Re: What it's for

[flameproof trousers on - I'm about to say something that genuinely isn't trolling but won't go down well]

I know it's fashionable to be rude about politicians. And there's a lot to be rude about.

But few governments are actually evil. And most are trying their best to do the right thing, incompetence permitting. For a given value of right, in that people do tend to forget that their own interest is different to their voters' interests, and end up doing stuff to suit themselves. Putting this caveat in to say I'm not a naive idiot, and realise politicians screw-up and both politicians and civil servants sometimes conspire against the voters.

But the UK government (for an example) isn't trying to rob us with inflation. Firstly 2.4% inflation isn't desperately high. In fact it's low by recent historical standards. What they're trying to do is to keep the economy from melting down, and a bit of inflation is a perfectly acceptable price to pay for that.

One of the problems of deflation, is what it does to debt dynamics. This is a major reason why there likely won't be a proper banking system in BItcoin. If economic growth/slump + inflation is lower than zero, then the value of an economy's debts compared to the size of the economy grows. This is what's happening to Greece, and is the reason that Japanese government debt has hit 250% of GDP. It's a disaster. Because eventually you have to default. So even when the economy isn't growing, a bit of inflation stops your debts getting bigger than your income. If on the other hand you have deflation money is getting more valuable than the things it can buy, so debt becomes harder to pay off. This would rewards savers, but not in the normal way. Because you don't need to lend your savings to get interest, you can stuff them under the mattress (or digital equivalent in the case of Bitcoin). Which is all well and good for you, but means the economy can't use that money in the meantime, and so can't do stuff with it. Like invest. Therefore you won't be able to take out a mortgage in Bitcoins, and as that's the largest transaction any of us is likely to make, that'll keep us trading in our own national currencies. Plus no investment = no R&D.

Finally, don't be so rude about taxes. Sure I'd like to pay as little tax as possible. But if we don't pay any tax, then when we have that heart attack, there'll be no nice ambulancemen to come along and jump up and down on our chests until it's going again. Just like bailing out the banks was the best of a bunch of bad options, a bit of inflation 'taxing us all' to save the borrowers is also better than writing that debt off and having to bail out the banks again. Or not bailing out the banks and losing our savings. The trick is to have higher interest rates in the boom, and governments not to spend more than they raise in tax - for which politicians are surely at fault, but so are voters.

Re: It was always 'jif'

Just tell that to the French who still will insist on saying le weekend. Just because they're too lazy to say fin de la semaine like good little boys like they're supposed to.

Although I was a fan of the officially approved click for online. Many websites label their buttons with cliquez, which is a bit icky. Whereas the non-stolen-from-english option is tirez. Which means fire/shoot (as in gun).

Re: Tumblr's DOOMED (more so than they think...)

Tumblr haven't even got a pronounceable name. And should be sued for cruelty to consonants or not paying for their allotted number of vowels first.

Re: Fun fact

Could this not be The Register Special Project Bureau's next project?

While the Iberian department conquer space, Lewis Page can pop down the Thames, defuse the bombs in the wreck, and be home in time for tea and medals. Alternatively a really, really, really huge explosion could be entertaining.

As a bonus, it should make a nice flat space for the new airport to replace Heathrow. Which is probably much better on reclaiming some land to build an island, building an expensive airport, and then having a plane fall on this wreck and flattening the whole thing again.

Re: yes

In one way, preservation is guaranteed. As with the German coastal fortifications in France from WWII, they're almost impossible to destroy. So much reinforced concrete was used, that these things just won't blow up. So I guess it's a case of finding a use for them, or making them into interesting museums.

It's interesting just how little effort the government put into civil defence. In the end they just decided that nuclear war would be so terminal, that there was little point in doing too much about it. This is a relatively small country, with a high density of targets.

I was reminded of all this yesterday, as there was a piece on the radio about 'Protect and Survive'. Not a particularly cheerful memento of the Cold War either. I remember watching 'Threads' in the 80s, and there was one shot in Sheffield as well was it called 'The War Game' or something?

I certainly remember having conversations in the 80s, once I was old enough to understand what it meant. Living under a mile from RAF Strike Command, in High Wycombe, surviving a nuclear war wasn't really an issue I had to worry about.

Re: @ I ain't Spartacus - NOW will you try Windows Phone 8?

I HATE OS/2 WARP!!!!!!

Better?

Re: Nexus 4

As above, SD card and a huge battery are surely worth that.

