* Posts by h4rm0ny

4560 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jul 2008

Microsoft forbids class actions in new Windows licence

h4rm0ny

Not an expert, but I'm pretty sure this is not enforceable in US law. In Europe it varies on a case by case basis. We don't have an EU-wide equivalent to the USA's Class Action at the moment. But several countries such as Germany, France, Spain do. The UK does not, but in some cases, there are ways to pursue the claim in other EU countries.

Regardless of legality, it's unethical to try and put this in a EULA, of course.

Study: The more science you know, the less worried you are about climate

h4rm0ny

Re: Mr. Page is lamely (intentionally?) obtuse and ethically bankrupt.

If you're looking for conspiracy theories about Carbon reduction, you don't need to get as sophisticated as you got about desires to keep countries underdeveloped or docile. The more oil-hungry other countries get, the more prices for the West rise. Simple and obvious. One of the primary reasons for the US invasion of Afghanistan was the building of an oil pipeline so that the West could purchase on a parity with China from Russian oil fields.

h4rm0ny

Re: Skepticism does not mean doubt

""How much risk do you believe climate change poses to human health, safety or prosperity?""

If that's the actual question asked in the paper, then it doesn't even equate to AGW. Few, if any, skeptics of AGW argue that the climate does not change. We debate whether and how much human activity is responsible for it. Someone who devoutly believed that CO2 was a minor contributor and that Climate Change was primarily driven by solar activity, would still be as much included as someone who 100% believed in AGW.

Similarly, a number of people make supportable arguments that a small global rise in temperatures of 2-3C would have an overall beneficial effect, increasing arable land, for example. Such people might be sincere believers in AGW and have very low concern. If their paper is intended to assess doubt / faith in AGW (which their entire conclusion about how to convince people to be more alarmed about climate change implies), then the question is very badly thought out.

Super-powerful Flame worm could take YEARS to dissect

h4rm0ny

Re: FOI request

Just in case casual readers dismiss you as a "conspiracy theorist", the figure of $50bn for black projects, is the total amount spent by the Department of Defence on projects they list as Classified. I.e. they wont tell you where the money goes. The $50bn figure is for the year 2010.

The USA spends *a lot* of money on things it doesn't disclose to the public.

Why Zuck will go soft for Facebook Phone - and rebrand Android

h4rm0ny
Thumb Up

Re: Hmmm

Thanks for both corrections. I didn't know about the moratorium on shorting for the first week. Makes good sense and explains why it wasn't allowed by the system which surprised me.

@anyone reading both our posts and wondering who is right, Turtle_Fan is correct on both points.

h4rm0ny

Re: Disagree - Facebook will go with Microsoft.

I seriously hope not. WP7 already has pretty seamless FB integration (which I have turned off on mine) so I don't know what else would be added. MS actually make their money by selling their software. Unlike Apple who have their own hardware, and unlike Google, who make money off your data, MS are actually licencing their O/S for the phones. FB make money from advertising which is inherently detrimental to the O/S. It would make far more sense for FB to do an Android (which they can do for free, technically), than to partner with a pay-for-it O/S that they would only make less valuable by their integration.

I really, really hope I never see a partnership between Facebook and MS because at that point, I've run out of places to retreat to.

h4rm0ny

Re: Hmmm

"And any employees that were given shares before the IPO and are allowed to sell them might be cashing in as well."

You'll note that I very specifically wrote "since the IPO". I think the only ones making money off Facebook stock are those selling them off because they got them from being an owner or employee. As to shorting it, perhaps. Someone on here the other day said that their broker system refused to accept shorting on FB stock and would only allow them to go long. Which says it all, if true.

Stock continued to slide today, btw. It's dropped down to $28.84 now. Looks like its being held up by people being unwilling to sell at a loss, imo.Which will probably translate into a continuing medium decline for a while until it collapses more suddenly. It's true value has to be <$20 so that's where it will end up sooner or later.

h4rm0ny

Re: Hmmm

"Time for those with inside knowledge to make some money from the stockmarket."

I'm not sure anyone is making money on Facebook stock beyond the initial IPO. It's just dipped below $30 for the first time. Shot down pretty much as soon as trading opened. Any small players holding on waiting for a better time to sell: get out now whlist you can afford your loss.

As to the phone - it's going to have to be an Android-based device. But they wont be able to make it better than Google does who are obviously the masters of Android, In fact, they'll only really be able to make it worse as to recoup costs and please their newfound investors, they'll have to riddle it with ads.

