Posts by kmac499 930 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2013
Who in their right mind would build a long term, 3-5yrs, project or product line on any microsoft 'technology' i.e. set of proprietary function libraries \ development tools.
Let alone invest in self training and certification at the huge double cost of the course fees and lost earnings whilst on the course..
The list of discarded and abandoned products just get's longer..
"A little bit unfair to investors and analysts. There are investors who buy expecting to hold for several years or even decades, if the future pans out anything like the way they anticipate."
Fair point; I would probably upgrade long term investors to shareholders.
It's the short term buying and selling that annoys me. I beleive it's impossible to build long lived stable profitable businesses if you are forever looking over your shoulder a quarter year at a time..
A Tobin Tax on short term holdings perhaps?
Whatever the financial niceties can I propose the following relationships to a business..
Owners :- People who's future lives and those of their chldren are almost solely dependent on the disposable earnings of their companies. The best examples of which I believe are the German Mittelstand businesses.
Stakeholders:- People and other businesses who work for and supply the business, Their futures are linked to the business but they may have other options.
Shareholders :- People who are long term partial owners of a business. They have two ways to recieve money back from a business. Sell their share and or receieve dividends.
Investors :- Gamblers looking to move money in and out of businesses at high speed, demanding higher perfomances of those businesses, than they themselves could deliver if they ran the business.
Analysts :- People who can predict the obvious future precisely. BTW if they are so good why don't they invest their own money and retire to their desert island..
Why didn't I describe the role of Banks.. Even El Reg has an AUP on language I beleive..
Any subject can be killed by a dry as dust curriculum and bored teachers. To teach and inspire students, the subject must initially be enjoyable to grab peoples curiosity, whilst relying on the absolute minimum prerequisite knowledge in other subjects..
The only maths you should need is a bit of basic arithmetic. (If someone says they can't do algebra ask'em "4 cans of beer for £6 how much each?"..)
Any project work should be a fun practical and relevant to the interests of the student
If physical computing\programming doesn't suit a student they should at least end up being aware that software is fallible and limited. For those that do wish to go further then we can start to introduce the fancy stuff.
Well "Team Lohan" when you cast you're collective mind back to that evening in the pub when someone said "I know what we can do next...." (name witheld to protect the guilty)
I'll bet you never thought you'd learn all about 'oven ready shipping boxes' and a thousand and one other things..
May the Force be with you All...
Don't know Don't care, I'm sure the guys at CDC are currently operating on a "All contributions gratefully accepted" mode.
If the epidemic does explode out from West Africa with all the consequences, Human and Economic, I'd be knocking on Apple, Google, Starbucks et als door with a simple 'request'..
All that Tax due on the cash you piled up in offshore havens hand it over now...
On the assumption that you have a tablet that can do iPlayer et al and the almost current vesion of it's OS
you will need to replace it when..
1) The number of recharge cycles leaves the battery life at less than an hour.
2) The USB port wears and goes slack so no charging at all
3) The OS gets at least two versions beyond what's on your Tab.
4) The screen is no longer touch
5) The Dog uses it as a replacement chewy toy..
6) The Child uses it as a replacement hammer toy..
7) You loose it
8) The draw of the new shiny shiny Tab and the sale value of your current Tab on Ebay almost cross
In other words I reckon that it doesn't take a genius to work out that the replacement cycle is about three years, with a small percentage for distressed purchase replacements.
Gartner can I have a job please..
The worlds best designers do not copy...
They are inspired by'
They are influenced by,
They channel ,
They reinterpret
They Homage
They, Oh alright they Rip Off whatever they can get away with, whilst convincing their bosses it's new and innovative..
I defy anyone to come up with a single Apple i-nnovation that did not previously exist in a competitors product.
I'd love to know exactly what Ive's and the design crew actually designed. Was it the philosophical arguments about the radius of the corners being 0.55" or 0.53" and the shade of blue being Pantone number whatever or...
Did they give the engineers a set of sketches saying we want the software to look like this and work this way. If I was an Apple core software writer I'd make damn sure my software was flexible enough to soak up the last design input the guys in Red-Rimmed glasses came up with, with minimal changes to get it out of the door.
Design is important, but my appreciation is for the people who take the charcoal sketch of a car a garment or a piece of hardware\software and translate that into an engineering drawing or CAD file that actually drives the manufacturing process..
I remember once a documentary about the Lotus Elise and it's Desginers moaning the engineers had stuck a small spoiler on the boot breaking the rasion d'etre of their design. And why had the engineers committed such a crime. The "pure design" was aerodynamically unstable at speed.. Mind you it looked great standing still, as all sportscars do ??
