Posts by Pete 2

Too big and too little

What's the point?

The company has been going so long (and grown so quickly) that its future expansion is quite limited - so not much scope for organic growth. Yet for all its size, it's only planning on raising $5Bn from the floatation.

That's enough to land it with all the regulatory deadweight that a public company must conform to, but not cash enough for it to drastically change its business model. All FB could hope to do would be to gobble up other companies in exchange for it's own shares - presuming they hold their value on the stock market - and then hope it can assimilate whatever novel attribute the small-fry had into it's own corporate mass. A strategy that's not known for its successes.

This IPO would make sense if the owners were planning to cash out and wanted to spend more time with their money. But in that case, without the founders' vision, who'd want to be left holding the shares?

To try and to fail

... is better than to not try at all.

The main government driver for almost everything (apart from personal gain: political or financial) is CYA. Therefore it's not important whether a programme succeeds or fails - if it's timed properly, that will be the next incumbent's problem - but to be seen to be doing something. To show that there is action being taken. That there is a policy.

So it is with this one, too. Who cares if it won't work or costs too much? Most government IT projects don't work, so the only issue is to manage expectations: downwards. As to cost -no big deal! The money's going to be spent on something, somewhere and whatever it's spent on probably won't deliver what was intended, anyway.

Pop!

> ... diminish public confidence in the legal profession

Or demonstrate that lawyers are just ordinary people who can hide behind a wall of obscure legal (and latin) jargon.

Most people who have ever come into contact with the legal profession; either through a house purchase, divorce, damages claim or criminal prosecution in all likelihood will already have a pretty low opinion of lawyers. Whether it's the firm that charges you parters' rates for your work and then hands it off to a junior who can't even spell. Or the conveyancer who seems to take a week to drag their heels through every single stage of an otherwise simple property purchase. Or the defence lawyer who doesn't seem to understand that YOU DIDN'T DO IT and just wants you to plead guilty, so they can have an easy life, collect their considerable fee and move on to the next victim.

Maybe this guy didn't diminish public confidence in the legal profession. Maybe all he did was show them up to have the same failings, weaknesses and faults as everyone else - that he peeled away the thin veneer of competence and exposed them to the light of day. For a profession that relies so much on appearances and excluding "ordinary" people from their goings-on, a bit of harsh reality could really burst the bubble.

Size doesn't matter

> an 11.6in screen is pushing it a bit for a handheld display

Once a device gets bigger than a convenient size to stuff in your pocket, then whether it's 10 inches, 12 or more becomes less important that how much it weighs. At those sizes (i.e. laptop-sized) it needs a bag to carry it around in, so it's lost the convenience factor. All that is up for discussion is how big the bag needs to be - and if you've got to carry a bag, why not have a proper laptop in it, instead?

Ask and you shall receive

> asked just over 1,000 women within families ... Around 94 per cent ... were "primarily responsible or involved"

As a control, it would be interesting to know what the reply would have been if they'd asked 1000 men *within families*[1] the same question. I suspect the answer would have been roughly the same.

[1] a further "reveal" would have been to discover if, given a very high divorce rate, those women had anyone else who *could* contribute to the decision making process. Since these days a "family" does not necessarily mean there's a man about the house.

A simple misunderstanding

Maybe what she actually said was: "would you like to swap those McNuggets for a Happy Meal?"

I mean, who could possibly misconstrue that.

Canute

I fully expect the "unauthorised" posts, tweets, articles and leaks to be the only interesting part of the whole thing - with the possible exception being the inevitable witch-hunts afterwards to find and then prosecute to the fullest extent (and then some) possible anyone who might have been in the slightest bit involved.

So far as "not to disclose their location; ... not to get involved in detailed discussion about the Games online," The Olympic Thought Police may as well issue guidelines asking the tide not to come in for the duration of the games.

To sum up

So the best from CES - the world's biggest gadget show - was a bunch of computers and tellies. With a (admittedly veeeeery cool) RC helicopter and toy guitar to mix it up a bit.

Power moving east?