And what will they do about existing Facebook apps on other platforms? If they make them better, they take away from the reason people might buy their phone. If they don't improve them or they let them stagnate, then they're excluding themselves from the increasing majority of their users who do everything via tablet or phone.

Microsoft invades Iraq, installs first distributor

h4rm0ny

Re: Yaaay!

It's not only that this will cost them more. In the grand-scheme of things, that's not a big cost compared to everything else. If they went with Linux and Open Office, it would be a chance to start building a local development and support community around those that other countries just don't have. They could become one of the leaders in Open Source if they wanted to. In most governments, MS is too entrenched to shift easily. In Iraq, less so.

h4rm0ny
Mushroom

Re: Ah, what a way to bring freedom

"anti-freedom companies on Earth."

Oh come on! Microsoft as one of the most anti-freedom companies on Earth? Blackwater supplied mercenaries to kill Iraqi opponents whilst avoiding legal entanglements that the actual army would have faced. Haliburton (along with others) pillaged Iraq of oil, forcing them to agree to deals at sub-market rates. Bechtel has received billions of dollars (paid for by Iraqi reconstruction funds) for rebuilding of Iraqi infrastructure whilst local Iraqi construction companies and workers were literally turned away. Ditto for Parsons Corporation. Symbion Power is another one. The list of corporations that financially benefitted from the Iraq war is long and shameful and I haven't even touched the "defence" companies yet. But MS selling products to the Iraqi government in 2012? Not really leading the pack of "most anti-freedom". The hyperbole where MS is concerned is getting ridiculous.

Free Windows 8 desktop app development is dead

h4rm0ny

"Historically, I don't think Windows 7 was ever the destination. Vista was the destination. They reached it and discovered that it was a horrible swamp of a place and asked themselves "Where now?". Win7 was the nearest high ground."

Well we're both right, really. There's no doubt that Microsoft would have liked Vista to be better received and to sell better. That would always be true even if it had been hailed as a great thing. But of course they also had a view on what was coming next and Vista's place as a step to what was next. They were working on Windows 7 even as Vista was being released so it's not true to suppose that they release Vista and then suddenly started writing Windows 7 as an emergency response.

Vista was where they overhauled a lot of necessary internal code, changed the security model and other fundamentals. You're absolutely right that the company would have liked their product to sell more - which company wouldn't. But it was always going to be a step toward the next version. Just like Win8 will be a step toward Win9, etc.

h4rm0ny

Re: @Kubla

Reasonable post, but I think the reasoning is flawed because it underestimates the life-span of Windows 7. We still have people happily using Windows XP out there and with all the modernisation that came in in Vista (and was made to work in WIndows 7 ;), Win 7 could happily endure not only through Windows 8 (which it certainly will), but maybe even through Windows 9. Windows 8 is okay for the Desktop, but not great. Plenty of good things in it, but Metro is a step backward (imo). However, it is shaping up to be really good for mobile devices, tablets, et al. A big part of the shift in Windows 8 is closer integration with the Cloud (hate that term, but too late now. It will be cemented alongside Blog and its siblings). So they use Win8 to establish an eco-system for themselves and just let corporate carry on using Windows 7. Microsoft have a whole new market to attack so I think that's what Win8 is about: make sure the homeland is reasonably fortified and launch the troops into iPadistan.

They will shift *some* Win8 in the corporate market - it does have nice enterprise systems for managing BYOD which is a big thing these days. And of course new home users will get it at the usual crawling pace as they buy new PCs. But so long as they are expanding into the new market space and establishing their own eco system of SkyDrive accounts, etc., Win8 will still be considered a success.

At least this is my supposition.

h4rm0ny

"What will happen is that even more people will stay on Windows 7 than who stayed on Windows XP"

That might actually be part of their strategy. People can rant about MS being evil, or underhand or whatever, but I don't think they're stupid. Even the generally reviled Vista was kind of a necessary step on the way to Windows 7 (they could either keep it in-house for a couple of years more until it because Windows 7 ready or release it and at least make some money and get a lot of the kinks out of it, knowing that many would skip it anyway as they were still happy with XP).

