Posts by Micha Roon 48 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Sep 2006
Illegal actions even with good intent is still illegal and must be prosecuted. The resources of the states are spread thin enough to not put more strain on them by attacking arbitrary targets.
Super heroes must stay in comic books and movies. This is real life
the only data most anyone can produce to take up that much space are photos and videos and for the 4 of you who do audio recording, maybe those too.
I have north of 1TB of photos and videos on my computer and the unlimited cloud solution which spies on me. My issue is that I have to remove the local copies myself. That would have been a useful functionality.
I never tried but my guess is that if you install 32GB of apps on a phone it will get sluggish because a proportion of these apps will have background tasks and your device will grind to a halt.
Anyhow, does someone know of an app that synchronizes media files (photo, video, sound) to the cloud and deletes the least used ones when a threshold is reached?
It might be true that AWS, Azure, Google, IBM Bluemix are hard to beat on infrastructure. This does not mean it is impossible. For example Digitalocean is trying and has some success.
There are also a myriad of smaller players which offer great value for money or localized services.
But the real money is in ease of use. Most developers don't want to struggle with infrastructure and scaling and administration. They want a CLI wich offers a single command to deploy applications. The likes of Nodejitsu and heroku are the front end to the cloud servers of AWS and others. They hedge their bets by being able to deploy to all the clouds and if one gets more expensive, it might be shunned by users.
It would be interesting to know what part of revenue for the cloud providers comes from those Platform providers, from big enterprises and then from small companies.
maybe there is no way for artists to make money from selling copies of their work. They got peanuts from records (except the mega stars) and now they get peanuts from YouTube (except the mega stars)
Here's an idea: why not launch an open platform for music where the artist stay in control. If the platform is advertised at every concert or other venue, then it should gather traction.
But there is no way anyone would go into so much trouble. Especially artists :-)
By the author's logic, FB has not added any value as people do not spend less time at work (officially at least) and they simply switched from watching TV to using FB. Or could they be doing both at the same time? This would have added value as the consumer could waste twice as much time and still get enough sleep.
The gain in living standards is questionable as the pursuit of an addiction (and FB has been shown to be addictive) can not be qualified as elevated living standards.
M$ and the PRC had a dispute on how much the chinese central and local government would pay for the privilege to use Windows and Office. This is the rebate they "negotiated"
According to an earlier article (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/29/china_microsoft_monopoly_probe/) the government was to "spend millions" on licences. Now they have the money
you can not counter an allegation on the basis that the other person is a worse criminal than you are.
If you go and steal from the thief who stole from you, it is still illegal. As Apple was reminded when they tried to excuse their anti competitive behaviour in the book market with the argument: "Amazon is worse than we are"
as long as it's not in the fine print, it is fine.
there is a site in Switzerland qoqa.ch which has offers every week. One week they had a Porche Carrera for a very reasonable price. You could buy only one and you had to keep it for 12 months.
It was printed in normal sized letters on the offer and no one could have missed the message. I see nothing wrong with that.
This is the the second major OS disaster for Mr Ballmer and the board will not kick him out.
He missed the phone market and it is not looking like they are going to get in.
He lost the browser war (after Bill won it)
The image of the company is that of a multiple sclerosis sufferer
The share price has stayed flat for the last 10 years. It was outperformed by Apple of course but also IBM (3x) or Intel (0.5x)
Come on, kick that loser out before he spends all the cash and sinks the boat.
If the banks can sell you CDS contracts I see no reason that an insurance could not sell you some sort of contract against inflation.
Say, you calculate your costs with 2% inflation and it suddenly jumps to 6% in the second year: the insurance kicks in and pays the difference.
In what universe is this complicated? It increases the price a bit, that's all.
Apple software was better than the others for a long time but has started to deteriorate lately. My MacBook Pro (2011) started staying asleep when closing the lid. I have been a Mac user for 10 years now and have always boasted about the ability of my Mac to go to sleep and wake up seamlessly. Not anymore. I am contemplating a switch to Linux :-)
the OS for the I series is the I5OS, a previous incarnation was I4OS.
Isn't it a pity that the same people who build such beautiful hardware are control freaks of the worst kind?
