Posts by Adair
128 posts • joined Wednesday 23rd January 2008 15:15 GMT
HOORAY!
And all in the best possible taste!!!!
After...
...the Exchange Server at work pwned my phone (well all the bits that really mattered to me) I swore `never again'. BYOD is one of those shiny glittery concepts that turns out to be dangling in front of an enormous mouth full of snaggy teeth. No thanks.
i'd be willing...
...to stake a pint on the majority of users for the majority of the time being able to get by fine on nothing more sophisticated than .rtf. It's only the constant pushing of 'upgraded' default document formats that result in people creating their documents in formats that are complete overkill for writing a letter/essay, etc. i.e. a bog standard text document with maybe some bold and/or italic styling.
In other words, if push ever comes to shove, the dominance/necessity of .docx could suddenly fade like the morning mist, and become just another specialist format for those who actually need it.
Already millions of words are traded online via email and web pages which never see a 'Word' processor, let alone file format. History show that monopolies are almost always fleeting, however desperately the monopolist tries to sustain their stranglehold.
I'm not about to make any firm predictions, but I do believe it won't actually take very much in practice to end the idea that we somehow 'need' .doc/.docx.
Re: I'm just waiting
Upvoted to counter an apparently gratuitous downvote---too many of us do indeed lead sad lives, with far too much time on our hands.
The problem with Android...
...is that it's lumbered with hundreds of 'apps' that do something trivial, but still doesn't really have a core of applications that do something substantial. As a productivity OS Android still doesn't really have much to boast about and as long as that remains the case spending $500+ on hardware is simply giving a generous donation to needy hardware retailers and manufacturers <cough>.
Anyone needing to get work done and willing to pony up is better off dumping Android and getting a full-fat Linux on board.
"Intel has pinned the "sweet spot" for Android notebook pricing at around $500... Intel has specified that they should accommodate detachable keyboards, allowing them to work as either notebooks or tablets."
Roll up, suckers. You too can have your very own bit of cynical marketing driven fail. No doubt Intel has done extensive research finding out what people out here in 'the real world' actually want/need from their lightweight power stingy laptop devices---or, are they just taking a punt that the great unwashed will buy whatever shiny is put in front of their ignorant faces as long as it has the magic word 'Android' stuck on it?
'Doesn't' should be 'does'!
<see heading>
On a slightly more serious note...
...it wouldn't surprise me if Windows (unless MS really doesn't manage to pull something out of the bag) becomes increasingly a dedicated business OS given that sectors reluctance to depart from legacy systems (for perfectly legitimate reasons). Linux seems to be evolving far more rapidly and flexibly than a closed system like Windows or OSX can ever hope to achieve, and there are far too many players who will be very happy to avoid ever having to pay the 'Windows tax' in the future if they have any say in the matter.
Interesting reading...
...the comments of the dead men* walking---those who remain determined to believe (like old time Bible literalists) that Linux is irrelevant/useless/childish/a hobby/too hard/... Or, maybe they're just trolling at the end of a hard day at their Windows (obviously) coal face.
* I don't deny the dead women walking their chance in the spotlight.
Re: @Adair From what I've heard previously...
Dear Turtle, your ad hominem attack does you no credit. Good manners cost nothing, and help keep the discussion focussed on the matters in hand.
As for your actual points. Yes, you are quite correct on the points of fact (as far as they can be known), but there is more at stake than simply who is entitled to know what, isn't there?
Software patent law (esp. in the US, it seems), is currently a disgrace and a laughing stock that is ill serving both businesses and the consumers. Though it is doing very well for trolls, sharks, and lawyers.
While MS may well be perfectly within their rights to act as they are doing, the point is that their actions in this matter are of genuine interest to 'outside' observers (regardless of their 'rights', or lack of them, in the matter).
On the face of it we see MS acting in an oppressive manner typical of it's history in actively generating FUD in order to entrench it's monopolistic hold on the market. Whether it is entitled to act in this way is irrelevant. Whether it will be able to continue to act in this way remains to be seen.
