Posts by Richard 102

Bing name

Somehow the name Bing seems perfect for a MicroSoft product. From urbandictionary.com:

"bing - used to portray prison and/or solitary confinement. Derived from the sound the bars make. "

Stars do move

But they are such distances that it takes a good bit of meticulous observation to measure it.

As previously noted, it was noted some years ago that Galileo had observed Neptune during his observations of Jupiter's moons in 1613. This was tracked down because Neptune, discovered in 1846, will not have completed a full orbit since its discovery until late 2010/early 2011. Any question of Neptune's orbit being changed by a Planet X is fuzzy, because it's not so clear-cut how to determine how an orbit is being altered when you only have one orbit observed. When it was realized that Galileo might have observed it, the researchers went back to his notebook, and there it was! But it wasn't quite where it should have been. Galileo was a pretty careful observer, careful enough to denote where star-like Neptune would have been relative to the four large moons of Jupiter.

@elderlybloke

"In America the rich get anything they want."

And this makes America different ... how?

Of two minds on ths one.

I'm not fan of companies (or anyone, really) messing around with important data for purposes of lining their pockets unethically. At the same time, there is the matter of his medical information being private, which is required by another unelected bureaucratic entity. Having said that, I'll err on the side of the individual, and say that Jobs' right to privacy was respected, as it should have been, and that the SEC should instead go after people who really hurt the American taxpayer, like lawyers and civil servants.

Everything old is new again

I seem to recall reading something similar about the Antarctic, around 25 years ago. You can't just dump old cars there, you have to get the iron dissolved into the water, so you'd wind up sending iron dust into planes, pipetting them into the ocean, ...

Money

"The programmer, who earned $400,000 per year"

Sounds about right for an efficiency apartment in New York.

Actually, I've known several programmers who've earned that. They didn't get it, but they certainly did enough to earn it.

Odd way to put it.

"During the Bush administration"? Well, the consolidation would have happened anyway, just as in every industry. Heck, one year there were over twenty-five companies making automobiles here in little ol' Indianapolis alone. You might as well say "over the last nine years". Or better yet, "since IE market share peaked".

FWIW, I think the Bush administration and the FCC were happy enough that it was American companies buying American companies. Besides, the last time they busted up a telco, we wound up with SBC in charge. That CEO, Ed Whittacre, was so idiotic that O'Bama's string-pullers made him head of GM.

Very well known

Are You Being Served?, as has been stated, has played regularly on PBS for over 15 years in the US. What's more, it has proven very popular among older viewers (which makes sense, given the comedy style) and people who aren't anglophiles.

And while I'll take Blackadder and Yes (Prime) Minister any day of the week, AYBS did have its moments. Certainly anyone who's worked retail can appreciate it.

IT Angle

Maybe he worked for MicroSoft and found a new paradigm for the WinMo platform.

I feel bad for the dog, though. I remember when my grandfather's bluetick coonhound got sprayed by a skunk and what he went through. I can only imagine what the poor dog went through swimming through that stench.

@Martin Owens

"The software agreement is by far the most consumer rights destroying document of modern times"

Uh, no. The executive order establishing the IRS did far, far more damage.

Target market

I'd imagine sales in China to be good. And in political circles.

@Richard 20

"nip in the bud" fell out of favor in England but survived in America (mostly in the southern states) until movies and television reintroduced it to England.

And as long as you're driving out Americanisms, when you are in a hurry, tell your friend to "step on the petrol".

Another idea

If we could just extract energy from university stupidity, we'd have more power available than if we tapped into the sun's fusion. I believe the old joke goes "Well, if we assume a spherical cow, ..."

RE: Very true

@Mad Mike: "Over £6b is a lot of money to keep a few Scots in employment!!"

Cheaper than what Gordon Brown's cost to do essentially the same thing ... And given what goes on in government departments, it's about the same cost to keep a few Scots UNemployed.

Help me out here

Why a touch interface AND a slide-out keyboard? I own an iPod Touch and have no problems with the touch keyboard, certainly no more than I had when I first carried a Blackberry at a previous job. It seems redundant to me and a big source of that extra heft. Am I missing something?

Camera

I think people are getting hung up on the Mp for a camera. You can have all the megapixels in the world, but if the lens is crap, then it won't help. My wife's (first-gen) iPhone takes pretty decent pictures, good enough for most things. When we went to the Indianapolis 500, she took crowd shots, kid pictures, etc, with it, and it was fine. For the cars and close-ups, I had my trusty formerly-high-end Kodak which did well. (Not pro-grade, obviously, but still.)

This just in ...

O2 technician amanfrommars had no comment when questioned by reporters.

RE: I see that

Wrenchy said

'If Apple made this decision with OSx, all you iSheep will be licking Steve Jobs' balls saying "Oh thank you Steve. Whatever you say Steve. Can I lick your sweaty balls some more Steve?".'

Not entirely. Apple has backed off from time to time. The latest is that there was enough kerfuffle about Firewire disappearing from Macbooks that they brought it back in the latest models.

RE: Sorry to bring cars into this again

"Ford & GM wouldn't allow you to park a car in their main car park if it wasn't theirs. What kind of sales message would it send if you looked in the car park at Dagenham and it was full of Hondas."

That actually killed Studebaker and AMC here in the states. You'd drive by their factories and noticed the employees were driving a lot of other companies' marques.

As a side note, public school employees in the US are 2-3 times as likely to send their kids to public school as other people with the same income. So there y'are.

iPhone Greatness

I don't own an iPhone ... mostly because I would have to use AT&T and that is a deal-breaker. But my wife has one and it does one thing better than any other smartphone I've seen: phone calls. I remember the first keynote when Jobs introduced the iPhone; he said (and here I paraphrase) that the killer app for smart phones is phone calls; it's amazing how smart phone makers don't get this!

Couldn't agree more. I've used a blackberry (for work) and borrowed WinMo and Palm smartphones, and the iPhone wins on this critical piece of functionality. It's so simple and obvious that even a journalist might get it.