Posts by Stephen Ware

Steve Jobs: 'I wanted respect, not backdated options'

When is a contract not a contract

'Apple's chief-of-chiefs has only been paid a token $1 per year salary since his return to the company. Combined with the eroded value of his stock options in the dot-com bust, Jobs said he wasn't feeling properly compensated for his work'

Think people are missing the point here. If the above is correct then Jobs NEGOTIATED his salary and agreed by signing on the dotted line. Presumably he thought his stock options would cover his pay loss ($1) over the future years. Then the market reversed and these are a worth whole lot less. Who's fault is it ? His.....He gambled and lost.

Quit moaning about lack of compensation and get on with running Apple as you agreed with the board (And shareholders) in the first place or is this case of heads I win, Tails you lose ?

Atari promises it won't suck this time

Re :StarTrekOnline should be Elite

IMO Atari produced one of the all time best games in Elite (simple, accessible, focus on gameplay not hardware sapping graphics that I ignore after the first few sessions)....

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Hmm no they didn't... They licenced and COPIED a game from the Acorn BBC version....so you cant use that as a example of Atari producing innovative gameplay....

It doesnt matter what the recent history of Atari is it still has a good historic name. In an age where brand names alone are worth millions, companies will continue to buy old names and trademarks to re-hash them for current content as it is basically a cheap method (Compared with throwing millions on advertising) of lifting product placement in the market

New .tel domains bid to be world's phone book

Re £280?? You must be joking

Your name say's it all 'By Anonymous Coward'

By all means argue points but calling somebody a f*****t on first reply because you either disagree or a have a better suggestion renders your whole post as childish and irrelevant...

I never got past the insult....

Gates threatens to buy millions and millions of servers for Microsoft

Re; Kein Mitleid Für Microsoft!

'Actually, without Wiley Old Bill an IBM's forgetfulness in enforcing licensing of their first-generation PC crapware, there probably wouldn't have been the market onto which Linux could have glommed. We would probably be sitting in front of Sinclair QX8s, Amstrad SuperNAFFs and IBM SuckyExtraXpensives/2 admiring those cool but costly 5 GByte harddisks and bitch about the interoperability problems with X.25 connections.'

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And thats another myth. Whatever would have happened the 'PC' (In whatever incarnation it ended up with) would have eventually concentrated around one or two OS's....Its simple market forces. The techological advance would have probabally still given us Terrabyte discs etc..The only argument is whether it would have a better underlying OS with non of the crap legacy support....

For example there are load of what if's....Without MS forcing Apple to be so innovative to be 'different' (to survive) would they be where they are now with the Ipod, iphones etc.? If Apple had emerged dominant and had MS's money thrown at it how would the OS emerged then...?

Blu-ray 'to bloom', now HD DVD's dead

To TimM ref @Alex Yes size matters !

'And there is the flaw in your argument. Fact is the *vast* majority of the population (in the UK at least), *do not* have TVs that size. Even 32" is big for most people....'

And the flaw with YOUR argument...? Yes in the past the average telly was 20, 24, 28 inch . Why was that ???

Simply Because CRT were extremely expensive large and heavy, impossibly so for moving around the house, never minding finding one that was say 42 and remotely cheap enough for the average consumer. Now with LCD and Plasma you can get a 47'(!!) for under a 1000 ukp and prices are continually dropping.

The average telly size now sold has shot up in the past decade from 21' to between 32'- 37' (Do a quick google for proof) and there is no doubt with prices dropping that will increase to 42' soon. And if that is the AVERAGE sold then you can bet there is a large perecentage of the population that are buying 42', 48' now....Sharp have also been quoted as saying average size will be 60' by 2015...

Somebody is buying all that stock in Comet/dixons etc. otherwise they wouldn't be selling em' !!

And yes I have checked my friends and they are all buying slowly Large LCD's...The last one a 42' JVC...mmm very nice

Might I suggest you get with the times....

Google eyes Cleveland medical records

Re :Been there. Done that.

'Unless you're willing to break into a GP Surgery and hack into their server directly, then yes it is secure. The electronic transfer of data only takes place across secure dedicated network connections and the ports are only open long enough to transmit the data'.

I was merely commenting on the often quoted 'completley secure'. History proves otherwise. If you had used other words maybe I would not have taken the bait. A system is only secure as its weakest links. Maybe your GP's surgery is tight however where is the data going..A busy hospital...Is it secure there ?

I Just get annoyed when people make such hyped claims. ID biometric database is so called secure say the goverment....Does that mean I believe them ?....

Re:Been there. Done that

'The system is completely secure and completely funded by the NHS'

Spot 'stupid comment of the day' award.....

Well it has to Paris then....

The Electric Car Conspiracy ... that never was

Re Does gas magically appear at the station?

'But let's do an apples-to-apples comparison here. How much energy is expended pumping oil out of the ground, transporting it from point A to B to C to D to barrels to an oil carrier to a pipeline etc., refining it, etc.?'

so right...

And as I stated in my last post its a lot easier to clean up a network of power stations than millions of cars with lots of invididual companies constantly sqealing foul every time new emission legislation is proposed.

There is so much FUD going on around this thread its unbelievable...

One other point that nobody has mentioned is that we are in the first generation of Electric vehicles. We are at the equivalent of the early part of the century on internal combustion terms. If as much money was poured into battery and or other technologies (i.e maybe not exclusively electric) as current engine design has enjoyed over the century then efficiencies would be vastly increased. This thread would then be regarded as laughable

Re Conservation of Energy

'Why do people think an electric car would be more energy efficient? You can burn the fuel directly in your car's engine....or you can burn it in a power plant hundreds of miles away, transmit it over power lines, throught transformers, turn it into chemical energy in batteries, then turn it back into electricity and feed electric motors.'

For two reasons. We are not just talking about efficiency. If electric cars took off large scale in inner cities then reduction in air pollution would be enourmous and easly offset some so called loss of efficiencies you are quoting. Secondly its easier to clean up a dozen or so power stations (By legislation or otherwise) than millions of cars spread across dozens of manafacturers with a vested interest in keeping the status quo

Supersonic stealth jumpjet rolls off production line

re: Lot of Falklands lessons being missed here

>>Using expensive ships as radar pickets

>This was due to the crap fit out of the expensive ships, ultimately two types had to be combined together because neither could do a decent job on its own.

The point being made was that you shouldn't be using ships at all for purely picket duty as it just exposes the ships

The supposed idea of 'picket' ships is to get around ground based radar line of sight problems with the curvature of the earth. If we had had a decent airborne solution then we wouldn't have probabaly lost Sheffield, Atlantic Conveyor, maybe even Sir Galahad. With the more advanced warnings we could have offered much better air support

And back again (Rebuttal)

Lewis

'Kandahar is not an improvised strip in the field, it is a heavily defended military airbase. It just happened to have a crappy runway until lately. Off-base operations and Kandahar are not the same thing, and a prolonged failure to do some basic construction work hardly justifies the F-35B. Develop a whole new jet technology, or mend a runway surface? You choose'

Not entirely a correct. In a larger war situation which has to be planned for militilary wise as well as the smaller venues (such as Afghanistan) operating from forward runway locations that are constantly attacked might be an important consideration. Indeed was that not reason why the marines purchased the AV-8B Harrier for ground support in the first place (As well as off-field) ?