Posts by Jason Hindle 1053 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009
Having skipped a couple of generations as a very happy (none-pro) 6 user, the 9 crosses the line for me with its improved camera features, the main one being that 50 megapixels can now mean exactly that. The 6 can already just about replace a real camera if I must travel light, while the 9 Pro makes travelling lighter more appealing.
The AI features? I'm all for the ones I don't see (I'm all about the photography, and if an NPU makes that better, I'm fine with that), but the flashy, visible stuff leaves me nonplussed (though I'll doubtless find uses for some of it).
"Brad frantically conducted more tests and found the cause: a spreadsheet created on a PC could be read on a Mac, but once the Mac opened it, Windows users would see only gobbledygook."
Not gobbledygook but opening a complex (especially if it includes macros) Excel spreadsheet created on a PC, on a Mac, is still anything but perfect. Word and Powerpoint are fine. Not Excel!
In most other parallel universes, it died at version 3, and NT never became a thing. Between various UNIX flavours/kernels and Linux, the world patiently waited for the hardware to catch up with what we already had. Windows was not really necessary beyond what it already was*. That Apple's approach to producing a modern operating system was to buy something off the shelf and adapt it says a lot. Months before the launch of XP, Apple's users already had access to a modern OS more secure by design. Linux users were a good few years ahead of both! We are that strange bit of the multiverse where Trump becomes President, Brexit happens, and the worst possible OS dominates.
* A GUI on top of DOS to give the Mac some competition.
And I'm guessing a case like this has a high bar for conviction.
For those saying we should have had more faith in the US justice system… The way prosecutors behave there makes the system incompatible* with ours. I will always treat extradition requests with scepticism.
* Strong arming confessions of guilt through a system of plea bargaining? FFS!
Last month, my bill with BT was £145. Granted, that includes mobile and BT sports, and the FTTC product has been solid, but the cost has ended up being pretty eye-watering. The lowest 150/150 from the new local fibre provider* is £19 per month, and they've offered to provide it for £1 a month until the BT contract runs out in November. I'm really looking forward to not being with BT. It's been a bit like being in an abusive relationship. The last time I renewed, they gave me a discount here and there without telling me they were removing the BT Sports HD pack, and then they put the prices up anyway.
* A company called Grain delivers fibre under the street in our area. Another company called Brsk serves other areas nearby.
Other solutions exist for smaller (and larger) installations, such as Proxmox. For tech businesses, there's the DIY approach to open stack*. In the carrier space, companies like Huawei and Ericsson provide off-the-shelf private cloud solutions (though I would be inclined to avoid both of those).
* The learning curve is potentially reduced because you can ask a chatbot.
I worked on Informix in the mid-90s. The stored procedure language was pleasant, if rather cumbersome, in the terminal-level application I was asked to work with. SQL is SQL. I don't care that everyone does it a little differently - the mental model remains the same.
"The inevitable Tory leadership election will show whether it still matters, or whether it was really was just "immigrants" all along"
The inevitable Tory leadership election will result in a lurch further to the right. Thanks to entryism at the membership level, it's a bad time to be an old-school, one-nation Tory.
Even if the feature turns out to be useful for some, I don't think Microsoft will ever be able to create a finished product that would work in a business setting while complying with legal compliance, privacy, and corporate policies. Without the active intrusion that comes with Recall, the current LLMs are already a minefield if you aren't switched on to the compliance aspects of day-to-day business.
The goal should be Windows systems that match or beat Intel/AMD on performance while delivering greater power efficiency, thermal performance, and battery life. As anyone who has run Windows under Parallels on an Mx Mac knows, performance and emulation should be fine.
"Two, the fact that from the article it looks like MS is unilaterally offering its Chinese based employees jobs in other countries. What if said countries don't want these people to emigrate?"
If Microsoft is making these offers, the immigration side is simply a done deal. New Zealand and Australia already take in plenty of skilled people from China.
Python is mature, while Flutter is fairly new. Python also originated outside of Google, so we can reasonably expect Google's patronage to be fluid. A quick Google on the most popular frameworks for app development indicates that Flutter hovers around #2. If anything, I would have assumed Google would be doubling down—unless Google's Crystal Ball* indicates headwinds.
* Assuming they've not also sent that to the Google Graveyard.
We reached a point of sufficiency with hardware at some point before the middle of the last generation. If you have something with a dual-core i7, 8Gb and SSD from that period, you have something that absolutely should run Windows 11 right now, as it is already running either Windows 10 or Linux. It is entirely correct to call Microsoft out on this. The environmental impact of forced upgrades is not going to be great.
Nobody wanted those at first, yet within a few years, almost every mobile phone and smartphone had a built-in camera. The same will happen with AI. If you've been rocking an M1 Mac since late 2020, you already have NPUs waiting to be used*.
* Well, they're already used in a few applications.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
