Posts by Otto is a bear.

Says it all

"The average sale price (ASP) for Windows tabs crashed in the last quarter to £119, compared to £405 in Q4 ’13"

It also gives a clue as to how much Windows was adding to the price of the device when compared to a laptop.

Golly Gosh

Who would have thought it, what rotters, now pass the ginger beer Algy, and we can get on with something more interesting.

Open Office

I use an Open Office port on my Samsung, can't remember which one, but on a personal level I use Open Office in preference to MS Office anyway. The latter is only a business choice, and I wonder, at this stage how many private individuals who want office functionality will bother to change away from what they have.

Corporates, however, will love it.

Such fun, Such fun

Perhaps they should have a driver change though, may I suggest Jeremy Clarkson, though the weight penalty might be too much, he's much more disposable.

Seriously though, the technical challenges they need to solve, not least how to keep it stable and on the ground will be the long term benefit. I would have though the speed issue for comms had been solved by now, military aircraft have been flying a lot faster than this for some time. Mind you if you are developing a low cost mobile 4G solution for the third world, flatness aside.

Not very green either

Running 33 hot spares and failed drives for 4 years. I don't know if it's still true, but the longer you leave a drive idle, the less likely it is to start-up when you need it.

There also have to be extra space costs for having 33 drives doing nothing.

The thing is....

To Microsoft other OS do not exist, apart from being a Sales opportunity. I also wonder if they really will go for a Windows 7 version, if it's a good product surely using it as a leaver to move people to Windows 10 makes more sense, rather than allowing Windows 7 to become another XP.

Mind you you could take the line, why do I actually need Windows 10, or Spartan.

I could say something unkind

Like Hmmm, a Moscow based company "Revealing" something from the 5i, but the trouble with Malware is that once it's out there, there's nothing to stop anyone else using it. If Kaspersky can reverse engineer it, so can a Malware lab, or just plain copy it, as they are hardly in danger of action from software patent trolls.

I'd say a bit of a leap to say who authored the whole platform based on one plugin.

Their own worst enemy

HMRC are not alone in poor IT, many other departments and agencies suffer from the same malaise, it all comes down to an inability to make long term plans and determine future requirements. That is driven by the fact that it's very difficult to keep up with politicians and policy, which change far more in government than they do in the private sector.

It's not so bad

As I actually use a Nokia Lumia, an iPhone and a Samsung Tab, all in anger, I think I can actually say that the Lumia is not a bad phone, it's easier to use than the Samsung, but not the iPhone. However the Samsung is a much better take to meeting device.

The thing is though, Apple make money with a premium product, Microsoft and Samsung, don't make that much, but Samsung has the volume. You do have to wonder how long the Lumia and Surface can last. My company provides Lumia and Surface by default in the UK, but really they are niche products and I wonder if they won't go the Blackberry way.

If you have, and like either the Samsung devices or the iPhone, why would you swap there really isn't any caché in having one and cost wise, well....

So far as apps go, who cares, they all have the ones you'ld want anyway, and once you've bought into an eco-system what would be the porting cost and hassle.

Demanding Answers?

Google must be quaking in their boots, running scared from the big bad Wikileaks.

Not on the same planet as the rest of us

A long time ago dealing with Oracle and Sun was easy, and fun, the Oracle started to change, began not to care about small and incremental deals. They bought Sun, and it went from being easy to buy Sun kit to being nearly impossible.

Now, even for big deals, I feel we're being screwed.

"Oracle doesn’t value resellers because it is a big solutions company and as far as they are concerned their offer is unique, customers can’t buy it elsewhere"

Is just so true. Microsoft are far more friendly, but for really good people to deal with, it's the start-ups and SMEs that win hands down, until they sell out to Microsoft, Oracle, SAP et. al.

I look forward to visiting SMEs, but the big boys, it's always what line of %^&£%^ are they going to give us today. Oracle, sadly is the worst, I hope they have changed in the six months since I last had to deal with them, but I doubt it. Sad, I like the Database and Sun Kit, but don't recommend it any more.

All I wanted was a Stamp

Who would have thought in the early part of the 21st Century that a visit to you local post office could be such an adventure.

"Good morning sir, can I interest you in life insurance"

"No thanks, just redirect my mail, and a dozen 1st class stamps"

"We are offering great interest rates on our current accounts"

"No thanks, just redirect my mail, and a dozen 1st class stamps"

"Have you considered the benefits of an ISA"

"No thanks, just redirect my mail, and a dozen 1st class stamps"

"I'm sorry sir, but we don't sell postage stamps unless you take out postal insurance"

Exit stage left pursued by bear.

(I did get to redirect my mail though)

Hmmm

Laptop sales are back into growth, slab sales down, so that'll be the people who thought they were interchangeable and have found out that actually a laptop is more useful, overall, and that you can do without a slab, but not a laptop, unless you really are a social user.

I'll duck now shall I.

How nice

Apart from the obvious, never leave the router passwords set to the default values, is there actually a SOHO router that is safe to use.

I do love it when we get the doom and gloom, without the recommendation on what to do, somehow I don't think we can rely on the router vendors or telcos to fix these things any time soon, unless of course market forces prevail.

