* Posts by Charles Manning

3509 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jun 2007

Flat mobe battery? Just light a fire

Charles Manning

Butane is pointess

If you have to carry butane with you to make this huge thing work then you may as well just carry more batteries which are far more energy dense.

If you power it with found materials then this is potentially useful, but a hand crank charger might be faster and more effective.

Nothing at all new in this though... In the Seebeck effect has been used for years to provide power from heat.

In the 1950s, the Russians made a Seebeck effect collar which was fitted to kero lamps to provide power for radios.

In the 1970s, I remember some encyclopedia giving instructions on how to build a Seebeck device to power a single transistor radio.

Fraudster gets ten years after selling fake 'ionic charge' bomb detectors

Charles Manning

It was probably the bribery

In the US (and probably the UK) it is illegal to bribe foreigners to sell to them.

He might also have show the suckers the device"working" in the UK. If he did that then the fraud was committed in UK.

Research explodes myth that older programmers are obsolete

Charles Manning

Re: HR only sees stereotypes

If you're working for a company where HR does the hiring you're halfway screwed anyway.

Charles Manning

If you don't keep learning...

then you don't belong in this industry. This is an industry of change.

I'm 51 and I now learn more than I did in my twenties and thirties.

30 years ago you could leave university with a pretty decent % of all computing knowledge under your belt. Now you're lucky if you're just scratching the surface of one very specialized field (eg. compiler or file system design).

If you stagnate you soon become just a commodity. You need to keep up to date, or specialized, to be worth anything. That takes continuous education.

Study suggests US companies use overseas workers to cut wages

Charles Manning

THere is a shortage of skilled people

Those that come straight out of university etc are not skilled. Many are borderline useless.

As has been pointed out in many industries it takes a 10,000 hours (a good 5 years of work) to become skilled.

During those 5 years the new grads are not worth hiring at inflated rates. They are only worth H1B1 salaries. However the kids have aspirations and a sense of entitlement. They won't work for what they are worth. So instead they cut to other industries where they can earn more. Result: they never really become skilled.

Gotta laugh: as I write this a pop-up ad offers me good money working on a mine in Australia.

Climate-cooling effect 'stronger than volcanoes' is looking solid

Charles Manning

British cars

Nor are the Made In Britain cars British. They're pretty much all German (Mini, Rolls Royce) or Indian (Jag/Land Rover...)

Guess who PC-slaying tablets are killing next? Keyboard biz Logitech

Charles Manning

Margin is the killer

Sure Logitech do make some lower cost products, but those don't make as much money.

I think it is more likely market saturation. Once you've bought a good mouse, where's the motivation to buy another?

Like everyone else, Logitech need to come up with some compelling new products if they want to make some money. More of the same is not enough. Nor is it enough to sell new technologies/products unless they have some compelling features.

Huawei preps new mobes to overhaul Apple

Charles Manning

Looks like I might be almost right

For a good while now, I have forecast that Apple/Samsung spat will look like two kids having a playground pissing contest when Huawei gets going properly.

The only part of that prediction I want to change is that it will happen sooner.

Huawei has two hurdles to get over: technical ability to generate product - which they seem to have licked and building a brand that is strong enough to overcome barriers such as xenophobia.

It was only 50 years ago that Japan was that place that made crap toys that broke the day after Christmas. Now they are the country most people associate with quality and premium electronic brands.

Twenty years ago Korea was viewed as some squalid country that couldn't make anything. Just ten years ago nobody would have suspected that a Korean brand would out-cool Apple.

Why should it be any different for China? The only difference is speed. The Chinese will do it faster.

Turn off the mic: Nokia gets injunction on 'key' HTC One component

Charles Manning

re: Would the problem then be ST electronics?

Yes, RTFA.

But then ST can no longer supply HTC, so it also becomes HTC's problem too.

Apple beats revenue estimates but margins are falling

Charles Manning

Portion of profits is silly

Funding R&D based on portion of profits is silly even though this is often used as a metric.

You pretty much need to spend the same amount on R&D whether you build an iphone or a Zune phone. The difference for a good seller is having to scale up your support supply and manufacturing infrastructure.

Some market segments have rules of thumb where they spend 5-10% on R&D, but that would be an obscene amount of development for Apple and would be largely pointless. You can only deploy a certain number of products into the market place without causing complete confusion for your customers.

Review: Nokia Lumia 720

Charles Manning
WTF?

"and the 1.5GHz Snapdragon with 1GHz"

WTF?

Huawei: 'We're not interested in US market'

Charles Manning

This is not the end of the matter

Sure, for now, Huawei will back off the US market but in a few years they will likely come back.

