Posts by Ye Gads
57 posts • joined Tuesday 4th October 2011 12:23 GMT
That explains
The tremor in the force I felt earlier...
I have no issue with this
It's all horses for courses...
Amazing multi-tasking capabilities
It allows the owner to talk into their watch and out of their arse at the same time.
Another breakthrough product by Apple!
Re: Aid
Wealthy countries? Have you ever been to India? I have. Here's a flavour of what to expect:
Extreme, grinding poverty. Crippled beggars in the street, people who live in tents by the side of the road, children running from car to car in the gridlocked, potholed roads attempting to make eye contact so they can beg for money. We don't have anything like this, not even in the darkest, poorest places in the UK. For us, poverty is not having a DVD player. For them, it's sending your children to beg in the street. There is no comparison.
Yes, it has an IT industry. The people who work for it are, by comparison to their compatriots, fabulously wealthy. When I was there my driver was paid 4000 rupees a month - roughly £55. The most junior people I was hiring were going to earn between 600K a year - about £600 a month.
How do I know this? I've worked there for the IT industry in India.
So don't give me that shit about them being a wealthy country. Go find an article about Windows to whine about.
Re: MS admits FAILURE (Reads between lines)
Eadon oh Eadon
I can't help but reading
But I think what you say is rot
Perhaps you were dropped
Or repeatedly bopped
With an MS manual as a tot
For your angry rants
Most often are pants
And surely, rarely, are missed
Perhaps you're drunk
Or were locked in a trunk
But chill, dude, there's no need to be pissed
Re: On the other hand.
By 17%? Not a chance. Especially as most Asian exchange rates are pegged to the dollar. And commodity prices have been going one way in the past couple of years (and it ain't down). Also, they said revenue from their largest customer had gone down, not profit. These terms, in accounting parlance, are quite different:
Revenue is how much you've made from a customer. E.G: I sold Apple $500 million worth of stuff
Profit is how much you made from your revenue: E.g. After costs, I made $150 million of profit of my sales to Apple.
They're saying revenue is down, not profit. This means that either Apple has reduced the price they're paying by 17% (don't believe that for a second), they've bought 17% less stuff or some combination of the two.
Also, companies making large purchases in foreign currency fill usually go to a bank and sign an agreement to buy x amount of currency y with currency z at a point in the future (this is called a Forward), so currency fluctuations usually don't affect this kind of thing.
So no, it's not price fluctuations, it's almost certainly that they're buying less stuff.
Re: Clegg the trustworthy....
Socialist?
The guy's a Liberal. There's quite a lot of difference between a Liberal and a Socialist.
Socialists are interested in managing outcomes in order reduce the disparity between the most and least wealthy in a state. They do this through progressive taxation (income tax), social programmes like free education, free health-care and significant state ownership and participation in the economy.
Liberals are more interested in process. Equality before the law, protections of freedoms (free speech, habeus corpus, etc) and freedom of action and conscience are all aspects of Liberal thought. You also have economic Liberals. They tend to believe in unfettered markets, minimal state control in the economy. Thatcherism is a form of economic Liberalism.
We're actually being governed by two Liberals. Cameron is an economic Liberal and Clegg a classic Liberal. Come to think of it, Tony Blair was also a liberal. John Prescott is a socialist, as was John Smith.
You, on the other hand, are simply ignorant.
Don't they have more important things to do?
Y'know. Jobs, the economy, that kind of thing?
Hold on...
So we're paying for foreign companies to use UK state office space in foreign companies? In the name of supporting the UK tech industry?
Yawn...
Another year, another set of incremental improvements palmed off as revolutionary...
You must be joking
Visual Studio integration costs $999 per year per platform. Easier to learn Java...
Blow?
Chromebook sales so far make the Surface look downright successful.
Crashing the mobile network
There's an app for that...
Re: So they've not patented...
They tried that with their "Look and Feel" lawsuit against Microsoft in the 90s...
That's a terrible thing...
To call Steve Ballmer
Re: Hmmmm
I'm not so sure. Nokia didn't just get an OS for Microsoft. they got quite a bit more:
1. About 1 billion dollars
2. Protection from being sued by Apple. You can bet Apple would have targeted Nokia if they'd gone with Android. MS would have probably targeted them as well. Nokia doesn't have the deep pockets that Samsung does so this could really have been a problem for them.
3. A lot of say over how the OS was going to be developed and the hardware that could be used with it. Given that they've been the only one championing the OS for the past 18 months this gives them a lot of leverage.
4. A new market. Nokia map data is now the WP platform standard, a new revenue stream for Nokia. I think you'll see them doing this with other services, giving them new revenue sources.
They could, of course, still go belly up. I just don't think their move was as dumb as people say. Their choice came with a large number of advantages.
Lets do some maths
So if I'm currently forking out £47 a month I can change to £26 a month + 69p a day.
That means £251.85 a year for the handset (or 20.99 a month). That means a very generous saving of 1p a month.
So the "deal" has nothing to do with saving any money. It's a case of being tied to a shorter contract in return for giving up control of the hardware to the operator.
