Posts by Charlie Clark 12180 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2007
Hmmm lots of US government money seems to going into that, don't think Boeing will be bleating if they get the benefits.
Seeing as Lockheed has got the contract, how will Boeing benefit? Anyway, this is from NASA's tiny budget. The real money flows from DARPA's conveniently non-discretionary teat.
You're absolutely right, but Trump's trade war isn't going to help this.
He just wants Republicans who support him to do well in the mid-terms. If there is a real trade war, it would lead to significant job losses in the US. But Trump only needs a phoney one so the chumps in Trumpistan think that next week, next month, next year things will improve for them. So expect lots of announcements about hard tariffs while the details leak out. Trade will largely displace and America will become a less attractive place to do business, but it might mean keeping majorities in a far more pliant Congress.
It's basically impossible to export even small quantities of many products into China due to ridiculous laws and red tape at customs.
Doesn't seem to have stopped the Germans selling into China. Making in China is more of a problem but the US market is pretty damn well protected as well.
There is a difference, though, in that Taiwan is extremely open about trade, more so even than Europe.
Wouldn't have anything to do America's promise to defend Taiwan from China and the massive arms deals as a result would it? Taiwan, like South Korea, is almost a US client state.
China does play fast and loose with trade rules, but largely because multinational corporations are desperate to get at the huge market and boost their own profit margins by making there. However, the end of the low wage employment boom is in sight with peak employment probably already past. At the moment it's not clear whether it will be automation or the declining labour force that drives the biggest change in China since Deng Xiaoping. Sort of like Japan since the 1990s but so much more so.
The depressing part is, this will actually create jobs.
I think this is unlikely. If the US retreats from international trade, it will attract less investment and it is investment that's needed to create the jobs. Instead US isolationism could weaken the dollar hegemony, potentially driving up US funding costs significantly, unsettling financial markets and driving investment and jobs elsewhere. As has happened with every protectionist regime of the last 50 years. Sure, American won't be another Zimbabwe or Venezuela but it will be diminished.
Trade deficit 375 BILLION dollars.
Trade surpluses are a problem, usually of the country with them. What does China do with all that cash? Buy American assets, particularly US treasury bills. If you want to know where this leads look at the Japanese boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s. Germany isn't doing that well with its own trade surplus either: it means savings being invested abroad in dodgy assets.
International monetary policy has for years trade more or less successfully, usually the latter, tried to deal with the problem of surpluses. Trade wars, howeve, have never worked because all the incentives are against them.
However, news just in: American manufacturing jobs were lost to automation and rationalisation. Difficult to see how giving US robots preferential treatment will bring well paid jobs back to the rustbelt.
it's a new action related to an old case.
Which makes it different to restrospective in what way exactly? It would set a very dangerous precedent if it succeeds. I would not be in the least surprised if the most conservative judges come down the hardest on this aspect. Will be fun to see Trump moan about judges he picks but can't sack.
I suspect trying to apply it retroactively is enough to get it thrown out of most courts.
OTOH Trump has just made himself wide open to the next "Benghazi" because the new law will also allow non-US spooks access to data held on servers in the US. What could possibly go wrong? Okay, those provisions will probably be thrown out on constitutional grounds because of the protection that the US constitution offers to US citizens (the rest are just "aliens" and fair game for spooks, scammers, etc.).
Linux runs Android and can run desktops. So a common kernel is already a reality…
That's a bit sweeping and, as a result, misleading. The monolithic Linux kernel does support lots of different archs but tends to get customised for each one as a result. Then there is the boon and curse of the different layers, especially when it comes to GUIs which is why both Android and MacOS (some fanboi has just edited one of my questions on AskDifferent to use the "official" writing) mandate their own tightly coupled app frameworks and why lots of people moan about Android not being a full Linux.
With the Mach kernel Apple should have it easier porting the majority of the OS services to different archs and it has been doing for years on simplifying the GUI toolset. Though it probably wants to refactor some of the IOS settings that have grown all kinds of warts in the last few years.