MS is not a charity, it is a slave to the financial demands of its share holders. We may pity MS, we may resent MS' bullying hubris. We may also like to comment on what MS does because some of what they do, big as MS is, has an impact on myself and others.
Wasn't...
...this was bound to happen eventually, as the technology both matures and moves on, and as the market saturates and also 'moves on'. There's always good money to be made at the top end of any market where the 'idiot tax' can be plausibly inflicted on those with more money than they know what to do with, or who are driven by fashion and status ambitions. Meanwhile the rest of the market is generally a dog fight over wafer thin margins. Tempted to say: nothing to see here, move along.
From what I've heard previously...
...in this august establishment, if memory serves, is that some of the patents probably concern the implementation of FAT within the Linux kernel. But all the enforced secrecy simply discredits what may be a perfectly legitimate claim, and merely feeds suspicion that MS doesn't actually have any confidence that its claim would stand up to challenge. Instead it prefers to frighten its targets into paying up merely to avoid the expense of years of inconclusive litigation. As I said earlier: it's a protection racket by any other name.
Lovely factory you have there, shame if...
What gets me is the fact that MS won't come clean about what 'patents' are actually involved. As it stands this seems like nothing more than a good old protection racket. Utterly, utterly pathetic. Words fail me, and cynicism threatens to overwhelm me. Oh well, just another day in business then. <sigh>
Re: Simple Explanation - MS MURDERED THE NETBOOK
Well, I stand by my first statement. The first manufacturers of netbooks had an opportunity to initiate something that could have genuinely subverted the MS hegemony, and they blew it. The hardware was pretty close to okay, not that memory issues and screen res. didn't need addressing, up to a point. But the OS implementation was generally woeful---regardless of whether it was Linux, XP, or whatever. And that was where the manufacturers blew it; along with allowing the great unwashed of the buying public to think they might be getting a fill blown 'PC' for nearly no money; that didn't help at all.
Someone further back up the line suggested that netbooks were still being churned out at 300 euros a pop, blah blah blah. That, my friend is NOT a 'netbook'; that is a small 'laptop' OR an excercise in gouging the gullible public.
Part of the essence of the 'netbook' concept is that you can drop it, lose it, have it run over without going 'ARRRGGGHHHH!!!', but instead be able to say, 'Damn, better get another one then'. 300 euros/pounds is not 'cheap as chips', it's jolly expensive for what should effectively be a disposable product.
Android, while fine as an OS for 'consumption' devices, continues to be pretty useless as a content production OS. That may change. When it does we may finally, with the benefit of ARM processors and modern screen technology, see the 'Netbook' concept allowed to blossom in the way that many hoped it would---the 'Rasberry Pi' of portable, productive, and CHEAP computing.
Re: Simple Explanation - MS MURDERED THE NETBOOK
Go, Eadon! Except it's worth remembering that the first netbooks came, mostly, with crap mutant versions of Linux. In that way the manufacturers got out the foot gun and gave themselves both barrels, before MS even woke up to what was happening.
Netbooks are a near perfect example of how 'the suppliers' often don't have a clue. The supply side is far more interested in serving up what it thinks will cost it least and gain it most, regardless of what the 'customer' might actually want or need.
'Netbooks' as a concept---light weight, effective basic functionality and ergonomics, long battery life, cheap to buy (no grief if lost or broken)---isn't going to go away. Maybe some enthusiastic start-ups will see an opportunity to actually serve the user market, and bypass the loser megacorps who only care about funding the shareholders and the CEO's yacht.
Got to say...
...some of us (me included on occasion), just love to whine. No one forces us to use Ubuntu, or any other distro. If we're not in charge of development and direction we're just all car and no responsibility. if we don't like the way a distro is going we can simply pack our bags for greener pastures, surely that's part of the raison d'etre of the whole FOSS scene. So, why do so many of us waste so much keyboard time moaning and bitching as though our tantrums actually matter? It is real toddler behaviour---'I'm going to hold my breath until I die if you don't do things the way I want them, and then you'll be sorry'.
