Posts by Richard Plinston

Re: Third bite of the cherry ?

> Microsoft's cloud efforts are growing faster than Amazon

We have seen the results of your fanatical growth predictions before. These seem to have been yours under the guise of AC*.

"""Windows Phone sales are growing rapidly so that seems unlikely. 156% year on year growth"""

"""Windows Phone and RT are growing market share rapidly. Windows RT might not be a confirmed success yet, but it's certainly not dead. Windows Phone however is going from strength to strength and will clearly take second place in mobile OS market share by the end of next year if growth continues at the same rate it has for the last year...."""

"""Windows Phone is already ahead of IOS in 25 countries"""

* which, of course, is why you try to remember to hit the AC button and changed from RICHTO, Your complete failures mean that no one takes any notice of your messages.

Re: Some organisations who understand evolution.

> If Darwin was right, Christianity is wrong. And vice versa I add.

If Darwin's 'natural selection' is 'wrong' this will have no effect of whether evolution occurs or not but will merely pass the causes of evolution to some other mechanisms. In fact other mechanisms are acknowledged as occurring alongside 'selection of the fittest', even by Darwin, such as 'sexual selection'.

'Christianity' means different things to different people, which is why there are so many different churches, and even within those people seem to pick and choose what they believe in. Many do not take it to mean creationism, or even require belief in the mythology of Genesis, nor indeed of any particular part of the old testament.

Darwin doesn't need Christianity to be wrong, nor does Christianity (except some fundamentalist cults) doesn't need Darwin to be wrong.

Re: Maybe you'll get what you deserve!

> Americans were fleeing BRITISH anti-religious persecutors

No, that is quite wrong. Some religious people were fleeing British persecutors from a _different_ religion. Others that wound up in America were being persecuted in _other_ European countries by yet other religious groups. They may have been anti-their-religion, but that is the nature of many religions: catholics killed the cathars, CoE persecuted the catholics (and others).

The main problem is religions that are intolerant of other religions, just as you portray, and you seem to be arrogant and intolerant of non-religious people, too.

> YOU BRITONS; are so arrogant, content and smug with your atheism

People that you label as 'atheists' exist in all parts of the world, as do people that you may label as pagan or some other term because their religion is not the same as yours.

> You fools fail to even have a single tolerant and respectable bone in your bodies.

The irony just broke the scale.

Re: Just the usual ignorance on display

> There are other people calling themselves creationists who believe something entirely different to you.

There are also many religions that have nothing to do with Judeo/Christianity, that predate the Bible creation' by thousands of years, that have their own gods and their own creation myths. Even these have disagreements about who did what.

> Now held on a fixed calandar date, but used to be the winter solistice when the Sun was at it's lowest point

Being 3 days after the solstice is actually correct. It takes a day or two to detect that the lowest point has been reached and the return is happening (it might have continued south if the 'gods' were not appeased correctly'). It then takes a day or so to prepare the feast and gather the tribe together.

Re: Another nail in the coffin?

> (observable/provable/testable)

Evolution is observable and testable, and has been tested. see 'Darwin's Moth'. Darwin had predicted the discovery of a species with particular characteristics.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/darwin-predicted-this-animals-existence-decades-before-1703223208

I suppose that you think your faith is observable/provable/testable, but it is merely an archaic collection of various books that are very flawed with contradictions and has no actual evidence.

Re: Another nail in the coffin?

> "just so" stories that change day-by-day

Science is not an unchanging book, it is a process. Yes, our knowledge changes, it does so as more evidence of the world is gathered and is understood more fully. Many centuries ago motion was Aristotelian, later it became Newtonian, then Einstein introduced relativity and even the GPS system must take this into account*.

Presumably that is part of your 'just so stories' that you reject, or are you merely being selective to protect your archaic dogma ?

Genesis was an initial theory about how the world came about, Noah's deluge was an early explanation about why sea shell fossils could be found up a mountain. We know more about the world nowadays, we know that the Earth is a few billion years old and that plate tectonics has scraped sea bed into piles several thousand feet high. Creationism is equivalent to Aristotelianism.

Knowledge changes, ancient books do not. You may 'study the world' religiously, but to me that means 'on your knees with your eyes closed'. You need to open them before you can see reality.

* the satellites move fast enough that the small time dilation would lead to significant errors if this wasn't included in the calculations. Indeed in the initial implementation they were inaccurate for rexactly that reason.

