* Posts by MOV r0,r0

201 publicly visible posts • joined 14 May 2011

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That long-awaited, super-hyped Apple launch: Watches, iPads... and one more thing. Oh, actually that's it

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Re: understatement of the new decade

the ipad is for the children

It plays Fortnite then?

Who cares what Apple's about to announce? It owes us a macOS x86 virtual appliance for non-Mac computers

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Re: IBM seems to have done very well over the years

IBM has done well - despite the 22 contiguous quarters of declining revenues?

Nvidia says regulators will be 'very supportive' of $40bn Arm buy despite concerns about chip designer's independence

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Re: Few here seem to understand

Not all former Arm leaders are whinging though. Some founding CEOs and ex-presidents are saying stuff like, Even though everybody says, "Oh dear, poor old Arm's gone to Softbank" the reality is 60% of Arm's shareholding when Softbank bought it was outside the UK. So to my mind who owns the shares, where they are, the reality is money is global, everybody owns everything everywhere. Money travels round the planet and it's everywhere, money doesn't care what nationality you are

Nvidia to acquire Arm for $40bn, promises to keep its licensing business alive

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Re: Shameful

Our economy does very well for foreign investment

I agree and so did Acorn - ARM as formed: 40% Acorn (themselves 60% Italian owned at the time), 40% Apple (US), 10% VLSI (US) and 10% various parties which even if we assume were all British that still only adds up to one UK money. Arm were global from the start.

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Re: Independence

I recently learnt that Malcolm Bird had an earlier business plan to spin ARM out before Apple got interested so the eventual timing of it was down to Newton but the main reason was Acorn not consuming enough ARM processors to recoup investment costs (and it was Robin Saxby's later plan they went with).

If in a year Arm still have their own brand and control their own finance, HR and legal I'll keep calling them British and a Cambridge company and Simon Segars can keep calling himself CEO!

Apple to Epic: Sue me? No, sue you, pal!

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Re: The “Apple take 30%” thing is a lie

Indeed and Kevin's "Morrison's cut" calculation above assumes UK bricks & mortar grocers make about 6% gross margin - seems about right! Why then does Apple need substantially more for what, after all, is some online distribution and a bit of QA?

In your quote Judge Rogers also said, "Not even Epic Games gives away its products for free" which will come as a surprise to people with over a hundred full-price games given away free in the Epic store - Apple the "innovator" stifling innovation?

Epic move: Judge says Apple can't revoke Unreal Engine dev tools, asks 'Where does the 30% come from?'

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Re: Free Stuff

If I give something to you for free it doesn't matter whether I make or lose money doing so, I've still given it away for free. The judge wrongly stated that Epic don't give stuff away for free when they very definitely do and they even give other people's stuff away for free but by now I'm re-typing my original message - it would have been so much easier for all concerned if you'd have read and understood it.

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Free Stuff

Judge, "Not even Epic Games gives away its products for free"

The base Fortnite game is free to play and of the 103 commercial games in my Epic launcher, I've paid for precisely four (plus one set of DLC). Not only do Epic give (some) of their products away for free, they pay others to give theirs away for free too.

Start Me Up: 25 years ago this week, Windows 95 launched and, for a brief moment, Microsoft was almost cool

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FAIL

I'm so over Win95 but that out-of-whack monitor geometry in the Aniston/Perry skit is still really triggering me!

Programming pioneer Fran Allen dies aged 88 after a career of immense contributions to compilers

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Re: Alzheimer's disease stolen another shining light

Yep - never make assumptions and never presume to know what is going on in the mind of someone with Alzheimer's.

China slams President Trump's TikTok banned-or-be-bought plan in the US

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Re: LOL

Yes: look over there at Hong Kong. The "don't interfere with internal Chinese matters" was CCP's response to the UK pointing out they were breaking an international treaty so I guess kids miming videos must out-tragedy HK if there's a Trump-hate angle.

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LOL

Criticise the CCP for breaking an international treaty and it's, "don't interfere with internal Chinese matters" but when the US proposes to act solely within US jurisdiction it's "stretching the concept of national security" and "abusing state powers".

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Re: Fate of UK TikTok?

It's probably historic: Bytedance was eyeing the UK as a possible international base, it had been courting Westminster and seeking significant office space in London. Then Trump pronounced.

