Posts by mhenriday

«"The university told us it's a good way to experience corporate culture.»

The message seems to have been as follows : This, my dear students, is «corporate culture». If you don't swot all you're worth, you will end up experiencing it not merely for a month or so, but for the rest of your working life....

Talk about incentivising students - if I'd been exposed to FoxConn during my salad days, I'd probably have done twice the academic work in half the time ! British students can only hope that Michael Gove - the man with the bibles - doesn't read this article....

Henri

«It's all in the process, Mein Herr»

Phil, why the capitalisation of the possessive «mein» here ?...

Henri

A good initiative on the part of Google,

which I suspect will also prove profitable to the bottom line in the not too distant future. One has to admit that the Google leadership once more has demonstrated their ability to think both inside and outside the box...

Henri

Wow, Richard - you really seem to have touched a nerve !

But thanks, anyway, for reporting this and in particular for providing a link to the article, which I found of great interest. The greatest problem, apart from that mentioned by Vladimir Plouzhnikov above (which to my mind is a wee bit beside the point, as what he seems to propose is one mechanism (there are surely others, as well) behind the corollations observed in the research, rather than a denial of them), lies in what was chosen to represent a «conspiracy» - introspection is a blunt probe, but I detect no tendencies in myself to believe that the Apollo moon landings were faked, despite a strong belief that the US/UK invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with «weapons of mass destruction» and Anthony Charles Lynton Blair's infamous «45 minutes». No reasonable person with any knowledge of human history can deny that conspiracies do exist - and that new ones are launched all the time - it is when one begins to believe that history itself is a conspiracy that one crosses the fine line to paranoia. But how to tell them apart ? I think, for example, that such organisations as Scientology or the Unification Church have rather more to do with extracting money from the gullible than with a «spiritual» impetus on the part of their respective founders ; do these beliefs make me paranoid ? Probably not, but then again, I haven't checked the criteria outlined in DSM V....

Henri

Ah, Rik - if only more of your «(tax) money» could be devoted to splendid things like the SDO

and less to mass murder around the world !...

Henri

What we need now are for the cables that have been going back and forth

regarding this case to be leaked, so we can follow the money and see just who paid whom. Or have the RIAA and the MPAA and the US and Swedish governments learned from previous indiscretions and «negotiated» with the relevant Cambodian authorities face-to-face, with all the cash in paper bags ? Oh well, at least we ḱnow that (the so-called «rights-holders» version of) justice has been served....

Henri

One thing about the US judicial system -

it never fails to amaze ! On the one hand, we get the perfectly predictable hometown judge like Lucy Haeran Koh or her patent-troll friendly colleagues at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, but on the other, we sometimes (albeit rarely) get a judge who knows what he's talking about, like William Haskell Alsup. In any event, the contradictions make the serials worth following - will Betty Boop be run over by the approaching train, or will the hero manage to untie her from the rails in time to receive his just reward (which alas, was never shown in the cartoons) ?...

Henri

While I agree that there does remain a soupçon of witchcraft

and a good portion of unverified tradition in medicine, anyone who believes that its practice can be reduced to the simple checking off of well-defined symptoms from a list knows little about biology or medicine....

Henri (PhD, MD)

Now I understand the perspective

enjoyed by Lewis Page and Andrew Orlowski on global warming - it doesn't exist and even if it does, it's beneficial anyway (on a scale of a couple of million years). Alas, many species to which we have been accustomed - including, most likely, H sapiens sapiens, itself - will, no doubt, have disappeared during the transition period, but I am sure that LP and AO will be able to find charming companions with whom to associate....

Henri

Is this not merely yet more evidence to the effect

that it's about time that copyright law was modified in accordance with a famous (here slightly paraphrased) document : «... whenever any Law becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Law, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness» ? The present situation is more than reasonably absurd....

Henri

«80 per cent penetration» ?

Is that like «Let me put it in just a little way ; I'll take it out if it hurts» ?...

Henri

PS : Richard, Baidu's claims with regard to 80 % penetration of the search-engine market in China would seem to be verified by Stat Counter's Global Stats (http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-CN-daily-20080701-20120904), which show some 78 %....

The homage that vice pays to virtue ?

As previous commentators have noticed, the key questions are the working hours and working conditions for all workers in the plant - both 16 and 17-year-olds and those 18 or over. As Brid-Aine Parnell. citing a China Labour Watch report, noted a month ago in the Reg (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/09/samsung_underage_workers_allegations/), these are hardly among the best :

«CLW said that the children were working "under the same harsh conditions" as adult workers, but were only getting 70 per cent of the pay. The group also saw discrimination at the company based on age and sex and found the employees were forced to work far too much - 11 hours a day, six days a week for 26 to 28 days a month.

