Posts by Mr Lion

Why is IoT locked in 'proof-of-concept hell'? Stakeholders don't talk to each other, and return on investment is hazy

400+170<500???

Erm - help me out here

“just $500m spent” “ biggest beneficiary to date has been Samara ($400m)” “ second place was Infarm with $170m” - where did the other -$70m go?

Brit boffins build 'quantum compass'... say goodbye to those old GPS gizmos, possibly

GPS accuracy

"A phone's GPS accurate to roughly 15 feet, although military GPS devices can be accurate to centimeters"

I don't think this is any longer true. As I understand it, GPS signals were originally designed to be available in two flavours - a civilian one, that was made deliberately less accurate, and a military one, that had the *real* data. The reason for this was - the US military didn't want to be giving foreign powers the ability to target their cruise missiles more effectively.

Now when the gulf war came, military GPS devices were in very short supply. Several soldiers received gifts of yachting units from family and friends and were using them to navigate through Iraq - as a result of this the military decided to broadcast the civilian signals at the same accuracy as the military ones.

Did you know ... Stephen Fry has founded a tech startup?

Famous person makes bad investments shocker!

Brilliant story!

I like that he's actually engaging in the world of tech - albeit perhaps a tad clumsily - I do have a sense that he is passionate about it and I have no desire to discourage anyone in our country from speculative investment in IT. Presumably you're also going to do a counterpoint where you brilliantly lambast the UK culture of stifling innovation in spite of being where so much basic science happens...

I know I know...asking you to say something constructive is a bit silly...

2015 wasn't about AWS. It was about everybody getting ready to try to beat AWS

Norwich Union?

Nicely played register reporter with a time machine, nicely played...

Big mistake, Google. Big mistake: Chrome OS to be 'folded into Android'

Re: One less ...

FEWER man, FEWER

You're welcome.

Mozilla's ‘Great or Dead’ philosophy may save bloated blimp Firefox

"The gay rights community"

Wtf is that? Anyone who doesn't support the rights of gays, or any other human, is an arsehole.

So if by your comment you mean that the drama is down to non-arseholes being opposed to discrimination - I guess you're correct, but it's a bloody weird way to say it.

Brit iPad sellers feel the pain of VAT-free imports

Wouldn't have gone bankrupts selling iPads?

What's the margin on those? I call BS on anyone being able to run a sustainable business selling iPads - what margin does apple allow them? A small handful of percent?

Ada Lovelace Day: Meet the 6 women who gave you the 'computer'

I don't think it means what you think it means

" I don't believe that the IT industry in general is "Institutionally Sexist", it may well be male dominated, but that isn't the same thing."

The key point about Institutional Sexism (or racism, or whatever) is that it isn't a bunch of bad people doing bad things because they have not yet had their moral compasses adjusted - it's that the system is set up in such a way that it mitigates against (in this case) women making as much contribution as they otherwise might.

Your final paragraph answers it:

"So it isn't surprising that women make up a minority in IT. Would the Industry benefit from more women in the field? Quite probably, but where are they to be sourced? You can't employ somone who doesn't apply for a position and to employ someone *just* because they are female and not the best qualified/able will not improve male attutudes to women in IT."

"quite probably" seems mealy mouthed but let's let that slide - the fact that women are not going into the field, aren't studying the appropriate subjects at the appropriate level, or whatever the causes are - that's the "institutional" bit - it's not male chauvinist pigs not knowing how to relate to women (although that - sadly - still happens) - but a system which has not - yet - been set up to encourage an equal contribution from all sectors of society.

Sergey Brin's 'test-tube burger' cooked, eaten, declared meat-like

Quorn is not a health food fad!

Quorn was invented way back in the day by some malthusian cynics who believed that the world was running out of cheap protein. They had evidently seen Soylent Green, read the Omen and had smoked something enlightening.

Obviously devastated to find that the food kept on failing to run out - so hit on a bonzer wheeze to make it a "health food"...what software marketing people call "the pivot". So unprepared were they for this change in focus that they only moved to using free range eggs in around 2000 - up to then all your vegger mates were eating battery farmed eggs binding together their weirdy cultured fungus proteins...

Quorn is not a health food fad - it's a bona fide science

Only 1 in 5 Americans believe in pure evolution – and that's an upswing

I think "pure" here is a bit misleading...

It's totally possible to be religious and recognise the reality of evolution - any person who believes in god couldn't not believe that god wasn't involved in evolution...

The study is interesting but the "pure" evolution believers should include those who think it's god and those who don't. It is certainly possible to believe that there are other agencies to natural selection than simple random chance mutations...

