Posts by Rob 103

Look, no client! Not quite: the long road to a webbified Vim

Re: Why bother?

You can't see any benefit, at all, for providing these debugging tools directly in the applications that are used to deliver the content?

Spam and the Byzantine Empire: How Bitcoin tech REALLY works

Re: Good explanation of the technical side

I'd recommend looking up the original paper written - its concise and well written.

What I like about BitCoin (theory - I don't "own" any) is that it challenges you to think about what a currency is, and why, for example, the problems that immediately come to mind with BitCoin don't (or do?) apply to Pounds, or Dollars.

Apple iPad Mini 8in tablet review

"This review is the personification of King Canute"

This sentence pushes two of my pedantry buttons:

1) "personification". Seriously? Some text is the personification of a person?

2) In the incident being alluded to, King Canute was demonstrating that he in fact does NOT have the power to hold back the waves.

Study shows half of all websites use jQuery

Re: And a bloody good thing too!

Canut (Knut?) was actually trying to show his advisers that he couldn't hold back the sea (they didn't believe him). A common misconception.

RBS must realise it's just an IT biz with a banking licence

Re: "A (retail) bank's business is Risk Management."

It sounds like you are deliberately missing his point. The core function of a retail bank is to take customers deposits and invest them to make more money (traditionally by lending this money long term to individuals/businesses).

If all these investments went up the swanny, then the bank's customers would lose their deposits.

Hence, the risk of the investments is of utmost, critical importance.

Hence "a banks business is risk management".

Google claims Chrome is the world's most popular browser

Re: Roger Roger

We've got the clearance, Clarence.

Foxconn daddy: 'Don't buy Galaxy S III, wait for iPhone 5'

Re: This, from the guy who has to put nets around his factories...

Hello,

I believe if you look into the statistics, the suicide rate amongst Foxconn employees is actually lower than that of the general Chinese population (related to the fact that Foxconn is in the top 10 largest companies-by-workforce in the world).

Cant be arsed to look up the reference, please feel free.

So you wanna be a Wall Street techie? Or anyway, get paid a lot

Re: No thanks ...

Chip on your shoulder much?

Machine translation cracks 18th century occult cipher

I always heard that as "Who controls the British Crown" but I could be wrong - and probably am!

Sergey Brin mum on $500m DoJ settlement stash

Nope

Thats how I read it. I bet they did it on purpose.

Delete all you like, but it won't free up space

Not the bloggers fault

Having read the linked article, its clear the blogger doesnt think this is new information. He's just pointing out to anyone interested that its a factor to consider and suggests some best practices.

The Reg author on the other hand......... the way he phrases it he sounds like he thinks he's uncovered the new Antennagate.

Google Cr-48: Inside the Chrome OS 'unstable isotope'

Hello

Some people are really very short-sighted. Yes, this is to a large extent an experiment. One which may work or may not work. No-one on this forum knows the answer, no matter how smart-ass the comments sound.

Regarding the argument "why would I want to store my data in the cloud omg how stoopid can you get google are so f*cking thick", I had a thought (prompted by a previous comment):

I have a NAS device at home, its not a huge stretch to imagine a "Google Cloud" service installed on it that allows me to access the data from my ChromeBook, and play movies/music etc. In fact, you could probably do this already. Now, my data is in the "cloud" but hey - its still sitting under my desk at home*.

*with copies regularly backed up to tape and stored in a fire-proof safe, naturally.

Apple pays off pension fund

Not quite....

When a company grants you a share option it means that you can acquire the share at a "given price" at a certain point in the future. If in that time the share price goes up, then you are sitting on profit.

The "given price" is usually the closing price of the share on the day the option was granted. However, if the share price was lower two weeks ago, backdating the "given price" to that day would mean your option would be worth more.

Doing this could be seen as screwing other shareholders out of money - which is OK if they agree to it but fraud if they didn't know about it.

Note: there are some generalisations here but that's the gist.

Palm slams Apple, hoodwinks iTunes

My 2 cents

A lot has been said on this subject - so I feel I must add my voice to this discussion that won't change anyones opinion.

I'll just throw in an extra "situation" that I feel demonstrates how anti-competitive Apple are being.

Say I buy a lovely iPhone today. Its pretty sweet, I get home and install iTunes (because I have to), and I spend lots of time uploading my music, buying some more music from the iTunes store etc. Its awesome - I can sync all this to my iPhone and listen to it all on the move. Its so easy and user-friendly. Weeeeeeee!

18 months and a phone contract expiration down the line, I'm thinking of upgrading my phone. What shall I get? The new iPhone 4GXsqP or the Palm Pre 5? Their features are pretty similar. I like them both. Hang on a minute - if I get a Pre I wont be able to use the music management system I have on my PC (iTunes) to copy it all over. Screw it, I'll get the iPhone.

This is anti-competitive. This is the entire point. Please can everyone stop talking about this now.