Disqus - Latest Comments for eoin73

Re: Why doesn’t Osborne admit the link between the jobs miracle and slowing down deficit reduction?

eoin73 — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 05:26:25 -0000

This is weak beer. Look we kept wages down at the lower end and therefore more jobs could be created, also we stopped taxing lower end workers so we didn't get that much tax.

Hard to spin but good try.

Re: I like Jeremy Clarkson. He is a good egg

eoin73 — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 11:42:54 -0000

And if only we knew what Clarkson actually did, we non-UKIP supporters could get outraged.

Re: The first colour photographs of America

eoin73 — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 09:55:02 -0000

Surely people were standing still for most of these, and the circular trains could not have been moving given the exposure time back in the day.

Re: When will Apple merge OS X and iOS?

eoin73 — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 09:49:40 -0000

but Windows 8 hasn't avoided a troubled entry into the market. So there is no way that MS can avoid a "Windows 8 mobile style debacle" except with a time machine. Since it has already happened.

Re: When will Apple merge OS X and iOS?

eoin73 — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 08:53:33 -0000

In what sense did it avoid it? It might have fixed it but it didn't avoid it.

Re: Mapped: the last affordable London boroughs in which to buy

eoin73 — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 09:15:08 -0000

How do you know what he earns or how?

Re: Key-Value Observing for the mainstream

eoin73 — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 07:57:28 -0000

The self in the parent call to super init, and the one returned from it in the child have the same address? Why wouldn't the add Observer method recognise that the key path is the same and call it once?

In any case all the magic of KVO does lead the unreadable code. I have seen not just UI but entire cleanups happen on this kind of call

progressbar.doubleValue = 100.0

somewhere else in the observation methods thats watched for and lots of stuff happens, but not in any way a reasonable coder would look. Which involves wading through all the observeValueForKeyPath: which tends to have multiple

if ([key isEqualToString:kStringTag]){

} else

code that goes on for ever. One giant method which does loads of stuff.

And of course there are multiple potential observers. Add to that the fact that the objects are not retained ( and therefore callbacks can crash) and it becomes very problematic, particularly where the system will resuse objects, like TableView cells, and/or dispose them. If you are observing changes to a TableViewCell will it be there when you get the observation, will it be the one you think it is?

Re: We have the anti-Semites we deserve

eoin73 — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 12:12:47 -0000

The ancient Britons were given short thrift by the Saxons, for sure. The history is hardly hidden. Under the Roman Empire there was some Christianisation ( but pagan sites remained). A century or so after the collapse the Angles and Saxons - who were pagan - invaded, and clearly committed a genocide of sorts of the Britons. They then Christianised, off their own bat over the centuries, and were subject to mass invasions by the Vikings who were pagan. Those are your only dark age genocides, or mass invasions. Eventually the Vikings were beaten back to the north, finally beaten by Harold who lost to the Normans who were Christianised Vikings. Far from being a military force, Christianity was in dire straits in the dark ages, on the cusp of being eliminated.

Re: Why didn’t Piketty’s Harvard publisher spot the errors which the FT has exposed?

eoin73 — Sat, 24 May 2014 09:22:25 -0000

Nothing on the innumerate froth on the comments section here or in the article really disproves Picketty's points. In fact most have clearly not even begun the book ( where in fact he does give weight to technological advances and modern health care). What matters is whether r>g long term. Arguing that it isn't is nonsense. German private capital was almost eliminated after the war, it's clearly grown since. Rebounding to about 600% of GDP. Same all over Europe. Reversals in the last century were due to war - which brought in, as he points out, most of the high tax rates and destruction of private capital. It's always bouced back particularly in the last few years of peace. Nobody denies that the 19th increased inequality. The only issue was whether the mid 20th century equalisation were due to capitalism's internal processes ( Kunutz) or the wars and weatlh taxes. Picketty shows the latter, a few sums wrong won't correct that. He might be wrong about how this capital is obtained in any generation - although he also makes it clear that growth rates are caused by new industry and wealth and make new capitalists but that secular growth is slowing and this becomes less important - but the rich list proves his point, not his detractors points. The ST rich list has doubled its wealth since 2008, the median wage has fallen in real terms.

