Posts by Charles Manning

@Christopher Rogers

Ballmer is Google obsessed.

Some while ago MS search + Yahoo searh would have been bigger than Google search so Ballmer would have liked to buy Yahoo to be bigger than Google.

It made locker-room sense to spend a lot of money to be the biggest boy on the block... if only for a short while.

Google now has >60% of search and MS + everyone else would still be smaller than Google.

It makes no sense, locker room or otherwise, to spend up large and still be smaller and shrinking.

Therefore yahoo no longer has value to Ballmer.

@Let's apply Occam's razor..

Thinning would make it radiate more, but perhaps more likely is that the change to the surface of the wire has changed the spectrum the wire radiates at.

Instead of radiating lots of IR (which we don't see), it radiates less IR and more visible radiation.

Coke is Life...

err no it is water (which isn't too bad) + a poison (CO2) + bunch of carcinogenic compounds (sugar, caffeine etc).

But still they're pretty close to being right,.

I have [ and am using right now] an Acer sold with Linux. Thank BigG I'm reasonably Linux literate otherwise I'd be fucked.

As much as we might fanboi over Linux, there is far too many zealots pushing the Open Source Religion (Wikipedia should really ban then sometime) over straight usability. Until we're practical about making usability more important than "freedom" (as defined by RMS), Linux Laptops won't be ready for prime time unless the hardware vendors support and update their own tweaked distros.

One reason Linux phones work for the Great Unwashed is that they use custom distrros. Although based on open source, customers still experience these as turnkey software.

"Oooh you can fix the bugs yourself" is a fine strategy for geeks who get a stiffy at the thought of a bug, but Mom and Pop want software to work when they download it from the vendor. They don't want to spend days in Ubuntu forums figuring out how to tweak X config files or fix bugs.

KWhy?

Sure I understand everyone has an itch they want to scratch, but I often wonder what the point is in yet-another-word processor etc when there's a perfectly good one out there.

For some things alternatives make sense (a reason why there are about 40 or so file systems for Linux), but for word processors?

Having tried to get my head around the strange and unwelcoming beast that is KDE4 I'm not at all included to give KWord etc a try.

Kids, there's lots of valuable software that still needs writing. Why waste your time on a "me too" app like a word processor?

[B]ing [I]s [N]ot [G]oogle

Recursive name like gnu etc.

Ballmer's Google obsession is obvious to all. This makes the "ing" part of the name obvious. So all they needed was to choose the first letter.

Aing? WTF? how do you say that?

Bing? Yeah maybe: B == Balmer or Bill

Cing? Nope is that pronounced Sing or King?

Ding? Sounds dented.

Eing? Same as for Aing.

Fing? Maybe but will get called F***ing.

Ging? Nope Jing or Ging?

Hing? Sounds too Asian.

Iing? As per Aing?

Jing? Sounds too Asian.

King? Fu...

Ling? ummm

Ming? Asian

Ning?Asian

Oing? As per Aing?

Ping? Asian

Qing? Somebody will bitch there's no U. Though "Qing wants U" is catchy.

Ring? No, just finished 6 months of therapy for XBox RROD problems.

Sing? Got Songsmith already thanks

Ting? Asian

Uing? Like Aing

Ving? Bloody Germans/Dutch/Afrikaners will say Fing.

Wing? Bloody Germans/Dutch/Afrikaners will say Ving.

Xing? Asian

Ying? Asian

Zing? No still got some Z stuck to the bottom of my shoe from Zune.

Well that pretty much leaves Bing.

@AC

"The vast majority of what I read on Scientology.org is rumor and slander. The whole purpose of Wikipedia knowledge application and procedure is to increase an individual’s understanding.

Anyone desiring information about the Scientology religion should visit the Wikipedia web site at www.wikipedia.org to form their own opinions"

Yawn... anyone with a barrow to push is full of BS.

@Terry Barnes

Right on the money.