I agree wth your description of the legitimacy of the way CEO's etc are appointed. Plus of course board members need to be regularly re-elected ( even if only by a show of hands).
My point is that the SBT (as I called them) are regularly feted as examples of excellence. But they do not run the same risks as the Jane & John Doe running the sandwich shop outside their corporate headquarters. Where Jane and John may well have remortgaged their homes and are running the risk that no matter how hard they work if it all goes titsup they could be on the street.
In a lot of cases the only downside the SBT seem to run is they may suddenly have more time to to count last years bonus..and not be on the cover of Business Week this year.
I still wonder why such SBT (Stellar Business Talent) as people like Elop\Diamond\Whitman et al undoubtedly are, based on their pay rates. How come they are always working for someone else as an employee? Surely they could make much more money leveraging their skills and starting their own companies.
If I go into a bank and ask for a sizeable loan they want the keys to my house, Do these SBTs lodge their house keys as surety that they will do a good job whilst they gamble with other peoples farms
Or is that their primary skill is to negotiate a good package for themselves and in fact SBT is short for Senior Bullshit Thrower..
"It is a truth universally acknowldeged that a CEO with a vision is the most dangerous employee in the company" 'pologies to J Austen
Absolutely right.. A salesman will also try and sell what you don't make; and then balme everyone else for not "giving him the product the market wants."
OTOH We have the Steve Jobs technique where he sold people a dream to be fulfilled by his products.
(see inumerabale Weight loss\ get rich quick\ Fitness fads)
OK Economists might not have good current data to help predict the immediate future but surely you have libraries full of historical data. If so you could do the same as real scientists, plugging old data into the theoretical models and see if the predictions fit the actual events. If not you're model and theory is wrong, simples. So it's back to the drawing board guys.
BTW this approach is precisely the one used by the much maligned climate scientists. They know thay are working with aproximations and undiscovered processes, so they are continually testing their models.
What tends to come across from economists is an apologetic attitude saying the system is and always will be too complex to accurately model. But don't wory we have the best possible description of the system just trust us and keep giving us the money and jobs.
In my front room the Wii talks to the world by Wifi, the smart TV talks to the Soundbar via Bluetooth and the Soundbar talks to it's Woofer by a second bluetooth.. So my Phone,Tablet and Laptop all bluetooth enabled can talk to the same soundbar or the bluetooth enabled DAB radio in the kitchen for Spotify\Listen again. or via a couple of bluetooth enabled headphones\earphones kicking about somewhere.
In the rest of the house there are a couple of wifi connected PCs and tablets, a couple of Wifi\bluetooth enabled pinters, another wifi enabled smart TV and a vodafone femtocell lurking in the loft kicking out a nice solid 3g signal.
To keep it all ticking over nicely there are a couple of wifi repeaters plugged in (not ethernet over mains) and for the legacy kit there is an old wfi to Cat5 bridging unit.
OH and I nearly forgot a few 2.4Mhz keyboards mice remote control sockets etc
Whatever the technical merits of LTE (discuss). How much would it cost to junk this lot or how long on a normal replacement cycle to replace it all..
I've got an 17yo BMW K bike; 4cyl in line, lying on it's side length ways if you didn't know rather then the trad BM-Boxer units. Rumour has it that when BM were tinkering with prototype options they used a Fiat engine .. Apparently BM cars didn't make small enough lumps at the time.
Anyone Fancy a Twin Air lump in a bike frame ??
"... fruity stormtrooper ..." Love It
Fruity Stormtrooper: Let me see your Press identification.
Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi: [with a small wave of his hand] You don't need to see his Press identification.
Fruity Stormtrooper: We don't need to see his Press identification.
Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi: These aren't the Blackberries you're looking for.
Fruity Stormtrooper: These aren't the Blackberies we're looking for.
Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi: He can go about his business.
Fruity Stormtrooper: You can go about your business.
Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi: Move along.
Fruity Stormtrooper: Move along... move along. and Have a Nice Day...
'Pologies to S Spielberg
Although useful for search and rescue dog work, Does anyone really want a 4k close up picture of the sort of thing that would interest any self respecting Dog.
Plus is the waterproof box fox-shit proof...?
MInd you
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=run+walter+run+youtube&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb&gfe_rd=cr&ei=SYoqVO2-Bemq8wfa6YCADg
is fun
The bottom line incentive is always guarenteed to get the attention of US Business, and the US Govt. if it believes others are eating 'their' lunch. (see numerous trade diputes over the years.)
