Posts by Dibbles

The BBC struggles with concept of 'tech bubble'

Great stuff

Echoing the comments above, a good article, but focussing solely on the BBC is perhaps a little narrow in scope. It's simply baffling that Facebook has valuations of $70bn thrown around, Twitter a few billion, Groupon similarly, and yet there isn't so much as a peep from media channels that should really know better. They watched the tech bubble and burst 10 years ago; they've seen the (lack of) revenue stream for some of these businesses; heck, somewhere they must have a single contributor who questions how much Facebook is dependent on fads - and why it's different from MySpace of 2004 - and yet still nothing.

I've seen one mention, in a headline roundup, of Fox News (Fox News!?) asking timidly whether perhaps these valuations might spell a bubble, but little else. Which I guess is how bubbles grow...

Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future

Just.... wtf?

First up, kudos for keeping the comments going when you already know about 80% of what will be posted.

Secondly, this: "The levels in three of the five samples are so low, and of such isotopes, that it is quite possible they result from long-ago nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific. "

I understand that you have you view, and by god you've taken such a firm stand that you can't back down now. But REALLY, this is getting ridiculous, and unfortunately damaging the credibility of the rest of what you write.

"Yes, there is plutonium; yes it may have leaked from the reactors; yes it is, let's face it, undesirable and will have repercussions - but let's try to get it in perspective" is surely a better approach than "nothing has happened, people, there is no nuclear leak, la la-la la, it's all a giant conspiracy"?

But I guess I'm not a reporter. The unfortunate thing is that this is starting to colour my view of the Reg, formerly my beacon of truth and sober analysis in a world of meeja hype. Can we have Andrew O back please?

Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes

Well, it's progress, at least

...in the Reg's reporting, that is. I did wonder whether perhaps Lewis has been sent on a much-needed holiday; one had the impression that if he wrote anything more on Fukushima without a breather, he would "literally" explode... sorry, I mean "sustain minor damage to his containment, causing no damage or ill-effects to anyone or anything (plutonium in the surrounding vicinity is practically a nutritional supplement in this context)".

The wonder that is modern media reporting is always worth marvelling at; a function of the need to fill 24 hour news channels, combined with the culture of needless editorialising and merging of fact and opinion; and it really comes into its own with events of this magnitude. It's unfortunate that nobody outside a few counter-prevailing outlets really delves into it with any commitment; doubly so that in the Reg's readership (and the overlapping viewership of Charlie Brooker's Newswipe), you're really preaching to the converted - or the never-to-be convinced denialists.

[As a footnote, can we have an icon halfway between thumbs up and thumbs down - a palm-down hand-waggle, if you like? I feel it would be most appropriate here; I'm still not convinced by the vehement "nuclear leak, what nuclear leak?" argument, but the analysis of the news media's reporting is always interesting]

Fukushima on Thursday: Prospects starting to look good

Another Nay here

I've avoided the fisticuffs until now - Lewis's first article on the reactor situation (Monday?) was pretty sober and considered stuff. The thing is, events have moved on, the torus for at least 1 reactor has now split, it would seem, and the story is no longer the same.

It's good to have a dissenting view: I can only imagine what the UK rags are making of this story at the moment, and frankly I'm glad I don't have to put up with the drivel. But like Michael Moore, or Stalin, there is such a thing as going too far, as arguing that really, it's all a storm in a teacup TOO much.

It is a serious situation. Adverse things are going on. It's not exactly a failure of the nuclear power safeguards, as the devastation was beyond what was built for; but it's still sub optimal, and there are some fairly serious repercussions. Some acknowledgment of these points would be appreciated, in the interests of balance!

Apple MacBook Pro 13in

Boring accusation but...

"The price may be high, but comparison with seemingly similar specced but cheaper PCs is dangerous. Few of them, for instance, include a full 802.11n Wi-Fi adaptor that works not only in the 2.4GHz band but also at 5GHz"

This particular snippet comes across as protesting too much that you can't compare this Mac to a PC pound for pound. For a site like Reg Hardware, why not? Go for it - take the chance that the Mac *might* look overpriced (or alternatively knock everything out of the park) and actually compare the closest PC match on price. Because as a consumer, "facts" like 'it operates in the 5GHz band' mean nothing to me and my perceived value of the product.

Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the environment

A couple of interesting corollaries to this are what this increased congestion does for urban pollution (which would surely have given the RAC a bigger stick with which to beat the DfT); and the impact of increased congestion on bus schedules. It's all well and good painting bus lanes and giving buses priority at traffic lights, but it's no d@mn good if the bus is sat 350 yards down the road in the queue for the lights.

Victoria Station/ Victoria Road in London is surely a good illustration of both of these points in action...

Apple iOS dominates Euro smartphone usage

+1

Agreed -

"The obvious caveat aside - that StatCounter-tracked pages may not be representative of the whole" is somewhat wide of the mark; the obvious caveat is that the web traffic coming from each OS is not necessarily representative of the handsets being sold.

I mean, have you tried to use Blackberry OS to browse the web? It's vile!

Nokia's 15-year tango to avoid Microsoft

"by the analysts' definition"

Interesting article, and while it's a small point, this phrase really jumped at me. It doesn't take much more than a passing interest in consumer trends and mobile technology to understand that quarterly figures showing that Nokia sells more smartphones than anyone else are grossly misstating the market. As you state, what may be 'smart' by the analysts' definition is far from it from a user - and manufacturer's profit - standpoint.

Good point, well made, and refreshing to see it addressed, rather than glossed over as is generally the case.

Microsoft re-org: more code, less death by PowerPoint?

Are we sure...?

The thing is, reading the article in a different light, that a clash of personalities or viewpoints could be seen behind a lot of these high-profile losses. They disagreed with Ballmer, they had to go. So it's highly possible that Ballmer is doing this to shape the company in his own bald-headed image - he sees himself as a Jobs, Ellison or Dell (first time around), as the sole messiah, pulling everyone into the roles he's decided for them. Of course, if he fails, it means it's all on him...

Canada? The computer vendor says no

Hear hear

I recently had the pleasure of moving from Europe to Canada, and besides the essentially closed markets for mobile phones, home internet, TV etc, the lack of a majority of products that can be found in the US or the UK is driving me up the wall. It's not just tech - although trying to find a specific model of laptop was actually impossible, and I had to settle for an inferior 'Canada spec' version - it's clothing, furnishings, food products, drink, services. Amazon.ca is a joke; hardware vendors are engaged in blatant price-gouging, and the governments (federal and provincial) tack on an extra percentage to anything shipped over the border. It's pretty shambolic, all told, and the best you get when asking why the market is so awful is "it is what it is, eh".

Steve Ballmer at 11: A Microsoft power play too far?

Good piece

- well researched, well written.

For what it's worth, I would agree heavily with a lot of what's been written by previous posters.

- There is too much bloat - the layers of middle management are pretty frightening in their volume, and when it comes to putting one's finger on what value, precisely, a specific level 65-67 manager is adding to any process or product, it's nigh-on impossible.

- While it's understandable in such a behemoth of a company, the processes and frameworks for success are rigidly defined. Mid Year Review is important in deciding direction for the next 6 months, and setting up objectives for the following year, but it essentially means that nothing else is done for about 6 weeks. And come June-August, the place again shuts down to assess itself and its success.

- And the horse-trading and petty in-fighting continues. Xbox wants to be free to decide its own destiny; Windows and Office don't see why they should subsidize everyone else; nobody actually wants to do MSN/ Windows Live properly; product managers think they know best; marketers want to do their thing. It's all a bunch of schoolkids sitting around stealing blocks off each other, and it's pathetic.

Ultimately, there is a hugely strong base there, despite the self-delusion (saying that Vista was terribly bad was verboten until last year; likewise, Live Search was "the best search engine out there") there are enough solid products and enough innovation and development to generate this strong growth. But the seeds are surely there for it all to come crumbling down, leaving MS a shell of itself, churning out Windows 9 to an uninterested public, margins sliced razor-thin by the competition.

Microsoft to hire 4,000 in UK

Shame....

...that they had to lay off quite so many people to 'create' these new jobs, eh?

Google advertisers howl over 'sudden quality score drop'

Instant link?

