Posts by Marvin the Martian 1513 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2007
Your first paragraph is correct (then it goes downhill a bit, which may have gotten the downvoters going)...
Notice how Nielsen clearly state "xxx chose an Android device" above their graph, where TheRegister titles it "2:1 chose Android". A frankly amateurish effort at slanting the news; lets say in the league of TheGrauniad, well below Fox News.
You have to see the rest of the picture.
He didn't care about the experiment, he knew exactly what he was doing. He parametrized it so that it would end in a finite time -- waiting for all needed 9 letter strings to appear has the correct timeframe; 8 letter strings goes 26x faster, 10 letter 26x slower.
As he explained to the Beeb, he did it to learn his way around Hadoop --- it's a marketable skill, and he's been in every non-techical news report around the world: very very cheap career advertising at $20/day for a short while. [He started for free when Amazon was giving away access to attract developers, and he took it offline when there wasn't anything left to learn to save the $20/day.]
If you are going to have a silly hardware switch, at least give it a cool couple of names. Ask the sales people, they might find something.
But it seem software would be the better judge of whether speeding up is needed or not: "Hm, this Photoshop thread asks the sharpening of a 10Mx7.5M pixel image... should I do it on "slow"? Perhaps not!". Let it be human-overridable if you want, but leave it at that.
... just not faster than light in a vacuum (which the rocky 700km between CERN and "Big Rock" aren't).
The Cherenkov effect --- the greenish light always seen around say nuclear fuel rods in cooling water for example --- is exactly that, (charged) particles going faster than light in the medium at hand.
I meant, "Why oh why a car review?". On an IT site.
It's arguably hardware, but one review means nothing without a comparison set --- "Is 70% good or bad? Is 180pounds heavy or not? Where does the reviewer stand anyway?". For example, a bad review by Jeremy Clarkson may mean it's a reasonably priced and efficient vehicle instead of an ED/CD (erectile dysfunction compensator device), or it may actually be a bad car.
In many systems, a "free" student is seen by the group or the leader as free indeed... Extra hands for undesirable jobs (marking and editing), with no strings attached to failure to complete -- no effort was placed into getting a grant and convincing committees with promises.
So (beyond personal decency) the student has no stick and few carrots, and dropout rates are extra high.
Since many years you can get such "delivery to convenient points" in Belgium and Holland, typically for Amazon-like deliveries (no Amazon.be or .nl --> Bol.com and similar local competitors). They give you a list of possible delivery points nearby: gas station shops (often 24/7), convenience stores, newsagents, ... . There's no need for lockers, except if you've become hyperallergic to human contact -- the shopkeeper has it in the back with other stuff not on display; it's as secure as any other mail in transit and as long as you don't countersign you can prove you haven't received anything (safer than leaving on doorsteps or handing it to neighbours).
A few years ago it was in the order of 2000-3000 options, sufficiently dense in the urban and suburban regions. In the end no different from picking up your specially-ordered mags at the newsagents, saving a needless trip to the PO queue on the one post-17h-opening eve, especially if your employer has a problem with using their offices for private deliveries.
In the early 2000's, my quite-general-purpose/student computer had a 24inch monitor with about that number of pixels (in 3:4). It was fantastic to do coding work with, some light photoshopping, or watch a dvd, but ate up all of my desk.
This is just a space-efficient version of that, especially considering my workload & habits haven't really changed... 1080p screens are fine, but make no difference to any DVD I have and very little to any iPlayer/Lovefilm online watching. It clearly stated "budget" here.
Suddenly my phone's all so much more functional, and my relatives are ringing me with timely and succint conversations, the insurance company that's been cold-calling me at least thrice a week for literally months (all kinds of tantrums on my side notwithstanding) has suddenly stopped, and I don't get twice daily spam texts anymore that "you may be entitled £3500 in accident compensation". What a difference this app makes!
No, really, how does this battery-consuming tripe improve my lot?
It's obvious that there is a net heat production for any type of cooling (and Peltiers are some of the least efficient), and on top of any engine heat.
So either this also has a giant tank of liquid nitrogren or so, or it only works on a non-running tank and non-sunny days (as the heat would build up too)...
