Are the Chinese exceptionally patriottic ?

I am wondering if our Chinese friends are favouring their own brands. Maybe they are just finding their own products have come along far enough to be acceptable as alternatives to products sold by foreign companies.

Battery life will make it or break it

If they can get decent battery life out of it (like 10-12 hours) I think they have a fighting chance. However, at those prices they are ogling the enterprise, and even if I had a very good reason to recommend these for my engineers and construction managers I would never get IT to support 8, so it would be a no-no. MAYBE if they could get 7 to work on it without a hassle I could get them to condone it, but otherwise it''ll be smallish laptops.

Not in a movie..

But definitely the most worrying bit of hardware : Hex in the Unseen University's science department. It's administrator is Ponder Stibbons, and it proudly displays a sticker 'Anthill Inside'.

It's possibilities are endless !

I like their stores

Well, us Belgians do not merit a real Apple store, but we have premium resellers.

When I decided I may want to buy an iPad I went to their store. I was half expecting desinterested spotty yoofs, like the sales people you get in Mediamarkt, Saturn, FNAC (and things like Dixons i visite when I was in the uK)and other stores that sell electronics, the sort that don't really know what you're asking and know even less about the products they earn their crust with.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a store where everything was not only in stock bur available for actual physical contact (the products, people), the sales guy knew the differences between the models, knew what they did and what they didn't and how they worked together with other stuff. He even let le eat my icecream while he was explaining to me.

I don't know what monetary value I should put on the environment and how it equates to the price of the product, but I was happy that at least my mood didn't get totally ruined because I happened to need an electronics device.

Note on Sagan

I've always found him to be a bit schizophrenic in his reasoning.

Especially his argument about atheists being unable to prove god exists due to the lack of evidence has somehow always rubbed me the wrong way. But maybe he was just trying to be funny.

It makes me wonder...

on what basis the manufacturers compile their bid if both of them now find - and not for the first time - they're not making any money on the contract.

Ah ! We are in the news !

You can always rely on us Belgians for a good tech scoop. Well done lads.

I wonder...

Who's going to be held responsible for the slip in the new iMac delivery. They're pulling out all the stops to give the impression that the machines will be on the shelves this year, but my take is that it's just going to be a token presence. It may well be february before they get any volumes to marked.

Someone (or some more than one) better start going the job ads.

We were so disappointed.

OS/2 Was hyped as the new thing that was going to send Windoze to a well deserved grave. It didn't require DOS, it could address a decent amount of memory, It was going to be much faster. It was going to be a true graphical OS, not a shell stuck to a command prompt. It promised the arrival of new and great native versions of WP, 123 and Symphony, Paradox and so on.

When we finally got our hads on it, we had built custom machines for it. 8 megs of ram, a 200 mb HD, grahivs cards with 256K or 512K ram. They were so hot the guys supplying the parts thought we were building the starship Enterprise.

Then came the disappointment. It was horrid to install, crashed every time you went for a pee, and gave you grief if you wanted to install DOS software, which you had to, because the great new native apps never arrived.

After several months of trying to make these boxes work anywhere near reliable enough so we could demo them to clients we simply gave up and returned to MS.

For me, OS2 was the biggest let-down in computer history. I still think it's a shame because it had serious potential. But I guess IBM never saw it as something they could flog to PC users as a product. Triple shame.

It is common knowledge...

that a wiz'(z)ar's staff has a knob on the end !

Dragonworld anyone ?

I played something called 'Dragonworld' in what I remember as 1984, but IIRC it was on the Commodore 64. It had quite decent 320 graphics - on colour! - and I seem to remember the parser was quite good, although this might just be a fond memory now surrounded by the mists of time.

I think I'll start looking around for some emulators and dig up all those old classics.

Did you know the original Hawaii 5-0 and Mannix shows are now available on DVD ? I was amazed to discover they were actually in colour too !

What is never tested : warranty and service.

I've had a Buffalo BAs sitting on a shelf somewhere for over 2 years. It was bought in a pinh by a colleague in Japan and brought over on a project.

The power supply failed at some point. I have emailed and phoned with Buffalo in three continents, and with their main suppliers an dealers all around, AND I've even posted on their forum, asking to send me a replacement power supply. I have offered to pay for it and the shipping.

I have been given the run around from japan to the US to Europe, and ultimately I've been sent packing. They can not provide me with a replacement PS.

So before you part with your hard earned, take into consideration that there's some things that are never tested in a product review.

My brain hurts now

If I understand this correctly, Apple has placed an app of sorts on their iStore. A man is complaining that the stuff is HIS IP, but Apple won't remove it because is can not determine if the man is the IP owner.

It therefor follows that Apple can not determine if the person or persons that placed the content in the store are the IP owners either.

So Apple has put stuff in their store but they can not determine where it came from, and refuses to remove it for this very same reason.

