Posts by TeeCee

The famous Rolls-Royce story was of the chap who toured the NorthWest frontier and Afghanistan in a Silver Ghost. At one point in his travels he broke the rear axle on a particularly lumpy bit of cart track. He got the car pulled to a local blacksmith's and cabled Royces for a new axle. A couple of weeks later, a new axle assembly duly turned up in the arse end of nowhere and the blacksmith fitted it to the car.

Some months later, back in Blighty, our explorer is doing his accounts and notes that he has not been invoiced for the considerable cost of a Rolls-Royce axle and shipping it to the back end of beyond. He writes to Royces explaining the situation and asking them to invoice him promptly so he can clear his accounts.

The reply he receives by return says; "We are afraid that you must be mistaken in your recollection of events. No Rolls-Royce car has ever broken a rear axle.".......

Re: Unfair competition?

If they were shipping a "me too" Android or iOS device and competing purely on price in a fragmented market of small players, yes.

As it's an entirely new thing looking to build market share from scratch in an established market pretty much owned in toto by two existing goliaths, it's a loss-leader.

Re: Depends on where you happen to be

Certainly does. The word "petty" for small or trivial derives from "petit" anyway.

It's all the fault of the Normans you know. The Old English Dictionary offers "nearu" (restricted) as what it would have been prior to the late 11th Century.

"...and it's cool when you can repair separate glass / digitiser / TFT layers."

Ah, you've never tried then. It's not cool, it's damned near impossible. If you can seperate the layers without breaking anything (no mean feat in itself), you're then faced with the small problem of what to stick them back together with. For some reason, while screens and digitisers seem to be readily available for a given device, the adhesive gasket to link the pair would appear to be made of rocking-horse shit. Far simpler and easier just to buy the entire "sandwich" for a paltry few extra quid and just bang it in.

Re: "A comprehensive online phone book is also on the agenda."

There's only one reason that's in there, so there's a deliverable left after the huge cost/time overrun[1] and massive descoping exercise.

[1] With a budget of fuck all, this should be even simpler to accomplish than usual for a public-sector IT project.

Re: Wow

Ah. Google tells me that a "fish foot spa" is less WTF? and more OMFG!

Re: RIM really, really don't want the punters' money

But as I said elsewhere, a prerequisite for that would be RIM admitting that software and services is where it's at and ditching their hardware business. Imagine what BB handset sales would look like if their few "killer apps" were also available on other platforms.

One thing that history teaches us in this business is that companies that have grown up in hardware have some sort of superiority complex about it and see moving purely to "soft" as failure. They probably will end up doing exactly this under a slightly different name, divested of their thoroughly bust and unwanted hardware arm, when emerging from bankruptcy in a few years' time.

I think they'd approve of that.

.falklands would cause 'em to throw a hissy fit though.

Re: It would be better...

Definately innocent uintil proven guilty.

The problem here is that the phenomenal effort he's making to ensure that the Swedish prosecutors never get to present their evidence is forcing difficult questions to be asked about his motivation[1].

[1] The tinfoil hatters can fuck off here. It's a heck of a sight easier, if you are the US, to get an extradition on a flimsy premise from the UK than it is from SE.

Re: Really RIM needs to look at a virtual blackberry on Android and iPhone

You're right.

Trouble is, companies with a hardware-based history find it terribly difficult to admit that being a services company is actually better for their business. It would be the final nail in the coffin of their phone business, if the only main BB selling point were available on other platforms I reckon the sales decline there would set some sort of record.

I remember seeing one of the "Troubleshooter" series of programmes, in which Sir John Harvey-Jones would be sent into an ailing company to advise them. IIRC Apricot was the company in this one and his advice was to get the heck out of hardware and concentrate on the software and services side of things. They eventually did, but only after ignoring his advice, pressing on as they were, going comprehensively titsup.com and resurrecting the remains after finally getting shot of the hardware business.