* Posts by YARR

605 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Nov 2008

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It's Galileo Groundhog Day! You can keep asking the same question, but it won't change the answer

YARR

I sincerely hope our government doesn't make a knee-jerk commitment to creating an identical sat nav constellation with no ROI, since we have enough expenses resulting from Brexit. How likely are we to ever deploy our military in circumstances where they are denied access to an existing sat nav service?

If the priority is the continued employment of UK based satellite engineers, there are other kinds of satellites that we could benefit from, that don't require the expense of launching an entire constellation. That might also afford them the opportunity to develop new skills, rather than simply repeat what they've done before.

Blighty: If EU won't let us play at Galileo, we're going home and taking encryption tech with us

YARR
Boffin

I assume it has a nice way of recognising the border in Ireland and can leash Rees-Mogg missiles of doom (ship's biscuits) on naughty foreigners crossing over.

What happens is every vehicle crossing the border drives over a weigh scale, so the vehicle weight is recorded with the licence plate. The integrated surveillance network of satellites / UAVs / cellphone trackers / traffic cameras monitor every vehicle journey. The start and end is recorded for every journey that crosses the border. The information is stored in a big database which identifies mass transfer over time, highlighting sites with a high net mass loss / gain. These are then cross referenced with declared goods importers / exporters to identify persons potentially trafficking goods illegally.

PS. No good for weapons / drugs but the data could be useful to identify suspicious journeys.

YARR
Megaphone

This is political posturing to try to keep us in Galileo, and offer a future to UK based companies.

Launching another commercial Satnav system would be a waste of money, but a defence only guidance system may be necessary if the UK is denied access to Galileo's high precision data.

The alternative might be the US giving the UK access to high precision GPS, but what if they demand our laws must be made in Washington?

Techies! Britain's defence secretary wants you – for cyber-sniping at Russia

YARR
Mushroom

Not My NME

I'd rather our armed forces defend our country from those who are actually invading, occupying and/or taking over, rather than exacerbating relations with foreign nations who aren't doing the above.

Conflicts are usually provoked by those who stand to gain. If only our puppet politicians and national media weren't controlled by a few psychos who are ultimately undermining our country (or what's left of it). They probably have their own private nuclear bunkers.

Windows 10 April 2018 Update lands today... ish

YARR
Go

Glad to see elReg is on the ball and didn't call this the "Spring Creators Update" like many other tech publications. The spring "Creators Update" was last year (1703). That said, they should think of a better name for this one. How about the "May 2018 Creators Update"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_version_history#Version_1703_(Creators_Update)

Blighty stuffs itself in Galileo airlock and dares Europe to pull the lever

YARR

Yet Another Satellite Navigation System

With so many SatNav systems to choose from (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, NAVIC) why waste money creating another? A cheaper option is to merge the publicly available positioning data from them all to get increased precision.

As the Russians or Iranians (presumably) have demo-ed in Syria, current SatNav systems are vulnerable to electronic interference meaning they can't be relied upon for military applications. Better to invest in alternative navigation systems combining inertial + ground radar data etc. If you must have a private SatNav for military purposes, launch 3+ disposable micro-satellites near the target area (keeping the protocol secret). All major powers can destroy satellites from the ground, so you can't expect SatNav satellites to remain active for long in a real conflict.

Brexit has shafted the UK's space sector, lord warns science minister

YARR

EU big, EU right

excepting the kippers who need 'special' consideration

We voted to leave the EU, not ESA. That means the electorate is opposed to closer political & economic union, but not against research collaboration. The EU is still on track to become a superstate, it's way more than just the free trade area we voted to join originally.

Our membership of ESA predates the EU's, but it appears the EU now decides who qualifies to participate, but Brexit must be seen to take the rap for the change in participation requirements (it's better PR for globalisation that way).

It's probably a good thing to define the future relationship now, since in the long term the EU superstate is likely to foment control of more European institutions. Every institution will have to decide it's raison d'etre. Should they serve the people or the powerful, and what's the contention?

