ARM Fire Another Shot
My trawl last night picked up this news item about ARM. ARM’s chief marketing officer, Ian Drew, is reported to have said:
Mobile users expect a range of devices at different price points, and for a mid-range mobile experience to include some high end mobile features. With a billion smart phones predicted to ship in 2013, and tablets projected to out-ship notebook PCs, device-makers can now provide quality, high-performance mobile products with the features that matter the most, at a range of price points.
I probably would agree. I for instance don’t use a smart phone, but carry a £10 Nokia phone and a Fuji Coolpix camera. For notes, I carry a small notebook and a couple of pens. So I don’t need a smart phone. I just want something to make and receive calls and text messages. In London, I’m never far from home and there are maps everywhere, so who needs on-line information and maps and the constant terror of e-mail, much of which is spam?
So a mid-range phone might just be the right one for me. But what would be better is a camera, that was wirelessly connected to my phone, so that I could post pictures quickly. If a camera is part of the phone, you inevitably end up with something that is just too big and the sort of device, that is regularly nicked.
I don’t think I’m alone either, in that several of my friends don’t have smart phones.
So have ARM come up with a winner in their new range of processor designed for smaller smart phones and tablets?
I think they have!
Balls Loses The Next Election For Labour
It is reported today, that Ed Balls has said he will cut the winter fuel payment to wealthy pensioners.
it wouldn’t bother me, as any extra benefits I get from the government, I make sure goes into my charity pot, where I give money to charities that need it for good causes.
Many of those losing their benefit will be Labour voters and this sends a signal, that perhaps some of their other benefits like excellent pensions from public sector jobs might not be safe. So they might think about not voting and some might abstain or worse, as far is Labour is concerned.
I have this view, that politicians of all persuasions and colours are not to be trusted with my money, as they’ll all find vanity projects to waste it on. I won’t name any projects, as I quite like some of them from all sides of the political spectrum, but obviously not all.
Belgians Give Up On Fyra
The Belgian government has pulled out of the Fyra project to run high speed trains between Brussels and Amsterdam. It’s reported here.
This sorry story has a lot of lessons for governments, who try to implement large projects.
Building railway lines and in particular high-speed lines is not difficult, except for the odd local political and environmental problems, as HS1 found in Kent and HS2 is now finding. But the actual line generally works well from an engineering perspective, with the possible exception of the Wenzhou crash in China, where signalling may have been at fault. None of the high speed train crashes in this country, were caused by engineering problems on new lines.
The main problems with Fyra are all about using new unproven trains. No sensible project manager would ever use unproven technology at the heart of a new project. You could argue, that Boeing used an unproven battery system on the Dreamliner. But look what happened there!
The other major problem with Fyra is that they discontinued the traditional services between towns like The Hague and Brussels, thus alienating a lot of their target market.
So when you do a large project, make sure that it fits the aspirations of your customers.
If we look at HS2 to Birmingham, the technology to be used to build the line will be very much proven, as hopefully will be the trains, which will probably be derived from something that is working well in the UK or Europe.
The line too, will be an addition to the current services between the two cities. This in itself removes a lot of risk from this line, as say there is a problem that cuts capacity on HS2, you don’t have only one basket for your eggs. I also believe the competition from such as Chiltern and Virgin trains and their successors, will make sure that HS2 is competitive and reliable. Those two services, will also act as valuable feeder services to HS2, as say you live in Banbury and want to go to Leeds, you’d hop to Moor Street station in Birmingham and then take HS2 to Leeds, when that section of the line is completed.
Londoners Don’t Seem Bothered About Fire Station Closures
I find this story about public meetings on the closure of fire stations rather interesting. Here’s a paragraph.
Londoners have been turning up in single figures to meetings on Boris Johnson’s fire station closure plans which are costing more than £100,000 to stage.
A single resident attended events in Newham, Brent and Harrow while just two turned up in Barking & Dagenham and four in the City of London. Mr Johnson plans to axe 12 fire stations, 18 engines and 520 jobs to save £45 million from the fire service budget.
