Would have been awesome a decade ago
However, now storage is approaching free, hasn't that horse rather bolted?
1822 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Apr 2007
I would love to see your sources on that one! Unless you're referring to China owning thousands of billions of dollars worth of the US government bonds, which let's face it, are no longer the premium safehouse they once were. Yes, I think the US will be defaulting on loans to China long before anything the other way round.
This is what I so love and admire about the Beeb - not content to accept the status quo, but pushing development on some funky fronts. I am so pleased to hear that the licensing and patent pool actually provides money to the corp, surely that means the department should be expanded ;-)
I remember in 1990 seeing that a bunch of engineers had recorded the Wimbledon final in HD - this is back before digital, mind, this was 4 Beta (SP? SR? Certainly waaaay before digibeta, and massively before HDCam...) decks ganged each recording 1/4 of the signal.
It's about how you consider and respond to leftfield problems. Do you panic and fluster? Do you consider and give a single definitive answer with no backup? Do you find out *why* the question was asked, and help the question-raiser narrow down their question to find their motivations in order to give them the most suitable answer possible? Do you work methodically and come up with a good estimate?
People behave consistently, so if you're a flusterer in this question, it's a good indication that you may not respond well to stressful circumstances at work.
Next time someone asks you 'How many cars are there in London?', they don't care what your answer is, they want to see how you think when you're away from rehearsed interview answers.
Not that any particular syntax/language is going to be of any relevence by the time they come to use it a few years later, but the sheer fact that computers become slaves not masters is what's most important. Knowing a computer can bend to your whim as opposed to forcing you to comply with its ways is so empowering, and provides the crucial link between hardware and applications.
If you're going to all the trouble to knock this up, you can add a second chamber connected by 1" pipe or similar whose sole purpose is to give you a bit more vacuum to play with. Nothing fancy, but a simple 1m sq box welded from mild steel, or some recycled hot water cylinders (if they're tough enough), or just about anything will give you a bit longer before the vacuum vanishes at ignition time, it may be worth it just to confirm that the ignition catches properly
Have a look at the Casio Exilim range for high-speed cameras - somewhat excellent for the consumer-level money. Pre-ignition you may need to add a heap more light for high-speed filming, but post-ignition it may be too bright - I doubt the electronics will adjust terribly well in the fraction of a second, but you could get a very cool little youtube vid for the project if it goes well
to remember the dotcomboomandbust of the early 21st century? Did nobody learn anything about web companies overvaluing themselves? Google can keep on subsidising youtube with advertising chump change (although half a billion dollars a year must still hurt), but Groupon will be a major lemon in anyone's portfolio. All the cash to date is going on promotion for a big IPO.
"Hi, I'm PC A, and I'm working on the NoTW case, not the phones, one, but the one where there may have been computer hacking incidents, are you working on that one, or the one where voicemails have been intercepted, but which doesn't cover the computer secutiy breaching?"
"Hi, I'm PC A, I'm working on Project X, are you working on Project X or Y?"
I can see an economy in codenames.
I do love the fact that LOHAN is *our* LOHAN, much as we all had our dabs on PARIS previously :-)
Aaaanyway, there seem to be a lot of technical discussions I am not qualified to celebrate or begrumble, so I have to address the more important questions - colour.
What colour will we make the thing? I vote for brazen orangey-tan colour. And any chance we can have some less aerodynamic than PARIS but probably more comfy rounded curves on LOHAN?
Sounds like you want T-Mobile Flext - a fixed monthly fee gets you a much higher's 'worth' of stuff. Hmm, how to explain - I pay £30/month, but get £180 of calls, texts, international calls, etc which can be used in any proportion, it just decrements the outstanding credit from the £180, so it automagically conforms to what I use. And the data is an all-you-can-eat add-on.
"Gold is around its all-time high now.... but you could have said the same when it was at $800/oz, $900, $1000, etc. all the way up to $1,500 where it is now."
Luckily we can look at history to give us an indication how things typically (always?) go in a speculative market. Tulip bulbs rose and rose in value. Pork bellies likewise. Dotcom 1.0 boom and bust. Housing markets. Markets always seem to have a reversal after long periods of growth - a few people buy cheap and joe punter sees a rising market and jumps in - a brinksmanship game - who will jump first?
Crashes waiting to happen IMHO - Gold, house prices (further when interest rates go up leading to more distressed sales), dotcom 2.0 nonsense (tw*tter, facebook, etc - apparently we learned nothing first time round).
Isn't that what we're really talking about here? The mythical 'cloud' is just a bunch of servers in somebody else's datacentre than your own - the rest is no different than before at the implementation level. A decent Tech Architect will design a secure, parallelised system with failovers borne in mind (or whatever the client is willing to pay for) and whether the tin it runs on lives under your roof or somebody else's isn't really terribly important or interesting.
Yet there seems to be a bit of hysteria about 'the cloud', a certain hardware/firmware company has just spanked a fortune on a domain with the word 'cloud' in, when they had similar services beforehand - it has some sexy mojo yet is vapid to the user. And another software maker with their 'to the cloud' line for somebody editing a photo... no wonder MBA's are chanting it and execs swallowing it.
They don't follow no stinking trends, they are hip and can prove their individuality by buying premium hardware which locks them into a chargable ecosystem. Some might also say that they are a demonstrably easier touch when it comes to getting money out of for overpriced stuff. The Android mob use Android for various reasons, including the fact that it is free and (in the closedest sense of the word) open. These are not the guys who are going to pay £5 for a crappy game, or £3 for a fart application.