Posts by Eponymous Cowherd

James Bond's Lotus Esprit submarine car sells for £550,000

Re: Rubbish

Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious.

Not just a static prop

It is a real submersible that looks like a Lotus Esprit and can actually be driven underwater (as intimated in the article when it referred to it being driven by Don Griffin).

IIRC the film used 3 different versions of the Esprit, real Esprits, a static prop for the wheel folding scene, and this submersible.

I think the car used for the beach scene was a real, stripped down (no engine, etc) Esprit that was pulled up the beach by a cable.

Torvalds suggests poison and sabotage for ARM SoC designers

Re: "The colourful language would, however, probably attract frowns from human resources managers"

"Who gives a rat's ass about what "human resources managers" try to think about?"

Unfortunately, those who work at the companies that employ them.

HR "managers" in too many firms have power and authority (to hire and fire) well beyond their ability to understand the roles they hiring and firing for.

Google Nexus 7 2013: Fondledroids, THE 7-inch slab has arrived

Re: iPad Mini 2

The current iPad mini is £70 more than the new Nexus, which outclasses it in almost every respect except, perhaps, build quality. It is £100 more than the old Nexus 7 (@ £170)

You can be sure that any "new" iPad mini will cost quite a but more than the current £270 (for the basic 16GB WiFi jobbie).

I would imagine that a "retina" mini is going to cost at least £50 more than the current model (the cheapest "retina" iPad is £70 more than a non-retina iPad 2), so you could be looking an a 16GB WiFi iPad Mini 2 costing between £120 and £140 more than the Nexus 7 mk2.

Scientists demo light-controlled semiconductor

Re: Usages ideas please

I too wondered how this may be more useful than a conventional photodiode / phototransistor. One thought is that semiconductors all suffer a voltage drop across the junction (0.6v for Silicon). This may not seem much, but for high power applications this can be a significant problem. When in its metal state I assume there is no such drop, so could be useful in that respect.

Annother idea is to protect solar arrays. Solar panels react rather badly to having current shoved up them the wrong way (such as when part of an array is in shadow and taking current from the illuminated panels). If the unilluminated panels can be made to "turn metal" when in shadow, and hence act like a shunt, they can be protected.

Continuous delivery: What works (and what doesn't)

Re: The fact is CD needs a lot of resources - and not everybody has them

Agreed.

If you have the people and resources to "pipeline" the stages then this can work really well. If you have to take people off one task to perform another then CD becomes more a hindrance than a help.

Autogyro legend Ken Wallis hangs up wings at 97

Sad loss

Engineer, daredevil, gentleman.

RIP.

What Surface RT flop? Nokia said to be readying WinRT slab for September

Re: Elop to take over from Ballmer when Microsoft buy Nokia

Ruddy hell, I hadn't thought of that. Elop would be the perfect replacement for Ballmer!!

If they want someone to continue the serial cockupery, then Elop is the perfect choice.

Study finds online commentards easily duped, manipulated

Re: Good job, guys!

"While I'm writing this comment, all the rest of the comments in the thread have exactly the same number of upvotes and downvotes. People seems to be divided on this subject. :0)"

Hmm. All of the posts have a 1:1 vote ratio. Statistically unlikely, particularly when some posts have 6 or 7 of each.

Someone seems to be having a bit of fun.

Brit Skylon spaceplane moves closer to lift-off

Re: Think of the rest

"Can we use this for commercial travel?"

That'd be a yes......

LAPCAT A2

See a young Brit's mobe? 55% chance it has nekkid selfies on it, claims poll

Re: interesting radio antenna.

You'd think Simon would learn to spell his own name before criticising other people's spelling

Microsoft unveils push-button app generator for Windows Phone

Re: The way to get more apps is redefine the term "app"

App Inventor is still out there and is now hosted by MIT.

While is won't produce anything sophisticated, it is certainly more capable than this effort from Microsoft. It has no restrictions on devices and finished apps can be deployed to Play.

It is, as you say, based on the same "lego brick" concept as MIT's excellent Scratch environment.

Arrr! Comcast working on new tech to nudge PIRATES to go straight

These are not the carrots you are looking for.

Real carrots would be if the content we want to watch/hear/read had.....

Greater availability.

More reasonable pricing.

No DRM.

Microsoft's earnings down on slow Windows sales, Surface RT bust

Re: Has Redmond lost touch with consumers? YES!

