Posts by Steve Gooberman-Hill

Don't bother with Big Data – listen to customers instead

It's called Qualitative Research

It is called Qualitative Research, as opposed to Quantitative Research (stats), and the people who can do it well (generally anthropologists and similar disciplines) are very smart and skilled. It's being used quite a lot in medical research as part of epidemiological studies (i.e. large scale health studies).

For example, you would do well to understand how people answer the questionnaires you give them - do they answer them in the way you think they do (and no, this is not a no-brainer, it can be a very subtle and difficult issue).

FWIW, I am not an anthropologist, but I am married to one :-)

CAPITALISM without PROFITS - Welcome to the Instagram Era!

Move over Warren Buffett

This guy really gets it. He is the VC equivalent of the BOFH. We need more. Regularly

Yet another iPhone patent lawsuit

How does FRAND work for a 3rd party

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the whole thing, but my reading is that the patents have been sold to a 3rd party (Core) with no interest in cellular technology, albeit with the original patent holders taking a cut (but having relinquished control).

So how does FRAND work here?

- Where is the requirement that Core need to apply FRAND - they have not signed any agreements on patent licencing as part of the ETSI or GSMA standards process.

- Was there a requirement in the ETSI or GSMA FRAND licencing agreement that required FRAND to be continued to be applied by anyone who bought the patents?

In short - can a 3rd party who has bought the patents claim that they were not party to any FRAND agreements and hold the whole cellular industry at gunpoint?

Moore's Law leaves mobile networks ripe for attack

Re: And?

Get outside any major city and it's a million quid to a pint of warm beer you will be on GSM.

The real reason Google bought Motorola

Simplify the tax system!

A simpler tax system with less scope for creative accountancy would also reduce the need for tax lawyers. Imagine what could be done if these highly educated minds were directed to something a little more useful to society....

Sci/tech MPs want peer review, not pal review

Peer Review and Grant Application Review

It's not just Peer Review of papers - the same thing happens with Grant applications. Many grant applications involve peer review of the proposals. If your friends are doing the peer review, then it is very easy.

And it's not just science. It is all forms of academic research, including social sciences and humanities, which suffer from these forms of unethical and nepotistic behaviours

Diary of a Not-spot: One man's heroic struggle for broadband

Orthogon?

Have you considered the Motorola OFDM kit? It does everything from stupidly deep non line of site over about 10k through to 160km over water links.

Judge bashes warrantless cellphone tracking

Not entirely true.

The system doesn't always know exactly where you are. GSM knows which (largish - maybe 30-40) group of cells you are in. UMTS has several layers of granularity and depending on how long it has been since your last activity will know within a certain resolution (single cell, small group or large group of cells).

When someone else calls you, you are paged across all cells in the appropriate group.

Cheers, Steve

Google to mobile industry: ‘F*ck you very much!’

Not surprising really

The main issue is that the carriers, who started off as technology companies whose focus were on running networks and making money off the traffic on those networks have been steadily moving up the chain, and now concentrate on selling phones and" user experience". To quote one carrier exec "Our core business is selling pay as you go top up cards. Running a network is an overhead".

The carriers have been steadily outsourcing building and running networks; the network vendors (Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, Huawei, ALU, Motorola, ZTE) manage a good percentage of networks for the operators. Site and network sharing deals between operators are becoming more common - the hardware is a commodity, and the operators don't really want part of this business; they want to concentrate on selling phones and airtime packages.

So Google has effectively directly entered the operators market. This is a classic late entry into market with no legacy overheads to support, and a clear idea of the direction the market is moving in.

Google are doing to the operators what Huawei have done to the vendors.

Apple admits third of iPhone calls in New York are dropped

Cost of doing business

I recall the CEO of a (nameless) opeerator telling me "we are not in the phone business - we are in the selling top-up cards business. The network is one of our overheads"

Is Microsoft's Silverlight evil?

re: Could be a dveloping trend

Truly RyanAir are evil. However, I've come across some really good helpful people in EasyJet customer service who didn't try and extract money from me, and ven phoned me back to tell me that they were wrong and that things could be done without spending money. And their airport staff can be really cool when you are travelling with tired small people.

Paris Hilton - the compromised candidate

The Historical Angle.

I wonder about Paris. I suspect that she is actually pretty smart:

She is the darling of the party set, and (generally) always in the news. She has committed a few (fairly minor) infractions with the law - which have only served to increase her public exposure, and she has a reputation as a sexual athelete. She may always be at parties, but she doesn't have a reputation for partying hard enough to put her health at risk.

The last peson I know of who had that reputation in their youth, surprised a lot of people with the breadth of their ambition and their political skill - and ultimately became president (or close enough - they effectively seized power in a coup), and was finally assassinated.

Gaius Julius Caesar of course.

I wonder....