Taiwan’s tech production went boom! in March

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Taiwan's been doing social distancing for all of April though (1m outdoors & 1.5m indoors) and from the outset there were fewer people outdoors, very few planes in the sky over Taipei and anyone coming home on one must self-isolate for 14 days or risk an NT£1M fine. The solution for a population from an inherently rice-farmer culture that experienced the threat of MERS and SARS-CoV #1 can't necessarily be cookie-cutter stamped across all of Eurasia.

Anyway, the Taiwan experience doesn't count according to the WHO as apparently it doesn't exist...

Apple creates face shield for health workers, resists the temptation to call it the 'iMask'

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Joke

Typical Apple product - I can see right through it

Capita inks deal with NHS to 'bring back staff': Workers get an hour of training to recruit and vet retired doctors, nurses

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There needs to be some checking otherwise dodgy people will masquerade as former staff and coin mega-bucks per day off an old biology degree and some Casualty re-runs. The story for me is whether Capita's checks were sufficient, not what they made from doing them.

Chips that pass in the night: How risky is RISC-V to Arm, Intel and the others? Very

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Re: Installed base

When you say RISC has "never taken hold" do you mean on the desktop? At over 100 billion ARM chips shipped, that's more than the number of people who have ever existed and certainly more than the sum total of all other processors ever produced.

How many times do we have to tell you? A Tesla isn't a self-driving car, say investigators after Apple man's fatal crash

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Re: Tesla never said it's driverless

"while on autopilot"

Oops you used the "A" word, five times too - very naughty. You can see the problem here, can't you?

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now: Brexit tea towel says it'll just be the gigabit broadband

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Re: Use disposable paper towels instead

Soap's a surfactant that emulsifies the oily icky stuff and disperses the lot in water: if you introduce water too soon the soap makes a beeline for it, the emulsion doesn't effectively form and some of the icky stuff is left behind (to be blasted off into the air if hand-dryers are involved).

I get that you're exaggerating with 20 soap squirts but your advice to wet hands first is unhelpful and directly contradicts what the World Health Organisation publishes on hand hygiene. If you mix some cooking oil and washing-up liquid in your kitchen sink, adding water both after and before, you'll see how soap works.

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

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Re: Impartial? Question Time anyone?

Nope, niche content is in! The under 20's do unicast and multicast but seemingly have no interest in broadcast content nor want to be subject to the hypothecated, regressive tax that majority-funds the 'Boomer Broadcasting Corp' and is therefore a demographic accident waiting to happen. Even the acronym "BBC" means something quite different to them...

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Re: Impartial? Question Time anyone?

The BBC claim the tickets are issued by the venue thus neatly side-stepping the issue of impartiality. The choice of venue is entirely the down to the BBC though and they'll give you a list of 'practicalities' as long as your arm as to why some venues are chosen over others, funny how it's almost always a liberal/left leaning organisation's venue.

I note also the BBC are not claiming impartiality in the FB story, only a 'perception of impartiality' - the organisation might be but it allows it's presenters and producers to be anything but. It's the same fancy legal footwork that has them claiming never to have criminalised anyone for non-payment of the Licence Fee, apparently transgressors are prosecuted for criminal contempt by the court for non-payment of the BBC's initial civil non-payment fine.

When criticising the BBC you must get the accusation right as they have entire departments dedicated to Orwellian-ing themselves beyond fault.

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That stupid globe got people thinking somehow the BBC is an international player à la CNN. It's not, it's a national state broadcaster - albeit a four-thousand-five-hundred-million-pounds-a-year state broadcaster (so in that respect there's nothing else like it in the world!).

£99,999, what's your emergency? Paramedics rush to OAP's aid after shock meter reading

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I rang that department at EOn prior to leaving hoping there might be some price flexibility but they offered worse rates than shown on their website! Apparently phoning in person precludes better web self-service rates.

I concluded they needed to sweat all their existing punters at the expense of losing a few. Hello Bulb.

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After finding their best offers required a SMETS meter, I nearly kept my account of 14 years good standing with Eon.

Emphasis on 'Bye!'

Right-click opens up terrifying vistas of reality and Windows 95 user's frightful position therein

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Big Brother

Since I became the product, Google recycle all my activity - no need for a bin!

Divert the power to the shields. 'I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain!'

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Re: The biodiesel had 'gone-off' ...