Although with the Nexus you do get Android updates. Can anyone tell me what they think of Sony's Android skin/launcher/whatever? I'm helping a friend sort out his phone/email/computer and he's been offered one of these. So it was perfect to see this review. The battery life looks especially nice.

I'll probably steer him to the Galaxy Note I or II for the S-Pen - for sketching dimensions on site photos. But it's worth looking at what else is around.

Re: NOW will you try Windows Phone 8?

To be 1,000 times better than iOS it would need to make me tea and a bacon sandwich on request, bring my slippers and paper to my armchair, and get those damned kids off my lawn.

Actually that's probably only 100 times better. So I guess we're talking bringing me smoked salmon and vintage champagne on request, with beef and claret to follow, then fruitcake and sauternes, cheese and port and whisky to follow.

I could be perfectly happy with iOS, Android, WinPho or Blackberry phones at the moment. Each would annoy me with something they can't do, but would have some advantage over the other OSes to make up for it.

Re: Let's hope LM get the accelerometer the right way up this time.

...and it reduces confusion: Too many white pieces of paper has more than once led to expensive rework. With the blueprints you get a higher level of confidence that you're working with the correct plans.

Oh how I wish that were standard practise in the construction industry nowadays! The number of times I'm talking to someone on a job and they've got no idea which version of the drawings they're looking at, and the spec and the drawings disagree... GRRRRRRRRRRAAAAARRRGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! It's just a big old folder full of badly-organised and badly-named files, so no-one can find anything.

I dread to think what that must be like with plans for complicated things like aeroplanes or spaceships - as opposed to simple things like buildings.

Re: Rereading...

I didn't really like that one. Although I'm a big fan of Niven, and Niven + Pournelle. I did really like Dream Park though, which is Barnes too isn't it?

Co-incidentally I'm re-reading The Burning Road, having just finished The Burning Tower. Which is just Niven and Pournelle. Very much enjoying it. Although it's not one of their best.

I should have written on this topic before. I moved before Christmas, and I've got all my boxes of books out of storage (after ten years). I built up a new collection in that time (oops), although I wasn't reading as much as before, until recently. But now it's like having bought several hundred new books, because I've got all this stuff that I can re-read. In the case of the Burning Road I couldn't remember reading it before, until I was about 100 pages in.

I don't consider a book any good until I've read it through a second time. If it won't bear a re-reading then I think it's lacking something important, even if I enjoyed it the first time.

Re: Now we might have a comparison

Different chips, different motherboards, different configuration. It'll be the battery and case that's similar. Unless you're talking about Windows RT which runs on ARM.

Re: Nice resolution.....

I'd imagine it's because they're building down to a cost. You've got to pay MS for Windows of course, and then you've got to have an Atom and motherboard, as opposed to an ARM SOC on the 'Droid one.

So going for a nicer panel will cost more, but also might mean needing a beefier graphics card/chip. You can get Win 8 tablets/convertibles with nicer displays, but they're going to have Core chips, rather than atoms, and cost more.

Re: Hmmm

It's Android. Does that mean it can run apps from the Play Store? Or would you have to side load that on first, and then perform various bits of hackery to get anything working?

David 164,

The posts were removed for the very obvious reason that they were put up there illegally.

As to the rest of your comment, you're completely wrong. There has been heavy coverage of the rebels' crimes in the UK press. I can't speak for the FT, because I don't think I've read a single piece from them on Syria. But there's been extensive coverage on the BBC (both domestic and World Service), the Telegraph, the Independent and the Guardian - which are the only places I can remember going to get news about Syria. There was a story covered by everyone 2 days ago of some Jihadist loony putting up a video of him cutting out the heart of one soldier they'd killed and eating a bit.

The reason that the West haven't decided to arm the rebels is because of the fact that some of them are jihadis. Although others would argue that not many of them were jihadis at the beginning, and perhaps if we'd armed the more sensible rebels, they wouldn't have needed to accept help from the jihadis - who already had guns. The Gulf states are arming the rebels (possibly with help from the CIA / SIS so the rumours say), and I don't know which groups they're arming.

However the regime are also partly responsible for the jihadis in their midst. It was they who welcomed Al Qaeda in - when they were fighting the sectarian war in Iraq. They were smuggling arms, fighters and suicide bombers into the Sunni area, over the Syrian border. I'm sure the Assad regime thought this was very convenient.

