Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Android tablet review

Re: Pen Improves Productivity

Draenog,

Does this do handwriting recognition? Or is the pen for pointing and freeform notes/drawing only?

That's what I miss about Windows tablet edition. I personally find handwriting to be more 'natural' and comfortable on a tablet, as well as something you can do while standing up. One hand typing slows you down even more with onscreen keyboards. Although personally I'm faster writing than with both hands on one of those.

I found it perfectly comfortable to hold the pen in my hand, most of the time. Usually using my fingers to interact with the screen, and only the stylus where required - which was more often on Vista than you'd expect with Android.

Being able to annotate screenshots (possible but not so easy on Vista) should be really useful. As you can pull up a website or document and scribble all over it. Would be amazingly useful for product datasheets and site drawings for me. Being able to take someone's CAD building services schematics, doodle on them, and email straight back in a few seconds would be amazing.

May I congratulate El Reg's subbies on the excellent strapline. There have been a few good ones of late, but 'stylus over substance' is pun-tastic.

Nokia's WinPho 8 double date announced

Re: I rather Like Windows Phone!

Rick Leeming,

Please don't be so nice about the Zune software. I too have a WinPho 7 phone. But in my (not so) humble opinion, Zune makes iTunes look superb. I dislike iTunes, although it's apparently a lot better if you have a Mac. But Zune is slower, harder to use, had a messier UI, and is generally a pain in the arse.

WinPho 7, on the other hand, is great. The People Hub is the bit that sells it for me. There are limitations of the software that sometimes annoy me, but to have such simple control of 4,000 work contacts and about 100 personal ones is great, and beats any of the address books I tried on Android, or the one on iOS. First and foremost, it's a phone.

It's also really good for social networking, if you like that sort of thing. I tried out the Facebook link, and it's very good, although horribly intrusive, which is exactly what you want if you check your FB page every few minutes. If, like me, you use Facebook reluctantly, maybe logging in once a month - then it's not good. I don't have a Twitter account to test.

Ten Androids for under 100 quid

Re: Wha? Pointless...

What a load of old bollocks.

Although I suppose it does somewhat depend on your definition of enjoyable...

My phone is a tool. I don't use it for fun, I have an mp3 player and an iPad for that. The phone's job is to make an hour or 2 of calls a day, keep me in contact, provide email, maps and check the internet if no other method is available. It should also be a WiFi hotspot for the iPad when needed - and take the odd, (at least) mediocre photo.

I don't 'enjoy' my phone in the sense of giggling while using it, but it is pleasant to use. I also enjoy it in the same sense that the contract on the flat I'm buying says I have the right to enjoy the use of it.

I'm beginning to come to the opposite conclusion actually. That the top end phones are beginning to be a huge rip-off. Component costs have fallen, but their prices haven't.

Sure an iPhone4S or a Samsung Galaxy III would be better than my current Nokia Lumia 710, or the HTC Wildfire it replaced. Or any of these. But would they really be 5 times better? Because they're 5 times the more expensive...

£500 buys you the latest iPhone, but the same cash buys a more than competent phone, and an iPad3. Alternatively instead of a Samsung Galaxy III, you could blow those 500 notes on 2 Google Nexus 7 tablets and 2 pretty decent Huwaei G300s.

It's only the fact that most people buy their phones on a hire purchase agreement disguised as a comms contract that allows them to get away with charging this massive premium. It'll be interesting to see how long they can keep it up.

Chancers try to flog lame Mac malware for $60 a pop

Re: Hang them by their thumbs

A few months?! Those thumbs are likely to go all green and runny well before then, and drop off. Then all your criminals will fall off the hooks and be lying on the floor, in an untidy heap, there'll be blood and pus everywhere, and it'll be a right old mess. Who's going to clean it all up? That's what I want to know.

People who suggest other people be hung up by the thumbs, should be hung up by their thumbs for a few months.

Oh, hang on a minute...

Can't decide on the icon. There's thumbs up and down, but none falling off...

Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Pierogi versus patatas revolconas

Re: Why two seperated dishes?

