Posts by Mage 9270 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007
"This is not the Victorian era when British goods were made from British steel, using British machines powered by British coal."
Even then it was involving exploiting Indian and Egyptian cotton growers, whose production was increased due to collapse of the Slave produced US Cotton at time of USA Civil War. There are many other examples.
The axion is a hypothetical elementary particle postulated by the Peccei–Quinn theory in 1977 to resolve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD)
(I'm nearly sure it's time and not colour)
Or there is some other explanation for the cosmic observations and/or solution to the strong CP problem, which might be unrelated anyway.
Which given space, cost, battery will generally be inferior than built in DAC & Amp in a phone, tablet, laptop, which will have a DAC and Amp ANYWAY for the built-in speakers. Even 10m of suitable analogue audio cable makes no difference to quality. No headphone cable makes any difference to analogue.
The idea of removing analogue 3.5mm jack has nothing to do with thinness or quality. It's about product differentiation. It's stupid. The extra cost of earphone DAC and Amp is more than cost saving of jack socket. The Bluetooth stereo earphones are even more stupid than wired unless you really need wireless, battery life and additional degradation due to re-encoding.
Used to be true, maybe.
But a properly set up Linux Mint, with Mate, Redmond theme and Wine for a couple of programs etc is MUCH easier for XP users and even Vista / Win 7 users than Win 8.x and Win 10.
Not sure if Sage and payroll runs under Wine, but very few home users and small business users not doing accounts / payroll need Windows any more.
Games? The appropriate graphics cards can cost more than an Xbox One or PS4. PS4 seems to be winning there.
Yes, given that that there was other CPU specific code and HAL.
Actually too, the original NT was for 32 bit Alpha. The 64Bit NT4.0 was for Alpha 64 only and came out later after regular Alpha 32 NT4.0. I never saw the 64bit Alpha of Win2K, though I may have existed, it's not on my MSDN collection.
"but they will have to pay the support costs from the entire time their deal has been lapsed as well as a 50 per cent "reactivation" charge."
How much do you pay if you are a new customer?
So to get a renewal you have to pay the fee for a period when there was no deal? Sounds like the Motor tax office or a protection racket!
What unmitigated rubbish.
It's a cellular system. The 700MHz is actually too low for decent cell size and control.
Build more 900 / 1800 / 2100 masts. Gives more coverage AND more speed / capacity.
The 800 MHz sell off was about raising revenue and letting Mobile operators do low capacity cheaply on existing masts. The 700 MHz is even worse and is driven by US Multinationals wanting royalties for the chips and Regulators hopeful for revenue.
700MHz for mobile only made sense in Analogue and GSM and CDMA-1 Voice only days.
It's not Kodi itself though, but 3rd party modules/plugs, pre-installed on the boxen, which makes them illegal in Ireland under "Theft of service laws". The Cable company never wants cable boxen sellers to be prosecuted under that law because of the maximum penalty (about €6000 and/or 6months), instead they sue the sellers for copyright violation, because no limit and then they not the state get the money. The just sue the box user for full cable TV sub back till they last had one or moved in, which actually isn't unreasonable compared to TV licence fines etc.
Yet perhaps half the papers are rubbish, because the peer review is absolutely rubbish.
"Elsevier is just a commercial publisher."
No, commercial publishers PAY the writers. Elsevier behaves like a Vanity house. They are charging the writers, providing poor peer review (the peer reviewers usually are not paid by journals!) and overcharging readers and especially researchers for access.
The charges to readers might be justified if they where Marvel, Netflix etc, or paid for quality peer review but still it would be wrong as they don't pay writers. Elsevier is in a dominant position and stifling research. Boycott publishing on them or paying to read.
Elsevier doesn't pay for the research either which is a LOT more expensive than writing for Mills & Boone.
So who are the pirates, the bandits?
I got a cheap 7" tablet (less than £60). 1G RAM, 16G Flash (11G free), Andriod 5.1, 800 * 1280 IPS, 2MP Bluetooth 4.0 with 4000mah Battery. It's fine.
