Your average recruitment agent doesn't know his R from his Oracle (or iOS or Java or Python). They just do keyword-matching on CVs as well as filtering out the liars and charlatans and cowboy coders. Can't blame them really: their job is mainly about having people skills and negotiating skills, not techie stuff.
Microsoft have this technology called ClearType. I'm not sure what Apple's version is called. It's a technique for font-smoothing which relies on the fact that the R, G, and B pixels in a flat-panel display are always in a certain order. By applying light colour to the edge of text, they can make a font appear smoother and crisper.
If the PNGs were designed with ClearType in mind, then they would definitely look worse when upscaled to retina display.
You can see the font-smoothing in Windows by taking a screen capture, pasting it into e.g. Paint.net, then zooming in to the captured image. You'll see odd faint colours around the edges of letters.
I started watching an episode of Come Fly With Me on iPlayer once. I never made it to the end because it was so awful. Do their stats include people like me who thought "oh this looks promising" and started watching a show, but then never made it to the end? I'd quite like to see a list of top-ten shows that people actually managed to sit through.
Why is JavaScript being hacked and cajoled into all these contortions, when there are perfectly good languages out there such as Java or C# which support "sandboxes and module loaders, array comprehensions, binary data objects, built-in hash maps and sets, and super-method calls, block scoping, array comprehension, maps and proxy"? Wouldn't it be easier to just take an existing language and plug in the DOM-related functions?
Top speed of 80mph, so definitely not a quadricycle like the Reva G-Wiz. The Mitsubishi version costs around £28,990 (according to wikipedia) so it's not particularly competitive with some of the others mentioned here. Nevertheless it seems a strange omission. I think El Reg even wrote a review of them a while ago.
"Three quarters of forensic scientists were opposed to the closure of the Forensic Science Service".
In other news, three quarters of turkeys are opposed to Christmas. Farmers have been accused of failing to listen to the advice of CTAs (Chief Turkey Advisors).
This headset only supports Bluetooth Hands-Free Profile version 1.5, not the new version 1.6 which was ratified last year. That means it doesn't support HD Voice. Perhaps not a big deal today, with relatively few phones or networks supporting the standard; and not so important for a headset which will be mainly used for listening to music; but nonetheless a shame to omit.
That was my first thought too - some kind of algorithmic pricing system which automatically hikes the price when demand surges. I can see why neither Sony nor Apple would be keen to publicise the existence of such a system; but it makes financial sense.
Windows Server and the associated tools (which appear to include SQL Server) are probably their best engineered products ever. It'd be a shame to see them go downhill.
Microsoft's UK research centre is in Cambridge, a city notorious for its high housing costs. Google's UK headquarters is in London, and its largest engineering office in Europe is in Zurich - both very expensive cities. Across the pond, tech companies consistently choose to base themselves in Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, or NYC; not in Des Moines, Iowa.
Skilled staff want to live in interesting places. Rents would be cheaper in Manchester, but GCHQ would struggle to recruit there - look at the fuss the BBC's employees are making about relocating to Salford.
I have a slightly different scenario on which I would appreciate some advice. Like Trevor, I loathe re-installing all my apps and I do need regular backups of my data. However I do a lot of work away from home, either on a train (where RDP is obviously unsuitable) or at a client site (where unfettered internet access is rare). My current setup is a laptop with Windows and apps installed on the bare metal. When I'm at home I use Macrium Reflect to take an image of the laptop's hard drive, which can be turned into a VM if necessary. Problems with this scenario arise if I want access to the computer when I don't have the laptop with me (but do have a tablet or friend or colleague's PC handy). What would be a good solution here?
In 2006 they predicted smart phones would become a large part of everyone's life (iPhone released 2007), and that 3D technologies would make a comeback in movies and gaming (Avatar released a couple of years ago; this year we saw the PlayStation 3D TV). In 2007 they predicted the use of smart phones to handle financial transactions.
They also predicted a 3D internet, doctors with super senses, buildings that fix themselves, and real time speech translation... so yeah. Not a terrible track record overall.
That'd be their low VAT rate then. I'm sure Luxembourg has some fine coders, but to misquote Mrs Merton: "What first attracted your business to the low-tax country of Luxembourg?"