Perhaps they should rename Office 365 to office 420.

The IT crowd: Fiercely loyal geeks or 'inflexible, budget-padding' creeps?

Re: No, No,Thrice No

You appear to be complaining about IT managers, the stuffed shirts who haven't worked with real hardware and software since the Pentium 2 was big news and Windows NT 4 was Microsoft's latest and greatest.

Many of them have never worked at the coal face in their entire careers and often don't know the difference between a terrabyte and a tampax, yet make decisions (based largely on a combination of fear, and what miscellaneous sales muppets have told them) that can knacker the entire company and make the real IT workers lives absolute hell as they are the ones that have to implement their bonkers policies and take the flack from the rest of the staff.

IT Managers. Worse than the Marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporations, and should probably suffer the same fate.

T-Rex tooth find shows dino may have been a pussy

Soft kitty, warm kitty.....

Arrrrrrhggg..........

Google and Apple's couples therapy is working – Schmidt

Re: RE:"Handing all their users data straight over to the government............

The same is true of the BBC. They, too, are regularly accused of Apple bias in both their tech reporting (particularly by commentards in Rory Cellen Jones' blog ) and in their apps (especially iPlayer mobile).

EE turns up speed knob EVEN FASTER on 4G spectrum

Re: I keep on making this point an the resident commentards keep ignoring it

"Once we get some competition then prices will come down. Until then if you need the performance then you'll pay for it."

Hmm, once we get some competition, not "once there is competition"?

Vested interests?

'The Apprentice' is a load of old codswallop, says biz prof

Re: Can't stand the show

I'd like to see one of them, when berated by Sugar for failing, to come back with "at least it wasn't as big a f**k up as the Amstrad eMailer"

Walloping a cod can be fun.

The point here isn't that the Apprentice is a load of codswallop, but that the prof thought it could ever be anything else.

Its entertainment. They get a bunch of the most obnoxious and incompatible assholes they can find and ask them to work as a "team" on an obscure project.

We sit back and laugh at them as they fail because they are the kind of repulsive and overbearing individuals we all love to hate.

Re: Its entertainment, not education

The apprentice I can agree with, but have picked up some good ideas from Master Chef, particularly Michel Roux's walk-throughs.

Apple 'iWatch' trademark filing hints Cook's make-or-break moment looms

Re: Make or break the whole company with a frigging watch?

Always makes me chuckle when His Royal Sugarness bangs on at the snotties in The Apprentice about picking winners.

He was told, and told, and told that the eMailer was a huge pile of FAIL, but he knew better.

What's the difference between GEEKS and NERDS?

Agreed

Geek = tech professional

Nerd = Dwayne Dibley

Anoraks

Nerds wear anoraks and have an unhealthy interest in trains and busses. Geeks don't.

SImple

Schwarzenegger says 'I'll be back' for Terminator 5 reboot

Hollywood:

Pretty much:

• Vampire flicks
• Zombie flicks
• Comic flicks
• Reboots / sequels / prequels
• Parodies of any of the above

Chinese 'nauts return to Earth after vigorous space coupling

You came in that thing?

You're braver than I thought. .....

FTC boss promises probe into patent troll regulation

See icon.

"situation needs an investigation to see if competitiveness and innovation are being harmed"

Hey mobile firms: About that Android thing... Did Google add a lockout clause?

Re: Google apps optional

"Nokia isn't locked to Windows Phone, they have other OSes, just not Android.

I know that, but Symbian is being relegated to "feature" phones, and they kicked MeeGo into the long grass.

There are 4 major "smartphone" operating systems. iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BalckberryOS. Of those, two are available for 3rd party manufacturers, Windows and Android. Samsung and HTC use both. Nokia only uses Windows. Why?

I would imagine that a Nokia Android handset would sell well, probably better than their Windows phones, so why don't they produce one?

Re: Google apps optional

"Have you ever gone into a phone shop and been told they're out of stock of Windows phones?"

Quite.

Vodafone are currently trying to ram Windows phones at me as an "upgrade" from my 2 year old HTC Sensation. Now why would they be doing that? Can't shift them? Being paid to push them? Or a combination of both?

Re: Google apps optional

Andrew 66:"Yes, but they make way fewer than they do Android phones - that's the point...

And, obviously, this is because of Google's anti-competitive practices rather than Android being more popular?