Why would Huawei want all the hassles of trying to deal with American xenophobia when they can put that same energy into growth in other markets which give them payback.

Those same problems were experienced by many: Toyota, Samsung, Nokia,.. who eventually became more than successful.

Boffins build ant-sized battery, claim it's tough enough to start a car

Charles Manning

Re: Great news for electric vehicles!

You forgot problem 4:

Grid overload: Getting the leccy from the generators to the homes to charge em.

Charles Manning

Even if it is 4-dimesional....

A few mm cubed battery jump starting a car is an extremely extravagant claim.

Cranking currents are hundreds of amps. The physics doesn't stack up.

Nokia: OK, Q1 has been weak, but there's 'underlying' profit

Charles Manning

Nokia != Blackberry

Blackberry has only ever been a top-shelf brand selling to the high end customers.

Nokia, OTOH, sells both smartphones and candy-bars. The smartphone biz had huge margins.

Nokia has been simultaneously kicked in both balls:

* Their smartphone business is pretty much an own-goal - shagging about instead of keeping Symbian fresh, then finally panicking and going with W8.

* The bottom-end candy-bar business has been eaten away by Huawei etc.

Suddenly the party is over and there are not enough aspirins to go around.

Charles Manning

Re: Nokia was Going to Die with Symbian

True.

Elop is just doing in more humanely by administering the cocktail known as WP8.

Microsoft CFO quits as quarterly results fail to sparkle

Charles Manning

Worked for Steve Jobs, why not BG?

If you look at any MS stock graph you see huge increases while BG was running the place. Hand over to SB and Microsoft essentially flat-lines from there out.

Reinstalling BG would do wonders for reinvigorating stock confidence. He might not deliver anything, but it would at least give the stock price a nice kick and allow a lot of people to make a lot of money (or lose it depending which end you're on).

Are biofuels Europe's sh*ttiest idea ever?

Charles Manning

Re:" There are probably more 'Nazi' supporters in the US than in Europe.

Flying the Swastika is illegal in Germany and not illegal in the USA."

Perhaps true for public demonstration of Nazi-ness, but it says nothing about what the people really think.

I even knew a German Jew who was pro-Nazi as a philosophy. He thought that Hitler and his cronies were the best thing that ever happened to Germany as a nation (if you could put aside the ethnic-cleansing excesses).

Just like there are many Russians who think the communist days were better, and South Africans (yes, even some black South Africans) who preferred the safety and stability of the Apartheid era, there are undoubtedly many Germans who still see Nazi-ism as a fine thing.

Study: Most projects on GitHub not open source licensed

Charles Manning

Copyleft... bullshit

Copyright is what gives GPL its teeth.

Take away copyright and GPL would be unenforceable and would basically becomes more like BSD.

MIT is an open source license, so is BSD. What really gets up my nose about FSF is that they feel entitled to redefine, and limit, the use terms like freedom.

Foxconn must pay Microsoft for EVERY Android thing it makes

Charles Manning

Microsoft has entered its SCO phase

Those that can innovate.

Those that no longer can litigate.

5 more years?

NZ plans interception law refresh

Charles Manning

Re: I need help...

The NZ police were legitimately investigating KDC. They lack some of the technical expertise to do some of the investigating and called on the GCSB to help.

The GCSB choose to investigate various people on their own bat (ie. as spies) and when they do this, they are only allowed to spy on foreigners. The "grey area" was whether or not they could lend their services to other government agencies.

It makes sense to allow them to do this. No point in having the NZ Police replicate the skillset.

Charles Manning

It is really fixing something that was in the grey area

It was unclear whether or not the GCSB could do work for government agencies (police etc). The police and GCSB always thought they could, but the courts ruled that they were not allowed to.

The law is being clarified to reflect the original intentions of the law makers.

Of course the opposition will make a bun-fight over this. That is all the opposition ever does, It is telling that the broken law was introduced when the opposition was in power.

Ten Windows tablets

Charles Manning

Reg: Where did you find this writer?

How can Microsoft be blamed for the price of these tablets? The price is set by the manufacturers - not Microsoft.

Half of US smartphone owners have no idea which mobe to buy next

Charles Manning

What's the motivation?

Once you get over the initial amazement at what smart phones can do, they become a bit humdrum and there is not much point in upgrading to the next one.

I have a Google/HTC G1 that was given to me and have no urge to get something newer. The only thing that would motivate me to get another would be when this one dies.

StreetView spots possible roadside nookie down under

Charles Manning

We're talking about Australia here.......