And on the same day, we learn that a British further education college is outsourcing its energy-consuming data centre to Iceland, partly because electricity in Iceland costs half as much as in the UK and isn't going to rise further.
Readers should be made aware that this display has a glossy screen, not matte. It's a matter of personal preference, but if you intend to use the screen in an environment with awkward lighting then a glossy screen may not be suitable for you.
There'd have to be some kind of mechanism to choose whose notes you're looking at. I wouldn't want the whole world's comments - that'd be worse than reading the comments on here ;-)
I can see the value in reading other people's hand-scribbled margin notes. In non-fiction books, e.g. history or economics, you might want to read the notes of another expert reader. The problem would be how to pay for this - the expert reader doesn't get anything (other than the prestige), and the user base would be small. On a technical front, does E-ink have sufficient resolution for hand-written notes?
There must be a market for selling subscriptions to business apps for iOS too. Salesforce.com and friends. Maybe they don't want to fork over 30% for their premium services.
That's the trouble with being on a small network. If Vodafone fails one morning, the whole country knows about it by lunchtime and clients understand why they can't get through to you. If GiffGaff fails, nobody has heard about it, and you get angry voicemails demanding that you answer immediately.
"how does a group of friends get to watch the same programming at the same time [...] In different parts of the US different shows are on at different times"
90% of my closest friends live within 50 miles of me. I suspect that's true for most people. So I don't think the time zones will be a problem.
A far greater concern is that many of my friends already watch TV on catch-up services, rather than watching it live.
Usually I put things in the microwave for a round number of seconds, e.g. 6 minutes. Will I just keep getting the same six-minute video each time? Also often I'll just press 6 minutes but then stop it after 5, thereby depriving me of the ending.
There shouldn't be such a thing as "content which is visible to others but not to the user whose account was used to spread it". If they could see what they'd done, they would delete it immediately and it wouldn't spread. So this is essentially a security hole.
Why not just look for people living lavish lifestyles with no obvious means of support?
The police could cross-reference HMRC's tax data against the DVLA's car ownership records. Look for males, aged under 35, with low/no income but who drive a "bling" car - Range Rovers, M-Sport BMWs, etc. They won't all be drug-dealers, but you'd certainly find a higher proportion than in the population at large.
Compare tough man Captain Kirk with soppy Jonathan Archer. Or consider Jean-Luc Picard & crew who spent too much time chatting about touchy-feely issues to counsellor Deanna Troi. Kirk would never have stood for it.
I like this plan. Oddly enough I think the old Kindle is a step in the right direction. The E Ink screen gives it a long battery life. The "Whispernet" 3G wireless sync means you could type up a document on the train, get to work, and have it automatically appear on your desktop, no fiddling around with memory cards or USB cables. All we need is a decent keyboard, and of course good software. There's no Angry Birds to distract you.
However I disagree with the laptop lid issue. When the keyboard is flat on a table, you need the screen to be tilted towards you. Otherwise you end up hunched forward like an old lady. Short of having a fully detachable keyboard and screen (think iPad + Bluetooth keyboard), the best way to implement this is with a hinge.
Focus your effort on the first page, but unless you're a fresh graduate you'll need more than one page just to provide a full list of what you've done. Remember, if there are any gaps in your employment which aren't explained, recruiters will just assume you've been in prison. Even if you were working for a crappy company which subsequently went bust and you're too ashamed to name them.
Download Opera Mini for iOS, go to Settings, Text Wrapping, On, and voilà your text will reflow nicely. I only use it occasionally for those sites which need it, but it makes reading them a pleasure.
This seems a bit silly. Mobile phones are most useful when you're away from home, not when you're just down the road in the pub. The village of East Garston is close to the M4, which would be a far more useful place to have coverage. For a salesman or technician driving on the motorway to visit a client, the value of a phone call is quite high. Conversely there is very little value in a nagging wife being able to phone her husband at the pub to tell him to come home.
