https://xkcd.com/1138/ /oblig

You're forgetting your history. Jobs was long gone by the time Apple was driven in to the ground by the corporate bean counters. He was brought back just in the nick of time to broker a deal with Bill Gates and Microsoft who bought a significant amount of non-voting stock which kept Apple's head above water. From there he developed a succession of innovative products which turned Apple co into the biggest company in the world.

Maybe not in your world. I deal with C-level staff regularly.

Agreed. High street, at best, has to become more like a showroom for stuff, fronting for a big online business.

I was working for an electrical store in '96 when I had a secondment to the head office. I happened to bump in to the Chief Exec and had a chat, I told him he should look at this internet thingy and his reply was "We don't see the internet as a big part of our strategy".

These idiots can be so short sighted it fucking hurts to see them taking home such large salaries.

I also remember seeing a Microsoft presentation when they were lauding Encarta, the presenter said something along the lines of "We took our idea to Britannica, but they were afraid of cannibalising their book sales. We said 'if you dont cannibalise them, someone else will' and here we are with Encarta the biggest Encyclopaedia in the world". They obviously didn't see the big Wiki coming but the sentiment was right.

FML, people are stupid.

It seems to have escaped your notice that narrow AI such as alphago has been crushing human opponents at a vertically defined task with the equivalent of about 20,000 neurons. If the exponential increase in compute ability continues we should expect these novelties to become commensurately more capable. Iâ(TM)m calling it: 2050 +/- 5 years, when we have a system which grows beyond our control. In the interim weâ(TM)re gonna get some incredible benefits as well as some harsh downside. Drivers, doctors and lawyers need to watch their backs first. (Not sorry for one of them)

Most people don't realise that the drying part of a washer dryer is always rated for half the capacity of the washing part. So if you put a full wash load of 4.5 kgs in, you're supposed to stop it at the end of the wash cycle and remove 2.25kgs. No-one ever does and they break down as a result.

I second this. I work for a large recruiting firm in London, and almost all the third party tools we use for automating CV entry into our candidate database etc. work exclusivley with Word. It's a real PITA sometimes when we get a PDF and it's impossible to extract the data due to some or other lockdown the candidate has applied.

The countries involved will legislate if the the advertisers decline to follow the voluntary code. This is the worst of end games for the advertisers because the legislation will likely be more draconian and far-reaching than the DNT code of conduct ever was. It's win-win for Microsoft.

Like it's not already. Seriously, Nokia with the present corporate culture in place could not have fucked things up more spectacularly if they'd tried. Their whole company culture needs ripping out and flushing away. Microsoft might be staid and boring, but they're successful and profitable. Some other corporate culture might be better, more fun, whatever, but Nokia really needs to get a grip and do something.

Considering this is a story about hacking, on the 'news for nerds' website, you certainly got a good conversation going about PAY TOILETS, of all things. Well played sir. I never realised this would register so high on the conversational agenda. I'm going to try this one at my next dinner party :-)

The stock market is fickle. They love the volatility that comes with aapl, and have largely been ignoring msft, even though the latter has brought home record profits two years in a row.

Someone may call me on this, but i think P/E & EPS & other key indicators are stronger at msft, but everyone keeps thinking aapl are gonna carry on eating their market share. Hence looking at it from a fundamentals point of view, it starts to look like aapl may be overvalued, and a lot of that share price can be attributed to speculation on future results. I reckon that's well placed speculation and the goose will yet lay a few more golden eggs.

msft's results have been too strong for it to remain flat, although there's always room for them to screwup! Essentially, everyone thinks Ballmer is about to drop the baton, despite recent results to the contrary. MS need to give the investors a little more confidence (Ballmer going may help), get a big win somewhere and their share price might fly. Ballmer isn't 'fundamentally' doing a bad job, but everyone thinks he's fluking it! Maybe so, but with their tenacity I'm sure we'll eventually see a strong offering which exceeds expectations financially and then it'll be interesting to watch the various tech stocks react.

Right, MS Zealot here, love their stuff and earn a living from it, but always want to keep my options open, just in case (as well as increasing my nerd rating, of course!). After flirting with linux multiple times since slackware '96, last weekend I've given it yet another go and I'm posting right now from the previous version of SUSE. It's the first distro I've ever installed and EVERYTHING seems to work. I've tried Linux about 20 times, but had given up after a few hours of mucking around because my mouse, or my graphics card, or my sound or my network or SOMETHING wouldn't work. Finally I've found one where everything works! I've been on it a week, and apart from not knowing how to do anything, the only problem is my fans sound like they're about to take off.