Cheaper seem to be junk:
The "Cheap" Tablets at £25 to £40 seem to be 0.5G RAM Flash 4G to 8G (1G to 3G Free), Andriod 4.1 to 4.4, 600 x 1024 (NOT IPS), 1100mAH to 4000mAH Battery. Some €99 in Tesco Lenovo and Lidl seem to be almost this bracket. Two sons have had ones in this bracket that the touch screen broke.
So there are a lot of "impulse buy" priced Tablets that give tablets a bad name, that no doubt is affecting all sales?
I can understand why some people might pay the Apple premium for an iPad, but is growth on Fire fuelled by Amazon's marketing? They promote their own products on landing page and in search and suggestions. Do people realise it's just a "crippled Android" locked to Amazon, no better than some cheaper Android tablets? It's not a real "Kindle" either.
Yet Apple is very expensive for the spec.
The Amazon Fire and Fire HD are expensive compared to similar spec non-name Android and are a "crippled" Android, locked to Amazon, no Playstore. Yet Amazon apps are available for Android.
So the sales ranking shows that Marketing and Perception are more important than price.
I have some quite new PCs with "full height" bays (twice CD/DVD Rom). I have full height MFM HDD in the attic too.
Is it 3"?
If so, then why not have a horizontal spindle 6" long with platter diameter between than in a 2.5" and 3.5" drive. Maybe have 15,000 RPM and stripe + parity across sets of four or five platters.
Nor anywhere else with EU or EU like employment and tax laws.
"how about someone finally getting round to challenging Apple about their refusal to honour the statutory 2 year warranty on consumer electronics?"
Fined in Italy, if Apple retail then they have to comply with SOGA in all of EU and many other places. Two years is the minimum it should "work" for the liability is 4 to 6 years for any claims or consequential damages, depending on Country. Covers incorrect description literature, adverts, website or box. All have to accurately describe the product. Design faults, manufacturing defects, mysterious failures or wearing out in "reasonable" usage. Since the battery isn't user replaceable consumable, they have to cover it. If it was easily popped out then they could call it a consumable with no warranty. The charger, cables, earphones etc supplied with phone OR separately BY Apple have same SOGA as the phone. Only things like light bulbs or user replaceable battery would be exempt from two years, though they would have to be fit for purpose.
Similarly it has to be "fit for purpose", i.e. it should work as well as any phone for actual phone calls, held in any normal fashion, without the earphones.
The being an Employee factors out way the Self Employed factors, so to be sure of winning Uber would have to have almost no characteristics of being an Employer. Uber is Taxi operator operating by piece work / bodyshop. It will be travesty of justice and morally wrong if they win on appeal.
Google is one of the Uber backers. The low price undercuts operations that have to run at a profit. They are backing it to get the user details, routes and times. ALL the App data is kept. I'd be amazed if Google isn't getting a copy.
So this is a con on two levels. The only flexibility the drivers have is to refuse pickups. That isn't affected by the ruling despite Uber's claims. Uber otherwise controls the driver and price. It is piece work. The fact that it uses software is a means to an end, not the end (selling taxi rides and slurping all the data) the App just makes it all cheaper to run and store the data than if they were rolling out a voice phone up taxi / hackney service (not the same thing originally). So Uber is taking 25% for running an automated version of a taxi company and keeping all the valuable user/route/time data. The drivers only know about their individual fares. They are not managing, co-ordinating, marketing nor storing the data. Just accepting the piece work or turning it away.
No doubt Uber will go to the highest court, because otherwise their exploitation is exposed. It will be a terrible travesty of justice if they win. Is it worth it to exploit the drivers to undercut existing taxi operations? Otherwise Uber would be marketing their service to existing taxi companies.
Uber, AirBnB etc are not tech companies, but regular Taxi and B&B booking services using apps/Internet instead of phone.
They are exploitive. Unsurprisingly not only are Uber Drivers working for Uber, but people renting out their place "significantly" rather than 2 weeks once a year need planning permission for change of use.
Deception is common to all these Internet based classified, services etc.
I don't understand why people would buy Tesla's Home battery pack. The lead in a Lead Acid battery is about 100% recyclable, pretty simply. It's lead, oxygen and sulphuric acid. It doesn't burn, though it CAN explode if the vents are blocked and it's either overcharged or short-circuited, though it's not very spectacular. They are looking at re-usuable battery cases on cars / trucks so that the batteries can be completely recycled.