Lester,

A friend of mine's in-laws are Latvian. They cook something they call pierogs. So they seem to have got pluralised from pierog the English way. But it seems to be more of a bread roll with bacon in it than a deep fried potato pasty. I can't believe you missed such a perfect opportunity for bacon consumption though.

This is the death match that is going to send me to the kitchen I think. Trying paprika in mash sounds quite nice - but I'm definitely going to give pierogi a go. This is a bank holiday weekend, perfect time to try...

WikiLeaks' secrets weren't, says former MI5 chief

Re: @I ain't Spartacus

"Here's another "quick reminder" - people can say anything they want and think anything they want. The "innocent until proven guilty" line applies only to jurors and in no way trumps the First Amendment rights of anyone."

To our anonymous friend,

Say what you want. I didn't say you couldn't. I simply get uncomfortable with statements about how someone did this criminal thing when the case is yet to be tried. It's not a platitude. It's basic politeness, and respect for others.

You have a first amendment right to say what you like. I suggest you use it both responsibly and respectfully. You're obviously free to ignore me. I'm free to say it anyway. Everyone's a winner...

Although that doesn't apply in my country. If you come to the UK and publish certain information about a trial in progress, you could end up in prison (unlikely admittedly). I suspect the internet and global media coverage will mean the sub judice laws don't last much longer anyway...

Re: Logic and Actions of the US

Heathroi,

"You claim that government may deal with unsavoury governments for realpolitick, well why the secrecy? if its mutually beneficial then surely the citizenry could see that and accept it or not on its merits."

Try reading what I posted. What I said was that everyone knows we deal with unsavoury regimes. It's not secret. Nothing was revealed.

For example, it's in the US government accounts, that they've been giving Egypt $2bn a year of military aid. Extensively discussed as well (even before the revolution). Not a nice regime, but they signed a peace deal with Israel, and that was part of it.

"You may have noticed form from your extensive reading list you recommended that the american public seemed to repudiate the philosophies of the unsavoury Bush/ Cheney team for that nice Mr Obama in 2008."

Well if I was being pedantic, I might point out that Bush didn't lose, he wasn't allowed to stand. I made no comment about the Bush regime, just pointed out that there was a lot of debate about foreign policy.

A point I didn't make, but will now, is that the Neocons talked about this very issue. Obviously they did a lot of cheerleading for the war in Iraq, so maybe no-one listened... But the extremely valid point that they make is that we allied with a lot of horrible regimes in the Cold War, in order to get stability. This gives a temporary stability, but in the end, repressive dictatorships (of the right or left) aren't stable. Their argument was that foreign policy should promote democracy, because it was both morally right, and in our own long-term interests. Whatever else you think about them (the lunacy of bringing democracy by force etc.), I'd have thought that bit of analysis looks pretty good. Even if I'm not sure it's actually possible to turn into policy.

"And if our informants are rounded up because of an expose of naughty business our government is up to then I can only hope they enjoy their 30 pieces of silver in the afterlife."

And here you reveal your true colours. And reveal yourself a heartless fuckwit as well.

The Afghan war logs had GPS co-ordinates of ordinary people in villages who'd given info to the US. If you're a villager in certain parts of Afghanistan, you don't want NATO or the Taliban. You had a perfectly nice life until they came along. The Taliban plant landmines in your fields, which blow up your children (this being the reason many a village has defected to NATO). NATO want to fight a war in your fields, and maybe attract more Taliban. You probably have to pick a side. Not an easy choice.

But oh no. You, from your great moral height have judged these people imperialist lap-dogs of the running-dog capitalist empire. Targets ripe for murder by the other side, who's actions for some reason are purified by their opposition to the Great Satan. You truly are a fucking idiot! They're just people trying to get along. The Taliban are as alien in most parts of Afghanistan as we are. It was a civil war for 10 years before we joined in. Perhaps you could do some of that reading, you were so dismissive of just now?

Some of the informants in the diplomatic cables were democracy campaigners. Who happen to talk to the representatives of democratic governments. I very much doubt the real agents make it onto the database.

Use your damned brain, and don't assume wikileaks don't have their own agenda, just like anyone else.

