Get a grip, it was experiments using bacteriophage which proved DNA was genetic material (Google "Hershey-Chase") and every molecular biology lab class has used lambda-phage in experiments. A whole group of genetic libraries are based on phage and it is one of the standard workhorses in research.
Sorry guys, you've got your scare story wrong. This isn't an CAGW scare story, but a "salt is evil" scare story and this is the anti-salt people putting their master plan into effect to get us all to reduce our salt intake.
SSDs only lasting 14-18 months? What are you doing with them? I maintain a (small) fleet of notebooks which have all had SSDs for the past three years. All used as primary machines with no performance problems to date.
And as for size, 320 G on a notebook? If you are storing that much, you either are not portable (and why bother with a notebook or SSD) or you are not using half of it. SSD gives great storage/weight and particularly storage/power so it is ideal in a portable medium. On anything else, yeah, disks are much cheaper.
- following the Air France crash story where at least one of the contributing factors seems to have been the pilots not realizing that the computer had switched off etc.
Not sure what the best options are; I certainly don't take kindly to cars doing things without me telling them (I drive a manual, which is getting harder and harder to find in North America), but I accept that ABS brakes are good when you need to steer as well as brake. Risk/benefit issues are all about likelihood and severity of hazard so if the automation reduces the likelihood by a very big amount, on balance we can accept a higher severity of hazard.
The whole issue of driver.pilot training seems to be the crux of the matter - learning in a fully computerized automatic vehicle (car or 'plane) can leave a lot out that hardly anyone is ever going to need, but will bite you on the ass big time if you suddenly do. For drivers, I doubt we will ever get everyone up to a high level, but for airline pilots - I think they really should know what to do when the autopilot switches itself off. And this comes back to the severity issue - a car getting out of control because the driver can't handle it in "manual" mode is an accident - a 'plane in this situation is a "tragedy". Non-quantitative terms, but I am sure you get my drift.
Posted Thursday 15th December 2011 15:16 GMT
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Without wishing to get into conspracy theories...
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To me, this is the biggest issue of the whole thing. Journo's listening to people's voicemails is hardly hacking and - while certainly an invasion of privacy - little more than going through your rubbish. Similarly, singling out the NoTW was fun for a while, but hardly relevant because it is on record that other newspapers were doing the same.
No, the way too close - and now shown to be corrupt - relationship between the police and journo's is where this investigation should really be focussed. If they are arresting people for paying for information, then the people who were paid have committed a far more serious crime and should also be arrested.
regardless of the desirability of the technology, the results should not have been leaked!
I am not surprised that LightSquared's CEO is hopping mad - this has just killed his company. No other investor will now come on board even if they bullet-proof the system and show no interference.
This is serious stuff from a government lab - I work with a lot of clients submitting data to governments and I know my clients are not going to like the thought that preliminary results can get leaked to the press.
No-one seems to be mourning the NoTW, but pretty much all of the papers were doing the same thing and it looks like it was someone else who accessed these particular messages, causing them to be deleted. If it turns out to have been the Guardian (who's reporters have been making hay with NI's troubles), will that be closed down by it owners?
- at least that is the title in Norwegian. Direct translation is "The Trollhunters", but that's not necessarily a good bet as titles seem to interpreted rather than translated by film people.
I don't have experience with Palm phones, but the PDA's were (and still are) pretty solid. New (in box) Tungstens still sell at a premium on E-Bay and used ones rarely go for less than 50-60 $, which means that people are expecting them to keep on working.
I wanted WebOS to work because I have such a long history of using Palm Desktop and I wanted to continue. However, before it was cancelled I asked on an HP forum about synchronizing to Palm Desktop and was told I didn't want to do that, that cloud services were better anyway and, no, there were no plans to provide this! I was more than a bit dis-chuffed to be so patronisingly fobbed off and - the next week - the TouchPad was dumped so it became a moot point (still pissed off I didn't manage to get a cheap one!).
I am now stuck with third party software to sync with my Andoid 'phone which is painfully slow (and a bit flaky, but it gets there in the end).
I am still not convinced by an 'all-in-one' smartphone and may go back to my Tungsten E because it is way better as a PDA. I can take the strange looks I get when I have two (OK, three, no four - separate GPS and camera!) separate devices bulging in my pockets. The big problem is that they all sue different chargers.....
Used Compuserve for many years as it was - originally - way more useful to actually get stuff (I was very popular in getting WordPerfect printer drivers for people). But as the web developed, CServe lost the customer base to free competitors, was Borg'ed by AOL and is now only remembered (fondly) in my username.
Posted Thursday 13th October 2011 15:34 GMT
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Spot on - why is RIM being bagged at the moment?
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This is the whole point - business is still using RIM and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. iPhone and Android are sharing the consumer market, but so what? All the stories are about RIM losing "market share", but that is because the market is growing like topsy and I've yet to see any data on actual number of handsets sold.
The coverage given to this (and every glitch from RIM) makes me wonder who is putting the boot in? There were stories all over our (local) news shows yesterday and today about this, despite the fact that hardly any people were affected in Canada. If i were a conspiracy-type i would be wondering who is manipulating the stock price....
Sorry, Serendipity, you obviously know nothing of India, or its history of IP protection. Patents are not international and nothing in the WTO makes them so. All you have to do (to join the WTO) is have an IP protection system such that foreign companies are treated the same as local ones (i.e, you can't selectively discriminate), but other than that, you can write your own patent laws.
India did just this with pharma-patents (making them effectively impossible to obtain while its generic industry got going) and the only reason they have changed this now is to protect the new drugs which Indian firms now invent (and wish to protect within India). There was no quibble at the WTO because non-one was treated differently - foreign companies couldn't patent and neither could Indian countries.
Furthermore, for patents to be valid, they have to be filed in a country before they are public knowledge - effectively meaning that if you haven't filed in India within a couple or three years after filing in the US (or wherever) you cannot gain patent protection retrospectively in India. Exactly what patents cover Android etc. in the rest of the world seems to be pretty ropey just now, but if they weren't filed in India, then they don't have any jurisdiction in India.
Take your $35 fondle-slab and try to sell it in the US and you may arouse Google's ire, but chances are in India, they haven't got a leg to stand on.
But with the market increasing, what does this mean in terms of actual numbers of handsets purchased?
I am no fan of any smartphone (I want my PDA back!), but it seems to me that RIM are being hammered in the press for a reducing share, when they are still selling lots and are the 'phone of choice for businessmen. All that has happened is that the market has increased with lots of non-business users who want browsing and entertainment devices.
RIM may have tried (unsuccessfully) to compete in that market, but the issue is still about how many handsets are being made and sold and how much people are paying for access to their network.
I don't have shares (in any of the companies involved), buy I sort of feel sorry for the shareholders who see wild swings based on numbers which have very little to do with the bottom-line profitability of a company.