Forget all the arguments about censorship, or freedom. What we have here is another example of the most populous countries in the world recognising that they have power: both political and commercial - and exercising it.

Whether the "objectionable" material the Indian government is objecting to (surely de facto, if they object to it, that alone makes it objectionable?) is political in nature, religious, cultural or illegal is less of an issue. We already live in a world where a self-appointed copyright guardian in one country has given itself the right to dictate to everyone on the planet what they may or may not show, stream, upload or view. That's got to be a far less legitimate use of power than for an elected body to require similar controls within its own borders.

Let's fix the mote in our own eye first.

Did he really say that?

So Willetts recokons that what Eric Schimdt said when he was stroking the egos of a bunch of pissed up luvvies [a term referred to in the speech, as was "boffin"] and TV execs on a jolly, went like this:

> he said that this arts v sciences debate really ought to be dead and buried and instead we should recognise how complementary they are

But when you look at the content of the speech, (courtesy of El Graunian) what it says is:

> First you need to bring art and science back together. Think back to the glory days of the Victorian era. It was a time when the same people wrote poetry and built bridges. Lewis Carroll didn't just write one of the classic fairytales of all time, he was also a mathemetics tutor at Oxford. James Clerk Maxwell was described by Einstein as among the best physicists since Newton - but was also a published poet.

Here comes the good bit

> Over the past century the UK has stopped nurturing its polymaths. There's been a drift to the humanities - engineering and science aren't championed. Even worse, both sides seem to denigrate the other - to use what I'm told is the local vernacular, you're either a 'luvvy' or a 'bofffin'

So what Mr. Google appears to be saying is that we should start whacking all the humanities types over the head with a copy of Bleaney and Bleaney and make our phsyicists write poetry in their spare time (which I'm sure they'd love). None of that sounds too hard, but it's a long way from advocating a new university for both arts and technology. Maybe once the polymaths can knock together a limerick-creating algorithm, we can lose the arts side of this and focus on what SCHMIDT ACTUALLY SAID about getting a sound technological foundation back into the education system.

Sounds good in theory

"Oh yes, I work in the Space Industry"

"Ohhhh, so you're a rocket scientist"

"yes, ma'am <fingers crossed>, though my job title is Optical Payload Lab and Clean-room Technician"

and when you look at the j/d itself, you find the post is for a deputy cleaner:

> A general assistant is required to maintain the various Clean Rooms and laboratories to the required class and cleanliness...

These are not the pirates you are looking for

Although this hits the emotional buttons about fake software and piracy, it seems much more likely that it was merely an accounting error. If Comet were producing discs under licence, then I'd guess that all that happened was they failed to pay MS their cut of the Windows royalties for some of the discs they made and have, since, been a bit tardy in coughing up.

Fakes or clones

So who would want such a thing? Apart from the sad old wannabees with more money than imagination, this seems to be a prime hunting ground for the clone makers. Buy a beta board, reverse engineer it and start flogging your own version. You never know, with real R-Pi not producing until February at the earliest, they could even be beaten to market by their copies </irony> (Or worse: find that the copies have been improved over the original.) Since these versions don't have the development and design costs their overheads are lower and the cost per unit (since R-Pi have also done all the promotion for them) should be considerably lower.

But it gets worse. If these few boards really do fetch the amounts reports (and don't just get the bids cancelled/withdrawn) then that would seem to indicate a burgeoning market for the less scrupulous to produce their own "beta" (where beta takes it's traditional meaning of: hardware/software that doesn't work properly) boards and make a few $k for themselves, until the window of opportunity closes.

Either way, it sounds like an astoundingly bad idea, to release prototypes onto the market.

The difference between people and chimps

> Chimps don't just blurt out whatever is on their mind - they consider who's listening

And if daytime television is anything to go by, people never worry about that

KISS

It sounds like you have already nailed the First of Larry Wall's Three Great Virtues of a Programmer (i.e. Laziness, for the truly lazy the other two are Impatience and Hubris - give yourself a a pat on the back for not bothering to look them up).

Impatience should require the use of Off the Shelf parts - possibly an ideal opportunity to buy a Raspberry Pi if/when they ever become available.

