* Posts by Hawknic

27 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Sep 2007

97% of UK gets 'basic' 2Mbps broadband. 'Typical households' need 10Mbps – Ofcom

Hawknic

I'm with you skipper409

No mains gas or drainage, crap mobile coverage and bugger all internet connectivity. We aren't very rural either, only a mile from a reasonable size town (in SE England too, oh the deprivation!) So 97% sounds bloody high to me.

Personally I'd love to see universal access to even 2M, but I don't get 10M as a valid baseline. Ask people what they need and they'll generally say a bit more than they have right now even though they're doing fine.

We manage to stream non-HD and do all the normal stuff (including running a small business) with a half meg connection (was 300k before we moved to Sky from BT) though it is a ball-ache. 10 sounds like a luxury to me - great if you can get it, and fine as a future-proofing measure, but as a minimum today? The government investing in Gb connectivity seems a bit guff, way more than anyone who can't afford to pay for it would need.

Best way of improving something is to shift the bottom quartile upwards, not stretch the top.

Can someone direct me to the SNR settings that skipper talks about?

Activist investors DESTROY COMPANIES. Don't get me started on share dealings...

Hawknic

Your point is?

"It’s called selfishness and greed." - it's called capitalism. Po-tay-to, po-tar-to. I agree that short termism is bad. But as you said, people invest with their eyes open, or should at any rate. They choose based on dividend expectation or capital growth, the two don't usually coexist so the choice isn't that hard.

Execs are employed by the shareholders, so investors are right to shake things up if the execs are making a hash of it. This doesn't happen enough in the cosy boys' (and girls') club of boards, execs and institutional investors. Activist investors may be self-serving pains in the arse, but if the result is a better performing company with less bad managers making bad decisions but still raking in the bonus cash, then what is the problem? Company value is not the execs' to waste.

Capitalism is based on self-serving decisions balancing out, and the financial markets are one place where this should actually work. The problem isn't duration of investment, it is complacency of investors and uninformed speculation.

Some good comments but I really don't see your point.

Jony Ive: Flattered by rivals' designs? Nah, its 'theft'

Hawknic
Headmaster

Apple invented nothing?

I'm pretty sure that nothing failed to exist before Cupertino thought of it.

Range Rover to fit trendy new SUV with FRIKKIN' LASER HUDs

Hawknic
WTF?

military to commercial - unheard of?

" It borrows from military technology - which, until now, has been unheard of in the automotive industry,” says Murray Dietsch "

Isn't the whole 4x4 utility vehicle concept sort of pinched from the military? Along with SATNAV and a bunch of other stuff that I can't be arsed to research.

E-criminals nicked £205m from UK retailers last year

Hawknic
FAIL

The police are crap - one example

A former workmate had his card details used by a thief, a couple of years ago now.

The reason he knew this was because the goods bought were sent to the "bill to" rather than the "ship to" address.

So he had the name and address of the perp - who had taken a classified ad order from him two weeks previously, working at the local paper.

When notified, the police said it was a matter fro the card company. The card company weren't interested either. The newspaper said that they had susoected he wasn't kosher, but hadn't done anything about it, and to our knowledge didn't do anything afterwards either.

If a clear case like this doesn't make someone investigate what incentive will there ever be NOT to defraud?

Cabinet Office faces SME supplier backlash over Cloud Store

Hawknic
FAIL

Typical spin

Given that Pareto (or something close) generally applies to most statistics in business, then 75% of contracts going to SMEs could easily amount to about 20-25% of the value. Giving the percentage based on value would actually indicate the amount of business, Maude knows this very well and is just spinning the numbers to make himself look like he gives a toss.

Also: 75% of the contracts for a measly couple of Million, out of the billions spent by government? No wonder smaller companies not already on the gravy train (if they had a significant government contract they would no longer be SMEs) are heading for the door.

Office 2013 to eat own file-format dog food

Hawknic
WTF?

Twat alert

"Only if documents can be easily exchanged and reliably accessed down ton an ongoing basis will... the availability of knowledge down through the ages be assured,"

What a twat. We have lots of historical information in a wide variety of dead formats, languages, media blah blah blah from heiroglyphics carved on rocks to wordperfect files from the 80s. And believe it or not people can read them if they care enough.

Yes standardisation is a good thing, but the quote above is a bit cack. He'll be saying that anyone who disagrees is like Hitler next and the issue will be closed.

Forget 'climate convert' Muller: Here's the real warming blockbuster

Hawknic
Facepalm

Re: But isn't the fact

Not the point. The issue is stability of the readings over time, not how representative they are today. It could be that LHR weather is a good average for the UK (I have no idea), but when trying to see very slow trends it is important that everything except the measurement remains as constant as possible, or at least changes in surroundings, equipment etc. are also recorded and corrected for - some corrections will be done by regular calibration, others can't be calibrated out.

