What the hell are Xerox playing at persuing this patent case when they aren't making any money out of the tech anyway. You really would have thought that they would be able to offer Palm a reasonable offer to license the IP given that it is already installed in millions of devices worldwide. Whoever is running Xerox these days seems to be a moron. In fact this isn't really anything new is it: Xerox had world beating technology many times in the past and failed to capitalise on it through poor business decisions.
Richard Alston, in the article, claims that Australian broadband on a 'purchasing power' basis is better value than broadband in the UK. Ah, I see now. Actually it was Management Consultants A.T.Kearney who said that, but either way 10 minutes with google prooves it to be, as you say in excellent Aussie style, a crock of shit.
I am particularly confused as to how they have come to this conclusion when telstra advertises a 3GB per month connection at about £35, whereas in the UK an uncapped service at the same provision speed is £30. Taking into account purchasing power parity, the difference is much worse, as I imagine you have discovered when you bought your first pint in London. Apologies for being a patronising arse earlier.
You might have spotted the following subtle differences between Britain and Australia:
o Australia is slightly smaller than America, but has a population of 20 million.
o Britain is slightly smaller than Oregon and has a population of 60 million
o Britain has a large amount of transatlatic bandwidth installed, and is conveniently next door to continental Europe.
o Australia is fscking miles from anywhere.
Now taking the above facts into consideration perhaps you could think about why broadband access is more expensive in Australia than London? You might also consider that when I am at home 30 minutes ride from Charing Cross on good old Connex South East, I cannot get broad band. That's right: scarcely outside the M25 and broadband connections are simply not available.
Your username says it all really: you haven't got the first fucking clue, but the MBA gives you license to spout all kind of shit. Hope your job in the (health) insurance industry is really interesting.
So they went to the states and after three weeks were unable to leave as the saucer couldn't carry the extra weight. You've got to love the American approach to cookery: "We can't make it better, so let's just make it bigger!". Same with the cars I suppose:-).
Why do you think it's right for a seller of a physical product to tell you what you may or may not do with that product after the lawful sale?
They're not. They are stating the rules that govern whether they will sell you a service that they are providing. Much like a casino making the rules for players.
With my old Thinkpad, I once (forgive me...) had a near car accident while it was powered up. The damn thing flew across the car and smacked into the dash with nary a problem. It still works today.
Interesting you should say that. I worked for IBM a few years ago and on the way back from a conference wrote off my car (ford fiesta) with 6 thinkpad 600's in the boot. My car suffered a direct sideways impact on the side of the boot from another car (don't ask); and then spun round and hit a traffic light post on the other side of the boot. All six worked perfectly afterwards, and I contrinued to use one daily for the following 6 months. Thank fuck.
I still think they are the best laptop you can buy and am about to pick one up second hand.
It is totally, entirely, and completely the fault of poor security at the film distributor. Except that the film was pirated by someone taking a camcorder into the cinema and recording it. Which seems to me has FA to do with security of the distributor. Now go talk nonsense elsewhere.
If you have read the articel more carfully then you would have noticed that they are NOT using 20 times the computing power they currently have. They are using the computing power currently SPREAD over 20 SITES in a parallel effort. Which part don't you understand? The article says that the problem would take 3-6 years using one of the installations. Using 20 such installations can provide a maximum of 20 times the computational horsepower. Probably less depending on how parallel the problem is. So how are they planning on getting a 1000 times + speedup?
The site states that Canada has over 20 serious supercomputer installations. It also states that the problem being tackled would normally take 3-6 years. So how do they intend to solve the problem in less than one one-thousandth of the normal time by using only 20 times the computational power? Something here doesn't add up.
Terrorist action would be a significant problem. Take out one of these carriages and the fact that all the rest are close behind, travelling at 400-4000 mph, makes for a tempting target. The system is in no way robust enough.
eh? By that logic almost any modern transport system makes a tempting target. In fact almost anything famous makes a tempting target: Tower Bridge, Sears tower, Petronas towers, Golden Gate bridge, etc. Are you suggesting that absolutely no feat of engineering ever be attempted again because if it could be toppled bad things would happen? Terrorist action would be no more than the negligible problem it is at the moment. Whilst the rest of your post is considered and interesting, this is just nonsense.
Try a CFO or other management financial officer at a trading house, broker - dealer, investment bank . . . . . plenty of trading floors are peppered with, if not standardised on apps which run on and are customised for, or developed in house for Solaris.
Believe me, banks do not have Unix workstations on trading floors. The Database servers are Unix, and much of the back-end systems are Unix, but the screens in front of a trader are windows. Likewise the managers will have very good P&L breakdowns and exposure analytics, but they are just a report generated by some query. You don't need a SPARC to read a report. This is true in the least for Paribas, UBS, Deutche and JPMorgan.