I'd be interested in knowing what "rights" I had on the phone? When can Vodafone claim the phone back, and for what reasons? If I annoy them can they cancel my contract and leave me phoneless with no warning/comback?
Lets list the ways in which this is a bad idea
1) Cost of hardware. Macs cost significantly more than a PC
Ican buy a Dell for £300. It's nothing special but it will do everything %90 of office workers need to do. Macs cost significantly more. And lets not even talk about support.
2) Cost of support. Supporting multiple OSs, PC types, etc is more expensive
How many people out there have experience running Macs against a windows domain? Go on, raise your hands. Thought so. Finding people who can do this in a credible way that doesn't expose the network to security issues is going to be expensive. Windows support people are plentiful and cheap.
3) Cost of IT time to make business software run on Macs
I've read lots of "ways to get windows software to run" on a mac. All of these require effort, setup and support. There's a massive added cost here in getting people to a position where they can do their job - as well as wasting ITs time helping people getting software to work on incompatible platforms.
4) Security
Apple has a long history of leaving security holes to linger in their OS before patching them. Their recent issues with the Java runtime was a case in point.
Companies are there to make money. IT is there to help them do this. Giving people equipment that doesn't allow them to do their job and costs significantly more to run and support is idiotic. I completely accept that there are places for Macs in certain roles: graphics design, some creative functions, etc, but if someone says they want to use a Mac to use Word, surf and run the accounting app then they need to be shown the door (as do the idiots pandering to them).
Re: Quelle surprise...
Yes, because most developers read the documentation first before they do anything. Developers love reading and writing documentation, it's far more fun than coding and
<BANG>
Oops, there goes the reality distortion field...
Posted in Apple iPad Mini 8in tablet review
Tablet Math
iPad Mini 16GB : £269
Google Nexus 7 32GB: £199
Kindle Fire HD 16GB: £159
Playbook 64GB: £129
I use a Playbook and a cheap Android tablet for long car journeys as it's loaded up with movies for the kids, can do web surfing and email, etc. I need my devices to be small, cheap and replaceable.
I'm just not sure that it's worth an extra £60-140 unless I've already committed to Apple products.
Three words
"Tee hee hee".
Mine's an extra large tub of popcorn...
I guess this is Microsoft's attempt
to stop us "holding it wrong".
We can pay for it but we're not going to be allowed to sully it with our presence....
Re: Education? More like car aftermarket...
Yes, because we'd all prefer to pay £300 for a device that plays movies and might get mauled by the kids when there is a £129 alternative that does the same thing.
They never learn...
Direct Line and Churchill are the insurance arm of RBS Group. Given RBS' past successes with outsourcing I'm sure they'll hire experienced and competent people and it'll all be for the best.
Oh, wait a minute...
Never mind.
Too Late...
Apple has already patented "rectangular device that sends and receives mobile signals".
they're doomed
In fairness
Microsoft isn't marketing this pathetically overpriced crap, Asus is. They're going to have to do significantly better with an iPad costing $400-$500 and a Kindle Fire costing $200.
Sadly, MS get tarred by association. Lets hope the Surface is (significantly) cheaper.
Re: Nokia need to put out Android phones
They do make great hardware, but putting Android on them would be a mistake. Here's why:
Nokia's business is under attack from a number of angles. Their "cheap as chips" phones are facing stiff competition from Chinese handsets and are losing market share there.
Android, while popular, is causing legal headaches for the companies that use it. If they're not being mugged quietly by Microsoft and being made to pay them a royalty for each handset sold they're being mugged loudly by Apple, who takes them to court.
Imagine the following: Nokia had chosen Android rather than WP7. They get hit by MS for $10 for each mobe they sell and then get sued by apple in multiple jurisdictions, stopping their product from even reaching market. They've got nobody to bail them out (MS gave them $1 billion and other unspecified payments) and no big, powerful friends to help.
So they've taken a risk. Symbian was dead (had a Symbian phone, hated it) and they needed to find something else. But was Android the answer? No.
To paraphrase Prince....
We're going to update like it's 1999...
Wasn't Microsoft doing this in Windows 98?
Re: Hmm...
Nope.
RBS started offshoring its investment bank in 2006.
RBS closed its final salary pension to all new employees in 2007.
What the new lot have done is followed the same policies, only more so. Moving some stuff offshore is probably not a bad idea (Helpdesk, legacy internal business apps, etc) - shipping off core bank functionality is not so good.
On the plus-side, all RBS Group employees are forced to have an RBS/Natwest account into which their salary will be paid. This happens around the 24th of each month.
Yep, you guessed it: RBS and Natwest probably won't be able to pay their staff until they fix the problem so they will be feeling their customers pain.
In other news
Larry Ellison has also bought himself a white cat and several sharks (for performance review purposes).
Innumerate
Right, so Python has exploded 600% while Java/.Net have grown by 25% over the same 4 year period. As "any fule no" it's easy to generate large growth rates from small numbers. if I go from 10 to 60 that is 600% growth, and 600% growth sounds much better than 50...