Regular updating of the metadata may make the low quality data usable over time, resulting in better results from a wider base.

Doh because this should have been started years ago, measuring a small number of variables when analysing a complex system is not good science.

iPhone 5 poised to trounce Android, devastate BlackBerry?

Hawknic
Paris Hilton

A massive swing to the... whatever

Bit puzzled by this one. According to the latest report from ComScore, with a slightly larger sample size of 30,000 (only in the US) Apple's market share is running at 15%+, or quite a long way from the 50% here.

The stats seem a bit flawed for this bit. Which makes the rest questionable too.

Paris because I don't get the whole fanboi/ fanboi-hater provoking journalism thing. Not really news, so a bit like celeb bullshit mag fodder.

For the comscore press release go here: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2012/7/comScore_Reports_May_2012_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+comscore+%28comScore+News%29

'Amazon can't do what we do': Twitter-miner's BYO data centre heresy

Hawknic
Go

In vs Out

Same question for anything, not just IT.

If you have stable demand that will use a full unit of resource, and you have the skills to manage it, and it is available, then it makes sense to bring it in-house - outsourcing means that you are paying someone margin after all, so it will never be cheaper unless there is some additional value being delivered above and beyond the commodity (which I suppose means that it isn't a commodity).

For unpredictable demand or resources that you can't use fully or manage or find, then you need more flexible (i.e. external) sources. As someone said already, that is one of the points of cloud, a great example because so many different skills and resources are needed to make a datacentre or any large scale IT work well.

The argument is ignored by many big co's and governments who have jumped on the "out is good" bandwagon, a decision often based on being too lazy or incompetent to manage what they have (or previously having been too lazy or incompetent to manage it, resulting in ridiculously wasteful practices and dysfunctional relationships with unions etc).

Nice to hear some sense from a company with ambition (though that communication with the market may be the point).

Puny US particle punisher finds strong evidence for God particle

Hawknic
Happy

why I read the Reg

These posts (most of them) sum up why I read the Reg. Once you get past the fanboi/ non-fanboi and similar bollocky arguments going on, there are some genuinely smart people out there.

Thanks for the education today, I learnt a lot from this one.

That was actually quite sincere. Unusually so.

Facebook phone app attempts to seize ALL YOUR MAIL

Hawknic
Big Brother

Just delete your account if you can't delete the app

Just did this on my Experia, worked fine. You could probably just turn off the synch in "settings > accounts and synch" (same place you can delete the account by the way), but I never use the app anyway so just starved it as an earlier poster recommended.

Net publishing happens in the server AND the eyeball, says EU Bot

Hawknic
FAIL

Re: Translation:

And what's wrong with that?

The fact that the stuff is digital is irrelevant. If I sell a substance via mail order, and send it to or through a country where it isn't legal, then I shouldn't be surprised if I run the risk of getting into trouble even if I am located somewhere else.

In the same way, if I approporiate someone else's digital property and sell it to someone in a foreign country, it shouldn't be a surprise that either country's legal rules would apply when the owner wants to defend themselves. The alleged wrongdoers here aren't saying they didn't do anything wrong, they're arguing about jurisdictions, which in my mind is trying to exploit uncertainty in the legal system, so this judgement actually makes it clearer by broadening the definitions (if that makes sense).

I know that digital ownership is theft to a lot of people, but that is a different question. The only question here is "can I commit a crime in the UK from a base in Austria?" and the answer is clearly "yes".

RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally

Hawknic

Re: Single sourced

Keep your expat account for a couple of months until you have proof of residence if you're moving back, otherwise just use your offshore account as normal. Not difficult at all. I used to transfer from account to account, currencies etc. without problems. Maybe you just chose the wrong bank (I was with Lloyds offshore, who are crap on many levels but clearly not this one) or the wrong country to move to.

Pretty sure that a lot of the bureaugracy and process involved with money movements (which only apply to transfers of more than a few thousand, so not relevant for normal expenditure) are international rules not just the UK, and were in response to actual money laundering ignored by the banking system (see recent stories realting to HSBC and Nigerian dictators), so don't let your bank give someone else the blame.

Hawknic
Thumb Up

good article

spot on

Assange loses appeal against extradition to Sweden

Hawknic
FAIL

Quote: "based on both UK and EU law saying there's not enough to extradite him on."

But didn't the ruling today say he could be extradited? And wasn't it made by the UK's highest court? How can that mean that UK law says that there isn't enough to extradite?

This thread is a logic free zone.