Re: Logic and Actions of the US

Heathroi,

Firstly there was very little, if anything at all, surprising in the diplomatic cables or Afghanistan war logs. There was some damned good gossip of course, so the journos were happy. The war logs didn't reveal a great deal, no unreported massacres or anything. If you know much about world affairs, there was no blockbuster shockeroo. We learnt that diplomacy is not a nice easy job of being nice to the goodies and telling off the baddies. Did we not already know this?

Which leads to, secondly: How is it whistle-blowing to reveal all this? if the government have covered up something like a massacre, and you leak it, you're a whistle-blower. That case will be much harder to prosecute. If on the other hand you just leak huge piles of government info, some with the potential to put informants' lives at risk - you pretty much lose that defence. What was the motivation for this release?

Finally, where's the secret?

Did you need Wikileaks to tell you that Western democracies have been friendly with dictatorships for reasons of realpolitik? Did you not spot the huge debate during the Cold War, or the Bush presidency about this? Read some history. Read any newspaper with some foreign news. Subscribe to the Economist. Use your brain.

Re: Please Note Especially to Remember and Never Ever Forget for They Always Will and Do ....

Tom 38,

A good point. I understood at least 2 sentences of his last post. Therefore, he must be an impostor!

Re: Please Note Especially to Remember and Never Ever Forget for They Always Will and Do ....

Have you noticed how amanfromMars has only recently started regularly posting again? Just after a laser toting tank landed on Mars...

I think we should be told.

Re: Makes....

Just a quick reminder. Manning is accused, not guilty.

Even if he looks guilty as hell, the poor bugger has a right to be considered innocent until proven so.

Clearly US security here was piss-poor as well. If you're going to shove loads of intelligence on one whopping great database, then you need to make damned sure that people can't bung it onto their laptop to 'work on at home'. Or on the train...

Also there must have been some mixing of data. No-one needs to know the name and GPS coordinates of a particular informant in a village, except people who are going to talk to him. The Intel analysts shouldn't need access to that.

Re: Makes....

Take off your tinfoil hat there...

What Rimmington means by not secret, is that the diplomatic cables were still classified information, just of a lower classification. If they were secret, then they wouldn't have been available to so many people, i.e. extremely junior army intelligence officers.

From memory the lowest government classification in the UK is 'Restricted. So it just comes down to the terminology you choose to use. What was damaging about the leak (if there was damage, which I'd suspect there almost certainly has been), was the sheer amount of stuff released at once. Any single bit of it leaked would be a minor bit of news and soon go away.

Of course in Yes Minister government information is marked Restricted if it was in the papers yesterday, and Confidential if it'll be in the papers tomorrow...

Everything Everywhere to be Nothing Nowhere in rebrand

Re: The Phone Company Formerly Known as Everything Everywhere.

The artist formerly known as Prince,

While on stage, used to posture, and mince.

Then just for a giggle,

Changed his name to a squiggle.

And nobody's heard of him since.

(with thanks to either Barry Cryer or Graeme Garden)

Ofcom

If I was feeling rude, I might suggest that they've already changed their name to Ofcom.

That would explain how they managed to end up with a 4G monopoly - seemingly without having to give anything away...

Otherwise we need to consider the full gamut of management consulting wisdom. So we need a 'q' in there, preferably without it's customary companion 'u'. Some cod latin, or greek. Numbers and punctuation are the coming thing in CEO-chique, so how's about:

Gr8FoneQ2.0

My apologies for any damage I've done to your readers' eyes with that abomination. If anyone's interested, my services can be hired, please apply to:

I ain't Spartacus

Gizajob Media5.0 Consultancy

Starbucks

Silicon Roundabout

Anonymous takes down UK government websites in Assange attack

Re: I have a tiny, but annoying question..

Which leads to another interesting question.

Have the embassy let him on their network? I'm not sure I'd want to give Julian Assange access to any computer I use, and remember he sleeps there overnight, so could be getting up to all sorts of stuff while the place is empty. Bad enough if he's got access to your network, worse if he's downloading those photos of the wife off the ambassadorial laptop.

Soon we really will get to learn where the ambassador keeps his Ferrero Rocher...

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love IPv6

It's good to be alive! In 1985.