Recycled a bad choice for roller feeds too, it gives out more dust than regular paper which gets into the grain of the pick-up rollers making them smooth and resulting in feed jams. It's so fine that cleaning isn't usually successful - the rollers have either to be replaced or re-ground.

I've long suspected bleach and china clay use are the real environmental evils of paper production anyway.

The top three attributes for getting injured on e-scooters? Having no helmet, being drunk or drugged, oddly enough

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Re: Scooter stoopid

I'm improving - practice makes perfect!

Chips 'n fish: Globalfoundries casts patent net at rival TSMC

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Re: Trade dispute

TLDR; Azar is playing a Trump card (also: two Chinas, Taiwan #1!)

For context, the Republic of China ("Taiwan") is constantly under threat from the Peoples Republic of China ("mainland China"). Xi Jinping is said to want Taiwan incorporated under mainland PRC control before he retires.

I understood Saam Azar's US-China trade dispute comments as employing the potential for this to seek western political backing for GF's legal case and that his comment that the "importance of the supply chain" not to be concentrated in Taiwan was in the light of more than half of all strategic semiconductor production potentially falling under PRC control.

He's asking the US government to invite Taipei to pressure TSMC so I don't see any confusion (at least on Azar's part) as understanding that there are two Chinas, asking the largest single impediment to the PRC making it one for help is a smart move.

IVE HAD ENOUGH! iQuit. Jobs done. Jony cashes out at Apple to run his own design biz

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Re: Little will really change

Did the cases, not the insides (or the software). Likes white, good with corners. Copies 70's Braun (a lot) and worked with Marketing who told him what would sell.

Gonna be really difficult to replace!

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Re: Little will really change

"When a man is tired of corners, he is tired of life"

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Re: Ave Ive

The dude was to corners what Slartibartfast was to fjords - all hail Sir Ive! (as Tim Cooke once called him).

Nope, we're stuffed, shrieks Apple channel as iPhone shipments enter a double-digit spiral

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Excess Inventory

How to dispose though?

Give it away to registered developers? (Hi Intel!)

Fire it all at a really deep crater on the moon? Oh wait...

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Re: Have you seen how much a Ferrari costs?

Yes and corners on said tyres so specially rounded as it make it circular!

You won't guess where European mobile data was rerouted for two hours. Oh. You can. Yes, it was China Telecom

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Re: That's what happens when you use a Huawei router....

China Telecom is delicate and fragile, BT is oven-safe and dishwasher-proof.

IBM raising axe for 'significant workforce balancing in Europe', says staffer rep council

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Re: Given the recent rounds of redundancy,....

'the EWC foresees a further increase in workload for the remaining IBMers'

You get to dodge doing two jobs for the wage of one?

Twist my Arm why don't you: Brit CPU behemoth latest biz to cease work with Huawei – report

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Re: Several factors, none of them stems from wrong tech choices. Russia has been dealt a tough hand.

Glasnost exposed what was really going on: pretend to the workers that they own everything while actually robbing them blind. No one country or system is perfect but in various forms over the years Russia has been nothing but kleptocracy.

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Re: Conspiracy theory No. 1

ARM's licence agreements will contain clauses for all eventualities including international trade embargoes, there will be no illegality because licensees will already have agreed to terms - it's not like ARM are new to IP licencing!

Strong-willed field support op holds it together during painful customer call

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Used to get this, when rumbled the caller would usually say:

Business, "But you supplied our other computers"

Personal, "But you supplied our previous computer"

They would never be interested in support contracts either - those weren't free.

Cheap as chips: There's no such thing as a free lunch any Moore

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Re: HDD vs decent SSD

Historically fab costs always were hideous but the greater yield from increasing density per die allowed migration down to mid and entry level product - that's where the mass market actually is and where the investment was finally recovered: it's that bit that is broken, just ask Intel. It's their entire business model.

You're going to have to amortise your R&D and production start-up costs somewhere so it doesn't really matter where your costs are occurring, it all feeds into per-transistor. Apple have a CPU design with an instruction set that can be implemented with reduced complexity so their reduced transistor count and the very large margins they achieve on their products are what is keeping them immune, not volume. Check the all time top ten sellers: they only have one phone in there.

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Re: per transistor cost

You're saying it's an engineering issue rather than a matter of economics - I don't agree. I don't doubt there are engineering issues but from the creation of the very first transistor there always were and people did not throw in the towel like they are doing now.

