Posts by hoola

That's how we roll: OWC savagely undercuts Apple's $699 Mac Pro wheels with bargain $199 alternative

Re: There's 360˚ of rotation

And all at slightly different offset of 1 degree. Then add in the special wheel wobble that shake the entire trolley, the oval wheel that occasionally sticks........

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data

Re: I must be missing something...

And not forgetting that the data is formatted on input so when it then turns something into a date or whatever, when you then go and put the correct formatting in the 10/07 that was turned into 10 July gets converted into complete irrelevance.

It is called progress and the usual developers knowing best without any concept that someone may not want it to do this. The fact that you do not appear to be able to turn it off is just as infuriating.

It is "usability" gone nuts.

What a good eye-dea: Battery-less, grain-of-sand-sized 2.4GHz transmitter to help save your eyesight

Re: People don't like batteries

The point that is being missed is that it the device & sensor is so small that it can be inserted into the eye giving real time pressure monitoring. The receiver is now external to the body and can have normal batteries in, just like any other device.

Hats of to the team that have come up with this. If this can be developed to be a routine tool in the treatment of Glaucoma then fantastic. Glaucoma is a horrible condition that destroys eyesight and needs constant monitoring. The problem is that if eye pressure rises quickly, by the time it is caught, then eyesight is already damaged beyond repair. Even if the receiver just alerts the wearer then it is progress but to provides a log that can be accessed by the GP, A & E or the Eye clinic alert to the healthcare professionals then even better.

Google to pull plug on Play Music, its streaming service that couldn't beat Spotify, in favour of YouTube Music

Re: Don't think any user will be surprised

Exactly, this should be of no surprise and will also not be the last. A subscription is just that, a payment for a service to a third party that can be stopped at any time. This is also the issue with all these services where you never actually own the material, you just rent it and have permission to play or read it.

The only plus in this case is that there is time to get stuff out.

At least with a CD or electronic download of a CD from the publisher you actually have a copy you can do what you like with. Storage is cheap enough now that 1000's of CDs or DVDs can fit on a USB portable disk as a backup and be kept in a safe place. Hell, have two copies, it is still cheaper than a subscription or a simple NAS lurking in a garage or something.

Rackspace IPO bags $704m, proceeds used to pay down debts to private equity backer

Private Equity Backer

" Private Equity Backer" three words that should install terror into anyone. Just like "Venture Capitalist".

There is only ever one winner in these situations and that is the people putting the money in, the broken husk of a company that comes out the other end is just a vehicle for turning assets into cash to be extracted as quickly as possible.

So many of the current problems we have with technically viable companies failing is because it is now routine for them to be totally screwed over, stripped of any assets and cash then laden with debt.

What is strange is why the cycle continues? Exactly what hold do these leaches have that allows then to get into them in the first place.

Aviation regulator outlines fixes that will get the 737 MAX flying again

Re: Hmm.

Haven't Ryanair got some on order that can wedge even more people in so does that score as a double?

You think the UK coronavirus outbreak was bad? Just wait till winter: Study shows test-and-trace system is failing

Re: With schools set to reopen in four weeks, the UK is about to find out

The way I see it any App is not a substitute for test and trace. What appears to be much of the issue is that test and trace is failing, not because of the system but because far too many people are giving false details or ignoring the calls. An App is still not going to help as the very people that are causing test & trace to fail will also do the same with an App.

We then have the issue of people getting a test if they have symptoms, again the responsible will get the test and then isolate if required. Those that are in denial will again cause the system to fail.

Add to that the issue with quarantine and it gets worse. Just like self isolation quarantine is based on trust and once again, with no form of checking just how do you know that it is being adhered to. We have already see just how stupid and selfish large groups of the population are and I strongly suspect that the UK is going to be in for a very rough ride, mostly self-inflicted.

I would not be surprised to see the out come being some form of national ID card if the general population continues to behave the way they do.

The final issue, and this is the cause of huge concern, is the belief that being infected somehow give people immunity and that if enough are infected, we will reach herd immunity. At the moment the is no strong evidence that there is any long lasting immunity after contracting Covid19. There is an immune response and it appears to very depending on how sever the infection was. The real whammy is there is no evidence that the natural immune response is sustained enough to prevent reinfection.

