Posts by adrianww

Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber

Nice to see...

...that the massed ranks of El Reg comments are up to their usual high standard. Keep up the good work chaps - very entertaining at the end of a busy day. Especially the badgers.

Meanwhile, just reading about all this stuff with the LHC reminds me why I used to love Physics so much at school and why, at one time, I did hope to end up working at CERN.

Not that it ever happened, but reading about those dump caverns and thinking about the energy (and engineering) involved in all this does give me a slight, passing sadness that I didn't end up going down that particular road in life.

Oh well, back to doing boring things that don't involve potentially catastrophic high-energy and radioactive incidents. Well, not usually anyway...

Amazon eyes wander as Royal Mail strike looms

The thing is...

...who else can Amazon (or anyone else) use for "normal" postal deliveries? The plain fact is that most of the contract courier/mail providers (UKMail, whoever else) still just hand the whole shooting match over to Royal Mail for final delivery. Unless you're actually paying for the full courier service on something (which will simply be too expensive for some consignments) or only happen to be doing business in a small number of limited areas (e.g. some of the big cities), most of your letters and small packets are going to end up in Royal Mail hands anyway. So what happens to those items during the strike? Do the sorting office and delivery workers suddenly pause their strike to deliver the third-party postbags, or does it just get stacked up in a different part of the sorting office until the strike is over?

I mean, I'm not hugely impressed by the Royal Mail's management, but I'm no more impressed by hidebound unions that still believe they're living in the 70's. And I'm least impressed by the decades of general Government, Civil Service and regulatory cocked-up-ness that has led to the current dire state of affairs in the UK in areas such as postal services, telecommunications, transport, basic utilities, etc.

And, yes, when it comes to things like this, I freely confess to being a grumpy old man.

Beeb unveils new Doctor Who logo

Is it just me...

...or does that new logo really, really, really suck. It's not quite as unspeakably awful as the Olympics 2012 one, but it's still rather dire.

Mozilla sides with Microsoft against Google IE

@James Loughner

Er...no, at first look, Google Wave looks nothing like THE killer Web 2.0 app. It looks more like another bit of tedious Web 2.0 mumbling. Realtime online collaboration with a few extra-special multimedia bells and whistles? Well whoop-de-doo, it's not like we've ever heard anyone flogging that kind of idea before. Even assuming that you want it in the first place.

The Web 2.0 killer app - when it arrives - will have to be something new and wonderful that no-one has really thought of and that shedloads of people will want to use. Not just some Google-sponsored, HTML5-crippled rehashing of old ideas that is only likely to be of long-term interest to a more limited audience. Let's face it, most of what Joe Public wants to do in the way of "realtime communication and collaboration" they can already achieve using mobile phones, old-fashioned Web 1.0 and the existing, over-hyped, not-so-killer-after-all, killer apps of Web 2.0 (yes, Mr Facebook and Mr Twitter, I'm looking at you. And does anyone know why Mr MySpace and Miss Bebo seem to be missing from class today?)

Web 2.0, full of Fail and badger's paws as usual.

New gizmo means working electropulse rayguns at last

@Fazal Majid's GoldenEye Scenario

As we all know, you don't need to bathe Wall St in microwaves (or anything) for it to cause a global financial and economic crisis. Just leave the silly money-grubbing buggers alone without keeping a close eye on them for a while and they'll screw it up all by themselves...

Second Life slapped with counterfeit sex toy suit

@Cameron

No, we have conversations about politics, philosophy, art, literature, music and countless other things with real people in the real world instead. While drinking real wine and beer, playing real games and doing real jobs. As for communicating with people with diverse social and political backgrounds from all over the world, there are countless forums, blogs and other online resources that allow you to do that without all that tedious mucking about with SL. Or, better still, take a real vacation to a real place (and not just some tourist-filled hellhole) and get to know the locals.

Oh, and when it does come to the desire for a bit of pointless clarting about with computers and similar technology, that's where your PS3, Xbox, Wii, Whup-Ass-Gaming-PC (TM), etc. comes in. I'm pretty sure that Halo, Call of Duty, Tomb Raider, Tenchu Shadow Assassins or Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party (not to mention countless others) are probably far more fun than SL. And look better too.

O2 just can't keep it up

Hmmm...maybe...

...there's something to be said for living out in the sticks after all. I haven't noticed any problems with either an iPhone 3G or a Nokia 5800, both on O2.

OK, admittedly, we don't use them much for data anyway, mainly phonecalls, but all of this network chaos seems to have passed us by.

Overloaded cells in more heavily populated areas perhaps? (Basic failure of network capacity management in other words?)

Adobe sounds Apple PowerPC death rattle

@AC, 03:32, 14/ 08/09

Covering the cost of CS3/4/whatever is not the issue. What is the issue is that the software is still somewhat overpriced and the stuff on the Adobe website about volume licensing largely seems to be a rather confused work of fiction.

In our case, we don't use CS for any kind of direct fee-earning work. We're not a graphic design or media house, we're a manufacturing, wholesale and retail operation. Graphic design (and pretty much anything Adobe) is pure overhead on our books. We use it 'cos it's the best tool for the job when we need to do advertising layouts, product packaging, etc. and we have found from experience than doing those jobs in-house with our own team has proven to be more cost effective and give better results than outsourcing them to an external agency.

So, on the one hand, yes I could afford to wander out and buy a bunch of CS licences if the urge took me. But there are other, better and more important things that I can spend the money on instead. It also irks me when I wave a shiny umpteen thousand pound purchase order in the face of a software supplier, only to be told that my "volume discount" on the purchase would be 0%. So, for as long as we can live with our existing mix of CS2/CS3 installations, I'm in no hurry to chuck any more money Adobe's way. Yes, the product is generally good, but their pricing structures and attitude to the paying customer leave much to be desired.