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Re: HDD vs decent SSD

There's an unspoken assumption with Moore's Law about per transistor cost. It's assumed as density rises for a given die size, the per transistor cost will drop. What's been happening is that the cost flipped and has been going the wrong way.

So it might be perfectly possible that Moore's Law could hold but that the economies it supported are broken so there's not the financial imperative to make it happen. Not dead, just broken?

Microsoft’s Bing dinged: What happened, Xi Jinping?

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As a total aside, my SEA friends pronounce 'Winnie The Pooh' as 'We-needa Pooh' - never fails to entertain!

The Apple Mac is 35 years old. Behold the beige box of the future

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Re: Typical el Reg

OK then, the article mentions Byte so here's a quote from the late Jerry Pournelle, "the Mac didn't become the computer for the rest of us because the first Macs were too limited and the next generation which could have been that were at prices the rest of us couldn't afford. It took Windows -- unreliable, limited, slick looking but finicky, wasteful of resources -- to get computers on every desk and in every home and in every classroom."

Much good has come from the democratization of computing but Apple played little part in that.

Tech support discovers users who buy the 'sh*ttest PCs known to Man' struggle with basics

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Headmaster

High Values of Two

Re illustration, a little late to the party but I tried harder and found 2 + 2 = 5 is true for high values of two.

Brexit-dodging SCISYS Brits find Galileo joy in Dublin

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Re: != Brexit dodging

Acorn were majority owned by an Italian company a full five years before ARM was spun out and then it was in partnership with two US firms. Shareholder capital being global doesn't stop a company being British.

Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

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Re: I'm sneering, but you know who's to blame for this?

I totally get that you dislike Amber Rudd (me too!) but smart meters are an EU wheeze leapt upon by Ed Miliband's Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Minister of State for Energy at that time was Mike O'Brien who told the Telegraph in July of his that, "After a while I barely looked at it, didn't use it. We got rid of it."

I think he meant the 'in home device' rather than the meter - him not knowing the difference wouldn't surprise me given that he, not Amber Rudd, is largely responsible for the present mess. OTOH he's no longer MP for North Warwickshire so perhaps he has ripped his meter out and is cultivating something entirely different to the usual Westminster disdain for voters.

Roughly 30 years after its birth at UK's Acorn Computers, RISC OS 5 is going open source

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Re: Observations

Well it's not like they had a choice - they couldn't do the former as there was no 6502 replacement that suited them so they did the latter. I think the article implies that.

This was an age when eg IDE was a novelty, the problem was that Acorn were used to doing peripheral control on the CPU to cut hardware costs and arrive at a viable price point but you can't have your CPU disappearing into it's own microcode for a dozen (plus some random number of) clock cycles without your OS thinking the hardware has failed. IIRC MUL was the first ARM instruction to take more than one clock tick and if you watch an ARM running RISC OS it's forever jumping into and out of Supervisor Mode.

There's no need to be revisionist over the history. The truth is the Master series hung around in education for an embarrassing length of time and left the door open for the competition which consequently sealed Acorn's fate. That ARM didn't disappear is 50% excellent judgement and 50% good timing/luck.

As for unhackable, as with BBC MOS, RISC OS routines were called through vectors plus those OS ROM modules were fully relocatable and could be replaced by soft loaded RAM resident versions and often were cos patching. Hacking the OS was half the fun and yes, still got mine too.

RIP Paul Allen: Microsoft cofounder billionaire dies at 65 after facing third bout with cancer

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Re: Say what you will

Adobe, OTOH...

Sopra Steria exec on warpath as its UK Government profit crashes ... by millions

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Joke

Re: "From my 50,000 feet position"...

But surely he needs to define the key attributes of his emergent themes and mandate guidelines to provide rafts of measures to drive pictures of excellence through a robust organising framework leveraging relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, observability and triability in his best of breed world class solutions going forward?

Wasted worker wasps wanna know – oi! – who are you looking at?

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Re: Wasps / Apple fall

Had this in the female loo at work, all the other men in the company being too pussy to deal with the situation I went in with a Henry hoover like some sort of Ghostbuster and thunked them down the nozzle (top tip!) after which I duct-taped their entry holes.

Left a note on the hoover and the nest to die off over winter, total pest control bill £0.00

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