Soyuz later! Russia may exit satellite launch biz

YARR

Anticipating the commercial end of conventional launchers like Soyuz is just market realism. But why not form an international partnership to compete with SpaceX in re-usables? If Russia pulls out of the launch market, their investment in Vostochny Cosmodrome will be in vain.

Car-crash television: 'Excuse me ma'am, do you speak English?' 'Yes I do,' replies AMD's CEO

YARR
Coat

All we know for sure is Brundle wasn't Intel agent.

Airbus plans beds in passenger plane cargo holds

YARR
Megaphone

Small problem: world faces big shortages of air freight capacity

The solution to this is to increase the number of dedicated air freight aircraft. There's a use for old A380s if operators want to upgrade to the A380neo.

Most freight aircraft are converted ex-passenger planes. If the challenge is to keep them flying longer (beyond their normal airworthy lifespan) without endangering lives, why not remove the pilots and have them operate as freighter drones? To reduce the risk to people on the ground, re-route the flightpaths / choose runways to avoid populated areas.They say planes practically fly themselves, so why not let them?

Phone-free Microsoft patents Notch-free phone

YARR
Thumb Down

0th world problem

"The notch" is such an irrelevance it signifies mobile phone design has reached it's zenith. Anyone seeking interesting work in product design should look elsewhere.

Here's a suggestion: if phone companies are so concerned about size, why not invest some R&D money in creating thin but effective phone protectors, or does that not align with your profit motive? They're in common use, but they are chunky and run counter to the tactile experience of using an expensive phone. But the more expensive the phone, the more worthwhile the phone protector.

If a phone can detect it's falling, it could trigger the protector to flare up like an airbag to provide better impact protection.

Another problem: if manufacturers produce edge to edge displays, the phone protector can't grip around them without obscuring the display.

Blackout at Samsung NAND factory destroys chunk of global supply

YARR

generators capable of running whole factory cost lot of money

Yes, but the production process could have been designed with a UPS powered safe shutdown procedure that would avoid destroying 11% of the monthly production run (if it doesn't take longer to restart production from this state).

It would be wise to design factories so that critical parts can be swiftly evacuated in the event that the factory is about to face flood / fire / invasion etc.

It would also be wise not to cluster the manufacturing of one component type in one area of the world.

Windows Mixed Reality: Windows Mobile deja vu?

YARR

If AR / VR is going to be the next UI for computers, it needs to subsume the existing screen based interfaces, allowing current applications to appears as 2D surfaces within the virtual environment. No-one wants to keep taking their headset on an off to see to a screen, or or worse, look at a screen using a camera. The desktop / phone UI needs to be pulled apart and put into a virtual environment.

As for Mixed reality, unless the headset is completely untethered, home users will have a very limited real environment to "mix" with.

Boring. The phone business has lost the plot and Google is making it worse

YARR
Black Helicopters

Stock Android = "OK Google" always listening?

If the market is heading towards stock Android on all phones for security updates, does this mean they will always be listening for "OK Google" (and everything else)? This has been reported for recent Android 7 & 8 phones with Google Now / Assistant, even after turning the setting off. Perhaps this is a "feature" for phones sold only in certain countries (for now), along with disabling the VPN?

Big Brother will be pleased.

NHS OKs offshoring patient data to cloud providers stateside

YARR
Thumb Down

Data globalisation -> Russia wins

The proles may have voted for Brexit but that wont stop the powers that be needlessly globalising everything. That we the people aren't consulted about how our own data is stored demonstrates how our "democracy" works. If we are consulted, it will be after they've implemented it so that reversing the decision will be costly and disruptive.

Even if cloud hosting costs are cheaper elsewhere, the data transmissions costs must be taken into account. It's probably worth paying more if the extra money is fed back into the local economy.

