Re: I tried reading about it, via the link

Thanks. Not entirely happy with the analogy, but it'll suffice.

It's a while since I've been in the lab!

Re: I tried reading about it, via the link

ELISA is kinda like panning for gold, but with a much higher accuracy.

The rest of the TLA's are basically just telling you the colour & shape of the pan :)

Re: Oops

No, no, it's the biography of Robert Downey Jr. he did.

Still don't see the relevance though.

I think the implication is weight of the BB spread over surface area of you. Or a suitably chosen standard human.

Re: real coders use notepad

Nope, butterflies.

Re: Either finance or defense - drugs and pr0n markets just too small

I believe Porsche have long made more money from financial dealings than from selling cars.

Re: So cynical...

You make that sound like a bad thing!

Re: I stopped reading after the first point

Of course, you are making the assumption there that people will actually read your proposal...

Re: No denying

If you're doing that, you're holding it wrong.

Shame, those that left missed out - it's a slow starter but the film improves immensely.

Re: "Given that most phones are replaced in 12-18 month cycles"

"Well that depends on the size of your wallet and the priorities of your life. As far as I'm concerned, £300/year is a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a phone, so I don't think you can make blanket statements like that."

Fair point, should have qualified that statement. I didn't upgrade to the SII until it reached a price I was willing to pay. Although the point is, that's a top-end phone, on £25/month, how many monthly contracts come in under that, or compare on pay as you go?

"Believe it or not, as far as the carriers go mobiles are very much about making and receiving calls because that's where a large part of their revenue comes from."

Sorry, that's not what I meant. With the release of the iPhone, making sure your handset had the best call quality, signal strength etc as a selling point became moot, as making/receiving calls was no longer the primary (or secondary, or tertiary...) function of a mobile phone. (Ok, probably more at the point the App Store started, rather than the original iPhone release).

This also marked the shift in power from the carriers to the handset manufacturers. It used to be a choice between Orange, Vodafone, O2 etc... Now it's iOS, Android, (RIM? Nokia?). The network you're on is largely irrelevant. Especially since cross-network plans came in. Witness the mergers/consolidation in the carrier market compared to the success of the handset makers.

That £1000 figure isn't far off - some handsets have cost near that sim-free. Which is why we got the subscription model from the carriers in the first place - they subsidised the upfront cost to get phones into the hands of users, so that they could make money from them making/receiving calls. And at that point the handset makers were pitching to the carriers, not the users. It's a little different now :)

Re: "Given that most phones are replaced in 12-18 month cycles"

But then, I don't see this as a problem :)

Mobiles haven't been about making/receiving phone calls since the iPhone was released.

£300/year for my SII is hardly huge amounts of money. And your SII (and mine) will still do all those things in a year's time, regardless of which version of the OS it's on. And if there's no new phone I want at that time, I won't change handset.

I think it's the carriers, not the handset manufacturers that have created this scenario too.

Re: On the grape vine

Yep, per core licensing (or Server + CAL - the CALs are going up 20ish% from 2k8 prices).

Makes sense though, with the increasing core per cpu count, MS's per processor licensing was getting increasingly generous to the customer. Reached the point now where they'd be mugging themselves on prices!

Re: 6KM

Andy Sirkis or Andy Serkis? Different people?

Re: Am I the only one...

Guesstimate is in the OED I believe.

Although it should have a double ss :)