We're actually lucky that IBM did not team up with Steve to build their business machines. We'd have even less competition and Linus would have fallen victim to an "accident".
it's just a big fingerprint magnet. And I don't like it when the manufacturer decides what applications are good form me.
But I am not the majority and Apple knows a lot about marketing and being cool. The cool factor is decisive.
I never understood people buying 400€ Jeans, but they do. Go figure
An organization usually looks like its leaders. In M$'s case: unwashed, unimaginative and arrogant.
But now that Billy has quit, there is a glimmer of hope that the business practices will change. It will take time. But maybe, just maybe, they will start to compete on quality instead of sheer brute force.
We would all gain from such a move and M$ more than the others. Because releasing quality software will give them a real advantage which they won't have to challenge in court all tht time.
I am astounded what the USA can do without having to suffer consequences:
- They wreck havoc in a foreign country? No problemo
- They don't abide by their own rules? No worries
- They brake contracts? Who cares
- They force their rotten food on others? That's the way to do it
I am really looking forward to a world where the US are weak and the petrol is sold in Euros and Yuans
But I'm sorry to having to admit that I believe there will be World war 3 before the USA let anyone beat them commercially.
since I've seen jeans sold for 300€, I better understand the people who buy a 600€ phone.
Surely you can use it longer and wash it more often than your jeans.
I'm shocked to learn that people are willing to put a week's worth of salary into their phone. My personal limit is two hours, but I'm overpaid.
But I find it even more shocking to pay three days salary for trousers...
Two million copies in 5 days is not so bad. And the price is not bad either. They made something close to 200 million $ in just 5 days. I'd be happy with that
Considering that iLife is not bundled with the OS that's an additional potential sale to anyone who has not bought a Mac.
Of course there is the drivers problem. But that could be solved with a "Certified for OS X" program. And anyway, Vista has a driver problem too.
I see mostly a missed opportunity here. But Stevey is a control freek and just as big a monopolist as Billy. Just a less successful one.
with 75 million $ in assets they have some cash to burn.
at current levels, they can easily make it 3 years without income, which is not bad at all.
in a company developing free software, I was surprised to see 300K worth of software. It can't be their's as it is freely available so it must be bought. isn't that a pity.
I'0m sure they use MS Office :-(
Now that the market told them they can take Vista and stuff it, they don't know what else to do. Luckily (for them) the coffers are still full and they have enough cash to survive the next 10 years. Unless they continue to pay 100 fold.
With web applications taking ever more space I wonder how MS is going to handle their market share loss.
I remember the early days of Windows networking. When Novell was still the dominant file server around. Novell was faster, more reliable, more secure and had options Microsoft did lack. We all know what happened next.
At least with the phone system even M$ will not be able to sell a system that works only with M$ hardware and software. Businesses around the world still need to communicate with all their customers.
It is easy to condemn Yahoo! and Google and others for dealing with China and giving in to government pressure. But it is cheap as they would be even more criticized if they failed to generate the revenue they do in China.
The Chinese government must not jail people for their opinions just as Chinese workers should not be forced to work 14 hours a day for 2$.
The only way to effectively criticize a commercial company is with a boycott. If Nike or Google has more to loose than to win from doing business with China, then they will stop doing it.
Those who buy Matel toys and wearing cheap clothes should think about their own involvement and support to a totalitarian regime which has its usefulness in the global economy.
The companies who make profits in China pay the taxes which are used to pay the officials filing for claims at Yahoo and Google. It's a circle really, we are all guilty.
A more effective way would be to stop selling weapons and military equipment to China. That would hurt mostly the Communist Party and maybe move them to adopt gentler ways with their people.
americans work longer hours because they are less productive than us europeans. that's why they don't have time to surf the web in search for fun
That's not from me but from the economist: (http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9612033)
Sorry for the Pomys among you, the brits are less productive than the yanks.
the first consequence will be to send the message that it is difficult to prove guilt and therefor encourage more file sharing. I don't believe this case will go til the bitter end.
but if it does and Thomas actually winns, she could then sue the RIAA for bulling her or whatever other reason she finds. I think her lawyer has an incentive to stay in the highlight.
this will be an interresting one to whatch. it might be one of those rare occasions where the plaintiff ends up paying the defendant to spare them a humiliation.
there is allready a class action against the RIAA and this could prove perfect precedence.