"The management are abusive during work, sometimes hitting workers on the factory floor. Any carelessness, such as slow movements, mis-operation, or late completion of team leaders’ orders could provoke the shouting of team leaders at anytime.»

Of course, given that China Labour Watch is based in a country in which large parts of the political establishment - and the media - have declared war on organised labour in general and the regulation of working conditions in particular, reporting on «harsh conditions» in China is redolent of rampant hypocrisy. But we scarcely react to that anymore, now do we ?...

Henri

They do enjoy whinging, innit ?

First they complain that the Chinese don't innovate and instead steal their so-called «intellectual property» (typical example : rounded corners on a flat slab) ; then they complain that the Chinese have created a new standard for domestic use, which reduces their ability to charge the Chinese excessive prices for «licenses». One does, indeed, sympathise with these companies, whose executives are so poorly compensated that they must, no doubt, spend half their time in breadlines....

Henri

A modest proposal - rather than an article reproducing Gartner's latest PR release,

couldn't the Reg vouchsafe us a detailed article which examines Gartner's IT predictions over, say, the last five years and tells us just how they panned out ?...

Henri

«... all four infamous Pirate Bay founders»

Well, Natalie, we realise that you, like the Reg's «executive editor» and most of its bloggers are (not unlike our Swedish justice system) the wholly owned and copyrighted property of the RIAA and MPAA and other so-called «right's holders» organisations, but you shouldn't you be just a tad more careful about your use of colourful adjectives ? «Infamous» would seem to be a bit over the top in this case....

Henri

Wow, Mr Bong, I'm impressed -

after all, it is not everyone who can write the Thai glyphs for «Mālay» twice in the same, purportedly English-language article, so that no one misses how enlightened he is, at the same time that he has difficulty with the romanisation of 毛泽东's name. But then he confesses himself to be a devotee of that master of wooden prose and economic illiteracy, the late (un)lamented Alisa Zinovjevna Rosenbaum. Why am I not surprised ?...

Henri

Apple-Samsung, Assange-Haig (without the latter being named), and O2

all in the same posting, Brid-Aine ! Do you have a permit for that wide-bore shotgun you're using ?...

Henri

Work with great potential -

thanks for the heads-up, Richard !...

Henri

Can anybody link to a serious test

of this or other Huawei kit of this type ? My impression from what I've read about Huawei's networks kit is that this is a very serious outfit with excellent engineers from many countries ; it would interesting to learn more about their consumer products....

Henri

The Right Honourable William Jefferson Hague

does go on and on, does he right honourably not ? But does anybody in his right honourable mind listen to what the Right Honourable William Jefferson Hague has to say ?...

Henri

Stop whinging about absurd patents and, in particular, Apple's many examples !

Hasn't our beloved «executive editor» informed us in this very number of the Reg that «the Apple-Samsung verdict is GOOD for YOU, your KIDS and TECH» ? How dare anyon question this divine wisdom ? Patents - the more absurd the better - are going to save us all (with the exception of those dastardly «freetards» - our executive editor's contribution to the vocabulary of the English language - who no doubt deserve their miserable fates). It is, of course, entirely consistent with our executive editor's exalted character that certain unfortunate Reg readers who haven't fully grasped the sacrosanct nature of his pronunciamentos are blocked from commenting on his postings....

Henri

Good for Shenzhen !

The people who make our toys are well worth higher wages - and even if rising wages will lead to the movement of some production from China's southeast to the country's western and northwestern regions, such a shift will be of benefit to these relatively undeveloped areas. As noted in the article, while some manufacturers will indeed investigate the possibility of moving to other countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, etc, where prevaling wages are much lower than in China, the superior infrastructure in the latter will most likely limit such moves....

Henri

As a child I learned that one bad Apple

would spoil a barrel. Never did I suspect that the truth of this old adage would be demonstrated so graphically....

Henri

Wouldn't this statute,

i e, section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, also be relevant in the the Motorola Mobile suite against Apple for patent infringement and the importation of infringing kit from abroad (http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/895480/New_MMI_v_Apple_Complaint.pdf) ? Is the USITC actively pursuing this vital matter as well ? You say not ? Wonder why ?...