Coronaviruses are the human species weakness as we have not evolved a natural, long lasting response to the. A vaccine is likely to be the only long term solution and even then, it will be an ongoing process. I foresee something that works in the short term that needs re-vaccination in under a year then in the longer term, a more persistent vaccine will be produced.

This then brings us full circle, you have ot have enough people vaccinated for it to work. The only hope is that the impact has been so great on life that it happens. If not then I think we will start seeing mandatory vaccination. I also can see that ID cards will be back on the agenda as at the moment so many are irresponsible that is going to be no option.

A long-winded post but that is my view.......

Alarming news: ADT to flog Nest smart home kit after Google ploughs $450m into corporate security dinosaur

Re: Natural progression...

Just think of the possibilities for data harvesting.

Apple's big trouble in not-so-little China – culls 30,000 apps from its Middle Kingdom App Store in legal crackdown

Regulations

If, as the article eludes to, these were mostly games that the developers where failing to comply with a Chinese regulation and have had since 2016 to sort it out, then I am not sure what the issue is.

Have Apple offended developers by removing Apps that were non-compliant with local law?

Have Apple offended the Chinese regulators because it took them so long to remove the non-compliant Apps?

I would have thought that the point of the Chinese App Store was for just this reason so is the Chinese censorship (or in there work, complying with local regulation) or Apple censorship?

That Apple can remove or block any Apps or developer in any App Store as they see fit is a different issue.

If you're on invite-only tech-testing scheme, take care with Amazon's Alexa-powered answer to Google's Glass

More IOT Tat

Just like Google Glass there are a solution looking for a problem.

Here is a thought, what about a pair of glasses that consist of a lightweight frame with a pair of lenses and some sort of independent hearing device that sits on, over or in the ears?

Or am I just over-thinking this.

I just fail to understand why people buy this sort of stuff and wonder if it gets used a couple of times and them plonked in a box before being binned.

Virgin Galactic pals up with Rolls-Royce to work on Mach 3 Concorde-style private jet that can carry up to 19 people

Re: Afterburners

Like the supercars that inject petrol into the exhaust when you lift off to make it bang and flame.

If some new technology comes out of this then it may have some purpose. The only upside is that in the current environment small aircraft with more space (fewer self load freight per cubic m) are likely to be more viable. Something this small is just for the mega-rich and is of no use to the normal person. You cannot really see it popping up like a Cessna 172 on your local airfield.

Struggling company pleads with landlords to slash rents as COVID-19 batters UK high street. The firm's name? Apple

Re: My heart bleeds

I have no sympathy for Apple here, they have the money, they, like the other Internet giant mitigate their tax to the point that they are bluntly not contributing enough to society so should pay. There are plenty of other companies that are going but but because there revenue stream has stopped dead in its tracks, particularly in the travel, leisure and entertainment sectors.

One of the big issues that keeps being brought up are the high rents and business rates for central locations. If you are online only then you have a huge distribution centre that costs you peanuts in rent & rates. There are also far too many ways to weasel out of paying business rates on distribution centres because of the way it is calculated.

What needs to happen is a complete revamp of business rates so that the distribution centres contribute more than they do. It is no use basing it on potential amenities and such like because the system is broken. A warehouse needs to have business rates based on volume and set at a realistic amount. Rents on these developments also need to go up but the problem is they are cheap to build, the land costs little and for the person selling, the amount is enough for them to up sticks and sit on an island in the sun so returns are easy.

For traditional retailers, they also have distribution centre but by re-balancing business rate they can offset the costs of the physical shops. Rents are more problematic unless the same landlord owns the distributions parks as the investment in the shopping centre has already been made and they clearly cost more than a tin shed.

Voyager 1 cracks yet another barrier: Now 150 Astronomical Units from Sol

Re: Oh, the days when things lasted more than a year...

Jack plane; what is one of those?

They all use those power planers that don't actually work properly but do spray an impressive amount of shavings out for minimal input effort. They days of real hand tools that do a first class job appear to be long-gone with speed and power being paramount.

Microsoft confirms pursuit of TikTok after Satya Nadella chats to Donald Trump

Re: Completing these discussions no later than September 15, 2020

I would expect them to use TikTok to continue to keep adding more useless features to the already next to useless Teams.

