Posts by TheOtherHobbes 1331 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Feb 2012
Yep. The noddy version is 'With the right combination of superconductivity, magnetism, maths, precision metalwork, and funding, you can make charge seem to disappear from the ends of a very small wire.'
It's not quite the same as proof of an actual free-floating Majorana fermion, which would be a whole other thing.
Incidentally, Majorana had an interesting biog:
The smart features are vapourware at the moment.
I think it's most likely to end up being some kind of VIP-wannabe ID thing. Imagine getting into a hotel room/transport system/entertainment experience by waving your watch over a sensor - and other applications with NFC on your wrist instead of in your pocket.
Calling it WATCH and chasing the fashionista market may turn out to be a dumb move. Pitching it as a not-a-watch personal digital somethingorother which is obviously a watch too (duh) but also does So Much More[tm] would have made it stand put from the competition.
IMO the fashion part should have been left implied, as it usually is in Apple products.
>I mean, how many OS X users run services over the network that can spawn bash to service requests?
You know Apple sells something called OS X Server, which - they claim - is a good way for small biz and home users to set up LANs and serve web pages on the Internets? Running - or trying to run - network services is exactly what it's supposed to do.
Now, IME Server is worse than a joke, and many parts (such as Samba) simply don't work.
But there are people trying to use this thing, and if Apple haven't patched it properly they're going to get bot-pwned.
Apparently most people here are too young to have heard of Profumo, but the public interest angle is that someone in public office needs to be a bit more thoughtful because they don't know who they're dealing with, or what their real aims are.
Honey traps and blackmail aren't fiction. This twat was easy prey. A few fanny pics made him an instant blackmail target and security risk - and I'm sure he's not the only one.
If you can't keep it zipped, don't run for office. It's the dirtiest business in the world. If you can't manage to be a straight edger, humiliation-by-tabloid can easily become the least of your worries.
Do you know why record labels are pushing vinyl so hard?
Because vinyl is a precious object that can't be copied.
No, really. To hardcore punters, vinyl rips just don't have that Special Vinyl Magic[tm]. So the majors are desperately trying to sign bands from vinyl-friendly genres like doom metal so they can sell music on bits of plastic and pretend it's 1965 again.
Streaming? Spotify has burned through >$1bn, and still no IPO. And Demonoid is back.
See that writing on the wall? That's the future, that is.
Nope. Sampling includes filtering to get rid of the aliased copies. If it didn't, it would sound really, really horrible.
As other posters have pointed out, the filtering is never perfect, so sampling is never Nyquist-perfect either. Sampling at higher frequencies and higher bit depths should have fewer imperfections, although if the hardware is a bit pants anyway high-rate sampling won't make a huge difference. (And if it's really pants it can make the sound worse).
But the killer problem for digital is clock jitter. If the sampling clock isn't rock solid to nano-second precision, you can forget Nyquist, because Nyquist assumes perfect sample timing. A lot of the smeary-splashy-nasty sound digital used to be famous for was caused by cheap jittery clock sources.
If your DAC can accept an external clock, hooking up a studio-grade clock source will do the sound many favours. It will also make the differences between FLAC and MP3 more obvious.
IME I can hear the difference very clearly, and the MP3 sound is seriously fucking annoying, even in a car. But my gf, who is a classical musician and can pick out the notes in chords by ear, is fine with MP3s. She hears music as pitch lines and very fine timing details, and most timbres as a placeholder. MP3s include all the detail she needs.
In fact everyone hears differently anyway, because everyone's ears are a slightly different shape, so we all have different acoustic filters stuck to sides of our heads. So it's maybe not a surprise some people strongly prefer FLAC and others don't care.
Last point - CDs aren't really lossless. Because of dirt, scratches, laser servo issues and other inaccuracies, most players drop back to Level 1 error correction at least some of the time, so there's always some quality loss.
A good CD rip will be bit-perfect with multiple read passes made to minimise errors, so FLAC will always sound better. (I was amazed by the difference - so amazed I spent a few months ripping and selling off all my CDs.)
All the cash he's talking about is over at Y Combinator, Greylock, and - oh look - Andreesen Horowitz.
The startup scene has always been a novel form of welfare for geeks trying to be frat boys.
All those very serious wannabe-a-founder interviews, all that hiring and firing drama, all the cash burned, and so little actual turnover.
VCs are Very, Very Important People who know All About Capitalism - which is why they've been funding the world's most expensive form of performance art.
You don't need Xcode to write JavaScript.
Apple used to have an entire JavaScript toolchain for making OS X widgets. That was back in 10.5 or so. Last time I tried it, it had stopped working, but it wouldn't take much to revive it.
Currently you do need Xcode to write/run Swift.
Neither brand has value in phone-land. Joe and Joelle Punter have heard of Apple and Samsung, and they've probably owned Nokia in the past. Some percentage know what Android is.
