Posts by Wanda Lust

Here's an idea

Announce a product, launch it, then make sure there's adequate availability. Google's really piss poor at this, it's just tiresome now.

Sky

So why isn't Sky having a go at this? They're flaffing on about wanting unfettered acccess to BT's cabs for their own FTTC and backhaul.

I guess the subject mustn't have come up at one of those infamous government-industry country suppers.

Free vs Paid

If something is free then one has to find it.

If something has to be paid for there'll be selling involved. Selling requires marketing, advertising, mail shots, idiots manning podiums in the local shopping centre promoting their inane wares. Many, many opportunities for money to be made along the way. It's a whole industry in itself.

Selling works well with sheeple, it's in their natural psyche to queue up for stuff.

Reap

what you sow Mikey Dell Boy

skroku

That 'Sky' thing looks suspiciously like a rebadged Roku. Why would I buy one from Sky (the original Roku does Sky streaming anyway) unless I am a SkySheeple?

Down with Rupe.

Sick, sick, sick & tired of this imbecile Cameron

Every week there's some populist, lame and inconsequential idea or policy spun out and fed to the sheeple. Everything's just a distraction from the main issue which is that these pillocks are shafting the greater proportion of the citizens they claim to govern.

This is going to be a waste of time, it's totally legit for Mr & Mrs Smith of 3 Acacia Avenue to surf on over to "www.blacksozzies.co.uk" & so they will do switching off the controls thus leaving little Jimmy & Jessica exposed! What about gambling, what about protecting the little ones from the mountain of advertising ridden kids sites, the ........

Argggh I'm just exasperated .....

Regulate

In Northern Ireland, broadband delivery was seen as an important enabler for many things rural. The Dept Of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation funded the ADSL rollout so all BT exchanges could provide 8Mb broadband, more recently it's been the Dept of Rural Development that has funded FTTC rollout. FTTC is by no means ubiquitous but what's been achieved under the devolved admnistration is a lot better than England seems to be achieving.

This cannot be left to the market, it has to be regulated and the models provided to date aren't exactly successful for the country as a whole.

Meanwhile, I see we have Sky making noises about getting unbundled access to FTTC cabinets. Foxtrot Oscar Rupe, go install your own cabinets and patch over from the subs line just like BT do.

Rodents, a dying species

A personal view: I hate computer mice - spawn of the devil and reason for a whole new medical problem or, at least, a large proportion of sufferers.

The tech - human machine interface is diverging, one path expoiting touch & the other, the old way of keyboard and mouse. Touch is good, it's natural. Keyboard is OK but mouse is crap, pen/stylus much better and more natural. Look at Macs, touch is dominant & I don't see much complaint.

I sense that Windows 8 is trying to bridge to a new UI experience. I've said it before, I like the Windows 8 interface on the desktop, it works for me as somethng that bridges touch and full desktop use. I can touch in tablet mode and use the keyboard with just a few keystroke shortcuts on the desk. One UI, two form factors. Your mileage may certainly vary but change comes.

For those who like their program icons ordered: try some thing new - hit the [Start] key on the keyboard, immediately followed by the first few characters of the name of the required progam icon. As if by magic, the desired icon is sorted from the dross, hit [return] and - bing - the program's started. No movement of your hand away from the keyboard, no risk of RSI, CTS.... What's even more impressive for those who like tidyness and order, you don't even need to look at a list: you tell computer what you want, not select from stupid list what computer offers. Isn't that how it's supposed to work.

All due respect to the inventor of the computer mouse who passed away recently but his invention outlived its usefulness to me about 10 years ago when I moved over to a Wacom tablet.

Feedback, schmeedback

Enough about feedback, they'll never get it right if they listen to feedback.

Define a target & go there. If it's not working either the target is wrong, they're not all pointing in the direction of the target or are misreading the target. Gates & Jobs were obviously very good with defing the targets, Ballmer maybe not so and Cook too early to tell.

One more thing...

I like Windows 8: how's that for an admission.

I've never been an advocate for Microsoft products before, but, for me Windows 8 works & I don't need a Start Menu. I've been running W8 on a tablet form factor for more than a year, not exclusively but enough, and for the last month or so it's now my main desktop docked into a 24“ display, keyboard & Wacom tablet. For me it works, the short cuts are way more intuitive and readily accessed without leaving the keyboard. I probably do have to qualify that with a hatred of the computer mouse, hence my favour for shortcuts.

1MT: what really does need fixing is software updates: the Windows 8 Store app updates are fine, the OS updates still take too long but individual, legacy, Windows application updates are just a monstrous sinkhole of time and energy.

So, enough already about the poxy start menu. Like or not, change has to pass.

Too many undefined TLAs

PMR, PMS, SMR, HMR, SMD, NST..... WTF, TPM, GGW (go google wikipedia)....

Simples

While conspiracy theories make for vicarious interest the simple answer may be that it's more often, than not, cloudy & wet in those parts so the probability of getting a clear visible overpass is low. Microsoft and Google obviuosly using different image suppliers.

Oh, too

I'm glad I've severed all custom with O2. Those dealing with customers all day on the hot end of a phone line can't have an easy job but my perception that O2’s business processes are worse than shoddy can only make it worse for them.

I'm sure it's not just O2 who are guilty but I do think they form their processes on a 60:40 rule, i.e. the thinking goes we'll script/procedure-alise 60% of possible interactions then deal with the other 40% as exceptions. The plan falls apart when they don't give those on the receiving end of the phone sufficient tools and information to deal with the exceptions.

