Posts by dotdavid

Football, eh?

"He revealed that recent national sex ed exam asked students: “What should you do if you have a sexual urge?” The answer, apparently, was “call friends to go play football”."

So that's what the kids are calling it nowadays.

Skills Gap

...is often just another way of saying "we don't want to pay as much for our staff", as invariably the gap narrows as you advertise a higher starting salary.

Cynicism

I prefer to call it realism, myself.

Correction

"iPad owners are far more likely to be able to claim they are considerably richer than you"

Surely you mean *were* not *are*?

Weaponised bags

"If we look at the world of brick-and-mortar weapons, we wouldn't call a bag a weapon though it could be used to carry away stolen goods"

Unless we're the TSA or UK Border Force, in which case we call it "a weapon concealment weapon"

Hmm

"On its side, Proview disputes whether Proview’s Taiwan unit, to which Apple paid £35,000 ($55,943) for the trademark, had the right to sell it or whether that rested with the Shenzhen unit and its creditors"

I'm not a big fan of Apple, but wouldn't that mean it's the Taiwan unit's fault for doing stuff beyond their authority, not Apple's fault for buying the rights in good faith. Shouldn't Proview Shenzhen be suing Proview Taiwan?

Of course the Taiwan unit is probably defunct, so suing Apple is a strategy with more chance of financial success...

Printed life-size dinos are pretty cool...

...but if you're just trying to model movement, why bother printing them? Can't you just 3D scan the bones and then build and move a virtual model? Or am I missing the point?

Pirate because I wonder whether they'll put the models on the Pirate Bay so you could print your own dino.

Superfast, ultrafast, super-ultrafast, ultra-super-mega-fast...

Given the presumed ever-increasing speeds of internet-connection technologies, do you think it's wise to use terms like "superfast" and "ultra-fast" to describe your broadband services?

Or has the Marketing Department taken over completely?

Aliases

Why not have .wales become an alias for .cymru, so if you go to, for example, www.riseupagainsttheenglish.wales you see the same site as you would if you went to www.riseupagainsttheenglish.cymru?

Or would this cause problems with certificates and stuff?

Maybe

Probably won't work, but is there any way of just having one balloon and making the bursting of the balloon trigger the launch somehow? I guess lots of balloon guts would get in the way a bit, and it adds a bit of complexity, but to my untrained eye it looks feasible.

Paris because wasn't something similar done for PARIS, based on altitude?

Apps

I agree, but I think the importance of an app ecosystem cannot be understated. If the TV manufacturers continue down the route of only providing proprietary apps for their TVs they will become left behind in the capability stakes.

The way I see it happening is Apple enter the market to some success, IOS apps are available for their TVs which extend the functionality of their product. Manufacturers will continue to try keeping up with their own offerings, but some will give up and use Android/GoogleTV or create an application standard.

I just wish they'd skip to the end before faffing around with the proprietary stuff.

Beautiful

I think you should seriously look into launching LOHAN there, judging by those photos.

I dunno, but...

...the name PhonepayPlus still sounds like a scam mobile payment scheme to me.

So...

...plants are quite resilient, a fact that could equally well be demonstrated by the continued survival of (almost) all my houseplants.

Photo

The guy in the photo clearly has a mobile phone, which he's apparently not very happy about. So presumably he suffers from the opposite of Nomophobia - maybe Hasmophobia?

Blaming Nintendo's woes on Mario...

...is like blaming RIM's woes on the fact that everyone's heard of BBM.

Mario is a brand with a pretty good reputation. Nintendo have never been particularly innovative and have had a couple of recent hardware flops, is all. They can either bet big on the next Wii (which looks a bit gimmicky from where I'm standing) or they can go down the Sega route and make Mario games for everything from rival consoles to your mobile phone. I know which choice I'd make, and neither involve getting rid of Mario.

Apple: Motorola Update Department

So now Motorola will need to update their handsets to no longer use slide-to-unlock, eh?

On the one hand, it's a silly patent that has plenty of prior art. On the other hand it's unlikely Motorola will release any updates without it...

Hmm

Proview must have looked at RIM's business model. Whereas RIM moved from making successful lawsuits to making increasingly unsuccessful phones, Proview have seemingly decided to get out of hardware altogether and move into the lucrative lawsuits industry.

Where are the employees?

From the photos it looks like most of them sit in the canteen all day.

That's the kind of work I could really put 110% into, I think.

""We do many things by breaking windows," he said; "spending US tax dollars is not one of them. Every dollar spent on fixing the windows we break is spent right here on Earth. This budget in-sources jobs, creates capabilities here at home – and strengthens our workforce."

I don't disagree that we probably should be spending more on space technology, not less (after all, the sooner we develop the technology and capability to get into space cheaply the better scope for our future survival as a species) but I dislike it when politicians come up with stupid justifications like "it creates jobs" to try and make the inevitable spending more palatable. There is an opportunity cost for every tax dollar spent, after all.

FRANDboi

"Of course, the Commission will continue to keep a close eye on the behavior of all market players in the sector, particularly the increasingly strategic use of patents"

Sorry, *continue*? You mean *start* surely?

Apple have been strategically using their rectangle patent, or whatever it is, for ages now.

Putrid gloop

"probably something to be thankful for next time the 07.42 to Charing Cross is delayed again"

Are you kidding? Have you seen the state of the on-board toilets? Putrid gloop doesn't come close to describing them.