Tanking your share price prior to things like share buy-backs (or screwing someone's option pay-out as suggested above) is illegal and a very good way to get shareholders to sue, but would have been hard to prove were it not for the monumentally inept way they have behaved recently.
If they tried a buy-back now, they would be screwed so hard by pissed off shareholders that I guess they will just have to suck it up and keep on going.
It gives a new CEO a great chance to earn his bonus by getting the share price to increase - even if it is still less than it was a few months ago.
I still say they should have kept Carly..
(ducks quickly)
Posted Wednesday 14th September 2011 20:38 GMT
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Absolutely - coffee-table browsing is major use!
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Have an el-cheapo e-book reader (Kobo, I think) that we use for the same stuff - IMDB is probably the home page! Why spend $4-500 when you can get most of the same functionality for $100.
Still wish I'd been able to snaffle a TouchPad for that price - I was hoping to use my old Palm applications on WebOS, but $500 was way too much. I can still get a (boxed) Tungsten E2 on EBay for about $250.
Finally something that makes sense - instead of merely aping Apple, Samsung have gone back to what works.
Palm might have lost out when it came to smart phones (although I think that was when they started trying to copy Blackberry with the tiny keyboard), but their PDAs (and HP's) were very popular. You can do a heck of a lot on a small screen if you use a stylus and thank goodness now that one of the big guys have remembered this, I might be able to get a cheap Chinese copy which has a stylus again!
[Getting really frustrated with my HTC-copy 'cos I am constantly selecting when I want to scroll and vice-versa - my wife's real HTC has a stylus and I am jealous.]
Actually, back in the 80's NASA funded actual work on this which showed a 25 sqm plot of potatoes could supply an astronaut's energy needs indefinitely. This was experimental work not modelling. Published in the American Journal of Potato Research Volume 64, Number 6, 311-320.
I can see why they might want a few other veggies though as you might get a bit bored just eating spuds, but they would only be for flavour.
More solar activity actually leads to reduced cosmic rays reaching the earth - cosmic rays don't come from the sun (the 'cosmic' part of it).
The way it is explained in Svensmark's theory is that the cosmic rays are pretty much constant, but high solar activity includes a high magnetic flux which prevents cosmic rays reaching the earth. This is the theory to explain the correlation between how historic activity (as measured by sunspots) and cold spells going back about 400 years.
As a theory, it needed to be tested - the data on low magnetic flux from the sun during this (quiet) solar cycle and higher cosmic rays has certainly doesn't refute it, but the question was how this could affect climate. The impact of cosmic rays on cloud formation seemed like a good mechanism and experiments started as early as the mid 90's supported this, but the CERN experiment, which was regarded as being the critical test, only got going about three years ago (maybe four).
The potential political impact has had even the DG of CERN worried - hence his warning to the scientists to not go into the broader implications in their paper.
Marginal rates of income tax mean nothing to the really rich since they are able to declare very low "income" on which to be taxed. They are quite happy with a symbolic gesture of saying "raise our tax rate' because they won't actually pay very much more anyway.
And yes, they employ lots of laywers and accountants who have a legal and moral duty to get the best deal for their client - unless that client tells them to do otherwise. In other words, you tell your tax accountant that I do not want you to minimize my tax liability and, hey presto, you pay more tax. Easy-peazy, lemon squeazy - but don't go blaming the lawyers for this one (they deserve enough blame for the other crap that goes on!).
I had hoped that with HP WebOS would mature into something useful. Surely someone could have harnessed the legacy of Palm software (of which there is both a great deal and real utility).
I was waiting for something to replace my Tungsten with (I have an Android 'phone, but it simply doesn't do what my PDA does - and is horribly slow at that).
What about when I am only in the UK for a hour between flights? And then in Paris for another hour? What about Tokyo?
It might not make sense for you, but it sure as **** makes sense for me and I have been using it for a couple of years now. Massively cheaper than mobile roaming rates (dollars per MB) and I can use the PC directly instead of having to read emails on my 'phone.
Since I never travel without my PC not sure how much I will need it on an i-Anything, but once again, that's just me - I'm sure people who have dumped their PC for an iPad while travelling will love it.
Thanks Andrew for a very insightful piece. I live in Canada and get BBC world news which I hardly ever watch if something is breaking because of their ridiculous addiction to a continuous loop - sometimes with as little as 30 seconds (the Oslo bombing for example). Not that anything else I can get here in North America is much better - I have pretty much given up on broadcast news and only watch TV for entertainment - news is better online.
I remember a long long time ago when TVAM lost all of its engineers during/after a strike - the managers and admin staff who took over to run the show would try anything (broadcasting live over satellite phones of dubious quality, for example - remember this was pre-smartphones) which they would never try with "real" engineers.
In addition to the 'Elfin Safety' issues, I wonder if there is still too much of a perfectionist culture to allow a journo to use in iPhone.....
Paul, his beliefs are irrelevant, but his record and affiliations are unquestioned. Roy Spencer has headed the UAH satellite program for many years and has published widely on remote sensing and atmospheric energy transfers. The paper provides the data and methodology behind the analysis and doesn't make any claims or hyperbole (sadly, the same can't be said the press release or other press reports). He has pointed out a serious discrepancy between the actual measured data and all of the models used to predict the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere.
In terms of what he "hopes to achieve" you are ascribing a motive based on your own viewpoint that everyone has to have an angle and will use any means to further it. Yes, Dr Spencer has beliefs and he is quite happy to expound on them, but not in his published papers in which he sticks closely to what the data reveal.
Your own beliefs are quite clear with phrases such as "extreme weather effects" and "tipping points" which are still only found in computer models, not in the data. So am I safe to assume that what you "hope to achieve" in your comment is to detract from the data by smearing the messenger?
This marks a change for MS as they had previously been developing their rapid fire weapons as anti-missile or anti-aircraft as opposed to anti-personnel. The idea was that with rapid fire from multiple barrels a moving wall of lead would destroy even fast moving incoming targets - which sounds nice on paper.
As people have said - if you are firing a million rounds a minute, you should aim better and I think this is why they haven't sold anything yet - anti-missile missiles with sophisticated tracking have seized the upper-hand in military circles. So maybe this is why MS are now looking at shotgun size applications although the potential for collateral damage (even from taser shots) makes me think twice about such rapid fire weapons as a hand-held option.
- pro-IPCC results are to be (over-)interpreted, but if they question the concensus then you should just cut out the conclusion section from the paper.
Well I for one don't want shiny chrome edges! There, said it.
What is the point of looking pretty when it is closed? It's what it does that matters - and how long it does it for (as the actress said the the bishop!). By going down this route, Lenovo are legitimizing the style-over-function movement started by Apple and are in danger of losing the confidence of ThinkPad owners.