Given that Quality score is based on how long Google users stay on destination sites and how likely they are to click on sites in the results, it might seem that Google Instant and/ or Instant Preview are messing things up; either through Instant Preview pulling realtime pages through and/or Google Instant serving up masses of irrelevant results as a consumer types in a search phrase.

Either way, the timing is... coincidental, at best.

Airport security boss calls time on tech

The thing is...

...it only takes one trip through a BAA airport to realise that 'old fashioned intelligence' is something that is not present in abundance among the 'security' staff there. Many's the time I've been through, wondering whether perhaps we'd be safer if *I* was checking the grunt who's allegedly responsible for checking the security of my bag.

UK.gov closes wiretap loopholes after Phorm row

The thing is...

...while I realise that these are on the surface two separate issues, won't this rewriting of the regulation to cover unlawful interception place the ISPs in a very sticky spot with regards to the proposed IMP? After all, it's really just the government's word at the point that goes live that it is 'lawful' - if all that's needed to decree it lawful is the government saying 'yes, we want you to track that usage right there' (and ISPs have to store all usage data), then really it's just semantics over lawful and unlawful interception.

PLUS, if anyone decides to take the government to court over the IMP (which could happen - after all, it's not exactly on solid ground), and it were to be found illegal, what then?!

Aircraft bombs may mean end to in-flight Wi-Fi, mobile

But...

...why would wifi and cellphones be installed on cargo jets anyway? Who's going to use it?!

BA slams stupid security checks

One rule for them...

It's a pretty astute point that the US forces airports to do more thorough checks for flights to the US. So for example in Pearson, you have the security check for US flights (shoes off, show boarding pass to 3 separate people, generally treated like some kind of prison inmate) and that for all other flights (generally more friendly, more logical checks, no particular need to get undressed for "security").

Funny thing is, from a geopolitical point of view, that the US hates the idea of Russia's 'near abroad', or circle of influence in Central Asia. Yet when it comes to bullying its neighbours, the US is right in there...

Samsung Omnia 7

New test framework?

I could be wrong - it's not unheard of - but I'd say that the Reg's audience is likely to use some of the more powerful aspects of this (or any) smartphone: the email capability, the internet, texts and so on. Rather than having a page of sample photos, could you tell us how useful (or otherwise) it is for more power users; and whether for lighter users it has sufficiently low-brow things like Facebook and Twitter covered well enough? (All IMHO, of course, and reflecting what aspects I'd tend to look for in a smartphone)

EU to lift flight ban on carry-on liquids

bah

After all, one can't be too careful. According to Basu: "The threat from Liquid, Aerosol and Gel (LAG) based explosives became apparent in August 2006 following discovery of a[n alleged] plot to use such devices aboard multiple transatlantic flights."

There, fixed Basu's quote for him

Navy Carriers: We want two or no votes for you, Tories

er....

Normally I find Lewis's articles interesting and informative, and a certain degree of opinion does lend some colour to the discussion. But he's perhaps turning into a parody of Lewis Page - leaving even-handed discussion at the door in favour of banging the same drum about carriers and suchlike.

The problem (from a layman's pov) is that carriers have much more baggage - you can't just buy the carrier and missiles and be done, as it also leads to very tricky questions about catapults, which variant of the F35 to buy, and so on. 2 carriers with no planes would be a bit of a white elephant, really.

In addition, it's perhaps leaving a few leaps of reasoning to overlook the fact that carriers may not be that useful in future conflicts. Are they much help in 'counter-insurgency'/ killing the locals in Iraq, for example? Can 2 carriers really provide sufficient strength for both an Afghanistan and a low-level pirate-watching or Yemen-tracking activity in the Gulf of Aden?

There's an interesting analogy (perhaps) with alternative models of air travel - fewer big planes (a la Airbus) or more smaller planes going to many smaller destinations. While one couldn't picture 1 frigate being sent to each of 12 different conflicts, the idea of having essentially 2 main nodes of the RN - ie carriers plus sundry hangers-on - is perhaps not the best in the modern world in which Britain really is a second-division military power.

UK passes buck on Europe's cookie law with copy-paste proposal

A title should go here

Seem to be a lot of naysayers here.

The thing is, asking consent for every cookie is pushing it - you have to remember that we're operating in a space where the majority of consumers still think the internet is 'the little e on your screen'. There was the classic Google Chrome-related footage of people on the street being asked what a browser is - needless to say most didn't know.