If the Russians are capable of tapping transatlantic cables, data security is at risk. In the event that they cut our communication links (or if they are cut by mistake or natural causes), the NHS wont have reliable access to patient data.

Drone crashes after operator failed to spot extra building site crane

YARR
Coat

He shouldn't have been flying Solo solo so low.

... with a Go Pro.

GoPro exits drone market and slashes jobs amid sales warning

YARR
Thumb Down

Re: The drone market was saturated years ago.

Not the market in Spark-a-like fold-up, sub-250g GPS-stabilised drones with integrated gimbal and better than HD cameras. The sub 250g market is exempt from new regulations, so is likely to attract many replacement purchases.

YARR

A shame but not suprising

It's a shame when management make such an abrupt decision to exit the market, throwing away all that development experience, rather than attempt to become more competitive. More so if they make the decision just as a new model is near release. Great news for their competitors though.

With over 1000 employees for just a couple of product lines (the manufacturing is probably outsourced), it's not hard to see why they're so expensive. I expect their cheaper competitors have a much smaller team allowing them to significantly undercut them on price. The business model of making a cheaper, inferior product for a wider market and iterating the design every year to copy the innovators seems to be more successful. Perhaps more western companies should adopt this approach and do away with the expensive overheads of research and advertising?

Rather than sully an established brand, introduce a new no-name brand for the cheaper product. If your no-name brand attracts a bad reputation for one product iteration, just invent another throwaway no-name brand the next year. Cheapness always sells.

Multiple-guess quiz will make Brit fliers safer, hopes drone-maker DJI

YARR
Stop

How is this lawful?

The Mark II Dronegun will possibly disrupt drone operations by jamming command, control and communication frequencies

This must violate legislation in most juristictions. What about laws restricting radio frequency interference? Is the owner of the drone still responsible if someone else is interfering with the control signal? What if the battery expires while they don't have control, or they violate minimum separation rules because they can't take avoiding action? If the drone is damaged or causes damage to other property, is the operator of the Dronegun liable?

If a Dronegun is lawful, why not an anti-Dronegun device? If it's permissible for anyone to hack the operation of someone's private property, what else is permitted? Can I shoot your pet dog / carrier pigeon with tranquiliser darts? What if it's carrying a camera?

Seagate: Happy Xmas, staff – thanks for everyth... um, you 500. Can we have a word?

YARR

Have any SSD advocates seen recent market stats to back up (sic) their projections?

A couple of years ago it was reported that SSD fabs were ramping production to meet demand, with SSD prices remaining stable for the last 3 years. Are sales still rising or is the consumer SSD channel now overstocked?

Once again, UK doesn't rule out buying F-35A fighter jets

YARR

Re: Why go totally F-35?

It may be able to do that when it has no stores, but put a few bombs on it and its range beyond the bow will be measured in metres

The Ruskies solved this by air-to-air refuelling. They have expensive "buddy" fighters converted to this role, which also have to be carrier launched and have limited range. Besides this is a moot point, since the QE class has a straight flight deck with a ski-jump, so it can only operate V/STOL aircraft at present.

However it's generally impossible to operate the catapults and have the landing area clear at the same time as they overlap, I think the latest US carrier might be the first to allow that by some careful re-positioning of parts.

Nimitz carriers have catapults on both the foredeck and the landing deck. See http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/x/556638285

Watchkeeper drones cost taxpayers £1bn

YARR

It seems the Russians are just as capable of misspending their billions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russky_Bridge#Criticism

The question is which will live longer? An underutilised drone or an underutilised bridge?

Russian rocket snafu may have just violently dismantled 19 satellites

YARR

Those Russian Cosmodromes are a long way from the equator, which must make satellite launches needlessly expensive. If this rocket went down over the Atlantic, then it travelled half way around the Earth, so we should be thankful it didn't come down anywhere populated.

Are there rules allowing the rocket host to inspect the commercial satellites they carry? What if a malfunctioning satellite caused this by activating early and interfering with the electronics of the launch rocket?

