Posts by MOV r0,r0 204 publicly visible posts • joined 14 May 2011
China buys in shills but top-downs them so they can't correct bad translation which is why you get "makes me irritate" instead of irritates me or "Pig Bay" instead of Bay of Pigs.
Russia uses it's own people and they are anything but expert. The give away is the incredibly tortured grammar resulting from their attempt to sound traditionally English.
When the PRC tell a big porky it's usually for home consumption but leaked through the Great Firewall. I'm still waiting to find any of those multiple reservoirs of corona virus required to make the zoonotic leap from animals to humans sufficient for the virus to spread between humans, which is what the CCP claimed. The white tailed deer are buoyant and abundant, it must have been 武漢肺炎 Wuhan Pneumonia all along!
Actually, a good example would be referring to the government of the PRC as "CPC" which is what they were insisting on a while back instead of CCP - after, of course, having seeded all the search results for "CPC" with their communist fluff pieces.
Sadly for them, my history directs searches for CPC to a rather good electronic components supplier in Preston and sadly for you, 2+2=5 is true for high values of two (eg, 2.7 + 2.8) so never a good analogy that one, especially when claiming the logical high ground!
Arm was barely 40% British-owned when it went to SoftBank, however that's not too different to how it was constituted at inception.
The danger in being pedantic over what constitutes a "British company" is that you'll rule Arm out of ever being British at all as it was spun-out entirely with US capital (Apple) and US design tools (VLSI) based on a US idea (RISC) and a product from a then majority Italian-owned company (Acorn) originally inspired by the activity of US companies such as Western Design Center. The founding CEO and former chairman cut his teeth at Motorola, a US company, and it was he who made sure Arm was global from the outset; Sir Robin Saxby was a huge part of Arm's success but if you were to ask him I'm pretty sure he'd say Arm was both global and British.
I'm uncomfortable with this decision too. If autism is sufficient for someone to be unfit to stand trial, how about severe personality disorders (for example Allitt, Letby, the Wests)?
People go up before the beak for what they've done, why they did it should only impact the sentencing.
The EU have a €750bn post-Covid slush fund which may or may not contravene competition rules (irrelevant; the EU makes EU competition laws!) which puts Intel asking for another €3bn into context. The article subheading hints at energy being a factor; this plant will have become less attractive the moment Germany lost its Russian energy-daddy and that particular story has barely started to play out for the industrial sector of the German economy.
Come on El Reg, it's Moore's law, not Moore's Law. If it were a "Law" it would have a formula you could plot on a graph and stuff. And Intel talking about it as if the economics that underpinned it have in any way been in operation for the last ten years - forget Moore's law, we're in Amdahl country now.
There are London brokers whose commission depends on Arm listing on the LSE - that's worth them putting scare stories out about head office locations but the truth is Arm has been operating out of the US for a while now because it's beneficial to do so - Arm's worldwide office is already in the US, it's in San Jose. Some board members are based there.
Being a semiconductor business Arm was quite rightly global in outlook from the outset. You lot already know this: the concept was from the US (RISC) as were the design tools (from VLSI which won them 8% of the shares) as was all the start-up capital (all from Apple resulting in a 46% shareholding) and even the IP was from a company 60% Italian owned as Olivetti owned most of Acorn when ARM span out. Assuming the remaining 40% of Acorn was all UK owned, then 40% of 46% - I make that a less than 19% British owned ARM at conception and even later when it went to SoftBank, Robin Saxby reckoned it was still only 40% British in ownership.
Yet there it still is, on the Fulbourn Road. Personally I'm really, really relaxed about where it lists and the nationality of the new owners because it's literally all global now, it has been since the Seventies. And if the new owner messes up? It will be a repeat of what happened with Acorn: a massive seed-pod of talent bursting over the Cambridge technology sector.
"Robot [anything] can be much safer" often because humans are barred from the space around robots. This is "elimination" in the Hierarchy of Controls, except that the hazard is moved to a space away from people.
The problem with robots in public spaces is removing the public from the space as we tend to get upset about things like that but I expect large parts of a country's public road network will have to be made driverless, riderless and pedestrian-less before passengers (in their safety cages) can enjoy automated road transport at scale.
before it left UK ownership
UK Gov does indeed have a legit influence because Arm is UK based, it might want to be careful exercising that right to avoid scaring off international capital, but Arm has never been wholly UK owned.
