Posts by Magnus_Pym
953 posts • joined Thursday 14th January 2010 08:50 GMT
London weighting
Many head offices are in London because the transport links are all biased towards London, Transport Links are biased towards London because many head offices are there. Workers are attracted to London because wages are higher. Wages are higher because cost are higher. Cost are higher because resources are limited, Resources are limited because so many workers are attracted to London. See the problem? Add London weighting on wages and you only add to it.
Just as an aside, How much would it cost , infrastructure wise to move parliament to Birmingham or Manchester. Just a little bit away from their banking playmates. Now that might justify a high speed rail link
Re: Working remotely
If the job can be outsourced to another country and costs saved then your competitors are already doing it and your company is already on the death slide. Goodbye smart arse.
How corporations save money
In a board meeting at every corporation ever:
CEO: Ok, the end of the financial year is coming up so we need to save 10% on costs this year so I can look good to investors. I need ideas people.
Director 1: We have too many directors, what about cutting the board a little?
Director 2: We could use the feed-back from customers to improve the product and reduce costly returns.
Director 3: We could listen to shop floor managers who have been telling us for years where the real problems are.
Director 4: We could sack workers and outsource everything non-core to the best third parties in the industry segments. Many would re-employ our staff so we don't loose any hard gained product experience.
Director 5: What he said but fuck the experience go for the cheapest option, save more money, we all get bigger bonuses and we move on before the inevitable shit/fan confluence.
CEO Good idea Director 5, have a promotion and extra bonus. Implement the plan immediately.
Balmercide.
We see them as potential leaders Balmer sees them as competition. Competition is not good for Balmer so competition ceases to exist. Gates backs Balmer because there is no one else left to govern.
Alternatives?
Why do these things have to be alternatives. The buyer probably has armoured au pairs, private S+M islands and as many Nissan Jukes as anyone could wish for*. Obviously what they really need is to buy some friends, even if it's only for half an hour at a time.
* probably no more than one.
Posted in Auto argument losers
Auto argument losers
It's my belief that there are a number of argument which, through illogicality or lack of evidence should automatically lose an argument. It might be useful to have a link to these rather like the like/dislike points that can be attributed to a post. Then rather than going to the trouble of trying to use logic and actual references to show an idiot what an idiot he is, a simple click to link the post to a pre written page that explains why they are wrong would suffice. Examples of self defeating arguments are:
1. bad grammar = bad logic. Pointing out that someone has made a spelling mistake does not make you right or them wrong. Additionally if you play the grammar card you will always make a grammatical error.
2. Thin end of the wedge. If you let people have bread they will be asking for cake next: More than likely but you can say yes to bread and no to cake if you want.
3. Dogma. I know the Bible* is true because it says so in the Bible*. *Insert guru, corporation or political leaning of your choice in these positions.
4. New ball game. just because something is done with a computer does not mean there is no president. On-line fraud is the same as postal fraud but quicker. Gaining information by deception accross juristictions has been done before via mail, phone, fax and probably by smoke signals.
5. Illegal copying is theft. No it isn't theft deprives the owner of use of the thing not just the money they might have made from it.
There are many more. Anyone think of any?
" tele-working for most jobs doesn't beat talking to someone face to face"
chronistic-circular argument: face to face is perceived as 'better' because people prefer what they are used to: people will continue to get used to it because it is perceived as better. Anyway teleworking doesn't have to 'beat' face to face, it only has provide a better cost/benefit return.
Re: User E%$^&#nce?
"websites for marketing". I've lost patience with companies whose 'help' website answers any question about 'prodcut x' with 'Buy product x'. Crystal Reports anyone?
Boycott Intel?
So the reason that the current crop of Intel processor works well is not because of the work of the individuals involved in it's design and the great many others throughout history and from all corners of the world whose work contributed to the science underpinning them but is actually a direct product of the religious/political climate in force in the area that some of those individuals involved happen to live in at the time it came to market. Interesting.
tri-gate advantage
I imagine that for an ARM processor to get the benefit of tri-gate technology it would require a re-design from a very low level so a future generation of ARM processors may use it but it won't be the current processors re-engineered.
Even so if I where a hardware manufacturer I wouldn't be jumping onto the Intel bandwagon just yet. Maybe if it turns out to open a real world advantage that sticking with ARM will be not able to close within a reasonable time frame then maybe. But then again, given Intel's track record with customer focus maybe not.
I'm wondering ...
.. if the age of dedicated hardware is going to come back. Either your business application is standards based, browser based and device agnostic or you sell a turn-key device optimized for the application. e.g. a CAD/CAM workstation or photo editing suite or music editing desk with appropriate keyboard, pen, mixers built in.
