
Regrets ...
I wonder if Oracle are regretting buying Sun?
Colin
212 publicly visible posts • joined 7 May 2008
"In any society it's expected that the older ones move away from the day to day and help steer the younger ones. It's called "management". Sure that "old" guy may know where to fix a 20 year old 'nix bug but if he is still in the trenches then that knowledge is likely not being transferred."
I think this is way off target.
In my experience, those old guys who move into management do so because it's the logical career path that leads to salary increases. Once out of the trenches, they spend most of their time in meetings, so their skills go rusty and they have little time to pass on their knowledge to the front lines. Overall, the organisation loses.
Colin
"Like IPv4 addresses where one or more octects is often greater than 255."
I thought this was to prevent suggestible loonies actually trying to connect to that fictional IP address. If it's in a movie it must be real, right? Similar to the non-existent 555 exchange or area code used in telephone numbers.
Colin
Terminator Icon because we know it's IP address is in the 300+ range :-)
"My cynical side thinks that the Government wants to push loads of money to cloud providers to get infrastructue off their capital budget and ditch some expensive skilled personpower."
Well put. However ...
My cynical side thinks that the Government wants to push loads of money to cloud providers to get a nice cushy directorship lined up so they can walk into a new job after they get shit-canned at the next election.
Colin
"Of course what we apparently need is more badly worded legislation to cover specific circumstances, rather than ensuring that existing legislation can cover the requirements, because politicians need to be seen to be "doing something" in the run up to an election."
And this, in a nut shell, is the reason we will be seeing many more instances of politicians making such claims over the next few months. All they want is face-time on camera as a means to keeping their jobs.
Make your MP work. Don't re-elect him.
Colin
"On the other hand, isn't this scientific study suggesting that children should drink beer?"
I thought that, way back in the Middle Ages, children did drink beer. It was safer than drinking water because the brewing process involved boiling the water, which killed all the microbes.
I could be wrong. I might have read that after I'd had a couple of pints :-)
Colin
"The books touch on issues like terraforming ... "
Including, IIRC, the deliberate use of greenhouse gases to bring about global warming. I think the "Russell Cocktail" (named after Saxifrage Russell, the character who developed the idea) was accepted, in universe at least, to be the ideal mixture of gases to warm the Martian atmosphere.
Note: I'm not trying to start an AGW/climate change flame war here, so please don't take this comment as such.
Colin
"Is it just me or have they been down that route before (apart from the life support systems - no frigging way is THAT ever going to come near me)? "
I seriously doubt that, if you're ever in a situation where you need a life support system, you'll be in any condition to ask the surgeon "does that monitor, blood-pressure gauge, ventilator, IV system, run Windows 10? If it does, I don't want it near me!"
Dave126 got there first :-)
Colin
"Scott McVicar, managing director cyber security at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence "...BBA to share that intelligence in a collaborative manner with all of its members, is vital if the financial services industry is to beat cyber criminals and fraudsters at their own game.”
So, the financial services industry is to engage in cybercrime and fraud? That's the criminals' "own game".
Or has this just given them a legitimate cover for their usual practices?
Colin
Given the general theme of the comments in this thread, particularly the first comment from AlbertH and the AC who responded, it seems to me that no sensible mobile user trusts Ofcom, the Networks or RootMetrics for accurate stats.
Would The Register be able to step up and conduct their own research with other independent groups?
Granted, it's unlikely that such research would carry some weight with Ofcom, but a man can dream.
Colin
I get the impression that Dave, George, Nick et. al strongly suspect they are going to lose at the next election and end up out of a job. Thus they are making these "laws" so they can use their golden parachutes to land in a nice directorship role in one of the Silicon Roundabout startups (or even as a roving ambassador for Google).
Makes me feel decidedly queasy.
Colin
While watching a couple of games with a few beers and good company, I noticed the brightly coloured, almost day-glo, boots most of the players were wearing. I wondered if tapes of the games could be analysed to predict, or at least simulate, movement of players on the pitch. In video games, the player would control one team member (the one with the ball), while the game's AI would move the other players to tactically important places on the pitch.
Sounds like the SAP software could be used to improve the AI of games like FIFA. Given that Sony were one of the World Cup's major sponsors, a Sony/SAP tie-up seems possible.
Colin
Beer Icon because several were involved in formulating this idea :-)
"The Computer is your friend!"
"Will all REG sector troubleshooters please report for termination immediately."
"Thank you for your cooperation. Have a nice day."
At least Paranoia gives an IT angle to this story.
Colin
PS: I am well aware of the big overlap between IT and RPGs. Hence the joke icon.
There were similar stories floating about years ago, when the Polytechnics were "upgrading" to Universities.
Newcastle Poly wanted to become City University Newcastle upon Tyne and it took some guy on the print line for the new letterheaded paper to point out the acronym. Admittedly, this might be some sort of urban legend.
The students at Sheffield Poly wanted to rename it Sheffield Hallam Institute of Technology.