Half the problem with these newfangled C++ etc is that they have a whole lot of frilly bits that the programmers feel they have to use to prove their geekhood. You know, operator overloading and the like. Unfortunately this gets them into all kinds of trouble that they often don't even realise they are in.

COBOL might be very simple, but that's have the appeal. It is relatively hard to get confused by COBOL.

[Did 2 years of COBOL back in early 80s].

re:Thuuuump

Chip price is only part of it. Atom + its buddy chips chew power (relative ot an ARM SOC), meaning cooling fans, bigger batteries, etc etc...

All that adds to size, cost and clunkiness.

12yo girl names rover

OMG, pink pony!

That passage from her essay doesn't sound like it came from a 12yo. I suspect some over-the shoulder input from an overzealous mom and pop.

So this thing is going to look for water and signs of life? Like the last three or four? Didn't they find water already? Pretty friggin amazing that it has taken them this long to figure out the perchorate problem. This time they'll probably figure out that the nukes interfere with the radiation sensors.

re:Afghanistan probably isn't winnable

Which is why you move the theatre of operation to Iraq, thousands of miles away.

NB though adding "cave" to the sales pitch. Nice buying cue for Al qaeda hunters.

re: Re: I don't understand...

"These are the sorts of figures you get when you put a bunch of managers in a room with a calculator."

Hint: punch the numbers into the managers, not the calculator.

It's <smack> worth <thump> how much?

In the internet economy you're just a boring bricks and mortar thinker if you worry about profits. All that counts is to pick two points on the usage graph and predict that in three years everyone on the planet, plus their pets and their toolboxes will each have three Facebook accounts.

re: Taser's safe?

Here in New Zealand....

Many of the senior cops have been tasered.

There are some tasers in use, but every cop that carries them has to go through very rigorous training and during the training sessions at least one volunteer gets tasered during the class.

Tasers are not lethal if used according to instructions unless there are other factors: person prone to heart attacks etc.

re:"They're missing one of the more dangerous aspects on non-lethal weapons "

Quite right. The trick is very careful training and guidelines on taser use. Unfortunately too many police departments just hand tasers out like candy and you end up with a bunch of untrained idiots just using a taser because they don't want to get their hands dirty. With effective regulations and training you can ensure that police don't just use the taser for fun.

As with all force, officers should apply the minimum force principle: the least amount of pain/damage to get the job done.

re: Bad Laws

"For a party led by lawyers"..., there you have it. Laws, by lawyers, for lawyers.

Bad laws == more work for lawyers.

Good, well defined laws make for simple determining of black/white cases of guilt/innocence which crank through pilce stations and courts etc like clockwork.

Bad laws are defined by many different shades of grey, open to all sorts of interpretation which need copious legal rumination and court time to unravel. Lots of work.

Does spinning speed make a difference?

Why should it really take more juice to spin at a faster speed? Once you're up to speed you're just fighting friction and no acceleration is involved.

I can understand seek speed making a difference because massive accelerations are involved and thus faster seeking means more power is needed. You could likely make power gains by reducing seek speed.

@Jay

"Does anyone actually use facebook anymore?"

Quite. Nobody uses Yahoo either.

Facebook and Ya Who? are destined to find romance in their twilight years and shack up in a run down old age home to eat boiled cabbage and jello.

@ Chris W

"Also, what was the definition of a relationship? Left handed knuckle shuffle?"

No. That's an affair... when you're cheating on the right hand.

@@@Charles Manning

The commenter saying that one SV is OK for timing if you know where you are in 3D space is correct. However to get the timing exactly right requires algorithms that communicate with multiple SVs. It also needs the ground stations.

GPS timing is way more accurate than anything you can get with rugby or ntp over IP though a dedicated wire with no repeaters etc could probably substitute. Running that out to every tower is just not practical. GPS timing is also very cheap with receivers designed for timing applications costing way less than running 50m of cable.