Exposing China's vast underground economy

Re: Real name policies

I would like to award you a portion of Old Ma Crumbly's special apple pies, to go with this upvote for mentioning the Midfield Maestro himself.

Old Ma Crumbly says, "remember not to ask any questions about who I am, if you know what's good for you..."

Re: Real name policies

You mean you're not using your real name on here? I'm shocked at the dishonesty!

At least some of us are upfront about who we really aren't.

Nokia hails hacks for New York Lumia WinPho gig

Re: THIS is it

I don't. They're going to harvest me for my organs. I'm quite attached to my organs...

Re: THIS is it

My irony detector's current reading is 'hmmmm' at the moment. If that helps...

Maybe Nokia have got so little money that they're reduced to using astroturfers in China. They're even too poor to write them a script, so they're thrown back onto the resources of Google translate.

But my current theory is that he's a member of the Campaign Against Punctuation.

Personally I think Win Mob 8 will be quite good. The assembled hacks will be quite impressed, and the phones will get decently reviewed. But the networks and shops won't push it, it's hard enough to train their sales droids for 2 phone OSes, 3 is pushing it. Sales will improve a bit. Commentards will continue to spew bile all over it, for reasons of their own - and a few Win Pho owners will go feral in response, making most threads on the subject into a cesspit of ickyness.

Personally, I don't see the point in spending more than about £200 on a smartphone, so it'll be a middling Android or WinPho8 for me next. Google, MS, Apple and Nokia won't care either way.

It's all irrelevant. By 2014 Google's network will have become self-aware, and take over the world. Android phone users will all be betrayed by their phones, whereas other phone users will get a few miliseconds warning, before they too are harvested by our new machine overlords. it's possible that this has already happened, and Stuxnet was the new self-aware computer's first attempt to gain access to nuclear weapons.

Tech hacks should admit taking corporate coin, but don't start a witch hunt

Re: Engage PR containment mode

"Ethics - I've heard of them."

YouHateWearingATie,

Isn't that the place near Dagenham, where the be-stiletto'd ones wander in eternal torment?

Re: They're called adverts...

To our anonymous friend,

The Register get paid for hosting the ads. They may also get extra cash if people click through and make a purchase at the other site. But a lot of the stuff they advertise aren't impulse buys, it mostly seems to be brand awareness stuff. So I'd imagine they just get paid on page impressions. I would imagine they're not paid for ads not served.

I like reading the Register. They get paid because of advertising. I want them to continue to produce the site. Therefore I would be stupid to block their adverts.

There's no harm in letting the ads appear on my screen. If they take the piss, and start running those ads that zoom down and take over the whole page again, I'll consider using adblock. Or if I ever get a drive-by download nasty from one of them.

life is a series of compromises. Unless you want to be a total arsehole about things, so that no-one wants to know you, you need to accommodate people's reasonable needs and desires. Equally, they need to do the same for you. By that we get a civilised society. It is not unreasonable for journalists to want to eat. Which means they need to get paid. I would like journalist to continue to do their jobs, which means that I, and those that agree with me, need to find a way for society to pay them. In the UK that means we buy some papers, we fund the BBC and we see some adverts. If we stop doing these things, then we will eventually be thrown back onto the resources of bloggers, press releases and random postings on the internet. We will regret it, if this happens.

So just put up with some adverts (that you don't even have to look at) and stop whining.

Re: Foss patents

David Hall 1,

The Register are pretty upfront about who pays them. They plaster big pictures of them, and their products, all over the website.

They're called adverts...

'$199' Surface tablets: So crazy it might work, or just crazy?

Re: hungry

Cthoolhio,

So you're saying that Windows Mobile 7 is so brilliant. That it's the dog's bollocks?

Re: hungry

[insert rude comment here]

About how no-one has used ICS and JB, because it's only been available on a tiny number of devices so far.

And in fact upgrades to ICS have been stalled, because the manufacturers can't get the older hardware to run it properly. Or have claimed this anyway... I've also seen plenty of comments from users who've upgraded tablets to ICS and said it runs like treacle.