In this context, asking for permission for cookies every time a consumer visits a website just ain't gonna work.

Police slam internet justice - then use it themselves

old habits, new media

This is hardly new on the part of the police - for years they've been using the media to prop up accusations or denigrate suspects, for example when they fall back on the 'child pr0n on the computer' charge when everything else has failed. It's funny how in cases like the Forest Gate shooting of a 'terrorist' suspect, later downgraded to 'child pr0n suspect', later downgraded to 'uh, we got nothing guv', the police are quick to accuse in all sorts of media outlets, but then rather more reticent about coming forwards and saying they got it wrong.

YouGov tests the waters on internet snooping

ComScore

Sounds like a fairly standard sign-up for comScore software. As the Reg noted a couple of years back (I think), CS software is picked up as spyware in some cases, and the way in which they invite people onto their panel is through offers such as this. Previously ComScore's software has been available in packages of freeware and suchlike; this sounds a lot like them.

Cowon iAudio J3 personal media player

SD card - library integration

A small error in your review - the Cowon D2 and D2+ (lovely little players, both of them) also integrate the SD card files and folders into the main library; a combination of this factor and the sound quality separated them from the Cown Zen (SD card but no library integration) and Sansa whatchamajig (micro SD card integrated into library, inferior sound quality)

WTF is... Project Canvas?

Epic meh?

The thing is, the ISPs screamed blue murder after a couple of months of iPlayer, demanding that the BBC pay them money for the bandwidth and suggesting that the interwebs were on the verge of grinding to a halt due to this additional traffic. That's just from a web-based system - surely the additional overhead of a fully at-your-screen service is relying on a broadband infrastructure that is nowhere to be found yet, not even on any 'map' of future development.

EA imposes used games tax

Just another step

I guess it's no particular surprise - the DRM on games like Crysis, GTA IV for PC and so on seemed designed to cripple the secondhand market rather than piracy (limited installs being the key one). Still, it smacks of pure greed and that they want to control all sales of their games, rather than having a transferable licence.

Mobe-wielding drivers getting away with it

YES!

I've been noticing more and more people talking on their mobiles while driving, and while this is partially self-selecting (I'm more likely to notice because I've noticed previously), it is good to see that there is finally a report illustrating just how little work traffic cops are doing these days.

Newsnight tries banalysis 2.0 for Prime Ministerial debates

Woah, hang on a minute there

That's where you're wrong, unfortunately, or at least should be. 'It's TV, it's only entertainment' has become the excuse for such monstrosities as Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Ant and Dec's Kangaroo-hole-based-cuisine takeaway (aka I'm a D-list Celebrity get me out of here) and ITV News. Newsnight is the BBC's flagship news and politics analysis programme, NOT an entertainment show, and the fact that this wordmess (TM) counts as news, politics or, indeed, analysis, is a damning indictment of the level to which the BBC has sunk.

iPhone 4.0: iAds, multitasking, and 98 tweaks

Anyone else smell...

...the whiff of a company running out of ideas? Ipod - great product when it first came out, revolutionary in fact. Iphone - likewise.

But now the Ipad - meh, woulda been better to sell the embiggening machine they used to make it from a stock iphone - and this. Jobs's reliance on having a big 'STORY' to tell every year means they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel

Qwerty Keyboard Smartphones

Like the direction

Even taking on board the point from RealRoland above, this is an interesting comparison and a worthwhile look at the phones. Will you be doing the same for non-hardware keyboard phones? And, while it's very subjective, what are your opinions on the hardware vs on-screen keyboard debate?

'Health and safety killjoys' kill cheese-rolling race

almost...

...You forgot to mention that it'll be commentated by Richard Hammond. On the BBC. In a primetime slot on Saturday night.

Tories ask: Why BBC3, BBC4?

Love it

"The remit is to be ‘populist’ and attract young viewers, but since BBC staff rarely venture further north than Muswell Hill, it’s a strange mix of somebody’s idea of what ordinary people might like who has been away a long time, with the emphasis on the demotic. For example the ‘comedy’ has lots of swearing, to cover up the lack of wit."