As for the fingerprint reader - not a gimmick at all, but the easiest (secure-ish) way to start up. I don't think I've used the start button more than half-a-dozen times in the past 2 years and takes away from either typing long passwords or dangerously making boot-up passwords too simple. I wish my 'phones had this as I now have nearly as much sensitive info on that!
Even if they are boiling any lobsters, I'm sure the anti-everything brigade will find something else to scream about. People tried this at Cornell University about 10 years ago and the green-meenies were up in arms about warming up the finger lakes. Didn't matter how many calculations showed the heat input to be negligible in contrast to the diurnal changes (let alone seasonal), it was "the end of the world".
Personally, I think they will use more energy pumping the various streams of water around than they would have done with chillers.
And a 7.5 mile pipe out into the sea is probably right - to get deep enough to avoid most of the surface level sea life (including possible jelly-fish). That is probably the original tunnel from the paper mill which would have been discharging some nasty smelling stuff previously. Even been close to a working paper mill?
My T400s is 21.1mm and still has a tray-DVD/CD drive - why isn't that the thinnest PC? OK a 14 in screen - so what.
Marketing hype at its worst. Run around through 30 or 40 specs to try and find one where you are smaller, faster, lighter etc. and pretend it matters. If you are going to lug a 6lb 15 in PC around, who cares how thin it is!
Long before there were "apps", Palm had a catalogue of programs which actually did real things (i.e. business and commercial applications, not just Angry Birds). I don't have a WebOS device at the moment, but as far as I can tell, there is a PalmOS emulator out there which means that I will get one when my latest Tungsten E goes the way of all electronics and I will still be able to access the 8 or so years of contacts, appointments, notes, to do lists that I store on my own PC and not in a 'cloud' somewhere.
The Met Commissioner was just taken to task for suggesting that the emergency services shouldn't be forced to follow the same health and safety rules after criticism of the 7/7 bomb response. The Police Federation (cops union?) were screaming about safety on the job when the inquiry was criticizing the slow response time of actually getting people into the Underground to deal with casualties.
In NZ there was similar critizism after a mining accident when rescue crews were denied access by the police. The "better safe than sorry" argument is getting a bit of a battering just now.
[Big Brother - obviously]
Posted Tuesday 10th May 2011 14:30 GMT
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Google and Skyhook doing what corporations do..
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So, Google do what corporations do - use a dominant position to pressure customers into dropping a competitor. And Skyhook respond with a lawsuit - all good corporate behaviour. Lawyers make a lot of money, regardless of the outcome, and the question of whether the users get a better deal is completely lost.
Is Skyhook's software better than Google's? Doesn't really matter. What does (in legal terms) is whether users have been denied a choice. MS got stung for this (rather as a bee stings an elephant) over IE, but the only outcome seems to have been the EU "Browser choice" screen. I doubt anything more will come out of this - except that the lawyers will earn some more money.
Finding out that Google is not a collection of wonderful altruistic coders who love puppies seems to be a shock to people. Get a grip - no company survives past it's first two years unless it is run by lawyers and accountants, no matter what it is offering. Once it is run as a business, it will do the same as everyone else and sail as close to the (legal) line as possible - generally going over it if the lawyers reckon they can get away with it or feel they have become so big they can't be allowed to lose (RIM anyone?)
Back in the gold old days of DOS, corruptions in the autoexec.bat and config.sys files were always re-setting the keyboard to the default US layout. Trying to recover was not easy as the : and / keys were those which shifted between US and UK keyboards (and Norway - where I happened to be working at the time). I got quite good at closing my eyes and finding them again.
I still hate traveling to West Africa though where all the pubic keyboards have french layout - I have even seen these in supposedly anglophone countries - maybe they are cheaper?
The Aussies lost two Blackhawks and a lot of SAS troopers in a nightime training mission in 1998 or 1999 (I can't remember exact date). Not mechanical failure as far as I know, but I suspect there could be a lot more problems than we hear about.
Us non-mil types are only used to commercial flying which has much wider margins and a lot more time/leeway to cope with mechanical failures. At the sharper end, I think there is an expectation of technical problems - Operation Eagle Claw was planned with extra capacity to cope with some kind of technical problems, although that didn't help in the end.
Since there are no reports of US casualties, they seemed to have got the chopper down OK (whether mechanical or shot down hardly matters) and the Seals showed cool heads in blowing it up pretty effectively to only leave the tail rotor intact. Seems like they had ample spare lift capacity on the other three choppers to get everyone out, so - once again - planning for losses was part of the op.
This is how the US works (sadly IMHO). There is relatively little regulation for most corporate behaviour - the threat of punitive law suits is what keeps most people (and organizations) from doing anything even remotely risky.
What always amazes me (after living and working in North America for 10 years now) is how repressed this actually makes corporations in real life - and yet how corporate behaviour is always seen as rapacious and uncontrolled. I guess the lawyers are happy to keep it this way since it helps them to whip up enough prospective plaintiffs for a class action suit, but the chances of losing when it comes to a jury are so high that most corporations fold and settle out of court, perpetuating the impression of wrongdoing.
Given the fact that it took almost a week to come up with this response, I am somewhat sceptical of their explanation. Given the history of Apple - I simply don't believe it!
Posted Tuesday 19th April 2011 23:47 GMT
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I want what I want - not what gets pushed on me!
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Call me a dinosaur (you wouldn't be the first), but I simply don't want a single device that does everything poorly (OK, some things mediocre). I still have a Palm PDA because there is no smartphone out there that does what it does for me; my camera is a point and shoot, but cost USD100 and has an 8mp chip and a 3x optical zoom; my GPS does tracking and way-point marking in addition to navigation and route-planning through my PC. And my phone is for making calls and sending texts (somthing that seems to be the least important thing on a smartphone these days).
I might be in a minority, but it is a big minority and I am getting mightily pissed off with being treated like a sheep and expected to just accept what is thrown to me!
I think there have been similar attacks on other international agencies - the webmail access at the World Bank was also taken down for a while after a cyber-attack (reportedly).
They use Lotus Notes, but for external consultants the webmail interface was the only option. When webmail access was discontinued, they sent out notifications - via the same system so no-one who actually needed to know could find out......
You have a good point, but this is only a continuation of the past 20 (or so) years of "moral intervention". This argument has been used to justify both Iraq wars and Serbia/Kosovo since none of these had much chance of "threatening" the UK, however a decision was taken that the rest of the world should step in to prevent dictators being really really nasty to their people.
Of course, determination of who is a "dictator" and what "being really really nasty" means are up for grabs, but let's remember that this kind of thing does happen and - at some point - there is a moral imperative to intervene as human beings.
I read a good article the other day (I'll post an update if I can find it again) discussing this point and the hazard you can run in giving disaffected groups an incentive to provoke violence just so you can get the international community to intervene. It is not a simple issue at at all and while we can all sit on the sidelines and criticize, governments have to make relatively simple decisions - intervene or not.
