Did you mean: sales
Showing 1-7 of 7 results
-
Microsoft stock booming on AI run
Life, James Hein, Published on 07/06/2023
» It's not a good time to be working for Microsoft, but it is a good time to be a shareholder or executive. Stock is up over 30%, net income is up and the CEO Satya Nadella got a nice 10% raise. Regular workers received no pay rise, or effectively a 5% pay cut due to inflation. Microsoft has rationalised it as pat and generic reasons like a "competitive environment" and the "global macroeconomic uncertainties". In reality, Microsoft is using the money to jump into the AI wave through a multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI.
-
Human override here to stay
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/04/2019
» Computers are useful tools and they will emotionlessly churn through thousands of operations in the blink of an eye to produce whatever results they were programmed to do. Most of the time the results are welcomed. When it comes to malware the results generate a different reaction, and then there are those spaces in the middle. The situation surrounding the Boeing 737 Max MCAS aircraft and the recent crash is an excellent example. The latest analysis would seem to indicate that the computer engineers made some choices that have had unintended consequences. In this case overriding the wishes of the pilots by assuming the plane was crashing, when it wasn't, and not allowing the human pilots to correct the computer's decisions.
-
Will fold-out phones start a new revolution?
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/02/2019
» Lower cost Google phones will be arriving this year. There will be mid-range offerings somewhere in the 4,700-22,000 baht range and another below that as a low-range product. The target is emerging markets that are fairly well saturated with other brands, both Korean and Chinese. The Google Pixel is the high-end product and is supposed to have the best camera, for now, but they are not cheap. The new range will round out the lower end of the market.
-
A very taxing problem for all
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/03/2017
» Every government wants taxes. It is, after all, how the salaries get paid, and how funds are raised for re-election and looking after the country, often in that order. Consider the UK as an example. Starting in April, there will be a new set of tax regulations based on the IR35 guidelines. With the uncertainty surrounding this change there has been a rush of IT contractors leaving government positions, in many cases over half, halting a wide range of projects. This has been happening for over a year now with, as an example, the Ministry of Defence losing 30 out of 32 contractors last year. When the process of government is stopped because of taxes imposed, you're probably doing something wrong.
-
Heartbleed causing heartache
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/04/2014
» One of the hottest topics in the computing world over the past two weeks has been a problem with the security of OpenSSL named Heartbleed. The short version is that this popular security layer has had a bug for the last couple of years that allowed people to grab not only information from a computer, but also passwords and decryption keys. The fix is to go to the OpenSSL site download and apply the latest version, anything past 1.0.1f, from here, www.openssl.org/related/binaries.html. If your Android phone is 4.1.x, then download a Heartbleed detector from the Play Store and check your exposure. For the technically minded, the problem is a missing bounds check so that the attacker can grab 64KB of memory. There are code samples on the net if you want more details. I suspect that system administrators have been busy all over the world patching their machines, generating new public and private keys and notifying all users to change their passwords on affected systems. I also suspect that there will be administrators and users who will not take any steps at all, either due to laziness or hubris. There is strong evidence that you should change all your important passwords at places like banks.
-
Samsung bites into big Apple
Life, James Hein, Published on 05/06/2013
» No prizes for guessing the fastest selling smartphone in South Korea. The Samsung Galaxy S4, of course _ it has sold 10 million units since the April launch. You will remember that the iPhone 5 sold five million units in its opening weekend but the S4 will be seriously attacking Apple's market share over the next month or so.
-
Sorry Redmond, I'm just not feeling it
Life, James Hein, Published on 09/01/2013
» My parents bought a new ultrabook and it was my job to set it up for them. Since all new home computers now come with Windows 8 it was a chance to take the PC version of the operating system for a test drive. So far I am not impressed. One of the first things I did was install an aftermarket Start button to keep it closer to their previous Windows experience. There are a number of these available, most of them are free and not only return the Start button but some of the original Windows 7 functionality you may like. Take a look at a few of them and decide what things you want or need to have.
Your recent history
-
Recently searched
-
Recently viewed links
Did you find what you were looking for? Have you got some comments for us?