Selective presentation

No doubt, in common wth other 'subscription' type models on Facebook, they'll only present users with a subset of the posts in an RSS feed.

Flipboard already.

Yes, dull, dull

Only 8 comments, that's how Dull this whole business about Dull is.

If the article was about a revolutionary user interface or the latest tweak of a fondling thing we'd be at 88 comments in no time at all.

FWIW, I think Mr Dell should be let get on with his plan (I believe he thinks he can do a Jobsian job on Dell but then he hasn't got the balls to do it while facing 'The Street' every 12 weeks).

iCan simply sees an opportunity to make money, isn't that the American way?

So earthshatteringly relevant

that only 3 comments ensued.

Opensauce is really cool stuff but it doesn't get sold. Peeple need to be sold stuff for things to happen. Hordes of expensively besuited sales, nay account, managers patrolling the mahogany sidled corridors gunning for c level targets. TCO models, RoI proof cases, non-committal commitments and win-wins. Can't do that for free beer, doesn't work.

The Meg and Dave Show

Too little, too late. Too little, as in 8GBytes, and too late, as in it's 2013.

The 'V' word

Might the reason actually be virtualisation? With consolidation ratios of 20:1, and even up to 60:1, this must have a impact on physical server deployments.

Nail on head

You hit the nail on the head in your opening paragraph, effectively posing the question: "can your infrastructure survive failure".

My day job exposes me to many IT shops who simply cannot answer that positively, it's really scary how many. They neglect to ask themselves, "what happens when 'x' fails?", and plan for the inevitable.

Few take an integrated, systems and services focussed approach. In regard to the rest of the article, I'd have liked to have read more more about what makes a storage system, be that block or file. In my book an array is isn't a system, it's just a pile of rust externally connected to a server system whereas a storage system has to be something that adds some considerable value to those little modules of rust: e.g. data integrity on top of the hardware redundancy, local & remote replication, efficiency, performance management, to name a few.

Keep these articles coming, they make for genuine discussion and an interesting distraction from the vendor fodder that has to make up most of El Reg's output.

Re-headlining

I misread the headline as "Pointless Internet Biz Pinterest....." and the first line as "Online crap repository".

Not far off the truth, eh?

Lawyers and shoes

So, do they all wear white shoes at the law firm?

Tiny point of pedantry (re coal cannot do that either)

Avgas != Jet A1

Avgas fuels aviation piston engines, Jet A1 fuels turbine engines.

Drops?

Don't understand the lingo old chap, "drops"?

In my little corner of the anglophone world the verb means to let go of, to let fall from one's grasp.

I nearly missed this story......

Splutter, cough...

£100m? For the UK? Scalextric probably turn over more than that.

Aircraft + fire

Just about the worst scenario you can have.

Engines throwing blades, yea, aircraft are designed to cope with that. The chickens attest to that & the more engines the better.

Fire... especially anywhere in the fuselage. Bad, bad, bad.

Boeing has messed up here, bad. I spent some around Boeing when they kicked off the triple 7 program & I was highly impressed at what I saw.

Failure: plan for it

Totally agree on the point made about understanding failure modes. It's a trait that I note is dangerously lacking in many 'architects' I have met of late.

Why 3G?

Tablets would be considered secondary mobile devices after a mobile phone/smartphone, right? I you agree with that why would 3G be necessary on a tablet? Oh yes, 'cause the cellco's want to up their subs count.

A MiFi (unlocked, of course) or a tethering phone is a much better plan.

We need to get back to network operators operating networks and nothing else.

Ofcom or ofdev

Maybe they should rule that the telco's provide network time & Joe Punter gets a lease agreement with a bank for the device of his choice.

That'd put some good, solid business back to the banks.

Wouldn't it?

All fail

Sum total of variance is 1.41 of something, is that a wow or a damp squib?

Servers just leave me cold.

Meh!

Pee eye

Back in 2008 Paul Maritz was CEO of PI Corporation which was acquired by EMC.

Is someone wedded to a PI idea? That's all.

Flash smash

So that 's STEC and OCZ looking like they've overcooked the FLASH game.

It's not everything it's cracked up to be...

Know your niche and stay there.

Delirious...

I baulked at the first paragraph then bailed out half way throught the second. Editor, help, please?

June 2011?

They acquired the company 16 months ago & still aren't clear on how to use its stuff?

I'll be expecting a humdinger of a strategy around that ( or not maybe ).

Dozens

I've only cursorily scanned the comments but dozens are very useful units. I can count to 144 using my two hands. No doubt if we looked at the history of weights we'd find some explanation why 14s and 16s were the multiples there.

But, today, even my pen counts so I don't need to use fingers, toes, staves on a barrel, whatever.

Geography and lottery

Satellite comms work on a big geographic scale, the UK is smaller than Texas with quite a few thousand telephone exchanges so there's more local loop coverage. Too few punters UK to really make satellite services viable for consumers.

Camelot, lottery and sat comms: they needed reliable comms, preferably under one contract for the whole country from the Scottish islands to Cornwall and all points east to west across England, Wales & Northern Ireland - only option was satellite. They must have upwards of 50,000 locations, not a big throughput requirement, sat works.

Like the enlightening AC, above, I have past professional knowledge of a network required to service a 'retail' business network that covered the UK, top to bottom and side to side. It required landline, satellite and mobile service providers. The services are there if you need them but as with anything, 'pays your money and makes your choice'.