And you can bet that whatever they decide (and whatever the outcome), these governments will be pilloried for whatever decision they come to. As an interesting exercise, think what we would be saying now if we hadn't intervened in Libya? Or Iraq, or Serbia/Kosovo? Would the world be all sweetness and light? What about Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo and Zimbabwe - should we (the rest of the world) have intervened there?
Anyone know if Palm applications will still run on WebOS? I was looking at a Pre for a while because I could still sync it with Palm Desktop running on my PC. If it does this then I'm in and will switch off all the rest of the crap!
I might be a dinosaur, but I don't actually want everything on one device (be that smartphone, tablet or whatever) - I have been using Palm handhelds for about 10 years and really only want something that does what my current Tungsten E does - keep my useful data to hand and sync with my PC. I am prepared to accept that I might have to get this in a 'phone someday soon, but why do I have to sign up to on-line storage of all my appointments and address data as well? (Don't even talk about my emails - I'm sure my clients would love Google or Apple having all of those!)
Dinosaurs like me are keeping up the resale value of hoarded Palm's pretty much where they used to be (around US$200 for 'in-the-box' new) so there is some kind of market for this. I hope HP gives us some options.....
Wow, looks like they are finally getting back to the original touchscreen notebook! The Concerto was great piece of kit and by removing the keyboard you could walk around and use it as a notepad, or use it as a normal (486) notebook. Very popular with the aged rellies who could never get the hang of using a mouse to move the pointer on the screen (probably why fondle slabs are popular with the same age group - when they can pry them off the grandkids!).
I used it as my travel machine for years and I've still not found a better way to give presentations - facing the audience drawing on the screen to highlight important points. It was still functional when we donated it to a IT charity shop five years ago (although Windows for Pen had not been updated very much...)
As a UK graduate (BSc and PhD) who has not lived or worked in the UK for 20-odd years, my impressions may be somewhat off-base, but the issue I have is the changing role of higher education - into a training system as opposed to education. As a number of previous commenters have noted, real training (as in learning the job) comes when you are on the job - the degree requirement was to identify those people who could learn and had the necessary background.
It now seems more and more that people (employers? employees?) expect to be able to "do the job" as soon as you start not "learn on the job" and so the focus of the qualification becomes more vocational than educational. In this case, we end up reducing the usefulness of the qualification for anything other than the specific job it is intended for and ability of the employee to bring anything more to the job than just an adequate ability to perform it. Now this is a chicken and egg situation - do employers demand this or teachers expect this to be the case - but as I compare my A-levels and degree studies with what I read now, there is no doubt that there has been a large change in focus.
As I have been exposed to higher education in four other countries since my UK PhD, what I have noted is the value in the highly focussed A-level system in the UK: For those people who have the desire and ability to get into research it is (or was?) the best system of any that I have experience of. Whether this was a problem for other students was an important question, but wrecking one (only?) good thing about the UK education system hardly seems the right way to go about addressing a different problem.
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Page:
Posted Thursday 2nd February 2012 15:44 GMT
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You mean.. → #
In JEDI alliance: Jellyfish overlords won't rule Earth after all
Big Sandwich...
Posted Wednesday 18th January 2012 15:57 GMT
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Unknown? → #
In Phages: The powerful new bio-ammo in superbug war
Get a grip, it was experiments using bacteriophage which proved DNA was genetic material (Google "Hershey-Chase") and every molecular biology lab class has used lambda-phage in experiments. A whole group of genetic libraries are based on phage and it is one of the standard workhorses in research.
Posted Tuesday 17th January 2012 20:48 GMT
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Why am I thinking.. → #
In HP hawks huge 132in 'tablet'
Minority Report?
Posted Friday 6th January 2012 21:40 GMT
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Happy New Fear → #
In Arctic freshening not due to ice melt after all, says NASA
Sorry guys, you've got your scare story wrong. This isn't an CAGW scare story, but a "salt is evil" scare story and this is the anti-salt people putting their master plan into effect to get us all to reduce our salt intake.
Posted Friday 6th January 2012 21:26 GMT → #
100113.1537
In Samsung SSD 830
SSDs only lasting 14-18 months? What are you doing with them? I maintain a (small) fleet of notebooks which have all had SSDs for the past three years. All used as primary machines with no performance problems to date.
And as for size, 320 G on a notebook? If you are storing that much, you either are not portable (and why bother with a notebook or SSD) or you are not using half of it. SSD gives great storage/weight and particularly storage/power so it is ideal in a portable medium. On anything else, yeah, disks are much cheaper.
Posted Friday 16th December 2011 22:04 GMT
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You're also dealing with an Aussie.. → #
In Apple's Galaxy Tab ban was best advertising ever - Samsung
... which in my experience seems to someone quite happily prepared to torture the english language to within an inch of its life!
Must be something they do to get their own back for something or other (insert appropriate shoulder-chip).
Posted Thursday 15th December 2011 20:25 GMT
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Very timely commentary - → #
In The moment a computer crash nearly caused my car crash
- following the Air France crash story where at least one of the contributing factors seems to have been the pilots not realizing that the computer had switched off etc.
Not sure what the best options are; I certainly don't take kindly to cars doing things without me telling them (I drive a manual, which is getting harder and harder to find in North America), but I accept that ABS brakes are good when you need to steer as well as brake. Risk/benefit issues are all about likelihood and severity of hazard so if the automation reduces the likelihood by a very big amount, on balance we can accept a higher severity of hazard.
The whole issue of driver.pilot training seems to be the crux of the matter - learning in a fully computerized automatic vehicle (car or 'plane) can leave a lot out that hardly anyone is ever going to need, but will bite you on the ass big time if you suddenly do. For drivers, I doubt we will ever get everyone up to a high level, but for airline pilots - I think they really should know what to do when the autopilot switches itself off. And this comes back to the severity issue - a car getting out of control because the driver can't handle it in "manual" mode is an accident - a 'plane in this situation is a "tragedy". Non-quantitative terms, but I am sure you get my drift.
Posted Thursday 15th December 2011 15:16 GMT
100113.1537
Without wishing to get into conspracy theories... → #
In Phone-hack saga: Cop bung probe nets seventh suspect
- this comment is very relevant.
To me, this is the biggest issue of the whole thing. Journo's listening to people's voicemails is hardly hacking and - while certainly an invasion of privacy - little more than going through your rubbish. Similarly, singling out the NoTW was fun for a while, but hardly relevant because it is on record that other newspapers were doing the same.
No, the way too close - and now shown to be corrupt - relationship between the police and journo's is where this investigation should really be focussed. If they are arresting people for paying for information, then the people who were paid have committed a far more serious crime and should also be arrested.