This goes a long way toward Keeping It Simply Simple.
Most people do not play for hours at a time and do not want to go through thick manuals to learn how to use 1'000 different weapons and in what situation each comes in handy.
The WII is a games console for having fun and that's what games ought to be about.
Well done Nintendo.
I wonder who will come up with the next brilliant idea in the games industry. Microsoft could have a first time experience (it would be their first idea ever), one never knows.
If Apple had released the Mac OS to PCs in the early 90s, we'd have more than one OS to choose from for our PCs.
If they had allowed competition when they tried it in the 90s, we'd have all sorts of Mac designs to choose from.
If they would sell the iPhone unlocked to third party software we'd have a beautyfull platform to develop mobile applications for.
My point is that if they had done what the market wants to buy, they'd be in a much better position right now. Even though they are doing great.
Competition is good. I take as proof the sorry state of the Windows OS.
And by the way, they should have built OS X on top of BeOS not BSD
How arrogant can you get? Apparently there is no limit to arrogance.
It strikes me that the US pretend to be the country of free trade and competition and at the same time they set up tarrifs on everything they can not compete on. Like sugar or steel or lumber.
The US is no serious contract partner and the world should just go ahead without them. Unfortunately this is not possible.
It is not only the Bush administration who can not be trusted as the canadian experienced when they had the dispute over softwood lumber. A US court decided the Canadian were right, but nothing changed.
The international law do only apply as long as it suits the American. Is that a good approach to law and order?
The real question is what can be done against someone like the US who is in a strong position? They might retaliate in so many ways that sentencing them to anything is difficult.
Micha Roon
This could give a big performance boost to any datawarehouse and reporting application.
I know of a couple guys who'd drool if they were told that it's no problem to drill down to posting levels in their accounting system. Today, with nearly 100 mio postings a day, this is not possible.
and by the way: no gives a shit about blackouts in a DW application. nothing's stored anyway.
the first iPhone is surrounded by lots of hype and advertisement and won't sell in big numbers. Especially if it is not subsidised.
This makes the 10% look OK because it won't be that much money for a lot of press coverage.
The second version will attract only a fraction of the hype and the negotiation position of Apple will change.
the target public for iPhone are the well-off fashion victims who pay half the iPhone's price for a pair of jeans. But the normal people will opt for a less prestigious phone.
I wonder what exchange rate Apple will use. The 600$ will surely become 600€ if not more.
cheers,
Micha Roon
This shows that where M$ is weak they are prepared to compromise and abide by the rules of other players who are stronger.
I don't see any pros to build my web sites on Windows but apparently quite a few people do.
The second thing this shows is that while everyone curses M$ for their monopolistic behavior, lots of people envy it and would like to be in their place.
As Bakunin recognized in his time: there is no such thing as a revolution. People merely switch from being oppressed to oppressing people.
But I'm glad to see that we have built a system that can cope with the worst cases of monopoly abuse. With enough incentive, yesterday's enemies become today's allies to fight their common foe. The role of the state is to provide a regulated fighting ground.
If you want to charge 50KWh (which is only 4 dozen) in 60 minutes you need 2'500V at 20 Amps
Now lets reduce that tho a couple minutes. Two minutes is a fine number but four will do. You take your pick: either you multiply the Voltage by 15 or the Amperage or you do a combination of both.
But 37'500 Volts at 20 Amps for 4 minutes to charge your battery will require a bit more than just heavy duty gear. This is industrial strength and the currently available power sockets at a garage can not cope with that. Even the 3 Phase 380 Volt ones.
Just for your info: 37'500 Volts, that's 100 380 Volt sockets and 300 phases. You might be able to find that kind of power in an aluminum factory.
Or is my math flawed.
All the signs point to "They've lost it": VISTA took for ever to complete and seems the worst resource hog in history and now Office 2007 breaks with the familiar UI.
The same thing happened when we moved from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. Some loved the new interface and some hated it, but we all use it now and would rather walk through fire than switch back.
But then, there was no real alternative at the time. Linux was in its infancy and difficult to install, Macs were even more expensive compared to PCs than today and OpenOffice had not seen the light.
It would be realy cool if M$ had a set back this time, it lost half its share price and was forced to compete on merits.