Rolls-Royce, Airbus, Siemens tease electric flight engine project

YARR
Boffin

Reusable ejectable assist fan

If the objective is to allow smaller jet engines by assisting takeoff with electric motors, the saving will be offset by carrying the weight of the batteries and electric motor + generator for the full flight.

To overcome this, the batteries could be jettisoned after they have done the assisted take-off. Going one step further, if the batteries, electric motor and assist propeller(s) were one unit they could detach after take off, switch into autogyro mode and perform a controlled landing, similar to a reusable SpaceX rocket. They would have to clear the air-corridor quickly to avoid delaying the next take off.

Tesla reveals a less-long-legged truck, but a bigger reservation price

YARR
Terminator

Duel

That picture reminds me of the 1970's movie "Duel". How apt it would be for a remake, this time featuring a self driving truck which relentlessly chases a (human) driver along a remote road.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel_(1971_film)#Plot

Munich council: To hell with Linux, we're going full Windows in 2020

YARR
Thumb Down

How have they worked for the last 10-15 years with Linux desktops if there are 800+ apps they need that are Windows only? They must have used both platforms interoperably, so why the need to switch to Windows only now? If management insist the whole network must run the same OS to simplify support / improve security, that doesn't bode well for an IOT / mobile app future.

Linux desktops reduce support and licencing costs for the common apps they run well. For more obscure apps that are only available for Windows, these should be virtualised (RDP-ed) where possible to avoid users needing multiple desktops or having to dual-boot. Further, if virtualised Windows VMs are isolated from the internet, they can maintain older versions and avoid paying for updates (reducing TCO). From the tax payer's perspective, all apps and data formats should ideally be platform neutral / open standards to avoid the long term costs of vendor lock-in.

Firefox 57: Good news? It's nippy. Bad news? It'll also trash your add-ons

YARR
Megaphone

Browser speed obsession

Is this obsession with browser speed becoming a bit long in the tooth now, like a certain mobile phone maker's obsession with thin-ness?

i.e. Most of the time, most browsers are fast enough, but the odd badly written javascript will slow any browser to a grind regardless, as used to happen with flash.

Maybe some Jobsian strictness is in order to punish the offenders? In this era of slurped metrics, browsers could report home URLs / functions that cause slowdowns. The collated results would be published as a live league table to publicly humiliate the worst offenders.

Parity calamity! Wallet code bug destroys $280m in Ethereum

YARR
Headmaster

A fool and his money...

That's quantities of money; this is actual currency. Different.

How different? The majority of money is numbers in a ledger (which has been electronic for the last 40+ years), cash is only a fraction of all money that exists: MB + M0 - M3 + MZM).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply

Value is more likely to be preserved if a currency has :

(1) Reliable ledgers.

(2) An entire nation / economy of workers who are contractually paid with that currency. (Who is obliged to accept bitcoin?)

(3) The issue of new currency (lending) is restricted to new assets that devalue slowly (not worthless used computer processing).

(4) New currency can be created according to demand. If supply of a currency is artificially restricted (like Bitcoin) or is tied to a rare asset (like gold), this can restrict lending and economic growth, causing people to switch to alternatives.

China-owned Opera touts big comeback

YARR
Coat

This Opera's not over 'til...

... xie phan li dai zhang.

American upstart seeks hotshot guinea pig for Concorde-a-like airliner

YARR
FAIL

XB = Experimental Bomber

Unless I'm mistaken, the designation XB means experimental bomber. Could this be the first service to drop passengers off at their destination, saving them the bothersome journey from the airport? I guess that's why they need a military pilot with aiming experience.

ATM fees shake-up may push Britain towards cashless society

YARR

"cash back from what?"

Your shopping bill paid for on debit card. The amount of cash back you request is added to your bill by the checkout operator, and paid to you from the till. There is no extra charge for cash back, so it's the cheaper option if the only available ATM is one that charges.