I don't suppose they reported the router that was hardest to break into did they?

Conspiracy?

DUAL has been around since I can remember (V4), and probably before, it's use was, and probably still is deeply embedded in virtually every Oracle application both overtly and covertly. Originally there wasn't much you could do with DUAL, apart from SELECT 1 FROM DUAL, the whole point being that it's a table with one empty row, was very useful when doing procedural stuff in early versions of Oracle Forms and SQL*PLUS, before the advent of PL/SQL. (I seem to remember some PL/SQL actually compiled to SELECT FROM DUAL) You did not insert into it, update it or delete from it, unless you wanted to crash your application, it was something every developer knew, not to touch.

I suspect that, in these enlightened days, no one actually uses it, and that it remains only for compatibility, quietly forgotten about, and not maintained by anyone.

It does beg the question

Who they mean by we, there are many "we"s, I know the one they mean, but sadly I suspect the "We" who will decide will not be the "We", we would like.

Automation is driven by the desire for profit, and the accumulation of wealth, the fact that most CEOs don't give a stuff about either their workforce or their long term market will ensure that AI is used to reduce the need for human beings to produce anything. Don't look to governments either, they all want to reduce the cost to the taxpayer, to provide smooth reliable services with minimal disruption. Unfortunately, us humans tend to be disruptive, we get sick, we sleep, we go on strike, make mistakes, and we change jobs for more money. AI offers a decision and control mechanism that learns, doesn't stop, doesn't make mistakes and oh yes doesn't buy anything either.

So an AI future mapped out by CEOs and Politicians won't include Workers, Consumers or Taxpayers, or at least as many as we have today.

Wow

Now that's one hell of an impact, and there was me thinking the cloud was the answer to all our availability and scalability problems.

I guess the fine print covers Verizon and screws the clients. VMs down 1 hour before, and presumably all up an hour or so later, but keep someone on standby just in case we finish early.

You do have to wonder exactly what they are doing and why they haven't structured their cloud to minimise this kind of thing. Who's their cloud software provider?

Well maybe.

Mrs Bear has her knitting needles out.

The proof will be in the implementation, when we will find out how much wool was needed to cover Ofcom's eyes.

The deal as I understand it is 85% of the Land Area, but who knows what quality of service they will provide, do you want to bet that the leafy villages of the Chilterns and Downs which get variable signals will still get the same service, because they already have a service. The operators were never going to agree to forced mast sharing, as that would decrease the value of their existing assets and drive down any fees they could charge for sharing. They already know it makes sense, and limited cooperation also makes sense, but in their book, it's the sharing deal that's important. I suspect the planning and backhaul costs will be the determining factor in the uptake and roll out speed.

Grow the cloud, ignore the rest

You can see the logic for Oracle, Microsoft and the rest, get people into your cloud, and you have their revenue for the very long term. More or less, once you are in, it's very difficult and expensive to get out, and that's not just the direct migration costs.

So what if your software is uncompetitive in the retail market, you can make it very competitive in your cloud, and you have a much lower cost support environment and larger profits. Afterall, who cares about the private clouds, they should be in vendor clouds, and they will represent a very small percentage of the remaining market. Ching.

In the long ran IaaS, PaaS and SaaS will be an inhibitor of technology, because demand will shift towards large hosting companies with risk averse cultures, sure competition will drive it a bit, but will switching your cloud vendor give you much of a business advantage.

You can look forwards to retail sales dropping and becoming more expensive as the market contracts. I'd say the the number of new hosting vendors will drop away, if it hasn't already, because of the high startup costs. Only very large organisations will be able to afford on site IT, the rest will use, what were they called, oh yes Bureaus, comeback Centrefile, the 1960/70s business model returns, without the Mainframes.

Stupid Ideas

You have to remember that there are probably no policy making legislators in any country that actually know how a computer system works. They know a lot of buzz word, they probably even know what URL stands for, but none actually know what they mean or how they work.

I doubt any politician even knows what a false positive is. I would also hazard a guess that their IT advisers are no better, as they tend to be young Turks who haven't really ever done proper IT, or old farts, like me, who ran an IT organisation, but never actually knew what it did, (not me by the way).

If you have a browser based black list of URLs, I can see that list getting very big very quickly as the URLs will constantly change, and probably get longer, as some things already do on the darknet, and will only be available to the initiated. We can probably look forwards to browser updates on a daily basis.

Gosh

I would never have known that, what cleaver people.

Not surprised.

There has been an unhealthy rush by government to exit Oracle contracts, because they are expensive, and Oracle hasn't been that helpful to the government in cost reduction.

The government has probably signed a lot of long term Enterprise agreements based on large numbers of licences attracting heavy discounts, and now they are exiting and consolidating these agreements, they are breaking the terms of the deals, and Oracle are recalculating their support agreements, you don't get the same discount on 75 licences, that you did on 100. In fact, it may well be that the new support agreements turnout more expensive than the old.

Add to that the fact that when moving from one ERP to another, you need to parallel run for a while, you can't just shut one down and start the other, and the likely hood that this wasn't costed by the Home Office or their contractor, it isn't much of a surprise.