Re: dogs cannot become cats

> You might as well try to train a cat to bark.

I think that I have seen that on Youtube, certainly one quite clearly said 'hello', and another: "no, no, no" (see Russell Howard).

Re: dogs cannot become cats

> the certain and sure knowledge of the resurrection and the peace of god in one's heart.

That is one particular faith, and not a generally held one by all 'Faiths'*.

* being restricted to Christians and derivatives, and not all Christians either.

Re: dogs cannot become cats

> Yet if evolution is true, then it must be possible for the descendants of my cat (or my dog) to, over time, become something that is identical to the other.

It is certainly true that, over a long time (millions of years), descendants of one particular type of animal can become something quite different. It is unlikely, however, that descendant lines of two dissimilar species become 'identical', and no theory about evolution ever claims that they would. That, however, rests on what you imagine 'identical' to be. Some descendants of a dog may eventually become 'cat like' in appearance and behaviour. Some descendants of a cat may become 'dog like' given enough time and an environment where that would be an advantage. To be 'identical' would imply the ability to interbreed and have viable offspring that could continue the line. That is not a factor of evolution, but one of genetics.

In fact cats and dogs have been shown to be able to evolve into different appearance and behaviour within recent history. It may have been by 'unnatural selection', ie breeding by humans, but this is not much different in process than would happen in the wild, it is just that the outcomes are different. Originally there were wolves and wildcats, now through evolution (directed by human selection rather than 'natural') we have dog and cats that are domesticated and tailored to our needs or wants.

A few tens of millions of years ago our mammal ancestors were small shrew like creatures, as is observable in the fossil record. Over those intervening aeons evolution has changed those into the forms that mammals now encompass.

You want to ignore the evidence and evolution of thought and claim 'that never happened'. Fine, but that is the definition of ignorance.

> Such populations could be split into two species

There are many examples of this. For example House Sparrows in America. They were introduced into the east coast and spread across the continent. The west coast sparrows are now incapable of interbreeding with the east coast population and are thus a different species, but are classed as a sub-species.

Re: Why try to 'convince' creationists?

> There is also evidence - or at least debate - that the theory as propounded by Darwin is wrong in some at some least respects. I'm thinking specifically about gradual change over long periods.

That is because Darwin's 'natural selection' is not the only process happening, and this was recognised by Darwin. He also saw that there was 'sexual selection' as a process that would operate over long time periods. It is not that "Darwin is wrong in some at some least respects", it is that other processes _also_ occur.

Re: Why try to 'convince' creationists?

> Your own post is evidence that you're someone who "simply want to believe instead of knowing." and someone who will remain ignorance.

How ironic can you get ?

> (what, you think Darwin was the first?).

A common mistake, usually by creationists, is to claim that Darwin wrote a 'theory of evolution'. He did not. Evolution was well accepted as a process for decades before Darwin. His theory was about _how_ evolution occurred, or at least about how one part of it occurred. Other theories about the process preceded Darwin, such as Lamarck's. Other mechanisms include 'sexual selection'.

> We will finally be rid of this stupid organised religion called "evolution"

Evolution is a process that is observable. It is observable in the universe, it is observable in the fossil record, it is observable in this experiment. You probably equate "this stupid organised religion" with 'Darwinism' or even 'Neo-Darwinism' which is a discussion about how some of the processes operate. You are perfectly welcome to argue that 'selection is not natural' as long as you can bring some actual evidence. You can also argue that 'humans do not have a common ancestor with other monkeys' but you would have to show why all the evidence for this is wrong.

> I would love to see more critical thinking taught in schools

You might like to try some of this yourself. Religion is not just 'Christian (creationism)' versus 'Neo-Darwinism'. There are thousands of different religions, and many variations within each of those. It is instructive to study a few of them and to contemplate their origins. For example Rastarianism (which I studied because my grandfather had been presented with a Lion Skin Cape in 1922 by Ras Tafari). This originated as a black power movement in the Caribbean after the English abolished slavery and the plantations had to import indentured Indians (mostly Hindu) as workers. It is a mix of Voodoo from the African ex-slaves, local West Indies native religions, imposed Christianity and various Hindu imports, such as hemp.

