Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Space is Hard

According to Wikipedia, "LauncherOne made six flights total beginning in 2020, resulting in four successes and two failures. Following the failure of the company's sixth launch and an inability to secure additional financing,[5] the company laid off nearly all staff and suspended operations on March 30, 2023"

So no, VO weren't built on this single UK launch, the rest having been in the USA. But they do seem to have been living from launch to launch and didn't have the funds to cope with too many fails, or 2 out of 6 in this case.

Possibly some people are confused by El Reg referring to the launch as "the UK’s big hope for space launches", which could imply VO is a British company. Obviously some of those jobs will have been at the Cornish spaceport, ie "British jobs", but I suspect many were never going to be long term since I don't think it likely the UK can support enough launches to make the place viable yet, if ever. I suspect most of the "jobs" in Cornwall were imported US staff, engineers, controllers etc., flown in for the UK launch and now flown back home.

Re: Trying to secure funding?

Depends on which side of the Atlantics version of "laid off" is being used by the now US -centric ElReg in a UK based story.

AFAIK, "laid off" in the USA means sacked or fired. In the UK, "laid off" is more likely used as a short term thing where the company can't afford to pay the wages and is attempting to re-finance/re-structure and hopefully take the staff back on in a few weeks or a month.

The risk is that it all fails and the people laid off end up redundant or the company starts up again but some people have found other jobs. The longer the shutdown, the less likely the good staff will still be ready, willing and able to come back. If too many of the essential staff don't come back, the company may fold anyway.

Re: Meaninglessly diluted and overrated brand anyway

They're chasing the younger market because they appear to have money. One of the reasons the younger market has money to burn is because they can't afford to get on the housing ladder and are living with the parents for many more years than young people previously did. So they want the "hip and trendy digital bank image", not some fuddy duddy old Victorian bank image of old in the hope that when those youngsters do finally scrape together enough for a house deposit, they will take out a mortgage with Clydsedale Virgin Money.

Most of these "hip and trendy" online banks are not new businesses. They are just re-brands of the old established order. The Co-Op Bank did the same with Smile. There no hint on Smile website that it's owned and operated by Co-Operative Bank.

Re: Where is the support?

Oh, they already had the committee meeting to decide who should be on the committee to do that? Wow! that was quick!

Re: Optional

There's also a measure of "you can live forever if you only ever drink Himalayan spring water and organic lettuce grown by monks, or instead, you can enjoy life"

Re: The words stable, door and bolted immediately sprang to mind.

I think it's more about the civil servants than the politicians. There are a LOT more of them, ie ALL government issued devices not just those operated by the people least likely to understand.

Then "IT" manglement aren't doing their jobs properly. It's up to them to prove the business case by itemising the cost of secured access to employees own $random phones. Even just the time spent adding users to an exiting InTune or similar management tool and then keeping it up to date as people join and leave the org is a significant ongoing cost. Of course, there will different budgets involved, so the bean counters need to be convinced that no matter the budget it comes from, it's still hitting the bottom line!

Better yet:

"I did not try to set it up until it was too late to return it and it only works with an app that is not available in the US!!! So much money wasted I should have gotten a go pro instead"

I'm not sure how small Go Pros can get, but I think his partner might complain :-)

Re: Compassion

That reminds me of as book I read many years ago.

The Anome by Jack Vance

It tells the story of a boy growing to manhood in the land of Shant, a society composed of many different, and wildly individual cantons, some of which are run by cults. Each adult wears an explosive torc which can be detonated by remote command, bringing about instant death by decapitation."

Re: No ARM done

"Short term gain, medium term suicide. If they do this, they're dead in 5-7 years."

Why would they care? If the IPO is successful, the people that count will have made their billions and be out of it by then.

Re: I can see how this will work out...

"So how much are they planning to charge for the ARM chips used in Maseratis Lamborghinis and BMWs."

Excellent point. I foresee lots of court cases attempting to not only define exactly what the "end user device" is but is the "value" what the end user pays or what the OEM builds it for? Retail prices vary from country to country as well as over time. If a phone is discounted does Arm get a proportionally lower royalty?

Buy Samsung phones and tablets. Comes with a FREE Arm processor!![*]

Note, the CPU is not part of the device and if you insist we do have models available with no pre-fitted CPU at EXACTLY the same price, just to prove that the CPU really is FREE!

Re: Nut on the loose

"though 'not that often' is a different question for a five-user app vs a five million user one!"

Like the infamous "some users were affected" when it's a cloudy system used by millions and "some" is a significantly large number when stated on it's own, even if it's "only" 1 or 2% of the total users.

Re: Aaaaargh!

It's often the best way to stop senior managers and above from interfering the smooth operation of the business. Give them something "important" to play with :-)

Re: Please see the British education system"

"Hint: it isn't about metrics."

Exactly that. If OFSTED are so clever at defining what good education is, why is every child not leaving school with a single rating across their entire educational performance with a certificate marked Outstanding, Good, Needs Improvement or Inadequate? Why so many grades for so many subjects when clearly a single word from a list of four is the optimum level of assessing the students academic abilities, just like with the even larger complexities of a school? Not to mention that they have a limited number of metrics to assemble into this one word rating that doesn't take into account the many other things a school does to make it a good place.

Re: Don't blame Metcalf for CAT 5 plug

"It was a happy day when we got 10baseT hubs and Cat5/RJ45."

In hindsight, yes, a vast improvement. My first though at the time though was "What? A separate cable run to each and every PC? WTF? That's gonna cost loads more money!!"

Re: If you really have to ...

And that 3 metres is only the recommended limit to assure a working connection. Odds are in many cases greater than 3 metres will work too.

Re: Random USB devices can usually be handled safely[1]

"For physical safety, I guess a USB extender with relays to allow remote activation."

Relays? Just don't plug the extender in until after the device is plugged in and placed behind the blast shield. Then plug the extender cable into a power source, or if feeling brave, a computer.