But a toolkit that works for both a touch and mouse interface is notoriously difficult to get right. As always the devil is in the detail of the kind of widgets you want in which environment. I'm seeing this with the Gemini, which is a lovely device (sound on mine could be unusually poor), that is at the limits of a keyboard and touchscreen interface (you can reach the lower part of the screen with your fingers while typing) where a lot of widgets are being caught out on the half-height screen. But you can do a lot and for the rest you can let developers provide different settings information for different widgets for different resolutions. Developers will appreciate this if it is done correctly and one of the reasons for the popularity of QT's QML, I believe.
As for converged devices, I'll believe them when I see them. Apple might well let others test the water and make a splash when it thinks there is a market to be had (it stopped pioneering years ago).
Indeed, it was from The War with the Robots by Karel Capek that we got the word. Dystopias and Utopias are symbiotic which is why where we have Verne, we also have Wells; where one inspires the other cautions.
The greatness of 2001 lies in the fact that Hollywood producers didn't get the chance to sanitise and glamourise it. But they did learn from it which is why since then spaceships are noisy, because audiences apparently didn't appreciate the silence in space.
For "cheaper" read bigger margins for Apple: margins on the phones are higher than those on the notebooks not least because the CPUs are cheaper to make.
But it's not the main reason: ARM allows more customisation and control and Apple has been increasing the parts that it designs itself, which allows it to differentiate its products more from the competition. Apple can then choose which manufacturer makes its design, though once Qualcomm gobbles NXP there won't be many.
Would be more like someone asserting copyright on the SQL specification and going after anyone who implemented it without obtaining the right to do so — I'm not even sure if you can obtain a licence for a copyright in the same way you can get one for a patent.
There is a bit more to this because of the stuff that Google did copy, but it could turn a few specifications into minefields.
I thought the judgement referred the case back to Alsup's court for damages so the amount of any damages might be revised.
If the $ 8bn is upheld then this will have serious consequences for software development in the US as it effectively opens the courts to similar cases on almost all software. A real bonanza for patent trolls given how long copyright exists for. MPEG and other consortia are probably calling lawyers already.
I think Google may still have additional legal avenues to appeal. I still don't follow the copyright argument. I understand what you say but consider it egregious to try and assert copyright protection over an implementation of a published interface. I think this touches different legal areas, not just copyright. But I'm neither an American nor a lawyer so I'll leave that to their courts.
diverting some of the investment into bank accounts as a share of the company is acquired is within the ability of most of these people.
Investors, yes but not employees who receive shares in lieu: their shares are untouchable and untradeable. Yet another way the VCs manage to shaft people. Didn't Kieren cover this a while back?
Economy of scale doesn't work well always - or Apple won't be the company with the highest market cap. You can go bankrupt instead selling a lot of cheap stuff.
Amazon, which does have famously thin margins, recently surpassed Apple in market capitalisation, I think. So you're wrong both on assumption and conclusion.
I seem to remember that non-US badged phones have always struggled. I suspect that Apple has a handy lead with Samsung second but only due to an almighty marketing push – too lazy to look for real data. I don't think an absence of tarrifs would make much difference for Huawei and they're right the various Asian markets are much bigger.
Huawei really wants to be able to sell kit to the networks. But, again, the US has always been pretty protectionist in this area.
It seems reasonable to protect a good API
Which is why the majority of software specifications are open and royalty free? If you want interoperabiity then you don't build barriers.
I suspect one consequence of this ruling, no matter how much damages are awarded, will be to encourage Google to get rid of Dalvik. It's been working its way toward this for the last couple of years.
Apple understands service lock-in more than most. The US school and college market have traditionally been seen as gateways for future business decisions hence the plethora of cheap licences from MS, Oracle, et al. It's also structured nicely for advantageous tax write-offs: where do you think the rebates come from.
That said it's not that big a market but Google's apparent success has obviously shaken Cupertino a bit and competition is good.
What it needs is a couple of major motor insurers to stand up and say "on the present showing we will not be quoting to insure automomous vehicles"
I think you'll find that insurers are pretty keen on autonomous vehicles. They know how shit a lot of human drivers and also the value of the data collected. In legal terms the case in San Francisco against GM is likely to be much more relevant than Uber's fuckup. Insurance is likely to be one of the biggest carrots for autonomous vehicles.
