Posts by Jim 59 2047 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009
"[some Linux users are] ...people who are naturally disposed to Being Right, And Morally Superior." And that's just Linux ? I thought it was a general human tendancy. Windows/Apple people too.
On the subject of Nokia, they will be back, once they have sorted out their internal problems. Not sure how, but they will be king again.
The senator expressed his views. Many people might disagree with him. But he was voted in to do that; it's his job. To me, it seems Savage's response was just an excercise in hate. It encouraged others not to think, not to address Santorum's views, but just to hate the man. And it encouraged them to think that the hatred was good and clever. We've seen it all before. Hate is not good or clever, but it can be extremely powerful when roused (cf any internet forum).
Wikipedia/Google should alter themselves to remedy the situation as far as possible.
Unix/Linux are technically very similar and historically intertwined. In the context of this article, they should be held the same, cutsey project names notwithstanding. The author has instead lumped Linux with Windows simply in order to make a point about the commercials. Far more interesting to group Linux more correctly with Unix, and ponder the evolution of the OSes from that viewpoint.
The author writes about Linux as if it were part of the Windows product suite, and not a tentacle of Unix. Linux is the most open unix of all, and has well and truly answered that 20 year old call for for "open systems!".
The lower midrange market was there fore he taking in the late 90's. MS jumped right in there and had a great time for 5 years. Then unix sent in its Linux steamroller, which continues to rumble back and forth in the datacentre.
The proprietory unixes have of course declined, driven by technology, but that's 10 year old news. This article focusses, oddly, on Itanuim/RISC, a minority platform if ever there was one. Yes, mainframes cost more than midrange, which costs more than x64. 'Twas ever thus. Only the old names changed - mainframe, mini and micro.
What put me off FB was the introduction of the "news feed", a large pane occupying centre-screen, which you cannot turn off, that barks at you every time a friend-of-a-friend does anything. There was a FB revolt at the time, but the company got its way and the enforced "feature" stayed.
Your average small exchange is probably downloading thousands of copies of popular web pages, eg BBC news. Maybe a big net caching device at the exchange could speed things up. If it has dedupe, it won't need to be so enourmous. The pages would have to expire after an hour or two.
Won't help gaming, interactive services and the rest of it, but those could still benefit from freed bandwidth.
Oh and turn off iPlayer, or re-implement it on top of bittorrent. Streaming is anathema to the Internet IMO.
Fair enough. We will have to disagree over tablets' ease of use. After owning one for a fortnight, I honestly can't think of any job that is not easier on a PC.
What the article excitedly calls the "loss of the Fibre Channel disk business" is just technological improvement, not the death of an industry. The guys who made FC disks will just switch to SAS, they won't be losing any business.
1. "Has Apple prophet Steve Jobs just foretold the end of the desktop hard drive?"
No. Cloud services existed before he spoke.
2. "Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital. The spinning disk gang are fresh out of luck."
You mean, apart from all the platters they will sell into the cloud biz?
3. "Smart phones and tablets are much easier to use than PCs".
Try leavng a comment this long using an iPad.
4. "Thus, consumers won't buy so many PCs"
Tablet and phone buyers will additionally buy a PC. Not all PC users will buy a tablet however.
5. "...users will abandon their PCs"
For a few minutes, until they have to create some content, ie. do some actual work.
5. ".. the expected loss of the Fibre Channel disk business"
Que ?
6. "The disk troika need, really do need, to find themselves new sources of growth."
Oh no! if they go bust, who will make all these new flash drives for us ?
So an anonymous "Pakistani pilot" says on a website, to paraphrase - "yeah we won we creamed them all. Not becuase of the planes, but just becuase we ROCK !". And the author:
1. Swallows the anon posting without criticism, question or confirmation
2. Ascribes the claimed victory to the equipment allegedly involved, when even the anonymous source seemed to be saying the opposite.
3. Questions the Eurofighter project on this basis.
Come on man.
I dunno. You have to be careful with this "despising your customers" thing. It's okay to politely eject a customer, or bar them permanently. But going to this length simply in order to make the miscreant look foolish ? Sounds pretty spiteful to me. Maybe even illegal.
Never been distracted by a texter myself, mind. Must drive you insane.
Agreed. I have just bought a tablet and am wondering what its role is. It can be used for reading mail, but even that job is done better on the PC. As for sending mail, forget it. Entering text is so burdensome as to put most jobs out of the tablet's reach.
Still, I only bought it for surfing, and it is okay for that. But slower than the PC, and with a smaller screen.
Words are important and so are the rules governing what time the BBC can use them. It's no good pretending that censorship does not, or should not exist. It does, and the guidelines are in place uitimately for everone's benefit.
I am not sure how cases like this should be treated - where the word is said indirectly. Clearly it is much less offensive that just saying the C word . If Ms Toksvig had done that, she would have been sacked or reprimanded pretty quickly.
