Posts by auburnman 1230 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jul 2011
Minimum wage, minimum effort.
Simple as that. When you know your employer is scaling your pay to the lowest setting allowed by law and busting your arse won't change that, it's entirely rational to save your energy for jobhunting / uni / generally pissing around.
"A missile can take down ONE attacker. If the enemy attacks with a wave of drones then the available supply of missiles will be exhausted very quickly leaving the vehicle with no protection."
That's currently one more than a not yet existing railgun that will be highly unlikely to effectively scale to APC level. Even if a ground vehicle railgun did come into being, it would still suffer from the same ammo limitations. Okay railgun slugs would take less space than missiles, but now you need something in the vehicle to power the accelerator.
Also if the railgun projectile is to be launched at speeds that make it worth using a railgun instead of an old school decent calibre cannon, the air disruption at launch would likely pose a serious threat to nearby infantry if not the vehicle itself.
"Linux is providing them with revenue via patents"
I think that's a VERY shaky house of cards that could fall apart at any time. Sooner or later someone will standup to the Microsoft shakedown, and MS will either have to back off or declare once and for all in court the patents allegedly infringed by Linux. Neither option would bode well for strong-arming further licencing agreements.
I don't think Big Oil could afford a bidding war over the fusion startups; a lot of their value is tied up in the company's core business being viable. If fusion genuinely becomes a realistic thing Oil companies will go from multinational money machines to debt laden liabilities sitting on obsolete kit they paid billions for in a very short span of time.
It occurs to me this could be them actually so paranoid in the wake of whistle-blowers like Snowden that they were genuinely spying on their own department. The stroke of genius is to admit it as a 'technical error' rather than trying to bury it.
This way the headlines are more 'HAR HAR SPIES ARE MUPPETS' and less 'Warrantless Wiretapping Scandal Continues'.
It's so the bloatware is always in your face when you're on the tablet. Every time someone less technical than a Reg reader sees the icon, there's a chance they'll go "Oh, what's this?" and fire it up without realising it's a hook for someone who wants your money. Or you could be trying to buy the latest Patsy Cline album and suddenly find your favourite Goongle muzak player cannot connect to servers. You really want that album today though, and look, there appears to be a ChamChung muzak app already on your phone...
Basically the bloatware is always there to maximise chances of preying on a moment of weakness.
"Yes, he should've been fired right there, on that moment, for melting down 50% of Nokia on the market in ONE F'N DAY. "
While I agree with your assessment, who on the board would realistically have pulled that trigger? Firing a brand new CEO with clearly no planned replacement strategy would have only doubled down on the share nosedive, and then the firer has then just committed the same offence as the firee.
Ironically picking a direction and sticking with it come hell or high water was probably at one time the best strategy for Nokia, unfortunately that time was months ago and definitely long before they were brought low enough to have to accept the Devil's coin from MS. That just left them with outsiders effectively setting policy for them.
You're meant to keep it in your head as a mental image of the scene rather than a collection of words. It's proven that imagery is much more memorable, especially if it's amusing. And if you can imagine the Pope waving a fan over a patty it's much less likely to mutate into an image of the Pope patting someone on the [body part appropriate to the nickname on your continent.]
Although that image would be much more memorable...
But the £:Gb ratio has only recently become favourable enough for most people.
Having said that if you can snap one up now go for it. I've just upgraded PC and the new one has Win7 on SSD - I barely see the boot screen now when I power on. I might actually have difficulty next time I need to get into BIOS, the bootstrap flashes by so quick.
I thought by now we'd be seeing the new iPhone being returned in bulk as not fit for purpose. Goes to show the power of contract lock-in I suppose. What I'd like to know is
1) has anyone tried to replicate the bending without forcing it, i.e. simulating a day's careful use like the guy who allegedly went for a drive with it in his front pocket and wound up with a bananaphone
2) isn't anyone worried about the battery in a phone that isn't protecting it from stress?
We need an option on posts that is more severe than a downvote but less severe than 'report this post' for content that contributes nothing to the discussion and/or wildly praises/denigrates certain companies/products. Although as I type this it dawns on me such a thing would be abused until it lost al meaning.
