Posts by IHateWearingATie 683 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Jun 2008
Yes, there are plenty of IT projects that are fine - you don't hear about them because 'IT system delivers on time and on budget' is a dull headline and no one reports it.
ESA was a big successful one I worked on, along with Steve Dover (mentioned in the article.). He was a real kicker of supplier arses - I bet the programme is poorer for him leaving.
In the last couple of weeks I've found one of the benefits of the Apple tight control of hardware is the ability to move back and forwards in phone versions, seemingly without penalty.
The wife's 4S got stolen, so I bought a 3GS off ebay for £70 - plugged it in, did a restore and everything *just worked*. I know there are some apps that will not work on a 3GS, but she didn't have any of them.
I suspect moving from a premium android phone to a budget one off ebay (contract expires in a few months, didn't want to spend £££) would have had more issues with app compatibility.
Interestingly she may choose move to android (maybe the latest Samsung Galaxy) later in the year anyway once her contract expires.
I thought the price paid for the coverage obligation lot was interesting - O2 only spent a little less on their 2x10Mhz with strings attached than EE did on their 2x5Mhz in 800Mhz sans strings and large chunk at 2.6Ghz.
Given the moaning from the operators about it, it seems they valued having 20Mhz as opposed to 10Mhz much higher than they let on.
Also interested to see what Voda and EE end up doing with their significant chunks in the 2.6Mhz band.
Fun times ahead for the spectrum geeks!
Not sure why you seem to have taken personal offence at my post with your snarky comments about the free market.
I'm sure people will buy them, valuing certain things more highly than me. However, with OSX being (officially) limited to Apple hardware, my choice of a different brand of laptop will have consequences for the operating system I can run. Its Annoying that I can't choose a cheaper but similarly specced lappy and (officially) use OSX on it.
£1300 for a 13 inch laptop? I like Apple as much as the next Fanboi, but that is taking the piss !
If this is meant as a desktop replacement (as that is what the MacBook Pro range is about as I understand it) I'd expect the prices of the 13 inch range to apply to the 15inch range at least.
I think the 'get into bed with MS' strategy was the best alternative at the time. Remember, their products were not great and their technical bureaucracy was incapable of producing but internal fights were easier. The alternatives were to go android and fight toe to row with HTC et al ( not an inviting prospect) or try and carry on with the internally developed new tech which was stuck in the mud.
MS have a reputation for throwing money and resources at things until they get them right, and that must have been attractive to Nokia at the time - first mover advantage and better integration on a platform that MS will just keep throwing money at until it succeeds.
It may not be working yet (and MS may yet fail) but it gave them breathing space (especially from investors ) to get their engineering depts back in a good place and be in a better position to slug it out on android should MS fail.
I'd go for a 'sell' right now. Price seems over valued so time to take profit and wait to see what happens.
You could use the cash to buy some Apple shares - after the recent fall Tim C will be looking to pull some short term stunt to wow to gullible analysts and get a spike ahead of the iPhone 6 later in the year.
Or like me, you could stick your cash in a bank account because I'm rubbish at gambling on the markets.
Tried them both at the beginning of last year on a free trial and the selection available was terrible, so I went back to watching whatever popped up on Sky (£21 a month for just the entertainment package)
However, may have another look soon and see if the Sky subscription is still needed...
I'm not a hardware techie, but it would seem obvious to me that, unless all of the IT shops that you deal with are 100% non-windows, your TEST LAB would need Windows in it at some point.
After all, TESTING would seem to be the point of a TEST LAB., whether or not you agree with the decision to use Windows or not.
Keep up the articles like this - while my professional sphere will never get this techy, its an interesting read all the same.
One just hopes that Steely Neeily chucks the report in the bin.
Unfortunately, this kind of thing can acquire a life of its own within the EU if one or more commissioners picks it up and pushes it.
Full Disclosure - in my short time as a civil servant I had cause to say 'No' to the EU on a particular issue where powers were to be transferred (nothing to do with IT). It felt very good.
..."There are already early signs that Qualcomm is branding Snapdragon processors, as a kind of Intel Inside'. ", given the page when I viewed it was entirely surrounded by a Snapdragon advert.
