Redefining The Netbook – How gaming and productivity tasks smashed the Atom.

Ever since the October 2007 release of the original Eee PC the world of portable personal computing has been a very different place, it has been a roller-coaster of ups and down as a huge variety of innovative netbook designs were unleashed on the markets, followed by a gradual recognition of all the things they can’t do well, and finally buried by the rise of the (truly) smart-phone. Well now are about to reach another inflection point with the mass arrival of products sporting AMD’s new Fusion APU, and to a much lesser degree the new Atom D510 / Ion2 products.

Perhaps it is time to reinvent the netbook?

Britain’s future strategic direction #12 – Naval deterrence & presence

The RUSI paper released today deals with the realm of deterrence, and principally the naval means by which a maritime power such as Britain requires presence to achieve this, the paper is titled; Why things don’t happen – Silent principles of national security. Its argument lies in a refutation of the Admiralty strategy of preserving high-end war fighting capability against the Treasury tendency to argue that an insufficient capability is in fact sufficient because its inadequacy has yet to be demonstrated. France has long maintained a hi-lo naval force structure, notably with its Floreal and La Fayette class frigates, to provide for constabulary and diplomatic duties in addition to specialised vessels such as the Horizon class AAW vessels and the FREMM class ASW/GP/AAW frigates. The latter are principally tasked with escorting High Value Assets (HVA’s) and providing area defence to a naval task-group, perhaps its is time to force the Admiralty to accept the same prescription……

For to concentrate purely on high-end war fighting is to create a fleet so limited in numbers that any loss is catastrophic and therefore its employment improbable, and its utility nullified.

At the gates of (climate) hell – The 5th IPCC report needs a sane policy response.

This blog makes no apologies for its scepticism of the IPCC consensus of catastrophic anthropogenic CO2 induced climate change, it has been driven by the default distrust of sloppy science, overconfidence in an incomplete understanding, and activists pushing policy before science, but it endeavours not to be dogmatic.

In short, one can be sceptical without being narrow-minded.

KDE team releases new version of Desktop Environment, apps and more

Taken from the press release:  KDE Releases Development Platform, Applications and Plasma Workspaces 4.5.0

KDE today celebrates its semi-annual release event, making available new releases of the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Development Platform and a large number of applications available in their 4.5.0 versions.

In this release, the KDE team focused on stability and completeness of the Desktop experience. More than 16,000 bugs have been fixed, and many feature requests have been filled.

Britain’s Future Strategic Direction #11 – Balance between sovereign and strategic effect

This article has been steadily brewing for some time, but its arrival has been hastened by the thoughts of a Think Defence article; Political Statement of Interest and Intent? It stems from the apparent internecine war between the Service Chiefs in the run up to the looming Defence cuts, and the alleged failure to consider first-principles and desired outcomes when formulating the SDSR.

This debate appears to revolve around the fading relevance of Single service tasks, and where the focus should settle in this new world of ‘jointery’.

Of Con-Dem Mergers and The Trident Replacement – Are the two are linked?

The biggest news item surrounding the Armed Forces this week is the shock announcement from the Chancellor that whereas the acquisition costs of the Trident replacement were previously expected to be funded directly from the Treasury, now the £20 billion cost should be absorbed by the £36 billion defence budget. At the same time speculation from the more stridently right-wing of Conservative support is reaching a fever-pitch over the possibility of a merger between the Tories and the Liberal end of the Lib-Dem’s.

How could the two be connected?

Q3 2010 – A great time to be into 4X Strategy games.

According to the mighty wikipedia 4X Strategy games are; “a genre of strategy video game in which players control an empire and explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate.  4X games are noted for their deep, complex gameplay. Emphasis is placed upon economic and technological development, as well as a range of non-military routes to supremacy. Games can take a long time to complete since the amount of micromanagement needed to sustain an empire scales as the empire grows.”

So what is so Great about Q3 2010?