Posts by Robert Grant
564 posts • joined Tuesday 22nd August 2006 22:40 GMT
Wow
Nice spec. Things like removable battery and MicroSD are awesome in a high-end phone. And is that now the highest pixel density in the world?
MS should hope this fails...
...then swoop in, buy RIM and integrate BBM into WP8. Love me some proper push.
Joss Whedon
Obv.
Re: Just a consumer.
Really got to be worried about the cultural side of The Register when someone can imply that the only alternative to reference material is something in the style of Mills and Boon, and no-one bats an eyelid!
"What I can say today is that Intel is executing on all cylinders," Skaugen boasted
And he's knocking his metaphors out of the park! Checkmate.
@dotdavid
The key problem is a system called Stack Ranking that Ballmer has championed, and thus it won't go away til he does.
It's an HR performance system. It basically looks at every team in MS, and ranks every employee from best to worst. The worst are often fired, or at least cannot easily move within the company. The rankings are first based on manager review, and then on a moderating system where managers fight to represent their employees (or not).
So, two problems:
1) Generally it's all actually based on visibility rather than productivity, and can be gamed. HR/management actively promote the idea that how one does something (e.g. never saying how things could be better, always being very pro-Microsoft) is more important than what one does.
2) If you have a team of superstars, you'll still have to rank some of them badly (the stats for each team must fit a bell curve, which is far too small a sample size to be accurate) and those that weren't great (but weren't the worst) this time are the lot expecting to be the worst next time
This leads to massive politicking and zero morale. Ballmer's basically got an almost zero track record of success, as their few revenue sources are just continuations of decades-old product lines. Nothing recently has been any good, except Xbox (which still makes a massive loss) and Windows Phone (which still has gaping flaws and is very late). MS have had zero visionary leadership in 20 years, I think. Even Gates, with his prediction of tablet computing, just wasn't the guy to make it happen. Sad as it makes me to say it, Jobs was the guy.
Ballmer is the worst: he isn't visionary, has admitted he has no idea about share prices, and he just wastes the time and money generated by clever engineers at MS.
Re: Source?
Nice. In the UK I had (in 2010; been abroad since) 20MB truly unlimited broadband (actually speed over 10MB/s), phone (and line) and Sky TV for 35 pounds/mo. Don't know what it'd be now.
@AndrueC - that'd be the representatives of the vast minority who are highly politically connected but choose to live in the countryside.
The problem
Stated another way, but pretty much the same as most people here:
1) You can't blame companies for minimising tax. That's legal. You do the same, unless you deliberately don't fill in deductables when you do a tax return, or you donate more tax out of your net income.
2) If you say some companies should pay more tax, based on a feeling in your gut, that means nothing.
3) Therefore if you say some companies should pay more tax, how should we define how much? You will get to something as complicated as tax law, eventually.
4) The problem with tax law is that it creates a lot of drag on companies, with serious, boring people getting paid lots of money to find boring loopholes in laws some other people wrote.
5) Therefore if you genuinely do find a way to tax more simply, start an open source government website, let anyone implement your suggestion, and we can wave goodbye to all the drag placed on companies by beancounters (or at least some of them).
6) Please do the same with law. The sooner we automate away the expensive paper pushers, the better.
Posted in Review: Mio Cyclo 300 cycling satnav
Americans?
Mio is best known for budget car satnavs and the Cyclo 300 falls into a similar category for those who use two pedals rather than three.
Licence server
Can't we automate away these expensive auditors already?
Er
CERN director general Rolf Heuer said it was a "great big pile of free cash" for the LHC scientists to be recognised by the committee.
Fixed that for you.
Re: Just to jump on the bandwagon...
Okay I don't understand that but am curious: explain, please :)
Re: Three Thoughts
Thought one: that's not a corollary. People often watch more TV than play games; this could just be an indication that Xbox is in more "normal" houesholds (ie ones where gaming isn't a focus) than before. Also, the amount of time playing games doesn't mean anything; some people literally don't have time. And that's fine, as long as they keep playing games. So the metric is (as it's always been) attach rate. Nothing new to see here.
Thought two: that's a marketing exercise, and ironically it's probably proven to be false by the first thought: Xboxes are in more "normal" households than before.