Robin Saxby has said it was 60% internationally owned when SoftBank bought it. At conception it was 55% US owned (Apple, VLSI) and the remaining 45% (Acorn) was 60% owned by an Italian ex-typewriter slinger anyway. All Arm's start-up finance was from outside the UK as was the core RISC concept.
Irrespective of ownership Arm always has been and remains a UK based company and it has always been global in outlook but there's never been a time when Arm was wholly UK owned.
I wouldn't worry, AMD also play last minute games and have been known to cut developer support without warning making it difficult to get your product running well on theirs, when their users notice even marginal sub-Intel performance they kick off and that's when their PR publicly dumps on your company and your render coder. So classy, AMD.
While an early years child is almost always better off sat on a parent's knee being read stories to rather than abandoned to a console, you've spotted the real reason for this change: unswerving devotional loyalty to the party unsullied by any non-Chinese characteristics.
For example, whatever a child of the CCP will be doing with their extra non-gaming hours, it's won't be learning a language. That's been all but banned, international language schools in mainland China are going suddenly bust and anyone still teaching on the side risks a uniformed visit and all for the very same "purity" reasons.
You have to make yourself more of a nuisance than actually dealing with the case would be for the case officer. And I mean really a nuisance as them bothering senior colleagues with anything, including your legit issue, could have short term implications for their career progression.
From what I remember it was ten times worse at the height of the quangos, out of it now though thank goodness.
The conditions that caused Android to arise mostly boil down to Google's desire to turn mobile users and their data into product as they had done with desktop search.
That was always going to happen and Linux was both an excellent and convenient place to start, but not the only place: Android did not come into being because someone at Google thought, "hey - cool kernel what shall we do with it?" so for Red Hat's Mike McGrath to say "no Linux […] no Android" simply isn't true.
Too many breakfast comments and not enough Fall! What if the chef thought it'd be funny to split the best breakfast they ever made into two courses - because it's not really "Winter (Parts 1 and 2)" is it? It's just Smithy winding us up by spanning one song over the end of side one and the start of side two. He'd pulled another cute trick previously with "Slates" - the best LP they ever made was an EP.
Anyway, my hangovers love Korean noodle soup (salt, liquid, carbs) plus less washing up although all the Koreans I know are currently into Breakfast Burrito...
All the country has done recently in sequencing and vaccines and the long history of discovery and application with early successes such as nabbing Colin Pitchfork, and you "feel" the country has no science base?
If I could recommend one thing to you at this point it would be to consume less BBC. Seriously - you'll be happier and feel better about the UK.
In 2018 Warwick University had it at 31k managers in NHS England with a third of them also either doctors or nurses with clinical responsibilities. Government reported 116k NHS England doctors and 285k nurses in 2019 so I'm not sure what you misunderstood to reach your conclusions - everything, possibly.
Whatever else it is, the NHS is a massive watering hole and staff at all levels do really well but they have to play by the rules, that's where Stannard went wrong.
Jerry Pournelle used to tell that story, he said he'd take late night bets in the bars of Comdex that he could get Gates on the phone. This was in the early days of Microsoft and Bill always worked later than anyone else and generally answered the phone - Pournelle claimed he dialled the number, quickly handed the handset over and cleaned up.
If the company goes to the police they will expect it to provide evidence for prosecution to a legal standard, the employee will still have rights and may be on full pay until the trial and even if found guilty, employment rights still apply and there's no guarantee the court will compensate the company for loss.
The alternative is to approach the staffer with evidence, recover as much as possible from them plus their resignation all in exchange for not reporting their crimes. Not only is this quicker and cheaper it deals cleanly with their termination in a situation where the police simply won't commit resources to investigate so I entirely understand why some organisations take this approach.
We should be flattered that global entities are interested in investing in our stuff. It's also in your interest that your pension fund doesn't restrict it's investments to UK sovereign territory and even your local council providing local services will have funds invested globally.
Money flows are global, you're correct that this has been going on for decades but it's really nothing to be afraid of.
Without outside capital Acorn would have failed before there was a chance to spin out ARM which itself was financed with US capital (Apple) from a US idea (UC Berkeley RISC) needing US tools (VLSI). The CEO, 12 engineers and the rented barn were British but their starting with a global aspect is what allowed them to achieve global success. Big money is global, if you start being fussy about which geography it comes from not only does it massively restrict your choice of provision but the investors worry about you letting it leave and it just stops coming.
