Posts by Silverburn

Nightmare

That works out to an additional 7PB in the Facebook Photo data store every month

For a humble tech dealing with much smaller infrastructure, everything about Facebooks photo storage gives me a headache. Pretty awesome all the same though.

Spherical Cow, however, proved to be a difficult beast

Well, I guess giving birth to something circular the size of a cow, I guess you'd run into difficulties too.

Thanks, I'm here all night.

Shopping malls

Agree with this.

There is the fact that most retailers are trying to ship commodity items to attract as many punters as possible, often selling the same bland things as each other with next to no difference.

Extend this approach, and you see why in the UK there are massive malls, filled with all the same bland names, selling all the same bland stuff. Zero choice, zero differentiation, designed to conform to some marketing statistic, and the USP comes down to the "retail add ons" (ie who's coffee shop is better). All of them are struggling, because when you can get the same commodity x online.

Witness if you will, shopping for a suit in Next. A tale of utter anonymous woeful tat it is. Pop next door to River Island, and it's the same tat, with a difference sense of woe. Down Saville Row, and things start to look up. Or indeed...different. And better. 1 Saville row for the price of 3 bland bits of cloth from Next? Bloody bargain.

To actually attract people in, you actually need to take the risk and go for different stuff and go for more vertical markets, and actually products are genuinely unique. The "boutiques" are all doing better than the chains, ta v much.

I could be a CEO

...if his comments are anything to go by:

- Developed world approaching saturation. No shit!

- Emerging markets are where it's at. No shit!

- Emerging markets can't afford Developed World prices. No shit!

- To sell in the emerging markets, you need to sell at prices they can afford. No shit!

Just stunning. And he got paid how much?

Glass half full

I prefer to think of this as a good idea. Most security issues are PEBCAK's, so raising awareness there is a good thing.

Better than doing jack shit at least.

Actually the glass is empty. Another please barman!

X prize ver 2.0

NASA is not yet able to "do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs,"

Yep, but I bet the boys at Ansari are wording the scope of the next prize right as we speak...

Rubbish

Reuters rubbishes report rubbishing cheap iPhone rumor .

For the sake of consistency, I think I'll rubbish this article about Reuters rubbishing a report which rubbishes cheap iPhone rumors.

Cue downvotes to rubbish my post about rubbishing this article about Reuters rubbishing a report which rubbishes cheap iPhone rumors.

Load of rubbish if you ask me.

Depressing Irony

Did anyone else spot the depressing irony that we had to ship our SA80's to the GERMANS for them to work correctly?

BAE systems...if their weapons were as efficient as their ability to suck tax pounds out of every wallet, we'd still be an empire.

Photo's query for El Reg

I'd love to know...how do you get the photo's so sharp and clear?

Mine usually start like thins, but after 3-4 months, my camera pics end up "cloudy", regardless of how much oil-removal cleaning I do.

New glasses required

Watch its Earth flyby live tonight

Watching a semi-reflective 325m object travelling at high speed 36,000km away...looks like I'll be needing new glasses then. And that's even assuming there clouds will let you see any of the night sky at all.

Good to see...

...some vendors having fun with the tech.

"Do you think we build a 1tb USB stick? It's completely stupid, but I've got all the bits lying about right here..."

"Yeah, why the f* not. I'll get my soldering iron."

Spin?

Do I detect some New Labour style spin here? "luxury mountaintop gaffe"? I think the word your looking for are:

"Evil Lair of doom"

Is the "complete rebuild" anything to do with the contstruction of the submarine base/rocket base/death ray underneath? If so, you'll definitely need more than 1.5kw. And a self destruction button.