Thought three: through the biz-speke I think you're saying that Xbox can't keep up with being a console if prices must be low but specs must be high, and where do they make a profit if that's where things go? I guess one answer would be the PS2: people bought it because it was a DVD player (and cheaper than the alternatives) as well as a games console. No-one's going to tell me that the PS2 wasn't also a phenomenally successful gaming console as well.
Re: You think he's crazy
We'll still be running McAfee long after McAfee's stopped running.
Damn those school systems!
If only they'd let girls do IT, we'd have legions of female programmers.
Re: They really don't get it...
Don't be ridiculous - you can't do anything without decent architecture! I read it in an architecture journal.
Awesome eulogy
Well done El Reg.
Strange article
I'm not really sure it says anything at all.
Posted in What's the way ahead for Dell storage?
Slightly off-topic, but...
I've been wondering for a while whether something like Exchange (or any IMAP server, as well) actually stores a file sent to multiple recipients (especially with internal-to-internal emails) more than once. If it does, that's ridiculous. Surely pointing at a blob with a reference count would be much more efficient?
Comments? I'm just curious, really.
Posted in Review: Apple Mac Mini 2012
"And it may not even be Apple’s fault, at least not directly."
No, that is Apple's fault. Apple products (allegedly) Just Work. That means when things don't work, that is their fault. Or are all the Apple product reviews going to go on about how amazing Samsung and Intel are in the future?
Re: Nothing to see here...
I think you've only picked up on the simplest concept outlined in the article. Might I recommend a re-read?
Doesn't work, anyway
It's about time the Chinese got some of their own medicine.
Posted in Kim Dotcom shows off new mega service
Re: Pseudo-random?
This is totally normal; don't know why the article author also thought it was intriguing. puttygen has been doing it since the year 2000.
Re: US Anti-trust Laws
Yeah, interestingly there's no massive EU slapdown on Apple's not allowing competing browsers on its huge marketshare for phones and tablets.
Compare this to: MS totally allowing competing browsers on Windows XP, but just installing their one by default.
Re: Last weekend
I'd downvote you for jumping on the 3dtv bandwagon, but by the same token you already have enough problems.
Re: presided over the 4 biggest budget deficits in Australia's history!
@Term
Read the post you're replying to. The GFC doesn't make the statement wrong, and doesn't make someone a sexist for mentioning it.
Re: Morons wasting time.
How do you have a silver badge? Give me it.
Posted in The best e-readers for Christmas
Re; Nexus 10 better
Just curious as to why that is. I have a Kindle 4, which I really like, but if there's a better option out there then I'd be interested to know what the advantages are.
Posted in The best e-readers for Christmas
Craziest score there: iPad Mini vs Kindle Paperwhite
Battery life: Kindle massively wins
Cross-device book portability: Kindle wins
PPI: Kindle wins (212 vs 162)
Weight: Kindle wins (213g vs 308g)
Price: Kindle wins
Reading in daylight: Kindle wins
Reading at night: Draw
Free 3G: Kindle wins (for the 3G version)
And yet they're rated the same? Are you joking, El Reg? Probably on all of those useful eBook reader properties every device here beats the iPad Mini. Stop inflating iPad scores all the time.
And yes, blah blah general-purpose, other apps, whatever. The review is for eBook readers. Obviously the Mini beats these readers at other tasks.
Re: Where the big bucks are ...
Or put one up every other year to pay down their deficit.
Ah what the heck, I just checked and that wouldn't really do anything. Go nuts, NRO!
Re: WP7 still has a market too
Any WP7 Nokia Lumia still has access to offline maps free. That's a pretty good purchase even if you don't put a SIM in it - just think of it as a satnav with games :)
Someone's making a list of improvements for Windows Phone
Stumbled across it in Google but couldn't view it due to firewallage :)
Caveat emptor: http://101fixes.blogspot.com/
I'd give it a go for 250 squids
Especially with a built-in cover and keyboard.
Re: 100 meeeeellion?
The knee injury you speak of; what accessibility technology will help people with that disability with a website?
The problem/joke isn't that disabled people can't drive, it's that generally the same things that stop people accessing the driving licence renewals site would also stop them from driving.
Someone else posted a the more sensible counter-example of colour blindness, which does work.
Dunno about other phones, but
Windows Phone lets you back up images to the cloud, remote lock, remote wipe, etc etc, all built in. Surely most of that stuff is just an OS function?