But this can be a good thing, with climate change rising up the political agenda again, and it's twin concern of energy security, the Rockefellers have decided to jump ship from fossil to green energy production investments.
Call me old fashioned but I suspect that is just as much a case of let's make sure we have a business in the future as any environmental concern.
Plus there are elections due this November in the US. I expect Microsoft and all the other cloud vendors will have a well stocked fridge of prawn cocktails on standby...
I would suggest That a common thread running sub prime and the subsequent banking foobar was Payment by results aka commission.. While the mass of we "poor bloody infantry" are paid by the hour. The stellar individuals running or selling on behalf of our comanies are reimbursed, compensated and rewarded on a percentage basis. with no clawback for long term failures.
Now it doesn't take a Sherlock to realise that if there is no down side, the average sales and chief execs who are almost by definition over confident, self deluding ego maniacs will milk the system for all they can get. i.e they are incentivised to commit fraud whether it be minor or major.
If commission or payment by results is such a good thing why isn't it the standard in all companies?
As for economists; I have said before they are not scientists as the do not allow reality to reject their pet theories. I would put their level of knowledge on a par with mediaeval physicians discussing humors or 18thC chemists love of Phlogiston..
Afterthought : I once worked in a manufacturing company where I jokingly said to one of the salesmen; who consistently sold large volumes of our cheapest product which was a pig to make and reduced the throughput of the factory by 30%. That maybe before we calculated his commission we deducted the increased manufacturing cost. A flash of purple shot across his face and he was not very compimentary..
The bPay Card can be slipped out of the band but it is a little large to tuck under a watch strap. If a hole was drilled in it, It could fit on a keyring like the express loyalty cards do..
I can think of a couple of ways it's service can be improved..
1) Two factor\finger authentication
All machines accepting bPay or any of it'sdigpurse variant friends just have the contact pad converted to a button. That is; as you hold your digipurse over the reader you have to press the button to authorise the payment no PIN just an DoItNow button. that should get rid of most of the drive by payments made in error..
2) Cash Back Top Up
All machines and merchants that offer cashback should be allowed to cash back via a PIN to the digiPurse card. The same goes for hole in the wall machines.. What's the point of having a replacement for cash if you can't access top supplies of digi cash in the same way..
Ok hands up anyone who has bought something because it popped up in a targeted sidebar..
Ok let's make it easier, hands up anyone who clicked on an advert in a sidebar.. (Then tried to get back to where they were...grrr)
Hands up anyone who thinks the targeted adverts around the text you are actually reading is just pretty colours and as it is on the edge of your tunnel vision doesn't even form into words..
Yeah thought so; me too....
I've got a Voda-Sure SIgnal Box works a treat most of the time.. it's mounted in the loft and covers the house and garden no probs.. But an all singing dancing PicoCell that offers Phone and Wifi (dual band?) sounds great.
My only bitch about the Voda Box is that I'm freeing up bandwidth on the public network but I'm still charged full whack, surely a lower tariff rate should be due.. (Just off to chase a herd of flying pigs that went past the window)
As I remember it ( for I was there) The Club of Rome authors of "The Limits to Growth" clearly stated their model was an approximation and the projections were wide crude estimates, They weren't so much doom mongers as some of the utra-greenies of the time were, but they were capitalist business people looking at possible future scenarios.
In the opening pages they had two interesting concepts..
1) A scattergram showing peoples attitude to events, the future and it's impacts on them. One axis was time and the other was 'distance form the event' Not surpisingly the points congregated around soon and nearby. Obvious really, but worth describing.
2) The concept of "Indian Equivalents" or IE. That is the per capita consumption of the average Indian citizen back in the 70's. Given this base the consumption levels of individuals in other nations could be expressed in IE units. This allowed a standardised economic consumption population to be calculated for the planet It also allowed for growth to increase the value of a persons IE value combining physical population growth with economic growth giving a net figure. (I have no idea how those 70s IE numbers translate to today.)
Although your article points out that the changing prices of resources will alter the amounts of materials that can be extracted or recycled there are a few things that are finite.
A simple calculation of available land goes as follows.
The Earths surface area 510 million sqkm of which only 1/3 is land between 7 billion people
Gives each of us about 20,000 m2 each or a circle of ground about 160 m in diameter surrounded by a circle sea about 70 m wide. From that we extract and grow everything we need to sustain life and lifestyle Food,water, minerals, energy, entertainment, waste dumping etc.
BTW when I was a lad my personal island was about 250m in diameter. How big will it be when my 9year old grandson is my age..