Martha Lane Fox hits caps lock, yells at small biz websites

Hawknic
WTF?

You have to be there! YOU DO!

Most small businesses are sole traders. Many of these are tradespeople/ professionals or serve a small local market (lots in agriculture). Another slice just want to be their own boss and don't necessarily care about growth very much.

For the rest, help is there, cheaply, for anyone who wants to do business online (and there's always Ebay, Amazon etc for small retailers who are still learning how to deal with deliveries etc) so why do we need to subsidise it and have a bunch of government types (who are so good at tech stuff) tell us about it?

Amount of ice in Bering Sea reaches all-time record

Hawknic
FAIL

Oh dear, death by statistics

So on average we're the same re ice cover. Bad news for polar bears, good news for penguins! Averagely OK doesn't mean OK on average.

Don't quite get the logic here. Overall Arctic ice is down, but in one place it's up, which means that the doomsayers were full of it? Kind of like me turning on my shower and denying a drought because there's plenty of water in my bathromm isn't it?

Americans resort to padlocking their dumb meters

Hawknic
Headmaster

Re religion causes stupidity

I think the causal link is more: rational thought = absence of religion rather than religion = absence of rational thought. Same correlation applies but you can't blame the pope for rednecks.

HMRC cuts IT spending in half in 2 years

Hawknic
Thumb Up

not just public sector

A lot of public sector bashing here. Justified, but I can think of a number of ballsed up private sector IT projects as well. They just don't get publicised. IT strategy 101 it may be, but better is still better so they deserve a little credit.

Google's Facebook: It rocks, but who cares?

Hawknic
WTF?

First one wins?

"Truth is, first to market wins, not necessarily the best."

Yeah, because facebook was the first social site. Hmmm. Google was also the first search engine as well. And Microsoft were the first folks to build an OS.

Cack.

UK tech retailers are rubbish

Hawknic
Go

Surprised?

A little by Richer Sounds, I must have had an unusual good trip there. But the rest, maybe the good experiences were inflated due to PC World not being on the list - would drop the average even further.

Assange 'threatened to sue' Grauniad over leak of WikiLeak

Hawknic
Thumb Up

Love this story

Maybe it's all double-irony from the Assange boy, an oh-so-subtle way of reminding us that everyone is a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to freedom of speech or privacy. But somehow I doubt it, he's probably just a saddo.

Shell pulls out of Thames Estuary mega-windfarm

Hawknic

0.1% - I'd take it

0.1% is a crappy little percentage, but that's the trouble with percentages. If someone offered you 0.1% of the UK GDP as a wage, you'd sure as hell take it!

According to AEP there are 2,600 power stations in the UK (admittedly many are very small), so producing 1/1,000th isn't that bad - better than all the CCGT plants I could find, and quite a few of the Nuclear facilities as well. If it can break even economically, when the alternative is more profit but greater damage, then aren't we all better off?

Brown opts for morality over science on 'lethal skunk'

Hawknic
Thumb Up

Re: ffs

Spot on

UK airports to trial face scan passport checks

Hawknic
Flame

Re: Learn from experience!

Iris is useless, and slower than normal passport control?

B*lls. I've been using it for ages at various airports and it's always worked fine - the only glitch I've had is that I sometimes have to bend over. As noone else seems to use it it means you can bypass all of the queues - but of course this advantage would be lost if everyone had to use it.

The only reason passport control (without the queues) is so quick is because there is so little checking of UK passports happening, just a cursory glance at the picture. If we can take the same or a little more time to have a true identity check then surely that's a good thing.

PC superstore suffers breakdown over Linux notebook

Hawknic

One more anecdote... in case you needed any more

I use PC world fairly frequently (apologies to the "why use it if you know what you're doing" crowd, but like most people I go for convenience, especially when I can serve myself and not rely on help). I've found the people there mixed to be honest, with the most unliterate being a senior person I asked a question a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway, last time I was there I stood behind an irate customer having a rant. He'd been sold a modem or router, having been told that it would work p'n'p with his new Vista machine (don't get me started on Vista!). Suffice to say it didn't work as planned.

The Tech advice given - go back home and download the Vista drivers from the internet! Need I say more?

PS lots of opinions above re what the guy is doing wrong (re-install Wndows with a hardware issue? call Acer or PCW customer service rather than go to the shop?) some of which seem to miss the point. If you buy something and it breaks, you shouldn't have to go anywhere but where you bought it for a repair or return, and if you've used it in a reasonable way (i.e.a way that wouldn't surprise a normal user) and it fails, it doesn't work as promised, no question. Why accept poor behaviour from these people by going elsewhere or adding work for yourself. The law is seldom on our side, but in this case it is, and we shouldn't forget that fact.