Posts by Tim Bates 917 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Mar 2007
>But although the Air's tough and light unibody aluminium casing is part of its appeal
Really? I always thought the Macbook Air's big appeal was it's price compared to other shiny products from the fruit company. It's been their cheapest option for some time now.
And given the number of people who switch to MacOSX because "you don't need an antivirus", I doubt the aluminium was the reason.
Well, both my parents (who aren't computer people by any means) would. And if pressed, I could probably name another 3 or 4 non-nerd people I personally know who would prefer a Linux laptop.
The reason netbooks with Linux were a problem was because they were also extremely cheap - at half the price, every idiot and his dog bought them. The original ones would have been complained about by the complainers regardless of OS since the specs were extremely low to keep the price low.
The reason we're not allowed to have incandescent light bulbs anymore is because they apparently produce carbon. And since carbon is such a deadly harmless substance, it makes sense to force things with mercury and other such heavy metals into our lives.
Don't get me started on the lies about the lifespan of the alternatives, either... OK, I'm started anyway now... I swear I change CFLs as often as we used to change the old fashioned bulbs. And that's with decent brand ones. We got boxes of free CFLs from our power company a few years ago (government funded I think) - they ran for a few weeks before failing. WEEKS! Yet for a mere 50c, an incandescent lamp in the same fitting would run for months.
I happily pirate some software at home, for my own use. But you'd have to be bonkers to do it at work - especially if your workplace is a freaking computer shop!
Do these clowns actually think 100% of their customers are so stupid that they won't notice pirated software? Or are the staff so clueless that they don't actually understand the whole of the word "piracy"?
I stopped even going into DSE when they ditched stocking the "E" part. I can look at cheap TVs and crap laptops at so many other places.
It only got worse when they started labelling themselves as "techsperts". The only thing they're expert at is flogging cheap rubbish to customers I then have to support - and it's really hard to tell people their shiny new Acer computer is a piece of crap.
The way I understand it, it could also effect:
* Volume license users with downgrade rights - Which versions of Windows have signed bootloaders? Do Vista and 7?
* System imagine tools similar to Ghost, Acronis, etc.
* System tools, like hard disk tests, RAM tests, etc. Especially non-vendor specific ones.
* Offline virus scanners that boot off a CD.
Now, any and all of these could end up with signed bootloaders, but doesn't the system's UEFI need to know to trust each signature? If they only trust MS, all the system tools are still screwed. How many can be trusted while still keeping this whole thing secure?
To me, it seems like a big pain in the arse with extremely small results. Rootkits have to be one of the rarer infections, I'd have thought.
Let's all be fair here - Google spends money making those maps available. The sites hitting it 25,000 times a day or more and almost certainly making money using Google Maps (I know some exceptions apply). So let's be fair here and see Google recover some of their costs from the people using it to make money.
I was actually a little worried by the headline - 2 sites I maintain for small businesses using the maps API to show a map of the business location. Wasn't keen on the annoyance factor of having to arrange about $4 a year to keep them there.
I hate how Google has decided that what I type doesn't mean what I want to see. It works OK for plain text searches for questions. But when it comes to ANY technical search, it's plain stupid.
I've had:
* model numbers dropped so my search becomes simply "user manual" (making the results really pointless)
* BSOD codes ignored so I can learn about different BSOD causes instead.
* "Windows update error 0x1234abcd" (obviously with a real code and no quotes) once turned into both "windows update error" and "error 0x1234abcd" - because maybe I needed to check what Office uses that code for too, and also was having more general issues with Windows Update.
They (or pilot drivers) talk to each other about sizes (insert joke here) and work out where they could pull over. One stops and the other keeps going.
They're extremely professional drivers in 99% of cases when carrying such loads. Unfortunately some bureaucrat decided that really big loads need to also have a police escort - it seems they send out the coppers that don't have a clue how oversize loads work in 99% of cases... I once got waved off the road AFTER I passed the load. That cop was a real genius...
> "I think the pace of Apple's iOS innovation on both UI and core technology side is slowing a bit."
Innovation in the UI? A grid of icons and a slide switch isn't exactly innovation. My Nokia 9210 has a grid of icons representing the programs I could load. And the slide switch thing isn't new either.
They created a brand styled UI though, I'll give you that. But it's not new or innovative.
Here I was thinking this was going to be an article telling us that JB had decided to grey-import the Galaxy Tab. Now that would have been cool - a retailer standing up to Apple and saying they're going to sell both products anyway. After all, the retailers are being hurt by this injunction too!
This is the stupidest idea I've ever heard. Sure the domains will be only available to certified banks...
But what about DNS poisoning?
Or plain old phishing sites running from some other random domain? We'll just see someone register .bank.com so they can scam people.
And then there's good old fashioned host files modifications that so much malware still gets up to.
I work for a small computer shop, which happens to be a local authorised Acer repairer (in Australia, so perhaps the UK is better)... I can say with some experience that this company should not be dealing with anything that is time critical or big...
I predict massive pain for those who need to use the technology.
Totally agree - I think I've got quite some time left, but I only renewed last time because MS said they've abandoned they attempts to buy.