Microsoft are simply incapable of doing almost anything properly now and this obsession with trying to push Social Media into the work environment is horrible.

Maybe it is because I am an old fart but we have so many different ways of "collaborating" it is almost impossible to have any consistency. Teams, is full of "Teams" that you have been added to (whether you are interested or not" and then you have an endless stream of crap constantly spewing forth.

And maybe they could do some do something useful like detect you have Teams installed before opening the fucking web page when you click on a link in an outlook email or not have the "call quality" message.

Dutch Gateway store was kept udder wraps for centuries until refit dug up computing history

Re: Cow boxes

Years ago (early 1990s) I had a system that had 16MB of memory, an insane size at the time.

The memory was on one or two DIMMs and cost £399.

I cannot remember what the hard disk was, probably will under 1GB.

My current laptop has 16GB and 1TB of NVMe.

Ah those were the days.......

Australia to force Google and Facebook to pay for news and reveal algorithm changes before they whack web traffic

Re: Useless search engines from Google and the like.

This is partly the fault of Google and a lot to do with all the bots that make money as click bait to fill the top half of any results that are not adverts.

I find it totally infuriating that you do a search and as you say, it is filled with adverts that are of no interest or relevance to the search.

That Amazon also appears to fill all the adverts or top results also goes to show how broken the system is.

Boeing confirms it will finish building 747s in 2022, when last freighter flies off the production line

Re: Flying wings/bodies

I thought that there was already a proposal to replace the windows with a screen internally as a concept as there were advantages (cannot remember what but I bet cheaper was one).

Re: I’ll miss her but...

Exactly, I do not fly much but I was surprised when I did my first long haul that also happened to be a 747 as to how noisy it was. Then a year later a similar trip on a 787 and it was significantly quieter. What really brought it how was my most recent trip that was 747 outbound then A380 back. As you say, the overall experience in terms of the state you arrive in the destination was huge.

The 747 was a game changer but the overall market needs to evolve quickly due to Covid19. Older platforms that rely on high passenger numbers to be economic are going to be at risk. Overall flying costs are probably going to have to increase as the passenger density is reduced. Quite how that is going to impact the budget sector will be interesting as there still appears to be a view from many that cheap flights and holidays, particularly to Europe are a right and necessity, not a luxury. Cheap air travel has done a lot for accessibility & mobility but many of the negatives have been quietly buried.

Covid19 is here for many years and I don't think enough people have yet understood that the freedom we had in 2019 is gone for the foreseeable future.

Firefighters to UK Home Office: Yeah, maybe don't turn off emergency comms network before replacement is ready

Re: Why use 2/3/4/5/6/x G at all?

Correct, there is a reason why radio works as well as it does. It is this endless obsession with data and information that has to be provided. So they can have building plans and all that at the touch of a button. These really are only relevant at very large incidents where there will be other organisations involved that already have the information.

In an emergency situation PTT radio is invariably better than some funky phone based device, even if that is trying to emulate PTT.

I have always suspected, that just like FM this is more about selling spectrum to make money than any actual improvements to service on the ground.

Take, DAB, as a package what are the benefits?

Poor streamed quality.

Much is streamed in mono because there is insufficient bandwidth due to cost

Poor reception.

Very bad battery life.

Cost.

Yup, that is a worthwhile upgrade.

Community Fibre to splash £400m on FTTP connections as it races to cover a million London properties by 2023

Is it really worth it?

Maybe I am missing something but it really does not matter how fast the connection is at the point of entry into the property, at some point in the connection path there is going to be contention as there is simply not the capacity to give GB speed to everyone. As previous posts elude to, once there is a single connection to a property then there is not any incentive for competing companies to do anything as the investment is just too great. You don't have competing gas, water or electricity all installing their own infrastructure because it is just too expensive (and wasteful). Why should communications be the same? The reality it that once fibre is in an area there is unlikely to be any competition.

I am also puzzled as to what people do with all the theoretical speed or bandwidth. There is only so much that streaming will use and even with increasing resolutions, there are equally issues in both storing and serving that at the source. To a certain extent at the higher rates, Internet speed appears to be a bit of a willy-waving exercise in mine is better than yours. I am on FTTC with the router connecting at 70Mb and even with 3 other people constantly stream, gaming or whatever I never have any issues with my work connection.

