* Posts by Tom 38

4341 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2009

Micro Anvika Stratford goes titsup - 2012 Games 'boom fell flat'

Tom 38

Re: Where the hell is it?

In the article it says it was a Samsung branded store, which I think was outside on the street, 'ground floor' level (really first floor), next to M&S.

Tom 38

Re: Another Olympic leech goes down..

As a resident of Stratford - present throughout the games - I can assure you that the modern Olympics are solely about money, and only corporate money at that. To get to the Olympic Park, you have to walk right through the Temple of Mammon at Westfield and give sacrifices to the great god.

All foot traffic was routed to keep those offered to Mammon within the constraints of Westfield and the Olympic Park, so almost no-one who went to 'Stratford' to see the Olympics even crossed the road into Stratford proper.

The Temple itself is a wonderful creation - all the shops you ever wanted to go to, but with only half the space to have the stuff you actually wanted. There is a Borders, but it is tiny compared to other Borders outside of Westfield. Ditto HMV, PC World, M&S, John Lewis, Waitrose (calling that a Waitrose is a joke). I imagine space in the Temple is at a premium, and comes at a premium cost, which is passed on to us in terms of lack of choice and higher prices.

Having said all that, Micro Anvika is a company preparing to go bust. They were the Kings of Tottenham Court Road, selling last years remaindered kit at next years prices to anyone they could tempt.

They don't sell anything you can't get elsewhere - like the PC World store 100 yards away in Westfield - or online for cheaper, so I'm not surprised they didn't sell much during the Olympics. Plus, the place is ridiculously situated to buy high value large items - most MA employees I saw around Westfield were about a quarter of a mile away, standing by a customer, his kids and his new Samsung TV waiting for his wife to find her way there to pick the damn thing up.

Microsoft flashes fat mobe wallet, whispers: 'Just rub our hub'

Tom 38
Stop

I haven't seen an actual paper ticket inside London in over 10 years, except for the occasional tourist.

How bizarre, I've seen thousands of people using paper tickets in London. If you buy a rail travelcard, you currently cannot put this on Oyster. If your travelcard includes tube travel, then this is a paper ticket you have to put in and take out of every ticket gate you pass through,

If your travelcard is an annual purchase (usually on a company loan), this means putting a paper ticket through at least 880 ticket machines (4 a day, 220 work days). The ticket will normally give out after about 100 passes through, and be no longer machine readable, and you have to go to the train station, queue up to talk to the man and get another one.

Masses of people working in the city have tickets like this. I spend as little time as possible on the tube, but get on or off anywhere City and you are guaranteed to see a paper ticket used.

Tom 38
Headmaster

'accept' - to receive, especially with a consent, with favour, or with approval.

'except' - to exclude; to specify as being an exception

LONDON iPHONE 5 MADNESS: 'You must be CRAZY to buy Apple'

Tom 38
FAIL

Re: I've only once queued up at a shop before opening time to buy an item of limited quantity..

You used your real name on IRC?

Tom 38

One wonders why you don't get quite the same level of piss take at similar events for Xbox, PS3, even some games...

Eric Schmidt: Ha ha, NO Google maps app for iPhone 5

Tom 38

Re: Just Pissed

I am pissed at Apple for having me upload ios6 to my iPhone 4s and then lose google maps

Apple mind controlled you into installing the update did they?

Tom 38

Re: Hmm...

He was on the board then because Apple and Google were best friends back then, with Google not interfering in anything Apple did. Apple launched a phone, then shortly afterwards Google bought a phone OS in development, secretly developed a phone and launched it. At this point, Google and Apple stopped being friends, and became frenemies.

Now, even the veneer of friendship that is the frenemy has gone, they flat out don't like each other now, no hiding it.

Hitachi claims glass data storage will last millions of years

Tom 38
Headmaster

Re: well.. a 100Million years from now..

A porn cache is a subset of porn from your porn stash that you keep on hand for low latency access.

Scientists: 'Castration is the key to a longer life'

Tom 38

Balls

This piece is missing the other important detail that whilst this longevity has been documented in a group of castrated Korean monks, there have been many studies on castrati, which document no longevity benefits to losing your scratchings.

