Posts by Charles Manning

Better Idea: Plug in all the E cars and hybrids

Run them backwards. That's what all the "smart grid" people tell us.

Let these things earn their tax breaks!

Pity though that this magic fairy dust that promises so much when scooping up the tax payer gravy doesn't really work that way in real life.

This is the unfortunate result of democracy.

Dimwits who think that Liking something on Facebook is enough to make it happen outnumber those with an appreciation for engineering & physics. However the dimwits get the same vote that a knowledgeable person does. Therefore dimwits drive policy selection.

Result: Tax the power stations which generate real power and use the tax to prop up beautiful green toys that do nothing. Blame global warming when the power runs out.

Re: He's an actor

"the general populace know that he's a very clever man and know that he likes technology. This makes him, in their minds, an IT specialist. "

Not quite.

He is a very convincing communicator. He has the gift of the gab.

He thinks he has a good grasp of IT.

Thus people will listen to anything he says before they will listen to a real specialist that umms and errrs.

Re: Price of Electricity

I'd be more worried by the price of subsidies.

Every time someone buys one of these, Joe Public gets shaken down for hundreds of dollars/quid of extra taxes.

What's in it for banks? LOTS!

Here in NZ anyway, there is huge gravy in it for banks.

In NZ, all the chip&pin cards are NFC and all go through Mastercard/Visa. That means the transaction gets handled the same way as a credit card even if it is a debit card. That means the vendor has to pay credit card processing fees which are far higher than debit card processing fees.

Apple et al will likely only do the NFC thing if they can take a shaving off the processing fee.

While I like the increased security of chip & pin, I don't want NFC. If I have multiple cards in my wallet I like to be able to control which card gets dinged when.

For a while we had NFC-less chip & pin cards, but I've now gone back to Luddite swipe.

Re: I'm working on it

You need to present your findings like an acedemic would.

Finish off the conclusions with the statement: More research is required.

You might also suggest some alternative directions for future research, different types of fuel mix for instance.

There's a whiole lot of funding looking for good research projects, can't find it and therefore gets spent on finding out why people with long hair prefer carrots to peas.

"We might as well make everything elective"

Why not?

As soon as the kids hit 16 or whatever they don't have to go to school anyway.

Those that are forced to do so just disrupt the class and screw up the learning of others.

Some people are not ever going to be coders, but can still solve problems. Different people are drawn to different problems and understand stuff differently. A mechanic mate of mine is brilliant at solving mechanical problems but he really struggles with abstract problem solving.

Re: "The core of Windows XP was developed before the Internet."

"The development of NT was begun before Windows 95 and before PCs were generally put on the Internet."

Not quite.

It was begun before Microsoft acknowledged they'd lost this battle.

Before then Microsoft was trying to get people cloistered in Microsoft proprietary protocols (NetBIOS, SMB,...).

Remember...

They can listen to you anyway through the fillings in your teeth.

That's why your fillings tingle when you suck some tin foil. The tinfoil is interfering with the waves coming out of the fillings.

Understanding a Corporation

In a big corp like Microsoft, there are many business units. What they do does not make sense if viewed from outside, just from inside.

They do not really cooperate. In fact they compete for resources, premium office space, having their head patted by the CEO,...

The Office group are interested in making money from Office.

The Windows group are interested in making money from Windows.

The Office group realise that they can put A effort into developing for Android and get B revenue.

They also realsise that they can put in W effort into Windows and get Y revenue.

Even if W is much greater than A, B is much, much, greater than Y. Therefore the spreadsheet tells them to do Android before even considering to Windows.

"one of the licensing conditions "

What licensing conditions?

Anyone can build a GPS receiver and listen to the signals if they have the time and technical inclination. There are no enforceable licensing conditions.

There are various projects on the www using either FPGAs or sw to do the correlators so there really is no need to even use commercial chipsets.

Power and responsibility

If you have the power to rid the world of glassholes then, yes, you have the responsibility to do so!

Python done right

We had a discussion over this language yesterday and the concensus is that it fixes both the things that are broken in python:

1) Typing.

2) Adding braces. Indenting can be screwed up badly. Braces fix that.

Re: So ....

who cleans up the 2 acres of sammy wrap?

Illegal aliens would do it at $5/hr, but real aliens might not.

THey've always had other design centres

"they cannot get skilled staff in the UK?" Nope. ARM are looking for the best, not scraping the barrel.

They also have a 300 person design centre in Texas which they have had for years.

