Posts by henchan

After all, returning Founder as Temporary CEO worked out very well for Apple.

This is really the only solution . A leader is required. One with vision, that employees, investors and customers would get behind. Nobody of that callibre could stand to have BG driving from the back-seat. So they might as well bring him back to the front. Only one man needs to be convinced and the rest just falls into place. Perhaps Melinda could keep the whole Malaria / AIDS thing going on her own?

Re: Yeah, good luck.

I'd like to try that test track fun-ride this year. Do you know where to buy tickets?

Re: "the less someone knows about something the more they underestimate its difficulty."

I am sorry to hear that you have been disappointed by some of your previous contacts with most people. As a person myself, let me try to help, if I can. You can help me by correcting my misunderstandings too.

You start well by qualifying your strong assertion "engineering wise", yet you don't hold back with your punch line "a waste of time". In my experience most people tend to hear the conclusion more forcefully than the caveats. Especially when similar language might have hurt them in their own lives. Suggested wording: "not cost-justified given present pricing of externalities". But, what is that you say: "engineers are trained to design closed systems, and externalities are zero, engineering-wise"? And there is your other problem. You hear harsh words of rejection (see above) but draw the wrong conclusions. I speculate that most people might reckon 'engineering-wise' is necessary but not sufficient to decide how to proceed with systems that are unbounded or, put another that they are part of and cannot escape from. Suggested action: take it back on yourself. Most people are generally right. (Though paradoxically nearly every individual is an idiot in their own way). Help us to become even more right by giving your valuable wisdom, while not assuming our general ignorance.

Re: Ping Time

> I've a workmate that does that. It's worse than no communication at all.

A female one? If I remember correctly, in that short story the (male) scientists got the idea from observing a pair of women talking.

Re: There are two reasons why everyone switched to Google

Don't forget speed. Google themselves still deem it the most important "feature" of any application.

Speed was partly a corollary of uncluttered interface, I guess. But I remember the very first time I used Google. I understood web protocols, but I felt Google must be using some kind of voodoo to return relevant results in the very instant that I hit Return. Turns out it was mostly down to Ajax and their distributed back-end, which were innovations at the time.

Re: Two different planes of existence

Agreed, but in this respect at least, it is better here. Under their parents' observation, from around the age of three or four Japanese children tend to be allowed to use "handihanabi" - hand held fireworks that are a little less hot but more colourful than British sparklers. I was introduced to the soldering iron cafe through my eight year old daughter's (sadly) fleeting interest at Tokyo's Make07.

On a slightly related note, I was ashamed when I brought my children to the UK, to be required to leave a room full of toddlers because I had not been vetted. Social acceptance of default distrust disgusted me. It had apparently arisen during my absence and is thankfully not yet present in Japan.

Re: Why is it common in Japan?

The higher number of older people who are disproportionately asset rich might have something to do with it. Japanese police are not generally corruptible in the way suggested here. Organised crime being traditionally another matter. However phone fraud is not mainstream Yakuza business.

With Raku-Raku, Fujitsu has perhaps the world's leading mobile phone brand for senior citizens. 20MM units sold in Japan, exports planned. Since they have developed this tech, a cynic might say it is not surprising that domestic phone fraud would be highlighted as a big problem in Fujitsu's marketing material.

Re: Edge cases"

Both the cause of and the solution to the Tragedy of the Commons is private ownership. Both 'sides' of this debate should try harder to see the other's perspective.

It would be helpful if Homer 1 would admit of just one example of a morally valid use case of Intellectual Monopoly, regardless of implementation issues. It is not necessary to admit all, or even most, but I think many people agree that creativity exists and should be able to confer market value - in principle at least. Last week, somebody argued to me that Tim Berners-Lee should not be getting credit for creating the WWW, since so much of that system was derived from pre-existing work. I feel this line of reasoning throws out the baby with the bathwater. And I am not even speaking about commercialisation here (TimBL eventually gave it away). Just the basic point that his creative input made the WWW a reality and without it we'd all have been so much the poorer.

Homer 1 makes some good points about implementation. If I understood Hooper correctly, the meta data size issue would be handled using links rather than accretion. Stripped metadata remains an issue though. Even if it's illegal, the law is moot when not enforceable. I have designed a metadata solution, but this post would become too long and off-topic to tell it. Also, I agree with Homer 1 that the current system of conferring legal monopoly is more bad than good. Wholesale change, not abolition.

I pay 3,500 yen / month for "unlimited" service from a Wimax-only (no 3G) router for a 24 month contract. My actual download speed tends to be around 25Mbps.

A bundled smart-phone and 4G service is typically in the 6,000 / month range (24 months).

Whether Wimax or LTE, people are mostly paying about $40/month for service - after accounting for device instalments. That service would also include 3G, which has 100% coverage, whereas 4G is not yet ubiquitous across all Japan. There is precious little incentive not to take the 4G on a new phone contract so most people take 4G now. Of course this fact helps promote smart-phone sales.

Re: Engraved handle on a kitchen knife...