It seems that "cashback" is also confusingly used for schemes where a % of credit card processing fees is paid back to the purchaser.

Apple hauls in $52.6bn in Q4, iPhone, iPad and Mac sales all up

YARR
Big Brother

Pique Apple over Apple's peak

Now all but the most power-hungry users can work with a seven-year-old Mac

that's assuming they last seven years. In my (limited) experince, I've seen disproportionately many faulty / dead Macs that are long outlived by PCs and even older Macs. Perhaps a journalist should commission a hardware survey to find out if Apple have passed their peak hardware reliability? If they have, that may have helped their recent sales.

Lenovo buys majority stake in Fujitsu's sickly PC biz

YARR
Thumb Up

The race to the top?

No one who cares about security will buy Fujitsu computers now

If you care about security...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/21/purism_cleanses_laptops_of_intel_management_engine/

Osama Bin Laden had copy of Resident Evil, smut, in compound

YARR
Stop

No privacy for the dead, no privacy for anyone except the rulers of this hierarchy of "freedom"

I wonder what criteria they use to decide what private information is relevant to the public interest?

If an authority arrests / kills you without proving your guilt, should you have fewer rights (including privacy) than anyone else? Even if they do prove you have committed a crime, should you lose your privacy? Should a criminal's rights diminish in proportion to the severity of their crime?

Since they (allegedly) killed Osama without bringing him to trial, the US government can wash it's hands of any need to lawfully prove his involvement in 9/11 and other purported terrorism. As with Russian electoral interfering, the media tells us what to think without providing evidence. How convenient.

If morality is served in equal measure, all who deny others their rights must accept the loss of those rights themselves.

Two drones, two crashes in two months: MoD still won't say why

YARR
Boffin

Airflow will *increase* the temperature of the airframe (from friction). "Chill factor" applies only to things that are hotter than the air

If the airframe is hotter than the air due to friction, the "chill factor" will cool it back down again.

Since flying in cold air is a unique technical challenge that no previous aircraft have mastered, perhaps the answer is to copy nature and give it a warm furry coat?

Fresh bit o' Linux to spruce up that ancient Windows Vista box? Why not, we say...

YARR

Great machines retired because of restricted disk space with no easy upgrade as early SSDs were proprietary or no longer available with a compatible interface for sensible money.

Which early SSDs were proprietary? Early netbooks circa 2008 often used the mSATA standard, which are still available if you look in the right places.

The EU is sooo 2016. We're all about the US now, say Brit scaleups

YARR

The French aren't to blame - they objected to us joining, even though we subsidised their farmers until Maggie wrangled a rebate.

We didn't vote to join an empire. Our empire is history - it was before most "old" people's time.

Since waves of EU immigrants arrived on mass, it's young British people who've endured unaffordable housing, stagnating wages (in real-terms). Wealthy oldies have enjoyed appreciating house prices, lost cost labour and cheaper imports.

Once the EU trade situation is known, industry will realign. We will have to live more within our means and stop running up debt - which is better for us in the long run. Once immigration is reduced, housing will be more affordable and young people can expect rising wages from less competition. You're right - there may be no tangible benefits for you.

UK's NHS to pilot 'Airbnb'-style care service in homeowners' spare rooms

YARR
Meh

Cornflakes and microwave meals v prisoners and asylum seekers

With interest rates predicted to start rising soon, paring down the national debt ASAP is a prudent policy, but at what practical cost? Like all ideas, this could work well in some instances, but it depends on the judgement of the administrator and should remain the exception.

I object that anyone would consider cornflakes and microwave meals a sufficient quality of nutrition for a recovering patient. What about patients with specific meal requirements? It could get complicated fast. It would have been better long term policy if they hadn't (permanently) closed down all those wards and sold off NHS land.