The study of the formation of religions should show, through the application of _actual_ 'critical thinking', rather than merely being critical, that they are a human mechanism designed to impose the will of the leader(s) upon the society they wish to create and/or rule over. In some sense the societies have evolved due to the religions. Those not belonging to the majority religion, or the most aggressive religion, in a society were 'selected away*' by banishment, persecution, wars, or genocide. This created cohesive cultures which could be classed as 'civilisation', but generally was not 'civil'.

Human thought has also evolved in many places, where we were able to avoid being persecuted by the various religions. The religions are still fighting back against this evolving of thought into science, they still want their dogma to rule.

> That God made everything in a relatively recent time frame has come out on top again and again for me,

And that puts you in the same class as the flat-earthers and alchemists.

* the basis of Darwin is not so much 'selection of the fittest', but its corollary: de-selection of the less fit, or of those that couldn't escape from the fittest.

Re: Truthiness

> Why that might be we can only speculate.

I see it as 'SantaClausism'. They have been brought up, or brought themselves up, to hope for a 'present' (to 'be with Jesus' or '24 virgins' or some such) at the end, as long as they believe and keep The Faith.

'The Faith' manifests itself in many different ways, which is why there are thousands of different religions or variations of those religions, and even of personal choices (such as 'I don't believe in "eternal hell"'). People choose 'The Truth' that they want to believe in. This also leads directly to discarding the inconvenient 'items' that tend to show their 'The Truth' as not being actually true.

Ironically, this leads to evolution of religion and of theology. New species of religions arise and old ones become extinct* on a frequent basis. Existing ones change and decry their past, or attempt to hide it. Survival or Revival ? Fittest or Richest ? Is this a natural phenomena or are the various 'gods' pushing and poking to create and destroy.

If you are a creationist and think that others are deriding your beliefs, it is because many put you in the same category as Flat Earthers, UFOlogists and Alchemists.

* In the distant past each society held their leader as being their 'God', in some cases only after death did they become a God (such as the Roman emperors and Kim Jong-il), in other cases they were living Gods (such as Hirohito or the Egyptian Pharaohs). When the next leader succeeded the previous he often became the new deity, though in a dynasty it may have taken some time to replace the previous deities. It seems that the Hebrew kept their [new] deity because they had made a contract with that particular one and replacing him would invalidate the promise of some land. Claims about what 'gods' could do and what they had done was mythology and mere puffery and was passed to the next set of gods in that society. Even Hindus are divided about which gods are the creators and which are the destroyers.

Re: Apple's migrations were different

> Apple's SoCs are by far the fastest ARMs around, and compare favorably on a performance per watt basis with Intel's x86 CPUs.

While Apple's may be the fastest _mobile_ SoC, it is not the fastest ARM chip. For example see X-Gene 3 for servers. https://www.apm.com/products/data-center/x-gene-family/

ARMs _trounce_ Intel on performance per watt, and also on performance per dollar in most cases.

Re: Cart before the horse

> Never let AMD design a chip architecture,

OTOH Intel tried to give us Itanium!

Re: Baby... Bathwater?

> Had Microsoft invested in making parts of the operating system *itself* run on the CLR (or maybe some special version of it)

Allegedly they tried that, according to developers. The reason that Vista was 6 years after XP and was hurriedly thrown together* was that the plans were to have a CLR based OS to be released in 2004 or so. This was supposedly to run on x86 and PowerPC. It appears that they also want to build an XPC similar to the XBox 360 so that they could take over some of the OEM's business to increase revenue and become more like Apple.

The problem was that they couldn't get it to work, and what did work was really slow.

* Enterprise contacts were a 3 year period. They signed up a lot of them around the release of XP. There was no update in 2003/4 but renewals were signed anyway. If there was nothing in 2006/7 then a lot of contracts would not have been renewed so they had to get _something_ out and Vista was the result.

Re: Joke Alert? 4 Richard Plinston

> So what? The Unix of the day was decidedly unready for the WWW prime-time it was about to be introduced to.

And I suppose you think that MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 was ready ?

Unix _was_ the prime-time of the WWW (along with NeXT and DEC). Windows was nowhere.

Re: Joke Alert? 4 Richard Plinston

> Would it be too jejune to point out that Windows was deploying into the heady universe of a new World Wide Web a-borning*,

That is just bullshit. Microsoft was late getting into the Internet. The first edition of 'The Road Ahead' made no mention of the internet. When the initial retail Windows 95 came out it did not connect to the internet* but instead only connected to the original MSN, a private network for Win95 only. At that time OS/2 and Unix were far ahead in _running_ the WWW.