Quite astute, that, and quite cutting. But yes, for a corporation that seems to see itself as the arbiter of quality, taste and 'public interest'*, the BBC is really giving people rather a lot of rope with which to hang it.

*- liiiike.... BBC News: "The Sun has effectively ruined Jon Venables' chance to a fair trial over any charges he faces. Jon Venables looks like this, here's Jamie Bulger's mother, an interview with a child psychologist, and 15-minute rotations on BBC News 24". Good work all round.

Whatever happened to the email app?

er... a few clarifications

I usually find Andrew's articles to be a good read - whether you agree or not they prompt debate - and wish more of them had comments enabled (good piece on Spotify vs music-buying, btw, although 0.6m from 35.2m is a decline of <2% yoy, so not necessarily much to talk about just yet).

However, on this one, it would appear things have gone a bit haywire.

" Did the whole world just migrate away from Hotmail over to Facebook when we weren't looking?"

er... no. Long term trends show that Hotmail unique figures have stayed at worst steady, at best have climbed slightly over the last 3 years, even while Facebook goes on the rampage.

"Microsoft dropped the email client from Windows 7, the rebranded version of Outlook it calls Windows Live Mail".

er... no. It was Outlook Express, and my guess is that it was either dropped as part of its efforts to appease everyone by unbundling software, or because there was no further development of it.

Interestingly, research from various sources suggests that it's IM that's been the big loser from TwitFace - even with Facebook's 'IM' client being absolute rubbish - while email retains a very different purpose and identity from the social networking sites.

Sooo.... interesting piece on email software, but the premise needs work.

BBC confirms death of 6Music, slashes online budget by a quarter

Commitment to digital?

I'm genuinely upset about the 6Music news - it's an innovative station that offers music not found elsewhere on the BBC's network or mainstream commercial alternatives. But then Mark Thompson has decreed that he wants to play politics, so who are we to complain?

However, this does make complete hypocrisy of the BBC's claimed commitment to digital radio and badgering of commercial rivals to support DAB. It's a nonsense, and hopefully one that will be picked up and thrown back at Thompson to explain and justify.

Music biz unites to save 6Music

Great spin from the Beeb?

There's an interesting theory doing the rounds elsewhere that this is a fantastic bit of PR from the BBC. Early last week it announced just how over budget its infrastructure/ rebuilding of its London offices is - with the total project in the vicinity of £2bn, or roughly 15m TV licence fees. A couple of days later, it was leaked that it was considering shutting up shop with 6Music and Asian Network, and cutting its web output. Which not only draws attention away from the Beeb's profligacy, but then gives them a very easy rebuttal to the naysayers who claim that the licence fee needs to be cut or shared among other broadcasters.

And meanwhile Project Canvas trundles on unchallenged...

Senators to NASA: Get your ass to Mars

Like it

(in an appropriately Austrian accent) "get your ass to mars"

Just me? Really??

IGMC

US must redesign killer hot dogs

Research spin!

A colleague assures me on closer reading that there is no word on how many hotdogs actually kill - 77 children die of choking each year; an unnamed number die of food-related choking, of which 17% are from hot dogs. By our calculations, 6 chokings were food-related (the rest were lego), of which 1 was a hot dog.

Cyber attacks will 'catastrophically' spook public, warns GCHQ

I'm struggling on this one

I mean, I understand the correct procedure: grossly inflate scale of threat, demand budget and exclusions to privacy laws to resolve it, see department grow into Big Brother. But what these public services that are delivered online that we'd be distraught to miss? A page showing the opening times of the local library? Something about MP attendance? I'm really lost...

The myth of Britain's manufacturing decline

Great article but...

Good piece, very interesting, but of course you miss the key point to square the circle, or hexagon the triangle, or whatever. While your points are all correct, it's not value that votes, it's people, and so the politicians break it down to 'there are fewer people employed by manufacturing' = 'there's less manufacturing in the UK'.

A desirable solution for them would involve every single man woman and child making grommits, or, conceivably, spending a huge premium on buying overpriced armaments from BAE - essentially paying to keep voters in work. Which joins up nicely with Lewis's work...

Motorola Droid - the not quite iPhone killer

Good review

If only your colleagues at RegHardware were as thorough in their approach! Too many times I've seen smartphone reviews with no mention of keyboard ease of use or otherwise, UI appraisal and so on.