Bitcoin gets a $100 haircut on rollercoaster trading run

Charles Manning

Where's the value?

Unless a currency is based on some underlying share in something of value, then it is going to be open to wild fluctuations in exchange rate.

A GBP, USD, or even a Zim$ is at least tied to something tangible. A bitcoin is tied to nothing. It has no intrinsic value at all. Only a complete moron would "invest" in this.

'1337 hacker' scrawls all over careless coders' SourceForge sites

Charles Manning

Re: Leet or not...

Some louts jumped over your back fence and defaced your property.

You'd thank them for pointing out your security is not up to scratch?

While it probably isn't sabotage (since so functional damage was done), it is surely vandalism.

Australia IS NOT educating more personal trainers than IT pros

Charles Manning

Perhaps not now,

But look to the future.

In New Zealand, approx 50% of the teachers in training are studying physical/sports education etc. I would suspect the numbers are pretty similar for Oz.

Why does this happen? Well it is a cool way for sporty kids to get a sports-oriented university education (well that and sports medicine - which is much more effort, or sports management). Unfortunately reality sets in when they get to the job market and find that only 5% or so of teaching posts are for PE teachers etc.

How many teachers in training have an IT focus?

Sci/Tech quango promises an end to 'events with no women'

Charles Manning

muscles

Oh bollocks...

Ditch digging and garbage handling in almost all societies that care about gender issues is highly mechanised. Can't have the little darlings strain their backs can we? Pulling levers in a digger requires no more muscle than pulling a pint!

Kiwi boffins bid up Earth-like planet prediction

Charles Manning
Headmaster

Beelion is Oz

The pronunciation of 'i' of the differences between Oz and Kiwi:

UK/ZAR: fish and chips,

Kiwi: fush and chups,

Oz: feesh and cheeps.

Veiny green 'scum' meteorite may be first visitor from Mercury

Charles Manning

Hmmm

Amazing speculations.

Not quite as bad as palaeontology, where people find a tooth fragment and claim it is part of a dinosaur that was 10 ft long with long legs, but getting close.

Patent shark‘s copyright claim could bite all Unix

Charles Manning

You had me until

"Patent shark's copyright..."

Should have buried the gaffes until a bit later.

Smartphone running 'Facebook OS' said to debut this week

Charles Manning

Re: Not so fast

It's just the FB "cool kids". You know, the people who bought FB shares too.

Charles Manning

Pity they didn't choose Winphone 8

At least with Android this FBPhone might actually work.

Review: Renault Zoe electric car

Charles Manning

Re: Grid overload

"the vehicle will (a) mostly charge overnight when other demand is mostly smaller".

It is only smaller NOW, because residential demands are lower at night than offices etc during the day. When everyone plugs in their cars for overnight charging, the overnight residential demand will easily be triple what it is now.

"(b) mostly not be used for long journeys so mostly won't need much of a charge." It really does not matter how much of a charge it needs. The peak will still be high.

"equipped EVs, using grid-tied inverters as are used with solar PV, could provide useful energy storage " This is eco-greeny horseshit. Using battery storage and inverters is extremely inefficient (~60% or so). Worse still, it will severely impact on vehicle battery life. And then when you get back to your car to go home you find it is flat because some dick used your battery to run their airconditioner via the smart grid.

All engineering is a compromise. If you design batteries for power usage, you would preferably not use the lightweight batteries used by cars.

Charles Manning

If EVs get popular...

"but on the other hand if you charge overnight then there tends to be a higher proportion of low-CO2 sources which should compensate somewhat."

That might or might not be rtrue now, based on the premise that night time leccy usage is lower and therefore can be addressed with less coal burning.

However if EVs ever become a significant percentage of cars, power use will not drop off during the night and this argument is flawed.

Charles Manning

Grid overload

There is one factor that makes EV impractical, except for a few niche operations.

The grid is pretty much overloaded in most countries. When you park an EV in the driveway you will double the electricity consumption of the household, the street and the residential population of the city.

Now if a few % of the population get EVs it really won't change much.

But EVs don't scale well. If 50% of the population were to switch to EVs and expect overnight charging, there is no way the grid in the UK, USA, Australia, or pretty much anywhere else is going to meet expectations.

Ubuntu tapped by China for national operating system

Charles Manning

Good reasons to be defensive

Stuxnet etc - thanks to Windows.

Charles Manning

Ahem....

China owns the UK....

Except for the bits owned by India (Land Rover etc) or Germany (Rolls Royce etc).

Wind farms make you sick … with worry and envy

Charles Manning

Re: effect on birds

Slightly off topic.... here in NZ it has been found that cats are actually beneficial to birds. Seems odd, considering cats often kill birds.