Colin
"Is the VC backers forcing them to sell up at the first hint of someone who'll give them anything close to their preferred return?"
Cynical but probably true. However, there is an alternative view: that UK bosses know they'll never get appropriate support and protection from Whitehall and sell to overseas companies who can protect their assets (e.g. IP and patents).
Colin
PS: "Christopher Clague" ... the offspring of Nick Clegg and William Hague? <<shudder>>
Additional point: a boffin should build on the work of his or her predecessors. They can take the work of Newton, Einstein, Galileo, Oppenheimer et.al and think "wouldn't it be neat if we did this?" Of course, when their new ideas come to fruition, they should credit the original sources and perhaps explain what led to their examining this new line of research.
Anyone who takes someone else's research, builds on it and then claims all the credit is not a boffin. He or she would be a rip-off merchant.
Colin
Grammar Nazi icon because he has the look of a boffin-turned-lecturer :-)
"I really hate the term boffin. It is too often used by certain publications to describe a man (and it is always a man, women in science tend to go by the term top science tottie) who though clever in a narrow field is incapable of dressing themselves in the morning or finding their glasses despite being perched on the top of their heads.."
That's the whole point of this discussion: to reclaim the word boffin as a term of respect and admiration for those in the scientific community who know their field inside-out and upside-down and can then apply that knowledge to bring about significant benefits.
Colin
"The Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association argues that the mobile app is basically just a form of taxi meter, which private cars and minicabs aren’t legally allowed to have."
This point puzzled me. The private cars and minicabs don't have the meter: the customer who wants the taxi has the meter, in the form of the app on their phone.
Colin
"Let's get that diameter in perspective: drag-and-drop HR 5171 A in place of our sun, and it's good-bye to Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt, Jupiter and Saturn."
So would that place Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in the Goldilocks Zone? Or would they all be like Daddy Bear's porridge?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Colin
Don Jefe,
Sounds like a plan. Have a beer on me.
All you need after that is for some astro-engineers to fit rocket engines to the base of the pub and then the party will really fly! It can raid the Home Counties for more supplies (but good luck finding tambourine girls in Essex, Kent or Berkshire).
Colin
Didn't Disaster Area have a fully robotic drummer? Their meatsack drummer was on a beach light years away where he "had found a small rock that would be friends with him". DA's manager was relieved that the timing of the cymbalistics would be correct.
Colin
Nuke icon because that's somewhat quieter than a Disaster Area concert :-)
"The trademark filing has it covering all kinds of non-software things. Notable in its inclusion is "Headphones," which retroactively makes Skullcandy headphones a violation of this trademark. I'm sure other instances could be found."
So where would this leave the Highlander movie? (there can be only one, two and three don't exist ;)
Hooker: "Hi, I'm Candy."
Kurgan: "Of course you are."
Colin
"It's a bit cheeky, copying someone else's game mechanism and then trying to claim it as your own IP!"
Well put. The follow-up question being: who actually owns the rights/IP/copyright/software patents/source code to the original "Bejewelled" game(s)? (Or whatever family of games can trace its lineage back to the first version.)
This is a serious question. I'm not trying to start a flame war.
Colin
"history" has been completely rewritten, and is now called "herstory".
The "touch" command has been removed from the standard distribution due to its inappropriate use by high-level managers.
Brought to you by the People's Committee for Democratically Organizing the System (PC-DOS).
Colin
"Whatever you do will be more fun."
I think Microsoft's funniest advertising fail was for Windows 95. The soundtrack was the Rolling Stones' "Start me up", which was all well and good when clicking on the Start button was what Win 95 was all about. But that song then does go on to say "You make a grown man cry."
The irony was obviously lost in Redmond.
Colin
I've upvoted a couple of earlier posters (Dan Paul and Ben Holmes) because I agree with their sentiments.
Where Dan's point is concerned, I'm with Stephen Hawking, who said "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space". If we haven't left Earth in significant numbers before then, then the human race will be blasted back to the Stone Age. Look at the Shoemaker-Levy comet impact on Jupiter. That's a near miss in spatial terms. If it had hit the mid-Atlantic, where would we be?
Ben's point is the main problem:
"An[d] so the endless cycle of underfunded grandstand projects such as SLS continue, whilst NASA slips further and further into obscurity."
The technology, the brains and the desire (Elon Musk and even Richard Branson) either exists or is on the drawing board right now. What we (as a species) lack is the political will to make it happen.
Heck. Rant over.
Colin
Errr ...
"Ubuntu Edge was a flop, rebranded as a ¨success¨. Just like MS claims Win8 is a success."
And ...
"MS´s plan must be working our nicely, they have clearly shifted gears into Operation Extinguish and this funding disaster was clearly part of that."
You are Eadon and I claim my five pounds!
Colin
"His plan is to solve malnutrition in one product and it looks like he has it. "
How can this solve malnutrition in famine-struck tracts of the Third World? It seems to need clean water and a means to refrigerate the final mixture to make it drinkable.
Will the maker be funding such developments with the profits from this gloop?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Colin