Posted Tuesday 13th December 2011 23:03 GMT
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But... → #
In LightSquared screams 'conspiracy' over leaky test results
regardless of the desirability of the technology, the results should not have been leaked!
I am not surprised that LightSquared's CEO is hopping mad - this has just killed his company. No other investor will now come on board even if they bullet-proof the system and show no interference.
This is serious stuff from a government lab - I work with a lot of clients submitting data to governments and I know my clients are not going to like the thought that preliminary results can get leaked to the press.
Posted Monday 12th December 2011 21:14 GMT
100113.1537
So... → #
In NotW didn't delete Milly Dowler 'false hope' voicemail
who did access the voicemails then?
Isn't that the issue here?
No-one seems to be mourning the NoTW, but pretty much all of the papers were doing the same thing and it looks like it was someone else who accessed these particular messages, causing them to be deleted. If it turns out to have been the Guardian (who's reporters have been making hay with NI's troubles), will that be closed down by it owners?
Posted Wednesday 16th November 2011 22:49 GMT
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Trolljegere → #
In Just trolling: It's OK to poke fun at Christians, says ASA
- at least that is the title in Norwegian. Direct translation is "The Trollhunters", but that's not necessarily a good bet as titles seem to interpreted rather than translated by film people.
Posted Friday 28th October 2011 14:45 GMT
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Hardware vs software issues... → #
In HP has another crack at fondleslab market
I don't have experience with Palm phones, but the PDA's were (and still are) pretty solid. New (in box) Tungstens still sell at a premium on E-Bay and used ones rarely go for less than 50-60 $, which means that people are expecting them to keep on working.
I wanted WebOS to work because I have such a long history of using Palm Desktop and I wanted to continue. However, before it was cancelled I asked on an HP forum about synchronizing to Palm Desktop and was told I didn't want to do that, that cloud services were better anyway and, no, there were no plans to provide this! I was more than a bit dis-chuffed to be so patronisingly fobbed off and - the next week - the TouchPad was dumped so it became a moot point (still pissed off I didn't manage to get a cheap one!).
I am now stuck with third party software to sync with my Andoid 'phone which is painfully slow (and a bit flaky, but it gets there in the end).
I am still not convinced by an 'all-in-one' smartphone and may go back to my Tungsten E because it is way better as a PDA. I can take the strange looks I get when I have two (OK, three, no four - separate GPS and camera!) separate devices bulging in my pockets. The big problem is that they all sue different chargers.....
Posted Friday 14th October 2011 14:10 GMT
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Spot on! → #
In OMG! Berners-Lee has an iPhone
Proves Tim B-L's point exactly!
Used Compuserve for many years as it was - originally - way more useful to actually get stuff (I was very popular in getting WordPerfect printer drivers for people). But as the web developed, CServe lost the customer base to free competitors, was Borg'ed by AOL and is now only remembered (fondly) in my username.
Posted Thursday 13th October 2011 15:34 GMT
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Spot on - why is RIM being bagged at the moment? → #
In BlackBerry stumbles to feet, full of apologies
This is the whole point - business is still using RIM and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. iPhone and Android are sharing the consumer market, but so what? All the stories are about RIM losing "market share", but that is because the market is growing like topsy and I've yet to see any data on actual number of handsets sold.
The coverage given to this (and every glitch from RIM) makes me wonder who is putting the boot in? There were stories all over our (local) news shows yesterday and today about this, despite the fact that hardly any people were affected in Canada. If i were a conspiracy-type i would be wondering who is manipulating the stock price....
Posted Wednesday 5th October 2011 22:17 GMT
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FAIL → #
In The $35 android tablet, a snip at $50
Sorry, Serendipity, you obviously know nothing of India, or its history of IP protection. Patents are not international and nothing in the WTO makes them so. All you have to do (to join the WTO) is have an IP protection system such that foreign companies are treated the same as local ones (i.e, you can't selectively discriminate), but other than that, you can write your own patent laws.
India did just this with pharma-patents (making them effectively impossible to obtain while its generic industry got going) and the only reason they have changed this now is to protect the new drugs which Indian firms now invent (and wish to protect within India). There was no quibble at the WTO because non-one was treated differently - foreign companies couldn't patent and neither could Indian countries.
Furthermore, for patents to be valid, they have to be filed in a country before they are public knowledge - effectively meaning that if you haven't filed in India within a couple or three years after filing in the US (or wherever) you cannot gain patent protection retrospectively in India. Exactly what patents cover Android etc. in the rest of the world seems to be pretty ropey just now, but if they weren't filed in India, then they don't have any jurisdiction in India.
Take your $35 fondle-slab and try to sell it in the US and you may arouse Google's ire, but chances are in India, they haven't got a leg to stand on.
Posted Tuesday 27th September 2011 14:40 GMT
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Numbers - not share - affects bottom line. → #
In Android outsells Apple 2:1
But with the market increasing, what does this mean in terms of actual numbers of handsets purchased?
I am no fan of any smartphone (I want my PDA back!), but it seems to me that RIM are being hammered in the press for a reducing share, when they are still selling lots and are the 'phone of choice for businessmen. All that has happened is that the market has increased with lots of non-business users who want browsing and entertainment devices.
RIM may have tried (unsuccessfully) to compete in that market, but the issue is still about how many handsets are being made and sold and how much people are paying for access to their network.
I don't have shares (in any of the companies involved), buy I sort of feel sorry for the shareholders who see wild swings based on numbers which have very little to do with the bottom-line profitability of a company.
Posted Thursday 22nd September 2011 19:25 GMT
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Highly appropriate.. → #
In HP may NOT spin off PC biz
Tanking your share price prior to things like share buy-backs (or screwing someone's option pay-out as suggested above) is illegal and a very good way to get shareholders to sue, but would have been hard to prove were it not for the monumentally inept way they have behaved recently.
If they tried a buy-back now, they would be screwed so hard by pissed off shareholders that I guess they will just have to suck it up and keep on going.
It gives a new CEO a great chance to earn his bonus by getting the share price to increase - even if it is still less than it was a few months ago.
I still say they should have kept Carly..
(ducks quickly)
Posted Wednesday 14th September 2011 20:38 GMT
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Absolutely - coffee-table browsing is major use! → #
In TouchPad sales doubled after it was discontinued
Have an el-cheapo e-book reader (Kobo, I think) that we use for the same stuff - IMDB is probably the home page! Why spend $4-500 when you can get most of the same functionality for $100.
Still wish I'd been able to snaffle a TouchPad for that price - I was hoping to use my old Palm applications on WebOS, but $500 was way too much. I can still get a (boxed) Tungsten E2 on EBay for about $250.
Posted Thursday 1st September 2011 16:09 GMT
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Stylus! → #
In Samsung outs 5in Galaxy Note as new smartphone concept
Finally something that makes sense - instead of merely aping Apple, Samsung have gone back to what works.
