Posts by PJI

Re: Apple's four nearest rivals ... all grew at least more than twice the market rate.

It's a matter of scale. I do not have any numbers to hand. But it's like risk of being hit by a meteorite doubling or even quadrupling: some number times very small is just a bit less small. Supposing one green widget is being sold for every 20 blue widgets, even if green widget sales are triple and blue widget sales go down by five per cent, blue widgets are still doing rather better, plus in this case the blue widgets earn money across the board, whereas many, perhaps most, of the green widgets are sold at a loss or very small profit, plus there is always the problem of retaining in the face of novelty and negative propaganda.

Re: Eventually, they became the Microsoft they hated

But the point is that he tried, which is reasonable if that is what he wants to do, and Woz had the ability to and did refuse. As we know just one version, perhaps we should all shut up and mind our own business.

As to the report according to this Register article:

1. Sounds as if the whole trial is rotten. If a juror started spouting their biassed opinion, they would be dismissed. If a judge does the same, it sounds like the old, Wild West hanging courts and the judge should be dismissed from their job, as being unable to judge the evidence presented to the court dispassionately, honestly and according to current laws on the subject. But then, USA is not strong on justice, just like so many Register commenters.

2. This sounds like a grudge by people in a position to pursue their grudge, a bit like sentencing a mortal man to 300 years in prison without remission. So, when will Google and others get their turn?

3. How does one know that Apple (or anyone else) has run out of new ideas etc.. Perhaps, just possibly, it is difficult to come up better mouse traps every month just because an easily bored public, who can not themselves do it, want it. Perhaps they are developing a brilliant idea, in confidence because they would rather like to get a working, decent version out to earn some money before some shyster takes the ideas, as Google and the iPhone.

4. Perhaps people have got very sad, limited lives if treating firms as if they are your favourite association football team is thought to be either reasonable or productive.

Re: Isn't this illegal? Immoral? @ Rob

Your ignorance is extraordinary.

1. one can not just reduce wages to the lowest common, international denominator if the employees are to be able to afford to live (eat, be housed, care for children, provide the market for your goods) in their country or area of residence. This is illogical, kills the local market that no longer has the wherewithal nor need to buy ever cheaper, usually inferior services.

2. this damages the firm's home country in terms of lost taxation and rising social costs for the support of the sacked workers.

3. in turn, the infrastructure that supports the company (legal, security, communications) is damaged as it becomes unsustainable with the loss of tax money to pay for it.

4. perceived savings are rarely realised overall as reduced service standards annoy customers; knowledge is lost; the overseas firms gain the knowledge and replace you; even overseas wages and infrastructure costs do rise, often faster and less predictably than in the home market; remote management is neither free, nor simple, nor fully effective. In every IT firm that I have worked, where "offshoring" is done, an amazing number of the "offshore" workers are brought "on shore" for various periods, each individual getting lower salary, but also needing airfares, accommodation, home leave, increased communications costs and still needing desks, insurance, space, equipment and still leaching knowledge away as they can not stay for ever, usually no longer than two years. Quality of documentation, service management and so on all drop, especially when different time zones are in play.

5. Most importantly, to me: business needs to cover its costs and make some profit; but its primary purpose in the larger scale of things is to be part of society, provide services and work for the inhabitants. A country with highly profitable business and poverty, disease and unemployment is a failed country, hardly indeed a country, and tends towards social collapse. Or of course, just replace us all with extremely profitable robots filling warehouses with goods for other robots and a tiny minority of "businessmen", wandering from (foreign) expensive bolt hole to bolt hole in transport systems insulated from the hoi polloi, like old fashioned, colonial expats. in HK and parts of Africa, neither knowing nor caring about the local inhabitants, culture, language nor even aware of where they are - a dying breed until resuscitated by modern, international "business", in a worse, more insidious, exploitative way than ever.

I wonder what sacrifices the senior managers of such firms are making, many of them getting bonuses, on top of generous salaries, that would cover the claimed savings.

You must be American, so sweet. In English, Fanny is short for a couple of names, including Myfanwy, not uncommon at one time and no snigger value in that context, also not in Swiss, as opposed to Randy, for example, that is popular in American but has considerable snigger value in UK.

Schatter is fairly standard, again snigger value only to Yanks. Really, you are culturally ignorant. Get over it and get educated. I assume you are a little older than three years old.