Posted in WTF is... H.265 aka HEVC?
Beware of optimized content
Demo loops to show the 'power' of video codecs are usually optimized for what the codec is best at. As far as I am aware they usually work by not resending static content from the previous frame. The more 'intelligent' the codec the better it as at deciding what not to send. A scene of a bee visiting a flower is a good example. The background is stationary and the moving part of the image is very small, hardly any bandwidth. The next level is predictably moving background the background doesn't need to be resent only a message to move all blocks the same amount. A man walking past a fairly plain wall for instance. The problem is that film directors like jump cuts and car chases. These don't encode very well at all.
Re: Hold on!
"It wasn't designed to bootleg concerts anymore than the compact cassette was designed to pirate albums."
I know. However it has been pointed out in earlier posts that a we should listen to the quality of a recording made at a live concert to judge this technology. That is something that it excels at. Recording live concerts is something a lot of performers see an infringement of their IP. They complain that 'live' music recordings can be sold by the artist to generate earnings from their work. These earnings are lost if the concert is bootlegged. It's similar to the situation with IP laws not designed to stifle competition and keep the small players out of the market. However that is what i happens in real life. IP arguments were used successfully to impose a levy on blank cassettes to give to artist who may be losing out on sales. Here they appear to be using the legislation to protect the IP of an anti IP technology.
Hence the irony. Jesus.
Hold on!
They are in court defending their IP on a technology that allows users to bootleg live concerts? Ironic or what.
Re: But are you a Hun?
Congratulations you win the Douglas Adams quote of the day prize - The, dare I say it, DNA award.
Tortuous
The current tax system does not work for a globalised market. Those wealthy enough have been always able 'optimise' their tax affairs. That's why super tax is so high. Not to take a large percentage but to take a large percentage of the small amount left exposed to tax after off-shoring salaries and purchasing through dummy businesses.
The problem now is that the internet has made the threshold for these type of schemes is much lower and they are now available to the huddled masses. The powers that be can't have that! Something must be done! This is just an attempt to stop the proles doing it but allow the nobs to carry on as before.
I suggest a fund...
.. for getting some of his better images made up as billboards in an around his local. hmmm, maybe some beermats too.
Re: REminds me of a report in the 1970's "Coal Bridge to the Future."
" I do expect it to burn a lot less coal for the same leccy that such a station built in say the 1970's would have."
Why?
Re: Let's call them what they are - Communists.
"your children will have to live with the consequences of your action (or inaction)." or to put it another way.
Our children will die of the consequences of your action (or inaction).
Re: 51% to 49% is hardly a sweeping victory
You're lucky. Cameron only got 36.1% of the popular vote but still thinks he has a mandate.
Easy to blame Brussels...
...but it amazes me that the UKIP types think our own home grown Westminister politicians and bureaucrats are any less lazy/wasteful/stupid than the European ones and that taking away the small level of oversight that the EU gives us will make them better.
If you want to end wasteful politicking by bureaucrats who know little and care less about the lives of the local population join in the movement to break away the original English kingdom. Anglo-Saxons ? Sod the Angles and their Danish overlords. Saxon home rule! - FREEDOM FOR MERCIA!
Just wondering.
What do you have to do to become a think tank? Is there some kind of national register or professional qualification? Can you be thrown out of the think tank guild for thinking the wrong things? or is it, as I suspect, a self bestowed title for people who think they know better than everyone else.
Re: Do it in house
I'd agree except it's Government ministers that do the negotiating. NHS procurement is only ever a proxy for party politics.
Two options.
1. Get some people who know what they are doing . Pay them to do it. Come back when it's done.
2. Choose the people in charge at random and change them at irregular intervals. Get big players in a similar industry to tell them what them want. Throw in disruptive political party expediencies for good measure.
Method 1 has a patchy track record. Has had some notable successes. Has little career enhancing pay back for the politicos of the day.
Method 2 has consistently and spectacularly failed. Gives politicians regular opportunities for claiming money saving 'new initiatives' and 'it was all the other guys fault.
Which would you choose? That's why you are not currently on an all-expenses-you-can-get-away-with all-power-no-responsibility gravy-train and have to work for your money instead.
Who new...
.. they didn't do this already?
Re: Minority?
Guardian, is that still going? Who reads the papers these days?
Left school in the early eighties...
Went to a college so underfunded parts of the buildings were taped off. No jobs, only schemes. Apprenticeships that paid a pittance and offered only redundancy at the end. Worked for my dad until boom-bust closed his business too. Several low paid, short term or part time jobs followed in between being unable to claim the dole due to 'benefit regulations' . Twenty years of scraping by before I got a career. Yeah. Thatcher's policies certainly got the economy working for me, Like fuck.