I believe we spend more on secure accommodation for prisoners and asylum seekers than on patient care, I'd certainly put those groups further down the list of spending priorities. I can think of lots of ways to cut the cost of secure accommodation, but I don't want to attract too many downvotes from Guardian readers.

Credit insurance tightens for geek shack Maplin Electronics

YARR
Megaphone

We need an alternative to the jungle monopoly

It's obvious that online is the future of anything that can retail online, and physical retailers that don't adapt face oblivion. The problem is that one online retailer has outgrown all others and will eventually have a near-monopoly. Something must be done! Either that retailer will have to be broken up, or other retailers must rise to the challenge.

The problem is that consumers want simplicity - they don't like registering multiple accounts and searching multiple stores. Either we need a single online shopping account that can search items and place orders with many retailers (OK, someone has a monopoly there already), or retailers of non-overlapping products need to merge their online shopping experience.

For the latter, it would make sense for specialists like Maplins to merge their online store with a generalist, like Argos, under a new brand. For this to really succeed would mean lots of smaller retailers across many sectors co-operating so their product range can compete with the non-indigenous arboreal behemoth. Is this ever likely to happen? The longer it takes, the more entrenched the monopoly becomes.

NetBSD, OpenBSD improve kernel security, randomly

YARR

Stating the obvious?

If the memory controller had a flag to make memory blocks read-only until they are freed up, then the kernel code would be immune to buffer overruns. Only the memory containing the kernel state (stack / heap) might need to be dynamically relocated.

Yes, British F-35 engines must be sent to Turkey for overhaul

YARR

...Mr. Farage and ... Boris Johnson warned us about how terrible the Turks were, about to overrun the UK, and how we should vote to Take Back Control. I would be most interested to hear their take on this development. Taking back control - who from?

This was in relation to leaving the EU so that we can take back control of our borders. If Turkey's application to join the EU was approved, then 80 million Turkish citizens would have the right to live and work in the EU (including the UK). I don't believe that these two issues are connected.

The dividing of F35 maintenance duties between NATO members is a means to cement political relations for the life of the F35. Any member considering leaving NATO during that time period could face difficulties maintaining their F35 fleet. These maintenance contracts would obviously be reviewed if the political circumstances changed. NATO would not be hampered by them for very long.

ARM chip OG Steve Furber: Turing missed the mark on human intelligence

YARR

I've also read that neurons exhibit quantum behaviour (which could be considered a form of parallelism) and might allow neurons to communicate at a distance.

If the observed behaviour of a neuron is so complex, how can scientists be confident that the classic model neuron they simulate, truly represents how a brain works? Maybe AI researchers are barking up the wrong tree and should return to researching how individual neurons and networks of neurons behave?

IT at sea makes data too easy to see: Ships are basically big floating security nightmares

YARR

Funny how the Brits, the US, the Chinese, the Indians, the Italians, the South Koreans and the Turks all have carriers currently under construction and Russia and Brazil have announced plans for further carriers.

Several of those nations have or are constructing helicopter carriers / landing ships, rather than aircraft carriers. Some such vessels can support V/STOL aircraft if their decks are built to withstand a downwards jet blast.

In WW2 26 aircraft & escort carriers were sunk out of about 125 actually in service. Since the majority were only commissioned in the period 1943-45, that's not very good odds

Have you compared this with the survival odds of other classes of ship in WW2? Besides, the purpose of a warship is to win the war. If sacrificial, their presence may allow a strategic war goal to be achieved. Many of those WW2 carriers were cheaply constructed (with poor survival odds) for this reason.

Western Dig's MAMR is so phat, it'll store 100TB on a hard drive by 2032

YARR
Boffin

Guesstimate...

How long would it take to do a format ?

For a constant rotation speed, and number of heads/platters and assuming the data bus speed is unlimited, capacity increases as the square of linear density. If drive capacity increases x10 in the next 15 years as speculated, the read/write time will increase by at least SQRT(10) = x3.16. So if your format (or RAID rebuild) takes about 2 days to complete now, by 2032 it will take around a week.