The research was undertaken in Sweden. Sweden is a vast country with a much smaller population; even the densely populated areas are much less dense than England. In Liverpool, a 60 minute drive just takes you to Manchester or Preston, or one of the many in-fill towns and suburbs. In London, a 60 minute drive in rush hour takes you one quarter turn around the M25 (if you're lucky). In Sweden, a 60 minute drive takes you far out into the countryside.
But as the article points out, the reason is probably sample bias. Long-distance drivers are more likely to be high earners, and high earners live longer and healthier lives. Simples.
I can see the value in this. If you're working from home, being able to pick up the telephone or Skype isn't quite enough. Sometimes you want to see who is there (presence information), sometimes you want to be able to overhear group conversations; and in both those scenarios the other people in the office want to know you're listening/watching. For a boss, it's a way to check that your staff aren't playing Solitaire or making spreadsheets for the fantasy football league when they should be working.
Register
153 posts • joined Wednesday 30th June 2010 15:07 GMT
Page:
Re: 50k for a Java dev?
I thought London too, but the column header clearly says "Average UK salary".
Re: Can someone explain...
Your average recruitment agent doesn't know his R from his Oracle (or iOS or Java or Python). They just do keyword-matching on CVs as well as filtering out the liars and charlatans and cowboy coders. Can't blame them really: their job is mainly about having people skills and negotiating skills, not techie stuff.
No need to apologise - that's a great subtitle!
Dilbert covered this
We've seen the "social search" idea before:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-05-13/
Annoyances
"But you’ll need to re-connect by pressing a Wi-Fi button on top of the speaker every time you turn it on."
That's an inexcusable flaw in a product in this price bracket.
Catch-22
How did they know there was a strong public reaction, if they couldn't read it on Twitter?
Re: bit harsh innit
More than you'd get for an average GBH too, at least for a first offence.
This post has been deleted by a moderator
Staggering?
£1349 sounds reasonable, considering that the 27" iMac starts at £1,399 (admittedly with a Core i5 rather than an i3).
ClearType?
Microsoft have this technology called ClearType. I'm not sure what Apple's version is called. It's a technique for font-smoothing which relies on the fact that the R, G, and B pixels in a flat-panel display are always in a certain order. By applying light colour to the edge of text, they can make a font appear smoother and crisper.
If the PNGs were designed with ClearType in mind, then they would definitely look worse when upscaled to retina display.
You can see the font-smoothing in Windows by taking a screen capture, pasting it into e.g. Paint.net, then zooming in to the captured image. You'll see odd faint colours around the edges of letters.
Most-started programmes != most-watched programmes
I started watching an episode of Come Fly With Me on iPlayer once. I never made it to the end because it was so awful. Do their stats include people like me who thought "oh this looks promising" and started watching a show, but then never made it to the end? I'd quite like to see a list of top-ten shows that people actually managed to sit through.
Reinventing the wheel
Why is JavaScript being hacked and cajoled into all these contortions, when there are perfectly good languages out there such as Java or C# which support "sandboxes and module loaders, array comprehensions, binary data objects, built-in hash maps and sets, and super-method calls, block scoping, array comprehension, maps and proxy"? Wouldn't it be easier to just take an existing language and plug in the DOM-related functions?
Re: iMiev and friends?
Top speed of 80mph, so definitely not a quadricycle like the Reva G-Wiz. The Mitsubishi version costs around £28,990 (according to wikipedia) so it's not particularly competitive with some of the others mentioned here. Nevertheless it seems a strange omission. I think El Reg even wrote a review of them a while ago.
iMiev and friends?
Why no mention of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV / Peugeot iOn / Citroen C-Zero triplets? They are bonafide leccy cars, available to buy now (I think).
Turkeys
"Three quarters of forensic scientists were opposed to the closure of the Forensic Science Service".
In other news, three quarters of turkeys are opposed to Christmas. Farmers have been accused of failing to listen to the advice of CTAs (Chief Turkey Advisors).
No support for wideband speech (HD Voice)
This headset only supports Bluetooth Hands-Free Profile version 1.5, not the new version 1.6 which was ratified last year. That means it doesn't support HD Voice. Perhaps not a big deal today, with relatively few phones or networks supporting the standard; and not so important for a headset which will be mainly used for listening to music; but nonetheless a shame to omit.