No, Mark won't be sorry. Of course if he pisses off enough people and Ubuntu goes down the toilet, well then MS clearly got it wrong, but that's the point too, isn't it, the freedom to do things and make mistakes. We're not paying for any of this, except in out own time and effort, but that's the risk we take with any distro.
As far as I'm concerned I've stopped using Ubuntu, but I wish the project well, and I hope we all may benefit from stuff that feeds back into the wider community.
Re: The difference between Steve Mann's glasses and Googles version is ...
Mmm... Maybe the difference is that one is about someone doing generic practical research for something that will actually work and be useful for a whole range of things all sorts of people may want to do; while the other is interested in making money. Or, maybe that's just too simple and cynical an interpretation.
Given Microsoft's track record...
...why would any of the mobile corps, etc. want to hitch their hardware wagons to WindowsPhone? Experience, or failing that history, says there's a good chance they'll be shafted as MS sets out to call the tune. I'm not saying MS is the devil incarnate, or that WP is crap, but perhaps it's understandable that plenty of people who want to make money try to make sure that is little as possible gets creamed off their profit margins, often wafer thin at the best of times, to feed the shareholders of an OS vendor who is beyond their control and used to believing that it's in charge.
Excellent!
Although I've stopped using Ubuntu directly, I still have a toehold through Mint, and my daughter at uni uses Ubuntu exclusively, and gets on fine with it---despite having to bully the uni IT services into changing their Windows only (WTF!) WiFi login service to one that would accept all comers.
Anyhow, having a computer in my pocket that does it's 'smartphone' thing when out and about, but can just plug into a decent monitor, keyboard, and mouse, etc. and let me get on with real work whenever and where ever is, I think, a real step forward. And one I hope others will be quick to pick up and run with. Anything, to stop the steady slide towards computing devices becoming completely locked down and locked in appliances---basically simple money conduits from our bank accounts to the big corporates'. Which, after all, is what they really want to achieve.
Doubtless Canonical wants it's own conduit, fair enough. But we need variety and choice, as well as standards and reliability, at east cost... Yeah, okay, nirvana is always just around the corner, but if it's the nirvana created by monopoly and stagnation then 'No Thanks!'.
Re: Upgrade to a more useful, sexier, *real* operating system. Linux
Steam beta working fine here on latest Minty goodness.
Perhaps...
...Microsoft should give up trying to make Windows all things to all people, and ending up with what it more and more reflecting in the UI the horrible kludge that the underlying code always has been, and instead market two distinct versions: one for those who want computing as an appliance---those who have no interest in what goes on under the hood; and another for folks who like to tinker or who actually need to get serious work done and so be in control of the stuff they use to get that work done.
@But do we actually need all this progress?
At least part of the problem is that Capitalism, despite it's serious flaws when allowed to run rampant, does offer a very good outlet for those people who are very driven by competitiveness, need for adventure/excitement, creative/inventive spirit, and/or the need for recognition. Those needs can be addressed in all sorts of ways, but the capitalist mentality certainly addresses all of them.
So, we may not 'need' all this [so called] 'progress', but we certainly need constructive outlets for human energy and enterprise.
Let's just...
...grow into Spaaaace! Expansion into uninhabited (and already habited) territory has historically kept many an economy ticking over very nicely, and also see that 'technology' stuff come on in leaps and bounds.
ISTM...
...that there a plenty of us who, whatever label we have pinned above us----Windows/OSX/Linux user,...---are just natural born whiners; then we have to add in all the folk who just can't handle change, especially when it's thrust upon them. Taken all together these people just can't help themselves---they complain all the time about almost anything. We probably all belong to this group now and again, but plenty of us are permanent paid up members of the 'Whingers and Whiners Club'---nothing is ever right in our glass half empty, probably at the dregs, world.
Perhaps it would be worth repeating that old mantra: 'Linux isn't Windows, Linux isn't Windows (or OSX, for that matter!). Linux AND the whole Free Software and Open Source world, which, at the moment, Linux largely represents, is a whole different world from the proprietary captialist 'just shut up and give us your money' way of working. It's messy, erratic, and often frustrating, BUT it offers something very special, and mostly at little or no monetary cost to the end user.