Re: Bootnote

Ah, a written constitution, freezing late eighteenth century ideas and expressions into permanent law, that two hundred and fifty years later nobody understands as the language changed, the circumstances changed and the numbers and origins of the population changed. Brilliant.

Re: WTF...

"Interesting. What election had they won to make that true?": you are betraying your worldly ignorance. Just what authority says that a country must choose its government through elections? Actually, what evidence is there, taking most countries into account, that elections produce a more popular or better government than any other form? So, In Europe and N. America, one may expect elections to be the norm. But for large parts of the world, some under the sponsorship of that great democracy, USA, this is not the case, e.g. the change of government from Sadam, or the two of the recent Egyptian changes, or Libya. How about the technocrat government in Italy between the last two elected governments?

How do you even show that most elections are truly open, fair, free of manipulation through money, business interests, ignorance, fear? (USA in particular, but most of Europe too, are all, it seems, just by chance, governed by those with rather more money and rather more commercial connections than the rest of us; just why does a party exist and why does it need so much money to get its members elected?)

Re: I can see the next terror plot..

Not even deed poll. In GB, I believe all you have to do is start calling yourself by that name and publish the change. Of course, your bank and others may want some evidence that you are you, making a deed poll worthwhile.

Re: Matt B.

I find this reasoning about a country being able to do what it wants if it suspects that a diplomatic aircraft contains, e.g., a spy or some other "wanted" person by, for example, the USA (one would have thought that at least that person should be wanted by the stopping state) disturbing and inconsistent, if not mediaeval in concept.

1. So what happened with those thoroughly illegal "rendition" flights? Why did every country permit them to enter their airspace, even after it was public knowledge?

2. Am I the only one, not surprised but certainly disgusted at the confirmation, who is interested that just about every European country obeys American government (not even USA parliament, just government officials, public servants) diktat so readily, despite the "shock" that the USA has been spying on them for commercial and diplomatic advantage? What is more, the governments are sufficiently ashamed, in most cases, that they tried to pretend there were technical problems with their flight control systems on the ground. Under what treaty, formal, reviewed application or whatever was this legal in any of those countries? Why did they feel obliged to obey? Is this legal even in the USA?

3. Is the USA the same country as the one expressing outrage at Chinese spying? Is this the same one that routinely deals with other countries terrorists and criminals as honoured guests, when those people are doing what the USA likes? e.g. inviting IRA terrorists to the White House?

4. Human rights - I gather that certain S. American countries were berated about these, just like the state behind Guantanamo.

No. I accept that the USA pursues its own interests, presumably in the belief that its methods are best for its people; that is the job of the USA government. But the hypocrisy of the USA and the pusillanimous acquiescence of "sovereign" states is terrifying.

Re: Only one of many misconceptions

re 1. it must be many years since anyone said that. Call your bluff.

re 2. I do not have the misfortune, any longer, to live in GB. But the pension is pretty miserable by international standards in the first place and, having some idea of the size of it, it would barely pay the average drinking bill of an 18 year old.

re 3. And just who do you think paid in to the pension and national health schemes and for your education, health care (I assume you got the usual inoculations, medicines for illness, checks etc.) and the national and local infrastructure that, no doubt, you think is there by some freak of nature? You appear to be one of those who think anyone over 60 is a candidate for compulsory euthanasia and certainly deserves abject poverty for having the temerity to live long enough to even think about retiring. One could add that today's UK tax rates are rather lower for most people than in the working years of many retired people. Personally, I think we owe them a lot, just as, provided most of your generation are more intelligent than you, your successors should appreciate your efforts.

Now, go and do your homework and work hard at school so that you can become a useful adult.

Re: Of course there are old people who understand computers out there

I grant your comment about contact with computing. I recall seeing a large building with two, windowless walls that held some vast machine (probably a 100th the power of my iPhone now) and having no idea, as a youth, what on earth it really meant.

But, I venture to suggest that the average mathematical (and literacy) level was somewhat higher across most of the population than today and that, given the chance, therefore, those actually using and developing the technology at the time would not have been so far ahead of the general population at the time.

Re: Yup - Me too!

I take it that:

1. Design, empathy, customer care and ergonomics are not your strong points.

2. You prefer to be on the dole to having a job.

I recall when my mother asked a bank clerk, who was directing her to use a machine rather than bother the clerk, if that clerk was happy to be out of a job. The miserable clerk had failed to consider the full consequences of bad customer service and delegation to a machine.