Posts by BorkedAgain 686 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2010
I mean, most of my mates are cool and all, but I do have a few ex-neighbours taking up unwelcome space in the old christmas-card list...
Loved the story though. Nice that the flight crew had a good, scientific approach to testing. not only checking that the wobble stopped but that it started again as well... So neat...
So slightly less likely than the successful hi-jacking of an aircraft with a pair of tweezers or nail scissors, then. Or being blown up with a carton of orange juice.
Keep this strictly entre nous, but I rather suspect that this is just another helping of security theatre. If we don't all have to take our shoes off, carry our tiny toothpastes in clear plastic bags and switch off our e-book readers (with no wireless capability whatsoever) for take off and landing then the terrorists will have *won* and then where will we be? Hmm?
Um. Don't quite know how to break this to you, Mr Anonymous, but I rather suspect you won't be seeing a response from HTC on this random comment post on a fairly obscure article in a relatively far-flung corner of the intarwebs. If you really, truly want a reply, you could try contacting them directly.
Let us know how you get on. I'm sure we're all rooting for you.
For myself, I've been enjoying my original Desire for simply ages; okay, there are newer models and funkier versions, but it's still a joy to use. Those actual physical buttons are a delight, too. At some point in the future I may have a go at rooting the old chap, but no hurry...
...reckons that the reason you don't get to see the screen is that this video was shot *after* the external design prototype was crafted from purest Aluminium and *before* the internal gubbins could be crystallised from their vapourware state.
If I were in a bitchy mood, I'd speculate on Apple's marketing team having a patent on that process. Good thing I'm all smiles today, really...
Your hypothetical single mother, if working, would probably also have substantial costs related to childcare since the hours she's working are unlikely to align well with school hours. Childcare ain't cheap.
It'd be funny if it weren't so flipping frustrating...
How do you know Bags isn't a particularly talented and determined sheep? Born to wooly parents, he looked at his brothers and sisters and decided that their grass-chomping, mint-sauce-ending destinies were not for him? He may indeed be responsible for his own position at the top of the food chain.
(by the way, who says we're the top of the chain? Don't folks sometimes meet sticky ends in tiger enclosures etc?)
I see what you did there. Hilarious. Do you write your own material? 'Cos that was priceless.
You know, with this level of wit and incisive analysis of recent trends in technology, I'm surprised the Reg haven't already offered you a permanent position. The world really, truly needs more input from you.
Well done!
</sarcasm>
...and there's still no sign of loosing the grip of the Sky Fairy, or his scary cousin. I thought the VR Hells were a nice metaphor for cloud, too (*ahem*)
And the text message? How would you describe a message that is formed of text? As your namesake said (quoting Blish, I believe) "If it looks like a rabbit and acts like a rabbit, calling it a shmeerp doesn't make it alien."
Anyway. Banks is one of those very rare beasts: a writer producing works that span genres and universes, every single one of which I'd be happy to recommend as quality literature. Not above reproach, mind, but he's a far better writer than I am. I'd give your left arm to be as talented as him...
Cheers.
I'd read "Consider Phlebas" before "Look to Windward", since LtW is a sort of follow-up, but I don't think there's a real dependancy; you'll just get more out of it that way.
But really, all of them, in any order, are very good. Excession is fan-flippin'-tastic but utterly unfilmable; the images are much better in your own head...
Really?
Are you quite sure about that?
Reason I ask is that I'm pretty sure I remember using the term fairly extensively years before the iPhone and its related store-of-applications were so much as a twinkle in Mr Jobbie's eye.
Still, let's not allow mere mundane reality get in the way of a good argument, right? After all, Apple invented the smartphone (years after other companies had started selling them) so why couldn't they also coin a phrase that had been used for years beforehand? Nothing is impossible, all you have to do is *believe*...
...what the hey:
Babel Fish. After the infamous tower.
Mind you, Babblefish has a certain charm to it.
I quite agree on the sonic screwdriver, though; it's turning into a bit of a deus ex machina plot device these days. The Doctor is beginning to remind me of a smartphoneaholic*; constantly reaching into his pocket, thinking "there's an app for this..."
Nice roundup. Good stuff...
* I speak as an acknowledged smartphonaholic who HAS the sonic screwdriver app installed...
"...which means they have to charge you more than their services are worth..."
No. They have to charge you more that their services *cost them* to provide.
Their "worth"; the value to the consumer, is how much it would cost the consumer to provide the same services themselves. Very different.
The reason why cloud makes sense in many situations is that there's a significant gap between the two, and that's why service providers CAN make money while saving their customers money compared with the alternatives. Make sense?
Sorry Zef, but no. You could have all your Salesforce.com-hosted data zipped up and delivered to your servers any time you like; the process can easily be automated. Not in the least difficult. They're your data, after all.
What you couldn't do would be reproduce all the functionality that Salesforce.com provides on another platform*; that is the value-add that they bring to the table, and why so many organisations consider them more than worth the subscription fee.