Castrati lived fairly normal lives to any other singer - hence there is a comparable control group -whilst Korean monks inhabited a different sector of society to regular workers.

Man City drags Big Data into Big Football

Tom 38
Facepalm

Asay is a Gooner

Now everything makes sense.

Google's Android celebrates fourth birthday

Tom 38
FAIL

Re: It's impressive

Agreed, but many probably forget (or don't even know) that Apple's iOS is based on BSD.

That is because it's not. It reuses certain components from BSD (specifically FreeBSD), but the OS is not and never has been based on BSD.

As an example, one of the things that is reused is part of the network stack. All versions of Windows also re-use the same parts of the same network stack, is Windows based on BSD?

Mars rover Curiosity gets ready to blast its first rock

Tom 38
Headmaster

Re: Language, language!

We give "the Earth" a definite article because 'earth' is a word with many meanings, and so in a sentence the definite article is required to impart the gravitas - there is earth everywhere, but of the Earth, there is only one.

This isn't required with Mars - there is only one Mars (unless you got a Mars Duo) - so it is fine to say "The rover drove across Mars".

You wouldn't say "The rover drove across the London" or "The rover drove across the France". You would say "The rover drove across the UK" because 'UK' is a plural collection, but you wouldn't say "The rover drove across the England".

Tom 38

You get better luminosity information per bit with greyscale than you do with colour, which is why all photos from Curiosity are greyscale, apart from the ones from MAHLI, which is intended to only be used in specialised scenarios where colour is important.

Publishers, Apple bend over for EU eBooks probe

Tom 38

I'm not sure the "bad for the author" thing holds up though does it, wouldn't an author get paid per book sold, a fixed bit of cash worked out in advance "we'll pay you £1 for the first 100k books then 50p for each book sold up to 250k and then 10p per book after 500k" for instance?

Not if Amazon are setting the prices, in which case they are free to discount the

This quote from a publisher:

When ebooks started, we were pricing ebooks at the same price as the print book, and Amazon was selling them all for $9.99. So they were losing like $3-$4 per book. And they weren’t doing it simply to move Kindles, since they don’t actually make any money on the Kindle unit sales. Now with the “agency model” we get to set the ebook price and Amazon simply takes 30% of that. source

The agency model is the one that Apple et al are getting sued for. Before the agency model came along, Amazon bought ebooks wholesale, and sold them as a loss leader:

So for instance, for a new e-book, let's say the list price was around $24.99. Amazon paid publishers $12.50 per copy, but then turned around and sold the e-book for $9.99. They took a loss on e-book copies to help sell Kindles and to build a huge early lead in the e-book market.

Take that $24.99 list price. Let's say the e-book would have sold for $9.99 at Amazon in the old days but now the publisher charges the consumer $12.99:

Wholesale model e-book:

Publisher: $12.50 (roughly 50 percent of $24.99 hardcover retail price)

Amazon: - $2.50 (selling at $9.99)

Agency model e-book:

Publisher: $9.09 (70 percent of $12.99)

E-bookseller: $3.90 (30 percent of $12.99)

This wasn't a story of money-grubbing publishers trying to stick it to consumers. They actually left money on the table.

The result: The e-book marketplace competition that publishers wanted began to take place. Rather than competing on price, e-book sellers like Apple, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and others have, up until now, mainly been competing on user experience. source

Amazon subsidize all their ebooks sold under the wholesale model by selling related kit, and generally encouraging people to buy stuff from Amazon. Because they, in effect, are not competing means that there is no effective competition in the ebook marketplace. The only way to get an ebook would be from Amazon.

I don't agree with 'favoured nation' status, that seems like anti competition bullshit to me, but allowing Amazon to scoop up all the ebook market by default would be bad, I feel. The agency model, without 'favoured nations', allows all publishers and sellers to behave fairly, where as with that clause, the sellers are protected against price wars against other sellers, with the publishers taking the hit if a non favoured seller lowers their prices below the favoured seller.