As for Hubris, I'd suggest giving the Mk2 it's own web interface, plus real-time webcam feed.

However, going back to Laziness for a minute. I don;' feel that having the device controllable from a phone or PC quite does it, for the truly lazy. Surely the object of complete laziness is for the device to do everything itself? Possibly up to and including re-ordering it's own SLA batteries when it detects the current ones are failing (shades of 2010 A Space Odyssey:, perhaps? Just keep it away from hard vacuum.).

One final point on the topic of a cylindrical cutter. Check out the blades that woodworkers use in planer/thicknessers. Apart from being scary sharp, really: SCARY sharp, they could be the sort of thing you'd be looking for. With a few adaptations, the Mk2 might even keep your hedges in trim.

Pearl and Dean

So what we're going to get is a channel or two playing 23 hours of adverts for the local curry emporium and then a jobseeker reading bits from the local paper?

Can't wait.

Don't universities already do this?

> commercial advantage for UK companies

Apart from research that is classified as secret, I was under the distinct impression that most work results in a publication of something, somewhere - that's how academics and researchers earn their brownie points and assure themselves of future employment.

Better yet, the one in a thousand (guess) pieces of research that can be turned into something useful generally gets commercialised by the spin-off companies that universities have all created to exploit such ideas.

So we already have an environment where public money that funds _useable_ research is turned into money-making opportunities for british companies. Obviously where existing companies (british or foreign) fund or sponsor a piece of work, they reap the benefits of any knowledge gained. But for new ideas from research grants of goverenment money, there is already a route to market - even if it's limited by the lack of entrepreneurial "buzz" in the funding departments.

Maybe what we need is not another initiative or institute (the more steps in the process, the greater the delays incurred) but some government underwriting - again using OUR money - of the nacent spinoffs, to ensure that what profits they do make stays in the country, rather than going to venture capitalists with no commitment to the UK

Bet they didn't see that coming

that's all

Open the floodgates

> technologies will be commonplace in five years time, ...mind control of PCs

And you thought the amount of pr0n washing around NOW was bad!

The difference between a job and a hobby

> open source ... it gives recruiters a deep view into an engineer's capabilities without the need for an interview.

But you also need to be aware that a lot of people who have written some OSS software have done it for non-financial rewards. Those are completely different motivations from being paid and don't necessarily mean that the individual who wrote a screamingly good piece of software would be prepared to buckle down for the long term to the disciplines of change, deadlines, designs, testing and debugging. Likewise, the second-rate coder might be a far better fit to a product-orientated outfit than a superstar hacker would.

In fact you still need the interview. Not necessarily to assess the technical skills of a candidate but to check on their maturity, self-discipline, reliability, ability to work with others (a team needs a lot more than a bunch of developers) and for those others to check that they can get on with the developers. Some of that can be done over a phone or online, but ultimately nothing beats at least one face-to-face meeting if you're going to enter into a long term business relationship with someone.

Replacement cycles

> we own fewer Smart TVs than folk in other major European economies

Presumably a lot of brits bought "high definition" or at least HD-ready tellies for the last time a british sports team got somewhere close to a final (wasn't there some sort of football thing a few years ago?). If so, they're not really going to upgrade the box they bought then. Not until someone throws a games controller at the screen or the CCFLs finally die and the repair costs exceed the replacement price.

Plus, we shouldn't forget that a great deal of the content on TV today is either repeats of old, old stuff, or daft reality/talent shows - for which internet connectivity or even HD is irrelevant. Added to which, there's always the disincentive with all things televisual that the box will turn out to be smarter than its owner. Maybe a rename from "smart TV" is in order?

How will this puppy abort a launch?

Taking a wild leap, I'd assume this aircraft is designed to take off with rocket and land ONLY without it's payload. That means that each flight/launch has got to be successful. No last minute holds or delays. Once the aircraft's wheels leave the ground, that rocket's either going into orbit or into the ocean.