Nothing new here, overcharging for data has been going on for yonkers. I can't find the link now but I'm pretty sure at least one older Orange plan had the data costs jacked up sky high (as in at least treble the average of other providers) rather than fix their broken billing.This is why I ditched Orange months ago.
Isn't Openreach supposed to have some sort of accountability process for the provision (or not) of comms infrastructure? Might be worth seeing if you could request the details of the cost estimate that returned a 'not viable' verdict. The cynic in me wonders if 'not viable' is code for 'can't be arsed.'
In theory they could disguise it as bribing a corrupt agent who has the power to bury the 'charges' against the mark. I doubt they've got that far yet, but I suppose it depends how long the scam has been going on, and if the baddies are continually refining it or resting on their laurels.
The negative worth thing is no great mystery. Even assuming the Yahoo! board made a written declaration that they'd not piss their cash pile away on hot companies, they would still be an also ran with near zero public goodwill or recognition and no big projects in the pipeline to make them stand out, and they're competing with Google and Bing. Investors would be better off putting their money in a basic savings account than going with Yahoo.
Yeah this seems to have been the most informative and civil forum I've seen on the issue; The debates between Pieface and Eyebrows were a waste of time with good questions being ignored and them shouting over each other. Yesterday's debate in front of da yoof was much better, at least until Galloway started banging on about Hitler.
Presumably MS are betting big that interesting exclusives will 'make' the XBone, in the same way that the original XBox was 'made' by Halo. I think the big battleground of this console generation will be who best supports/captures the resurgent Indie games.
When you think an engaging concept with retro graphics like Minecraft or Hotline:Miami can make AAA money off a shoestring budget, it's a no-brainer really.
(EDIT: to clarify, courting Indie studios is what I consider to be the no brainer, MS have most likely overpaid for Mojang bigtime in true Corporate Monolith form.)
I suspect the downgraded service is spread around the contracts that have low lock-in. I have always been on PAYG (because I value the ability to switch at the drop of a hat over the convenience of monthly billing) and I can't recall my data connection ever being as good as that of my pals.
If you're accepting that bad guys will get in the door and walk out with something, why not have your servers littered with useless files called LOGINS.txt and ADMIN_ID_LIST.xls? Fill them with crap data that looks like real logins, and rig a red alert klaxon to ring whenever these are accessed?
I would imagine Musk's quote would make much more sense with context (coincidentally available in the book he's plugging. I doubt machines will ever become sentient and rebel (at the very least not in our lifetime.) It's what 'AI' might do under human instruction that is dangerous.
Imagine a bipedal robot or other system capable of covering rough terrain that can fight it's way into a power plant, secure bunker or target of your choice and then blow itself up.
Another reason that there is little need to upgrade every year is that the software / UI side of tablets is still constantly evolving, backed by interests that want the ecosystem to be so comfy you don't want to leave. So most tablet users are getting incremental improvements anyway without shelling out for the latest shiny.
I struggle to see a realistic scenario where the auto-car has to 'choose' someone's life to endanger. Any time it is travelling at lethal speeds it should have safe stopping distance in the road in front of it (if programmed correctly) and any obstacle suddenly appearing within that space, such as another out of control car weaving into that lane, takes the 'choice' element out of the equation. The robo-driver can have absolutely perfect reflexes, but momentum will decide whether there is a collision or not.
I suppose this deal depends heavily on how well the entrenched interests control the possibility of becoming a licenced commercial driver in NY. Given the stranglehold they (allegedly) have on the rest of the red tape I wouldn't be surprised if this is tailored to their desires too; anyone with better knowledge of the NY regs care to chip in?
Exactly how controlled the control groups in this experiment were; after all paracetamol is one of the most readily available pain medications in the developed world. Did the placebo group think they were taking paracetamol when they were popping the sugar pills? Were any measures taken to control for them picking up paracetamol at the corner shop?
P.S. For the commentards living with back pain, as I haven't heard them mentioned yet I will chip in that adjustable desks which allow you to stand for a portion of your day are becoming more and more common.
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