Henri

«However, given the paranoia that exists around Chinese firms,

especially in the US, it remains to be seen how enthusiastic customers will be about China Mobile having hold of their data.» To which paranoia, of course, Phil is ever ready, as his every posting on China on the Reg has demonstrated, to contribute. As others commentators have noted, all data storage companies, no matter their location - and in the US, public libraries which are required, if so ordered, to inform the FBI of which books loaners have borrowed, but enjoined from informer the loaner that this information has been passed on - are going to make one's files available to the government if requested/required to do so. Anyone who thinks otherwise is blissfully unaware of the notion of «sovereign powers» exercised by a state. Encryption is, as pointed out above, one alternative, others DvDs, external harddisks, or tape, depending upon how much data one needs to store. There are also, not to be forgotten, courses in mnemonics....

Henri

A question, Phil -

if it wasn't time «to sweep the cobwebs out of that old nuclear bunker at the bottom of the garden» when we knew that the US had targetted China with 3rd generation ICBMs, why is it now time to do so when we learn (are told) that China is responding by targetting the US with the same type of device ? Has the Chinese government shown a greater dispostion to bomb other countries than the United States ? It is hardly China that represents the greatest threat to mankind's survival....

Henri

«The flaw there is that one might well argue

that modern human civilisation has largely eliminated natural selection and survival of the fittest: a dullard or other genetically sub-par type, in some circumstances anyway, would seem just as likely (if not more) to propagate his or her genes as someone with useful abilities is.» «[M]ight well argue», indeed, Lewis, if one were unfamiliar with research on the matter, for example, that on natural and sexual selection in a Finnish population between 1760 and 1849 described here (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120430152037.htm) or here (http://www.pnas.org/content/109/21/8044). One can't help wondering if the ability to understand the science concerning human evolution or, for that matter, global warming, is one of the «useful abilities» to which you refer (without specification) above....

Henri

«Always striving to be the biggest and best on Earth,

China is also set to complete the world’s largest radio telescope in 2016.» Is that your inferiority complex showing, Phil ? Would you have written about the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in these terms ?...

Henri

The really frightening thing is that

the government of this particular country - the United States America - which, along with its vassals here in Europe, continues to play a major role in determining policies which affect H sapiens sapiens' chances (slim at best) of making it through the present century....

Henri

Tried this myself on 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04, with the following results :

Firefox Nightly 17.0a1 (2012-08-19) :6059

Chrome 21.0.1171.0 dev : 9661

Test conditions far from identical, as on Chrome I ran Octane with one (1) tab open, while on Nightly i had 221 (sic !) tabs open. Hardly fair, but I don't want to lose those tabbed pages....

Henri

«... China's claim to Taiwan had been renounced in 1985» ?!!

Rather confused about East Asian history, are you not «Shocked Jock» ? Perhaps you meant to refer to the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895, in which China (then governed by the Qing Dynasty), was forced to cede Taiwan «in perpetuity» to the Japanese state. Easy come, easy go - what a country can gain by winning one war it can forfeit by losing the next or the one after that, the situation in which the Japanese government found itself in in 1945, when it was forced by the terms of the Cairo Declaration, incorporated into the Potsdam Declaration, itself incorporated into the instrument of surrender, to return to China all the territories it had seized from that country 50 years earlier (a fact which is also relevant when considering who has the better title to the Diaoyu Tai/Senkaku Shotō). The present Chinese government - the government of the PRC - has never relinquished its claim to Taiwan and the islands, but as Phil states here «... both are happy to maintain the status quo and not bring up the thorny issue of Taiwan’s political reintegration with the mainland». As to the sending of Guomindang supporters and their families to internal exile in Tibet, I can only congratulate you on your imagination - you wouldn't be related by any chance to Ian Fleming, now would you ?...

Henri

Those who support Pussy Riot

but condemn Wikileaks and Mr Assange fail to grasp what freedom of speech/information is all about. Contrary to what you may have read - implicitly - in our European and North American corporate media, it is not about supporting speech/actions that are anti-Putin, while condemning those who investigate those who shed light on the secret activities of actors in such political and economic capiitals as Washington, New York, and London. But as Upton Beall Sinclair used to say, «It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it !»...

Henri

Be interesting to see

what this has for repercussions on broadband speeds in China, which presently, as detailed in previous Reg articles, lie at the low end of the scale....

Henri

Tux, just because....

The fun thing is the Chinese translation of Noah's Ark (诺亚方舟)

is, as the photos accompanying the China Daily article (thanks for the link, Phil !) make clear, painted in large glyphs on the surface of the spheroid. But the Chinese term for Ark (方舟) literally means «square/rectangular boat». Wonder what Eukleides would have said about this attempt to square the circle....

Henri