Is it me or do they have it ass bakwards ? Does this now mean I can use any of Apples IP as long as I don't know it's their IP ? For instance, as long as I don't know Apple owns a patent for rectangular slab with rounded corners I can sell as many as I want, Ignorance is now an acceptable defene ?

And I'm not even trying to take the piss here. I'm dumbfounded.

So when does Sinofsky start...

chez Apple ?

Pete

I wonder if it can be done.

It would possibly be a horrendously expensive undertaking to develop a new architecture chip that :

1. outperforms the Intel latest generation

2. delivers comparable performance at a comparable price point

3. does not infringe on AMD or Intel IP (at least not getting away with it)

4. produce it at anysignificant quantities

5. produce the relevant industrial strength compilers and cross platform the software at the time of release.

6. Alternatively, develop new software from scratch. This would truly be a can of worms, migrating to completely new hard- and software from the ground floor ?

I only have to refer to AMD who, although they make exellent products, and were even the originators of the 64 bit instruction sets as we know it, have never been able to make a sizeable dent in the Intel armour, not even when they had superior hardware (I'm conveniently ignoring the Opterons, which had a good run...for a bit). And et's not forget that even Big Blue did not have the stomach to go up against Intel at the time of the PowerPC's

I imagine that as soon as someone adds up the numbers at Fruity Towers the whole idea will be quickly relegated to 'bargaining chip' status.

But, admittedly stranger things have happened.

When I bought my iPad over a year ago it was really no contest between the available 'droids and the iPad. If I would have to make the same choice today I'm not so sure the iPad would ome out on top. the 'droid tablets have come a long way in a year, for sure.

Oh dear...

It's not an 'A'elta, it's a 'D'elta, and my guess is it's a DC motor controller. For a fan, f'rinctance.

I don't think it would be advisable to cut loose Symbian in the current IP climate. Let's just imagine some IP litigation outfit gets to examine the source and claims all matter of copyright infringement.

Nokia has enough trouble right now. They don't need to expose themselves to infringement cases.

Mr. Bond is a Gentleman, and gentlemen do NOT drive Mustangs. And if , for reasons beyond their control, it IS necessery for them to drive one, the less it is mentioned and the sooner it is forgotten the better.

And I'm not sure about the E-type either

The first Esprits weren't turbo's, and the 750 they started filming with was such a steaming pile of excrement that BMW snuck in a 740 8 cylinder for the rest of the recording. Although the 8 cylinder Beamers are just an ever so slightly less steaming pile of excrement, at least they kept going.

Is this a surprise ?

Really ?

This is what happens when people do not invest in the company and their product, but only in the hope that an idiot will pay more for their share than they paid for it.

There's simply nothing solid to hang a share value onto. No product. Just some bits flying about with a perceived dispersion measured in clicks. The whole predictability of the business model is based on vapor.

The sheer stupidity of these 'investors' and 'market analysts' is nothing short of baffling.

I always get confused listening to these folks...

First they leave their country and come to ours, and when they are here they want us to start doing things the same way they do in the place they farked off from.

It is very disorienting, not to mention bloody annoying.

I, on the other hand...

Am still waiting for H3 on the PC.

It is, however simple.

It may be within the purview of the US to demand extradition. No country has the right to determine what US law should be.

It is, however, equally within the purview of the NZ law to refuse extradition on the basis of whatever NZ lawmakers decide reasons for refusal are.

Ah...humans !

We've already started tu turn Mars into a garbage dump too. The efficiency with which humans can srew up their environment boggles the mind !

You're joking ?

Anyone who is prepared to have 3500$ billed to their CC without any inkling on what they're getting or when they will get it deserves anything they finally do get...or not.

So...

Has Mr. Chen formulated a detailed flan of attack on how the Chinese eonomy is going to support 2.5 billion inhabitants with a reasonable standar of living ? I'm quite interested.

Can't comment on Groupon US...

But here in Europe they're just a bunch of parasitic scam artists.

And if they would like to sue me for saying that, the Reg is free to fork over my email adress if it is subpoena'd.

I still fail to understand...

Why Apple is not targetting google. Well, I do, because Google also sits on a large pile of cash (or whas that a large cache of piles ?) and they're a US outfit, which would give the presiding judge an identity crisis. But that's beside the point.

I'm in engineering. If I licence a technology from - say - Company K., and buid a plant for a client, an subsequently Company L opines that their patent has been infriged upon, thay would first have to prove this in court in CL vs. CK.

IF they are succesful in defending their claim a licensing deal would have to be brokered between CL and the client, possibly involving damages from CK to CL.

I would have to show I did not infringe knowingly (i.e. defraud) and the client would simply wave it's arms in the air claiming they know nothing and are from Barcelona (if such were the case).

So could someone explain the workings of this claim ?