If you've built your own software stack hosted on a cloudy VM, then you're free to host that VM on any cloud-based provider's hardware (assuming image compatability) but you're still responsible for supporting the whole software stack yourself, negotiating responsibility for outages, failover handling etc between you and the service provider(s).
This may be your idea of a good time, but in many applications it's difficult to justify when you realise that there are other people who are more than capable of doing it far better for far less.
*Okay, you could. But you'd essentially be reproducing Salesforce.com's development budget for your own private use, losing their economy of scale and making all kinds of additional, unnecessary rods for your own back. Why put yourself through that?
I have to say, though, that Ellison's argument is a trifle disingenuous. He could just as well say banks are unsafe because “Thousands of customers co-mingle their money in the same exact bank. It’s really a very weak security model.”
The underlying data store is shared, yes. That's what multi-tenancy means. But it's only at a very low level that the user never, ever gets to see. Even the admins running the SaaS platform never access the data at that level. That'd be somewhat akin to editing a Word document by tweaking individual disk blocks.
Anyone might think he had some different platform to sell...
...did you see the US version of The Office?
Plus I have a disturbing memory of being holed up in a hotel someplace watching a dire US sitcom, with the dawning realisation that they'd taken Fawltey Towers and relocated it to Florida or something. Truly wretched. I don't think I've seen worse.
(Mind you, I no longer watch "Two Pints" otherwise I'm not sure I could make that assertion...)
...but would a religous zealot consider himself permitted to execute a harlot for the glory of the sky-fairy? Given that they're already hi-jacking a plane full of folks, you know...
I know I probably wouldn't volunteer for the stripper job. Mind you, I wouldn't be qualified being the wrong side of thirty-five and male.
...the whole "they buried their tech under our civilisation millennia ago then teleported into it when they felt like doing it for real" thing, you mean? Plus making it modern-day and U-S-of-A.
Still, I get your point. It had its moments. That booming call the fighting machine made as it activated was pretty blummin effective...
I read through six of those bloody Thomas Covenant novels, waiting for them to get to the good part. "Surely there must be a good part coming, any time soon!" I thought to myself.
I was wrong.
There is no good part.
And don't tell me it gets good if you read the next trilogy or the next because I'm not giving that guy any more of my life. I'd rather read Mills and frickin Boon.
Okay, that was a bit harsh, but still...
How dare they take this resource and steal its energy to generate power to run their servers for free! Surely everyone knows that the wind energy is created by the rising column of hot air over Cupertino (powered by St Jobs himself, bless him) and it's typical that Google are simply helping themselves to someone else's creative power etc etc...
Y'see, I know that these are rational business decisions made by hard-nosed people in suits that probably cost more than my car, but the emergent phenomena look an awful like petulant three-year-olds scrapping over a favourite stuffed toy in the nursery playground.
Good grief, if an infant can get their head around the concept of sharing, why can't a corporation? And the thing is, almost every item of consumer electronics has rouded corners now, and this has been true since way before the iWhatever came out. It simply makes sense with anything that's going into a pocket or being held in a hand. And a touchscreen UI will end up looking similar as well. it's convergent evolution; it's also why the silhouette of a penguin (bird), dolphin (mammal) and shark (fish) all look similar.
If I were the judge, I'd sentence the senior execs of BOTH sides to enforced sessions with Barney and Big Bird until they learned to play nice... No parole. Cruel and unusual, perhaps, but justified.
You know, it occurred to me (a few years ago, when it came out) that, if we wanted to prepare a generation for the revelation that the Galaxy was inhabited and we were about to join their serried ranks, then in the Night Garden would be the ideal way to do it.
Think about it; Igglepiggle (the protagonist, humanity) goes into the Night Garden (the night sky, where each star becomes a flower) and has adventures with all manner of different entities on various scales (intelligent transports, OCD rock-creature, the nurturing plant-lady, tiny-but-highly-influential swarm creatures, bouncing gasbags etc) all narrated by Ian Holm.
Maybe I read too much sci-fi...
...but it's probably the best that Mainstream can handle; I personally don't have a problem with exploring the impact something like the Doctor would have on a "normal" person's worldview and relationships (I liked that exploration of Rose's relationships with her mother, boyfriend, dead Dad etc for example) as long as we can avoid becoming mawkish.
I do like the dark feel from the trailers, though, and my young son is as excited as I am (but more able to express his excitement due to social mores etc) as long as we can keep the metrosexual Daleks out for the time being...
...just spread the resources that that would have freed up across the other 364 days of the year, supplying the same benefit (good) without inconveniencing your paying customers (evil)
It pleases me too, but it's sad to see that it's possible to be called wicked-bad when doing good. I can imagine some people here being given a free lolipop and throwing it back in the kind donor's face yelling "This is blackcurrant flavour! I wanted strawberry! You're EVIL, free lolipop person! Nyaah!"
Hey ho.
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