Not just about the money going to MS - it's also about the fact they'll promptly retire the entire current system in favor of a "far better" one running on WIndows Server and using Silverlight where ever they can find a place for it.
They may be doing it for their own commercial interests, but they are still 100% correct that it isn't in the public interest to ban them either. People like me are left with no choice - or more accurately, the choice to get pissed at Apple or not get pissed at Apple. Either way, I'm not buying an iPad.
Good on them. Apple's ridiculous statements were bad enough when no one was listening in the 90s. They were even tolerable when the mass media started bleating about shiny things 10 years ago. But this has to stop. MY choices are being removed for no reason. YOUR choices are being taken away by courts bowing to the giant fruit.
The pricing looks just like their DVD pricing structure... Way more than anyone else charges for the same thing. On the up side, at least it sounds as if they aren't just offering a bunch of "best of" collections like their DVD sets always seem to be.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone from BBC has ever actually looked at DVDs from places like USA or Australia.
Australia's import laws are more sensible than most of the rest of our laws. I'm sure the current government will put a stop to all this as soon as some larger retailers and brand names start jumpig up and down in Julia's ear though.
What I think is funny is how much Kogan just seems to want to push Gerry Harvey into steaming fits of rage :P
I actually work for an Optus dealer (that is, a shop that sells Optus, not an Optus shop), and I find the plans confusing!
One thing that pisses me off (and all the telcos do it) is the "cap" plans where they say they include a certain value of call credit (usually measured in the hundreds of dollars). The trick being of course that they charge you about $1 a minute.
So I say it's about bloody time they force the telcos into making it easier to compare things. The included value for starters should be measured in minutes of talk time, not arbitrary and meaningless dollar amounts.
"The bit where you lose me is where you claim it's easier to infiltrate a small corporate team than a big open one. Can you explain that? Surely getting to work on a project at MS or Apple is trickier than contributing to an open source project?"
Go and write a kernel module and ask for it to be merged into the main branch. While you wait, apply for a job at Microsoft. Then you can go through both interview processes at the same time and see which is easier/quicker.
It's the crap content that's making their profits go down. No sane person would pay good money to see a crap movie or listen to crap music.
For proof the internet isn't killing things, simply look at the content that DOES make us excited - For example, the final Harry Potter movie was reported to have broken sales records in many markets. Yet the industry heavies feel this isn't good enough, and we all should have paid to see it twice (or something) just because the internet exists.
I don't know ANYONE with WP7 - plenty of current and ex WM6.x users, but no WP7.
And in the 9 months or so since the shop I work for took on being a local dealer for a major telco, we've sold exactly zero WP7 devices. Barely even any interest - aside from a few nerds who start by bagging it out. Pretty lame MS.
When it came to buying a server for home, I looked at HP, IBM and Dell. Not only did Dell beat the others on price (by a lot), but in my experience, they'll bend over backwards to keep you happy.
And of course, this box is running a free virtualisation system based on Debian Linux. Far better result than using Hyper-V...
True - and it is annoying. But at least if you do enough you know how far you have to go before you can stop.
The annoying thing is just how bloody long Windows takes to load the drivers. And it does it fresh for every iPhone. Takes longer to load the driver than to click the button or 2 in iTunes to make the phone come alive.
My aunt had a Compaq 486 laptop that had hibernation support (although it was called some funky branded name). It was running DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11.
I remember playing games on it when I stayed there while my parents were away for a week in 1994, and she'd had it for a fair while at that time.
I'm certainly no fan of Apple, but in this case, I hope Apple win. Trolls need to be shot in the face.
Saw the same effect when I worked for the NSW state government - suppliers not only don't see the point in being competitive, but they quickly work out how to rip the government off.
We had mono laser printers with prices near double the RRP. Only advantage was a 4 year warranty. For one round of printers, I actually found an online price 1/3 of the special government price.... Even if one died outside the 1 year warranty, we'd still have had double the printers over the special prices.
They don't want resellers because they want all the money to themself.
When customers come in asking about Macs at our shop, we straight up tell them it's not worth our time or their money. We simply can't buy them any cheaper than the prices they saw online already. None of our regular suppliers sell Apple, and the few "irregular" ones that do don't have much better prices than the RRP Apple set.
On the topic of the online only software - Apple are retarded. While I personally will download software if it saves me waiting a day or 2 for delivery, when it comes to very large software like entire OSes or video editing software, I would rather the discs. What does it save me if the download takes 2 days anyway? I'm just going to have to pay for internet excess charges now instead of freight.
We have a batch of USB sticks at work that have a write protect switch. Took us AGES to find some, but we use them both to stop client PCs infecting our sticks and also to prevent client AV software from deleting all our tools we keep on them (mailpassview, some malware removal tools that look suspect to some AVs, etc).
It should be a law that all USB sticks have these switches - 90% of the time when people plug a stick in it's only to read from it anyway.
It would certainly apply to other vendors who are stupid enough to have batteries that can have firmware arbitrarily updated... But at this stage, Apple is singled out because that's the vendor it's been discovered with. Until someone goes and checks other vendors products, no one will know.
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