Posts by Mage

It's moronic greed

Terrestrial TV has given up to much spectrum already.

Greed by regulators thinking of increased license fees

There has been a huge increase in allocation to Mobile Spectrum above 900MHz too.

They are not building enough base stations (adds capacity via frequency re-use and up to x20 higher speed due to half distance is about x4 speed). Spectrum is being used inefficiently. If there was a single physical provider and ALL mobile networks where virtual, that would more than double average speed/capacity overnight. The Regulators/Governments oppose this on spurious competition grounds, but the real reason is that their licence income would be 1/4. Licences should be performance based on meeting KPI and then revenue from use. Not up front sales to highest bidders after chopping up the spectrum. Some people "sit" on spectrum for years.

The regulators want to kill terrestrial TV and have only Cable & Satellite broadcast, or Mobile operators selling Broadcast version of LTE. Certainly Ofcom and Comreg have already decided this is policy, without any consultation.

Data Protection Laws

Which are not just an EU thing. Countries as diverse as Switzerland, Germany, China and Russia are concerned by Google, Facebook and now Window 10 / Microsoft.

Labelling

I trust it's properly labelled in French too.

It's not a scam unless it's not really air from the Rockies.

several spew adware

That explains Google's lackadaisical approach.

Steve Bong?

I smell collaboration.

Bitcoin isn't a currency. It's a speculation medium.

Programs

The more complex it is, the harder to maintain. So called A.I. are exceptionally fragile compared to a Lathe controller, set-box GUI, accounts program because it's impossible to predict all eventual inputs and situations. Unlike a GUI an autonomous car can't ignore input until it gets "valid" input.

Autonomous vehicles need their own dedicated pedestrian and cyclist free road ways, the equivalent of railways without tracks.

I'm sceptical

Apple had a PDA and a game console, actually in the market (Newton and Pippin).

Apple's Apple TV so far isn't remotely a TV, it's an overpriced streaming box, no screen. So what might an Apple Car be?

The Apple Watch isn't much use as a watch. It needs an iPhone and basically daily charging (every other day at best). Either a fitness band (10th of price) or a two Euro watch is better value.

I can't see many car makers wanting to pay an Apple Tax for Apple supplied kit, other than perhaps an iPhone dock.

Just because Apple are developing something doesn't mean that

a) It will ever be released

b) If released, that it will be as successful as iPod, iPad and iPhone. Almost all of Apple's profit is now iPhone. The other products are small percentage. iPad dropping, iPod nearly dead, Apple computers such a niche (compared to iPhone) they dropped "Computer" from their name.

sad message "Windows 10 couldn't be installed." There is often a way round it,

Err.. nothing sad and why would you want a way round "failing to install as upgrade"?

Mine's the one with Win7 in one pocket and Linux Mint Mate in the other.

USPTO

Now we just need USPTO to invalidate about 90% of USA patents, 100% of software patents (there is copyright for that) and about 99% of "Design Patents" which are generally not distinctive enough shapes (which are really covered by copyright anyway if original)

Not a new problem.

Great article

"So If you're doing spectrum policy, it really helps to consult the physicists, so you make rules that are consistent with the constraints of Maxwell's wave equations. If you're doing broadband policy, it really helps to consult the stochasticians, so you make rules that are consistent with the constraints of packet-based statistical multiplexing," added Geddes.

Stochastic models used to decide how many voice calls at once an exchange can support, no exchange could ever support all users at once. The "engaged" tone might mean connection capacity is used up on the local exchange.

Most of what is advocated regarding Net Neutrality is bonkers. Especially so on a Mobile connection.

Hmm...

Sounds like a UK or Irish Prime minister with a good majority too. Or indeed very many places not the USA.

The USA President is more like a Monarch that can be limited by parliament. Like a Monarch, the USA President isn't elected directly but selected really by those with power.

The USA President does though have some powers that UK or Irish Prime Ministers don't have.

Horrible Win8 + Bing?

If they had offered them with out bloatware, decent default settings and Win7 ?

It's not really to do with Win 10. People are not "upgrading" as often, the majority of laptops have terrible shiny screens and poor viewing angle. Really the entry level laptop is replaced by Tablets (now saturated) and only people wanting better than 1080 resolution, and portable workstation are much buying laptops.

My wife spent hours recently looking at new laptops and ordered a new battery pack instead.

Perhaps HP made too many of something people don't want any more no matter what OS is on it and MS Win 10 is a convenient scapegoat, very believable too, given MS rush-out-too-quickly Win10 and OEM vs download approach.

I don't understand

Two weeks in a row this column has simply been straight reportage.

US Government is daft

Though NASA's case not helped by relationships with greedy USA Aerospace and poor management.

This is vandalism.

6TB is lighter than the 5TB product baffles us

Perhaps thinner head arms, thinner base on chassis and slightly thinner platters so as to fit an extra platter in?

Prescient.

As long as they don't grow it for long enough to ask it questions?

Disturbing.

Vaio and Minidisk

I thought Minidisk was a nice idea, then I discovered that neither the net MD player nor the Vaio with a built in Minidisk allowed you to digitally read your own recordings? On the Vaio it seemed you could only write to the built in drive? So I bought a Dell Inspiron instead in 2002.

Sony made some nice HW, but crippled by media division and bad software?