"sheepsourced"
I nominate that word for QOTW!
Algorithmic pricing
That was my first thought too - some kind of algorithmic pricing system which automatically hikes the price when demand surges. I can see why neither Sony nor Apple would be keen to publicise the existence of such a system; but it makes financial sense.
HD Voice?
I can understand losing Orange SignalBoost when you change the ROM, but surely HD Voice is just a standard built-in phone feature?
Maybe the reason Mint is so popular is simply because the taskbar & start menu look and feel very much like Windows. (Whereas Unity doesn't.)
Gary
No reference to Gary McKinnon? Come on Reg, his story used to feature regularly on these pages.
I agree
Windows Server and the associated tools (which appear to include SQL Server) are probably their best engineered products ever. It'd be a shame to see them go downhill.
Ambilight is patented
That's why other manufacturers haven't copied it.
Microsoft's UK research centre is in Cambridge, a city notorious for its high housing costs. Google's UK headquarters is in London, and its largest engineering office in Europe is in Zurich - both very expensive cities. Across the pond, tech companies consistently choose to base themselves in Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, or NYC; not in Des Moines, Iowa.
Skilled staff want to live in interesting places. Rents would be cheaper in Manchester, but GCHQ would struggle to recruit there - look at the fuss the BBC's employees are making about relocating to Salford.
Laptop-on-the-train scenario?
I have a slightly different scenario on which I would appreciate some advice. Like Trevor, I loathe re-installing all my apps and I do need regular backups of my data. However I do a lot of work away from home, either on a train (where RDP is obviously unsuitable) or at a client site (where unfettered internet access is rare). My current setup is a laptop with Windows and apps installed on the bare metal. When I'm at home I use Macrium Reflect to take an image of the laptop's hard drive, which can be turned into a VM if necessary. Problems with this scenario arise if I want access to the computer when I don't have the laptop with me (but do have a tablet or friend or colleague's PC handy). What would be a good solution here?
In 2006 they predicted smart phones would become a large part of everyone's life (iPhone released 2007), and that 3D technologies would make a comeback in movies and gaming (Avatar released a couple of years ago; this year we saw the PlayStation 3D TV). In 2007 they predicted the use of smart phones to handle financial transactions.
They also predicted a 3D internet, doctors with super senses, buildings that fix themselves, and real time speech translation... so yeah. Not a terrible track record overall.
15% VAT
That'd be their low VAT rate then. I'm sure Luxembourg has some fine coders, but to misquote Mrs Merton: "What first attracted your business to the low-tax country of Luxembourg?"
And on the same day, we learn that a British further education college is outsourcing its energy-consuming data centre to Iceland, partly because electricity in Iceland costs half as much as in the UK and isn't going to rise further.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/02/iceland_data_centre/
Glossy
Readers should be made aware that this display has a glossy screen, not matte. It's a matter of personal preference, but if you intend to use the screen in an environment with awkward lighting then a glossy screen may not be suitable for you.
House prices
Our national obsession with property is supposed to save us? I thought that was what got us into this mess in the first place?
There'd have to be some kind of mechanism to choose whose notes you're looking at. I wouldn't want the whole world's comments - that'd be worse than reading the comments on here ;-)
I can see the value in reading other people's hand-scribbled margin notes. In non-fiction books, e.g. history or economics, you might want to read the notes of another expert reader. The problem would be how to pay for this - the expert reader doesn't get anything (other than the prestige), and the user base would be small. On a technical front, does E-ink have sufficient resolution for hand-written notes?
Games only? Or business apps too?
There must be a market for selling subscriptions to business apps for iOS too. Salesforce.com and friends. Maybe they don't want to fork over 30% for their premium services.
That's the trouble with being on a small network. If Vodafone fails one morning, the whole country knows about it by lunchtime and clients understand why they can't get through to you. If GiffGaff fails, nobody has heard about it, and you get angry voicemails demanding that you answer immediately.
Time zones are not a problem
"how does a group of friends get to watch the same programming at the same time [...] In different parts of the US different shows are on at different times"
90% of my closest friends live within 50 miles of me. I suspect that's true for most people. So I don't think the time zones will be a problem.