The EC might be better off asking why Nokia is locked to Windows Phone. It certainly doesn't make good business sense for them to put all of their eggs in that particular basket unless they are contractually obliged to.

Apple: iOS7 dayglo Barbie makeover is UNFINISHED - report

"Crikey! So all the men in your office are gay then?"

And that from someone who names himself after a raincoat?

What do you mean WHY is Sony PS4 so pricey in Oz?

Re: Two reasons

You have hit the nail on the head. Big business likes the free market, but only as long as it favours them. If it starts to favour the consumer then they get their tame politicians to introduce artificial constraints on trade.

Or introduce their own constraints (such as region coding) and then get those same bought-and-paid-for politicians to back it up with draconian law (DMCA, for example).

Cold, dead hands of Steve Jobs slip from iPhones: The Cult of Ive is upon us

Re: Does it do widgets?

No it doesn't do widgets. That would require:

• Apple to admit Google got it right
• A major rework of iOS far beyond the iOS7 tweaks

Pub bragging rights?

"Even the parallax view – fluff that shuffles the wallpaper as the phone tilts – is vitally important as it marks the iPhone out from the crowd. It’s the feature that will be shown off in the pub to prove the owner's superiority."

Right up to the point they see someone's Android device running a live wallpaper like the beautiful Ocean HD wallpaper.

Doesn't matter how you dress it up, iOS 7 is still a pig wearing lipstick.

Curtain drops on Apple Store ahead of WWDC: What lies behind?

What's all the fuss about?

A basic reskin, some "me too " features and some minor tweaks, hardly worth all the fuss, let alone a major upversion.

NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron

Re: Nothing to fear?

@Tom 38

There is a world of difference between arranging interception of a UK citizen's comms on UK infrastructure and asking the NSA if they have any info. One takes a lot of arranging and cooperation between a number of companies / agencies / people, while the other is a phone call between an MI5 spook and an NSA spook.

Are we to seriously to believe that they bother with "ministerial authority " for these nod and wink exchanges?

Nothing to fear?

"If the British intelligence agencies are seeking to know the content of emails about people living in the United Kingdom, then they have to get authority. That means ministerial authority," he said.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Sunday that law-abiding Brits had "nothing to fear".

The point is, Dave, they can just ask the NSA who, by inference, do the snooping for British Intelligence, without oversight or "ministerial authority ".

Google slides its soft finger-fondling into any willing Android doodad

I wish Google would get their fingers out..........

and support UK English for physical keyboards.

Whitehall grants copyright pirates safe haven until 2015

Re: This will just add £10 per month to internet subs

"looks like 1984 is coming true after all and the media-mafia are doing their best to piss off paying customers."

And that's the rub, isn't it?

The obsession that the TV and movie industries have with (unsuccessfully) attempting to protect their content is merely giving their customers a piss-poor user experience (e.g Ultraviolet), right-royally pissing them off and actually encouraging them to turn to the "pirates".

The music industry seems to have learned its lesson. You can now easily buy unencumbered mp3s and surprise, surprise, the music industry is now turning up healthy profits from legal downloads and music piracy is on the wane.

Publishers put a gun to our heads on ebook pricing, squeals Amazon

Author's cut?

What sort of royalties, as a percentage of cover price, do you get from these firms? IIRC, Amazon offer 35% (or 70% if you pay per MB delivery costs) for direct publishing.

Correction:

"The MFN clause stopped the book houses from offering better prices to other retailers, something Apple also insisted on, which left ebooks at a more or less uniform inflated price for customers no matter where they were bought."

Penguin chief: Apple's ebook plan 'dramatically changed' market

Re: Reading between the lines

"Amazon might be selling at the price you want to purchase at. They might not be selling at a price authors or distributors can survive."

That is the way the agency model works. Publisher forces seller to ask a fixed price, trousers most of the profit and passes a pittance on to the author.

With the wholesale model, the publisher sells in bulk to the seller at a fixed price and the seller can sell on at whatever price they like. The publisher still trousers the bulk of the profit and the author still get the same pittance.

In any case, the price I feel is reasonable for an eBook is, pretty much, in line with the opinion of most other people I have talked to on the subject. Its no good whining that the price isn't high enough if your potential customers won't pay more. If authors want more of the pie they should look for less greedy publishers or do it themselves (easy with eBooks).