Unfortunately as the Iraqi Sunnis found, along with many before and since (including Assad), you can't trust Al Qaeda. They may offer help, but they're don't give a fuck about the people they claim to support, they're only interested in whatever it is their ideology actually seems to call for. Something they're never all that clear about. Other than the Caliphate, the end of Israel, and death to everyone who they don't like the look of with particular emphasis on death to the West of course.

They killed more Sunnis in Iraq than they managed to kill Americans and Shia, and the Sunnis ended up having to kick them out. They turned against the Syrian regime who'd sheltered them, which is probably why the Syrian government lost control of the whole area round the Iraqi border pretty early on in the conflict.

Anyway, as always, it's complicated. The West aren't giving the rebels 100% backing without criticism. As even a cursory following of the news for the last 2 years would tell you.

They forgot the vodka. Which I understand to be an important component of any successful sauna...

The ads in YouTube are massively intrusive. You click on a video, and you don't get the content you wanted, but an incredibly loud ad. Some don't let you skip for 20 seconds, on a 30 second clip! That would be like an hour long TV show lasting only 30 minutes and half an hour of adverts!

Plus they also sometimes have pop-up ads inside the videos that you have to close to get out of the way of the screen. Mostly I've seen those on videos that also had intro ads.

I've no problem with a bit of advertising, but I'm getting to hate YouTube now. I don't mind if they show stuff around the edges (which they do) and I've no objection to a short ad embedded in the video, but it's got well past taking the piss proportions now.

Of course some of this may be the content providers and not Google. But then seeing as YouTube was built on Google profiting from other people's copyrighted stuff without paying for it, you can't totally blame them either. 'Tis a bit of a mess really. And has a pretty shitty UI as well.

...And breathe... Don't know what launched me into that rant... Oh well, I feel better now.

Re: Not so nice when the shoe's on the other foot is it Microsoft?

The answer as to who to root for is, the customers. MS have been particularly evil in the past, but they've been slapped down a few times, and had to learn a few humbling lessons from the market. I'd argue they're no longer evil, they've improved in quite a lot of ways and they're just like any other corporation. Which doesn't mean nice, but profits in themselves aren't evil.

I worry that Google could turn evil, and they've got an awful lot of people's personal data with which to do it. But now, equally, I think they're just another big corp out to make a buck. Of course they did publicly say 'do no evil' so they can't complain if they're held to high standards.

However it's ironic to see Google making these points. Funny how they're so concerned about other people's revenue now. As opposed to when they're using their search monopoly to cross-subsidise free products into other areas, or turning off Exchange Active Sync and CalDav in Gmail to inconvenience non-Android users. Or scanning author's books without permission, or maybe most relevantly taking advertising revenue from news websites by pushing people through Google news so breaking the media companies revenue - even though they pay the money to provide the content. Which is also similar to YouTube., where Google get the cash, and other people do the work.

Again nothing particularly evil or unique here, it's just weird to see the occasionally rabid defence that Google gets from techies on these forums. The downvotes you get for even mild criticism of Google, Android, or worse, being nice about Windows Phone... Come on guys, they're just another company! They do some wonderful stuff, they do some pretty shitty stuff, and everywhere in between.

***Obviously for the purposes of this comment 'evil' is a nice piece of shorthand. In reality neither MS or Google have done anything evil. You need to consider them against Hitler, Stalin, or even the more tin-pot end of the Dictator scale like the Kim family in Korea or the Assads in Syria. In that perspective they're all just cuddly fluffy bunnykins really...

Re: Fragmentation?

Remember Samsung don't completely own the market. They just hoover up all the profits. It's safe to assume that the users of all the non-Samsung handsets still buy apps, and I think Samsung have less than half of Android sales. Although you could save testing time buy just concentrating on them, and still hit a large chunk of the market. I guess that depends on how much profit you make from each installed app.

Re: Nokia

It would be interesting to see what all the Elop-haters think of this story. Had Nokia gone Android, then they might be in the same boat as all the other manufacturers of 'Droids who don't live in Korea. A sad boat with no profits - and therefore no champagne, cocaine and hookers. Boo hoo...

Of course, I'm sure they'd just say that Nokia would be able to do better. And ignore the fact that no-one else seems to be managing it. After all, HTC seem to have some very nice phones, some look nicer to me than the Samsungs, but it doesn't seem to be doing them any good.

However the bit at the end of the article may be the most interesting. Maybe it's just down to marketing spend. Well Nokia would struggle with that, without the huge Microsoft marketing kick-backs they've been getting.

