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* Posts by Bob J.

19 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Nov 2011

Trump signs 'no privacy for non-Americans' order – what does that mean for rest of us?

Bob J.

Trump does us one favor with this bizarre abdication of responsibility

He reminds us that the intelligence services of the world are the ones largely pulling the chains in this domain. Trump obviously knows and cares little about privacy regimes and the rule of law that is our protection against invasions of privacy. His own phone is so obsolete it can be tapped remotely at any time. So, someone else has planted this little seed in the Orange Man's round head. Who can it be but....! Vigilance is the price of liberty. Trump reminds us to be vigilant again. Over and over, again.

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FCC to Obama on net neutrality: We work for CONGRESS, SIR, not YOU

Bob J.

More accurately, there have been over 4 million submissions -- equal to 1.5% of the American people -- regarding the FCC's diddling around with its rules and with Net Neutrality. (No, the two are not the same: whatever the rules, there will always be the concept Net Neutrality ready to be reinstated when the current epoch nightmare is over.) Wheeler has played this perfectly to maximize who knows what quid pro quos. I remember a similar occasion in 1982 when the California Cable Television Association, a state organization arranged by Wheeler, then head of the National Cable Television Association, with participation by local "interests" got stuck in the Legislature between its interests and those of the growing population of cable users, thereby enabling the politicians to rake in enormous amounts of money to take one position or another -- all orchestrated. Wheeler has learned at the knee of real experts.

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Apple CEO: Frothing fanboi iPhone 5 hype screwed our sales

Bob J.
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Re: Apple will allow you to trade in your old one for a new one if unopened

Gives you some idea actually how much worth there is in an iPhone. Maybe $50?

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Bob J.
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Re: Unlikely

So says Apple. Trust 'em?

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Bob J.
FAIL

Apple has lost its soul

Apple decided to abandon its Mac users, its authentic fan base, to try and score big in toys (i.e., smartphones and tablets). It did ... for awhile. But now there's competition, Android is kicking IOS' butt, and the margins are collapsing. For this Apple pushed its most ardent customers under the bus? Tim Cook isn't responsible for Apple's turn in this direction -- Jobs first quaffed of the poison brew of greed and dominance -- but he has certainly exacerbated the problems inherent in Jobs' strategy, not least understanding the difference between computers and toys. That's what happens when a good operations man is asked to execute on a stupid strategy: excellent progression right to the bottom of the sea.

Apple has already lost its soul. Maybe it needs to lose its head. Only then can it start back on the road to recovery.

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Study: Climate was hotter in Roman, medieval times than now

Bob J.
FAIL

So what? It was warmer last week in Tucson than it is today.

Hooray for the Roman oenologists in Ancient Britain. Surely their wine was up to current English standards, which is why it goes unmentioned so often in Roman annals.

In Tucson, where I live, consistent 42º C temperatures are here an now, and incompatible with local eco-climes. Species and humans are dying left and right.

Let's get on with the present.

Please, fewer idiotic articles for idiot climate-deniers.

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One court order could gag EVERY ISP in Denmark

Bob J.
FAIL

HG Wells was right

How sad. This is the "new" Danish Government, the so-called "left" Danish Government, the Danish Government supposedly for the people and not the corporations. How wrong the Danish people were to believe such propaganda. The New Bosses are the same (or worse than) the Old Bosses.

It's the same all over the world: get a really extreme party of the right going to scare people, than have a mildly right party posing as a left party win the election -- and discover belatedly that the corporations are even more in charge. Shades of Blair, Obama, and now Helle Thorning-Schmidt. It's not copyright holders' rights that are at stake, it's freedom itself.

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Apple's Retina Macs: A little too elite?

Bob J.
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Unhappy

Re: Ugh

The Black Box syndrome is a function of smartphonism and tabletism. No one messes with their smartphones or tablets other than to switch the chips in the former. There's nothing in there to be messed with. Why on earth, then, provide for anyone to modify their computer? Aren't they all digital.

(The above is sarcasm, of course.)

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Bob J.
Unhappy

This is what happens when smartphone and tablet champions take over a computer company.

Everything that's not accessible via an "app" or a text, that isn't something to be sold or gotten via localization and maps, is given second shrift. It's beyond the Device worshippers' ken.