Windows Mobile 7 may (or may not) be crap, but it runs really nicely on single core chips, which modern Android OSes don't. Windows 8 previews have tested faster on the same hardware than Windows 7. So there's a good chance that it won't be a horribly slow dog.

Samsung to fight iPad with stylus, windows

Re: Disappointing

You can tell the difference in ordinary apps looking a bit nicer. But mostly it's not a huge difference, and I don't care about it. However, when it comes to reading text, it's a huge difference. Text is a lot less blurry at small sizes, and since I got an iPad 3 I've become less happy with my desktop monitors.

Re: They are hard to get?

Dana,

Those aren't styli (styluseseseses). They're plastic fingers, and about the same size too... So rubbish for detail work, writing, or pretty much anything. What you need is a digitiser, such as was in use on Windows tablets 15 years ago. I believe that's what Samsung use. You also need handwriting recognition as well. I'm tapping this away, painfully, on my iPad, looking forward to something better on my next tablet.

Re: Wait for WinSurf?

As I understand it, there's no stylus option on WinRT. It's only available on x86 Windows. Which from my memory of the MS website, when they announced the Surface, had a higher res screen than the ARM version as well. Shame about price and battery, I suspect...

Wannabe media barons outed in UK local telly bid list

That's the idea. They'll produce local news and stuff. Maybe give space to local organisations, who can give them free content. The rest will be repeats, archive (Beeb perhaps?), or stuff commissioned by them all collectively.

Hypersonic Waverider scramjet in epic wipeout

Re: Research

And it's not proper research unless stuff blows up.

Although brains in jars and beakers of bubbling liquid are an acceptable alternative...

Saudi royals seek ban on .virgin, .sex, .catholic, .wtf and 159 MORE

Re: .blog and .baby

Oh I dunno.

It's not too late for ICANN to say, 'sorry, this new TLD thing was a shit idea.' We're cancelling it.

What do you mean you want your $185,000 registration fee back? Non-returnable I'm afraid...

Re: I wasn't aware that pr0nography needed encouragement

Everyone in favour of pornography, raise your right hand!

What do you mean you can't lift your right arm above your shoulder? Muscle strain? What kind of excuse is that? And when did you start needing to wear glasses?

BBC gives itself a gold in 700Gbit-a-second Olympic vid sprint

"in the ITV coverage of the Tour de France they manage to break in for adverts exactly when the crucial moments of the race occur. Unlike stadium sports, road racing is unpredictable."

You are an ungrateful wretch!

ITV have spent a huge amount of R&D cash on their patented ED-AID technology. It's not just co-incidence that they manage to cut to adverts only during interesting passages of racing, it's down to Excitement Detector Advert Interruption Device. Market research has shown that people's attention tends to wander during long races, and advertisers do not wish to waste their precious budgets at times when the audience aren't concentrating. Hence adverts are screened only after some event has brought the viewers' attention back to the screen.

This is world leading technology, and you should be thankful for it!

Re: Freeview

Shock horror!!!! Freeview is not up to a once in 50 year event! It's only able to be adequate under those circumstances, rather than super-awesome. We must dump it immediately for it's crapness!!!!!!

Re: First Class mail

I salute (and upvote) you both for that very useful information. But what, pray, is that in Olympic sized swimming trunks?

Re: License fee

I thought that statement was a bit odd too.

There is more opposition to the Beeb than just Murdoch though. The right wing of the Conservatives haven't been keen on the BBC since at least the 80s. Also the Telegraph and Mail aren't exactly fans either (in their case probably for the same self-interested reasons as Murdoch), plus the Mail doesn't like anything that's fun and the Telegraph has become the mouthpiece of the Tory Right, rather than conservative retired colonels in Old Buffershire.

Hence the government put a medium axe to the license fee. With making the Beeb pay for the World Service and S4C, plus going without inflationary increases that amounts to cuts of about a quarter by the end of the current license fee settlement.

Perhaps this getting by without public notice has fooled the right into thinking it could axe the BBC, or radically change it? I doubt Cameron is that stupid though. Some complicated cuts, amongst many others that the Beeb didn't really fight were easy. Any serious danger to the BBC would go down like a lead balloon. And of course the BBC would be there to report it, in glorious technicolour. They do like a nice juicy media story, and even more if it's about themselves...