Given the amount that Qualcomm advertise their Snapdragon processor on tech websites (I see it a lot on El Reg) I suspect it is a lot more that 'early signs', and more 'definite and absolute strategy'.
I'm no fanboi (having a personal iPhone, a work blackberry and an Android tablet at home), but credit should be given to Apple for pushing things to a new level in mobile computing.
Of course a whole raft of vendors made phones and other pocketable devices before the iPhone (I had a whole number, including the excellent N95), but what they were the first mass market mover, starting a step change in devices that has resulted in even my 65 year old Dad looking at mobile internet on my iPhone (not really specific to iPhone, could be any touchscreen 'smart' phone) and thinking that maybe he could do that. And this is from a guy who only consented to be taught how to send text messages 4 years ago.
The large touch screen phone and simple UI was a great innovation, that seemingly gave others permission to develop their own or release already completed but unreleased products.
Remember, innovation is not invention - the person who gets the credit is the one who makes it a huge success, not the one who invented it (see: Penicillin, vacuum cleaners, theory of evolution (well, partly), calculus etc)
... to the article by Tim Worstall recently:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/11/distie_consolidation/
The best thing for shareholders (the owners of the business after all) may be to milk the cash cow then shut it down, rather than gamble on R&D that may not pay off. You may argue that stifles innovation, but it may be that the shareholders would rather make that gamble in another company rather than this one.
In macro economic terms, as per the article, corporate raiders are the good guys :)
I was with you until you said 'Volvo'.
I thought owning a Volvo generally showed people you were a middle aged accountant, probably called Gerald?
As opposed to my car (a modified subaru impreza), which generally shows people I'm a semi-literate, fake tracksuit wearing, burberry loving peasant. Mostly right, especially the 'peasant' bit
... maybe they'd be a little more sensible in their policies.
Naturally the left's argument against shutting down firms relates to the welfare of its staff who are made redundant, even if they are clearly crap and need putting out of their misery (see British Leyland and gov support for Rover before it finally died)
The right loves the idea of bad companies being closed, but expects people to just sort themselves out , sometimes in impossible circumstances (see M Thatcher ref closure of coal mines)
Don't worry, me and my mates all chose to go PS3 and don't ownXboxes so my anecdote evens yours out.
I'd love to know what percentage of the sales figures are replacements - none of my mates still have their original PS3 having all been hit by the YLOD at one point or another.
.....and, as a user of both iOS and Android, argue that Jelly Bean is a better* tablet operating system than iOS.
*By better I mean that in my qualitative judgement (which is far superior to yours, fellow commentard :) ) I prefer Android as it allows more flexible use of the increased screen space with widgets etc, rather than sticking to the grid of icons and stil-not-great notifications system of iOS.
There does seem to be a serious lack of understanding within the general public (of course I'm not counting us commentards amongst the the hoi polloi) on some of the basic concepts of economics, with growth a particular issue.
I would take issues with a couple of things in the article though. One of the paras seems the paras seems to suggest that a lack of regulation is allowing developing economies to better make use of new inventions which has caused their fantastic rates of growth when in most cases it is the cost of established tech, like mobile phones, reducing significantly due to the maturity in developed economies - that and remarkably better education in places like Brazil and China over the last 20 or so years. Its pretty easy to get the rates of growth they have been having when you turn tens of millions of uneducated subsistence farmers in to skilled and semi skilled workers.
Also, as others have said, I'm not sure that I recognise your description of micro vs macro . it seems to be a bit confused compared to my economics modules at uni. I see what you're saying about individual structures typically classed as micro economics causing long term structural harm, but micro isn't just those things, as well as macro not just being medium and short term.
Oh, and quoting Keynes? Don't they expel you from the Adam Smith institute for that?
The Ofcom mantra is based on the belief that whomever offers the most money will make the most economically efficient use of it, as they will want to maximise their profit. Spectrum owners are generally free to licence and resell their holdings, so the idea is that the highest bidder has the greatest incentive to make the spectrum holding work for it.
Unfortunately, the theory doesn't always hold true, for example in the case of large companies using their holdings to create a monopoly and raise barriers for new entrants.
Must be the first time anyone has ever welcomed dealing with BT....anyway...