I also wonder how much is down to the channel? One of the criticisms of Elop that I've read is that he's been bad at getting Nokia into prominent places in the phone shops, and also at getting the staff to push Nokia's shinies. Now maybe that's just the staff being nice to their customers and pushing them away from Windows Phone. Or maybe it's unfair criticism, I don't know the industry well enough. But I've read a few other things about store staff pushing customers to Samsung away from HTC as well. So I wonder if part of it is that Samsung are paying the highest commission? Or just their regional sales bods are motivating/communicating with the store staff better? I had a brief bit of contact with this in my last job, working for a UK retailer. The incentives on just the Pay-as-you-Go phones we sold were horrifically complicated. We also made a small loss on most handsets until we got our rebates a few months later. With the actual mobile phone stores, I think there are programs to reward the sales guys directly - but even if not, management will push the one that makes most for them.

Re: To the author

Whatever the case may be, I can't see Google transforming Android into the kind of sick experience you get on Windows Phone today.

No I'm not an Android fan, I'm not even a Microsoft hater. but having played with both Android and Windows phone I'd rather have the "mess" than all the restrictiveness.

Aren't those 2 comments a bit mutually exclusive? It's certainly sounding a bit fanboyish.

Not that either OS is perfect. It's horses for course. Sure Windows is locked down. As is iOS. And if you want something that Apple/MS don't approve of then tough luck. Not sure I'd call that sick though. Just you pays your money and you takes your choice. Android is much more free, and therefore can be a bit of a mess. If you know what you're doing, then that's no problem.

I wouldn't recommend Android to my Mum, if she ever wanted a smartphone. But anyone with a small amount of confidence in computers will be perfectly fine. Then it's just a matter of which you prefer.

Re: round objects

You didn't like it. Fair enough. Others might. I don't think there's anything much wrong with the OS, it just makes different design choices to Android. It's horses for courses. A lack of ecosystem is no problem to people who don't want apps.

I have to say though that I find it hard to justify the top-end Lumia's because of that. If you're shelling out £500 anyway, get an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy 4. With decent app stores. I upgraded from my Lumia 710 a few months ago, and the MS Marketplace was still pretty crap then. But the cheap handsets are nice, as long as you don't want to do anything that WP can't.

Re: 16GB?

It's got a sealed battery, so I suspect no SD card. It was the Lumia 820 that had the SD slot wasn't it? Seems pretty stupid in my opinion.

At least when Apple make this decision it's so they can make you pay £200 to upgrade from 16GB to 64GB for yummy profits. I suppose deliberate evil is better than incompetent crapness...

Most other manufacturers don't seem to want to give you more than 32GB. My music collection is 20GB, plus I like to listen to podcasts on the way to work. Storage is cheap, I'd love to stop carrying a separate mp3 player, but so far I've not found a phone that does it, at sensible cost.

Re: Android capturing the spoils?

But Google aren't in it for the money. At least not directly. They're capturing the data, which is what they wanted. Although as you say, other than Samsung no-one else seems to be doing too well with Android.

I find Google's data gathering rather worrying. But you have to be impressed with the long-term planning that they've put in place. Even assuming only some of their moves were thought out long in advance. The sheer power of the massive network of mobile data recorders that they now control (or customers' Android handsets as everyone else calls them) is astonishing.

They won't need to go WiFi sniffing again, because they've got a network of phones with WiFi and GPS chips that upload all that data to their servers. The same thing helps them with mapping, traffic data for sat-nav, plus usage/location/search data that could give them a hugely valuable mobile marketing resource.

It better be worth it, because it hasn't come cheap. When you think they've bought patents as well as Motorola (possibly to get more), plus Android itself and spend a fortune on R&D and marketing. And yet they don't make a huge amount selling their add-ons to the OEMs, and I don't think they make a huge amount through the Play store either (at least so far).

Re: Torn between them all

I went Windows Phone for a while. Because the Lumia 710 was cheap. The upside was the big text, big buttons and lack of options. I decided that the tablet was for apps, the phone was for sat-nav and communication. My previous 'Droid was much better customised, and had more apps, but harder to use as a phone.

Now I've got a work iPhone, and I miss the flexibility of my old Android and the ease-of-use-but-inflexibility of my Win Phone. I think there must be something wrong with me...

In all seriousness they've all got strengths and weaknesses. I played with the new Berry and that looked OK too. But in my opinion Android needs the most tinkering to make it work well. For which trouble you get a UI more customised to what you like. My conclusion was that I don't want to tinker with my phone, I want it to mostly right out of the box.