Re: Why didn’t Piketty’s Harvard publisher spot the errors which the FT has exposed?

eoin73 — Sat, 24 May 2014 05:27:22 -0000

You are wrong. Krugman has covered the story and rubbished the idea (from Giles) that there has been no increase in inequality in the US.

Re: Man getting the dole had €400,000 in bank account

eoin73 — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 16:33:08 -0000

I can't really get upset at someone who presumably paid into the system getting a pay out even if he saved £400k. Maybe especially if he did ( assuming he was once a PAYE worker) as he paid lots in. As someone said if he bought a house he would have been golden.

And PRSI claims to be insurance. Insurance isn't means tested. Pay all PAYE workers full benefits once they have enough stamps. The alternative is people eating into their lif savings after contributing to the state for, possibly , decades.

Re: Big Brother

eoin73 — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:44:44 -0000

Great piece, Dom.

Re: Author Christopher Hitchens dies

eoin73 — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:20:03 -0000

I wonder if the kind of person who thinks that supporting the Iraq war makes you "right-wing" despite everything else he believed in ( mostly left, or social libertarian and anti-religious) does also think that not supporting it make you left wing. So is Peter Hitchens left wing? If not, why not?

Re: Cramer: Why I'm Concerned About Apple - TheStreet

eoin73 — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:28:06 -0000

WIndows 8 will be the real casualty here. In any case this is mere stock manipulation, something Mr Cramer has been accused of before. Apple has 25% of the US market with an old iPhone4, and two models, with 3 models it will get to 35%, with 4 40%. Windows is going nowhere, as it has for the last year. In fact it is going to bring down Nokia. As for my own stock checking, this is easy enough in the online world. Here is the UK, on the O2 checker, there is no iPhone 4S available in any store on the Island of Britain. There wasn't yesterday. nor the day before. ( At least when I checked they update every 30 mins). There are some stores in Northern Ireland ( which O2 UK obviously services), but not store has all there models, most have 1, one has 2. Sold out.

Re: Fire and Silk: Did Amazon's Jeff Bezos bury the lead? - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech

eoin73 — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:19:27 -0000

I am pretty sure that Chris Espinosa works for Apple ( he is one of the original employees, was in the garage with both Steves). Posterous is what he was using to comment.

Re: Analyst Suggests Apple CEO Cook Consider Acquisitions, Expand iPhone, iPad Lineup

eoin73 — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:55:07 -0000

Suggestions sound pretty reasonable to me.

Re: Andreas Whittam Smith: Germany has shifted and default is now inevitable

eoin73 — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:19:07 -0000

Really? No history of Germany would fail to mention the stab in the back - the "November criminals". The rightwing nationalist belief that Germany was betrayed by the left at the end of wwI.

Re: Feynman: comic biography of an iconoclastic physicist

eoin73 — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:56:33 -0000

Why do you think he was socially inept? He was very personable, and could command a stage for an hour and leave people enthralled. He also did good television. He got together with a lot of women, consensually, prior to settling down ( with a woman more than a decade younger). No idea where the sexual immaturity claim comes from, unless the assumption is that he was a scientist so he much be.

Re: IDC fails to learn from previous mistakes, issues 2015 smartphone predictions

eoin73 — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:43:54 -0000

@Daniel Rocha:

"Doing anything less would probably hurt the iPhone mythical brand rather than help it. And all for a lower margin - doesn't look so good to me."

The iPod touch is $220 or so, without a contract. We know that Apple will produce a cheaper machine as Tim Cook said they will. It could well be the 3GS reduced to sell after the iPhone 5 is announced. Whatever it is, Apple just have to protect ( or in this case take) the medium low end, not the very low end. Any manufacturer in the lower end is doomed to continual losses, to fade away like the commodore 64. As for brand, Apple still has a mystique of being expensive as it sells $50 MP3 players, a $220 iPod touch and a $499 tablet which is cheaper than most other android tablets ( or the same as one or two). It can buy components cheap, as we have seen in the tablet sphere, and can use it's position as the world's largest electronics manufacturer to reduce component costs, and it does all this and protects it's "expensive" brand. That is golddust - it makes the middle classes feel rich.

As for IDC predicting 18% compound growth to 2015 for iOS - Apple have achieved 100% growth per year in the last two with expensive phones, on fewer carriers than Android, on one carrier in the US,and on one or two in China. Thats about the change to Apple's advantage.

