Re: So instead of "We'll do you proud."
Bottom line.
ISP bought by "big 5" --> Turns to s**t.
16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"From an accounting perspective that's a really dumb thing to do, "
And sadly for a lot of senior managers that's the only perspective they actually have.
Multiply that by the above average tendency of hiring and promoting psychopathic personalities ("So what if there were better candidates. I got you to fire them or drove them out") and you have the current business climate of self congraulatory CxO types who (literally) see nothing wrong in the idea that their profits should not be taxed anywhere.
Oh look I think someone's been doing embedded systems programming in Javascript.
I'm guessing some fresh clueless graduate at some coding sweatshop in a 3rd s**thole.
What could possibly go wrong with that plan?
The only way this starts to get fixed is if people start switching ISP's as a result.
Otherwise it's the classic computer mfg problem.
performance << design spec
Identify faults.
Fix faults
Issue upgrades/ workrounds
Obviously the usual suspects of digital slowness are not going to be much use, but I'll presume their tech has a bunch of speed sapping pathologies of its own.
IOW D-Wave better get their collective finger out.
"Why does Boeing even exist! It's not like they DO anything. How hard can it be to build planes with functioning batteries. My iPhone has one and it doesn't burn at all. Pretty clear that they knowingly cut corners and put lives in danger in search for excessive profit made on the back of exploited proletarians, quite a bit of which is anyway coming from taxpayers: subsidies and ruinously expensive contracts that the military-cretinous complex thinks it wants to gift itself. And now the bureaucrats and their immense oracles of deep knowledge have to be called in to check it AGAIN - for the Nth time. Does Boeing think these people are available on call? It's outrageous."
Oops.
Deeply bonkers tone + TOTC icon --> internet satire.
I think.
"So what? The average PCB track is about a third of the thickness of a human hair!"
I think not.
Last time I checked the average human hair is 2 thou or 50 micrometres wide.
The usual width for a PCB data track is 75 micrometres.
Dropping standard PCB widths that far would cause a massive amount of trouble in the PCB industry.
Yes it's an anorak.
"Its commendable that people are trying to develop blood-glucose readers that don't involve extracting your own blood, though."
It's tougher than it looks.
I came across an old "Elektor" magazine from the 70's (among a pile of Dutch magazines) which talked about a huge clumpy thing that you kissed because the blood vessels were thinnest in the lips.
The amount of blood needed seems to have gone down but no one seems to be able to crack the blood glucose measurement at a reasonable price/speed/nafness factor. I thought it'd be a something you could clip on the earlobe and read from the blood optically.
As reported by el Reg.
Google is taking OTS tech and stitching it together. ETH have developed a whole new process for this.
The problem with the OTS tech is it's frankly too damm big. It wastes volume and mass on thick substrates that this application does not need.
AIUI this thing will sit "unobtrusively" on your eyeball all day as an early warning/monitoring system. Anything else makes it as cumbersome as present solutions.
My bet is that chip will add significant weight and you will feel it hanging off whatever 'ball it's laid on.
"Well, for one, you've got pakistan and india pointing nukes at each-other. Pakistan has supposedly been developing *battlefield* nuclear weapons. Not strategic ICBMs, not tactical missiles, but battlefield nuclear artillery, that would be under the command of junior officers."
I hate to worry you but such things were available to the US since about the late 1950's.
I'd expect the Russians to have developed them as well as they would certainly have the capability to do so.
The question has been is broadband (or cable TV provided equivalent) "common carrier" like a phone line or postal service, or not.
If it is then everything gets a chance to use the service, regardless of content. Flipside is the carriers are not responsible for any content sent down the system.
But it seems the FCC have been treating the broadband suppliers as being responsible.
so broadband <> common carrier <> neutrality required.
OTOH you also see Google backing this idea of neutrality, yet their network (which most people don't seem to realize even exists) seems to either carry or generate 40% of all internet traffic.
Why is this concept so f**king difficult to grasp?
infrastructure --> big investment --> high barriers to entry --> prone to monopoly (or at least oligopoly) --> ways to extort monetise captive market.
Let's see if the appeal clears things up.