Palm might have lost out when it came to smart phones (although I think that was when they started trying to copy Blackberry with the tiny keyboard), but their PDAs (and HP's) were very popular. You can do a heck of a lot on a small screen if you use a stylus and thank goodness now that one of the big guys have remembered this, I might be able to get a cheap Chinese copy which has a stylus again!
[Getting really frustrated with my HTC-copy 'cos I am constantly selecting when I want to scroll and vice-versa - my wife's real HTC has a stylus and I am jealous.]
Posted Tuesday 30th August 2011 15:15 GMT
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Ha ha ha ha → #
In Beyonce's belly: Most important thing ever, on Twitter
Boom-boom!
Posted Tuesday 30th August 2011 15:02 GMT
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Spuds in space... → #
In What vegetables are best for growing in Spaaace?
Actually, back in the 80's NASA funded actual work on this which showed a 25 sqm plot of potatoes could supply an astronaut's energy needs indefinitely. This was experimental work not modelling. Published in the American Journal of Potato Research Volume 64, Number 6, 311-320.
I can see why they might want a few other veggies though as you might get a bit bored just eating spuds, but they would only be for flavour.
Posted Thursday 25th August 2011 15:21 GMT
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Wrong way round → #
In CERN: 'Climate models will need to be substantially revised'
More solar activity actually leads to reduced cosmic rays reaching the earth - cosmic rays don't come from the sun (the 'cosmic' part of it).
The way it is explained in Svensmark's theory is that the cosmic rays are pretty much constant, but high solar activity includes a high magnetic flux which prevents cosmic rays reaching the earth. This is the theory to explain the correlation between how historic activity (as measured by sunspots) and cold spells going back about 400 years.
As a theory, it needed to be tested - the data on low magnetic flux from the sun during this (quiet) solar cycle and higher cosmic rays has certainly doesn't refute it, but the question was how this could affect climate. The impact of cosmic rays on cloud formation seemed like a good mechanism and experiments started as early as the mid 90's supported this, but the CERN experiment, which was regarded as being the critical test, only got going about three years ago (maybe four).
The potential political impact has had even the DG of CERN worried - hence his warning to the scientists to not go into the broader implications in their paper.
Posted Thursday 25th August 2011 14:43 GMT
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- and take a tax deduction for the donation → #
In French letter shock: Tax us more, demand rich people
Says it all really.
Marginal rates of income tax mean nothing to the really rich since they are able to declare very low "income" on which to be taxed. They are quite happy with a symbolic gesture of saying "raise our tax rate' because they won't actually pay very much more anyway.
And yes, they employ lots of laywers and accountants who have a legal and moral duty to get the best deal for their client - unless that client tells them to do otherwise. In other words, you tell your tax accountant that I do not want you to minimize my tax liability and, hey presto, you pay more tax. Easy-peazy, lemon squeazy - but don't go blaming the lawyers for this one (they deserve enough blame for the other crap that goes on!).
Posted Friday 19th August 2011 21:38 GMT
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Bugger! → #
In HP's WebOS mess: When smartphone assets go toxic
I had hoped that with HP WebOS would mature into something useful. Surely someone could have harnessed the legacy of Palm software (of which there is both a great deal and real utility).
I was waiting for something to replace my Tungsten with (I have an Android 'phone, but it simply doesn't do what my PDA does - and is horribly slow at that).
I wonder if ex-Palm people are still around .....
Posted Thursday 18th August 2011 14:44 GMT
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So it's not for you - who cares? → #
In Skype brings per-minute Wi-Fi to iPad and iPhone
What about when I am only in the UK for a hour between flights? And then in Paris for another hour? What about Tokyo?
It might not make sense for you, but it sure as **** makes sense for me and I have been using it for a couple of years now. Massively cheaper than mobile roaming rates (dollars per MB) and I can use the PC directly instead of having to read emails on my 'phone.
Since I never travel without my PC not sure how much I will need it on an i-Anything, but once again, that's just me - I'm sure people who have dumped their PC for an iPad while travelling will love it.
Posted Tuesday 9th August 2011 13:34 GMT
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Continuous loop... → #
In Sky wins TV riot battle
Thanks Andrew for a very insightful piece. I live in Canada and get BBC world news which I hardly ever watch if something is breaking because of their ridiculous addiction to a continuous loop - sometimes with as little as 30 seconds (the Oslo bombing for example). Not that anything else I can get here in North America is much better - I have pretty much given up on broadcast news and only watch TV for entertainment - news is better online.
I remember a long long time ago when TVAM lost all of its engineers during/after a strike - the managers and admin staff who took over to run the show would try anything (broadcasting live over satellite phones of dubious quality, for example - remember this was pre-smartphones) which they would never try with "real" engineers.
In addition to the 'Elfin Safety' issues, I wonder if there is still too much of a perfectionist culture to allow a journo to use in iPhone.....
Posted Wednesday 3rd August 2011 13:42 GMT
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Go speak to the Danes → #
In Acoustic trauma: How wind farms make you sick
Has anyone asked why Denmark has closed more on-shore windfarms than they have opened in the last 5-10 years? Noise complaints.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/7996606/An-ill-wind-blows-for-Denmarks-green-energy-revolution.html
Yes, a DT article, but they quote the head of Denmark's wind power agency.
Posted Wednesday 3rd August 2011 13:04 GMT
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Thanks for this → #
In Microsoft man saves drowning woman
Not quite what I expect from reading El Reg comments - but thank you for this information and the link.
Posted Tuesday 2nd August 2011 13:56 GMT
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erm... → #
In Skype arrives on fondleslab
Been using Skype on a fondleslab for months - was I holding it the wrong way?
Posted Friday 29th July 2011 23:00 GMT
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beliefs not relevant to science → #
In 'Missing heat': Is global warmth vanishing into space?
Paul, his beliefs are irrelevant, but his record and affiliations are unquestioned. Roy Spencer has headed the UAH satellite program for many years and has published widely on remote sensing and atmospheric energy transfers. The paper provides the data and methodology behind the analysis and doesn't make any claims or hyperbole (sadly, the same can't be said the press release or other press reports). He has pointed out a serious discrepancy between the actual measured data and all of the models used to predict the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere.
In terms of what he "hopes to achieve" you are ascribing a motive based on your own viewpoint that everyone has to have an angle and will use any means to further it. Yes, Dr Spencer has beliefs and he is quite happy to expound on them, but not in his published papers in which he sticks closely to what the data reveal.
Your own beliefs are quite clear with phrases such as "extreme weather effects" and "tipping points" which are still only found in computer models, not in the data. So am I safe to assume that what you "hope to achieve" in your comment is to detract from the data by smearing the messenger?