Just what do you do with 10Gb and what exactly is the point?

Arm China brands itself a 'strategic asset', calls for Beijing's help in boardroom dispute with Brit HQ

Re: A failing experiment

The trouble is that short term capitalism has meant that we have sold our souls to China. Much of Western society is built on goods manufactured in places like China because it is cheaper. The fact it is cheaper is largely due to cheap labour, poor working conditions & vastly inferior environmental legislation but it is convenient to ignore that as they are not immediately obvious.

It is a classic case of NIMBYism, just on a global scale.

Re: Well, that does it for Western companies investing in China

Why is it stealing if the subsidiary owns the IP, assuming that must be the case otherwise the what subsidiary doing?

This is what happens when an innovative company follows the big money regardless of source. Arm wanted to compete as a major designer of compute and the only way to get the money was to borrow or sell. They went down the sell route and as is typical with any sort of innovation in the UK, we let it be sold to foreign "investors".

It's been five years since Windows 10 hit: So... how's that working out for you all?

Re: So here is a question for the group.

What drives me nuts are all the stupid scroll bars that are invisible until you hover over them. This obsession with varying shades of grey on menus with incomprehensible symbols and then no boundaries on things like Explorer windows.

Just who the hell designs this sort of stuff and believes that it is usable?

BT: 'Because of the existing underlying supply of the 4G equipment, most of our 5G (NSA) so far is with Huawei'

Re: BR

No, not the Pacer that was crap as it was (is?) a total short-term bodge because there was no money.

He will be taking about the HST, APT and then going back locos like the Deltic.

The HST was a stop-gap until the APT entered service. The latter failed, mainly because it was ahead of its time and drunken reporters were sick. Yes, it had failure and issues, but that was more because of the pressure to put it into service too early. It was then scrapped and the technology sold for bugger all, only to resurface in the Pendalino.

The HST is only now starting to be retired and there is no way the modern stock with a bus engine buzzing away under every carriage will ever do the some miles. I remember being taken as a kid when the HST first entered service on a trip from Paddington (Dad was a train nut) and the acceleration, comfort and speed was amazing/

Standing on the platform when the rear powercar went out at full wack was just awe inspiring.

Amazon and Google: Trust us, our smart-speaker apps are carefully policed. Boffins: Yes, well, about that...

The majority do not care.....

What is troubling about this is that the people who use these devices simply don't give a stuff about privacy. They have not idea how the things work and have no concerns about what is being collected. Those of us that do care are in such a small minority that it is an irrelevance . Companies will continue to spew out ever more Internet connected tat that a gullible public will buy, install and use, further increasing the data collected by these parasites.

Even if they do get caught out the standard procedure is to say "Sorry, we made a mistake" and pay a derisory fine that is the equivalent of losing 1p.

The only thing that may be a game changer is if the fines are linked to revenues and are of sufficient magnitude that it actually hurts.

Once considered lost, ESA and NASA's SOHO came back from the brink of death to work even better than it did before

Re: A fitting tribute to intelligence and sheer dogged determination

One has to wonder if they outcome would have been the some if it occurred now. There appears to be so much general incompetence in the management chains that the people who really understand what can be done find their voice is lost.

Some really amazing work to recover the mission using good old fashioned thinking and problem solving.

This investor blew nearly $300,000 on Intel shares the day before 7nm disaster reveal. Yup, she's suing

Re: Hang on a sec

This is just yet more of the culture we are in where far too many people have no concept of taking responsibility for their actions. I always thought that the risk of shares is "the value of your investment may go up or down and you may not get back what you invested".

If, as she claims, that Intel were not being open about the 7nm production issues then she may have a tenuous case but I would have thought the risks of being landed with a large legal bill far outweigh any compensation.

We're suing Google for harvesting our personal info even though we opted out of Chrome sync – netizens

Uncontrolled Data Harvesting

Courts all over can try as much as they want to try and sort these privacy issues out but they will ultimately fail. There is so much money at stake and these tech giants are essentially unregulated that sadly, it is just pissing into the wind. Whatever regulation comes into play they will simply find a way round it and continue to gather ever more data. Splitting them up does little to solve the problem because the constituent parts are also so big.