"They never had senior management or shareholders, it was just a small operation with under 150 clients (most lifetime) and less than $1k/month in actual recurring income. They only had a total of 3 hosting servers, one of which (the biggest) was used just for the lifetime clients. It never got off the ground enough and was never something that was intended to be a scam. There just wasn't enough recurring income/profit to pay for the expenses."
Ever wondered why people hire accountants?
A competent accountant could have told them it was not going to work (or at least not on the scale of their operation or the fact most of the customers had that deal) before it got that far and they might still be in business.
Lifetime support + recurring costs (which may rise) --> perpetual motion machine.
"You won't get useful amounts of energy from the cosmic microwave background,"
True.
The background microwave "noise" provided by the fog of mobile phone towers in most parts of the developed world should be quite adequate for a little NFC system.
The definition of "remote" reading in this context is likely to be <1m
But the tech to make it flexible enough to go on a contact lens is staggering.
Of course for those HUD contact lenses some people will have to learn to put contacts in in the first place.
Which looks a bit nasty to me.
"The bigger questino is for the MOD to answer - can they genuinely say that recruitment was going to cost them £1.3 billion over 10 years...if so that is outrageous."
Easy.
Like every other MoD (according to the MoD at least) system their requirements are totally unique and completely unsolvable by any sort of off the shelf package.
And then of course there are those 23000 odd procurement bods in Bristol. You've got to wonder how many of them had a hand writing the procurement document
And of course let's not forget the old £140k --> over 10 years ---> huge IT con-sultancy can be "trusted" to have the financial resources to handle a job that's so big.
Stir up this great big steaming pile and serve in large portions to the British taxpayer.
"EPS is negative, forward P/E >100, Price/Book >30, PEG >10 so, to be kind, it's overpriced regardless of what they sold last quarter. Both Apple and Ford are more stable investments with better financials and both currently pay dividends.
For the Tesla touters who would like to point out that Tesla is up 625% over the last 5 years, kindly note that Apple isn't far behind at 550% and Ford tops both at 635%."
Nice summation.
BTW is Ford on it's 2nd or 3rd US government bailout because they can't manage to make enough cars that USians want to own at prices they want to pay.
I forget.
"The facts are that three Tesla vehicle fires have been reported, all following a collision. So the [US] National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating whether there's a problem. It may find that there is and it may find that there isn't."
So I think the takeway fact from this is don't have a collision when you're in a vehicle.
Any vehicle.
Who saw that one coming?
"Nah. The highly skilled and extremely motivated folks at the TSA are all fully aware that *any* bomb has curly wires leading to the explosives and a red LED count-down display."
I think you've just given me an idea for my next screen saver.
Naturally all it does when it hits zero is to re cycle back to whatever it was set to.
"But this isn't really aimed at the typical Reg reader is it? This might be "noddy" stuff, but if all my friends and relatives actually understood and followed it I'd have a lot less of my life wasted cleaning up their infected laptops and explaining why they keep getting all these rude emails and need to cancel their credit card"
Correct.
I like the fact it does not require a)Squillions of £ of advertising and b) Several new laws and a Statutory Instrument (the Dark Lords favorite device) to implement.
People see the Mission Impossible antics but 99%of the time it's the simple (stupid) stuff that's not done that f**ks most people up.
"Ultimately it's not that big a deal if the PC's are never allowed on the internet (and restricted environments generally are not), and the multiple layers of firewalls are all configured properly."
Wasn't the "multiple layers of firewalls" not being configured properly that let McKinnon into the DoD?
And that was an organisation that make annoying people it's business.
"Migrating from XP to 7 makes sense when you are a MS-shop, but why IE8?
Why not use the chance to at least go to IE9 or later?"
Because you've probably bought the whole MS package and run all you server systems on IIS and your developers coded lots of MS specific stuff and now you can't get rid of the crap.
"Jedidiah, I am in the whitebox building business. The market share for highpower, upgradable computers is almost non-existent. The desktops people still do buy are smaller off-the-shelf units that they basically use to obsess over their Facebook & Twitter accounts and maybe do a little web browsing and email. Laptops outsell desktops and have for several years. People buy laptops from me just to sit them on a table and never move them just because they take up less space. "
One small point.
I'm a touch typist.
Most laptops have pretty rubbish keyboards for what I do.
And they always will have.