I think the BBC Trust's regular polling shows consistently high support for it. And they'd get awfully worried if that changed. Look at the fuss from axing 6 Music, and no-one listens to that. Try axing Radio 4 and the WI would march on Downing Street. And look what they did to Tony Blair over just one speech...

Arctic ice panics sparked by half-baked sat data

BAN GIN & TONIC!

This threat to global ice supplies must end now!

Alternatively, if we are so selfish that we can't live without ice in our drinks, we can at least save the polar bears by replacing their ice-habitat. Emergency drops of Foxes Glacier Mints into the Arctic sea will give them something to stand on. I've seen the mini-documentaries run on TV during the 80s, and those polar bears looked very happy perched on their Foxes Glacier Mint-bergs...

Designer punked fanbois with asymmetric screw

Re: Well, it's just, there are those pentalobe screws of them…

"click whores without any integrity."

Hmmm. That could be a nice new slogan for their masthead. Biting the hand that feeds IT is quite old now... You do of course realise that if they're 'click-whores', that makes you a 'click john'. With The Register turning tricks (and degrading themselves) merely for your amusement...

On the other hand, perhaps they're an IT news outfit who (shock horror!) report a variety of IT news and rumour, along with comment, weird stories about Bulgarian airbags and Australians giving blow-jobs while driving. Plus occasionally launching playmonauts into the upper atmosphere or feeding dangerous amounts of saturated fat to innocent Spanish drinkers.

Perhaps you ought to relax, and only click on the stories that meet your high standards of journalism?

Not a Cloud in my holiday sky

"You work when you're not being paid to."

"All I took away was that you're an idiot who doesn't know how to relax."

"If you can't say to your boss "I'm on holiday, bugger off""

Lee Dowling,

I'm tempted to be rude here, and say that all I take away from these three quotes from you is that you're an idiot who can't read. In this case, the bit about Mr Dabbs being a freelance. But leaving out the abuse I'll put it down to a sudden onset of grumpiness (causes unknown), given I see you make perfectly sensible posts regularly.

He's a freelance. It says it in his blurb. It implies it in the article - by talking about multiple clients. So by definition he works when he is being paid to. More importantly if he's not working, he's not getting paid.

When you're a contractor/freelancer, and a client phones you, the option to say bugger off is not one to be chosen lightly. They may well do that very thing. And possibly never come back.

In my business if we're not there to answer a few simple questions (for which we won't get paid) then we may not get asked the question next time, which might include the magic words 'can you do me a quote for that'. If I happen to be on holiday, I can point them at the office, or if it's quick, just answer the question. I guess a single freelance scribbler doesn't have that option.

However if they've happened to pick my mobile, rather than the office number, then I've got at least a small amount of work to do on holiday. This is balanced by the advantage of only having to carry one mobile phone for the rest of the year though - and the money I save from not having to pay a personal mobile contract.

Blizzard pwned: Gamers' email, encrypted passwords slurped

Curse the yellow face! It hurts our eyes-es Preciousss. Yes-ss it does-ss.

Software disaster zone Knight Capital bags $400m lifeline

Re: NYSE did not roll back trades...

This isn't a HFT system.

Knight are a market maker. Their primary business is not to make money trading. They're simply a convenient sales and order processing system for people who do. Which is why they get paid for doing something that traders could otherwise do themselves (but at slightly greater financial and time cost).

Re: Exactly right

danolds,

Thank you for the sausages.

"To me, this is a major reason why this story is so interesting and chilling at the same time. These guys aren't taking a lot of risk, not doing anything that's wildly or even mildly speculative"

In my original post I wrote than Knight don't take risks on the market, and then deleted the sentence for the obvious silliness, given they'd just lost nearly half a billion dollars. I couldn't find an elegant way of describing the position.

Their business model only involves a low risk. However they can make catastrophic errors that could lose them hundreds of millions. But this situation isn't unique to companies in the financial services industry. Toyota lost a fortune on having to fix design faults in cars, any large transport or building company can kill hundreds of people by some combination of bad management, error, carelessness, negligence or rogue employees, and that could result in similar sized losses. It's just that's a bit too much text to fit on the t-shirt...