Re: Reading between the lines

"Amazon is coming across as a Robin Hood character in this, except its not just the wealthy nobles getting reamed, its also the market stall owners. But the peasants don't care, because, free stuff."

Who said anything about wanting "free stuff"? I certainly didn't. eBook have less intrinsic value than paper books (can't sell them, loan them,), have lower manufacturing and distribution costs and, therefore, should be priced accordingly. I understand that the real value of a book is what is written inside it, but there is no way any eBook should be priced higher than the same title in hardback.

Personally I'd say the correct price-point is around 2/3 the paper book price, and Amazon were closer to this than the cartel publishers.

Reading between the lines

"Shanks said Penguin believed Amazon was holding prices at artificially low levels with its strategy, and the publisher wanted to see what price customers would actually pay for ebooks.

Lets make that a bit more believable, shall we:

"Penguin believed Amazon was holding prices at artificially low levels charging realistic ebook prices with its strategy, and the publisher wanted to see what price customers would actually pay how much they could gouge customers for ebooks.

Obama: Just call me Billygoat Gruff the Third, patent trolls

Trip, trap, trip, trap........

"Both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are already looking into whether patent trolling is affecting competition in the technology market, as the patent wars between big firms like Apple, Samsung and Googorola embroil more and more combatants."

It isn't the "big firms" who suffer at the hands of the trolls. Sure the trolls will have a go if they think one of their patents has been infringed by Apple, etc, but the real victims are the small players who cannot afford to defend themselves against these scumbags.

You spend time, effort and money developing an innovative product and getting it to market, then along comes Mr Troll and takes you to the cleaners. Yes, you can do due diligence and do a patent search, but often the Troll's claim is only tenuously linked to your product and they rely on being able to out-afford the legal costs.

The obvious solution, IMHO, is to introduce a rule for transferred patents. If you are the recipient of a patent (i.e, not the original owner), then you must be able to prove you are implementing that patent in order to defend it and the onus should be on the patent holder to demonstrate this, with the burden of proof increasing with time (if you have had the patent for a year, you'd expect to see concrete designs and, maybe, prototypes. If you've had it for 10 years then anything other than "in full production" would invalidate it).

Relax, Hollywood, ARM's got your back: New chip 'thwarts' video pirates

Re: Almost correct......

"In a high transaction volume retail space, the measurement metrics that count are Willingness to Repurchase, and Willingness to Recommend."

Indeed:

Ultraviolet:

Chances of me repurchasing: NIL

Willingness to Recommend: NIL (unless to say "Avoid like the plague").

Re: Almost correct......

"The problem is that for you the goal is "watch" but for them it is "buy". As long as they trick you into paying they are happy, "watching" is not something they concern themselves with."

But how many time will people buy without being able to watch?

Almost correct......

"Unbreakable DRM would be so encumbering as to prevent sales; the trick is to make buying content easier than copying it, which is what ARM is hoping to facilitate with the Mali, but how exactly it works will be up to the manufacturers who using it."

Current DRM systems already prevent sales. It isn't the buying of content that is the problem, it is making reasonable use of it once you have bought it.

It works like this. Buy movie. Try to watch it, FAIL. Buy movie, try to watch it, FAIL. Download torrent, try to watch it, SUCCEED. The buying is easy. Its the watching that is the problem. Until the DRM obsessed media industries realise that DRM is a major driving force behind media piracy they will never beat it.

Vodafone set to splurge £2.5 MEELLION a DAY building 4G network

Only if the price is right

There is no point in offering an "ultra-uber-mega fast" network if you need to remortgage your home to use it. If Vodafone try to offer 4G with the same costs and caps as they currently offer for 3G, then the mega-fast speed is pointless.

Woolwich beheading sparks call to REVIVE UK Snoopers' Charter

Re: The police already knew about these guys

Titus Technophobe wrote:

"4. The police knew about them, but they didn't have any evidence

Errm yes, and how do you think the police go about collecting evidence?

Yep, they apply for a court order when they have reasonable suspicion that someone is up to no good for such things as wiretaps and search warrants.

These pieces of filth were known to UK security forces and could have (should have?) been under surveillance anyway.

It it, frankly, disgusting, that Reid, at al are using this incident to introduce this liberty eroding scheme. It just says to the terrorist scum: "yep, we're scared, you're winning". We should be sticking our stiff little fingers up to these cretinous pieces of filth and carrying on as normal.