Posted Monday 25th July 2011 13:39 GMT
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Metal Storm - changing tack → #
In Grenade-gasm autogun gets Raoul Moat Taser shells
This marks a change for MS as they had previously been developing their rapid fire weapons as anti-missile or anti-aircraft as opposed to anti-personnel. The idea was that with rapid fire from multiple barrels a moving wall of lead would destroy even fast moving incoming targets - which sounds nice on paper.
As people have said - if you are firing a million rounds a minute, you should aim better and I think this is why they haven't sold anything yet - anti-missile missiles with sophisticated tracking have seized the upper-hand in military circles. So maybe this is why MS are now looking at shotgun size applications although the potential for collateral damage (even from taser shots) makes me think twice about such rapid fire weapons as a hand-held option.
Posted Monday 18th July 2011 13:34 GMT
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So that's OK then... → #
In CERN 'gags' physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment
- pro-IPCC results are to be (over-)interpreted, but if they question the concensus then you should just cut out the conclusion section from the paper.
Posted Thursday 7th July 2011 14:07 GMT
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Pretty Think-Pad? Sacrilege → #
In Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420s 14in Core i5 laptop
Well I for one don't want shiny chrome edges! There, said it.
What is the point of looking pretty when it is closed? It's what it does that matters - and how long it does it for (as the actress said the the bishop!). By going down this route, Lenovo are legitimizing the style-over-function movement started by Apple and are in danger of losing the confidence of ThinkPad owners.
As for the fingerprint reader - not a gimmick at all, but the easiest (secure-ish) way to start up. I don't think I've used the start button more than half-a-dozen times in the past 2 years and takes away from either typing long passwords or dangerously making boot-up passwords too simple. I wish my 'phones had this as I now have nearly as much sensitive info on that!
Posted Wednesday 25th May 2011 19:48 GMT
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I'm sure they will find something else → #
In Google opens tiny window onto Baltic Sea-cooled data center
Even if they are boiling any lobsters, I'm sure the anti-everything brigade will find something else to scream about. People tried this at Cornell University about 10 years ago and the green-meenies were up in arms about warming up the finger lakes. Didn't matter how many calculations showed the heat input to be negligible in contrast to the diurnal changes (let alone seasonal), it was "the end of the world".
Personally, I think they will use more energy pumping the various streams of water around than they would have done with chillers.
And a 7.5 mile pipe out into the sea is probably right - to get deep enough to avoid most of the surface level sea life (including possible jelly-fish). That is probably the original tunnel from the paper mill which would have been discharging some nasty smelling stuff previously. Even been close to a working paper mill?
Posted Wednesday 25th May 2011 12:49 GMT
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And exactly why.. → #
In Zuckerberg: Give me your children
this crazy old uncle refuses to sign up to Facebook or any other social networking site!
Posted Wednesday 25th May 2011 07:48 GMT
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Slimmest PC? → #
In Dell intros world's thinnest 15in
laptopPCMy T400s is 21.1mm and still has a tray-DVD/CD drive - why isn't that the thinnest PC? OK a 14 in screen - so what.
Marketing hype at its worst. Run around through 30 or 40 specs to try and find one where you are smaller, faster, lighter etc. and pretend it matters. If you are going to lug a 6lb 15 in PC around, who cares how thin it is!
Posted Monday 23rd May 2011 22:03 GMT
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WebOS runs Palm programs → #
In HP exec: WebOS tablet will trounce iPad
Long before there were "apps", Palm had a catalogue of programs which actually did real things (i.e. business and commercial applications, not just Angry Birds). I don't have a WebOS device at the moment, but as far as I can tell, there is a PalmOS emulator out there which means that I will get one when my latest Tungsten E goes the way of all electronics and I will still be able to access the 8 or so years of contacts, appointments, notes, to do lists that I store on my own PC and not in a 'cloud' somewhere.
That's what HP bought with Palm.
Posted Wednesday 11th May 2011 19:58 GMT
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Hmmmm → #
In Northants cops blow up suspicious school play prop
The Met Commissioner was just taken to task for suggesting that the emergency services shouldn't be forced to follow the same health and safety rules after criticism of the 7/7 bomb response. The Police Federation (cops union?) were screaming about safety on the job when the inquiry was criticizing the slow response time of actually getting people into the Underground to deal with casualties.
In NZ there was similar critizism after a mining accident when rescue crews were denied access by the police. The "better safe than sorry" argument is getting a bit of a battering just now.
[Big Brother - obviously]
Posted Tuesday 10th May 2011 14:30 GMT
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Google and Skyhook doing what corporations do.. → #
In Google says Android 'club' makes phone makers 'do what we want'
So, Google do what corporations do - use a dominant position to pressure customers into dropping a competitor. And Skyhook respond with a lawsuit - all good corporate behaviour. Lawyers make a lot of money, regardless of the outcome, and the question of whether the users get a better deal is completely lost.
Is Skyhook's software better than Google's? Doesn't really matter. What does (in legal terms) is whether users have been denied a choice. MS got stung for this (rather as a bee stings an elephant) over IE, but the only outcome seems to have been the EU "Browser choice" screen. I doubt anything more will come out of this - except that the lawyers will earn some more money.
Finding out that Google is not a collection of wonderful altruistic coders who love puppies seems to be a shock to people. Get a grip - no company survives past it's first two years unless it is run by lawyers and accountants, no matter what it is offering. Once it is run as a business, it will do the same as everyone else and sail as close to the (legal) line as possible - generally going over it if the lawyers reckon they can get away with it or feel they have become so big they can't be allowed to lose (RIM anyone?)
Posted Thursday 5th May 2011 15:06 GMT
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Old fogey remembers... → #
In Reg reader lost for words over blank HP keyboard
Back in the gold old days of DOS, corruptions in the autoexec.bat and config.sys files were always re-setting the keyboard to the default US layout. Trying to recover was not easy as the : and / keys were those which shifted between US and UK keyboards (and Norway - where I happened to be working at the time). I got quite good at closing my eyes and finding them again.
I still hate traveling to West Africa though where all the pubic keyboards have french layout - I have even seen these in supposedly anglophone countries - maybe they are cheaper?
(can we have an old fogey icon please?)
Posted Wednesday 4th May 2011 14:02 GMT
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Not just on missions → #
In New top-secret stealth choppers used on bin Laden raid
The Aussies lost two Blackhawks and a lot of SAS troopers in a nightime training mission in 1998 or 1999 (I can't remember exact date). Not mechanical failure as far as I know, but I suspect there could be a lot more problems than we hear about.
Us non-mil types are only used to commercial flying which has much wider margins and a lot more time/leeway to cope with mechanical failures. At the sharper end, I think there is an expectation of technical problems - Operation Eagle Claw was planned with extra capacity to cope with some kind of technical problems, although that didn't help in the end.
Since there are no reports of US casualties, they seemed to have got the chopper down OK (whether mechanical or shot down hardly matters) and the Seals showed cool heads in blowing it up pretty effectively to only leave the tail rotor intact. Seems like they had ample spare lift capacity on the other three choppers to get everyone out, so - once again - planning for losses was part of the op.