Though not biting the hand that feeds you, is a sensible strategy when you are working in a commercial post directly for that hand. However If the hand that is feeding you, is second hand and not your sole source of sustenance then a bit of grumbling is fine..
Otherwise your independence is immediately suspect.
More power to Lisa.
Quite right too, Economics is not science, because it will not reject it's core theories when confronted with reality. Economists simply bemoan lack of adequate data or plead a special case.
It barely qualifies as a study, along the lines of 18th Century Natural Historians cataloguing everything they find and then looking for traits in the collected data.
At least Phlogiston had a smack of logic behind it until proved wrong by experiment. I'd actually draw a closer parallel with medieval physicians and the four humors theory, which had no logical backing whatsoever, just some guy with a 'reputation' saying it is so...
I've got a Sammy Note 8 tablet with the Wacom system (Yes a normal full size wacom pen does work).
I also have a screen protector on the tablet. The really important thing to get right for any stylus is the 'Glide Factor' i.e. How similar the stylus feels to a standard pen on paper.
The Sammy stylus is a tad small and skinny for serious writing, (a bit like an Argos ball point) and tends to drag. The Wacom pen is a little too slippy on the surface. Maybe stylus makers could ship different 'nibs' with different properties like the different sized Ear-Buds on earphones. But both devices are perfectly usuable and the handwriting recognition is very good.
The attitude of the Met does seem a little hysterical. Presumably the intention was if we say it's illegal then no one will watch it especially the impressionable ones who might be encouraged to support IS and it's aims here in the UK
The dignified reaction is what I believe most of us are doing. We know the footage exists, we are disgusted by it, we feel compassion for Foley, his friends and family, and utter contempt for the perpetrators. So all we are interested in seeing or hearing is enough to help identify the IS killers.
I don't for one minute think that 'viewing figures' will influence IS in anyway at all. They will still keep terrorising the tens of thousands Iraquis and Syrians that don't agree with their twisted fanaticism.
My sympathies go out to the individuals and families of the 'non combantant casualties' whether they are targeted or collateral. Never forgetting the immediate agony and terror endured in violent deaths;
It doesn't make any difference which 'cause' is responsible, all such deaths are pointless and often ultimately self defeating for their 'cause'.
Yes seen that so many times.
Someone has a fairy (not a mis-spelling) idea for a requirement thinks a computer system could do it and the first questions are How Long will it take? and How much?
As the idea is bounced around the teams The budget is reduced by 10% as it passes up each level of the negotiation management chain Once finally approved the budget is set in stone, the delivery date is reduced again and the poor Oiks are set to work.
Couple of points
1) Budget is a fancy word for Guess.. The quality of your guess is directly proportional to the time and effort spent exploring and defining the proposal and it's likely construction method.
2) The people who define missed budgets are never accused of being bad at their jobs. It's the people who can't acheive them, and didn't set them, that 'fail'..
3) If you really want to annoy analysts insist on asking them how many words will be in their final specification document. When they explode with "How do I know I haven't written it yet.." just smile ...
And I'll point you to yesterdays article on TV Tech and VIrgin Media's ditribution setup ,, (I'm not a cutomer BTW)
and my comment
-------------------------------
"Fascinating, I just about kept up 'til page 2.
But here's a thought as these guys can demonstrably design build and run a large complex and secure distributed network. Why aren't we hiring them to run e-everything.gov.uk, and offer really useful online services?"
-------------------------------
I remember a couple of years ago a wise old Owl saying, if you wanted to set up a big new e-commerce system hire the guys that worked on porn systems. Because they had huge numbers of customers, secure payment sorted and privacy covered to ensure repeat customers.
When the NSA and t'other Five Eyes snoop in secret it's under the dubious cover of nashonal' skurity and protecting the populace.
When Gogle snoops, at least you get a hint they're looking in your browsers tickertape,.. under the dubious cover of improving service.. (Anybody here ever bought anything from a targeted ad ?)
When Murdochs outfit snooped it was to make more money... under the dubious cover of.. nah just make more money
Quite right too;
I've been involved at looking after a fair few sandwich student placements over the years and it was usually apparent within a month if the Oik was any good and had a future in IT.
HIgher Apprenticeships offer the employer a quick way to identify talent in a real 'real world' environment and the Apprentice get's to find out if they've made an horrendously duff career choice, whilst still being young and independent enough to try a Plan 'B'.
What we must leave open is the opportunity for a succesful apprentice to have access to 'Post Grad' style education later in their career. That way we keep open the career path to professional engineer status as well as normal promotions within an organisation.
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