Posts by Terry Ellis 39 publicly visible posts • joined 24 May 2007
600kbs is not plentiful at all.
Try using Citrix over a slow link, or dropbox, or skype, or any online gaming.
1TB seems excessive (maybe he means 1GB?), but regardless it reminds me of the classic Waston line: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers".
Who knows what future use cases might be?
As reported in Ars Technica's write up here:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/01/amd-ceo-ousted-over-tablets-but-amd-ousted-its-tablet-chip-in-2009.ars
Seems like it was a lose/lose situation. Remember in 2009 there was no iPad then! The same board would probably have called him mad for carrying on with that project.
Firstly to all the commenters stating this is an issue of copyright (OMG they trying to copyright the dictionary!!!) or 'patent' the word are clearly confused - this is an issue of trademark not of any other protected asset.
Second it is perfrectly acceptatble to have a trademark for a word that is already in the dictionary, provided that you can make a case for it (as a commenter above noted, it hasn't stopped 'Windows' being afforded protection).
Thirdly in order to enjoy the luxury of having a trademark it has to be defended else it might pass in to general language. That's why Google or Tivo are probably not happy that their trademarks have effectively become verbs - it then makes defense of your trademark much more difficult.
Finally the comparison with POD shoes is a non-issue. The trademark can only be rigourously defended against other marks that might be considered competitors or are in the same market. If POD shoes suddenly made some kind of shoe based MP3 controller, that would be interesting. A relevant example is also the Apple computer versus Apple records dispute - in that case there was considerable debate about whether their activities overlapped or could be confused.
...including a list of references in a journal paper?
Isn't including a hyperlink in an email essentially the same thing as having a reference list? And is there a difference between including a link in an email and copying verbatim from the blog in to the body of the email?
I sympathise with the EFF's alarm on this one.
...is if that had some kind of slide pivot so that the screen could be slid down and positioned closer to the desk at an angle of say 30° and come with some kind of stylus so you could draw directly on to the screen, like it was a proper drawing board.
I don't think there would be much of a market for just manipulating on screen images etc using your hands. For one, arm ache would ensue and second, why not just press the right-arrow key.
Let me know how it goes when you need to send 500 letters to different addresses using your method, or when you need to embed graphics in those documents or when you decide that you didn't want to write your letter in that colour ink, but oh no! it's too late!
Perhaps you just enjoyed doing lines at school, eh?
Vodafone did this almost exactly this time last year. I think they put up the prices of thier premium rate numbers (and 0800) in some cases by about 40%.
The T+Cs stated that if they put up their prices by more than 10pc you could get out of the contract. I had a number of 'chats' with useless call centre staff before being refered to a customer manager and then thier manager.
They argued that the 10pc increase refered to the overall cost of the bill (i.e. if your monthly bill went up by more than 10pc) whereas the T+Cs simply said 'call charges' which was undefined in the contract. They wanted to monitor the effect of the changes on my next three monthly bills before deceiding if I could terminate. When I pointed out that this was ridiculous as I could just dial such numbers to artificially inflate my bill, they relented and let me free of the contract while keeping the phone.
Their retention centre then called me a week later offered me a 75% reduction in my taffif (£40 > £10) and a new phone, which I accepted and gave to my other half, while I went and got a new shiny phone of my own on another network (I traded in the N95 that I got to keep).
But where's the solid investment in the renewable energy required to support the carbon reducing sentiments of Mr Hoon. Without renewables you are simply moving the point of carbon emissions from the street to the power plant (although you do remove the noxious gases and particles petrol cars produce).
Or indeed where is the investment in the energy sector in general; there are already concerns about an 'energy gap' which this would only fuel.
Isn't the comment in this article open having mobile operators opening up their networks in direct contrast to the thoughts of many just the other week when Sky was bleating on about having Virgin Media open up its infrastructure to competitors?
Why shouldn't the mobile networks employ these kind of deals? In the end, the consumer is happy to go along with it whether or not this ultimately reduces choice or otherwise. In many cases, the deal is better for the consumer else they would already be going to purchase handsets at full price and accompanying sim card as you suggest.
I don't buy the idea that ultimately there will be less choice. The market will provide what ever the customer wants (or in some cases needs). Yes it's true that the OS market was (and is) long dominated by one player, but potentially those days are coming to an end (not necessarilly because there are better OSes around, but because of the internet). In addition, I wonder whether the perceived lack of innovation in the OS space due to having only one OS actually benefitted the application space - would our applications be as rich had developers always had to develop for multiple OS?
Still, the length of contracts does concern me somewhat but I think that eventually, it won't be cost effective to have a contract - the market would eventually realise that (you can't really go any better than offering a free handset/laptop).
Perhaps a solution would be for someone to come out and operate an 'open' mobile network in the same way that the internet is open, and have a market of only MVNOs?
"But the industry, which only accounts for two per cent of CO2 emissions within Europe, can also help other industries to cut their energy use by better use of technology."