Of course he's a millionaire
It was stolen from CENTRAL London. They don't even let you walk through central London with out proof of an American Express Centurion account these days. Let alone actual live there.
My laptop has slowed down...
... is usually the opening gambit. "Yes, that happens I say".
"I think I need a new one" I ignore this but most persist. "What should I buy?"
"Reconditioned Lenovo T series or a macbook." is my the stock answer (make of that what you will).
...Time passes...
"I thought about what you said about Len.. thingy's and mac but I went to PC world and the had a sale on I got a much better deal on a (Insert shite of the day here) are they any good? Only it's started to do this thing where..." I feign death at this point.
Didn't microsoft say...
... something about 'not using Nokia IP as to stifle competition' Looks like Microsoft lied, who would'a thunk it.
Re: This is why they make prisons
Yes. But who are 'they'?
Posted in Windows Phone 8 support to end in 2014
Surely it would be better...
... to announce the new OS before announcing the death of the old one?
Re: Plumbing
Cold climate agree. Hot climate disagree.
Re: The need for central control
"And some commentards overlook the simple concept that I pay for electricity, plus a range of taxes and government levies on top, and I expect the industry to meet my demand when I want it."
While I agree that no good can come of ceding control of a service to an entity centred on making a profit from your use of those services. This assumes that the price you pay for that service is actually the true total cost of using it. When it involves a finite resource of unknown total quantity that has both in increasing demand and increasing side effects inside and outside the borders of sellers domain it's a bit difficult to calculate.
Coal and Natural Gas are essentially free. They exists already. Any charges are based entirely on extraction costs (which are largely based on safety legislation) and taxation (which are largely based on greed legislation).
Usual 5am Run?
WTF?
Hold on a minute
Some women in the porn industry their breasts enlarged, some massively so. No women in the porn industry their breasts reduced. IRL both are carried out mostly within realistic parameters. How can the average pornstar not have larger breasts than the average non-pornstar?
Supersize vs superskinny
Anyone seen that? More often than not the killingly bad diets on both ends of the spectrum involve large amounts of branded cola beverage. Co-incidence? I don't think so.
New headline
- UK Gov doesn't want to pay for skills to save itself from cyber threats -
Re: .... nice
Rant yes. Incoherent no.
Re: Hmmm
That's how blackmail always works isn't it.
Bricked?
To my mind 'Bricked' means no recovery no functionality. If you can recover it it wasn't a brick it was merely a broken laptop.
If you can brick a laptop by plugging something into a USB port then it's a big problem. It doesn't matter how it was discovered. What we now know is that there is a system call on board that will fuck it right up. Bad news. For one thing it's an attack vector for bad people that do bad things and secondly it's a huge seagoing battleship mine whenever the user upgrades or installs anything.
Maybe the facebook generation...
Who have gotten used to everything they do and say being instantly broadcast to everyone they know will be less constrained by the corrupt standards of old. Maybe 'sexting' will make the human body a bit less taboo. We can only hope.
Nude paintings art art vs public nakedness is degenerate
Looking at naked people, natural vs being a naked person, natural
skimpy beach wear acceptable vs skimpy evening wear slutish/weird
ad nauseum
Exchange documents?
Who uses office to exchange documents? If the text is not in the body of the email I usually get PDF's. If I get a Word document at all it's because some clueless has dropped an image or screenshot into it before emailing the whole thing. Excel, maybe a few, but not so much as back in the day.
Gimmick
I' enjoying reading about users who consider Wii to be a gimmick when compared to other 'serious' gaming platforms. Serious gaming? Oxymoron surely.
Re: Referendum is not very likely
"Labour fucked the economy"
What. For the whole world?
Re: Wait, What?
" Imagine the productivity hit if they had to spend 20 minutes walking to the van and back every time they need a new tool or tester or box opener or reel of cable."
But that's an excuse anyone can use. You might as well say 'but how can my business make money if I have to abide by the law?' The only reason there is space for BT vans to park there is because most other people don't. Let's here you complain about overzealous traffic wardens when the Fire Brigade can't get to your burning house because some arse has parked badly at the end of the street.
Re: Baffling
Because it is sounds like saying 'It is easy to find that there is nothing I want to watch'
Re: Don't have a Tv Licence... Love Netflix
"Use the dns hack to stream from the American service."
Nooooo. Don't we have enough American content on TV as it is.
"daring to TRY and prove him guilty."
Guilt is proven in a court of law. If there was any kind of impetus towards a court of law I would agree.
