Posts by Peter 39

"reliance on global supply chains"

"... such an action would render the factories inoperable due to their reliance on global supply chains"

If China invades Taiwan, the global supply chain will be the least of the things rendering the plants inoperable.

Who expects Microsoft to test their stuff against Safari ??

Quite aside from the present legal arguments, Assange is in his present situation because he *probably* (based on information available) took advantage of at least one of the women with whom he associated during his time in Sweden.

Had he behaved differently he'd probably be a citizen of Sweden already.

As the old saying goes, "This is the screwing you get for the screwing you got"

Being a Mac developer in a primarily Windows zone, I chose to provide my own hardware. Sure - it cost a little but there was never any possibility of dispute about who owned what.

They cautioned me that I had to keep backups, which I did. And a darn sight better than the corporate IT folks. IIRC there were three 100%-loss events on PC's during my time. Disk failure plus unusable backup ! Good one, guys. I took care of my own and never lost anything.

Charger, or port ??

If EU mandates USB-C chargers - no issue.

But there's no good reason why EU should mandate that all DEVICES should be USB-C. That's what cables are for.

Trumpbook

No issue if "Facebook" decides to not publish. That's their call.

Given the lousy thumb-on-scale scheme to decide "what you want to see", seeing nothing would be an improvement.

codswallop

"Republicans, known for their fiscal conservatism..."

That was the case decades ago. Now it's alternate conservatism and profligacy depending upon the recipient(s). So a $1.7 trillion tax cut for companies and high-rollers is fine - no offset needed. But funding for laid-off workers got the axe Friday night.

Even the Trumpites are cr***ing themselves about this because they can see the disaster unfolding during the convention in a couple of weeks. What it means, of course, is that the GOP Senators have given up on T. If they thought he had a reasonable chance then money would be showering down like the balloons at the convention - but they won't be having that this year either.

The Great Trumpet has not yet sounded its last but it is most certainly off-key.

Surprised they're still in business. I used them for a while from the US and they hassled mightily about "verification".

And then a bit over a year ago they just shut down here. No advance notice. Just on the bike and away.

S'house way to run a company.

It's amazing that it's 2020 and we still have the same-old same-old whinging about iPhones.

These folks have been proven wrong for over a decade and still they blather. I guess they just can't read the financial reports. Lots of people have voted with their wallets. Many have bought some variety of Android phone, fewer but still a goodly number bought iPhones. And Apple has cornered almost all the profit in that business (about 80% last time I looked).

With the current massive unemployment in the US, all the companies will have an annus horribilis. The wonderful-Wall-Street-analyst isn't telling us anything that was not already bleedin' obvious. Anything to get clicks, I guess. Put "Apple" in the headline and get more - that's all it is. Just blather.

"Standard" and changeability

It's really funny when Brits talk about the ability to change and update standards, such as moving from the "old" microUSB to USB-C connector.

"No problem," we're told.

Then we point out the standards evolution of the BS 1363 Type G plug - and fall about laughing.

Seriously, it's well past time for UK to move to a transition. I might suggest that new dual outlets have one type G and Euro C and F sockets, with a fuse in the outlets to handle the ring-main characteristics of UK wiring.

Tom Lehrer

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun

No-compete restrictions are very limited in California but do operate at high levels in companies. No idea whether he was at that level or not. But Apple knows this law well and will have pegged it appropriately.

The more serious question is whether he took anything, *anything*, other than what was in his head. To do so is fatal in this environment. As is trying to recruit staff. No notebooks, no papers and certainly no electronic files of your designs. Your head is yours, and that's all.

You can do this "involuntary spinoff" thing in California but you have to be very, very careful.

A dull knife in the drawer. In private industry there is elasticity, as one poster rightly noted. But these scenarios are usually for salaried staff, not people billed by the hour. If that's your gig then bill only those hours you actually work.

Of course, he's doubly-screwed because his clearance now is worthless. Dumb move, dude.

Immelt was only the most recent in a long line of GE managers who got it wrong.

GE was running trans-Atlantic time-sharing in the late 1960's. It was worldwide in the early 70's (meaning US, western Europe, Australia, Japan and probably a couple of others I've forgotten). The "Information Services Business Division" used email for its daily business from the early 70's - long before it was legally permitted to offer it as a service to others.

Some observant folks might have noticed that GE's class A (in old-speak) IP block is 3.xxx.xxx.xxx. That's right - the first one allocated (0, 1 and 2 were reserved). By contrast, Apple's is "17" and Microsoft is "92".

We GE folks were there in the early days and helped build it all. Then crass, stupid management pissed it all away. Immelt was not the worst, just the most recent.

Open ? Shmopen

"Facebook is now – finally – being open about ..."

Pure BS. They might be more "open" than before but anyone who thinks that this is 100% transparency needs to get a brain transplant.

"Leaker"? No !

"Comey admitted he became a leaker – giving his notes to a friend to pass to journalists"

This is NOT a leak. Comey was a party to the conversation and is entitled to report it however he wants (excluding obvious exception such as classified info, or legal advice, etc that don't apply here).

If it had been someone else's conversation that he'd heard then that would be a leak. But if it's his own then he owns it (jointly with Trump, I guess) and he's free to report it.

SSDD - users pay, carriers save

I'm sure the carriers want to push broadcast. That'll save them shedloads in infrastructure at high-demand areas (such as sporting events).

