Posts by PhilipN

The forge and the crucible

The era of the blast furnace is over and the era of the laboratory well under way. There were good reasons why Britain kick started the first, and why Silicon Valley was pre-eminent in the second. Here comes the next wave and Uncle Sam doesn’t like it. It started years ago when (for example) the latest feature from Nokia was replicated within weeks, or even days, by the energetic buggers in Shenzhen. Now it is unstoppable or, if as appears to be the case, the U.S. is bent on applying huge resources to preserve its diminishing advantages it will not be for the good of all.

Amen.

Appalling, El Reg

How can you unashamedly publish such an article. "Very, very NSFW" is atrocious grammar!!

OS/2!

‘Cos nobody’s mentioned it.

{waves ‘bye going out the door and no-one looks up}

Old Tech Solution >

The Senior Partner in a law firm I was with in a previous lifetime once said only half joking he wanted a neon-lit sign on his door saying "Fuck off".

Somehow I think he would have reported his email system broken and useless, perhaps on a daily basis.

Now that would be a "MeToo" movement for the rest of us.

Weren’t accessible from the main roads

And a miserable to non-existent mobile signal?

Way-hay! Show me where! That is exactly where I want to be at weekends.

Well, weekdays too but .... needs must.

Close to the sea?

You mean - that is where the pipe is aiming and where its (usual) contents will go?

Point 1 - Urggh.

Point 2 - Can we have more fatbergs please.

Blade Runner

If anyone has already commented approvingly on the pic at the top I have not spotted it, so : good choice, AD.

Smart move of the film makers to choose a look-alike sound-alike young version* of Harrison Ford to do the interrogation.

*Clone? Replicant? Now, now - do NOT hijack this forum with a BR digression.

Crossing the Line

That was when FB, a simple social facility, following the decision of its bankers drooling over fees, agreed to list at US$100B+.

Then (1) the upper executive echelon inside FB were carried away in a total state of hubris and (2) they had to adopt one desperate measure after another to generate income to justify the hype, and the price. Item (2) was made easier because high-flying IT graduates* with the same dollar signs instead of irises flocked to FB and its incentive schemes expecting to get wealthy within 3 years or, hopefully, sooner.

*with apologies to the vast majority of IT graduates who maintain their prInciples.

Fuel pumped by a Jaguar V8 engine

My Jag has what I suppose is the same engine. Since I already have the base module I just need to bolt on the jet engine. There's a fixer-upper on eBay :

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ROLLS-ROYCE-G2-BUSINESS-JET-ENGINE-NON-OPERATIONAL-/273336101881?redirect=mobile

Anyone got a garden shed so I can get started?

Explanation for across-the-ponders : example of self-deprecating British irony.

Graphics

Ugh. Do not know whether it was actually the graphics on a VGA monitor or (or as well as) splattering organs but I succumbed to something like motion sickness in less than 2 minutes. Is it any better on modern systems? Cannot try since just thinking about it makes me queasy. Ok so it was the blood and guts.

Alternative business model please

Today's internet was built on the back of advertisers' dollars, yes? Was there another way? I am genuinely interested.

We all or most of us pay a monthly stipend for the bandwidth, not that much different in principle from the days of ftp, gopher, etc but would we have had all the graphical and multimedia content?

Reminds me the thinking is that porn was behind the growth of VHS.

Any advance on ads, porn ..... ?

Surprised nobody has yet said it

but memories fade, even about "embrace, extend, extinguish".

And the Browser Wars

And the DoJ case against Microsoft (q.v.)

At least MS have learnt : last time around they went with the NCSA Mosaic donkey. Now they are riding the competitor's thoroughbred.

P.S. I would not have wanted an Andreessen-controlled planet either.

"hit quarterly targets so as to pocket fat performance-linked bonuses"

Uhhh yeah? Thought that's how all US executives operate?*

So if sales are flat find another company to buy to hit the target by consolidating sales.

Even better make it an overseas company so the executives can go off for a jolly occasionally.

and again and again

*On the other hand I was a pimply-faced newbie in the City of London when I first heard the expression "window-dressing" to (cough! cough!) "improve" the balance sheet ahead of results time.