Don't know why Rover was on your list - certainly not near the top - and it had itself (and perhaps nationalisation) to blame for the state it ended up in which was so "precious" the tools had to go to one mainland Chinese company while the drawings went to another which might have provided a bit of work around Longbridge for a while but it took the CCP to amalgamate both buyers into one company to fix that fire-sale.
There'll be a story behind every organisation on your list, either their inability to change and compete at a global level or their success at doing so leading you to no longer consider them British. This country has a far bigger problem globalising local successes than it does hanging on to companies that have achieved it and your comment that there is, "virtual nothing left now" plainly isn't supported by UK treasury receipts - even the massive debt pile we're building is evidence the market thinks we're good for it in future.
Your whole message reads like you're afraid of the world thinking it's enough to retreat into the EU's protectionist bunker mindset but the EU is only half of Europe and even all of Europe isn't enough. If previous occupants of these islands had taken your attitude we would never have set sail to trade around the world with the consequence that few on your list of "lions" would have come into existence anyway. I suspect 47 years of EEC/EU membership has fuddled some people's perspectives.
Business as usual is for Apple to make some cosmetic changes and pay a reduced fine, that way they can keep charging profit while the EU Commission still have something to fine again in future. They'll call it "compromise".
Apple have a very nice set of books, the EU has a massive debt pile while emerging late from a pandemic lockdown having lost their second biggest donor country - can't kill the host!
The UK grid frequency constantly drifts but there is a legal requirement to monitor and correct back to a 50.000Hz average. For example at the time of writing it appears to be at 49.903Hz
The video is just some bloke who thinks he knows a bit more than most banging on about something he's not properly researched. Still - anything for views, right?
You've bought the Commission's spin that vaccines are a limited resource to be competed for such that the only safe place is inside a big, safe, cozy trading bloc.
There may have been some packaging of UK-grown vaccine on EU member state territory but the Commission's allegations of the UK "stealing" EU vaccines has never been proven: it never happened, it was a story creating fake outside malevolent forces to spin EU opinion and quell rising bloc membership dissent. The Commission were going to need a cover story anyway because a lot of what the EMA did was re-badge MHRA work - that competency was lost to the EU by their own choice with Brexit so the EU's vaccine market approval was always going to be late running while the UK had this huge under-utilised resource which is why Oxford AZ approval was fast-tracked in the UK.
It stops being a limited resource when supply is improved with massive and speculative spending on research - the UK has spent per head seven times more than the average across the EU - and to place huge speculative orders irrespective of trials finishing or market approval being granted. It is better to throw away money than lives.
Rather than leaving the front runners alone and seeking to help any stragglers, VDL's bloc philosophy added two months of delay to Oxford AZ delivery - at current EU rates that's an extra 80,000 dead and I really can't believe a seemingly intelligent person like you buys the savings-per-dose argument: when large parts of your economy is locked down you simply don't quibble over a few dollars per dose. There's also the moral issue of helping your own country as fast as possible so you can go on to help other friendly or less fortunate countries.
To borrow VDL's analogy, if you had a sick relative would you rather help came on a speed boat or a tanker? Don't forget, there's a fee - it's two dollars cheaper by tanker!
The UK economy recovered during the Eighties due to supply-side economic reforms. That it was a member of the EU at the time is coincidental.
I mention this partly to correct you and partly to point out that, the way the Commission is currently taking liberties with regulation, we're quite likely to do it all over again. Singapore-on-Thames here we come.
A user might assume, in 2021, that redacting a section of a document causes the application to automatically redact concomitant occurrences elsewhere. My guess is the word "adobe" splashed on screen at start-up which is fair warning, you know, there'll be redaction - but it's best reasonable endeavours.
Fair dinkum except next the Commission triggered the NI protocol. The thing the EU wanted in the WA to protect NI not just walked all over a mere 29 days later but some EU mouthpiece spouting on about "infallibility" mentions the Pope - like this wasn't ever a sectarian conflict - as incompetent as it was insensitive.
Today Ursula fond-of-Lying, who really should steer clear of mentions of both broomsticks and ships, has claimed steering is not the EU's strong point as it is a "tanker" whereas the UK is a "speedboat" (seriously - go check for yourself). She said there was bound to be a delay as the 27 were given five full days to consider the Commission's vaccine proposal - great Ursula, that explains he first week of delay but how about the other nine because the Commission getting involved added two months compared with the UK's position.