But Microsoft on a phone? When did that happen? And who wants it?
Microsoft have become the anti-Apple. Instead of operating a reality distortion field for punters, MS seems to have invented a RDF that only works on upper management - who all seem convinced that the Microsoft and Windows words make people want things, when in fact they're more likely to make them run away screaming 'No no no no no.'
The Nokia deal looks more and more like a knowingly spiteful spoiler move to kill a competitor than a serious attempt to do something useful with the IP.
Pooch screwing happened a very long time ago, because they've been making most of their money from overpriced, overmarketed, mediocre consumer electronics since the 1950s.
I'd guess the component side was always a footnote.
I remember being appalled when I discovered them in the late 70s because the catalogues seemed brash, aggressive, and patronising. If you wanted something like a 555 timer you had to buy a multipack, while all the other UK electronics stores at the time would let you buy one-offs - and their catalogs and literature treated you like an engineer, not a gullible fool in need of upsell. (Maplin will still sell you a single resistor.)
To be fair they did give the world the TRS-80, which wasn't a total rip-off for the time.
For nostalgia fans there's an almost complete collection of old catalog(ue)s at http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com.
Not a fair comparison. The Swiss and Germans (and the French, sort of) have been making stuff work since after WWII.
English telcos take pride in overcharging and making stuff not work.
What I'm wondering is whether a Yes vote means we could have a referendum in England declaring our own independence from Westminster.
>Which decade is radio stuck in, the theatre stuck in, the book stuck in ... ???
Books have these new things called eReaders. I hear there are even electronic delivery systems for them.
I spend too much time on Facebook to have any idea what 'radio' and 'theatre' are.
The problem with TV is the studios/networks and the way they commission content. YouTube has the right idea with free-to-view user-generated content.
If Apple tried the same stunt and created an iTV store (probably not with that name) where the public could make/sell/crowdfund content they'd transform the industry overnight.
It probably won't happen because the studios won't like the idea. But it would be a game-changer if it did.
It's a cut-down iPhone screen with a dinky but clever UI and an extra knob for rotating rotatey things. And it vibrates. Sorry - taptates[tm].
It's too cheap and not blingy enough to cut it in the over-priced premium designer tat watch market owned by Rolex and the rest, it's too expensive to compete with the FitBits and Garmins for the yoof health market. So far it may do a few things that people might sort-of want, a bit, but - unlike a phone - it doesn't do anything anyone really needs.
I know it's dangerous to predict an Apple failure, but I can't see this appealing to many people outside the Bay Area and Silicon Roundabout. It's certainly not going to sell to Vogue-y fashionistas.
Pricing also matters. Most iPhones are sold on a contract with - eventually - a minimal up-front payment. Far fewer people are going to drop $350 in a one-off lump sump. That price point makes it more expensive than any of the iPod touches, and those still have obvious utility for gaming and music.
>Really, what do you want on your wrist?
The FAIL here isn't the actual product, but the fact that what is really a wrist-based data processor has been billed as a watch, when it should have been sold as something that happens to be wearable and watch-shaped but is *not* just an eWatch.
It even has a stupid, obvious name - Apple WATCH.
When Jobs sold the iPod he didn't called it Apple MUSIC. He gave it a weird name to distinguish it from the other MP3 players and to underline the fact that it was part of an ecosystem.
Then he bundled it into a package that gave users access to a completely new mini-industry called podcasting. And, incidentally, also tied it to iTunes and a music market.
So the iPod wasn't just an MP3 player. It gave you access to a huge music store *and* you could also promote yourself and your interests by pushing your own content to the device for other users to listen to/view.
Not so WATCH, which has been marketed as a fashion accessory with cut-down features and a hint of bling to a market that doesn't care about fashion.
Most people are thinking of it as a small iPhone for your wrist that tells the time - which IMO is totally not how Jobs would have sold it. What's missing is that community of interest that can add value.
Devs will be able to do things with WatchKit, but for users there's no element greater and more interesting than the object itself. And that may turn out to be fatal mistake.
And you think this makes less sense than:
"Starvation is a substitute for food, playing with oneself is a substitute for a willing and able sex partner and, yes, we do generally think that minerals and metals are substitutes for fossil fuel energy."
And *you're* the one claiming everyone else is talking bollocks?
Of course if you build minerals and metals into renewable power sources you might have something resembling a not entirely hairy and round point. But I don't suppose you approve of those, given your record of hand-waving swivel-eyed nonsense on pretty much everything you've ever written about.
Central government has been biased against local solutions since Thatcher's day. The Queen of Sleaze wasn't just a nasty piece of work, her policies were deliberately designed to consolidate power in the hands of her handlers.
So good luck with getting anything more useful than a bit of gardening and maybe some road signs put up locally. If you try to do anything more interesting, you'll find you're 'not allowed' to.
The real problem is democracy is rigged and basically non-existent in the UK. The voting thing is a bit of panto we all get to take part in. It has almost no effect on policy.