Vehicle Lead Acid batteries are mostly recycled, unlike rechargables in portable/mobile devices.
There is no weight issue with home PV use, weight is the only reason that Lithium cells are used in cars as actually NiMH can be similar volumetric capacity. only slightly less after several months of use. (They weigh a LOT more). NiMH can last longer than Lithium too.
Actually perhaps Lithium rechargables should ONLY be allowed in portable / mobile applications?
It could be argued that Propane made by synthesis from water, waste carbon and electricity solar or nuclear or hydro / wind / wave is more sensible as a car fuel than Lithium batteries. There is actually much more energy wasted within a country transporting electricity on grid and loss of recharging, compared with the energy needed to transport propane from say Sahara to Glasgow.
I first drove a regular car with regular engine with petrol, retrofitted to propane in 1979. You could use either via dashboard switch. It was regular drilled out of the ground propane, not the new-fangled synthesis. Pure electric cars might be a niche, they would need MASSIVE grid investment even if 1/5th of people used them.. Lithium for home PV panel only makes sense to Lithium battery makers selling Electric cars.
" Racial Affinities feature is in line with standard advertising practices and is in fact intended to let advertisers post more diverse ad campaigns that can be specifically targeted at multiple groups."
Obviously loads of advertising agencies need to be prosecuted in very many countries if such specific targeting is "standard advertising practice".
Hardly rocket science and on some PDAs 30 years ago. Presumably easily added to almost any OS via driver, kernel module or whatever.
It's more a case to of economics than software. I seem to remember servers with battery backed RAM too, apart from battery backed SRAM then DRAM on RAID controllers, so uncommitted cache wouldn't be lost by sudden power cut (or something)?
Practically a Swiss Colony. Lichtenstein are not in EU, they are under same rules as Switzerland who manage their telecoms and much other stuff. Nearly as close to Switzerland as I.O.M. or Channel Is. is to UK (neither is exactly part of UK, but not a colony like Gibraltar or Falklands)
It assumes that self driving / autonomous cars are ever going to be good enough. Lots of Lidar is a problem. It's easily jammed. Also loads of places where GPS doesn't work. Is the map reading / dead reckoning ever going to be good enough?
Also do most people actually want one, especially if it's small, electric etc and more like a Fiat 500 than a Tesla. Will there be as many form factors as today, or will we (like Apple, MS, Google*) have "tech" companies and sociopathic Silicon Valley folk foisting their vision of what a car should be (probably not for European roads, larger families or fetching DIY stuff)?
[* look at phones in Carphone Warehouse. That's not choice!]
Maybe, but I'd bet it's more about acquiring IP than making chips. Qualcomm are far more interested in royalties, unlike many others, often you have to pay a royalty on sales as well as buy their chips, which are means to an end. They buy smaller outfits and shutter them, just to get Mobile related IP.
There is a lot or receiver IP, NXP used to be Philips.
As others have said, it's more about consolidation.
National Semi -> Texas
Altera -> Intel
Atmel -> Microchip
Linear Tech -> ADI
Others too. I think NXP already ate one of the two Motorola Semi Spin offs.
HP got rid of chips and Instruments and kept the simple but mass market printers and PCs.
What?
That is so pathetic. ANY lag is stupid.
I have no lag with keyboard, mouse and Wacom digitiser on a 14 year old 1600 x 1200 screen computer with XP. and none on my modern Linux box with two 1600 x 1200 screens.
The cost in rockets of putting the material up is massive. The cable materials have to be extended from the geosynchronous platform. Also we have no proven material for the cable.
The Space Elevator's ongoing maintenance is considerable too. A fusion / plasma torch rocket is frankly more believable than a space elevator on Earth.
An Elevator WILL work on the Moon.
Kevlar might actually be strong enough for a space elevator on Mars.
Rings are better/best, but need to be quite big to reduce Coriolis forces, thus materials limit you to about 1/3 G to have a safety margin.
Realistically in terms of shielding, gravity, materials etc, we are still at remote probe stage of exploration, even a moon base would be challenging, and people wouldn't be able to stay much longer per person than on ISS. It would have to be underground for shielding (see "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and many other decent moonbase stories. Not Space 1999)
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