The only way you can be sure that your Oracle costs will really drop, is by exiting all Oracle contracts at the same time. Don't forget Oracle have absolutely no incentive to be nice in the current climate. Oh and don't think SAP or Microsoft would behave any differently. At the moment HMG are probably falling into the arms of Microsoft, with even bigger deals.

Oracle needs badly to modernise its licence model for everybody, but it's a tough job for them, how do you tell your shareholders you need to cut revenue to survive. They need to support a much larger low end product base, rather than severely limiting it, so you have to move to Enterprise products at a ridiculously low level, and then gain loads of functionality you don't need. The Standard editions are way cheaper and easily capable of supporting most applications.

Crossrail and the East / West Link

Sadly, Crossrail belongs to TFL, so it's very unlikely that through trains from Cambridge to Oxford via Kings Cross will ever be allowed, no matter how useful. (Oxford is due to be wired in the next few years).

The East / West Link is however likely to be built, it's in the strategic plans, other possibilities are Via Hitchin or Stevenage, but again development has encroached. Peterborough to Bedford via Corby is still possible, but very roundabout.

The plans are actually for a new route through Sandy or Stevenage, rather than using old track bed.

A carriage full of nerds, my idea of hell.

Huh?

iTunes isn't a purchase mechanism as such, yes it let's you buy from apple, and it's the easyest route, but I don't use the Apple store much, and purchase other ways. To me the most important function of iTunes is that it allows me to organise my music and stuff, and backup my phone.

My Sony, Nokia 6210 and Blackberry phones all came with propriety software interfaces, as did my Palms, and I don't ever remember anyone else demanding to write interfaces for them, I doubt anyone tried. The only reason I can see that this is happening is that Apple became the biggest player through customer choice, and others wanted a slice, and think Apple should be obliged to let them have market share.

What do these people think Apple should have done, considering the up front risk they were taking. Even once successful, changing their market strategy would have been a very brave move even for Steve Jobs, hey investors, we are going to cut our margins, reduce our profits, and let competitors in, reducing the value of your stock.

It has always been, if you play with Apple you play with their Rules, if you don't like it, well there's always Android, Microsoft and Linux. We the consumer gave Apple their market, because we pretty much like them.

Yay!

And from the home of the Vivaro Van. Shoot me now.

With a warrant

It should be that any law enforcement with a correctly issued warrant, can look at any document it wishes. It is not reasonable to say that just because you want to keep something private by encrypting it that law enforcement then can't see it. It should always be able to do that by showing just cause.

Destroying evidence has always been an offence, and so far as self incrimination goes, if you are stupid enough to write down the fact you have broken the law, the more fool you as the police always have had this power with paper why shouldn't they have it electronically.

Blue touch paper lit.

BT Need to be back in the mobile game

Whatever we might think of BT, their long term future will require them to be in the mobile telephony market. Fixed line as a personal method of communication is dying, which leaves BT as a data provider between wireless links, a far less profitable, and more controlled market.

Buying back O2 or even Three makes sense. As for customer service, well they are as good or bad as the vast majority of infrastructure providers, mostly I've found it depends on the person on the other end of the support call and the time it takes to reach them. I've had brilliant service from O2, Vodaphone, Virgin, and BT, and I've also had complete and utter crap.

I doubt the ownership of either of these companies will make a lot of difference, mind you if BT can get O2 back for less than they paid for it, go UK PLC.

I would also expect Ofcom, yet again to decide at the 5GL auction to opt for new entrants to enhance competition, as they seem to like to have more players than the market can support.

If only it were that simple.

Labour markets, like any type of market react to supply and demand, and indeed there are instances, even for skilled jobs where the contractor is paid less money than the permanent employee, using your example the $50 employee would get paid $40 as a contractor, so there is no uncertainty premium.

It's also true to say, the firm may well give you a discount based on length of engagement, which may not meet the $75 contractor, but won't be far off $100, making the choice less clear cut.

Startup tech. companies use the market model quite effectively, as a primary contracting vehicle. They do however, tend to use contractors they have worked with before and take on only those personally recommended by trusted partners. In my experience, it is very rare that they would take a risk with a total stranger.

If Oracle Want to Grow again.

Perhaps they can introduce competitive pricing. Enterprise Edition might be the most comprehensive database going, but that's not much use when most users , use less than half the functionality.

Here's a thought, take the limits off standard edition and introduce a realistic VM/cloud licence policy, you've done it for Microsoft and Amazon, how about the rest of us.

It also doesn't help that Oracle support recalculates your support to current pricing if you consolidate, making it more expensive than it already was.

Not surprised lots of key Oracle users are looking at Postgres.

And that's just the Database, let alone the rest of their overpriced software, much of which suffers from the same pricing issues.

I actually like Oracle technology, but, even I can's make an economic case for using it any more.

The solution

Just tell the PRS (Performing Rights Society) that minicabs are playing music for the entertainment of their customers. They will want a cut, on behalf of the artists. As already noted, it makes a big change from the current status quo, where the passenger gets forced to listen to the drivers favourite station.

Now if the PRS could only charge drivers for UKIP rants.