If Amazon then wanted to compete on price, they could only do so by reducing their cut, discounting the cost to consumer out of their cut, and publishers have a measure of reliability about what they will receive. They would still be able to undercut other stores by selling as a loss leader, but they wouldn't be able to screw the publisher.

iPhone 5 sleuth work points to $199 component costs

Tom 38

Re: "any large-scale product that isn't making about 50% markup…"

I wouldn't expect Apple to sell the iPad or iPhone as a loss leader, but they could definitely sell it for significantly less and still rake in cash hand over fist.

Or they could sell it for what they currently do and make billions and billions. One of these approaches is more appealing to shareholders…

Besides, I thought people didn't buy Apple for ideological reasons, reducing the price wouldn't make those people buy.

Ten backpacks for tech-heads

Tom 38
Headmaster

CompuDay Photo 250 is a seriously snazzy backpack and for under £50

Technically, "£50" is not "under £50"

UK.gov squatting on £1bn IPv4 motherlode

Tom 38

Re: The US

There is no requirement for you to make allocated addresses routable, you are allowed to use them for non-routable segments. Just like DWP are doing.

Tom 38

Re: How do you flog addresses?

I'd imagine they'd ask Nortel's administrator.

Romanians plead guilty to credit card hack on US Subway shops

Tom 38

Re: Numerous reason to use credit cards

Paying with cash is instant, so I'm impressed that you can securely exchange credit card details faster than 'instantly'.

Tom 38
Unhappy

Subway should be convicted of sandwich fraud

Or maybe I'm just bitter that $5 footlong == £5 footlong.

Mobile phones still failing to kill people – Nordic scientists

Tom 38

Re: I want to see an experiment

They would probably feel the Faraday cage is "amplifying other signals" and get physical symptoms in both cases.

Physical symptoms are not necessarily due to any underlying condition, the mind can convince the body to produce all kinds of bizarre symptoms.

NASA working on faster-than-light drive capable of WARP TEN

Tom 38

Re: Interesting article

You've never seen the classic sci-fi film 'Primer', where internal consistency disappears about 10 minutes in, and you either come out of the theatre thinking "wow, what an amazing film" or drooling and gurgling while your brain rearranges itself.

Actually there's a 3rd option, where I watched it, lots of people left after half an hour, they just couldn't (or wouldn't) keep up!

There's an obligatory xkcd that explains plot time lines of various movies, "Primer" is the punchline.

Apple forecast to sell 8m iPhone 5s next weekend

Tom 38

Re: What irks me...

If Apple could make they twice as quickly I'm certain they would - even then they sold out in the first hour or two - so twice as many may have lasted 3-4 hours...?

Exactly - if they could make them twice as quickly without spending a fortune on being able to make them twice as quickly, they would.

Tom 38

Re: More caution...

I know lots of people with iphone 3GS and 4 who did not bother with a 4S (or a 4, in the case of the 3GS), and have been sitting on unsubsidised, month to month contracts waiting for a phone they want to upgrade to to be launched.

I think it would be nuts to change from a 4S to a 5.

The perfect CRIME? New HTTPS web hijack attack explained

Tom 38
Joke

Re: Or...

I'm British, so a "nonce" will always be a man that fucks children. Lets keep this discussion civil ;)

Tom 38

Re: Or...

Are you sure you understand how authentication works? HTTP is stateless, and without presenting authentication tokens on each request, like basic auth, or presenting a client certificate, the browser must be presented with and return an authorization token, usually a session cookie.

(Sidenote, its only authentication if you are presenting your credentials; if it is just allowing you access, it is an authorization token. An 'authentication cookie' would be a cookie with your username and password in it)

I need my bank to be secure, and that uses cookies. Unless service providers start issuing me with client certificates for authentication, that will always be the case - there is no other way for me to authenticate and subsequently be authorized for future requests.

I also think this behaviour could be easily mitigated by browsers inserting a different random arbitrary token into each request. This extra data would make it significantly harder to determine whether compression changes occurred due to the requested filename matching the session key.

Apple 'hasn't really run out of iPhone 5s AT ALL'

Tom 38

Re: LOL

They got the cash reserves because they don't do moron things like sit on stock for 3 weeks so you can produce enough shiny for launch date, and instead spread sales over several months.