So what about people staying on Windows 7 because they don't like Windows 8? Well the thing is, they would probably do that anyway. Windows 7 has been really well-received. Prising people off it and onto Windows 8, if Windows 8 had been just another small iterative development of Win 7, would have been a nightmare marketing scenario. There are improvements in Windows 8 (it's not all about Metro), but no great flagship items that would persuade Upper Management. So why not accept that fact and turn it into an opportunity to attack the tablet and BOYD market? Much of the really radical stuff in Windows 8 is to do with portability, cloud-computing, etc. What you need for these things to be a success isn't upgrades of your work PC, but installs on various tablets and mobile devices. When you have that install base, then Windows 8 or 9 in the corporate environment becomes a major draw. Particularly with all the enterprise tools in Windows 8 for managing BYOD, etc.

h4rm0ny
Unhappy

Re: So forcing people to code for a browser with less limitations than the desktop

What did grammar and spelling ever do to you?

h4rm0ny

Re: Talk about betting the farm on it

"The free version is pretty much only used by amateurs anyway"

True, it's not going to affect many (any?) professional developers. It's not like the paid versions are that expensive in context. But "amateur" includes a lot of people, typically young, who want to learn and might enjoy bashing out their first free app that they can share with the world.

People should never be discouraged from learning to program. E.g. by having to use Eclipse.

Facebook phone tagged for 2013 release

h4rm0ny

Re: The beginning of the end?

Yep. Facebook aren't going to vanish any time soon. But they are at risk of being transformed into something they don't want to be. Many is the site that asks you if you want to sign in with Facebook. Mobile devices seem increasingly keen to aggregate a user's different communication channels. For example on WP7, SMS, Facebook, Email can all seamlessly flow together (thankfully I can turn it off). That's very bad for Facebook because it makes them more like a private version of OpenID and Twitter all rolled into one. Their situation could become analoguous to sites that find themselves screenscraped by news and support forum aggregators. Facebook use without visiting Facebook? V. bad for Facebook's advertising revenues.

Given they are almost certainly heavily overvalued right now and a lot of investors have sunk money into them only to see shareprice drop (it's not going back up folks - get out while the loss is something you can afford), they're going to be under a lot of pressure to generate revenue and I think that could cause some quite bad long-term strategic thinking by them.

h4rm0ny

Re: What's the betting it's Android based, like Amazons kit?

It's almost certainly going to be based on Android. The only alternative would be to partner with RIM which seems... unlikely at the least. So if they base it on Android then what they actually have is a device that is almost inherently inferior to Google's own devices. (The only way that would not be the case would be if FB took the lead in developing Android - an absurd idea).

So why would anyone buy it? They only have two options. The first is to leverage the Facebook angle on the belief that people will choose their phone because of it. This relies on two bad conditions: (a) that Facebook apps on other platforms are not improved to the point where people are happy with them. Something that both shoots Facebook in the foot and may be a lost cause as WP7 for one already has near-seamless Facebook integration (thankfully easily turned off). And bad idea (b), the belief that people care enough about Facebook to choose their phone based on it. I don't believe that people do.

The second option (equally dire), is that the cost of the phones be subsidized by Facebook to make them more financially competitive. That would rely on ad serving to the user to an unprecedented degree or borrowing heavily on the promise of later doing so. I'm not even going to go into what is wrong with this second option.

I honestly don't know which of the two options Facebook think they're pursuing here. Or if they're crazy enough to think that by hiring a handful of (even very competent) people away from their competitiors, they'll be able to produce a better Android.

Or maybe we're both wrong about Android and they're about to re-launch Sybmian ;) . Or partner with RIM and we're about to see the launch of the world's first FaceBerry. ;) But I think Android is the only realistic option and would be interested to hear different if anyone knows better.

Short Version: Don't buy Facebook shares. <$30 by the end of the month.

: subsidise the pricing

Chinese rocket parts land on village

h4rm0ny

Re: One local apparently suffered a shock when they touched the wreckage.

Perhaps they read a lot of comic books. As I understand it, the primary teaching of the format is that if something glowing falls from the sky, touching it will give you super-powers.

Facebook needs Opera - to rescue it from dependence on Apple

h4rm0ny
Joke

And there was great rejoicing at this news...

...amongst the Internet Explorer development team!

h4rm0ny

Re: Opera - top dog. AC@17:17

"5 downvotes? I can't understand the mentality of some people here, what on earth did he say that merits a single downvote, let alone 5?"

Not because they said that Opera was a good browser - it's excellent and although IE9 has caught up, it has at various times been the best browser available. (It has always been better than Firefox, imo, even if you don't have all the plug-ins). But they finished their post by saying anyone who is a web-professional uses Opera. Simply not true nor should it be.

TalkTalk subsidiary's customer data placed on the web in IIS whoopsie

h4rm0ny

Re: slap head

"A firewall is not a complete way of securing your network or data >_<"

No, but if someone says that an external system is connecting into your internal network, that's a reasonable part of your response statement.