> and that Linux has had the advantage of walking behind and seeing where the biggest landmines were?

Linux didn't do stuff (or not do it) because Windows showed it was wrong, it did so because it was the right way to do things. Windows was making 'convenience' features for the lowest level of users while not even considering security or safety while Linux was following the Unix lead with a proven track record (with a small number of exceptions).

There are many more examples of poor design and/or implementation in Windows: eg on booting, the network started before the firewall was activated giving a (small) window where it was vulnerable. That was because the firewall was an afterthought and was later patched onto the system instead of being designed in.

* There was a plus pack that catered for this. OEMs often added 3rd party software that would connect.

Re: Joke Alert?

> Linux has always been vulnerable. Just not as exploited

True, but Windows has been exploitable _by_design_.

Everything from port 139 being open by default, through executing programs on a CD or USB being run when inserted, downloaded programs being executable without any further action, merely selecting an email executes code, the list goes on of all these 'convenience' features designed into the system. Many have been closed, or at least give warnings, but Linux made far fewer mistakes of these types.

> They still make Harriers for the Yanks (or the Yanks make 'em)

""" in 2003, the 72nd and last AV-8B to be remanufactured for the USMC was delivered. ... which marked the end of the AV-8B's production; the final new AV-8B had been delivered in 1997"""

Re: A is actually not a bad piece of kit

> the Yanks have got 11 huge ones twice the size and far more effective?

In the Falklands war the British carriers regularly operated the Harriers in weather conditions that would have shut down the American fleet carriers entirely. For example in the frequent fog when there was no visibility the conventional aircraft would not be able to land, and thus would not be allowed to take off. For the Harriers the carrier would leave a trail of flares on the water behind them. the harriers would go into vertical mode, drop down to sea level (identified by the flares) and follow the trail to catch up to the carrier.

In a large seaway, common in the south Atlantic, the surging of the flight deck would make it too dangerous to try to land. The Harriers would come alongside in vertical mode and would slide sideways over the deck at the mid-point where there was little or no vertical deck movement.

Fleet carriers are not always more effective.

> please identify the countries that operate aircraft carriers that can handle cargo planes and tankers,

When the UK operated fleet carriers they used converted Fairey Gannet AS4s in the COD role. Versions of Gannets also were used as ASW, ECM and AEW. Scimitars, Sea Vixens, and Buccaneers were used for refuelling other aircraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Gannet

Re: A is actually not a bad piece of kit

> By my understanding there isn't a vertical take off version.

The F-35B can take off vertically, but only with reduced gross weight. ie: no armament and reduced fuel. STO on a ramp allows full warload. Vertical landing is done after the fuel has been used up.

Just like the Harrier actually.

Re: "probably to avoid litigation with IBM"

> Um, if I remember correctly, there was no chance of litigation since IBM did not bother to protect anything via copyright. It was a truly open market.

Your rememberence is incorrect. While the ROM BIOS source was available it was fully protected by copyright (as is all FOSS software). It wasn't until Phoenix did a clean-room reimplementation that there was a cheap enough way to implement clones. IBM did protect its copyrights agressively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_the_IBM_PC_BIOS

Re: Linux has facilitated the cituation he is lamenting about

> I can just about remember the early days of "the PC",

Unfortunately you seem to have misremembered most of it.

> bought the company and stuck an IBM badge on it.

No. The IBM 5150 PC was an internal project based on their previous System 23 Datamaster and somewhat on their Displaywriter. While the System 23 was Z80 based Intel persuaded them to use the new 8088 which had an 8bit data bus and would not need much rejigging of the planar (motherboard), though it was redesigned somewhat for the 'Model B'.

> You caould buy loads of "PC"s from other vendors, that came with PC-Dos from MS, and would run "PC" software. But they really didn't have the uniformity of hardware that people think - there was a lot of variation and MS would provide each manufacturer with a PC-Dos tweaked to suit.