What do you split Google into that prevents data harvesting & matching?

Does splitting Instagram and WhatsApp out of Facebook really change that much? They would potentially become competitors but much of the damage has already been done. Any split of a company needs to be combined with draconian data-sharing limitations. This then gives you the next problem, how exactly do you split up what they already have. Just giving the same data set to each split does not help. The trouble with data is that it is very difficult to then untangle the mess when the likes of Facebook have done everything possible to integrate it to maximise their potential earnings. The amount of cookies and scripts that are set on even the most innocuous web pages is just frightening. Yes, you can argue about NoScript and so on, but that does not address the underlying problem as most people don't care.

The other real issue is that most people simply don't care and it is only going to get worse. The younger generations that have grown up using Social Media simply have no clue as to the implications and do not have the slightest worry about giving ever more information to these giants. Anything that is said to raise awareness of implications is dismissed as old farts just trying to interfere.

Everything about this is a huge cultural problem that is never going to go away. The only way to fix it is to destroy all the companies, their data, algorithms and working practices. Then have a robust, legally enforceable (internationally) data handling framework and start again.

Microsoft runs a data centre on hydrogen for 48 whole hours, reckons it could kick hydrocarbon habit by 2030

Re: Hydrogen is a solution and its own worst enemy

If this puts more effort in developing fuel cells and hydrogen production so that they become usable as a mobile fuel source then it is commendable. Using fuel cells in place of batteries & generators as a UPS/backup power supply is also worthwhile. Using fuel cells to power fixed infrastructure as a permanent solution is stupid. You have to use more energy in the source to destination chain due to the conversion losses at the different stages.

I suppose if we can extract hydrogen more efficiently then fuel cell do become an interesting solution when combined with solar or wind. It would be interesting to see the overall efficiency of producing 1KW of power at output for:

lead acid

lithium

fuel cell

Assuming an intermittent renewable source such as solar or wind.

Intel couldn't shrink to 7nm on time – but it was able to reduce one thing: Its chief engineer's employment

Eye off the ball

Intel have been slipping for some time now and this is becoming a bit or a downward spiral. For the last few refreshes we have been using Intel on our HPC clusters. This is now looking highly unlikely for the next as AMD is now a real contender again. Lower cost and power equates to more cores/threads/cycles and capacity for the same budget. Arm is also starting to look interesting for some workflows as well.

WTF is cloud-tethered compute? We're not sure either, but it just made a hype cycle for the first time

It is all about revenue

This will simply evolve into a PC as a service that will not work without an Internet connection.

We are not far off that already, this is simply adding a bit of funky marketing and the word "Cloud" so that all the graduate management idiots can spout something that sounds cool.

My son was trying to fix something in Windows on his laptop and misguidedly ran the "Microsoft Troubleshooter". The sodding thing kept failing and coming up with a warning because he did not have a Microsoft Account. The problem was nothing to do with accounts or anything yet it still persisted in trying to force a Microsoft Login to be created as if this would solve a VSS issue.

It is only a matter of time before Windows simply will not function without an MS login. I suppose you can say the same for iOS and Android as they have always needed it to work.

Heir-to-Concorde demo model to debut in October

Concorde

When it was conceived and did fly Concorde was an absolute marvel of the technology and engineering skill of the time. One of the things that stands out and as far as I know has not yet been equalled was its ability to fly at Mach2, with no reheat for the the hop over the Atlantic. There was nothing that could touch it. Sure, some military jets could go faster, climb faster blah blah, but they could only do it for a few minutes before they became, at best a very expensive glider or at worst an aluminium brick.

I cannot really see where Branson is going with this. I suppose there is the possibility that general cheap air travel reduces and the game moves into luxury, either as mid-sized planes with not many people or small and fast.

Keep it Together, Microsoft: New mode for vid-chat app Teams reminds everyone why Zoom rules the roost

Re: Annoys me

And why the hell this obsession with backgrounds? You get bits of heads floating round, fuzzy bits when someone moves and then a screen with a rainstorm or jelly running down it.