As to the second point, I think you misunderstand what I was getting at. The original poster was asking why their marketing bumph was in MS proprietary formats. I answered that the poeple who look at marketing bumph will have a Windows machine on which to look at it. I wasn't talking about generic decision makers in a bank.
damn skippy, and if you look at EDS's contracts for the British government you'll see what a bunch of cowboys they are. But then EDS is a marketing organisation and IBM is an engineering organisation.
Two years ago, the idea of a free book --- a book whose author had intentionally made it free on the internet --- was largely unknown and untested. My arse it was largely unknown and untested. If that's your first sentence I'm not going to bother read the rest. BTW, Bruce Eckel has an interesting note about this at http://www.mindview.net/Etc/FAQ.html#BooksOnWeb
err, you didn't actually read the BBC article did you. Their fund manager was running a fund that invested in companies such as BAe or Phillip Morris. That's hardly an abuse by the elected representative. I mean, do you know which equities your pension fund is invested in?
Of one that was worth every penny. Lou Gerstner. Joined IBM as CEO in 1993 and left in March 02. When he joined, the common perception was that IBM was a dinosaur overdue for extinction. Sure it had world class engineers and a huge patent portfolio and masses of installed fortune 500 customers, but mainframes were on the way out. The bottom line was that IBM weren't making products that people wanted to buy at the right price, and it was costing a lot to make them.
now fast forward to 2002. IBM is profitable and leading the way once more. Gerstner essentially turned the company around, and in doing so generated billions of dollars for his shareholders. So despite the fact that I can't justify the need to earn tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each year, from the shareholder perspective he was worth every cent.
"Insider lending added thrust to the long surge in executive pay that has pushed the average major-company CEO's compensation from 45 times that of the average worker in the early 1970s to about 500 times worker pay today."
That may be true, but there's only one driving force behind the gigantic pay for America's CEOs: Good Old Fashioned Greed. If USians didn't feel that the only way to prove their status in society was to amass a huge pile of money then this wouldn't have happened. I mean you can't really argue that a personal fortune of more than, say, a hundred million is actually going to help you live a happier life.
why should buying a legal contract be any more difficult than buying a physical box? I went on holiday a few weeks ago and an hour before I left I realised that my travel insurance had expired. I purchased a travel insurance contract in about 15 minutes online with no difficulty. Essentially buying a piece of paper is no more of a "PITA" than buying anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
SMS Marketing System
are you the people that spam mobile phones?
British Museum? Hmm.. how many Library of Congresses is this? I just want to understand this analogy better
7
What the hell are Xerox playing at persuing this patent case when they aren't making any money out of the tech anyway. You really would have thought that they would be able to offer Palm a reasonable offer to license the IP given that it is already installed in millions of devices worldwide. Whoever is running Xerox these days seems to be a moron. In fact this isn't really anything new is it: Xerox had world beating technology many times in the past and failed to capitalise on it through poor business decisions.
Ah, I see now. Actually it was Management Consultants A.T.Kearney who said that, but either way 10 minutes with google prooves it to be, as you say in excellent Aussie style, a crock of shit.
I am particularly confused as to how they have come to this conclusion when telstra advertises a 3GB per month connection at about £35, whereas in the UK an uncapped service at the same provision speed is £30. Taking into account purchasing power parity, the difference is much worse, as I imagine you have discovered when you bought your first pint in London. Apologies for being a patronising arse earlier.
o Australia is slightly smaller than America, but has a population of 20 million.
o Britain is slightly smaller than Oregon and has a population of 60 million
o Britain has a large amount of transatlatic bandwidth installed, and is conveniently next door to continental Europe.
o Australia is fscking miles from anywhere.
Now taking the above facts into consideration perhaps you could think about why broadband access is more expensive in Australia than London? You might also consider that when I am at home 30 minutes ride from Charing Cross on good old Connex South East, I cannot get broad band. That's right: scarcely outside the M25 and broadband connections are simply not available.
Your username says it all really: you haven't got the first fucking clue, but the MBA gives you license to spout all kind of shit. Hope your job in the (health) insurance industry is really interesting.
So they went to the states and after three weeks were unable to leave as the saucer couldn't carry the extra weight. You've got to love the American approach to cookery: "We can't make it better, so let's just make it bigger!". Same with the cars I suppose :-).
Indeed, it is still trading.
Why do you think it's right for a seller of a physical product to tell you what you may or may not do with that product after the lawful sale?
They're not. They are stating the rules that govern whether they will sell you a service that they are providing. Much like a casino making the rules for players.
Interesting you should say that. I worked for IBM a few years ago and on the way back from a conference wrote off my car (ford fiesta) with 6 thinkpad 600's in the boot. My car suffered a direct sideways impact on the side of the boot from another car (don't ask); and then spun round and hit a traffic light post on the other side of the boot. All six worked perfectly afterwards, and I contrinued to use one daily for the following 6 months. Thank fuck.