You can take several view on this from two extremes.
If you are a die-hard supporter of cuts and would vote for Boris at all costs, you probably wouldn’t go.
But I suspect, that it’s more down to the fact, that we rarely see a serious incident. I have only seen one this year and that appeared to be a fire in an empty building, which perhaps half a dozen appliances attended.
If only a few attended some of these meeting, it would seem that they weren’t even picketed by fire-fighters and their families.
So I suspect, that Londoners in general, aren’t particularly worried about the plans.
Badgers, Foxes and Deer
As I write this, there is a debate going on about the badger cull on Radio 5. Living in Hackney, I have no vested interest, as what happens won’t effect me directly.
When I first moved back to Suffolk at the start of the 1970s, I never saw a badger until perhaps 2006, and then on one night coming back from a restaurant I saw several in the lanes north of Haverhill. Over the last twenty years, I started to see dead badgers increasingly on the road.
Foxes too, were very rare in East Suffolk, where I lived until about the mid-1990s. I had never seen one alive, but I had smelt the odd fox. In West Suffolk, we had foxes everywhere and now in Hackney, I saw one cross the road in front of me, as I walked with a friend to the local church.
Deer too, have shown a remarkable rise in numbers. In fact, the only claim, I ever made on my car insurance in recent years, was when a deer jumped in front of my car, when C was driving.
All of these animals have no natural predator in the UK, and they are rapidly increasing in numbers.
There will come a time, when we will need to cull badgers, foxes and deer, very strongly, as otherwise we’ll be overrun with them. As it is foxes and badgers are carnivores, so what effect will unsustainable high levels have on our other native birds and animals? As it is already, some believe that foxes are feeding aggressively on our hedgehog population, as I reported here.
If we don’t keep our large mammals to a healthy level, we will be seeing a lot of other problems.
Burning US Trees In UK Power Stations
This story talks about a crazy idea of cutting down trees in the US and burning them in UK power stations.
I haven’t seen the numbers, but it does strike me as an extremely wasteful process, with all of the transport across the Atlantic. We would be much better off, using the subsidies promoting the use of this fuel, in insulating buildings and replacing those, that can never be made energy efficient.
Is This How To Deal With The EDL?
This story tells what happened when EDL protesters turned up at a mosque in York.
The mosque offered the protesters tea and biscuits, they all had a chat, and then everything ended peacefully.
Let’s hope this episode sets a precedent.
A Case That Stinks From Florida
This case reported in the Miami Herald is rather bizarre. And as one of the lawyers involved says, it stinks. Here’s the first three paragraphs.
Ten years ago, killer Robert Burkell bludgeoned to death his 81-year-old tenant Charles Bertheas, cracking open his skull like an eggshell, according to police. The motive: money.
Today, Burkell is in prison for life. But his wife Susan, a Lauderhill resident who authorities say did not participate in the slaying but knew what was happening, is set to inherit more than $214,000 of the victim’s money.
Bertheas’ eight elderly brothers and sisters, who live in France, won’t see a dime: Charles Bertheas designated the Burkells as co-beneficiaries on his accounts at the Bank of America.
Co-Operative Bank Ditches Business Lending
This story on the BBC web site, says a lot about the state of the Co-Operative Bank. Here’s the first bit.
Co-operative Bank has stopped offering new business loans amid concerns over its capital position.
The bank is continuing to provide lending to existing customers, but has frozen lending to new corporate customers.
I don’t bank there, but if I did, I’d be moving my account for safety reasons tomorrow. If not today!
Be Careful What You Tweet
Sally Bercow has dropped herself into it, by a tweet, that she meant to be conversational and mischievous. It’s all here on the BBC.
I might criticise people on this blog, but I’m very careful in criticising them only on subjects that are very much in the public domain and not just innuendo or gossip.
In some ways, I’m more likely to be sued not by a celebrity, but by some quack, who is promoting some scientifically-incorrect, who are I show the error of their ways.
The Anonymous Widower 