Posted Friday 29th April 2011 18:13 GMT
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US = Regulation by law suit → #
In Google sued over – yes – Android location tracking
This is how the US works (sadly IMHO). There is relatively little regulation for most corporate behaviour - the threat of punitive law suits is what keeps most people (and organizations) from doing anything even remotely risky.
What always amazes me (after living and working in North America for 10 years now) is how repressed this actually makes corporations in real life - and yet how corporate behaviour is always seen as rapacious and uncontrolled. I guess the lawyers are happy to keep it this way since it helps them to whip up enough prospective plaintiffs for a class action suit, but the chances of losing when it comes to a jury are so high that most corporations fold and settle out of court, perpetuating the impression of wrongdoing.
Posted Wednesday 27th April 2011 15:05 GMT
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Hmmmmm, → #
In Apple breaks location-storing silence
Given the fact that it took almost a week to come up with this response, I am somewhat sceptical of their explanation. Given the history of Apple - I simply don't believe it!
Posted Tuesday 19th April 2011 23:47 GMT
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I want what I want - not what gets pushed on me! → #
In Smartphones eat games handhelds and cameras for lunch
Call me a dinosaur (you wouldn't be the first), but I simply don't want a single device that does everything poorly (OK, some things mediocre). I still have a Palm PDA because there is no smartphone out there that does what it does for me; my camera is a point and shoot, but cost USD100 and has an 8mp chip and a 3x optical zoom; my GPS does tracking and way-point marking in addition to navigation and route-planning through my PC. And my phone is for making calls and sending texts (somthing that seems to be the least important thing on a smartphone these days).
I might be in a minority, but it is a big minority and I am getting mightily pissed off with being treated like a sheep and expected to just accept what is thrown to me!
Posted Monday 4th April 2011 20:49 GMT
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Same here → #
In Email compromised at Epsilon
Yeah, BestBuy RewardZone were quick off the mark here in Canada too. i got the email from them before the story broke here.
Haven't seen a noticeable increase in spam yet.......
Posted Friday 1st April 2011 15:08 GMT
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Common theme going on here... → #
In EU parliament suspends webmail after cyber-attack
I think there have been similar attacks on other international agencies - the webmail access at the World Bank was also taken down for a while after a cyber-attack (reportedly).
They use Lotus Notes, but for external consultants the webmail interface was the only option. When webmail access was discontinued, they sent out notifications - via the same system so no-one who actually needed to know could find out......
Posted Friday 25th March 2011 13:40 GMT
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A continuation of "moral" wars..... → #
In Libya fighting shows just how idiotic the Defence Review was
You have a good point, but this is only a continuation of the past 20 (or so) years of "moral intervention". This argument has been used to justify both Iraq wars and Serbia/Kosovo since none of these had much chance of "threatening" the UK, however a decision was taken that the rest of the world should step in to prevent dictators being really really nasty to their people.
Of course, determination of who is a "dictator" and what "being really really nasty" means are up for grabs, but let's remember that this kind of thing does happen and - at some point - there is a moral imperative to intervene as human beings.
I read a good article the other day (I'll post an update if I can find it again) discussing this point and the hazard you can run in giving disaffected groups an incentive to provoke violence just so you can get the international community to intervene. It is not a simple issue at at all and while we can all sit on the sidelines and criticize, governments have to make relatively simple decisions - intervene or not.
And you can bet that whatever they decide (and whatever the outcome), these governments will be pilloried for whatever decision they come to. As an interesting exercise, think what we would be saying now if we hadn't intervened in Libya? Or Iraq, or Serbia/Kosovo? Would the world be all sweetness and light? What about Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo and Zimbabwe - should we (the rest of the world) have intervened there?
Posted Tuesday 15th March 2011 23:17 GMT
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What about old Palm applications? → #
In HP promises App Store and Microsoft love in webOS world
Anyone know if Palm applications will still run on WebOS? I was looking at a Pre for a while because I could still sync it with Palm Desktop running on my PC. If it does this then I'm in and will switch off all the rest of the crap!
I might be a dinosaur, but I don't actually want everything on one device (be that smartphone, tablet or whatever) - I have been using Palm handhelds for about 10 years and really only want something that does what my current Tungsten E does - keep my useful data to hand and sync with my PC. I am prepared to accept that I might have to get this in a 'phone someday soon, but why do I have to sign up to on-line storage of all my appointments and address data as well? (Don't even talk about my emails - I'm sure my clients would love Google or Apple having all of those!)
Dinosaurs like me are keeping up the resale value of hoarded Palm's pretty much where they used to be (around US$200 for 'in-the-box' new) so there is some kind of market for this. I hope HP gives us some options.....
Posted Saturday 19th February 2011 13:17 GMT
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Compaq Concerto? → #
In Lenovo to press LePad on LeWorld
Wow, looks like they are finally getting back to the original touchscreen notebook! The Concerto was great piece of kit and by removing the keyboard you could walk around and use it as a notepad, or use it as a normal (486) notebook. Very popular with the aged rellies who could never get the hang of using a mouse to move the pointer on the screen (probably why fondle slabs are popular with the same age group - when they can pry them off the grandkids!).
I used it as my travel machine for years and I've still not found a better way to give presentations - facing the audience drawing on the screen to highlight important points. It was still functional when we donated it to a IT charity shop five years ago (although Windows for Pen had not been updated very much...)
Posted Tuesday 15th February 2011 14:32 GMT
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Education - or training? → #
In Boffins demand: Cull bogus A-Levels, hire brainier teachers
As a UK graduate (BSc and PhD) who has not lived or worked in the UK for 20-odd years, my impressions may be somewhat off-base, but the issue I have is the changing role of higher education - into a training system as opposed to education. As a number of previous commenters have noted, real training (as in learning the job) comes when you are on the job - the degree requirement was to identify those people who could learn and had the necessary background.
It now seems more and more that people (employers? employees?) expect to be able to "do the job" as soon as you start not "learn on the job" and so the focus of the qualification becomes more vocational than educational. In this case, we end up reducing the usefulness of the qualification for anything other than the specific job it is intended for and ability of the employee to bring anything more to the job than just an adequate ability to perform it. Now this is a chicken and egg situation - do employers demand this or teachers expect this to be the case - but as I compare my A-levels and degree studies with what I read now, there is no doubt that there has been a large change in focus.
As I have been exposed to higher education in four other countries since my UK PhD, what I have noted is the value in the highly focussed A-level system in the UK: For those people who have the desire and ability to get into research it is (or was?) the best system of any that I have experience of. Whether this was a problem for other students was an important question, but wrecking one (only?) good thing about the UK education system hardly seems the right way to go about addressing a different problem.
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