This is too true. There should be more pressure in order to come up with efficient systems, but this would only make sense as part of the normal upgrade cycle. While there has been a lot of focus on mimimising the power requirements of the CPU, it seems that there has been less on other elements (chipset, discrete graphics). Virtualisation will help though.
The other issue is trying to use the waste heat from server rooms. I'm currently working on sustainable building design where we are utilising some 30MWh of low grade heat from servers to contribute to the overall building heat demand. This would otherwise be lost (and saves money).
I though you could post links on a wall to any website /from/ within Facebook.
This would imply that Facebook is then responsibly for all of its users link-posting actions, which surely can't be the case.
And what if the link was to a search rather than a specific file - is that still actionable?
Item 7 and Item 8 state something along the lines of (paraphrasing here) :
"we may from time to time decrease/increase call charges"
"you may cancel your contract if...these charges cause you call charges based on previous bills to increase by 10% or more than the Retail Price Index, whichever is greater...and you write to us before the charges come into effect".
Looks as though you will have to prove that you are adversely affected by these charges (>10%) to have any joy. It's a bit ambiguous as to whether it is a 10% increase in any one month or on average over the life-to-date of the contract.
It does not appear to be, however, a change in the terms and conditions of the contract (unless your call plan consitutes part of the contract - I could not find this in the text).
...from Vodophone on the 21st May saying that my "monthly data allowance is now unlimited... fair use applies".
I did think that the 120mb was pretty low, given that a number of websites take well over 500k to load up in full.
Still, I think it's a scandal that they are allowed to abuse the word 'unlimited' as they do. I think most people would accept useage limits if they were made plain and not dressed up.
I used to be a Virgin customer until I recently moved to a flat with no cable connection.
I signed up with Be - the price for the max 24mb service is really not much more than Virgin (although you have to pay line rental too) but it is much better:
- I think Be's speed/price ratio is pretty damn competitive
- I get about 12-14mbps all the time
- their customer service is really good. They sent text messages throughout the order process to tell me when the modem was being delivered, when I was to be connects (which turned out to happen earlier than anticipated) and they even tell you when they are about to debit you.
I really couldn't recommend them enough!
"Sorry matey - if you buy an off-the-shelf operating system, then IMHO it's really that operating system's job to operate your system (the secret's in the name, folks) and unfortunately that means it should run any hardware you happen to have."
Please name these other operating systems. OS X? Nope, sorry that only supports a highly controlled range of systems?
Surely the support of peripherals is not solely an MS responsibility, but that of the manufacturer. Go back to the specification on the box of that Maxtor hard drive that you bought - does it say it is compatable with Vista? If it doesn't is it fair to assume that said hardware will be guaranteed to work under Vista? Why isn't is Maxtor's responsibililty to offer this if it is possible?
I run Vista SP1 and have had no problems. I built a carefully thought out system that had modern components and a modern OS. I don't think I would ever have upgraded an older system from XP to Vista because you can never guarantee that they will work and I (personally) wouldn't expect it to (certainly it is not the sole responsibility of MS)
They should implement the Napster software in the all-you-can-eat mode so that you can stream to the device, like Musicstation.
Musicstation is a good idea, but it's not well integrated into the OS on my N95 (e.g. when I have the phone on silent, it won't output to the earphones; standalone app) and the software constantly looks for a connection (i.e. you can't use it in flight mode or abroad) and can also take a longtime to download tracks even when in a 3.5g area.
It's a great idea and I would use it a lot if the software was a bit better.
I thought we were on about the 7th or 8th 'generation'...
It will be interesting to see what happens to sales over time. As I understand it, it is not until a console has been around for a while and the pricepoint starts to tumble that sales start to pick up. I wonder how much the prices will fall relative to each other in afew years time when the bulk of the sales may be made.
Being a reader for a number of years now, I honestly had no idea that the site was 'mirrored' accross both the .com and .co.uk domains, being an avid .co.uk user myself.
Being slightly unaware of the fact that both of these domains existed, my initial question is whether there is content that is directed exclusively at one or the other's territory (i.e. are there articles that only appear on the .co.uk or .com version of the site)? If the answer is no, then I do not see any reason to abandon the .co.uk domain for the .com one. (I guess I am also asking what is the use of a us.theregister.co.uk or uk.theregister.com sub-domain?)
After all, all major companies around the globe have to have there headquarters somewhere, and so (to me, at least) it is really a question of where your operations ultimately run from and this should determine which domain you run from. If you remain true to your current brand, then surely .co.uk is the way forward. However, one can sympathise with the decision to migrate to a .com domain, especially if this is what was originally intended.
Personally? I agree with Mark above - make a stand and adopt a us.theregister.co.uk or, maybe, force them into a us.theregister.com domain to show that the .com domain should really be non-geographic.
Anyway, kudos for this article - it says so much about El Reg's approach to journalism and the modesty with which it consults it's readership.
Indeed. Only today on the front of the Argus is a (sensationalist) story about the proposed incinerator which leads with the frankly absurd 'finding' that waste incinerators could reduce the lifespan of nearby residents (those in the quote "fallout zone") by up to twelve years.
I too will await with anticipation with this story...
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