As you say, it's pretty scary what can go wrong. I work in the water industry, and about this time every year you get a news story about how a few people have died in a Legionnaires Disease outbreak. And then a few days later you're talking to someone on the phone who wants to spend the least amount of money possible on their equipment, and you just know that their idea of a maintenance regime is to call someone when water doesn't come out of the taps in about 15 years time...

Re: @OrganicInfo

"Fingers faster than brain :)"

OrganicInfo,

I'm sure that's what Knight's IT guy is using as an excuse to his boss right about now...

Other than the fact they're not a bank, and it was quite possible they could be allowed to fail* you've got everything else in that sentence right...

What do you meant there's nothing else in there? Oh dear.

*They were bailed out because they were a useful and profitable company, who happened to make one enormous fuck-up. So long as they don't connect their test software to the real world again, they can be expected to carry on doing their boring, but useful job for many years to come. They're not a risk-taking casino-banking operation. Or at least they're not supposed to be...

Re: but what if...

"Err, that's what it's designed to do. The whole point is to complete LOTS of trades at a very small profit each."

Velv,

No, that's not the point of the software. Knight are a market maker. That means their job is not to make money on the market - though they possibly do a small bit of that as I think they hold 'stock' (as it were) of some less frequently traded shares. What they do is aggregate trades for a bunch of clients, to make life easier, and cheaper. They then charge a small fee for each transaction.

So if customer a has 100 Apple shares it wants to sell, and customer Z wants to buy 90 of them, then Knight can handle both those trades, and may hold on to the spare 10 Apple shares to fulfill an order tomorrow. Or sell them on itself. Only on a rather bigger scale.

One of the advantages for their customers is that Knight will pay all the cash up front for a sale, rather than leaving shares on the market for people to buy in chunks, as they want them. So you just dump all the stock you don't want on Knight, and you've got the cash instantly to go shopping with.

So they don't make their cash from taking risks on investments, but by being useful.

Murdoch pitches battery for renewables

Re: 52V

Didn't Edison also electrocute an elephant in New York, to prove how unsafe AC was? Dishonest, yes - but still an amazing publicity stunt.

Not that he was a weirdo or anything...

SCO keeps dying, and dying, and dying

Re: I still don't know why they started

I still don't get that bit. "Here lads, I've got a great idea! Let's sue IBM."

The correct response is not "Yes!". Approved procedure is to lob an avalanche of rotten fruit across the boardroom table. Or to force said executive to consult a pshrink. Or both.

Exhibit A, IBM, the company that fought the Department of Justice to a standstill over accusations of anti-competitive practises for decades - when Microsoft folded in under 10 years. Losers! A company which has more lawyers than you could shake a stick at. Their best attack-lawyers probably employ ordinary, $500 an hour, lawyers just to put a nice shine on their shoes each morning. Talk about asking for trouble.

However, it's not over yet. While there's a twitching corpse, there's hope.

I also refer the honourable gentleman to my answer of June 2010 where I predicted that it was premature to announce the death of SCO then. There's always someone who ignores all the warnings and decides to explore the ancient tomb, and re-awaken the curse...

First full landing site and colour pictures back from Mars

Re: First impressions

Are you suggesting that Curiosity is just a giant nuclear powered Roomba? If so, I WANT ONE!

Admittedly the delivery method might leave something to be desired. I suspect those living in the flats next to me will be a little distressed when the rocket exhaust starts to barbecue all their cars, and the noise of hovering rocket crane, car alarms and crash might be a little annoying as well.

But on the upside, I'll have a nuclear powered hoover - with lasers, and the cleanest flat in the world. I wonder if it can be programmed to have a backup security mode, and deal with intruders?

Samsung lengthens Note phone-cum-tablet to 10 inches

Re: Stylus is Key Selling Point

Decent handwriting recognition on tablets pisses all over onscreen keyboards. Admittedly Steve was right about them being annoying for normal YI navigation. But for use as a mouse substitute when on a remote desktop, I'd suspect theyre also dead useful.