We then could speculate if they run in all direction in panic or if they regain focus and lift themselves out of the shit.
One thing is clear: they will not be able to bully their way this time around. Too many people and the DOJ are watching.
Micha Roon
That's it, the signs I've been waiting for. M$ has trouble: a huge number of people ask DELL (heaven forbid) to install Linux on their Laptops; they ship a new OS that's crap and they don't know how to fix it.
But really, it's just me fantasizing and doing wishful thinking because M$ did not get rich by developing great software and probably never will.
As long as people will buy PCs (and that's going to be a while) M$ has money. Because most people either never heard of Linux or have no clue how to install anything (except spyware of course) and M$ has a firm grip on those OEMs which will not ship anything else in the foreseeable future.
The savvy will switch and the clueless will stay. Which is the bigger group?
Micha
M$ has such a bad track record about so many things and made so many people angry, that it will be very challenging, to say the least, to convince people of its good will.
it reminds me of an article from IBM I read in the 90s. It was about the new version of Visual Age and in the middle of it one could read: "we don't want to lock people into our technology anymore"
that statement had me thinking that Big Blue had become a bit more humble and really a couple years later they published an Open Source IDE platform.
Maybe M$ will tread the same path.
As far s I'm concerned, the DB layer has become a commodity. When I develop I use MySQL to store my objects and when I deploy to Production I might use Oracle or B2 or whatever is around and supported by the ORM tool I happen to use.
And don't tell me I have to know what lies underneath because it's like telling me I need to know Ethernet to build a network. It's not true. All I need is a compatible network adapter and hub.
It's the same with the DB. As far as I'm concerned, all I need is a DB that is supported. The ORM Tool will do the rest.
Now I agree that if you want the solution to scale you need specialized knowledge and performance tuning does not come free either. Ever tried to build a network for 1000 users? I did not and I would not try because I lack the knowledge to build the infrastructure. But as far as I know network connectivity has become a commodity.
To make the point one more time:
it's like pizza. Making pizza for the family is easy. Try making pizza for a 1000 people crowd...
Cheers, Micha
I have visited some HP factories back in 1994 and the head of R&D told us about exactly that technology being in development and even showed an early prototype.
I always wondered why they didn't commercialize the thing and then figured that it was too much of a competition to their lazer printers.
Whatever the reason, it's always great to see something new even if the idea isn't.
Inkjet has the advantage of not needing a fuser to fix the dots on paper and therefor need a lot less energy to do the job.
I see there is an emerging market for metal clothing for protesters. As a simple sheet of aluminum paper stops things in my microwave from heating up, I believe the same effect can be achieved here.
The good old water canon still has a future. Be it only to spray the protesters before heating up the water and cook them up with the silent defender.
The crucial question being: how many tons of battery do you need to fire this baby for a minute?
In my opinion, the only people who really need mobile e-mail are the staffs who do not work at an office: the road warrior, the sales rep. And then, I don't know if the hand held type is the best solution. But that's not for me to decide.
Where I work, lots of project managers run around from meeting to meeting with their Blackberry like gizmos which vibrate so much that meetings have turned into earth quakes. They do not respond to the e-mails right away (Swiss people tend to be polite in meetings) but more often than not, they read them.
None of these people are hart surgeons waiting for a transplant availability message or any other information of vital importance and 99% of messages could easily wait a couple hours if not a couple days.
E-Mail is THE killer app of the internet. It is the most useful thing on my computer and allows us to stay informed. The down side is that with everything else, too much of a good thing just turns it bad.
Some of us get an e-mail a minute or more. Not spam, just people who send out information and think we ought to be informed.
But the Gizmos are mostly for status display anyway and not really for information delivery; it's for status. Getting a Blackbery like device shows that you are important. It's a cost effective way for a company to make employees (male ones at least) happy. It certainly costs less than paying business class
We are flooded with information all day long and most of us do not have the mental or technical or organizational tools to deal with the amount of e-mails, or SMS and phone calls. Making it too easy to communicate can create a lack of communication because people don't know (and have no way of finding out quickly) what is relevant and what is not. I started to filter all the e-mails where I am alone in the "To" field from the others. I have started asking people to use key words and to post to mailing lists. Unfortunately for me, my authority is limited and I still get lots of e-mails. Thank God for the "Off" button.
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