Er
Random question - if I go to another country with said fondleslab and connect to wifi there, will it get me my copies of the Times? What I mean is: is the Times just another app?
Re: Given I was the 808 camera project manager
Sounds about right.
Anyone credited with "steering" anything technical is very unlikely to have done very much that an equivalent plug'n'play manager couldn't have. I've worked on one project in my life where the PM was both steering at a board level and very involved at a technical level; every other time, you don't even see them.
Re: Easy life
Check this out. If the RIAA can survive attempting to sue a dead person, I wonder if any amount of media circus (particularly where there's probably a lot of crossover between media and media enforcers) will actually make a difference.
Do murderers pay for police time?
The fine should fit the crime, not the lawyers' fees.
P.s. given the facts of the case I'd obviously say no harm done, so no fine, just a massive apology from the heroic laptop-snatchers. I'm just pointing out this as well.
Re: "Bin Laden and Company are well versed in ... IUDs"
women taking control of their own fertility
They don't let women have tubal ligations? Isn't that what a lot of women prefer, because it's easier and safer for the guy to have a vasectomy?
Or are you talking about abortions? Nothing to do with fertility.
Re: Pseudo-SMS
The clever thing with iMessage in particular is that at first glance, it IS still an SMS you're sending - it just takes a slightly different route which avoids operator charges.
This is what WP7 did a while before iMessage came out; you can switch messaging mode to send SMS, Live Messenger or Facebook messages, so all conversations are interleaved and look the same. If the contact is on FB/Live Messenger then you can send via those technologies, and WP->WP messaging can happen this way as well. It's cool because it all looks like one chat history with the person, and it'll let you know if they're offline on a certain service. You can still send messages to offline people, though.
I imagine they'll try and build in Skype messaging as well, if they haven't already, and there are various requests to open up the API completely so WhatsApp/Kik/whatever can also join the party. That'd be ace.
Re: Farcebook
That last sentence possibly explains all the others.
Facebook != email; its functionality is more like IM + email + blogging + commenting + twitter-style broadcasting + probably other stuff. Like user authentication.
With downsides a-plenty, of course, but email wouldn't come close to replacing it.
Posted in A valid use for Windows 8?
Licence transfer
If I upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 8, do I keep the DVD licence?
Re: But, but , but ,but...
Who told you you had to buy them at all? Did they threaten you?
Re: "Poor suffering New Zealand has one trans-Pacific connection..."
Er, how were you being sarcastic? You think Kim Dotcom should be believed, that he and the PM don't deserve each other, and that NZ doesn't need another cable?
Yep
Disgruntled Opera user here as well - never seems to get a mention hey. It slightly worries me that apparently no-one at El Reg is savvy enough to use Opera. It's not the only good option, obviously, but it's bad that no-one seems to use it.
Posted in Adobe's revenge on Steve Jobs: HTML5
"Adobe for its proprietary approach to Flash."
Little bit of bias here: care to mention the alternative at the time Flash was created by Macromedia, in 1996? For better or worse Macromedia/Adobe filled a huge gap in a browser-independent way, when Javascript was slow as a dog and there was no functionality alternative. It's only now, over 15 YEARS later, that there is a standard alternative available, except even then it's without the strong authoring tools.
Worth remembering, I think. I disable Flash, as I'm not a fan of it, but I don't think just blindly repeating Jobs' words is a fruitful exercise.
Also, would Apple have even survived in the dark days without Photoshop? They should be showering Adobe with thanks, I reckon.
Re: XBox myth
MS did poor business with XBox - 11 billion invested, and pretty much no profit to offset that 11 billion. (In fact, it's currently making a loss again).
This sort of talk fascinates me. So they sold stuff to me at a loss? They earmarked a lot of money to replace problematic machines, no questions asked? How is that bad for me? Would you rather buy from Apple, who are clearly selling to you at a massive profit, because of their ridiculous amounts of money?
Seriously crazy, boys. Anyone who defends their product purchases by how much money the seller is making from them is just insane, and cannot be reasoned with.
P.s. general statement: saying someone's argument is bad because they're posting as AC is also ad hom.
Surface networking capability
Will they use EDGE?
@Amonynous
Hilarious that that's the sort of work lawyers have to do, or that it counts as work at all. Can't wait til we automate their jobs.