I'm amazed some of you can tie your shoes, this is simple supply chain 101.

Tom 38
FAIL

Re: LOL

Apple contract manufacturing out, and can build a certain number per week - lets say 10 million - which they can then ship out worldwide.

When they launch a new phone, this means the design has gone to the manufacturer, and they are assembling them as fast as they can. Production continues at 10 million a week, shipping new containers full of phones every week.

After 3 weeks, they have enough stock arriving in markets to start selling them, whilst still churning em out at the factory. They have initial orders of 50M, and 20M stock, with 10M new units arriving each week.

This means they immediately sell out, with a backlog of 3 weeks.

Your contention is that they could avoid this "if they wanted to". To avoid this, they would need twice as much manufacturing capacity, which would be very costly, and after the initial rush of orders, they would not need anywhere near as much capacity.

Therefore, they would have to spend an exorbitant amount of money in order to speed delivery to the early users by 2-3 weeks, and then have that expensive manufacturing capacity lie fallow until the next refresh. Plus, as has been pointed out several times, there is the cachet of desirability indicated by stock selling out.

So yes, entirely in their hands, except they aren't morons who would bankrupt the company building unnecessary capacity.

Tom 38

Team Register?

No-one willing to put their name to this pile of shite?

Apple's first batch of iPhone 5 preorders sold out in an hour

Tom 38

Re: Gee...

Unless you wanted a blue one, in which case you had to wait for the supply chain to ramp up. Oh snap.

Tom 38

Re: Every time

But EVERY TIME they release and iphone it happens and you would have thought they would have learnt by now how many they need to produce.

By your logic, they should delay the launch until they have produced enough inventory to cover all potential sales of the phone, sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock whilst it depreciates in value and consumers buy competitors phones.

They announce as soon as they have the supply chain in place to produce a steady stream of phones. Anything else would be stupid.

Google defends drowning Acer's newborn Alibaba Linux mobe

Tom 38

Re: Good Thing

Why is it in consumers interest that the only OS available for phones in Asia is that delivered by an ad broker?

People so ingrained to "Apple = EVIL, Google = GOOD" that when something comes up to contradict that, they have to pervert it so that it is a positive.

Google shutting down competition is not good for consumers. You've argued long enough that Apple shutting down competition is not good for consumers, so why when Google do it is it "in consumers interests"?

Apple admits iCloud 'unacceptable', vows to not go titsup again

Tom 38
FAIL

Stats fail

You are assuming that the alleged 1.1% of users affected are distributed evenly throughout the world. If the fault affected users in specific geographical locations, then the probability that a sample of 4 people from that area would all be affected would actually be more likely.

It's not really a fail though, all journos make the same mistake with statistics.

Apple threatens to ruin peace worldwide with voice-controlled iMacs

Tom 38

Re: ARRRRRGH!

The novel part of this patent is having your phone digitize your voice, transmit it to a central server which determines what you said, determines actions, and then sends them to a different device in order to operate it.

That's what the youtube video shows is it?

PS: You're foaming a bit at the mouth.

4K LCD TV output to outstrip OLED production

Tom 38

Id buy a 4k TV set - seems like the best way to do simple polarized 'full def' 1080p 3D content.

NASA reports first sighting of dry ice Martian snowfalls

Tom 38
Stop

Re: Cool man, real cool

Mars + Ceres != enough gravity to stop the atmosphere boiling away

Tom 38
Joke

Re: [BOO-HISS]

Are Martian snow angles the same as Earth snow angles>?

Don't be obtuse.

Osborne hands £80m tax break to punters drilling in 'old' oil, gas fields

Tom 38

Re: Oh dear

It makes fields that were no longer profitable to operate profitably again.

This allows oil to be extracted from those fields.

This increases the amount of oil produced, which increases tax revenue from oil.

This requires more people to be employed to extract that oil, decreasing unemployment and increasing tax revenues.

Having more people in work means that they have more disposable income, which means that more money is spent in the economy, which in turn allows more people to be hired, and again, increases tax revenues.

Not exactly rocket science is it?

Boffin named Jubb to fire whopping hybrid thruster

Tom 38
Thumb Up

That tache is incredible.