New Brit nano-satellite to use Xbox Kinect for docking in space

h4rm0ny
Joke

Re: Surely you've missed a bit...

"With Balmer in charge? More like the 'Evil Organisation' from Austin Powers"

Hmmmm. There is a resemblence... I wonder if the rocket will look like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1JgMxRm--0

h4rm0ny

Re: Surely you've missed a bit...

Facts you may find useful #1: Microsoft are not SPECTRE from the James Bond movies. They're just a reasonably successful and bog-standardly money hungry corporation like most others.

If you want to insult the very clever people who not only came up with this but have the nouse to actually implement it by suggesting they're just a PR stunt, then that says more about you then them.

Facebook ninjas scale wall, pluck iPhone techies from Apple's garden

h4rm0ny

Re: with the cash they have

Even with a tonne of cash, I'd be surprised if they got anything out by the end of the year. Way I see it, doing anything from scratch would be too difficult for them. That's a major task for even a company that does have the development experience in-house. Took Microsoft a long time to catch up with Apple and Google on this and MS have a Hell of a lot more development power than Facebook. So what are Facebook planning? Their own deployment of Android with a few tweaks? A fork of Android? Either way they're putting themselves in a head to head with Google that they cannot win. Is there anything else out there they could use? Can they licence Symbian or something? Even if they could, they don't have the expertise or business model to support sustaining it.

I don't see any good options for Facebook in this venture. All I can guess at is that they are taking a non-good option, e.g. copying Android. A road with many pitfalls in it. They must be worried.

h4rm0ny

Re: Facebook smartphone

My WP7 pretty much seamlessly integrates Facebook.

It's the one thing about it I don't like. ;)

Why don't the best techies work in the channel?

h4rm0ny

Channel?

Why am I seeing this word 'Channel' everywhere all of a sudden? Have I missed a buzzword release?

China claims piracy at new low

h4rm0ny

Re: Thanks.

Well the BSA are required to *look* accurate. They have their methodolgy independently reviewed for example. So like them or not, they're under certain constraints to produce plausible figures. The Chinese government can basically write whatever number they want to on their bottom, bend over and tell you to look at it.

People-powered Olympic shopping mall: A sign of utter tech illiteracy

h4rm0ny
Pint

Re: I tried to fix it

Beer for someone who tried to get involved rather than just sit around complaining about the politicians. Hopefully you'll have another go sometime.

h4rm0ny
Headmaster

Re: Easy Solution

"Nuclear reactors for everyone. One in each home, each mall and each baby crib. Hell, we should cram them in cows too!"

Your enthusiasm is great, but we don't need quite that many nuclear reactors. If we wanted to meet our entire UK electricity consumption by nuclear power, then 25 new designs such as the European Pressurized Reactor being built in Finland at the moment, would meet those needs. That could replace the 9 existing nuclear, 14 coal power plants, 44 gas powered plants, 3 oil powered plants (!), 4 open gas turbines, 35 hydroelectrics plants, 4 open gas turbine plants, 4 misc power plants such as landfill and, for the sake of completeness though their actual electrical contribution is small: the 15 offshore windfarms and 226 onshore windfarms.

"There can be no other solution and no research into other options."

What is this strange figure made of straw I see approaching? Sure, put research effort into solar, geothermal, wind (appropriately), but whilst doing that, let's keep ourselves running on nuclear power which is cleaner and has far longer and safer fuel supplies than fossil fuels, yes?

"By the time Mr. Page figures out he's done the math wrong he'll have forgotten his rant anyway and be on to the next thing that can't work because anything that doesn't run on fissile material is stupid"

The argument put forward was not that the tiles wont work because they don't "run on fissile matieral". It's the idea that (a) energy just comes from nowhere for free, i.e. that this doesn't create a harder to walk on surface and (b) that the energy returned is in any way comparable to the energy being spent.

Top Facebook exec begs students: 'Click on an ad or two'

h4rm0ny

Re: I suspect

"await the moment firefox will come w/ installed (and configured) adblocker, easily winning the fastest browser award."

Mozilla is substantially funded by Google. You may have a long wait before the mainline releases of Firefox come with ad-block built in.

h4rm0ny

Re: Script it?

That's all kinds of wrong and long-term would do more harm to Facebook's share price than most other legal actions by an individual could. Note, I don't think you'd need to do that part where you buy some FB shares youself. Isn't that just wasting money?

h4rm0ny

Re: Excuse me for being thick

"Can you point a single moment in F***book history (or web 2.0 history for that matter) when users were not perceived as a cash cow and their private life was not perceived as a "monetizable item"."