And my personal annoyance with Teams: why, when you receive a call is the most obvious button the "End" call? At least make one read & one green, but no, you have to peer are the screen amongst all the blue shite with grey lines to find the correct bit to click on.

Never mind rail and ports, let's help DPD... and, er, Amazon: UK gov and ESA call for ways to slap logistics with 5G stick

Re: For those of us on the wrong side of the pond...

In my experience they also do appear to be able to deliver a package that arrives at the correct destination, intact and usually within the delivery schedule.

The good news: Vodafone switches on first full-fat, real-life 5G network in the UK. The bad news: it only got sent to Coventry

It is possible that the telecoms companies are aiming for a future where everything has a SIM and you no longer have a WiFi router at home. Whilst you can still do a 5G wireless router, this always on and no interaction with anything mantra rather favours mobile data.

Whether anyone can afford it will be another thing plus the issues of building penetration.

The Future

Maybe this is linked to the announcement that Coventry is the next City of Culture. Perhaps all the 5G goodness will enable the cultured residents of Coventry to download more cultured stuff.

Coventry -> culture, is that an association that only I am struggling with?

In the current situation there is bugger all live culture happening with no realistic timeline as to when anything will start. I supposed the only thing that will have benefited at the moment is the porn industry. I would hazard a guess that quite a lot of the seedier end will not have been to worried about the long-term health of their "performers" as long as the money kept rolling in.

Analogue radio given 10-year stay of execution as the UK U-turns on DAB digital future

And not forgetting the absolutely shite battery life of any DAB radio that is portable. A basic FM radio will last for weeks whilst some piece of fancy crap costing 10 x the price will barely last a day. And the solution is to make then rechargeable. That is not a solution that is using sellotape to repair the Titanic.

It done not matter how you try and justify DAB, it is shite whatever you do, always has been and always will.

The only DAB we have is in the car and it is never used because the reception is so rubbish,

Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users. It's meant to work like that, right?

Re: 'Relevant' ads

Or you search for something you want to buy and the top 20 entries are all a mix of adverts, bots and Amazon. You see one that looks cheaper only to find that it is somebodies archive page and the product is discontinued. Amazon in particular are bad at this with links to long dead shops and items but once in their website you get a tempting array of "suggestions" to ensure that you buy from them.

The wretched bot engines that just create a web page based on your search should be banned. As far as I can see they only exist to generate clicks, page views and advertising revenue.

Apple said to be removing charger, headphones from upcoming iPhone 12 series

Re: spare tire from your trunk/boot

VW UP!, we bought it to replace a much older one that had a real (full size) spare wheel & jack. Previous runabouts had all had one as well, It never occurred to me that the place for the spare wheel would be filled with a sodding speaker! WTF.

Son is learning to drive and he managed to clip a curb and with some real bad luck, the tyre had a cut that failed spectacularly the following morning a mile from home. Pissing with rain, I go to take the other car to rescue my wife can get to work and then am left to sort this out. If it had a spare then it could have been fixed in minutes. No amount of tyre sealant was going to make it usable.

Capita Consulting ditching more than a quarter of its workforce 45 days after consultations with consultants

Revenue Below Expectations

So things go into meltdown because revenue is below expectations. Surely profit (or loss) is the more important figure?

It is no use having stonking revenues a 1Bn if you are losing 20p on every pound.

Microsoft takes tweaking tongs to Windows 10's Start Menu once again

Re: CLASSIC/OPEN SHELL !!

All well and good but in the corporate world you get what you are given and very rarely have the luxury of installing such things. Even back-room IT professionals get lumbered with the same restrictions that standard users get at our organisation.

UK space firms forced to adjust their models of how the universe works as they lose out on Copernicus contracts

And I think one of the key points is the continuing uncertainty. This has been the case since this fiasco started with all the endless internal bickering in parliament and the courts. Uncertainty has probably caused (and still is causing) more damage than anything else has and nobody has the foggiest what sort of clusterfuck we are going to be saddled with at the end of it.

Boffins baffled as supergiant star just vanishes – either it partially blew itself apart or quietly turned into a black hole

Maybe I am wrong but if it collapsed, does that not spew out gravitational waves or a huge pulse of X-Ray?