I'm a tech-head too, most of us are on this website. And like most freetards, I fear lock-in more than spending cash. Most readers here are not short of a bob or two anyway, and Reg staff are positively rich. No, is it the lock-in we fear. It is initially attractive, especially with the worlds best marketing machine behind it. But once you are locked in, nobody cares about you any more. A "means to an end" you say, wisely. True, but you don't really control the end any more.
A friend of mine kitted out her children with iPods, bought a big telly and replaced the living room hi-fi with an iPod dock linked to surround sound. She is delighted, but the overall result is that (a) they can't listen to music without waiting for the massive telly to boot (b) Everything they hear is over 1" speakers, (c) the whole rig is vastly complicated to administer and use, (d) it cost well north of £1500.
In comparison, I have a "open" freetard solution I won't bore readers with, and the total cost was about £52, using an existing hi-fi. It took much more work initially, but is streets ahead of my friends system. On a recent visit, I tried to connect my media player to give Anne a demonstration of "crossfade". Silly me, there was input on the iPod dock.
Still haven't made up my mind iPhone vs Android though.
Quoting Matt 89's fine rant:
"..this is a *DESKTOP* not a *MOBILE INTERFACE*"
Exactly.
Dear desktop designers, my PC has a 20 inch screen, not a 3 inch screen. It runs 10 applications at once, not a single "app". I use 2 hands, not a single finger, and so on, and so on. Please take your shiny Androidesque daftness and place it in the bin with the KDE plasmoids. I'll give you plasmoids.
I agree with the Skype/Hotmail comparison. But I don't think Ballmer should go. Microsoft's problems are largely brand related. People hear "Microsoft" and they think: viruses, malware, annoying dialogs, that paper clip thing and the 1990s. "Windows" is similarly tainted.
MS should buy companies and use those companies' brands as well as their tech. It is better if customers don't know that Microsoft is behind a brand (like Skype). Also they should rename Windows before trying to put it on a mobile phone or tablet. Keep the "Windows" badge for desktops only.
Also, to keep a finger in every pie, they should launch some Android kit, even if it competes with their own mobile OS. Basically, MS should push themselves to the front of the market with whatever it takes, and not just sit in some back room with a Windws PC.
I know what ports 161,162 are used for. Is well discussed in the indicated URL. No, my point was BT's reluctance to explain themselves and my concommitant relictance to get a HH3.
Anybody on BT broadband out there - what would you recommend as a drop in replacement for the home hub ? All my PCs are Linux.
On the latest Home Hub, version 3, port 161 is always open and uncloseable. BT won't say why. Their inability to come up with an explanation is more troubling than the actual open port IMO:
http://community.bt.com/t5/BB-Speed-Connection-Issues/port-161-open-on-home-hub-3/td-p/133207
The main reason I am still on HH 1. Wonder what version was used in this instance.
It's the general issue of streaming vs broadcast. The author has binned broadcast "in less than a twelvemonth" in favour of streaming. Good luck to him. I am in the "get real!" broadcast camp with my trusty topfield PVR and seperate MP3 players. Streaming clogs up the internets, quality is an issue, and you have to involve your entire home IT ecosystem everytime you want to listen to Thin Lizzy. On the other hand, my hi-fi connected MP3 player boots in under a second.
Re the weaving analogy. Yes, technology killed the spinning wheel. It's different with MP3, where tech has killed not only the preceding technology, but has altogether removed the motivation to make music in the first place. Its as if the weaving machine killed not only the spinning wheel, but the sheep as well. Without sheep, the weaving machine can't weave. Unless artists are motivated to make good music, there won't be any.
Once the product can be digitised, all bets are off. When anybody can make perfect and infinite (if illegal) copies of your product, it becomes hard to sell. It happened to music, and it may happen to books. You may critisize a lack of commercial innovation, but what would you do ? On the other hand, Itunes does okay, so maybe there is hope. Perhaps they should vary the price with the sales of the song. Eg. the higher a song goes up the charts, the cheaper it gets. Or some better formula.
I personally favour buying music on CDs, which are often very cheap these days.
A naughty stash ? We don't know, and never will. However, it is odd for the CIA to feel that a mass murderer's reputation needs lowering. If you have already incinerated 3000 civilians in a premeditated act, looking at naught pics hardly makes you a worse person. And his followers, though they may be gullible, are unlikely to believe what the CIA says anyway.
Better for the West to give a good example to Bin Laden's followers by improving our own behaviour.
It's unfortunate that those who define what is racist also define a list of alternative groups who may be abused with impunity. Groups on the list are either selected arbitarily, or contain people they don't like. The more "abusable" groups you are a member of, the more annnoying it is. Unfortunately, Welsh and redheads both fall into this category. Personally I think you should be nice to everyone.
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