Posts by Adrian 10 16 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jan 2010
I'm not sure a regulator telling them "no, but we'll let you tell the world if you want" officially counts as patience. I'm looking forward to watching the webcasts again, but this is one of those occasions where it is good we have regulators despite how much they can slow us down sometimes... "We're finalising the investigation and aim to fly next week" is not what regulators are used to hearing.
I catch the MTR (The Tube) in Hong Kong every day. It was funny watching people try and use a tablet when they were popular, because there is just no space to hold one. It wasn't funny when I tried it myself with my spare 2cm of spare space between people. Anyway, I've noticed all the iPhones disappearing, while most people now use Galaxy Notes (or Galaxy S). Even if you didn't sell one phone in UK / US - there is an enormous revenue stream in space constrained Asia for a phone / tablet hybrid like the Note.
I'm ready for the down posts, but I'll say it anyway... I like 3D. I think it is just going to take more time for mass market adoption than we have patience for as commentators. I'm not going to buy a new TV because my current one is 2D, but when I buy a new one that has 3D, as increasingly more do (at least here in Asia), then I'll use it. Most people don't buy a telly as often as they do a phone (again over here where they seem to buy a phone every few months), but at some point it will be available in enough places that it will very slowly become 'standard', and will then get used more. Does anyone know how long HD took to transition from just being available to becoming common place?
Isn't flying an aircraft at, or around, mach 20 for 9 minutes a reasonably good achievement? I don't get the title being so negative. My claims to fame today are not quite so impressive, although I did manage to not drink as much coffee as yesterday which I'm pleased about.
People seem quite quick to sledge Java these days, usually for good reason. I've been using Java since version 1.0 (as a student back then - those were the days...) and still quite like it for building solutions where the language fits the domain or problem well.
I personally don't like that Oracle control Java now. However, isn't there some good news in the changes they're looking at introducing? In many large organisations, access to newer tools & languages simply aren't an option for project teams - so at least there is light at the end of the tunnel in using JEE to solve problems more effectively than is available today. I don't recall having any decent JEE roadmaps before the hand over. Maybe there was, but I just didn't know about them...
I'm not endorsing Oracle's approach to stake holder management / community engagement for a second. I'm also not saying I think they can succeed in this task of keeping the language relevant. I do hold this hope that it can start heading in the right direction though, and ASF or Oracle offer a palm leaf soon. Oracle not suing the crap out of others, and realising the community can help them move forward on more than just this would be a nice change of course too. It would also be incredibly interesting to know the 'real reason' Sun then Oracle think they can't give the compatability kit to ASF. I get the sense there is some liability that would be exposed... I just don't get it with what we know at the moment.
As dr 48 says - GPS can be less accurate for alititude. An aircraft altimeter is effectively just a barometer from memory. When you start flying, you get the air pressure on the ground from the control tower (or some other similar service) - and then every 1 hectopascal = 30 foot altitude is what I remember from my study too many years ago.
So if the Bureau of Met publishes pressure for geographical points, which should be easy enough, then you would get really accurate altimeter readings.
I don't quite know why I would really care about my current altitude all that much. Maybe it's an app for paragliders or microlite pilots... But then I probably wouldn't trust my life to the quality of the hardware they'll provide. Anyway, more stuff in a gadget seems good to me. We can figure out what to do with it later. :-)
I heard that breast cancer research gets significantly more funding than prostate cancer research, even though more people die of the later. Something to do with more effective lobbying - chicks are less embarassed about the whole thing and are more effective at letting politicians know that they will use their vote to make a difference. We all sit here and complain away in the forums as it seems relatively obvious to the The Reg readers why all this patent stuff is so stupid (and is such a risk to innovation in general). But our forum posts won't really make a different other than to make us feel better by venting.
Is there any organisation that is lobbying effectively against the poor regulation and running of patent law? If so, please post who it is so I can become a supporter.
If they _gave_ ads to their internal departments then many more people would be ticked off. If they shared how the systems worked, then they would be manipulated. <sarcasm>Maybe they should never grow their business outside search to keep people happy.</sarcasm> There is no perfect solution, but there are far bigger fish to fry than this.
So when a 'noted blogger' (seriously, what is a noted blogger!!!) - says it is a conflict of interest, they'd have to just roll their eyes and move along. I don't like working with our Finance department. However there really are reasons, especially around accountability of spend, for having marketing accounts for seperate departments. Meh...
> You might call it a de facto ad blocker.
No ads seems good to me, at least at first. However, take The Register - if we can't read your ads, then you can't get money, then you have to all go out & get other jobs and I no longer get your articles. Then I would no longer have the information I need to do my job... I paint a bleak picture to illustrate (or exagerate) a point.
After some time with my bleak thought - I now think this feature could be a bad thing. The alternative though..... you would have to charge a subscription to readers. Hrmmm... don't Apple have a plan along those lines, controlling media access and getting a cut of the money from everyone reading content.
This first seemed like a quick point to skim over, but I don't think it actually is. I'd be really interested to see a Reg staff member post a response on the forum where it can be more of a personal opinion than you can provide in a professional article. Do you think this will affect your business model? If so, should you (and therefore us long time readers also) be concerned?
The assumption of his blog seems to be - that the aim of these projects is to eventually sell and commercialise the projects. However, when I was working on JBoss in the early days - I wasn't doing it so that he could make money. I'll go so far as to say, I didn't really have any interest in Redhat making money from it either... And the core developers who built the essence of what became popular didn't built it so he and Redhat could make money either, which is why they had the big falling out with him.
I agree with the part about Monty selling out for 1b then thinking he still has some say in it. He doesn't - but Marc's rant is based on a fundamentally flawed arguement (in my opinion anyway).
So let's hope no one like Marc gets the great idea of making millions from everyone elses work in PostgreSQL, making it no longer available to the community who actually created it. And yes - I am referring to the brand power, community, etc as much as the product / code itself.
Why a beer icon, 'cause it's all a bit sad really. I'm going to just go drink a beer instead of think about it too much more.
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