The Loch Ness Stig gets pixellated

that has to be

...the worst pixelation ever. Unrequested privacy pixelation FIAL

Record labels seek DMCA-style UK takedowns

and in fact...

...this would be Mandelson in his dual role as Secretary of State AND best friend to the record labels (as personified by David Geffen and his yacht)...

Samsung Omnia II

Maybe I'm missing something

...but how's the text entry? One of the main benefits of this kind of phone over a non-WM one is the document editing/ email/ messaging platform - yet no mention of how the keypad works (I'm assuming it's on-screen not physical, for starters?)

Pants bombs vs America: The infernal conflict

Too much credit to the TSA et al

The thing is, there's no evidence whatsoever that there's any constructive or unscripted thought at the TSA. Give them the number 2 and they will marvel in amazement at it, never once wondering what happens if you add 2 and 2 together. Likewise, give them an incompetent would-be shoebomber and they start testing everyone for shoebombs (but nothing else). Give them an incompetent pantslighter and they start looking at everyone's underwear - they will not actually start looking in people's folds of fat (good idea, btw, but fat people rarely sign up to Al Qaeda, it seems) until someone actually tries that method of bomb-carrying.

Which is a shame, really, as it just goes to show that airport security is really about backside covering (and not in the pant-lighting sense). Airport security officials need to be able to say 'we tested everything that could be reasonably expected', where 'could be reasonably expected' means 'been tried before', rather than 'things we thought of that someone is going to try some day'.

You and what Android? The Google iPhone killer that isn't

mmm.... not quite

I know that El Reg has something of a theme with Google wanting to retain data, but I think it's going to be a hard case to make that this is all about G wanting to get more consumer data. I mean, come ON.

So the phone is an HTC Android phone with a big G badge on it - so far so what. If we take Google at face value then they genuinely think that selling it themselves, sim-free, is going to revolutionise the way mobile phones are bought, and ensure that the choice of handset is no longer dependent on the choice of network. Which, if the networks don't scupper it, sounds interesting, and still a one-up on the iPhone. Except that at present it's available subsidised by only one network (or unlocked).

So the question is whether you take them at face value, or think that perhaps they just wanted to get more cash from the mobile business, and something that makes money for them beyond just keyword advertising

Airbus: We'll cancel crap A400M unless we get more £££

wah wah wah we won't make a profit

The problem is that the EU continues to subsidise Airbus to this extent. In any other business (well, most normal ones) if a supplier screws up and then says 'we want more money, we won't make a profit', the usual response is "ah boo hoo, don't screw it up next time". With Airbus, the EU's standard response is 'OK, here's more cash, please make a profit'. Where's the business, exactly?

It's the end of TV as we know it

"IPTV to set-top boxes is the future"

um.... it's A future, not sure it's necessarily THE future. For starters, even for those 18m households with broadband, the bandwidth is not always sufficient to stream TV programming at a decent quality. And, as we've seen from the ongoing BT/ broadband shenanigans, that *reliable* *consistent* bandwidth for all is a loooong way off.

A decade to forget - how Microsoft lost its mojo

Competition keeping it honest

Maybe this is just being relentlessly upbeat, but the emergence of Firefox has arguably made IE8 a better product than it might otherwise have been. With genuine competition in the market, MS has to compete on product functionality and usability, rather than forcing its products on people due to sheer market dominance. So while we may not see it return to 90% market share, from the point of view of quality of output, it could be argued that greater competition is a good thing.

PS3 hardware still losing Sony money, claims analyst

um...

Yes these figures exclude shipping, marketing etc costs, but according to the numbers you quote, Sony makes a profit on each PS3 sold in the UK...

AT&T to choke your iPhone

Shooting themselves with both barrels...

...squarely in the foot. In the long run, mobile internet is where the money lies for operators - and making it possible for advertisers to reach users of iPhones and the like with targeted ads. But one of the major hurdles to wider adoption of mobile internet is that pricing structures for consumers are labyrinthine at best - the main way to get round this is to allow them 'all you can eat' data plans to encourage them to make the most of their wonderful data-capable phones.

You remove that, you remove consumers' wish to go online, and the only link between the current time and future revenue.