Posts by Mikel

For 40 years Intel has been about widgets

It's time to refocus on people.

We call them Chromebooks now

Intel wanted to cripple the feature set, OEMs wanted to put fat Windows on them and that drives up the cost. ARM, however, lets the maker make what the maker wants to make. Some makers want to make cheap Chromebooks and some really fancy premium ones with ultra hi-def screens.

I would weigh in now

But I already spent myself over here:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2013/04/07/nasa_administrator_says_no_humans_on_mars/

Short story: with Amsteel Blue as a tether on Ceres a space elevator has some real utility with real stuff we can make right now, and acceptable engineering margins, that we can get out there with our lift capability, and a reason why. There is no other place in the solar system where this is true right now. Ceres has vast quantities of the most precious space mineral there is: water.

/No, I don't work for Samson nor any vendor that sells rope, nor any other relevant thing. I don't know if they can make a 900 km rope. I just like the whole "space elevator" thing, and am jazzed that there is at least one current use of Clarke's dream even if it isn't where he thought it was.

There's a pimp analogy here somewhere

Don't panic - you will still be able to get PCs. These new mobile things are amazing though.

Oceans absorb heat

The oceans weigh 280 times as much as the air though so they can absorb quite a bit. Also understanding the energy transfer of phase change - melting ice - is essential to knowing what is going on here.

It would be passing strange

For Apple not to get a bump on the launch of a major new iPhone would be odd indeed.

Topic? What's a topic?

You promised me a silver badge, you badgestiges, if I climbed your hill. The hill is climbed. Where is my badge?

How many stars have earthlike planets or moons?

All of them, near enough as makes no difference.

An interesting choice

I'm looking forward to ElReg's thorough rundown on this gear when it's shipping.

New trend

A strong showing for Windows HPC Server is driving a surge in supercompute buying worldwide. "The smooth AD integration was the thing we had been missing in our compute clusters all along" said Tim Waters of NLRCCB. "Clearing up that the new system absolutely could run Quicken was key to getting budget committee approval."

OK fine

How about you all give me 13 thumbs up on April Fools day, just because I need that to get this farking stupid silver badge, now that we're all here for no reason?

This was just what they needed!

A lower rez screen to compete with the $50 Android tablets in Shenzhen. Great thinking. Go get 'em guys!

IBM got somebody to pay for their PC biz

It was in the run up to Vista. Bright lot, those guys. After years of burning cash buyer Lenovo is happy to get margins of +2.6%. IBM's market cap is back on par with Microsoft's these days. Now that Windows 8 is upon us and PC Biz is a straight loser nobody's going to buy Dell's money pit.

Good luck to them. They're going to need it.

Bottom's up!

Gemini were better the Windows codename

Given the duality of its aspects.

When it was started, a $40 tablet was outlandishly low

Now it's just an ordinary 7" white box android tablet you can pick up almost anywhere in China.

I like the ideals of the project, but recent pace of technology has a way of messing up the plans of individuals.

A bright future

I can see BRIC heading over to ARM / Ubuntu any day now. ARM certainly has a grip on our mobile future, in addition to all the embedded stuff that moves far more units. Cheers!

Here comes the cluetrain

Seems the analysts have finally discovered that making Windows PCs and laptops is not profitable.

Planck?

Still waiting on a quantum unit of probability. That will sort things out.

Nature/nurture: fight!

There are a number of issues in play here.

1. Humans are more intelligent than we need them do be. A moderately good education and diet is going to bring the average human up to a potential that is going to make him unhappy for the rest of his life as he knows his potential is far more than than his available work prospects. The world needs ditch-diggers too - far more than those constrained to the role by their intellectual ability.

2. The state of US education is deplorable. Any ordinary kid can read at above "college level" by the third grade with sufficient diet and education.

3. But if we maximize the potential of each young human into entry into adult life we pretty much guarantee they will be unhappy for the rest of their days. That's probably not a good thing as unhappy young people have a tendency to induce radical social change without regard to the consequences more mature folk are aware of.

4. Regardless of the above we also have far more useful people than we actually need to produce the necessary, so we need to find something useful and rewarding for the rest to do. The alternative is to demand they do nothing. To banish useful, creative and energetic people to the fringe of society and starve them for lack of work is to demand they cause trouble. Lots of trouble.

No more cheap RAM

Prices of SSD to stay high.

/sigh

The truth? You can't handle the truth.

Microsoft is now the FIFTH largest company in IT by market cap. The entire thesis of control their engine is built on is smashed. None of the others in the top 5 rely on Windows. Apple, Google, Samsung and IBM don't even use Microsoft products internally, and don't rely on Microsoft for profits. Those dependent on Microsoft like HP and Dell seem capped at a certain diminutive size relative to Microsoft for some reason. Microsoft is no longer dominant, and they are not prepared for a world where they are not dominant. They cannot control the pace and path of progress any more. It seems the way to grow big as an IT company is to not rely on Microsoft. Whodathunkit?

Mobile devices that don't run Microsoft ware will outnumber Microsoft Windows desktops in a month or three, and they MUST be served. That means that on the server side Microsoft operating systems and services won't do as they're designed to leverage dominance and encourage dependence on IE and Windows. Likewise Windows Line Of Business (LOB) apps need to be rejiggered to be browser-based and platform-independent because a Windows-only client app just won't do any more as we've gone mobile without Microsoft. The protestations of junior .NET junkies will be beat down by CIOs and CEOs with iPads and Android tabs, iPhones and Android phones who needs must get their work done on the go, so shut up and deliver what is required or put in your notice.

This one is all over but the crying.

Fragmentation?

Android has literally always had it, and now is outselling his phone OS nearly 3:1 and just took the lead in tablets too. His whining that people seem to prefer what he thinks is a fatal flaw is a failure to adapt. Fragmentation is choice, and people like choices. Choosing is an empowering and enjoyable part of the purchase experience. An essential one. He should know that.

Sour grapes.

Simplify

For the next iteration rather than continuous app patches the device will just boot from their cloud so you can get the whole experience streamed and they can update everything continuously. They're calling it "aluminum".

Rubin's next?

Can't wait to see it. I'm sure it will be Amazing. Also, it will be quite a while. He's a big thinker. Probably started the skunkworks on his next big thing quite a while back though - they do that at Google. It's called the "20%."

The merger of Android and Chrome is a way off yet too. Just too different as yet.

Apple is reportedly not happy that Google considers them so defeated they're sending in the second string coach. Phil Schiller in particular it having a case of the shrills.

Google I/O looks to be fantastic this year.

Google Now, that I turned off. It was just too creepy.

BB10?

At this point the thing is going to need to cause orgasm on contact to survive this market. I don't see that happening.