Now that sort of dependency is probably OK for a mature launch vehicle: one that's had, what? several dozen successful lunches - but to assume that from day#1 the number of "ooops-es" will be low enough to not have customers running back to conventional players is quite a lot to ask for.

Gives mass to other particles?

So how can a 126GeV boson impart mass to an electron with a rest mass of 0.51MeV?

Do you need to get lots of electrons together into some sort of timeshare - where they each get 2 weeks of the boson every year (actually, with that provisional energy, it would be more like 2 minutes per year, than 2 weeks).

A dangerous course

> Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales is contemplating taking [it] down – temporarily

Apart from having to face the uncomfortable truth that very few people (leaving aside those who define their personalities by controlling their own little wiki fiefdoms) might notice - or care, there's a bigger issue to consider.

What gives this guy the right to say "OK this whole mess will be closed for X number of days"? While it is traditionally his "baby", he effectively gifted it to the world. If he's going to spit his dummy and take it back just because of a little local politics in one small part (the USA is only 5% of the world's population) of the internet, that doesn't bode well for how he'd react if the Wiki mafia (i.e. the editors) decided to go in a direction that he, personally, disagreed with.

If the guy genuinely believed in freedom he'd find another way to demonstrate his political leanings. Causing (some small) inconveniences to other people who have may not have even heard of SOPA, probably have no understanding of it, definitely have no influence over it's passing and ultimately have bigger things to worry about, strikes me as a childish act - and one that could set a precedent with some unintended consequences.

I'll be waiting

> The new tablet's key feature is expected to be a 2048 x 1536 display

Not for the iPad but for the new generation of lappies that (hopefully) it will spawn. All with decent resolution screens to match the marketing spec that the iPad3 will set. Even if you need a magnifying glass to get the full benefit from them.

And then what?

Once CERN does announce its discovery of the Higgs - either soon or at some time in the future, what do all the researchers do after that?

Do all the physicists just pack up their bags, have the Big Bang of all leaving parties and wend their various ways, or do they scramble to come up with a new theory in order to secure future funding to keep themselves and their teams in employment.

Discovering a new fundamental particle is all very nice: don't get me wrong. But this seems to be the final part of the Standard Model. After it's been caught I can just imagine all the non particle-physicists saying "OK, they'd got THE ANSWER, now we need loads of megabucks to continue our work in our field, since these guys have now finished doing their stuff."

Lock the catflap, but leave the door open

I can appreciate the film industry doesn't want people making illicit copies of it's sequels, prequels, remakes, derivative works and any actual original films that it may make. However, surely the biggest hole in the "we mustn't let customers copy films" strategy is letting people have the DVDs and Bluray discs in their houses, while never knowing what other media copying equipment they may have?

Looking at the Lovefilm rental offerings, it seems that the average punter still has far greater access to the physical media than they do to downloaded material (3 discs per month, compared to 2 hours of download time) and therefore this represents a much bigger threat/opportunity for naughty people to indulge in a spot of copying than trying to secure the online viewing process?

But then again, this is the film industry we're talking about so it's futile to expect rational thought or a considered strategy from them.

alibaba and friends

People who frequent the chinese online bazaars and exporters will have seen many instances of Android tablets available to UK buyers for < 100 USD (plus whatever VAT/import duty you get dinged with)

Just how you'd deal with a warranty claim could be a show-stopper and they don't seem to be A4, but you can definitely get 'em shipped here for not very much, if low prices are your biggest motivation.

And what do you find there?

When you get to the edge of the 'bubble' is there a large sign saying "You are now leaving the Solar System. Only space probes travelling to other stars may go beyond this point. Please have your papers ready for security. You are not permitted to carry the following items ..."

More interesting: what language is it written in?

So, nothing for the illegal access?

The article explains that the sums awarded were for the losses the victim sustained as a result of the access to his records - but no mention is made of any award as a consequence of the unauthorised access itself.

So if you or I had our medical records downloaded (by a partner, stalker, nosey bugger or just randomly), but we didn't suffer any losses as a result, this story doesn't sound like we'd be eligible for any remuneration.

It would be interesting to know if the person who accessed this information has been prosecuted and punished for their acts.