Mountain Lion looks cut in the same mold. Perhaps it will work out, but it had better be a world more effective and more in a computing, not a smartphone mold.

Lastly, Retina display: doesn't that shrink the visual appearance of fonts? I already cannot easily use my MacBook Air without donning a pair of special reading glasses. But wait, this is all about pre-packaged graphics, right? Who computes anymore?

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Bob J.
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Re: Retina MBPro

The Chinese answer to everything: glue.

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Samsung Galaxy S III: A Swiss army knife of wireless tech

Bob J.
Meh

An unintended consequence: less support for Apple's computers?

I'm concerned that Samsung throwing down the gauntlet like this will incite Apple to pour even more resources into the iPhone -- and devote even fewer resources to evolving its computer base. A whole passel of Mac users already are getting the message, rightly or wrongly, that Apple now cares more about its "device" customers (meaning iPhones and iPads) than it does its computer customers. The critical flow of technical innovation from Apple's computer platforms to its mobiles has been reversed with a flow of stinky interface design and "apps" from the mobiles to the computer platforms, with clearly negative consequences for Apple's new OSs' performance and general ease of use. For the first time in decades, some Apple computer users are talking about bailing.

Samsung's new phone may or may not be the cat's meow for mobile users, but an unintended consequence of this new phone ("unintended" unless Samsung is smarter than I think and figured it all along) may be to enact that scenario, thereby further alienating Apple's computer-user base, further reducing sales of Macs and similar technology, and further shrinking the flow of technical advances and innovations from Apple's computers to its mobiles. Such a situation could enable Samsung to open up greater distance between its mobiles and Apple's, forcing Apple into an underdog role in both fields, mobile and computers. Even with all its cash and stores.

I'm not saying this is inevitable or even probable, but it is possible. Wait and see.

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Ocean currents emerge as climate change hot-spots

Bob J.
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No snow in Scandinavia

It finally arrived, late and puny. Talk is, the North will become a temperate rain forest. Sounds cool, until you realize that these humane societies will be faced with hordes of boat people and other immigrants fleeing the unbearable heat, drought, and disease in the rest of Europe, from Italy and Spain, France and Germany, Poland and the Ukraine. People take this possible future seriously.

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SpaceShipOne man, Nobel boffins: Don't panic on global warming

Bob J.
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Simply not true

Saying it is doesn't make it so.

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Most EU states sign away internet rights, ratify ACTA treaty

Bob J.
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But note the UK!

After Cameron's weighty protestations about signing the financial pact subjecting nations' budgets to EC oversight, on grounds that that denigrates the UK's sovereignty, he approves this "treaty" that eviscerates the privacy rights of British subjects without any remorse. In a digital world, that's more of an extranational intrusion on citizens' privacy than are green-visor types in Brussels looking over a stale budget. Talk about hypocrisy of the highest order!

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Bob J.
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Bring it up to date: vicious black people in rubber boats toting AK-47s and RPGs, attacking defenseless cargo ships off the coast of Somalia. Why, they're the very next thing to terrorists! Which of course, digital "pirates" eventually will become once they're so libeled and labeled. This is a very slippery slope.

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Verizon slips $3.6bn shiv into AT&T, T-Mobile ribs

Bob J.

Nice to read about the media oligarchs tit-for-tat maneuvers while the economy burns.

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Climategate 2.0: Fresh trove of embarrassing emails

Bob J.

It's becoming conspiratorial to suspect conspiracy, too well orchestrated.

I had no idea that not only a substantial number of your readers but also your contributors are climate-change deniers. I thought that The Register was skeptical of blogosphere conspiracy theories. Now I see that I was largely wrong, that an article of such little cleverness, citing STOLEN emails now two years old or older -- emails that are repetitive of past emails that were equally insignificant -- can achieve top billing in your newsletter and draw a crowd of cretinous repeaters of almost the exact same speaking points, not even acknowledging (as would be the honest thing to do) that the "release" comes just the week before the next round of global climate-change policy talks. Karl Rove, George W's brain, always said that the best way to defeat an opponent is by going after their greatest strength and hammering on it until it becomes a weakness. A corollary is not to let the same thing happen to you. Unfortunately, the climate deniers greatest strength was to be skeptics, but not they have become laughing stocks. The more they argue that some snippy scientists at West Anglia signal universal conspiracy, the loonier they sound and their explanations, too.

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