Many Japanese people get their knives sharpened professionally. There is a man sets up stall outside my local supermarket twice a month. It costs about 1,000 yen.

Re: Who are they targetting?

I predict your next car purchase will be a Fnord.

the keyhole

The obvious solution to this and all incoming asteroids, which always seem to have to come in through the keyhole, is to just paint over the keyhole. Anyway, it's not as if we were planning to use it again.

Double down Oracle On Android

Agree that Oracle is a large problem for Android. It could also be part of a solution.

Assume that Oracle gets into a winning legal position. Would it go just for maximum cash or for a more strategic play? Follow Oracle's trajectory with Java back to the '90s and it is clear that they always loved that platform. Android is the best potential growth franchise for Oracle-owned Java. If they'd cash in on a positive verdict without reinvesting the award, investors could more clearly see the long term expected value for the Java component of their $8B Sun investment. But If they'd double down on marketing partnerships, development cost sharing, product integration and reasonable licensing the Android platform could be sold as a growth story for Oracle just as Google. has so far got away with. Google apparently has few friends and can ill afford to buy any more. Their enemies are common. Better to shake hands now, Larry to Larry, on a mutually beneficial arrangement and to temper their courtroom arguments accordingly.

achievement variance

I recently saw a supporting stat given at an old TED lecture.

Of all women ever alive, 80% have descendants now alive. The figure for men is just 40%. Presumably, in each case, of those who reached sexual maturity.

The lecturer's argument followed that this single difference explains why there is both greater excellence and greater abject failure amongst men (who need to stand out to stand a chance) than amongst women (who are pretty much on a sure thing). And this variance difference is the case in every endeavour. Averaged over the entire population though both sexes tend to rate about the same achievement levels.

it's about the people not the network

I am not really a user of any social network, so it is possible that i don't well understand the field. Nevertheless, I wanted to point out that your post makes assumptions which, though perhaps true right now, likely won't hold for long.

If the majority of people basically assume that the data in their network of choice belongs to themselves (and I believe that is the case), then the owners of those networks sooner or later will have to open up access or lose market share. There is no corner that they'll be able to hide in. With suitable software, any client of one network may act as a bridge to the other networks - within the scope of the data that user owns. This is equivalent to the analogue problem faced by DRM. Ultimately, the data must be rendered to its owner. And at that point it can be manipulated at the owner's convenience. Client-side adaptors may be messy, inconvenient and subject to cat-and-mouse games now, but they can and will erode any business model bent on excluding data owners from using their own stuff however they want to.

You are Verity Stob?

And I claim my prize.

online trade

I suspect the Reg is still looking for its characteristic snark w.r.t. this technology.

I like Bitcoin as a facilitator of online trade i.e. as a currency. Not so much as an investment.

The unmentioned context of the recent 30% drop is currency appreciation in hundreds of percent over a few weeks. So the real issue is not the size of the drop, but volatility. Hopefully prices will stabilise as deeper trading increases coin turn-over in the market.

praise where it is due

Let's separate the issues here:

- Is nuclear power a good thing in general ? This seems to be your main concern.

- Did the authorities in Japan manage a bad situation as well as they could have possibly done ? This was the thrust of the report from the IAEA.

- Was Lewis's reporting predominantly accurate and better than nearly all contemporaneous reports written in English ?

In response to the third issue, I would like to take the opportunity to personally thank Lewis for his attention to detail. On two occasions I used his articles to deal with severely distraught family members urging me to get myself and my family the hell out of Japan. One of whom was becoming sick with worry. We should not forget the hysterical nature of much the reporting going on elsewhere at that time. Lewis's reports may not have been perfect, but they were very well researched and time has shown them to be predominantly accurate. It is disingenuous to pick up on specific discrepancies without referencing the context; the general quality of reporting on this issue in all media.

As it happens, I actually agree with @interested_reader about nuclear power in general, and have always held that the long-term costs and uncertainty around disposal to be unacceptable. But praise where it is due. The response of the Japanese authorities to this specific incident was apparently excellent and Lewis's articles were predominantly accurate.

Here here

'tis good to see Verity back and in superb form.

The top of the linked Wiki on Currying, being close to her style of wit, leads me to suspect she must be always chuckling as she goes about her daily business.

"It was invented by Moses Schönfinkel and later re-invented by Haskell Curry; because of this, some say it would be more accurate to name it schönfinkeling."

hooray

Unless I am looking at the wrong fork, it's a whole year since get-iplayer fork moved a jot.

Presumably that project would be more active if the BBC's strategy had been API, rather than application based. No doubt, Rights Management is a bitch but it's the BBC's bitch. Better for them to work on their own problems and delegate platform decisions to the developer community.

power management

Dishwasher and washing machine are arguably the most practical household appliances to be networked. They draw relatively large power for relatively short spurts. And there is generally some flexibility in when these machines need to complete their cycle by,

Network power load-balancing applications could save the utilities a great deal of money by optimising the schedule of domestic appliance cycles against real-time power consumption on the network. Flattening peak loads to near base load.

Utilities savings could be passed on to consumers through load-aware pricing plans.