One vital piece of information

> questioning more than 5,000

As well as knowing how many people they *did* survey, we need to be told how many declined to take part. If they had to approach (say) 50,000 to get their self-selecting sample that tells us that 90% of people are more guarded and careful about their personal information than want to discuss it with researchers - or potential scammers: there's little to distinguish them when they're "n the field".

That would tend to put a more conservative slant on the results - though by how much is impossible to say. But possibly enough to make a lot of the results less, or very, insignificant as a result. Without that information we can't form an opinion on their results.

In response:

57 20 66 68 20 67 72 6f 6e 70 66 68 20 72 67 76

66 27 6e 20 51 20 46 42 72 20 72 6b 68 70 6e 67

79 6f 2c 72 71 20 72 62 61 66 67 27 7a 20 6e 72

20 61 67 76 6a 20 79 76 20 79 68 65 0a 61 00 00

ha ha!

Though you have to ask ...

Who's the bigger idiot, the one who puts their life on TV or the one who watches it?

Just missing one feature ...

... it doesn't appear to contain a TV tuner.

Though I suppose if someone was to go into pedant mode (on El Reg, surely not) and analyse the Latin root of the phrase the ability to receive TV signals could be argued to be superfluous. Having said that, both my (real) TV and my DM run on Linux - so calling this tablet/media-player a TV is rather misleading

Meanwhile, Hollywood breathes a sigh of relief

Electric cars could mark the end of one of the film industries most over-used cliches. Can you imagine a car chase (in electric cars !!! ) or gunfight where one (or preferably all) the vehicles involved don't catch fire or explode at the slightest provocation?

At least this will save the FX people from having to come up with an even more unlikely source for artificial excitement and story-rescuing spectacular scenes. Though it may mean some script rewriting if the resultant explosions (and now they can introduce sparks and lightning and maybe even electrocutions too) don't happen until a day or two after the event.

First: teach the teachers

Fine words indeed: let's just train a new generation of softies - why didn't anyone think of that before?

However, in order to train all these new games programmers 'n' all you first have to provide some qualified teaching staff. That would tend to imply that some people somewhere will have to be trained in the dark arts of writing software (and the darker arts of writing software that works properly).

BUT THEN you have to persuade these newly qualified and eminently employable people to not dash off and themselves take all the jobs that their freshly qualified pupils were meant to fill. Jobs that pay lots more than they'd get as teachers. Tricky.

It's still only guesswork

And now we have another guess.

From what I've read about CC in general, people take some data, guess what that meant, guess again about what caused it, guess whether the same thing will happen in the future, guess whether mankind did/could/will (or not) have any input into the circumstances and then finally extrapolate those guesses into what should (or not) be done.

Now, I do believe that the UK is, on the whole, seeing some more extreme weather than we're used to. And I am receptive to the idea that this is caused by more energy in the atmosphere and oceans. However, since nobody seems to have a model of the atmosphere and oceans that can estimate next week's weather to any degree of accuracy better than a coin-toss, I am not willing to believe that they can translate their guesses about what it all means into any solid, actionable and reliable plan - or tell us if one's needed.

<This is the point where "climate" people pile in and say that their science is not meteorology. Which is a bit like saying biology is not chemistry. They deal with the same basic elements, but at different levels. However to understand the former you *do* need to have a pretty clear understanding of how the latter works and the basic laws it obeys.>

A website for the non-googlers

OK. This site agglomerates a bunch of stuff about Surrey. Where the schools are, the few roads that the council can't weasel out of not gritting, and which parts of the county are really inner-city hell-holes and not the nice leafy 'burbs we all think of as Surrey.

Fair enough - except ISTM most or maybe all of this information is generally available already. Either from surrey.gov.uk - without the "i" -(which already has a helpful "moving to Surrey" section) or the various organisations that provide these services (we're not in 1995 any more - everyone's got a website). The only feature that this idea has is to bring it all into one (more) place, rather than having to search for it yourself, piecemeal.

So if this is all to help people who are less proficient at searching to find stuff then I suppose the question is: how will they find out about this new service?