Good luck with that one. Their iOS prediction is as likely as their previous symbian predictions, they employ people who have no ability to actually understand the market, but are mere extrapolators. Apple stalled last year ( in market share but not units, of course), so it will stall in a future market which is expected to grow much slower as it mature. So they extrapolate from that.

Assume nothing else on Chinese growth, growth in the US as Apple go multi-carrier, or the inevitable cheaper phones. Dont do any research. Just extrapolate. IDC = I dont count, very well.

Re: IDC fails to learn from previous mistakes, issues 2015 smartphone predictions

eoin73 — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:34:22 -0000

Aymco calls this the cut and paste job. Symbian today = MS tomorrow. This assumes that everybody on Nokia is a fan of Nokia hardware, not Nokia Hardware and software. And that they will move to Windows. There is no evidence of this. More likely the transition will kill Nokia. Nokia has zero loyalty. Loyalty is either to software, or hardware, or both. If software they will get the WP7 die-hards, if hardware ( unlikely) stay the same, if both trend towards zero. Expect the latter.

As for iOS - its position as of last Q is 28% of the US market on one carrier - expect it to get to 40% on all carriers eventually. we know that Apple are going to release cheaper phones because Tim Cook said so, and that their growth in the Chinese market ( where Android phones were a cheap iOS substitute) is phenonomal as of last quarter, and that in other markets they have stalled at 40%, or so. Where I expect them to either stay, or grow with cheaper models .

Android will probably stall on phones, and is going nowhere on tablets. A bad copy of a virtual machine masquerading as a phone OS wont and can's scale to a tablet.

So take the Android number, and replace it with the iOS number. Although this does depend on Apple's supply chain.

Re: Apple on Sony Reader: “We Have Not Changed Our Guidelines”

eoin73 — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:24:59 -0000

Thats clearly a new rule.

Re: Eric Schmidt: All of Google's Strategic Initiatives in 2011 are Mobile

eoin73 — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:25:06 -0000

I doubt that report. Lets see what happens with Tablets and iPhones on multiple carriers in the US and China this year.

Actually google wallets will show that a software vendor is not the same as vertical integration. Apple have been working on this, too of course. And the next iPhone will have a NFC chip and the software at the same time. Google have to hope that the manufacturers catch up.

Re: Too Hollyweird for Hollywood? David Lynch asks fans to help fund his movies

eoin73 — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:13:48 -0000

If crowd funding is to work then the crowd funders should get their money back if the documentary makes money, like in any other source of funding. Give everybody a share per $50. Of course people should not get any vote on a David Lynch movie, that would hardly be a David Lynch movie. Oh, and RhinoKiss, directing is a real job.

Re: Where is Channel 4's 'Anne Atkins on gays' programme?

eoin73 — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:22:37 -0000

"not brainwashed in Catholicism as an infant. "

My particular "brainwashing" in Catholicism meant learning as much science or evolution as much as any secular school. If Dawkins is playing to the leftwng EDL gallery by attacking Catholicism rather than the English sourced protestantism (which I note you didn't criticise) which does oppose evolution ( his particular field) - then we would be wise to call him a bigot. As we would you.

As for brain-washing, English anti-Catholicism based on nationalist myths are a greater source of myth.

I am not a believer but it is interesting that the heirs of Cromwrll stick the boot into Catholicism more than any other religion: the first item on the agenda of real secularists in the UK would be the secularisation of the State, which still has an Established Church. That would be anti-clericism, attacking Catholicism is sectarianism. The difference is obvious.

Re: Where is Channel 4's 'Anne Atkins on gays' programme?

eoin73 — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 17:50:16 -0000

Presumably, if Dawkins does do Faith Schools - the vast majority of which are Anglican - he will spend little, or no, time on Catholicism which teaches evolution in all it's schools ( and largely teaches academic subjects with little religion in most), and spend all of his time on fundamentalist Protestantism which teaches creationism - that Protestantism is a part of the English reformation, after all. And on muslim schools which teach Creationism. Catholic schools teach evolution.

if it becomes a form of Catholic bashing from the leftwing branch of the EDL, then I think Catholics are correct in crying foul.