Posts by Frederic Bloggs 365 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Aug 2010
I think you will find that it is only "incomprehensible" (or more accurately "unconscionable" ) to large US corporations that want to hoover up all this information because of "money". But it is probably true that parts of the US population also couldn't give a shit - neither, it has to be said, do I.
Very delicately put. I would characterise more forcefully. WDC has a forked decision to make: either it buys Toshiba cheap - because it paid too much for SanDisk - thereby becoming a serious full scale player in the flash market, or it is sold to someone else. If that happens, that they scale up instead - and WDC whithers on SanDisk's diminishing niche flash and its own spinning rust businesses.
And Toshiba don't want to sell to "anyone", as this includes Chinese or allied companies and Toshiba (or their government) don't want to transfer technology in that direction. Nobody "suitable" seems to have the money that Toshiba want. And notwithstanding all this, don't under estimate the fact that WDC think that they can get the flash business on the cheap - especially given the current political climate in the US.
I suspect Toshiba would have sold if WDC had made a sensible offer. Now it could be "not WDC at any price".
And since ubiquitous 4G coverage is a requirement for ESN, the replacement for TETRA, we await with interest to see whether they manage it before TETRA is switched off in a couple of years. The equipment used for the TETRA backhaul hasn't been made for a long time (think Kilostream) and the supplier will have run out of spares. They have set a hard limit before the backhaul will be switched off and time is ticking away...
I'm not bothering to cross my fingers...
You're partly right, in fact if you simply make your hovel out of the complete newspapers (i.e not separating them into sheets and scrumpling them up) it is actually considerably more fireproof than that polyethylene cladding. With the bonus of not having much in the way of cyanide fumes to breath in as you emerge out of the smouldering pile.
As the article says: "it's very difficult to fly", as were many of the designs of that era (on both sides).
There has been one fatality (1996) and at least two prangs (2011, 2014) with various replicas. They are very light and directionally unstable so landing in any kind of wind (especially if gusting) is definitely brown trouser time. I wouldn't want to spin one with that tiny tail...
Or sack them. In the (Good Old [hah!]) days of the RA there were 100 field engineers in 6 centres. There are now 30 engineers for the whole country. There was a research department which was dismantled (more or less) completely. Then there was the Technical Advisory Group (which was, admittedly, staffed by industry) - I don't know whether that still exists...
Does the same problem occur when talking to something modern and clean such a Dovecot IMAP server? And anyway, surely the password strength police should be applauding the use of any UNICODE characters that increase the overall entropy of the password?
Obviously "because it's free" or at least likely to cost some negligible amount (compared to the $86 billion the FCC thinks it's going to get for its next round of spectrum auctions). And they "need" the spectrum. Bugger the current users. They have no ownership "rights". They have no "economic power", or more accurately "regulatory mindshare".
There is a distressing tendency for hard pressed civil servants, who are generally intelligent and well meaning but have insufficient domain knowledge, to need to rely on "industry partners" to help them "think". Anyone who has been on one of the DoT wireless related study groups or the TAG will have seen this in action.
There has to be a real shift in Civil Service recruitment and training to address this. But how it is to be achieved is moot, especially for acquiring comprehensive knowledge without compromising independence. Can't say I am hugely optimistic. Sadly, the way the US equivalent works with its built in political cycles, stands no chance.
It truly is a pity that the US still seems to succeed in styling itself "leaders of the free world", because "free" in this context means allowing big US money to determine what the rest of the world has to put up with.
Hands off our WiFi spectrum.
Do we actually need all of these projects? Especially as many of them will fail. If the Government wants to throw money away, it would be better just to convert that into helicopter money where it might do some good. Using it for something actually useful (and therefore potentially vote winning) might be better.
There's waste, but then there is Government waste!
That makes someone behave as though they are beyond moral and ethical standards of behaviour? First the King of the EPO and now someone who seems to be able to successfully get away with DNA testing his workers over a workplace spat. On current performance it seems likely he will get away with sanction busting as well.
Do these people really need this level of Teflon coating lack of accountability to do their jobs?
This really hasn't changed in the 40 odd years that I have been in the business - particularly in anything to do with software production. Nearly every company I have ever worked with have war stories about a CompSci graduate that they have employed. The complaint nearly always boils down to: intelligent, but not actually much use for "our" business without spending two years (re-)training them.
Why is this? Why has this still not improved?
I have been doing this indeterminate sentence call "IT" for a long time (with no imminent prospect of release), so it tickles me rather that "graph databases" are being touted as "new". In the early days of "databases", "graph" or "network" databases were the only game in town. Then some upstart, name of Codd, came along and said that they were all wrong and we should embrace some new fangled concept called "relational" databases instead.
I know that one has to hype one's product up to stand a chance of getting it noticed - but I do wish that, at least some, acknowledgement of computing history is given instead of hyping some "new" concept that has been around before - sometimes three or four times.
I know, I know - I am an old codger and am on my way to get my knackered coat already... I just wish they would let me outside.
... comes around. In this case for at least the fourth or fifth time. Or one could argue that they haven't really ever gone away, just dropped out of fashion and then occasionally in (a bit) for a while.
If you need them, then use them - it really isn't some big deal or new technology that requires all this hype. Remember Wyse "thin clients" from the 1980's?
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