I see the original Sony Walkman as a TMA 5kg mobile phone. I see the ipod as a resonably uptodate GPRS phone, like the Motorola Razr.
Yes, the ipod is one of the most advanced media players around at the moment, but it isn't going to stay that way forever. The thing that replaces it may well come from Apple, just like the first mobile I saw was a Motorola, and they are still in the market.
We had analogue cell phones which weighed about 5kg, had a battery life of about 10 minutes and worked within a 1km radius of large city centres, but only outside, away from high buildings. Cell phones have moved on since then.
We had portable music players, and we still have them. They used to store their music on strips of plastic coated in rust, and could hold about 45 minutes of music. Portable music players likewise have moved on since then.
I work as an accountant. At work we have software to prepare accounts, calculate and file tax returns and so on, as well as the usual things like word processing, spreadsheets, email and a web browser.
You can't get accounts software that would do what we need on linux, and you can't get tax software at all for linux, so we have to use windows. The software suppliers don't supply software for linux because it would mean additional cost and very little extra revenue, because very few of their customers use linux. Their customers don't use linux because they can't get they software they need for it.
This is the first mover advantage TFA is talking about. In the IT industry, and probably in most industries, the winner is not always the best, but the first company to put out something that is good enough to a large enough share of the market.
Of course, there are areas where linux is ahead of microsoft, mainly in some parts of the server and embedded markets, so I don't see for example IIS replacing Apache or MS DNS server replacing BIND.
Well the problem in England is that moving the trial several hundred miles away from London, Birmingham, Leicester etc where these crimes are alleged to have been planned would take you out of England and into a different country with a different legal system, a different court system, and very probably a different language, so that isn't an option here. The measures taken to prevent this alleged attack taking place affected everyone in Britain, particularly those in the remote parts of the countries of Britain which would be furthest away from where it is alleged to have taken place.
Human rights is not an absolute thing, it is a balance between different conflicting rights. You have to balance the right to free speech with the right to a fair trial. Requiring newspapers to wait until the trial is over before reporting so that the suspects can get a fair trial is in my opinion a reasonable balance between the two rights.
They say five times the output of a mobile phone battery for the same size.
Probably what they have discovered is a way of converting the energy from walking around the place into something that can power your phone. There are already proven inventions that let you use that to power your watch, so it may be possible.
I certainly don't believe it involves "free" energy. I think they have just reinvented the electric generator.
Some of the water goes in producing the Hydro bit of the Hydrocarbons. That will get released when you burn them, and eventually rain back down on us, somewhere. Not necessarily the same place as the crop was grown.
You forget a few things. At least two formerly large oil producing countries, Britain and Indonesia, are now net importers of oil.
Secondly, the economic growth in China and India is creating huge demand for oil and other resources. China is building a new power station every week, and the citizens are using their new found wealth to buy things like cars.
China has 20 times as many people as Britain, but at the moment, the economy is only slightly bigger, so there is still plenty of growth potential left.
If the batteries were standardised, you could swap them out for freshly recharged ones at the eletricity station. Also, the several hour charge is through a 13A plug at home. An electricity station set up to charge cars could use much higher Ampage and Voltage to charge them.
Actually, the tax on biodiesel is a lot less than the tax on the stuff that comes out oil wells, about 26p + Vat on selling price per litre. The problem is that the tax free cost of vegatable oil is a lot higher. Bio diesel works out about 5p per litre cheaper at the pumps about 95p v £1 for non-bio fuel, but you get about 25% less miles for each litre you buy, so it still works out more expensive.
But as battery technology improves, you could charge up your car with electricity from the nuclear plant. I believe you can get a range of about 200 miles now from the latest offerings, which is getting to be competitive with the 400 miles or so range I get from a tank of petrol in my car.
But he didn't have any dangerous articles in his possession, such as colgate toothpaste or evian mineral water, so there is no need to worry. There were no passengers at risk.
The company sold shares to the directors for less than it should have done. In other words the company ended up with less money in the bank as a result of the sale.