Sadly, people are not responsible, they need to know that breaking the rules ALWAYS invokes a certain, even minor, punishment.
I think it's probably a case of both carrot and stick. It's interesting to see how effective the helmet propaganda has been in some countries and yet you'll see cyclists in helmets riding like numpties. There was research into how ABS and airbags actually increased reckless driving and I think there is a bit of this with helmets.
no lights, dark clothing, brakes not working and no helmet
Sounds like the Netherlands… Until public policy consitently sees bicycles as vehicles and thinks about the kind of traffic management this needs there will continue to be half-hearted measures that are poorly enforced and misplaced faith in helmets.
Thumbs down for asking a simple question? Tough crowd today.
Have an extra downvote for being a whiny shit.
In answer to your question: firstly, metal tubes make pretty good Faraday cages; secondly, what about the all the existing bikes out there? Do these stay invisible and we simply declare open season on them?
A radio beacon would require less power than a puny set of lights that will get a cyclist killed on an unlit road.
A cyclist needs no help whatsoever to kill themself on an unlit road at night. Not sure how a radio tag would help there either.
But why stop at bikes? Small children and animals should surely also be fitted, right?
Or you could spend money reducing the likelihood of bikes and cars meeting…
As ever it's enforcement: in the UK this would include making sure motorists don't treat cycle lanes as parking spaces.
But, actually, this kind of solutionism is an attempt to avod the difficult and expensive problem of traffic flow management. There are very few accidents between cars and bicycles in the Netherlands, and the recent experience in Copenhagen shows that this isn't just a one-off.
actually thought methanol as a fuel (either direct or in a fuel cell) was still more dangerous than petrol as it is actually more flammable
You could very well be right because it has a lower boiling point, but also far lower energy density than petrol. But I think the design made this a bit moot because the engine never runs that hot. I never looked at this in detail so I happy to be corrected.
Seriously, if someone is going to spend £60k on a car, they don't need an £8k handout from the government.
Since when has need ever had anything to do with it? Lots of subsidies go to those who don't need them. Think of all the lolly that landowners like Paul Dacre get for doing nothing.
Elsewhere Mr Orlowksi has ranted about how subsidies for renewable energies act like a tax on the poor. I don't agree with all the arguments (simplified for effect) but subsidies almost always tend to lead to distortions. This is generally true but isn't itself an argument against subsidies as they can still help to change behaviour. That said, the subsidies for electric cars in most countries have basically functioned as tax breaks for value signalling.
Assuming that the boffins can somehow deal with all the issues and objections to hydrogen fueled fuel cells
Well, seeing as hydrogen is the main problem that's going to be difficult. Hydrogen just as too many drawbacks: low energy density, incredibly difficult to store and the tendency to destroy containing vessels. I seem to recall work being done on using methanol as the storage and cracking it to get the hydrogen. This would be great if it worked because methanol can be transported easily and is relatively safe and easy to make.
think the last 'negotiator' that had a sufficiently large pair to gain anything from the EU was Maggie
Maybe initially when it came to the rebate but her strategy became obvious and the rest worked around it. This meant Britain thought it got crowd-pleasing exemptions but was actually being excluded from the good stuff. This worked so well that they stuck with it all the way to the referendum.
Chrome OS is a more modern OS than Android which was rushed out the door.
I think they were both initially rather rushed. The fact that ChromeOS is gaining the ability to run Android apps indicates that the initial idea for ChromeOS of doing everything in the browser wasn't that well thought through either.
Kuvee fits the same pattern as the Soylent: nerds extrapolating from their own slightly odd needs. Not really much different to people who peddle crystals for healing, etc. for which there seems to be a market. But only in the Valley will you find a VC willing to throw money at something so "magical and revolutionary".
Given that Apple has a far less permissive attitude to user privacy, Tim Cook was commendably not-smug when he chimed into the debate.
Speaking at the annual Chinese Development Forum in Beijing on Saturday, Bloomberg quoted Cook as calling for stronger, “well-crafted” privacy regulation.
This should be a single paragraph otherwise the reference to Cook is unclear.
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