The iPHONE 5 UNDERMINES western DEMOCRACY: 5 reasons why

Tom 38
Alert

If Apple stopped making phones

What would Obviously! do all day?

This is his "GO TIME". He's been prepping for weeks for the non stop rush of comments he needs to post about iphones, and why no-one cares about them. He really doesn't care about them, which is why he posts every 3rd comment in an iphone discussion.

I've given up worrying about which phone is best, but watching some self destruct in indignation at the launch of a phone he doesn't like is comedy goldmine, if a little callous.

Dutch unleash intelligent robot bins: No ID, no rubbish

Tom 38

Re: Reducing truck mile?

Because you don't understand the system. You don't get one bin per household, you get a communal bin, which probably serves 100-200 households. You put your rubbish in there, how much you put in is calculated, which you are billed for. When any of the bins are close to full, that location is added to the day route of one truck for the next day.

Communal garbage collection is quite common on the continent, because that is the best way to do it.

Google skids car insurance comparison engine onto rivals' lawn

Tom 38

Re: Have used...

I still remember going to the local insurance broker, who did all that stuff for you, found the cheapest cover going, and hand filled in your insurance certificate whilst you waited. I don't miss their 15% cut.

HTC's 4G patent beef could get iPhone 5 BANNED in US

Tom 38
Go

Everyone give Obviously! a break

The launch of a new iPhone is deeply traumatic time to young Obviously!. He has to endure pages upon pages of iPhone reviews, each one has to be devoured before he can go to the comments section and let his wisdom guide the poor deluded saps who are in need of his teachings.

Sometimes however, the relentless barrage of iPhone stories is too much for young Obviously!. In times like this, a little rage is likely to pop out, which is fair enough really. Without Obviously!, we would all be in thrall to the obscenity that is the iPhone. You malicious down voters need to accept the Word of Obviously! into your hearts, and start anew on the path to Androidiness.

Report card

Implying iPhone owners are sub-human: 1 point

Implying iPhone owners "buy it for the status": 1 point

Keyword bingo: "Slackle", "Fandroid", "iHater", "idiotPhone": 1 point each

Implying iPhone owners are idiots: 1 point

Obviously! rage rating: 7

Tom 38

Re: You can say Apple doesn't deserve this ..

Steve, you're embarrassing yourself, this isn't about facts. Get with the program, start dishing out some Apple hate, or those downvotes will continue.

Samsung accused of sex discrimination in China plant

Tom 38
Mushroom

Re: typical for android

t wasn't that long ago there were threats of mass suicides at Foxconn due to the working conditions.t wasn't that long ago there were threats of mass suicides at Foxconn due to the working conditions.

I remember it well, 4,000 Foxconn workers up on the roof chanting "48 hr weeks or we jump"…

Or was it 2010, when 14 Foxconn employees (out of 930,000) bought the big ticket? For amateur statisticians out there, that is a rate of 1.5 suicides per 100,000 people for Foxconn, against the national average of 20 suicides per 100,000 people in the general population.

But no, you keep on peddling your red top headline history rewriting. All Foxconn workers get beaten with iPhone prototypes and then jump off tall buildings. Much better story.

Dredd movie review

Tom 38

Re: This ain't Dredd

Rob fucking Schneider

I quite like the talented Mr Schneider, although not in this film. I think this says more about me than anything else though.

Tom 38

Re: Optional

Watch it with 2D specs

WinPhone 8 preview SDK limited to established developers

Tom 38

Re: Way to go.....

<tinfoilhat>Its hard to prove it when they post AC</tinfoilhat>

Judge: Apple not liable for dropped, broken iPhone screens

Tom 38

Re: Frackin MORON JUDGE!

And, in case anyone wants to know, I have in anger at phone wonkiness hurled across the room TWO of my previous SAMSUNG phones, one multimedia flip phone from 2007, and my SAMSUNG Moment, from 2009. In both cases they had minor or non-annoying dents or scratches, and in neither case did the plastic shatter, peel, delaminate, buckle, warp, pop out, or otherwise deform in a way to make me regret hurling them.

You are G.W. Bush and I claim my $100.