Posts by Giacomo Bruzzo

He's only gone and done it. Ex-Register vulture elected to board of .uk registry

pedantic syllogism

Assuming the author wanted readers to imply a conclusion in the subtitle:

<pedantic alert>Kieren's here to chew bubblegum OR kick Nominet ass. And he's all out of bubblegum</pedantic alert>

The sooner AI stops trying to mimic human intelligence, the better – as there isn't any

Thank you

This is fabulous, I just peed myself a little.

Patrick Moore: Lived with cats, accompanied Einstein on the piano

Absolute Legend

And a musician not devoid of a sense of humour.

NASA admits hiding 'really good' news from Martian soil

They found ...

the coast of Norway ...

Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

Bravo

I wholeheartedly agree with most parts of your argument, in particular the need for a long term research/energy policy based on Thorium reactors

Mac OS X Lion debuts in July as $29.99 upgrade

Most important new feature

Windows will be resizable from every side/vertex. Finally...

Official: PhD in 'Essential Oils' or 'Natural Toiletries' = 'a Scientist'

Giacomo

Sabroni go and read some Karl Popper you moron.

Apple coughs to iPhone 3G IOS 4 upgrade problems

roaming

Noticed that when in Italy roaming. with Data roaming off the Iphone would still download the mail....

Fifty Quid Bloke, meet Spotify's 14p man

@The original Ash

My point exactly. Once habit is set, it is very hard to recede. Their free service is way too similar to the premium service to convince sufficient subscribers to jump to a subscriber service. Possible Solutions?: stream half a song for every song, severely increase the frequency of the disturbance (adverts) etc etc., yet make people feel how good a service it is (good as snappy, quick, intuitive etc etc. Availalbitlity of catalogue (the magical: "whatever song I think about - it's there!"), speed and reliability of the interface, smoothness of streaming, quality of the APIs. But for God's sake, make people pay for the damn service.

@James Hughes :

difficult to increase it slowly, people will migrate to other incumbent services who are sitting at the edge of the market - there is nothing really proprietary about the Spotify technology, it can (and will be) replicated - proprietary is the breadth of licensing they managed to achieve (but then again, Record labels will do deals with anyone today, so newcomers to the game may even get better deals than Spotify - hence enjoy a lower cost base) and, if they survive long enough, proprietary is their brand.

Fact of the matter is: the streaming services do not pay much royalties to aggregators/labels and therefore to artists.

Once people went mental and said music=water the damage was done (ok ok the internet may have something to do with it...)

My curiosity is rather: what kinds of accessory services could Spotify offer? (if it doesn't it will eventually die and be superseeded)

Whatever is being said,

offering a largely free service (as an enticement for users to subscribe to a premium service) will not allow them to make any money. And advertising revenues will dwindle. Mah, another nail in the coffin for the record industry at large (that includes, unfortunately, independents).

Younger users now ASSUME that music has to be free - there is no going back from that.

Microsoft forbids changes to Windows 7 netbook wallpaper

Just a sign of great

Pettiness and smallmindedness from Microsoft marketing folk.

WHAT A BUNCH OF WANKERS

The Long Fail: Web 2.0's faith meets the facts

generalizing from observation

is not very scientific (it is induction, but science is not...)

Poor Scientific Method?

A theory's scientificity is, by ample consensus, associated with its falsifiability.

The original theory of the Long Tail was an scientific proposition (because falsifiable) about the shape of demand for large online retailers - it posited, that empirical demand for online goods was fat-tailed. (in fact it posits that the availability and "searcheability" of goods generates demand in the tail). It was falsified.

The Modest Theory of the Long Tail is the original theory with adhoc hypotheses attached to try and save it. It was falsified again.

The inspirational theory is not an empirically falsifiable proposition, and therefore not a scientific statement.

As such, the theory of the long tail may continue to exist in the realm of metaphysical/motivational propositions of new age culture, and may, one day, be shown to have engendered all manner of positive spillover effects on the industry (something like a cultural looking-glass) - for the moment I feel it is of very little value but to boost the ego of Mr Anderson and all those who religiously read wired magazine.

Every Italian's tax bill published online

@both AC and Tim

AC: I do think it is a good thing, bearing in mind, non of the far right wing parties entered the parliament either. AN is, I agree, a potentially mixed bag, but they have come leaps and bounds since the eighties, and are now a pretty different political animal. The italian communist party and the party of communist refoundation (both now excluded from the parliament) never made the slightest attempt to soften their ideological stance (which cost Italy a lot over the last 20 years - no or very little labour market reform, no or very little tax reform etc). Having said this, Mr Berlusconi showed himself to be more interested in personal affairs rather than matters of state during his previous tenure, and when criticised, he blamed the communists.

Now he has (for better or worse) been aquitted of all charges and there are no communists left for scapegoating, only the mild and centre-leaning Democratic Party. He is also quite old, and willing to be remembered. He has now to govern Italy for the benefit of Italy.

Tim: hehehehe, point taken

regards,

Giacomo

@AC

I have one - you need it if you live in Italy.

But it is quite boring to hear day after day after day how italian politicians are incompetent/ridiculous/ etc etc etc. Which, in many cases is actually quite true. But it has been said before, so the joke is, in the best of cases, tired.

regards,

Giacomo

@AC

Beppe Grillo was a comedian from the outstart. He then opened a very successful blog, which garnered him a lot of media and popular attention. I would not say he is a politician, but he can wield influence in Italy. Do some research before you make useless comments - joke is not that funny.

As far as the idea of publishing everyones income and taxes paid it is a god-awful one. Think:

1) Identity Theft

2) kidnapping opportunities for ransom

It only serves to feed the envy and satisfy the nosiness of people towards each other. Yes it is a case of sour grapes by the previous incompetent italian government lead by Romano Prodi.

Gentlemen, Berlusconi may not be everyone's piece of cake, but take notice of the following fact: This is the first italian government since 1948 where a communist party will not have any seats. This event has to be seen from this perspective.

regards,

Giacomo

Vista SP1 downloaders bite back

I must say

Had Vista Ultimate since release, only had trouble once when upgrading Ram (not an abstract issue, a matter of price), repeated BSODs because of an ancient Wifi driver.

Matter then solved.

System has always been rock solid and quite zippy. SP1 installed without a hitch, file copying is now faster (although it never was a major issue for me in the first place).

All in all, I am not displeased at all.