So, I'm struggling with the basics, but learning a little every day. Does anyone know a decent Windows-Linux Conversion guide which explains the parallels between the two - such as how to install drivers, where the hell is 'Program Files', what do I do if I want to install software but it's not an rpm or whatever it is suse uses. (Damn, I miss MSIs & EXEs!)

Also, is there any mail client I can use to connect to my exchange server for work email? (using MAPI \ RPC over HTTPS)

This is quite a lot of fun, and I've noticed that it seems to render flash video nicer than windows, BBC iPlayer HD is a bit stuttery on windows, but is smooth as silk over here.

Any hints and tips gratefully received!

That's not how it works because in science you can't *absolutely* prove anything - unlike in maths. For example, we only have extremely strong evidence that the earth is (roughly) spherical, but we can't *prove* it. Yet you don't hear scientists going round suggesting they have an open mind on it being cuboid for instance. It's because the evidence is so strong for it being spherical, it's to all intents and purposes true. Now the evidence for 'angels' for example is just sketchy reports from madmen. Until something a bit more substantial comes in, then we correctly denounce their existence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

See also Russell's Teapot for this argument in a religious context.

Single Core - True, the iPhone 4s computationally flies, but I don't think this will hold the Nokia back. Gaming may be the exception here, but as long as the developers know the platform they're aiming for they're good at compromising (360 vs the more powerful PS3 for eg - there are differences in the games but you have to be eagle eyed to spot them) for day to day phone/email/music/internet etc, well, I've got a slower Win phone than that, with Mango, and I'm trying to think of a time where I wished it would hurry up, but can't. Need for Speed is probably the biggest CPU killer I've got on there and I've noticed very occasional slowdowns, but hey, it's not like it's a COD deathmatch or anything :-)

Pixel Density is not that great, but Super AMOLED whoops backlit LED out of the park - the colours saturation and contrast are simply amazing. Seeing the two side by side and the iPhone looks like one of those ancient LCD color efforts - despite the extra pixels. I think Android potentially has the edge here, with it's many platforms able to regularly push the envelope on what's possible, although I don't think there's been an AMOLED with the density of the iPhone - now *that* would be awesome.

No US launch before Christmas - yep, that's a massive air swing, but with Nokia circling the toilet, this launch is damage control, the next one will be the biggie.

Pro's

I don't know about the camera either - Nokia are usually pretty solid in that space though.

The N9-alike (what's it called again??) is a nice bit of kit, feels really solid and nice in your hand. It's a smidge smaller than my Omnia 7, which sharpens up the display a bit. The only thing that's weird - NO USER SERVICABLE BATTERY! How much flack do Apple get for that??

I'm not sure WP is actually lagging iOS - the core functions are there, it's solid. Massively in it's favor are things like the way it consolidates all your different data sources (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail etc etc) is unmatched anywhere. For me I like, for example, the way facebook events and My exchange calendar are now one - the number of times I've turned up bleary eyed for a meeting I've scheduled because I forgot it's so and so's birthday the night before... and they're right in your face on the lock screen. It's like MS have just gone, f*ck this, let's go over the top and be the number one aggregator. FB, twitter et al do all the underlying hard work and Microsft gives you this single window where everything comes together. It's fricken awesome! Also you don't have to plug in to all these services if you don't want to, but as far as I can see that's the biggest benefit of the platform. iOS is nice and all, but feels so last century compared to WP. Android usability is a bag of nails in comparison. (I know, I know, Android comes in to its own when you like to tinker, but on my phone, I don't, nor do lots of people, as evidenced by iPhone. YMMV)

The phone is comparable in price to a iPhone 4s, Build quality is similar, although the iPhone still has the edge on style I guess. Comparable featuresets which I think is better in some key areas.

The Windows Phone app store is lacking in absolute numbers right now but they've got one of every sort of app as far as I can tell. The problem is network effect, where all your mates are playing an iPhone version of scrabble or whatever, but you can't join in even though you've got a good scrabble game yourself. However, it's still nice when random people on the tube are interested in your phone because they've never seen one before (I've STILL not seen a single other Windows phone user in the wild!) still that's only a bonus if you've got no life I guess :)

You'll probably guess that I'm a bit of a fanboi, but I earn my living implementing MS tech, and wanted WP7 because Apple is the new Burberry, and Android is like making clothes yourself. It's fun putting together a Microsft platform at home that, like the fruit companies efforts, 'Just Works' and it can be done - I'm quite obstinate like that. :-)

Anyway, after I seem to have written a bloody novel... I'm hopeful for Nokia, I don't think this is the killer phone they are aiming for but it's been a really tight turnaround for them to get something out this quickly. They've got a big future, and a little bird tells me they're not quite completely MS's bitch like most here would seem to believe. They still have decent ambitions of their own in the smartphone market.