Showing 1 - 7 of 7
Q&A, truth, lies, the web and you
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/04/2024
» The online world is changing and not necessarily for the better. I'm old enough to remember what you were looking for came up as the first search result, when there was a search facility, that is. The old Bulletin Boards kept their subject matter to the topic of the board with opinions kept to opinion sites. Sites on science were not one-sided as they presented the facts along with the supporting data for checking and verification. If people disagreed, they also brought their data along to challenge a thesis and a healthy and often robust debate followed. That was then.
Elon's Twitter bid reopens censorship debate
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/04/2022
» Without a doubt, the biggest news of the last couple of weeks has centred around Elon Musk. It started with a tweet where he asked his followers if they thought that Twitter followed free speech principles. Over 2 million responded, with 70% indicating it didn't, and some asked him to buy Twitter. A week or so later he purchased 9.2% of Twitter. This triggered a swathe of wild speculation. Elon then rejected an offer to sit on the board because this would limit his ability to purchase more stock. A week or so later he offered to buy all of the remaining Twitter shares for US$54.20 (1,840 baht) a share, above the current market price and well above pundits' sell price only a little while earlier. The Left went crazy. The board started talking about introducing a financial "poison pill" share approach to both increase the number of and dilute the value of Twitter shares to make it more difficult for Musk to purchase more than 15% of Twitter.
AI deserves our human paranoia
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/08/2019
» For most of my IT career I have seen promises of the "silver bullet" application. The modern iteration of this is the overused promise of Artificial Intelligence. Every man and his dog are jumping onto this marketing bandwagon and Microsoft has been no exception making it part of their database offerings.
Samsung's US$16 billion battery hit
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/09/2016
» The news has not been good for Samsung with the Note 7 still causing problems as they recall every unit. This situation is unusual for Samsung as they are normally better at the component supply chain. Apple, of course, is taking advantage after their own antenna gate and I suspect secretly gloating that it has happened to their biggest competitor. As I write this, Samsung has taken a US$16 billion dollar hit at the stock market and has had to drop $25 billion from their market cap value. Samsung has also announced they are selling their printer business to Hewlett Packard.
Size counts in the world of IT
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/05/2016
» When it comes to implementing systems, it is all about scale. If you have ever been a system tester you will know that what works one at a time may not work well if a whole bunch of them are processed all at once. Those who have ever used an old fashioned typewriter will understand this. Volume testing and scalability of system is one of the biggest problems a development testing team faces.
3D Doctor Who a literal headache
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/12/2013
» It is interesting how much we take modern technology for granted these days. We read stories of people who believe their in-car GPS units over common sense and have ended up on dead- end streets, in rivers, lakes and the sides of house _ in one case up a tree. The younger generation believe Google and Wikipedia over Grandpa, who was actually there. People create fantasy words in which they spend hours, but real-life meetings are sometimes avoided.
The importance of preparing for disaster
Database, James Hein, Published on 02/06/2010
» After the recent events in Bangkok, I suspect many companies will be considering the issue of a disaster recovery plan. Anyone who has received formal training in project management will be familiar with this term, but it has been my experience that many organisations ignore this aspect of project management and that of risk management in general when building up their businesses.