I'm not too worried...

...about them dropping PowerPC support, but I wish they'd do something about their bloody ridiculous pricing. A year or two ago when I was looking to buy a couple of upgrades and a few new licences for CS3 (as it was at the time), I was told that the discounted price to me was going to be...the standard retail price. Or, as it's otherwise known, slightly more than you would pay if you just bought a few copies of the boxed product direct from Amazon or some box-shifter on Tottenham Court Road. Hell, even buying copies from the Apple Store would have been cheaper!

And, although it wasn't a huge number of seats, this was still a purchase that - according to Adobe's website - fell well into the first tier of volume discount (which, to any other company, would usually mean something lower than RRP).

I pointed out that this was obviously some new definition of the term "discount" that I hadn't yet heard about, but the Dutchman on the other end of the phone didn't seem to be too au fait with the whole sarcasm thing. So I just told him that, under the circumstances, I wasn't going to bother buying anything, we'd manage with what we had and Adobe could stick their heads up their collective bottoms and whistle for my money until such time as they decided to become a bit more reasonable in the pricing department.

If I didn't have some fairly strong principles, I'd just rip the damned stuff. It's no wonder there's so much counterfeiting out there when software companies have an attitude like that. Overcharging, customer-gouging poltroons.

Wasted billions of government IT spending exposed

Also, don't forget...

...that many of the large-scale Government IT projects are hideously over-resourced in the middle management and project management roles. The NPfIT (or Connecting for Health, or Cocking-up the NHS Computer Systems project) was a case in point. From my limited experience dealing with this project and people on it, I would reckon that they could have shed maybe a third of the external contract staff without doing any harm - most of those being middling (and meddling!) project management types who didn't seem to add any value, but who did muck things about so much that it made it difficult for the good project managers and engineering staff to do a decent job.

IT grad sues school over failed job hunt

@Tom 94

Actually, if I have two applicants with the same experience, one with a degree and one without, I don't know which one would be given the job. First of all, depending upon the layout and presentation of their applications and resumes/CVs, one, neither or both may be short-listed for interview. Then, in the event that both get an interview, the one that interviews better and seems like the best candidate for the job will get it - whether they have a degree or not.

Of course, if would be nice to think that having the degree may improve your chances of making the short-list and, in some cases, it very well might. But anyone who doesn't take more into account than the simple presence or absence of a given qualification isn't being appropriately diligent in their hiring and selection process. (Well, unless the qualification in question is a pre-requisite for the job - e.g. neurologist required, must be a qualified medical practitioner!)

Hurt yourself? Try f**king swearing

Glorious!

Thank you Sarah Bee. The phrase "Searingly intelligent and creative people swearing loud and long and clear as if flying a magnificent kite of fuck" will live long in my memory.

Pirate Bay sells out to Swedish software firm for $7.7m

Title goes here

I can understand why they've done this, but I do think it's a bit of a shame. These statements could be seen as some kind of admission that TPB was originally doing something wrong in and of itself. I'm sure that the RI Ass of America and their cronies will spin it that way. Which is a pity, since I still reckon that the whole case against TPB didn't really stack up and it was only a complete lack of technical understanding on the part of the authorities (possibly with a side order of industrial or political leverage??) that allowed them to be found guilty in the first place.

Pirate icon 'cos, well, it's obvious innit?

Girls Aloud net obscenity case falls at first hurdle

@Pablo

I'm not a lawyer, but I reckon that "offering no evidence" in the UK is probably the closest equivalent you'll find to dropping the charges in a US court. It's basically the prosecution saying "Hey guys, we don't really want to go any further with this, so we're not going to say anything, present any evidence to the court, call any witnesses, etc." From the point of view of the end result, it's exactly the same as being found Not Guilty.

The prosecution can either offer no evidence on an entire case, or if someone is accused of more than one offence, the prosecution may go ahead with the trial on some of the charges, but offer no evidence on the others. The latter situation is quite common if someone is accused of several offences where some of them are much more serious than others.

Having said all of that, I suppose a defining point about a "no evidence" submission is that - strictly speaking - it can only happen in court on the day of the trial. It is, essentially, the prosecution dropping the charges at the very last minute - actually in the court room at the beginning of the trial itself. In other cases, charges may be dropped long before they come to court, when it is usually just said that the prosecution is "not proceeding".

Back on the subject of the article itself, while I might not have any desire to read nasty stories about Girls Aloud (and I also have no desire to hear the atrocious, over-produced caterwauling that they generate and try to pass off as music) I am rather glad that legal sense has prevailed and the CPS has effectively decided to drop this one. It was a stupid case to bring in the first place and the less said about the nanny-stating poltroons and gutter-press numpties who stirred it all up in the first place the better.

Don't call me Ishmael

Once upon a time

I worked for a small company that had two development offices in the UK, one "darn sarf' and one "oop north". The head of R&D was a tedious little rodent of a man that no-one could abide, so two of the main development servers became "weasel" and "ferret" (one at each site). You could then openly use questions such as "Is weasel up?" (or similar) not only to ascertain the status of the relevant server but also - and more commonly - to find out whether you'd be likely to run into the waste-of-space bossman at your office that day.

OK, so it wasn't big and it wasn't clever, but we all liked the joke and it did turn out to be useful on occasions.

Chief constable caves to judges on disk grab

Surely...

...the Avon and Somerset force are going to have to get rid of this high-ranking liability sometime soon? He seems to be lacking so many different varieties of clue that it's difficult to know where to start with him. I mean even ACPO must be getting sick of him being such a wazzock by now?