The directors then sold them on the market for the market price, and made a larger profit than they should have done on the sale.
Well the point is that they were documented, and the documentation was allegedly falsified.
Valuing the options is pretty simple. You phone your stockbroker to get the current share price, or look it up online, and that is the price of the options.
What they are suggesting actually happened is that they looked at the history of the share price movements, picked when it was lowest, and backdated the documentation to that date.
My phone, from O2, can be reflashed. I have reflashed it, with updates supplied by O2. Modded ROM images from other sources are available, but I haven't tried them.
My phone can run Skype. Only problem is that the battery life on wifi is a lot lower than GSM, and wifi in many cases costs more per minute than GSM calls anyway.
And in Britain for longer than that. As far as I'm aware, the first Co-op was founded near Manchester about 150 years ago to sell high quality food at affordable prices to the local working population. It is still around today - http://www.co-op.co.uk/ , though not as big now as it was about 40 years ago.
There are cases where it is a good idea to control what software runs on your hardware. Your heart machine is one good example.
However, that doesn't mean that control should be exercised by the manufacturer. In this case, I think the keys should be controlled either by a suitably senior official at the hospital or the local health regulator.
What happens if the manufacturer goes out of business. Your expensive heart machine is now a paper weight.
What happens if the manufacturer decides to drastically increase support fees. You don't have the choice of getting support for the machine from other approved suppliers.
I think the new provisions get the balance just right.
The heart machine presumably is password controlled so that the hospital can ensure that only suitably qualified doctors can operate it. Likewise, it can be controlled so that the hospital can ensure that only suitably tested code can run on it.
I see the original Sony Walkman as a TMA 5kg mobile phone. I see the ipod as a resonably uptodate GPRS phone, like the Motorola Razr.
Yes, the ipod is one of the most advanced media players around at the moment, but it isn't going to stay that way forever. The thing that replaces it may well come from Apple, just like the first mobile I saw was a Motorola, and they are still in the market.
We had analogue cell phones which weighed about 5kg, had a battery life of about 10 minutes and worked within a 1km radius of large city centres, but only outside, away from high buildings. Cell phones have moved on since then.
We had portable music players, and we still have them. They used to store their music on strips of plastic coated in rust, and could hold about 45 minutes of music. Portable music players likewise have moved on since then.
I work as an accountant. At work we have software to prepare accounts, calculate and file tax returns and so on, as well as the usual things like word processing, spreadsheets, email and a web browser.
You can't get accounts software that would do what we need on linux, and you can't get tax software at all for linux, so we have to use windows. The software suppliers don't supply software for linux because it would mean additional cost and very little extra revenue, because very few of their customers use linux. Their customers don't use linux because they can't get they software they need for it.
This is the first mover advantage TFA is talking about. In the IT industry, and probably in most industries, the winner is not always the best, but the first company to put out something that is good enough to a large enough share of the market.
Of course, there are areas where linux is ahead of microsoft, mainly in some parts of the server and embedded markets, so I don't see for example IIS replacing Apache or MS DNS server replacing BIND.
You have to find them first. And that can be pretty difficult.
Because in a hand count of paper ballots, there will be a representative of each candidate present to monitor the count.
Which means you have 10x the amount of people available to count them. So it makes no real difference.
Well the problem in England is that moving the trial several hundred miles away from London, Birmingham, Leicester etc where these crimes are alleged to have been planned would take you out of England and into a different country with a different legal system, a different court system, and very probably a different language, so that isn't an option here. The measures taken to prevent this alleged attack taking place affected everyone in Britain, particularly those in the remote parts of the countries of Britain which would be furthest away from where it is alleged to have taken place.
Human rights is not an absolute thing, it is a balance between different conflicting rights. You have to balance the right to free speech with the right to a fair trial. Requiring newspapers to wait until the trial is over before reporting so that the suspects can get a fair trial is in my opinion a reasonable balance between the two rights.
They say five times the output of a mobile phone battery for the same size.
Probably what they have discovered is a way of converting the energy from walking around the place into something that can power your phone. There are already proven inventions that let you use that to power your watch, so it may be possible.