The rationale is that cats typically kill more rats than they do birds and rats are a far worse bird predator than cats are. So, all up, cats are beneficial to birds.

Now the same argument **might** apply with wind turbines too. Perhaps burning coal has a worse effect on the birds than the equivalent wind farm does.

These issues are very seldom straight forward.

Ubuntu support periods slashed

Charles Manning

With Unity being pushed down the throat, who cares

These days it is much more interesting what Mint is doing.

Finland a haven for vulnerable SCADA systems

Charles Manning

Responded to http != insecure

My bank's website responds to http, yet it is pretty secure. You need to go deeper than that to really know if it is vulnerable.

However, it is good policy to run SCADA on a private betwork. If it has to go remote then use VPN.

Vietnamese high school kids can pass Google interview

Charles Manning

Most kids just want a cruisy ICT course to get easy credits: eg. demonstrate vague proficiency in using MSWord. Doing challenging programming is hard.

And with the sense of entitlement felt by the modern generations, all they need computers for is to access www.dole-r-us.govt.uk and Facebook.

Insourced staff paid a pittance but don't want to leave

Charles Manning
Flame

"benefits of in-house staff"

What are the benefits of in-house staff.

In any business setting, you either look like an expense or a source of value.

If you are adding value to the organisation, and the organisation knows it, then they will want to keep you around and will pay to do so.

If the organisation doesn't see you as a value-adder, then they see you as an expense. Expenses are something you try to reduce to make better profits.

If the suits don't understand the benefits of in-house staff, then that is not THEIR problem, it is YOUR problem. Educate them!

Make sure you are seen as the bloke that fixes problems and increases productivity, not just the dickhead who keeps on screwing things up and making silly rules.

SCADA honeypots attract swarm of international hackers

Charles Manning

Re: This just in

"or use a dedicated/secure circuit instead of the public internets"

In the case of a remote village power transformer a dedicated circuit would quite likely be prohibitive.

At the minimum, remote SCADA connections should be secured with VPN, ssh or similar. Having anything less is completely insane.

Charles Manning

Board level? Why?

Why the hell should board members be doing time on this? It is unrealistic to expect board members to know all the technical ins and outs.

Do you expect the board members to recommend what programming languages to use? Perhaps they should give recommendations on using CAT6 vs fibre?

What board members should be doing is ensuring the corporate culture is tuned to take care of these matters properly and that there is sufficient budget to do the right thing rather than just hope...

Nvidia and ARM: It's a parallel, parallel, parallel world

Charles Manning

Not just for CUDA

ARM will be an important platform for **everything**.

ARM pretty much covers everything from very low (sub-$1 microcontrollers) up to some servers.

There is increasingly only niche space for really tiny 8-bit micros and really big top-end microprocessors (servers, desktops etc).

As ARM expands (in both directions), the space for non-ARM players gets smaller.

Twitter patents sending messages, promises not to sue everyone

Charles Manning

Flawed? It's working fine thank you.

The USPTO is directed by two bodies: Uncle Sam and patent lawyers. For them the current patent system works fine and there is no need to change anything.

Uncle Sam makes a nice little revenue stream from USPTO. Just make it easy to get patents and more people will apply and more $$$. There is no QA - you can't sue Uncle Sam for issuing a crap patent that kills your business.

And the patent lawyers love it too. Quite a nice income for cranking through patent applications. However the real money comes when patents are challenged and the whole lot goes to court. This is far mre likely to happen with crap patents than with good, so where's the motivation to improve patent quality?

Microsoft issues manual on Brits to Cambridge exports

Charles Manning
Facepalm

As busy as a beaver

Some years back I noticed that a female USAian co-worker had been very productive - sorting out various bugs etc. and had generally been working well on the project.

To complement her I said: "You've been a busy beaver over the last few weeks!". She immediately became crimson with embarrassment.

It was only a few weeks later that I also heard some gossip that she had dumped her boyfriend and had been, euphemistically, attending a lot of singles bars.

,

BlackBerry CEO: iPhone past its prime

Charles Manning

Round lights or square lights?

Car makers keep on changing between round lights and square lights - telling you how dated the other shape is. And then a few years later uncool will be cool again.

The same seems to happen with Linux distros. Version x+1 has a cool blue background which looks so much better than the old brown background in version x.... and round window and button corners by default! Yet the in version x, brown replaced blue and the soft round buttons had been changed to be more angular.

It seems that top-end phone UIs have pretty much got to that stage too. Is there really any useful stuff than can be done or are we just chasing fashions?