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Comment Re:Electronic White Boards (Score 1) 164

I've seen this one in action and it works really well. It's not a touchscreen like those on your phone, the screen edges work like a camera to find where your fingers and where the pens are. It works like a normal screen attached to your PC and then there's a Windows application that lets you make annotations beyond what the normal OCR and OneNote drawings allow. I'm trying to get my company to buy at least one of these.

They also have smart whiteboards that scan their content and broadcast it to mobile phone apps. It's not bi-directional interactive like the big Smart screen but it's only £500 I think.

Comment Re:Drama queen (Score 2) 196

Developers! Developers! Developers! are obviously very important, but end users are also a stakeholder in this conversation. If today there are closed app markets and signatures it is in part because there are enough developers out there capable of producing malware that looks and behaves like something any buyer would download unless warned not to do so. It's an arms race of sorts, and if you're a developer who prefers to remain anonymous and unaccountable, then it's something that users should be warned of when they come across your applications/extensions.

Comment yeah, you got us, it's the chemtrail thing (Score 5, Funny) 77

Some of the sheeple I monitor on FB figured out that "they" are spreading thought control gas using airplane fuel. At the last meeting of the Illuminati board I asked if we could contaminate fuel supplies worldwide why weren't we doing that with regular car fuel instead... would reach more people rather than just those under flight paths. Then one of the guys came up with the idea of adding the thought control formula to erupting volcanoes so that it's harder to trace it to us. I still think it's a bit inefficient and too 007-super-villain way of doing things but the higher ups always know best. oh well. Back to fudging the lottery numbers for next weekend I guess.

Comment Re:Crazy (Score 1) 70

There more than one reason behind this:

1) everything that is online only has a potential to earn a rent at some point.
2) cloud providers are better at keeping data backed up than the typical home user
3) advertising revenue for provider.
4) some features like the aforementioned teamwork do work well if applications and shared data are centrally hosted
5) new features can be added and tested with minimal effort.
6) customer retention. Even if there are no ugly tricks to prevent paying users from leaving, having to migrate 500GB of storage bundled with the word processor is a barrier to leaving.

Comment Re:Slashvertizement ... (Score 0) 112

Every time I've seen a corporation trying to "leverage social media techologies in-house" my bullshit alarm bells go off

Could it be your bullshit alarm is really sensitive? If you take the user-friendly UI and familiarity of Facebook, Twitter, etc and apply it to internal web applications like a document library, would you not get an easier adoption, and through network effect have more benefits for everyone? Would you not be steering users away from using email for everything?

The way I see it, home computing and enterprise computing influence each other and that's not something that just happened when Facebook became big. There's terrible enterprise application UIs out there which would definitely benefit from copying good things from the properly design websites. In comparison, Yammer, Podio and Jive look like tools that people would actually use rather than accumulating local copies of every email and Office doc they've ever received, missing out on a good search function. "Enterprise social media" can work, let's not dismiss it just because it looks like something hipsters would approve.

Comment Re:Muslims? (Score 1) 509

I tend to agree with this. Until now, I have not seen any good reason to think of the islamic state of Iraq and Syria to be better or worse that the islamic state of Pakistan, or IS of Saudi Arabia or any other I'm not even aware of... It looks like there are important conflicts between being a devout muslim and a law-abiding citizen in a western Europe secular country. Following the Charlie Hebdo attack, this Amjed Choudary cleric chap explained things with little room for error - he is defined by media as "radical", but who's got a way of benchmarking a moderate religious guy?

Where I'm getting is that it might not be that worse to treat the IS of Iraq and Syria as a country rather than a ... place where there are terrorists? ISIL seems to have strong appeal to some of the most undesirable Europe-based muslims, to the extent they actually pack up and go live there. Recognizing ISIL as a country would certainly have many effects I can't predict, but with optimism I'd say it would give some clarity about muslim's world view, while giving those unhappy to live in secular Europe a place to live according to the rules of their sect of Islam. Maybe the great power of having a new country would also give them the feeling of responsibility not to live in permanent war with Shia/Sunni/infidel neighbours.

Comment i'm going to the movies 2x a month at least (Score 3, Interesting) 400

These last few of years I was signed up for Lovefilm (DVD Delivery) and then Netflix. After a while the convenience was beat by the limited offering and the annoyance of Netflix UK trying quite hard to hide away what's available and what films will be on in the future. Last month, for the first time in years I watched 3 movies at the cinema and this year I'll sign up for a Cineworld £16/month subscription. There's a couple of months in 2015 that won't have very appealing releases but from the list I saw so far, there will be 2 worthwhile films every month, plus those that I will watch now and wouldn't if I had to pay extra. Yes, there will be road traffic to get there and noise from others eating popcorn but I'll be watching current films.

Comment Re:The one mistake Forbes keeps making.. (Score 1) 386

Bringing new products to market is key, but don't underestimate the importance of being seen as innovative by the overall market. Whenever Google announces something about the driverless car, the wearables, the AI-assisted emailbox, etc., they are reinforcing that image of a company that is there for the long run, that is innovating, that will eventually bring revolutionary tech to the market. Owning a major brand with good reputation is worth a lot, and keeping up a stream of good news takes effort and investment.

Look at other competitors and their efforts in keeping that brand value up, it's not easy. Apple is great at making their customers feel special and "niche" while selling millions of units of standardised products. When I look at Xiaomi knock-off phones on eBay I find it quite amusing that the iPhone knock-off sells at a premium compared to the Lumia and Galaxy knock-offs :)

Comment Re:Knowledge is the solution (Score 1) 1051

5 vaccines in Europe? Lies, dear AC. Here's the schedule of vaccination for the United Kingdom:
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/v...

Same for Portugal:
http://www.vacinas.com.pt/cale...

Same for Spain (click on each part of the map for regional rules)
http://vacunasaep.org/profesio...

Hare's a handy comparison/search tool for vaccines for all of Europe:
http://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.e...

Comment Re:Sometimes there are reasons (Score 1) 1051

I do have issues with the rate and ingredients of the vaccines that our state requires us to give our children

That sounds fair if accompanied by some serious analysis. What were the quantities that you found would be acceptable and what was the basis for that decision? Were there quantities you decided to be adequate based on analysis or was it a matter of opinion?

I'm having important discussions with my wife about this matter and I feel there is significant FUD being applied by the proponents of no-vaccination. It would be good to settle on what are the objective criteria or to admit that "keep an open mind" is something that "alternative medicine" proponents only demand from those who disagree with them.

Comment Re:Lets not be lemmings here folks (Score 1) 1051

Hey... can we have some sources and explanations for all that please? Looks like serious accusations. Got to keep an open mind, you know?

I for one need to keep an open mind to the possibility that the companies selling vaccines are the same that would sell the treatment. I have an open mind to the possibility that "chemicals" and "toxins" are dangerous in the wrong doses rather than as absolutely dangerous in all circumstances.I have an open mind to the possibility of herd immunity and immunisation from vaccines being false would mean that doctors and nurses would need constant treatment.

It would be easy to dismiss antivaccination proponents as being dumb, and fear that giving attention offers credibility when none is deserved, but I'm giving AC a chance. Offer some proper evidence instead of FUD and we can have a useful discussion. Then you can show if you have an open mind or if that's something that only applies to people who disagree with you!

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