I certainly don't believe it involves "free" energy. I think they have just reinvented the electric generator.
Some of the water goes in producing the Hydro bit of the Hydrocarbons. That will get released when you burn them, and eventually rain back down on us, somewhere. Not necessarily the same place as the crop was grown.
You forget a few things. At least two formerly large oil producing countries, Britain and Indonesia, are now net importers of oil.
Secondly, the economic growth in China and India is creating huge demand for oil and other resources. China is building a new power station every week, and the citizens are using their new found wealth to buy things like cars.
China has 20 times as many people as Britain, but at the moment, the economy is only slightly bigger, so there is still plenty of growth potential left.
If the batteries were standardised, you could swap them out for freshly recharged ones at the eletricity station. Also, the several hour charge is through a 13A plug at home. An electricity station set up to charge cars could use much higher Ampage and Voltage to charge them.
Actually, the tax on biodiesel is a lot less than the tax on the stuff that comes out oil wells, about 26p + Vat on selling price per litre. The problem is that the tax free cost of vegatable oil is a lot higher. Bio diesel works out about 5p per litre cheaper at the pumps about 95p v £1 for non-bio fuel, but you get about 25% less miles for each litre you buy, so it still works out more expensive.
But as battery technology improves, you could charge up your car with electricity from the nuclear plant. I believe you can get a range of about 200 miles now from the latest offerings, which is getting to be competitive with the 400 miles or so range I get from a tank of petrol in my car.
But he didn't have any dangerous articles in his possession, such as colgate toothpaste or evian mineral water, so there is no need to worry. There were no passengers at risk.
Fine. That sounds like a reasonable basis for valuating unquoted shares. It isn't going to change over four days.
The company sold shares to the directors for less than it should have done. In other words the company ended up with less money in the bank as a result of the sale.
The directors then sold them on the market for the market price, and made a larger profit than they should have done on the sale.
Well the point is that they were documented, and the documentation was allegedly falsified.
Valuing the options is pretty simple. You phone your stockbroker to get the current share price, or look it up online, and that is the price of the options.
What they are suggesting actually happened is that they looked at the history of the share price movements, picked when it was lowest, and backdated the documentation to that date.
Pre IPO shares won't really have a market value, and certainly not a quoted one, so you are probably OK.
My phone, from O2, can be reflashed. I have reflashed it, with updates supplied by O2. Modded ROM images from other sources are available, but I haven't tried them.
It means you have A4 paper in your printer, and you have sent a job which requires Letter sized paper.
Letter is some weird paper size that the Americans use. MS Word annoyingly defaults to it until you go into the page settings and change it.
My phone can run Skype. Only problem is that the battery life on wifi is a lot lower than GSM, and wifi in many cases costs more per minute than GSM calls anyway.
And in Britain for longer than that. As far as I'm aware, the first Co-op was founded near Manchester about 150 years ago to sell high quality food at affordable prices to the local working population. It is still around today - http://www.co-op.co.uk/ , though not as big now as it was about 40 years ago.
You could read your email using the supplied Outlook Express if you were really desparate. Otherwise, Mozilla Thunderbird is free.
Nevertheless, the lack of decent email clients for windows is a big problem.
There are cases where it is a good idea to control what software runs on your hardware. Your heart machine is one good example.
However, that doesn't mean that control should be exercised by the manufacturer. In this case, I think the keys should be controlled either by a suitably senior official at the hospital or the local health regulator.
What happens if the manufacturer goes out of business. Your expensive heart machine is now a paper weight.
What happens if the manufacturer decides to drastically increase support fees. You don't have the choice of getting support for the machine from other approved suppliers.
I think the new provisions get the balance just right.
The heart machine presumably is password controlled so that the hospital can ensure that only suitably qualified doctors can operate it. Likewise, it can be controlled so that the hospital can ensure that only suitably tested code can run on it.
In this case, surely the person who fraudulently signed the code as being suitable for use in the heart machine would be liable, and nobody else.