Precise timing is also used to keep the intertubes flowing

These applications don't just use GPS to keep your wall clock up to date. They use it as a precise timing source for receiving and transmitting and keeping the signal timing between cell towers etc synchronized.

nanosecond stuff.

Rugby doesn't work for these because propagation through the atmosphere is too variable over any reasonable distance.

Claus et al

Agreed there are some interesting issues wrt focusing, but it is very possible to use output pixels as inputs with the correct technology.

LEDs are obviously outputs, but can also be used as inputs too.

Don't blame the mainlanders (South Islanders)

Telecom is run by morons in the North Island.

Sounds dodgy

It isn't a matter of technical possibility but customer perception.

On Windows + Mac computers people expect to pay for software and software differentiation can work well. On Linux computers people are far less likely to feel that they should pay for software.

Phones and PMPs are a different matter again. If people feel they have to pay more to enable some device features then they might feel cheated - that Apple is holding part of their phone hostage.

But then Apple probably understands their customers better than you or I do. One would expect that they would do sufficient market research to see if the strategy will actually work.

Is this really what we need?

Beside the fact that it does not work very well (yet?), one wonders whether it is really a good idea to try get actual answers from the internet.

Google's searches return (mostly) relevant information but still require the reader to actually apply some reasoning and interpretation to get to the real answer. Considering all the rubbish out there this is probably a far better way to handle information from the internet.

WA might technically work, but if it runs in Mathematica (even compiled) then it will just never be able to scale like Google does.

I tried WA from New Zealand South Island with two questions:

Question: "How many sheep in New Zealand?"

WA answer: Can't understand input.

Google: NZ population statistics page giving a reasonable number.

Question: "Where is Wellington?"

WA answer: Map with a star at the bottom of North Island. Reasonable answer.

Google answer: Google map of Wellington + wikipedia link + other associated info.

Correct answer: Who cares.

re: Amazing

Sounds about as complicated/dangerous as what some construction workers and oil platform divers do on a daily basis with no fanfare and fame.

Try fixing something underwater (weightless, just like space) is pretty difficult. Get fouled underwater and you're dead.

Using leccy cars

Rescheduling charging for 3am would be good for cheaper electricity but that would have to be under customer control. You would want some flexibility to get a charge if you were a shift worker.

You really, really don't want to use a leccy car as a battery bank. This is a very daft idea. Batteries are designed for purpose. leccy batteries have to meet a very different set of demands (lightness, collision resistance...) to stationary battery banks. Each time you use a battery dings its lifetime and using a leccy battery for this will mean you have to replace the leccie's battery sooner. Rather pay for a stationary battery.

But then local storage isn't particularly efficient either. Charging and then discharging a battery and reconstituting mains is pretty inefficient (60-70%) making you wionder whether it is really a good idea in the first place.

To the anti-outsourcers

There is no lack of people, but there is a lack of really talented people.

If you're a commodity programmer/whatever with nothing to differentiate you from thousands of others then, guess what, you're a commodity item and sensitive to a price driven market - just like the people assembling running shoes or whatever.

If you'[re in that band then it might be a bastard for you personally, but why should you really get that job over some person elsewhere?

If you have special skills, or something more to offer, you should get a job pretty much any time you want. The trick is to de-commoditise yourself. Find something extra. Find some way to sell yourself.

Geez, give up!

x86 is a complete power hog - even Atom. This is a fundamental limitation of the x86 architecture. You can't make a gazelle by shaving an elephant's legs.

Power consumption is pretty much proportional to the number of transistors you have to flip to get the task done. All that pipelining etc that is required to get x86 speeds up requires a lot more transistors getting flipped (compared to a risc).

Right now even ARM-based systems are at the point where power consumption and thus battery life is the major constraint to adding more CPU power. x86 would just make that worse.

Sure, incremental process improvements will improve x86, but a rising tide floats all chips and ARM will score from that too. Thus ARM will always be some steps ahead in this game.