Well, up until now, users have mostly been OFFERED as s monetizable item, i.e. FB has gotten big by the potential others thought they had. Now, with so much investor money flooded in and people expecting to get something in return, FB will be expected to DELIVER on their supposed potential. So yes, people have been the product all along, but now people have handed over money, they may expect that product to be made more use of.

'Shame on the register to post wrong informations'

h4rm0ny

Re: @h4rm0ny

I can tell the difference up until close to the 320kbps mark. Maybe with some Classical music that is big on strings I can still tell the difference. Beyond that, I can't really tell the difference between comparable formats. I.e. difference between a 320kbps and a FLAC, v. hard to tell the difference and with most recordings I don't think I could. Difference between either of those and something that kicks in my Dolby system (i.e. non-comparable sound formats), I can obviously tell the differences.

Pipex 'silence' condemned punters' emails to spam blackhole

h4rm0ny

Re: Very sad

Wow! Six thumbs down just for saying I've had good experiences with their support. I wasn't offering empirical proof that they are beyond all reproach or anything. Stories like this always provide an opportunity for people who are pissed off with company X to leap in and tell their stories of woe. And that's fine for them to do so. But just because someone has always had really good experiences with them that's reason to object to their post?

h4rm0ny

Re: Very sad

I have used Pipex for some years and I have to say I have always found their support levels very good. No, I'm not affiliated with them in any way. But I have called them up with a problem at gone 10:00pm at night (as a small business customer) and got straight through to someone who was able to look into the problem and assist.

Boffins cram binary data into living cells' DNA

h4rm0ny

Re: Si-fi concept of genetic memory..

I think there's a greater chance of producing Leeloo from Fifth Element. She was supposed to have all the vital information encoded in her DNA, was she not?

h4rm0ny

Re: Speed might be OK, but the latency is killing

Latency may be slow, but it's a lot of fun...

Facebook IPO plunge sparks tidal wave of lawsuits

h4rm0ny

Re: What you can see

"followed by self-righteous people telling everyone that has money to invest how dumb they are (while wishing they actually had money to invest)."

*Raises hand*

h4rm0ny

"Can anyone explain what happens when this really tanks like drops below 10 dollars a share? Any chance of them going out of business in two/three years? Or will it just drop to a certain point then limp along until they realise how they can make money from it?"

If Facebook don't have debts to pay off, which I don't think they do, then they can continue on even if the share price is low, so long as they are turning a profit. You ask a very good question. Low share price does not mean that Facebook will go out of business. But what it does is limit their options. Selling stock is a big way of raising capital. If the stock is not well valued, then they cannot make much money through that. Similarly, if the stock is not well valued, their options for borrowing are more limited. When we talk about their stock not being valued, we're really talking about their actual market capitalization. Ultimately, if the stock falls really low, it means that people don't think Facebook is a big business - no matter how many people use it or how high the brand recognition. And if they're a small business, then they are subject to takeovers and other market issues that big players shrug off through sheer size. Also, investors are going to be less tolerant of the board giving themselves nice big salaries and bonuses. Basically, it means that Facebook turns out to be just another run of the mill company along with numerous other corporations that are "just" worth a billion or whatever. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Baidu.. .they'll all just regard Facebook as another morsel. Given how much investors have paid for stock, who then see it devalue to <$10 (in your scenario), they would put a lot of pressure on the board to try and recoup their investment. A *lot* of pressure. If they think they could get a good price for FB, they might encourage takeovers.

So basically in answer to your question, if FB shares drop <$10, no that doesn't mean FB goes out of business. But it does mean that the market doesn't consider them a big player with all the limited credit, vulnerability, etc. that goes with that. Market Capitalization is your ability to go "Rarr" and have others jump.

h4rm0ny

"It is only possible to go long on this share option""

Seriously?!? :( How much more of a warning sign did small investors need?

h4rm0ny
Headmaster

Re: So, let me see now....

P/E is now down to 74.1, but yes, that's still an insane ratio. Anything up in those regions is either the next greatest thing ever about to hit the big time, or a Dyson-sphere sized bubble. Guess which Facebook is...

h4rm0ny

Re: Good move

"Actually - market has only been open for 25 minutes and the stock is already 2.42% up on it's opening price and increasing."