Lets look at some real numbers, taken from www.ITJobsWatch.co.uk
In the last 3 months:
.Net 23381 (.Net Developer 8184)
Java 18322 (6110 Java Developer)
3295 Python (273 Python Developer)
Looking at this, I'd suggest that business are mentioning Python in their job adverts a lot more but are
still not really looking for people with Python as a primary skill in large numbers (notice the difference between Python and Python Developer).
Oracle
A company that gives a f**k about getting your business...
Or is that gives one to get your business? I can't decide
Um...
Here's the issue. The gates are all about getting people through as fast as they can. Making them ticket machines as well will slow down the process considerably. People should have a ticket when they reach the gate.
Just imagine trying to get to work via London Bridge (i've seen crowds by the Jubilee line entrance 10 deep on semi-regular intervals) when 4 of the terminals are taken up with tourists buying tickets for their family...
So how is this going to make the tube better?
We've already got paper tickets and Oyster cards. I'd prefer if they put the money into trying to stop the Jubilee line breaking down twice a week.
Re: The initial reaction
Except that you've probably got a lot of people writing WinPho apps using Express. People who will find they need to upgrade to VS 2011 to port their app to the new WinRT interface.
And they won't be able to do this unless they fork out the thick end of £500
Stupid, stupid, stupid
How do you get people used to using your tools if the only stuff they can build with it is apps for a single, untested device with no market share?
The whole strength of Visual Studio was that you could intstall a couple of templates and be up-and-running with Azure/Windows Phone/Blah.
All this will do is push people towards SharpDevelop and make it harder for enthusiasts and hobbyists to write their own apps, and given these are the people who are churning out WinPho apps at the rate of 300 a day that is incredibly short-sighted.
Re: What do they need the funds for?
Companies do IPOs for 4 reasons:
1)To raise capital for investment and expansion (traditional - build new factories, etc)
2)To reward it's owners for building a successful company (Google, Microsoft, Apple)
3)To grab the cash before people realise they're in trouble (think Ocado...)
4)Because they have no choice but to do so for regulatory reasons (that'd be Facebook)
Basically, Facebook has over 500 shareholders (not shares, but people who hold Facebook shares). Once you breach the 500 shareholder limit SEC starts putting pressure on the company to float and allow its shareholders to trade their shares on the market..
Well...
We could start off their day by having them read the Daily Express cover-to-cover while having porridge (naturally). This would be followed by spending the morning listening to John Major's election speeches. After a lunch of Haggis and pickled beetroot they could spend the afternoon pairing a socks. Dinner would consist of tofu and courgette, boiled until they were soggy. Prisoners would then have the evening free to watch repeats of Dads Army.
This would be their schedule every day.
No, the reason for refusing to answer is probably because she doesn't know what HTTPS or SSL is and so is unable to answer the question without looking (more) like a prize wally.
And this, you see, is why they want this system. In future, people making comments like this at work will have their web-traffic intercepted and will be met at their doorstep when they get home in the evening by a couple of men in a dark sedan who want a word about "troubling comments about a senior government official" on the interwebs.
On the plus-side, they'll probably get Capita to write the seach tool. The development of which will be off-shored...
Re: Geniune question
LinkedIn, for one. I see several a week, and that's just for Windows Phone, I'm sure the Android and IOS groups have much more activity.
And I for one
Welcome my new SME overlords and will be happy to write code for them until they can't think of another feature they want added to their apps.
This is, after all, what software developers are for.
Developer Direction
To answer a couple of the questions:
When WinPho8 rolls out it will support existing applications. it will also support WinRT, which is a new development platform being rolled our for Windows 8. So existing Silverlight apps will work on WP8.
As for developer support, the marketplace is now at 80K apps. It's small compared to the 600K of Apple apps but it's growing pretty quickly. At this time last year there were about 10-15K apps.
I do agree with the need to get new functionality out. One major release a year just isn't cutting it with Android and Apple still progressing. Apollo will add a whole bunch of new stuff (multiple screen-sizes, sd cards, multi-core support, etc) but they need to be churning this stuff out faster if they want to stay in the game.
Fraudsters must be quaking in their boots
Councils now have a new checklist, an e-training course and resilience check in their arsenal.
I'm sure fraud levels will plummet...
Re: Its not just opengl
Err. No.
If you want to write your iPhone or Android apps you can, you just need to compile them with Mono, the open source .Net runtime. There are several people selling solutions that do this for you that integrate into Visual Studio, the C# developers tool of choice.
Re: C# and .NET in mobile?
Yup. It's possible to code for Android and iPhone in C# in Visual Studio. The UIs are completely different but the back-end code is pretty much the same and it makes porting code from platform to platform less of a pain as you can run Mono on Android and Apple products.
Of course, it means your app is bigger because of the included Mono binaries...
Posted in Nokia Asha 201 Qwerty phone
Re: Proof that
Um, no.
Microsoft are about to release WP7 Tango, the budget version of the OS. Nokia will be following this with release of the Nokia Lumia 610, which is their "budget" Windows Phone. Rumour has it that the 610 will bring WP7 to pre-pay and should cost under £100.
And by "about", I mean expect all these announcements officially at MWC 2012 (in about a weeks time) with Nokia bringing these phones to market in April or May this year.