'PC-DOS' was strictly for IBM and only available from IBM (though it could later be used on clones). Many other 8088/8086 (or compatible such as V20/V30) machines could run MS-DOS and they did not need to be anything like an IBM-PC. They could be S100 based, or Wang or DEC Rainbows. But, no, MS would not provide a 'tweaked' version. Exactly like DRI's CP/M and CP/M-86, MS-DOS (which was actually written by SCP) was structured as a BDOS, a CCP (Command.COM), a BIOS and utilities. The BDOS and CCP was invariant, the manufacturer needed to write a BIOS to suit their hardware. It happened that the IBM-PC had a ROM BIOS which only required a small stub software BIOS to translate the BDOS calls to the ROM BIOS**.

> SHe worked on the basis that if you could take ${random_game} off the shelf, unwrap it, and boot the PC with that disk and be able to play the game - only then was it "PC Compatible".

Much software in the early days could run on any hardware that was running MS-DOS. Some came in 'PC-DOS' or 'MS-DOS' versions where the former required an IBM-PC or clone and the latter had a configuration program that could choose the appropriate way of using the screen or terminal. For example Wordstar and Borland Pascal 3 came in several versions (also for CP/M and CP/M-86). Because MS-DOS terminal handling was so poor, and so slow with ANSI.SYS, many software writers included to option of using BIOS terminal handling. This was also poor and, on IBM PC, they started doing direct screen writes to the CGA or MDA, or Hercules. _This_ is what changed the users to needing clones.

> IBM were geared up to "big stuff" (where productivity is measured in how many lines of code you make, not how small you make it !)

Many mainframes of the time had quite small memories. While LOC was one metric used to measure programmers productivity that does not imply that the programs were huge, nor that RAM was freely available.

> and as they could see the likes of Commodore and Apple eating their lunch in the small office - bought the company and stuck an IBM badge on it.

The small office was not the primary aim of the IBM 5150 PC. Apple IIs and Commodore Pets were appearing in the IBM sites running Visicalc, Wordstar and dBaseII. IBM wanted a machine that would keep these sites 'pure'. The IBM PC was designed (by IBM - NOT a bought-in company) to be just a bit better than the Apple II and to run the same software. It was also intended to be a terminal (which is why its serial ports were DTE when most other micro computers were DCE*). There were also versions of the IBM-PC that were 3740 terminals and 360 Emulators (with additional 680x0 boards).

IBM were also already in the small business market with the 5100, 5120, 5130 and small System 3s.

> As so, fairly quickly, all the manufacturers quickly learned that they had to mimic the IBM PC fairly closely (eg putting the serial ports at the same I/O addresses etc) or they'd be labelled as "not compatible" and would lose sales. Thus the "PC Compatible" standard "happened" !

The 'PC Compatible' was not just a few port addresses, it relied on having a compatible ROM BIOS and an internal address mapping of hardware, such as the video adaptor. Manufacturers could have licenced this from IBM (some 'stole' a copy) but a deliberate clean-room implementation by Phoenix provided a cheaper way of making clones.

> I deliberately say "happened" because it wasn't really designed, it sort of came into being in a very accidental way.

No. It was not even close to being 'accidental'.

* DTE= Data Terminal Equipment. DCE= Data Comms Equipment (eg a Modem). A 1-1 cable will connect a DTE to a DCE. S100 systems used DCE serial port to plug 'green screen' terminals into.

** The first version of MS-DOS that _required_ the machine to be an IBM-PC clone with a ROM BIOS was MS-DOS 5.

> See, the absolute number can stay the same (or even increase) even if the percentage goes down.

Approximately 20 million new PCs are sold every month. Most of these will have Windows 10 pre-installed. A smaller number of old PCs, many with XP or even earlier, will die or be retired or replaced.

Thus the percentage of W10 should increase even if no one 'upgrades' an existing machine.

Whether people taking time off from work causes a decrease in W10 usage or an increase is entirely a matter of speculation, but W10 is likely to be found more often in homes than at work.

Re: How many phones has MS killed?

> I'm not sure how to count them,

Don't forget the WebOS ones. MS waved the 'loyalty' discount on all products and pointed to 'Windows on ARM' (later Windows RT) and told HP "it would be a shame if you had to buy Windows for all your PCs at retail prices".

Re: Burning Platform?

> MS paid maybe $1 Billion before Nokia sold phone division,

MS paid Nokia up to $1billion a _year_. Allegedly this was to cover the cost of WP licences so it may have been a decreasing amount as their market share dropped to below the margin of error.

And still Nokia phone division did not make a profit.