This winter's (non-renewable) energy prices went up 18%, while those for renewables stayed the same (wind) or fell (solar), with the geopolitical situation of average stability. And the last winter they did the same. So another year or 5 and renewable energy is actually cheaper.
And manufacturing leaving the UK is usual trend independent of green. You want to keep high-value ones (typically high on design, so relatively low on energy cost vs sales price).
And the targets are EU-wide, so far from a "UK-only obsession".
Anybody that's ever been to Switzerland will tell you prices are ridiculous, making Oslo look like package holiday territory. And it has gotten worse recently... The last two years the Swiss franc has gone up by some 60%.
So if you're paid in Swiss francs but are an expat, then you're funnelling off quite a lot into Euros or Pounds, and have in effect had a giant payrise. [Example: work in Geneva, live in France (easily just 25min away from the diplomatic zone) -- so you pay mortgage/rent in Euro, food in Euro, council tax in Euro, ... . Bingo!] So a 10% cut in a tough jobmarket is not such a difficult choice [but 24h decision time is inhumane, human rights court territory].
Conversely, UBS charging for their services in Swiss francs: they've eaten deeply their competitive edge through no management decision of their own.
This of course only holds for Swiss units, not London-based ones.
But everybody knows they've been selling now for $100--$200, so reaching shops at $250 in a few weeks/months time is not going to help.
And argued e.g. on TheRegister, most of the shopping frenzy was a the idea it was a unique opportunity; people felt they got a fantastic deal vs. the $400 asking price (the day before) --- many people wouldn't have bought the $200 device if sold previously at that price.
So a $250 asking price means they will want to get it for $75--$150 max! Paying $250 means having missed the boat on paying $100, and gives people (irrationally) a feeling of having lost out (rather than paying a fair price for a quite good machine).
If you actually have a life and/or job, there's little time left over for all this Which-driven switching --- of phone, gas, water, electricity, broadband, tv and other suppliers. Paperwork for peanuts while there's other things to chase --- like the recently almost-completely-scrapped child benefits that left a huge hole in our finances.
Also, most of these switches give a ridiculous hassle every once-in-a-while: after switching away from them, a Which-recommended utility has taken about 2years to refund us the £300 it had already taken --- they "expected" us to use £50 a month, it systematically was below £30, they refused to either lower their automatic taking or to refund us the increasing stash; so we left.
I also don't buy much of the arguments, as pointed out by ThomH.
And saying that Android will win because thats what the young people buy and theyll be around for longer -- thats just rubbish. Exhibit A: MySpace vs Facebook... the second was the grownup place, the first disappeared. Exhibit B: mass market vs luxury cars... Mercedes and their ilk are bought by older men, as younger people dont have the cash -- but when they have the cash they dont stick by toyota or vauxhall because that's where they started, do they?
On the BBC it was implied that this would let arbitrary code be run on the system...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14443001
(As for the comment above that it indeed is "hacking" in an online game -- note that its obviously NOT an online game here, as that kind of trickery is checked against... it only worked "if shutting down wifi" etc.)
It seems to be a OSX Server vulnerability specifically.
But I find it a bit of a swooping conclusion --- buying into a platform or not based on a specific vulnerability? Next week the same guy comes up with one of the many cross-site scripting windows vulnerabilities and suggests to avoid PCs?
Doing the most basic upgrades necessary on the MBook, they did cost more than the basic MBPro that had them preinstalled! Which were better finished and had a backlit keyboard.
Who on earth bought a macbook last year or so??
I was hoping they'd re-label the old MBP to the "new" MB.
Why don't you look at HP's fabulous new ipad clone; it can do all that the ipad can, looks a bit worse and is chunkier and less sturdy (innovative combination), but it has this fantastically low price of ... exactly the same as the ipad.
You mean, have up to six* governments at any one time (now five, as you hint at, as one went for a prolonged liedown)? I don't see how that helps.
There's separate governments there for person-bound and land-bound issues --- as if you can separate those (e.g., urbanism: planning schools = person-bound, roads = land-bound). *To wit: 1 federal gov (now down for a long time), 3 linguistic govs (Flemish, French and German), 3 regional govs (Flemish, Walloon, Brussels); with the caveat that the Flemish have integrated their two local govs (the Walloons can't as they have the German speakers on their terrain, AND they want to meddle in Brussels).
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