It's a what?

Must confess I look askance at people, and the animal, when they say "It's a XYZ/ABC cross". Some things are not intended by Nature.

(for US readers)

Many of them have been there. Suffolk too.

Went to school there. Flew for the USAF there ...

Look up Feltwell, Lakenheath and Mildenhall

Not surprised

Good article. FWIW since it is tangential I took delivery of the Mate 20 Pro phone a week ago and I am mightily impressed, not just with the phone but in the sense that Huawei are making some very smart, coherent and thoughtful decisions to push themselves up the sales charts in both phones and PC’s.

Bound to be in fact already is political pushback against Huawei but if this gives the PC industry a much-needed boot up the arse it is a Good Thing.

P.S. 32.5 cm tall? You mean y.... Oh the bag is 32.5 cm. Phew!

Efford

Love it! Phonetically almost identical to “F-Word”.

Think I’ll use that name as part of all my login credentials from now on.

Did you see it?

The main statement : “ double-check whether anything had crossed my desk”. Smart move - making sure first there is no paper trail so she can say whatever the hell she likes. How could she not know?

She ain’t presidential material though: they are past masters at “plausible deniability” without so clumsily demonstrating how they achieve it.

No no you have it all wrong

Not broken. NOT withdrawn. Just paused.

It was pining for the fjords.

“..based on your feedback...”

Is what MS always say when they’re harpooning another user favourite.

Be happy : “The theoretical argument against democracy is, of course, that man being prone to evil, something external to him and indifferent to his passions must be put up to govern him; the people will corrupt themselves, but a despot or an oligarchy, when it has satisfied its corrupt desires, still has a wide margin over which it may rule well because it is indifferent.”

I was stifling a chuckle nay a guffaw while writing that. Must be ‘cos I take comfort from MS’ protection against you corrupt bastards.

Buzz words - the more times you say it ......

“Innovation” dates back to Ballmer - and he even remembers to say it again.

“Digital transformation” is a new one on me : count how many times MS execs use it in the next 6-12 months.

I wonder how much they pay the PR people to come up with these Orwellisms?

Senior European Politician

Who's that, then?

Thought it was an article about Clegg.

Will die - no

Judging by the number of punters at the Surface counter at the local digi-shop compared with those at other counters, it is already dead*

*Save for corporations finagled into buying them in bulk

Would you Adam and Eve it

“Unintended” and “embarrassing” sounds like a two-word summary of the story of the Lady and the Apple

Mind wandered ...

While thinking about this remembered getting DV’ed the last time I called out the guy who holds up a long queue of the caffeine-desperate at rush hour by using a card - the kind requiring a VOUCHER to be PRINTED and then he has to find a space on a busy counter to sign the thing. Bastard! All for a 2 or 3 dollar/quid cup of coffee. Was he claiming it on Expenses?

Point of the comment is time was - the time of pen and paper - you could ask the restaurant to write a receipt for a lot more than the actual bill. Now that is how to charge expenses. Course none of us ever did that?

Who decides?

With acknowledgement to (a recent issue of) the FT, the C-in-C British Cavalry responded to the threat of WWII by ordering more fodder and second horses for officers, while the Wehrmacht busily developed the Panzer.

Easy to say he was a dumkopf but where did he have the authority to commission the design, construction and delivery of new battle-worthy tanks - and the formation of regiments to deploy them. And all else besides - a MAJOR and costly undertaking.

It wasn’t until it was almost two years too late that the politicians got organised.

So why don’t the MP’s put themselves under the spotlight?

After all, the soldier only does as he is told, yes?

Luxury!

Just this past weekend as chance would have it a live CD with the previous iteration of Elive on it was the first fossil I found in the drawer when I had to try and re-boot an old Mac Pro which had the flu. Booted, ran, GUI, the lot. Love it! Definitely will give this new-fangled version a twirl (knowing I can wind it back 5 years if the need arises and I shall be happy as a sandboy).