I still think they are the best laptop you can buy and am about to pick one up second hand.
It is totally, entirely, and completely the fault of poor security at the film distributor.
Except that the film was pirated by someone taking a camcorder into the cinema and recording it. Which seems to me has FA to do with security of the distributor. Now go talk nonsense elsewhere.
So Newton's own copy is still in Trinity Library, and I'm sure there are plenty of other copies around. What's all the fuss about?
If you have read the articel more carfully then you would have noticed that they are NOT using 20 times the computing power they currently have. They are using the computing power currently SPREAD over 20 SITES in a parallel effort.
Which part don't you understand? The article says that the problem would take 3-6 years using one of the installations. Using 20 such installations can provide a maximum of 20 times the computational horsepower. Probably less depending on how parallel the problem is. So how are they planning on getting a 1000 times + speedup?
The site states that Canada has over 20 serious supercomputer installations. It also states that the problem being tackled would normally take 3-6 years. So how do they intend to solve the problem in less than one one-thousandth of the normal time by using only 20 times the computational power? Something here doesn't add up.
Terrorist action would be a significant problem. Take out one of these carriages and the fact that all the rest are close behind, travelling at 400-4000 mph, makes for a tempting target. The system is in no way robust enough.
eh? By that logic almost any modern transport system makes a tempting target. In fact almost anything famous makes a tempting target: Tower Bridge, Sears tower, Petronas towers, Golden Gate bridge, etc. Are you suggesting that absolutely no feat of engineering ever be attempted again because if it could be toppled bad things would happen? Terrorist action would be no more than the negligible problem it is at the moment. Whilst the rest of your post is considered and interesting, this is just nonsense.
Believe me, banks do not have Unix workstations on trading floors. The Database servers are Unix, and much of the back-end systems are Unix, but the screens in front of a trader are windows. Likewise the managers will have very good P&L breakdowns and exposure analytics, but they are just a report generated by some query. You don't need a SPARC to read a report. This is true in the least for Paribas, UBS, Deutche and JPMorgan.
As to the second point, I think you misunderstand what I was getting at. The original poster was asking why their marketing bumph was in MS proprietary formats. I answered that the poeple who look at marketing bumph will have a Windows machine on which to look at it. I wasn't talking about generic decision makers in a bank.
When did you last meet a CFO who ran a Sparc workstation? It's simple: the people who make the decisions use Windows and MS Office.
errr. I thought this beast had ~65k processors?
32*64*8*64 = 1048576.
damn skippy, and if you look at EDS's contracts for the British government you'll see what a bunch of cowboys they are. But then EDS is a marketing organisation and IBM is an engineering organisation.
Two years ago, the idea of a free book --- a book whose author had intentionally made it free on the internet --- was largely unknown and untested.
My arse it was largely unknown and untested. If that's your first sentence I'm not going to bother read the rest. BTW, Bruce Eckel has an interesting note about this at http://www.mindview.net/Etc/FAQ.html#BooksOnWeb
err, you didn't actually read the BBC article did you. Their fund manager was running a fund that invested in companies such as BAe or Phillip Morris. That's hardly an abuse by the elected representative. I mean, do you know which equities your pension fund is invested in?
Joined IBM as CEO in 1993 and left in March 02. When he joined, the common perception was that IBM was a dinosaur overdue for extinction. Sure it had world class engineers and a huge patent portfolio and masses of installed fortune 500 customers, but mainframes were on the way out. The bottom line was that IBM weren't making products that people wanted to buy at the right price, and it was costing a lot to make them.
now fast forward to 2002. IBM is profitable and leading the way once more. Gerstner essentially turned the company around, and in doing so generated billions of dollars for his shareholders. So despite the fact that I can't justify the need to earn tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each year, from the shareholder perspective he was worth every cent.
"Insider lending added thrust to the long surge in executive pay that has pushed the average major-company CEO's compensation from 45 times that of the average worker in the early 1970s to about 500 times worker pay today."
That may be true, but there's only one driving force behind the gigantic pay for America's CEOs: Good Old Fashioned Greed. If USians didn't feel that the only way to prove their status in society was to amass a huge pile of money then this wouldn't have happened. I mean you can't really argue that a personal fortune of more than, say, a hundred million is actually going to help you live a happier life.
why should buying a legal contract be any more difficult than buying a physical box? I went on holiday a few weeks ago and an hour before I left I realised that my travel insurance had expired. I purchased a travel insurance contract in about 15 minutes online with no difficulty. Essentially buying a piece of paper is no more of a "PITA" than buying anything else.
They certainly do not. An electron's mean speed down a wire is of the order of a few centimetres a second. It's the signal that moves much faster.