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User: hughk

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Comments · 2,568

  1. Re:Essentials on Non-Technical Managers in a Technical Company? · · Score: 1

    The analogy which works for umbrellas is that you really don't want it to be so bad quality that it doesn't last 100 yards down the road.

  2. Re:Know your knife laws on Best Leatherman-Style Multitool? · · Score: 1
    Good point about air-travel. I used to always carry a Swiss-Army knife with me (more compact), but can't unless I'm checking now.

    OTOH, ThinkGeek has this little toy. I guess that will get through most security checks on a bunch of keys.

  3. Re:Security Directive 96-05 on John Gilmore's Search for the Mandatory ID Law · · Score: 1

    It is probably from a airline database. Many of them seem to store stuff like this in ALL CAPS due to nostalgia for the teleprinter age.

  4. The Theory.... on FCC to Fine Curses More Than Nuke Violations · · Score: 1

    Most people murder because they have an immediate an extremely personal problem. Once they murder they remove the problem and they don't do it again. There are excetions such as Dr. Shipman. Thieves tend to do so again and again.

  5. Not even kittens..... on FCC to Fine Curses More Than Nuke Violations · · Score: 1

    in the case concerned, it wasn't even going to cause the premature expiration of any kittens.

  6. Re:Well.. on Bank Of America Loses 1.2 Million Customer Records · · Score: 1

    I'm in a ski club run under the BSB although it has a very strong non-id card holder contingent. We have a Euro account there as well as USD. Most people pay for the trips in Euros as the costs are in Euros (or CHF). The dollar is supported of course but discouraed as we have to offer a bad exchange rate so we don't get caught out.

  7. Re:Well.. on Bank Of America Loses 1.2 Million Customer Records · · Score: 1
    I whave heard much the same from others. The standard of service is much less than other retail banks, even local banks. Unfortunately if you want to bank in dollars, you have to deal with the Community bank.

    A German bnk would happily let you bank dollars, but you pay a lot for the handling of dollar cash.

  8. Re:lords and ladies on Fan Group Creates Full-Length Discworld Movie · · Score: 1

    Going Postal was released autumn last year. Terry has been doing two books a year of late but one of those at the moment is for kids. There should be a kids book in the spring followed by the next adult book in the autumn.

  9. Re:Banks do this.... on Authenticity of International Help Organizations? · · Score: 1

    This is why the banks also do a press search before allowing them to open accounts. I would advise donors to do the same.

  10. Banks do this.... on Authenticity of International Help Organizations? · · Score: 2, Informative
    all the time because Charities are regarded as high-risk from the point of view of anti-money-laundering. Non-Profit Organisations are considered a little dodgy because the audit reuirements are usually looser than corporations.

    A charity must be registered somewhere. The registrar should have a website with a list of real registered charities. That should be checked.

    A search on the net is also useful to pull out any press records, both good and bad about them. Banks do this too, to ascertain whether the charity is genuine or not.

  11. Re:That's hardly fair on Software Patents Affecting Futures Exchanges · · Score: 1

    This is why the use of Mercenaries, especially the Swiss ones, was heavily regulated about three hundred years ago. the only legal Swiss Mercenaries left are the ones defending the Pope.

  12. Re:TT has problems.... on Software Patents Affecting Futures Exchanges · · Score: 1
    Actually, there is, but it relies on somebody arguing the case in court. May the guys with the most money win!!!

    Many markets don't actually have that much money themselves. The cash is in the infrastructure. Euronext has some money and so do Deutsche Boerse (50% owner of Eurex).

  13. Re:I Use TT on Software Patents Affecting Futures Exchanges · · Score: 2, Interesting
    What Eurex originally did was to provide the Futures Market Depth down the screen. The screen wasn't dynamic but people would just scrape the screen and refresh it and then distribute the results.

    As for speed, that was variable. Many packets in former times would just be lost and nobody would be wiser. When it worked it was fast, but hey, no error checking! Someone explained that it was like being a dwarf in the T-bills pit in Chicago. You could hollar but nobody could hear you.

    All the exchanges provide APIs directly. Some don't even give any trading interface although Eurex does and it is fairly good too.

    Incidently, if you want the best speed on a market like Eurex, be close to the exchange. It costs a lot of time to go under the pond.