Nobody is forcing advertisers to use Google

Don't like to use Google Ads? Don't buy em!

Think they're too expensive? Don't buy em!

If you don't think that penis cream is going to give you a nine-incher then don't buy it.

It is one thing to fret about third world workers being exploited by some Evil Empire, or some old gran being duped out of her nest egg by a fraudster, but fretting about advertisers being screwed over is quite another matter.

Ya who?

The quoted number sources just show how bollocks stats can be.

The "unique visitor" count is useless. It does not show usage patterns at all. If I hit Google 5000 times and Yahoo once, then thy both score 1 "unique visitor" point.

Ranking is also a bollocks measure, only actual numbers count. The real number is in the Nielsen report: Google out searches Yahoo 4:1. Yahoo hardly "came second". You don't get an Olympic silver medal for taking 4 times as long as the winner to run the 100m dash.

What is more important is the trend. Google is getting bigger and Yahoo is getting smaller.

@Andy Barber

"Also why do US Fire crew still wear Victorian safety head gear & not the full head safety gear they use in Blighy?"

Because they want to be recognised on TV.

Ms Bee proving it

Spring and she's getting cranky.

If she keeps this up for too long Reg readers will be snuffing themselves in droves.

Drone landing should be easy

Drones really don't need for any pilot or XBox driver.

GPS etc + some relatively simple software is all that is needed to land a drone. All the interface you rally need is something like Google Earth: Fly to here [click], then here[click], then land here[click]. OK[click]. The XBox mode is useful if you need to change the flight in realtime to investigate interesting things, but you can go back to auto for landing.

$5000 of software and hardware can control a tractor to within a few inches over bumpy terrain. http://www.ez-steer.com/demo.shtml. Controlling a plane through air is no more challenging.

Bumpy landings are OK since there are no passengers. Techno-paranoia is also not a factor for the same reason.

80% efficiency is bollocks

The problem with just zooming in on drivetrain or motor efficiency is that you lose the true system cost.

Sure, only 20% of the energy going into an internal combustion engine hits the wheels and 80% of the energy going into an electric motor gets to the wheels.

But take one step back. If you make the "cut off point" at where the energy goes into the car you get a very different picture. With liquid fuels pretty much 100% of the fuel going into the car gets to the engine (just a tiny amount is lost to evaporation etc). With electrics it is a far more dismal picture. Battery charging/discharging and motor control is pretty inefficient ~70% or so. That means that only 50-60% of the electrical energy put into the vehicle actually gets to the wheels. Sure, that's a step up from 20% but not quite up there with 80%.

Quite likely

Having a compass is very useful for orientation of maps, Starbucks, etc and is pretty much a must-have for any location based service.

However having a heading in the location-based API could also be coming from GPS (since GPS gives heading). GPS will tell you the direction of movement but won't give you the orientation of the device though.

re: The 4 Positions

Having spent some time trying to understand things from a data driven perspective, I tend to be a 4-ist too although I might modify that to being a 5-ist:

5-ism: We're doing something, so is nature, but what we're doing might not be mainly because of CO2.

Sure. we're doing something, but how much and is it within Mothar Nature's/Gaia's capability to compensate. Apparently around 95% of the carbon cycling through out atmosphere is just natural carbon cycle processes and just 5% are due to us. It only needs a slight change in Mother Nature to make a difference and soak it up.

A lot of what we're doing to the planet is through other mechanisms (land use for cities and agriculture, landfills, changing water flows,...).

Blaming global warming for every possible ill is not only wrong, it is also lazy science. If you are worried about frogs, polar bears or anything else then just link them to global warming and QED they're under threat.

Unfortunately this laziness also slams the door shut on other lines of research (eg. blaming pesticides or swampland drainage).

Often it is a toss up as to how we impact the planet. We can reduce fossil fuel usage by covering New Mexico in algae farms. The obsession with global warming makes it very difficult to have rational discussions about trade offs: Is it better to save the polar bears by building infrastructure in the desert that wipes out the desert dwellers? Is a coyote less valuable than a polar bear?