You don't need inside info to make the assertions Bill Ray has - the scenario he sets out sounds likely to me given the publicly available information . I'd be surprised if BT want to get back into the mobile game through the spectrum auction, given the large capital programme of fixed line broadband upgrades they have set out for themselves for the next few years.
I could imagine them buying a cheaper chunk to use on fixed wireless as a fixed line alternative though (in the 2.6 rather than 800 range).
So right
My first role was coding C and C++ on a legacy mainframe and I remember the joy of looking at the flow and symmetry of a carefully crafted and well commented code module.
Other people's of course. Mine were more like a toddler's scribble than a renaissance masterpiece!
The OP mentioned that it was only a couple of miles from York town centre, so was assuming the £20k would be mostly the ECC (excess constuction charge) that Openreach might apply to extend the cabling that is bound to be around there if it is only a couple of miles from the town centre (don't know York, was going on what the OP said)
Of course on top of that you'd have service charges etc, but my post was about getting service to the site, not then connecting all the businesses up and paying their service charges (they would be responsible for them).
Surely the owners of the business park should have sorted that themselves ages ago? I think the York exchange is a WBC one, and it can't cost more than £20k to get a nice fibre cable and associated kit to provide a decent service to their customers (i.e. the businesses paying them rent in the business park).
If not, then why do businesses choose to site themselves in the business park at all?
I'd be very surprised if BT was getting public money to compete on a door to doo basis. The EU (whose permission BDUK has recently got) have a concept of Black, Grey and White areas, with (let me get this right) Black areas disallowed as there are already services (such as virgin). BDUK and the EU would not have approved a plan that included Black (or even Grey) areas within the subsidy plan. I suspect they are only subsidising areas that can't get Virgin , although these may be very close to areas that can.
If nothing else its a huge waste of money by the council, as in the bidding process they would have defined the areas for the bidders to upgrade and should have exluced premises that can get Virgin. In cases where some premises connected to a cabinet can get Virgin and some cannot, there may be some overlap or those premises would be excluded - assume it would be on case by case basis (e.g. percentage that could / could not get Virgin).
"And that's the crux, because technically and scientifically you do. not. need. "lots of people" to do genetic typing of Disease X."
Not sure that is correct.
My understanding (to be fair, limited, as I'm not a geneticist) is that you do need a large group of people due to the difficulty of isolating genetic from epigenetic from environmental factors. it's not enough to get a group of, say 10 pancreatic cancer patients with varying responses to a particular treatment, sequence their genes and be able to say "AHA - I see the pattern".
A large group is needed to be able to spot subtle patterns - remember that there are very few cases where a single gene is responsible for a disease. Even with something like breast cancer, where there is a single trait that significantly enhances the risk. Having that trait doesn't mean that you definitely will get breast cancer - so what are the other factors? Maybe there is a subtle interplay of environmental factors that influence the expression of a large group of genes (epigenetics) that could be highlighted. You'll only find that with a large group of patients that do have the disease (and very very crucially) DON'T have the disease but do have some or all of the genes and environmental conditions.
Three things that have not a jot to do with an NHS held database of a 100,000 volunteer samples.
The NHS already hold significant information about you that is computerised, and anonymised & sold to medical researchers. Adding DNA isn't that much extra to me.
Oh, and my wife would probably characterise my emotional range as closer to a ladle, or maybe a large spatula.
... or are there more paranoid privacy commentards around today?
Genetic factor led treatment is probably going to bring about the next really big advance in medicine, which means if you want to benefit (for example, get a personalised cocktail of prostate cancer drugs proscribed) you're going to have to have your DNA sequenced and stored.
And to develop the technology, lots and lots and lots of people will need their DNA sequenced and put into a database for researchers to work on.
You have to trust someone, sometime.
... with limited bandwidth in our bundles. Cloud services (such as spotify) are fine, but my paltry 500Mb a month gets eaten pretty quickly (it is however a very cheap bundle)
With a decent amount of music, apps, a couple of Peppa Pig videos for the kids and a bunch of photos I'm already over 16Gb.
Shame really - I was hoping to replace my iPhone with one of these at some point :(
Well on Windows it'd be difficult to be much worse. I've used iTunes for a while in windows and its a hateful piece of crap - buggy, inconsistent and continually freezing and crashing. Apple have never seemed to properly fix the freezes on the windows version; here's hoping version 11 is the one.
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