ARM have always been talent shopping and it is no surprise they're shopping in Asia. That makes particular sense when you see all the ARM design wins coming out of greater China.

Isn't that mico-USB and now mandatory in the EU?

UKIP is mandating Good Old USB A/B.

Critical thought is HARD WORK

Interwebbers, even El Reg, publish clickbait. They just try harvest different channels.

As with any indepth TV documentaries, real journalism is hard work for both the journalist and the audience. The audience only has one set of eyeballs that everyone is competing for.

When the ratings (ie. the ad revenue) comes in, the editors setting the direction of the channel/web feed are driven by the numbers. In-depth documentaries on stuff people need to know get upstaged by kittens and stories some celeb's tits.

End result, journalists who entered the profession with lofty goals of helping inform humanity soon get either kicked out or re-align themselves to the real world where they, and their articles, are judged purely on their ability to bring in an ad dollar.

Sure, follow your dreams.... but if those dreams include eating and paying rent you need to be practical.

What has happened to the good science journalists?

Good Science Journalist: Here are the facts.

Editor: Well thats f**ing boring. I want something more punchy. Something that attracts eyeballs. We're here to sell papers (or ad clicks) you know! Screw all the hard numbers.

GSJ: Ok, I'll clean it up.

Editor: Nope still boring. Look, you've got to pay your way here or you're gone.

GSJ sells soul to devil. Screw the facts. Up the alarmist. Becomes Bad Science Journalist.

BSJ: How about this: Glaciers will all melt, flood the empty mines and mutant octopii will invade London and eat everyones brains.

Editor : When will this happen?

BSJ : Two hundred years from now?

Editor: Sooner.

BSJ: Next Tuesday?

Editor: YESSS!

Late to the party?

This is a lame excuse that does not work.

Microsoft have been doing tablets since 1992 Windows for Pen Computing. This is at least their 8th go at it.

They were pretty much the first and they gave the space away. While MS can't find its ass with both hands, Apple and Google slid into the space and took it from them.

"less tobacco tax and less premature deaths..."

and less sick people choking up the NHS.

It would be interesting to do a complete financial breakdown from a govt perspective. - just pure numbers without the sentimental aspects.

Does premature death (therefore less pension etc) and less excise taxes add up to more than the added healthcare costs?

Third attempt???

For all those that think this is going to be "third time's a charm " for MS,...

MS have been trying to sell tablets since the 1990s. It has always been BillG's pet form factor. BillG was always waving around tablets at Comdex.

They started with Windows 3.1 for Pen Computing 1.0 in 1992. Since then they've served up at least 8 different flavours - none of which has gone anywhere useful.

Re: What part of the fact that this is medium to long term research did some of our posters......

Amazing what qualifies as "research" these days...

Selling baby rights

These theoretical ideas don't gain traction in the real world because they are unworkable.

Consider a person that has no assets:

1. Sells right for $10k, blows it all.

2. Then has 10 kids.

3. Owes "fines" of $100k.

What are you going to do to get that 100k from them? Threats don't work on people who have little or nothing.

On top of this, you will have leaders saying "screw the Westerners and their ideas" and telling people to have all the babies they want because that is the African way. That's how people like Jacob Zuma in South Africa get into power.

"dad opens the door for his little angel"

"And take this fu**ing SatNav with you."

It is one thing having to put up with stroppy offspring, but this SatNav is getting far too intrusive too.

It was that a man's house was his castle and the kids played outside. Then the yoofs took over the lounge and the man's only peace can when driving his car.

Now Intel proposes filling the car, the last tiny bastion of a man's life, with an iNanny that tells you to buckle up and a means for the kids to fill your car with their shit sound and make churlish tweets about the person giving them transport.

Intel, please go back to servers.

Get with the tinfoil

http://www.afcma.org/

http://www.usafoil.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_foil

Just pasting ranty URLs does not build a case.

I have done consulting work for Cisco. It is an INTERNATIONAL company, with products developed all over the world and manufactured in different places.

For example, there is a development house in Norway and the products they make are built in Poland.

On top of that, you can download the code for many of these devices. Granted, you can't download it all.

While it might be plausible to infect US made products and conspire to keep the US side of Cisco quiet, the company is far too large and multinational to keep anything secret for long.

... just give Microsoft a chance...

"Just give MS a chance" seems to be the general theme of these MS-will-rise-up-and-eat-them-all articles.

MS have been in smart phones since 2000 or so - twice as long as Apple or Google. The "give them a chance" routine is bollocks.

In 2001, they basically had corporate smart phones sewn up.... then they pissed it away.