Posts by Dork Lard 21 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jun 2009
The premise of moving the Moon at all is bad enough, but to move it interstellar distances?
Why not ditch the re-imaginings and come up with something new? There are some great sci-fi writers around, why not put them to use.
My vote is for a series based on Larry Niven's "Tales of Known Space".
Surely most of the gains from remote metering will be had just from the metering/billing part of the program.
Unless the idea is to run the country with power cuts as a normal part of the service there should be little need to cut off anyone's energy supply; don't they currently need a court order of some kind to do this at the moment?
The solution has to be that Parliament acts to clearly legislate what remote metering can do (i.e. say they can't have the capability to remotely disconnect users). The national security aspects of this should be reason enough to act (or maybe the government likes the idea of a remote kill-switch - hypothermia is one way of cutting the pensions deficit).
"They have been described by The Wall Street Journal as a “national litigation powerhouse” and by the National Law Journal as “unafraid to venture into controversial” and “high risk” matters."
And by a future copy of the Enyclopeadia Galactica that fell through a timewarp as "A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came".
Auto-eroticists!
I think the point of this is to give Nokia something to compete with Android/iPhone and for Intel to have a route into mobile devices.
Android/iPhone clone perhaps, but if you can't (Apple), or don't want to (Google), join them you can't just pack up your business.
This at least looks like a positive step for those who want to compete in the smart phone market but don't want to contribute to Google's empire and by definition, Nokia can't make an iPhone.
It's always possible that with the cooperation of companies who know and control the hardware as well as Intel and Nokia, they will be able to create a smart phone OS that's better on power management than current offerings.
'Customers, meanwhile, could be "stranded without an alternative set of software" during the re-development work that Microsoft said would cause a "major public disruption".'
So what will people do?
1) OMG, the software I paid money for has a licensing issue! I must uninstall it immediately!
or
2) Microsoft has a legal problem; so what?
Ok, so Microsoft have some work to do or money to spend, but it's not the end of the Wor(l)d!
As the article suggests, this isn't entirely over. Kurt and his cronies may resurface like perpetual Dr Who villains and those who care about online privacy will have to be vigilant.
It would be nice to get this sorted out in the law though, so that any similar technologies are explicitly banned. We may not be able to rely on poor technical implementation and inept marketing to scupper the next attempt at DPI advertising.
BTW - Is that his real name and is he related to Gag Halfrunt? A present for him anyway...
Hopefully Google will concentrate on the OEM business; it's here that Linux needs to gain ground against Windows. For every Linux enthusiast that downloads and installs a Linux distribution there are hundreds of "normal" users that just buy a computer and use whatever is installed, usually Windows.
Whatever people might think about Google, they have a strong brand and Linux needs to get some muscle behind it to start winning the OEM deals that will bring it to a wider market.
This sounds like a step in the right direction; Google obviously have their own commercial agenda, but this needn't be incompatible with the rest of the open source movement. After all, Linux always needs development funding and Google has deep pockets to help with that.
From a commercial point of view, the Google brand is a good one to sell to OEMs and consumers, if it's slick and delivers the netbook experience that people want then there's no reason it couldn't get a good slice of the market.
Windows XP on netbooks is less than ideal (especially on limited SSD space) and IMO it's success there has more to do with Microsoft's OEM marketing and users familiarity with the Windows XP brand than any real advantage.
I have an Asus eee 901, bought with XP installed as it was on offer (thanks eBuyer), but I find myself using Presto more often these days.
There will never be a one-size-fits-all operating system, so if Google's marketing power can move the Linux case forward this can only be a good thing.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