There are no easy answers, and Watkinson's vapid conclusion certainly isn't one of them. But if I had too much spare cash I'd start a party that encouraged people to pick people from the local community who are respected, effective and have a record of integrity to stand for parliament. *Not* business people and the usual suspects, but people like teachers, nurses, and even (!) software developers.
Then run a slow flush through Westminster replacing the current crop of chancers, thieves, and shills in all parties with adults who have a track record of solving problems.
It's not a perfect solution, but it's (arguably) better than any of the alternatives.
> Microsoft marketing would give you Bill G's grandmother if it involved you buying services from M$
That actually sounds like something we can expect from Microsoft marketing.
"Win 8 - now with free Mrs Gates the First Venture Capital Action Figure. But sign up for Azure, and get your own strictly limited edition Steve Ballmer Signature Office Chair. Also available - genuine Sinofsky Skateboards with Real Dented Credibility Finish, and Official Nadella Strategy Synthesizing Stuffed Shirts, with Dynamic CEO Fistpump Action and Genuine Deep Visionary Shoegaze[tm]"
Even the Bank of England has noticed that wages are - oh look, they're falling. While prices are increasing.
So if you have a steady job on the borderline - oh look, you're fucked. Working full time and you can't afford to pay your bills any more.
Apparently this is called 'being irresponsible.' Right.
Getting asked some hard questions on a video no one watches is really going to terrify BT.
>That's how it works in the commercial world. You lie, you lose.
if only.
What's needed is a campaign with a catchy-title to take down everyone who makes easy money out of Westminster slime and stupidity. That includes the telcos and cellcos, the energy companies, the transport companies, the high street banks, the defence procurement circus, the shady outfits who would benefit from NHS privatisation at the expense of care provision, and too many of the big names working in major infrastructure in the UK.
We have some of the most corrupt, greedy, self-serving and customer-hostile companies in the world.
"Rip-off Britain" was a start, but it didn't go far enough or hit hard enough.
A bit of hard questioning is fake-democracy panto. It won't change anything, and things won't improve until there are real consequences.
>I think a person would be more useful.
They're called domestics. Maids, butlers, housekeepers, etc. Rich people have them.
And this is the killer app. Combine it with robotics, and everyone gets a personal servant for those boring chores - cleaning, cooking, shopping, walking the dog, terrorising the neighbours, that kind of thing.
The first few generations will bump into things and fall over a lot. But as long as none of the current big names in technology try to make this happen (Microsoft - I'm looking at *you*) the potential is, as they say, there.
Also sitcoms/dramas in an upstairs/downstairs way. (Dyson Abbey?)
>1) Business had just completed/still undergoing the XP->W7 upgrade. They would not be going W8.x no matter what.
The upgrade cycle takes a while, and business totally would be thinking seriously about W8 if it was any good. So it's the future MS has to worry about now.
Right now there's no guarantee, and not much prospect, of Win 9 being any better. It's more likely to be a Different Kind of Annoying Crap [tm].
>they will end up letting Linux into the desktop arena
The slack has been taken up by OS X at the high end and iOS/Android at the low end. There's been some Linux switching, but Linux is still mostly a geek toy. (I know Reg readers all have grandmothers who are using it happily. But the stats show most of the population doesn't want it.)
Linux is making more inroads into corporate, where the bits that don't work aren't so critical.
MS is happy because cloud. But cloud is a lossy, competitive business, Windows is sick as a Norwegian Blue parrot, there's serious corporate interest in switching to open alternatives to Office... and there goes the MS biz model.
Nadella badly needs less business bingo, and more Exciting New Thing.
Breath? Not holding it here.
The Laffer Curve has been debunked repeatedly by people who live in the real world.
Go on. Google 'Laffer debunked.'
Can we have someone who knows something about real scientific economics? I suppose some people - not least Worstall himself - are terribly impressed by this kind of hand-wavey story telling, but it would be nice to see some content with more of a connection to data-driven science.
The mainstream publishing drivel storm is alive and well and full of Oxbridge luvvies, ghostwritten sleb biogs, and middlebrow nonentities specialising in novels about wine, shoes, husbands, and bitchy middle class nastiness.
No one in the business believes someone like Thomas Pynchon or Jane Austen would be signed today.
AWS is a footnote in the Amazon business model - it's less than 10% of revenue - so this article is silly. AZ could walk away from AWS tomorrow and hardly notice.
It's the Any Old Iron companies - IBM, HP, Microsoft, etc - who need to worry about commodity cloud pricing, because it's critical to their business models.
If prices crash - and they will - they're going to be in a world of pain.
Carrington happened in 1859, which was not a few decades ago.
12% seems unlikely, but not quite impossible. Before this story, the more common estimate was that Carringtons happened once every century, which seems more believable.
[doomporn] Of course the next event might be even worse than the 1859 one.[/doomporn]
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