A far greater concern is that many of my friends already watch TV on catch-up services, rather than watching it live.
Dodgy link?
I'm a bit surprised at El Reg linking to a site like watchcartoononline.com. They're illegal, innit?
One obvious flaw
Usually I put things in the microwave for a round number of seconds, e.g. 6 minutes. Will I just keep getting the same six-minute video each time? Also often I'll just press 6 minutes but then stop it after 5, thereby depriving me of the ending.
Facebook design flaw
There shouldn't be such a thing as "content which is visible to others but not to the user whose account was used to spread it". If they could see what they'd done, they would delete it immediately and it wouldn't spread. So this is essentially a security hole.
FixMyStreet also has Android and iOS apps. Where do I claim my £1,000 ?
"lavish lifestyles from the proceeds of crime"
Why not just look for people living lavish lifestyles with no obvious means of support?
The police could cross-reference HMRC's tax data against the DVLA's car ownership records. Look for males, aged under 35, with low/no income but who drive a "bling" car - Range Rovers, M-Sport BMWs, etc. They won't all be drug-dealers, but you'd certainly find a higher proportion than in the population at large.
Same with Star Trek
Compare tough man Captain Kirk with soppy Jonathan Archer. Or consider Jean-Luc Picard & crew who spent too much time chatting about touchy-feely issues to counsellor Deanna Troi. Kirk would never have stood for it.
Kindle with a better keyboard
I like this plan. Oddly enough I think the old Kindle is a step in the right direction. The E Ink screen gives it a long battery life. The "Whispernet" 3G wireless sync means you could type up a document on the train, get to work, and have it automatically appear on your desktop, no fiddling around with memory cards or USB cables. All we need is a decent keyboard, and of course good software. There's no Angry Birds to distract you.
However I disagree with the laptop lid issue. When the keyboard is flat on a table, you need the screen to be tilted towards you. Otherwise you end up hunched forward like an old lady. Short of having a fully detachable keyboard and screen (think iPad + Bluetooth keyboard), the best way to implement this is with a hinge.
Best stuff on the first page, but more is fine
Focus your effort on the first page, but unless you're a fresh graduate you'll need more than one page just to provide a full list of what you've done. Remember, if there are any gaps in your employment which aren't explained, recruiters will just assume you've been in prison. Even if you were working for a crappy company which subsequently went bust and you're too ashamed to name them.
"In Southwark, 25% of DWP records could not be matched to properties in the borough."
Could it be massive benefit fraud? Seems plausible in Southwark....
Certainly not after reading this!
Test and treatment?
If one in five of us carries it, I'd like to get tested. Where and how? Is there an effective treatment for it?
Opera on iOS has Reflow
Download Opera Mini for iOS, go to Settings, Text Wrapping, On, and voilà your text will reflow nicely. I only use it occasionally for those sites which need it, but it makes reading them a pleasure.
This seems a bit silly. Mobile phones are most useful when you're away from home, not when you're just down the road in the pub. The village of East Garston is close to the M4, which would be a far more useful place to have coverage. For a salesman or technician driving on the motorway to visit a client, the value of a phone call is quite high. Conversely there is very little value in a nagging wife being able to phone her husband at the pub to tell him to come home.
Sweden != UK
The research was undertaken in Sweden. Sweden is a vast country with a much smaller population; even the densely populated areas are much less dense than England. In Liverpool, a 60 minute drive just takes you to Manchester or Preston, or one of the many in-fill towns and suburbs. In London, a 60 minute drive in rush hour takes you one quarter turn around the M25 (if you're lucky). In Sweden, a 60 minute drive takes you far out into the countryside.
But as the article points out, the reason is probably sample bias. Long-distance drivers are more likely to be high earners, and high earners live longer and healthier lives. Simples.
I can see the value in this. If you're working from home, being able to pick up the telephone or Skype isn't quite enough. Sometimes you want to see who is there (presence information), sometimes you want to be able to overhear group conversations; and in both those scenarios the other people in the office want to know you're listening/watching. For a boss, it's a way to check that your staff aren't playing Solitaire or making spreadsheets for the fantasy football league when they should be working.
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