A number of good and blameless Europeans may die because instead of helping straggling member states with provision the Commission had to impose itself upon them all. If VDL were a tanker she'd be a "wotal tanker", if she were a sailing boat she'd be gaff rigged.
Loved Subnautica! It was one of the early freebies on Epic store, I played it to death and immediately bought Below Zero.
On the subject of death, depending on settings you can go fetch what you dropped when you died - if you can locate where. As vehicles don't reset position when you die, at least expiring at the door leaves it as a handy marker of where to swim down.
Both games are more-ish with shopping lists of goals although on the first one I sometimes needed to look up what to do next which might feel like cheating if you're old school but is kind of expected by developers these days.
Awesome environments and some serious jump-scares.
That would be the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine developed and trialled by Oxford University with UK government support with AZ being brought in only later to produce it at scale - and not-for-profit at Oxford's insistence. UK vaccine funding per head is seven times higher than the EU's (and where do you think the EU gets its money from anyway, if not member states?).
The reality is AZ chose to produce with partners located in the territory the vaccine was intended for specifically to avoid territorial spats like this and that vaccines produced in a certain territory are exclusive to that territory until a certain production number has been reached and only beyond which they can be exported. The EU Commission have twisted that last part with their agreement with AZ that UK soil could be treated as EU for the purposes of new EU production (sensible: it was invented here) and conflated it into a claim on existing UK production which is simply not in the contract.
Vaccine production is a biochemical process whose yield takes time to establish. The embarrassing truth is that the UK were around one month ahead of some EU member states in establishing AZ vaccine production, perhaps because it was developed here, up until the Commission got involved and insisted it negotiate on behalf of all of the bloc which added an additional two months, hence the three months late accusation. This is an existential embarrassment to the Commission as it suggest that when they get involved it adds little except delay and that member states are often better off acting independently as the UK has done and could only do because of? Brexit…
The Commission's response is pure face-saving and we've all had enough of that after Wuhan, Hubei and the CCP and additionally it's a distraction for AZ's CEO who has a more important task of running a corporation producing an effective, not-for-profit vaccine suitable for both developed and developing countries.
Here's some quotes from him in a Repubblica interview:
"In the EU agreement it is mentioned that the manufacturing sites in the UK were an option for Europe, but only later"
"As soon as we have reached a sufficient number of vaccinations in the UK, we will be able to use that site to help Europe as well. But the contract with the UK was signed first and the UK, of course, said 'you supply us first'"
I shouldn't have to point this out on ElReg but semiconductors has been global industry for four or five decades - that the UK can make such a large contribution of both IP and people is something to be immensely proud of, the idea of shutting off the rest of the world and going it alone is wrong-headed and fanciful.
Yes and it gets better because Arm (as ARM) was started with foreign investment: the entirety of the start-up capital was from the US, it was spun out of a majority foreign-owned company (Acorn) and has remained majority foreign-owned throughout its history yet there it is, still based in Cambridge!
Arm took a bad gamble with IoT under Softbank, datacentre was a better bet and Nvidea has a lead there. Stopping this deal would hurt Arm's prospects.
"keep"? ARM's founding capital was 100% from overseas: Apple and VLSI (Acorn put IP and people in, not money) and even by share ownership it was largely a "foreign" company (I prefer "international") as Acorn were majority owned by Olivetti. Arm was still minority UK-owned (around 40%) when Softbank bought it.
Semiconductors had been a global industry for a couple of decades prior to ARM's inception and big money had been global for longer - any legislation back then requiring ARM to be British-owned would have smothered it at birth and any restrictions now could impact on the future success of British innovation.
Left & right button switches are Omron D2F-01 with a grey or white top and it should say "Japan" on the top moulding as the China produced ones are garbage. Under the scroll wheel is an Omron B3F for which B3F-1002 with the yellow top is common and B3F-1002-G is the same thing with gold contacts.
Nice but late: Apple were offered ARM silicon for the desktop in the Eighties according to Robin Saxby. Sir Robin, who was then fresh out of Motorola and the founding CEO of Arm, said he was pushing ARM beyond Newton with Apple. He and Larry Tesler were best buddies but Apple's desktop division wouldn't budge from PowerPC which was their choice to make but imagine what could have been if Apple had made this change decades earlier. DEC's StrongARM proved it could be done, ARM became a mobile architecture because Arm followed the Nokia money.
I realise I'm raining on a parade here but the truth is what it is and anyone who doesn't like it can always engage their Apple iRDF™ :)
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