  14. Re:Open letter.. on Software Patents Affecting Futures Exchanges · · Score: 3, Interesting
    These are the guys who decided that it was pretty cool idea just to multicast everything. In the early days they never bothered with any error correction so they were dropping packets all over the place. The customers were never told of this, of course!

    The problem with support always existed, even back to the time of VMS. They needed to keep all platforms on as narrow a release and patch range as possible.

  15. The CTO is ex Andersen on Software Patents Affecting Futures Exchanges · · Score: 1

    The CTO, Gary Kemp is ex-Andersen Colsulting (he worked briefly at Eurex before leaving to make his own company). In those days the consulting and accounting arms were quite close.

  16. TT has problems.... on Software Patents Affecting Futures Exchanges · · Score: 4, Informative
    The market for their product, Xtrader has become much more static in recent years as the growth of electronic markets has slowed and margins have been considerably reduced by competition They need something else to demonstrate the growth their funders demand.

    The patent, is on something fairly obvious given any knowledge of market trading called a "Market Depth" display, which shows orders that are not just at the top of the market, but those at slightly worse prices. The ability to access the Market Depth is actually a function of the exchange itself. All TT are doing is presenting a horizontal representation of the bid-offer spread depths.

    The main market is probably Eurex which is German based. US customers may be affected but not EU based ones.

  17. Re:Google definitely would buy into this... on Translation Software That Learns by Reading · · Score: 1

    All you have to do is to hit something like The EU's web portal. EVen back then you had an extensive library of regulations on just about anything in a bunch of languages up on the web. The translations are supposed to be good quality (EU translators aren't badly paid).

  18. Re:Hum... translate what politics say on Translation Software That Learns by Reading · · Score: 1

    An even more serious business in the EU with something like 24 countries now. They have used machine assisted translation for ages and have sponsored several projects in that area, but it still needs humans to polish the product.

  19. Re:WiFi hotspots and payment on The Return of Free Internet · · Score: 1
    If you are in the City of London, try Corney & Barrow. A free-WiFi winebar. Almost everyone else(especially the coffee shops) charge $$$ for something that costs them very little.

    The joke is that WiFi connections are so expensive that 3G is actually cheaper in most circumstances.

  20. Re:Terry pratchett quite on London Nuke Plant Loses 30 Kilos of Plutonium · · Score: 1

    If you look at Pterry's bio, he used to be a PR officer at a nuclear power station. Along came three-mile island. I guess this is when he decided to start writing fiction.

  21. Your stats on Green Energy Now, And On The Tide · · Score: 1

    For fall efficiency, direct sunlight is vital. However, there is plenty of energy that can be obtained on a bright but cloudy day. Yes, for electricity it may be a problem but not for heat. Believe it or not, solar power has been used for heating even in the UK, let alone Germany.

  22. Don't screw the analysts on HP CEO Carly Fiorina to Step Down · · Score: 1

    Wall Street doesn't understand a lot about high tech. However, when they took the calculators that the analysts were using to figure NPVs and so on, they started wondering what she was doing.

  23. Hello? on HP CEO Carly Fiorina to Step Down · · Score: 1

    The financial calculator is a nice toy when you work in the industry. Your computer is busy doing other things, your screens (up to 4) are full, you don't want to run another app for a standard calculation. A calculator is great for this.

  24. Re:Ding dong, the witch is gone! on HP CEO Carly Fiorina to Step Down · · Score: 1
    The problem was HP was a bit too big and covered too much areas, and had too many competitors. They couldn't sell spectrum analyzers to places like Dell, IBM, Compaq, because they had a PC line. And who buys from the competitors.
    Many, many years ago I worked as a software engineer but close to hardware at Digital. We had HP stuff there (along with Tektronix, etc). At the time they made some lovely logic and network analyzers. Did it bother us that they had a computer division as well? Not at all.

    If anything, the instrument division helped get their Unix boxes into labs.

  25. Re:In addition on HP CEO Carly Fiorina to Step Down · · Score: 1

    Olsen was frankly crap at marketing (as were most of Digital), but the engineering was first class. What Carly did to the remains of Digital was criminal. Digital and HP had a certain respect for each other at the engineering level, but afterwards, Digital had an important absence from its product line - no inkjet printers!!!! Carly doesn't understand this business.