But punters will still be charged full whack for each byte.

the way it was ...

Back in the day (late 70's) BA had a cool fully auto-land system. It was on BAC-111 and maybe some others, although not heavies. This was a 100% hands-off landing, all the way.

Worked great through testing and acceptance and then one day the full-thick fog reduced visibility to not much more than your nose. But BA could land, and then ... LHR had to send out a blinky "follow-me" to lead him to the gate. Poor pilot could not even see the ground in order to taxi.

"The Internet"

There were certainly networks available before "the Internet" and it's often difficult to differentiate the two.

Most here think of "the Internet", lately retitled "the internet" as the descendant of the ARPA/DARPAnet which was certainly available in the 80's but only for non-commercial access. CompuServe wasn't part of that in those days, but used other networks AFAIK (as did many other services, including AOL).

bollocks

Verizon conveniently fails to note that it is an ISP and not a transit service (although it may do some of that).

So the Netflix traffic it receives is destined for its own end users, who have paid for the delivery all the way through Verizon's network. The fluff about asymmetry is just that - fluff.

source code actually quite useful

In one gig, access to the networking source was absolutely crucial to be able to build in-kernel network plugins. To say nothing of how different the packet handling was from the STREAMS code in classic Mac OS.

In another, we were building custom kernels with added security. Some of which Apple has incorporated (our changes went back to Apple under the open-source rules).

The disinterest might be widespread but it's far from total.

Glad to see this

I am very pleased to see that this is becoming more common in companies. When dealing with security issues and expenditures, the bean-counters frequently reduced or eliminated security aspects of IT budget proposals. They saw it as a dead expense, completely ignoring the fact that what they were doing was self-insuring the company.

Once cyber insurance becomes commonplace, IT managers will have a way to push back against those cuts by arguing that spending on security will recede the price of insurance. Just as installing better fire protection will cut those premiums significantly.

Cyber insurance should be mandatory for businesses dealing with customer data (which is most of them) just as liability cover is required for your car. You aren't required to have full cover but you should at least have cover for customers. Why don't we have that yet ??

Yawn

Having had my account info swiped a couple of years ago while I was on a short visit to Europe, I have never been amazed at the level of pwnage going on at Skype.

If MS thinks that this is a good way to deal with mobile and social media then it will confirm all that they've done with killing the PC business.

Any company that handles web pages in the kernel deserves all this problem, and more.

Apple gets cluestick

I expect that Apple is actually rather appreciative of Swift's letter.

It was clear right from the start that this was a bad decision on *someone's* part but Apple could reverse it without losing face. But after Swift's letter, they can claim that they were caused to seriously reconsider the [inexplicably poor] decision. And everyone will be happy.

Had this kept going - without Swift's involvement - then it would have become a PR disaster for Apple. They don't do this often but this is a doozy.

record companies

“I just bought an album on iTunes: how much of that money goes to tax havens and how much is taxed in Australia?”

For the answer to this - they'll have to haul in the record companies. Apple takes a 30% cut but pays all the sales cost, delivery, billing etc. The 70% for the record companies stays mostly with them - the artists don't see much.

stupidity calcified

(1)Microsoft has been doing this make-it-faster-by-putting-it-in-the-kernel thing for twenty years.

Nothing has changed, nor will it change. The only way for MS to stop it is to isolate Windows into a VM on top of some non-Windows OS.

For if it is Windows, see (1)

So the new Samsung S6 is smoking' Apple.

Unfortunately for BGR, that's "smoking' " in a less-than-good way. I guess that BGR didn't take time to read the reports that the Snapdragon was way-too-hot and that Sam had settled on a less-capable-but-cooler substitute.

Ahh, facts. Such pesky things.

Amazon is not "Silicon Valley"

"The current US administration has been remarkably generous to Silicon Valley. Obama's administration treats Big Tech as generously as Bush's treated Big Oil. Google staffers can be found at all levels of this administration, and Google is a significant campaign funding contributor.

It's not just Google. The Department of Justice handed Amazon a very favourable settlement in its "price fixing" case against publishers. The order handed Amazon something very valuable: a retail monopoly (technically, a "monopsony")."

Uh, no. It gave Silicon Valley, Apple to be specific, a raw deal. And this was to the benefit, as you say, of Amazon which hails from Washington state. Your premise might be correct but your example contradicts it.

With the gender-selection in China (and some other countries) there are lots more men than women.

She knows that she will be able to find a husband with more common sense.

cobblers

Having your everyday network traffic on the same network as the POS systems makes as much sense as giving a spare key to the safe with the contract cleaning crew. In every store.

SIMMs

I've read that a contributing factor leading to soldered-on memory is that there aren't any SIMMs available for the memory that Apple is using here.

CurrentC from MCX has several "issues".

1. you have to provide direct access to your bank account, via either direct debit (via ACH transactions) or debit card info

2. you have to give them your SSN (social security number) and driver license info

All this goes into the database-in-the-cloud and makes an extremely juicy target for identity theft. Everything you want all in one spot !

With a credit card there are at least some consumer protections. With CurrentC/MCX there are none. It's a disaster in slow motion.

>As for the man currently occupying the corner office in Redmond,

>Satya Nadella – who kicked off his tenure as CEO by announcing

>18,000 layoffs – Ballmer told Vanity Fair, "I am giving him space."

How considerate. Given the task facing Nadella, a reasonable person would instead have given him a shovel. A big one.