Equifax: About those 400,000 UK records we lost? It's now 15.2M. Yes, M for MEELLLION

YARR
Boffin

You can't lie about your Date of Birth when applying for Credit......well you can, but it's Fraud!

This is good reason to store mandatory personal data in a hashed form like passwords.

i.e. The bank don't know your DOB, but if you give them a date they can check if it's the same as before.

BAE confirms it is slashing 2,000 jobs

YARR

Re: Forward Planning

Reality is that the RAF and similar need a simpler air defence aircraft to tackle Russian heavy bombers and something simple, cheaper and robust for ground strike -preferably with a decent range

Both sound like ideal scenarios for drones.

Perhaps some newly redundant workers should found a UK drone design bureau to compete with BAe, using UK gov funding for startups. Might save the taxpayer a fortune in the long run.

How many times can Microsoft kill Mobile?

YARR

I don't think MS will be abandoning UWP because Store apps are the future for Windows 10s which is their answer to Chromebooks. A few tweaks to the Windows 10 UI might be possible, if there is widespread demand for specific changes.

Personally I like the UI, but I think they should concentrate on fixing the bugs and make all their apps consistent before adding new features. Making zero telemetary an option would be desirable too.

As for Windows Mobile, if I'd known there was a WileyFox handset coming I might have bought one. Why didn't TheReg tell us?!

Microsoft shows off Windows 10 Second Li, er, Mixed Reality

YARR

Really, just what is the point of all this VR/AR stuff for the average user?

With AR you can sit on the same settee and watch different things on "the telly" at once, in 3D. Bliss.

2019: The year that Microsoft quits Surface hardware

YARR

Flat surface sales

If high end hardware is considered "low margin" how is Apple so wealthy?

Microsoft always take several versions to get their products working right. Having invested so much in Surface R&D, once the design is mature, it takes less investment to upgrade the silicon each generation. Sacrificing the Surface before it's time could end in closing their (physical) stores.

So if they want to attract more customers in-store they could diversify into:

- Hololens experiences. A different experience every month.

- Windows bootable USB sticks (who has a Windows USB stick ready when their PC gets corrupted or infected? Read-only or physically write-locked by default would safeguard against infection)

- Cortana AI assistants, perhaps for the workplace / public environments rather than the home? They could replace their shop assistants with Cortana kiosks.

- Copies of "Hit Refresh". What better way to get people in store if you couldn't buy it elsewhere?

Nadella says senior management pay now linked to improving gender diversity

YARR
Meh

It would be ironic if the (presumably) most highly paid male within Microsoft increases his salary by paying women more in raises then men, just because they are women. The overall effect will be an increasing disparity between the most lowly and highly paid employees (contrary to his supposedly Marxist background).

He's certain to succeed and get his bonus by simply instructing his minions to hire and promote more women. But hiring / promoting more women is simple, the hard problem is addressing the gender disparity of available skilled employees, and students interested in pursing a career in the IT profession (assuming this is a problem that really needs solving).

Nadella also wants Microsoft's hiring practice to represent the global population (which is code for more ethnic minorities). This is fair enough given, Microsoft is a global company, but this is a justification for creating more jobs and finding more customers across the world. It's not a justification for bringing the rest of the world into the west to undercut or replace the existing workforce. Doing so brings global companies into a conflict of interest with western workers. Western governments represent their voters not lobbyists of global companies. So they should recognise this conflict of interest and support their voters interests first.

There is clearly a political agenda motivating this (top-down rather than bottom-up / grassroots). Their agenda is presented as moral but is not the truth. Frequent news headlines suggest the IT industry is inherently sexist and discriminatory. Future generations will read those headlines and believe it to be the truth. IMO this is a serious misrepresentation of the industry, but if CEOs are willing to accept this, then they must also accept responsibility for the apparent historic discrimination that has taken place within their organisations.

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