Yes, but each day so far has opened with a little rise on the day before where big players try various tricks agreed overnight to try and shore it up. And then it begins to sink. I predicted <$30 by the end of the month. I'm kind of alarmed to think I may actually have been wrong about that. It hit $31.02 yesterday and news of this lawsuit will NOT help.

People can follow the rollercoaster here:

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=FB#symbol=fb;range=5d;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;

h4rm0ny

How depressing.

Greed is depressing.

Stupidity is also depressing.

An inflated sense of entitlement is really depressing.

How horrible is to see all three combined so seamlessly.

Unless you predicted this along with everyone else outside of those idiots looking to make a quick, unearned fortune and just find it all quite amusing. Suppose it depends on your point of view.

Why on Earth is Microsoft moving to Euro pricing now?

h4rm0ny

Re: MS European HQ

"Mines the one with EMEA economic outlook in the pocket."

What has Javascript to do with this?

h4rm0ny

Re: Not for business use but...

Unless something has radically changed, then I'm pretty certain that an MS product licence for the USA will be valid for the same product in Europe and that this situation will not change. MS cannot tie their customers to a particular national alliegiance. There are a couple of soft restrictions though - i.e. if you're buying online and your address is a UK address, they may direct you to buy from a UK store. This is not unique to Microsoft. But it's only a soft restriction. If you can get the Microsoft (or Amazon, or whoever) site to sell you from a different region, you still get the same and legal product. E.g. I occasionally buy things from the French Amazon site. I just have to make sure it doesn't bounce me over to the UK one when it realizes where I am.

But as you recognize in the subject line, this is not about business use. For businesses it is different.

I'm unclear as to why this should signal a price [i]rise[/i], btw., Whilst some of the European economies are stronger than ours (i.e. Germany) I would have thought we're above the average. Thus we should be benefiting from a reduction to the European average, rather than having to rise to meet it. Price discrimination is actually beneficial for poorer purchasers. Look at the housing market for an analogy. It would be lovely for poorer people if the average house price wasn't pushed up by the purchasing power of those wealthier than themselves. Same for software licences.

Titsup WHMCS calls the Feds after credit-card megaleak

h4rm0ny

Is there anyway to check if you're on there without downloading a tonne of other people's credit card details, however? That would be useful as I really don't need or desire the rest of the data.

'Dated and cheesy' Aero ripped from Windows 8

h4rm0ny

Re: Can we get Gnome and KDE to do three-point-turns, too, now?

At least with KDE you can spend ten or fifteen minutes turning it back into something nicer. With Unity, I was pretty much stumped as to what I could do to improve it.

h4rm0ny

Re: Win 7

"Can see it being good for touch screen though but touch screen for a desktop isn't exactly an upgrade over a mouse."

I was having this conversation with a colleague and made more or less the exact same point as the above. I said that I thought it was absolutely great on a tablet, but that for a desktop, whilst it wasn't exactly a disaster, was definitely a bit of a downturn.

They replied that the future was tablets and that desktops were on their way out. And I suddenly realized they might be right. In business use, people still want a monitor and keyboard. But outside of developers, most users would probably be happy just having Metro launch their "apps". They're not power-users. For leisure, browsing, etc. people are increasingly just wanting something they can lie on the sofa with and surf or ping friends or whatever. For which a tablet is better. There are a dozen scenarios where a proper desktop is better than a tablet. But they only add up to a smaller fraction of the total times a computer is used compared to when people are just surfing, doing v. light email and whatever. I was sure Metro was a real mistake. Now, I'm starting to wonder if MS have actually just skipped forward and taken things to their logical conclusion.

Ouch! Facebook slumps below IPO value on day 2

h4rm0ny

"If (theoretically) someone asked you if I would rather have $10k of Apple or $10k of FB what would your answer be (neither is not a valid answer)."

The Apple shares. They are more likely to have the same value or better than the FB shares by the time I organize selling them. With Apple I would be sitting here thinking 'I'm going to sell those and buy something nice'. With FB shares I would be sitting here hurriedly clicking through web pages trying to offload them whilst they were still work $10K.

Do I think <$30 by the end of the week? No - too many wealthy groups will keep propping the price up. Do I think <$30 by the end of the next week? Yes. They will only keep them propped up for as long as they need to to get out of there.

h4rm0ny

"The real story here is the % the banks bought. Apparently 86% were bought by 5 key banks."

Oh please, no. PLEASE tell me this isn't true. The banks, whose business is managing money and who have whole departments dedicated to analysing the stock markets... the can't not have seen coming what most of us all predicted.... Can they?