Here in NZ tuatara are apparently under threat from global warming. Unless we fix global warming the tuatara are doomed because a 4degree change in temperature will destroy their breeding. What a shame. These guys have been around since dinosaur times and we're going to kill them with a 4 degree temperature change. C'mon people: surely if they've survived countless ice ages, meteorites and other happenings that have caused all kinds of extinctions they can survive 4 degrees.

Please help a Nigerian child

http://www.steppingstonesnigeria.org/howtohelp

Wonder if this crowd are getting their funding from selling phone to crims?

Or maybe it is just a straight forward scam.

Far easier & long term solution

Weed killer + green paint. Apply once.

Get it all in context

*Regular flu has killed more people than swine flu during the last few weeks.

*One day sees more tuberculosis and malaria deaths than all the swine flu deaths in the last few weeks.

In part that's due to good isolation practices. No doubt if health authorities had not been so hardball there would be a lot more places in the world with larger number outbreaks.

Google didn't come up with the name

They bought Android the phone dev company.

Therefore it would be wrong to say that Google actually stole the name.

@ Estariel

Quite right!

There is a big difference between brand value and product value. Brand value is what allows companies to charge more for their product or keep a loyal customer base. For example Coket is just the same as some No Name colas in a taste test yet Cocacola can charge 3x as much for it. Therefore Coke's brand is worth the difference.

Microsoft's Brand Value is what allows them to sell a generic mouse for $5 more than a competitor.

It is very difficult to evaluate branding when a company has an exclusive product. ie who is buying Vista just because Microsoft make it?

Does branding work well in interwebs? I'd venture that Google has built huge brand value, but their major value is in the fact that they a great suite of services.

The modern punter is easily distracted. Provide better services than Google and people will just switch to the new provider.

New names are built quickly and die quickly too Ya who? Look at twitter. Huge uptake but very low retention (most twitards give up within a month) because it is fundamentally a crap idea. In a year it will be nothing unless it is cross pollinated with a wider set of services (mail, groups, video/photo sharing etc) to keep the tards entertained a bit longer.

re:Torture is perfectly legal in the country in which it is allowed.

What tosh!

If that was the case then why didn't GWB just tell the American people he'd have to invade because Saddam turned on his radar. Why did he have to fabricate the WMD crap?

GWB needed to do something that made it look like he was doing something. He had to find something to point the US military at. He needed a target and Saddam was good enough however he needed to make some vaguely credible reason beyond "he turned on his radar" or "he's a raghead".

Whether torture is legal or not is not really that important. in times of war when law is a bit flexible. What is important is that it generates really poor intelligence. The victim just says whatever makes the pain go away - truth or not.

Where are the great results that are supposedly provided by torture? Got Osama yet?

Why go to the moon?

Rather study a planet that we don't know much about and is far more important to us. It's called EARTH.

xubuntu

xubuntu runs fine on older kit and gives it a new life.

As for power... my first PC had a 100W power supply and no fan (apart from one in the power supply) . My current PC has a 400W power supply and fans all over the place. Why?

Far easier

Just do some homebrew on ISS.

Perfectly safe....

except for growing a third tit from all the hormones and crap in feedlot pork.

Once again this underlines how politicians will bend public stupidity to their own ends.

Freedom of speech is overrated

Try to shout any of the following and claiming free speech:

1. "Fire, Fire" in a movie house.

2. "I've got a bomb." in an airport.

3. "Heil Hilter" in a holocaust memorial.

You need a bit more than freedom of speech to claim that you have the right to do something.

Are we all dead yet?

SARS, Y2K, Bird Flu, AIDS, Mexican Swine Flu....

We're freaking out about relatively few deaths here.

Every year TB kills over 1million, malaria kills 2 million. Where are the OMG! headlines?