If it has collapsed into a black hole then one would assume that light from more distant stars will now be bent. If it just disappeared then theoretically there should now be new things visible behind it. This of course is possibly beyond the observing power and instrument resolution we have.

Never knowingly under-digitally transformed: Retailer John Lewis outsources tech function to Wipro

Partially correct, the other huge problems are the tax arrangements that Amazon have and the fact that they appear to be untouchable by the relevant authorities to be accountable for a realistic tax settlement.

One of the ways the likes of Amazon can be sorted out is a complete overhaul of the business rent/rates system. It has been abundantly clear for some years that warehouse and distribution centres are pay far too little in rent and rates. These sheds are put up on greenfield sites for peanuts, leased from some holding company and then have in real terms, bugger business rates. All retailers needs these facilities but the big background costs are in shops. Rent and rates for these facilities need to be dramatically increased and then traditional retail premises reduced. You could also do some sort of offset to try and level things a bit more so that if you have retail shop space, its rates are reduced to counter the increase in the warehouse. Warehouse and distribution facilities should also be rated based on volume, not anything that can be massaged like floor area, etc.

I worked for JL in the late 80's and 90's and then they were innovative. The problem is not just limited to JL but throughout much of the UK where there is this obsession with "Graduate Trainees". These are usually totally clueless individuals that are fast-tracked into management positions. This becomes a self perpetuating cycle as more and more of the pillocks occupy more senior positions in the management change. Very occasionally you will get a good one but for the most part my experience has been that they are a liability but because of the way the system works, it is self-fulfilling. You reap what you sow and that lack of real business skills, common sense and long-term planning has been lost.

You've accused Apple of patent infringement. You want to probe the iOS source in a closed-room environment. What to do in a pandemic?

Re: I've often wondered...

I would have thought that the risks of tampering with the material and being caught far outweigh the implications of any court outcome.

If this tampering of evidence or material were to be uncovered the penalties are probably greater as well as the impact on any future cases that the company may bring. This being Apple, the likelihood is that then need to protect their reputation as being squeaky clean because this will not be the only litigation they they are involved in.

The internet becomes trademarkable, sort of, with near-unanimous Supreme Court ruling on Booking.com

Re: Once again

And that is the fundamental problem with .com, as things have evolved is has become a status symbol and a country-specific organisation uses it when in reality it should not.

Whatever this is going to turn into a wet dream for lawyers.

Brit police's use of facial-recognition tech is lawful, no need to question us, cops' lawyer tells Court of Appeal

Big Brother is watching

It is always far more difficult to undo something than put a sensible framework in place first. The fact it facial recognition does not work now is a complete red herring. There has to be a robust set of regulations and rules around this because it is open to so much abuse.

We are very rapidly approaching the point where technology is become cheap enough and sufficiently powerful that these sorts or systems become viable. All the big-brother scenario films are close to becoming reality and whilst I believe that generally UK police are reasonably trustworthy it is something that can change. They are increasingly becoming a political tool with elected commissioners (or whatever they are called). The fact that the the politicians are becoming lest trustworthy, more likely to lie and the increased status of the special advisers leads me to believe that we should be very worried about this.

After 84 years, Japan's Olympus shutters its camera biz, flogs it to private equity – smartphones are just too good

Re: Sadness...

That is the crux of it, for 95% of people they could not care less about the physics.

The phone camera is used to take snaps and videos that are consumed on a small screen where the actual quality is pretty much irrelevant now. Being able to upload compressed images quickly is of greater importance than the last smidgen of colour gamut or focus.

Software (lovingly labelled as "AI") can so all sorts of things to make these images more appealing to the eye and the devices they are being viewed on.

I do some astro-photography and for that I need the RAW images. I happen to have a Canon 1100D that has had the IR cut filter removed as these were easier to convert. Generally Canon and some Nikon are used in this field, I don't think Olympus comes up that much but it is very niche anyway.

Fintech biz Wirecard folds into insolvency like two pair against a flush. Good luck accessing your chip stack

This is brewing up into the Iceland banking fiasco where the Internet, Google and perceived better returns meant people put their money in with no understanding that it was not protected.

Also, given that this appears to have then been used as a rebranded service for other cash cards further increases the complexities of ownership, liability and compensation.