Google's Larry Page: MY SECRET TO VAST WEALTH, SUCCESS

hmm jai

"smug + massively rich = not a nice combination"

yeah not so sure...I am 50% of the way there and I can't help thinking 100% will be even better...

Jackson’s Hobbit becomes a trilogy

Re: Longer wait for Dambusters then? lets hope so

@Steven Davison "To some people" - colours firmly nailed to the mast there!

Pirate island attracts more than 100 startup tenants

Re: Seems a bit daft

"What are they going to do about (the lack of) women?"

What do you think? The possible boon to the onshore economy will certainly not be lost on local regulators...

Yahoo! board! probes! CEO's! CompSci! CV! blunder!

Re: semi-meh

OR...they should focus on the fact that he may have lied, potentially in a submission to the SEC, and that in itself would, if shown to be true, show a weakness of character (and indeed lack of judgment) which would bring his fitness for his position into question.

Having a Physics degree myself, I would never stoop so low as to claim an education in Computer Science - but if I did so on my CV, and you caught me, I'd expect a proper drubbing...

iPad app that lets mute kids speak menaced by patent lawsuit

Re: It's not about milking the parents of disabled kids.

It is indeed a very emotive subject as you correctly point out - but patent is not fundamental fact of the universe, it is an artefact which societies have created to fit their purposes. It is no longer fit for purpose.

If there were a law which allowed - say - slavery, that would be an inappropriate law. You would, I'm sure, agree that fighting it was appropriate and obeying it was wrong.

Surprise! Facebook, Twitter still not THAT important for news

Missing the point - Twitter is important, but not for any of the reasons in this article

Twitter is still used by a vanishingly small proportion of the population - however one of those sections is journalists, and this is really critical.

If you are a journalist on a print newspaper you probably got a degree from a top university and struggled really hard to get your job. Now you are faced with vanishing budgets, reducing headcount and a profession which is in a state of cynical despair. So where do you go for stories?

Twitter, facebook, mumsnet...and you use wikipedia to verify your sources. Big brands recognise this, which is why making complaints on twitter gets you so much better support - not because they are worried what IT savvy navel gazers like me think...but because they know if it isn't responded to, and it's a slow news day, they might get into a *proper* news source.

Samsung Series 7 Chonos 15.6in Core i7 notebook

One less than five!

One less than five? One FEWER than five. Wash your keyboard out with soap and water - you should be ashamed.

Ten... boomboxes

Jambox - or how do you choose which products to review???

There seems to be a rather arbitrary approach to which products you review, which makes them a little bit...totally ****ing useless.

Your reviews are in general well written, but when they miss out really obvious products in whatever category you're reviewing, it really doesn't help me decide which one to buy, just how I should feel about what I've already bought.

Speaking of which - why didn't you include the jawbone jambox in this review. Spectacular piece of kit.

Demand for Ruby, Hadoop and HTML5 rockets, C devs still best paid

@kid cosmique

Where did you study? That is probably far more important than what you studied and certainly far more so than the classification of your degree.

Marshall Islands prez 'legalises cocaine'

durrr

They also have stories announcing that Israel is dismantling its settlements and recognising the Palestinian state and that Japan is ending whaling...

Nothing to see here...move along

People have no bloody idea about saving energy

Recycling glass

is a load of old cock as any fule kno - however reusing glass (like used to happen with deposit bottles) certainly isn't.

Judge trounces Register.com in Baidu.com hijacking case

snafu?

I don't think it means what you think it means

'Racist' job ad sparks investigation

That's absurd

Everyone knows Manchester pisses on Imperial. Bunch of chess playing geeks.

JustGiving.com website goes titsup after upgrade

New justgiving website demonstrably worse

One thing which has gone uncommented so far...the new site is simply worse than the old one. There are a few stylistic things (I thought a thermometer was a much better way of showing how far I've gone to achieving my goal than a magic star) - however the one really key screwup they've made is that I used to be able to see *all* the donations on a page at once - now it shows a maximum of ten on any given page and users have to click "next" to get through each of the pages.

People look at who's donated what and typically decide how much to donate based on that. If the list doesn't show the bigger donations then people are likely to donate less. So they've (potentially at least) reduced the money which their charity customers raise.

Apart from the fact that it's a giant step back in web design - "you remember how much you used to love clicking "next" and "yes I really want to do this" when you used windows - well we can bring that experience to the web..." one assumes that the marketing people in the charity sector aren't on the marching powder so maybe that was thought up after some cider and particularly potent smokes...who knows but PLEASE FIX IT NOW!