Sometimes we need to step back and remember (or maybe realise for the first time) what is the bigger picture, and what we actually have to be grateful for in the Free and Open Source Software world, and, just for a minute at least, quit whining and be thankful for all the folk who, for better and for worse, give their time to making things work (and there's nothing stopping us from contributing something useful too, is there?).
Posted in Cassini spots Titan ‘mini-Nile’
I'm looking out for...
...the gigantic Harkonen refinery floating on a sea of hydrocarbons.
Re: Sony's position doesn't surprise me:
Just for the record: I deliberately chose an Xperia P over a Galaxy, for the combination of size and features (esp. camera). Sony actually came good this time on their promise to provide an update (from Gingerbread to to ICS). Had the phone for over four months now. It's a good bit of kit, regardless of the brand logo.
Having said that, I broadly agree with criticism of Sony's past (present?) behaviour doing them no favours.
Re: Mint forced gnome 3 guys to introduce .... Gnome 2!
No, you're not alone. I like it too. There's still work to be done, but there's a very nice desktop growing there. We all have our preferences, but alongside that there are plenty of people who just don't handle 'change' very well, and they shout long and loud whenever it happens.
Mind you...
...my Xperia P was updated to ICS quite promptly, whether Sony will bother pushing out later updates for it remains to be seen. Even so, a nice bit of kit.
I really hope...
...they get on and use 3D printing for this. Somehow it would seem a very aesthetically pleasing thing to do.
What's with the..
...lbs/pounds. This is the 21st Century and high tech; SI units only please unless someone is taking the proverbial, in the pub, or both.
Posted in LOHAN plugs into some hot LiPo treatment
Why not...
...simply keep the whole heating module as a wrap around pot (mostly styrofoam) around LOHAN's backside, which then can simply blast out of it---a much simpler setup.
Um, no, actually...
Unfortunately I'm not exactly the best qualified to answer this, but here goes.
As I understand it the problem is basically MS hijacking the territory re secure boot, and demanding that OEMs implement UEFI by default, without any obligation to give other OS providers an automatic right to be able to have their own keys for authentication by the UEFI system, i.e. everybody has to go cap in hand to MS.
Ubuntu and Redhat have already sorted a deal with MS, but everyone else will have to have UEFI disabled.
Anyone else is welcome to correct the above.
What do I think?
I think that getting rid of my TV four years ago was, and remains, one of my more intelligent choices. No regrets.
This is tradtionally known as...
...a landgrab, and is conducted by whoever has the most guns/money/power/chutzpah in an area of virgin territory (never mind the natives---they get sorted out later).
As far as I know there are two traditional solutions:
1. Revolution---this can be violent;
2. Marginalization---this is sneaky, rendering the landgrabbers irrelevant, but can be tricky to implement.
Either way it's no different to dealing with the playground bully---there have to be enough people willing to work together to take him/her down, whether by force or guile.
Then there's always the problem of: 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss',
but that's another story.
Posted in Ultrabooks adopt Chipzilla's vPro
Alternatively...
I wander into meeting, join others round the table, put phone on table for wireless/nfc link (or into universal dock if we must), wireless keyboard is available if needed (but I may have one of those lovely folding one's that used to be around, and some were really quite good), when the time comes my phone takes over the presentation display on the wall, I do my stuff, get standing ovation, job done, we all leave for lunch.
Now what's so hard about that? All the tech already exists; where's the imagination to do stuff?
Instead we get more of the same, just a bit thinner, a bit crappier, a bit more/less expensive; even though there are opportunities going begging.
Re: I shall be following this project
Ahem, have you ever seen what a goat leaves behind---not a lot. In less tech reliant communities than our own goats are part of the land clearance arsenal, and very effective they are too.
Sheep, on the other hand do quite a good job if all you want is the grass kept short. When the quarter acre garden of my late grandfather became too much for him to manage, being an ex-farmer, he simply fenced off the bottom half and let sheep from and adjacent field wander in to graze, just don't bother trying to keep any borders or small shrubs.
I reckon the tank idea is a goer, except that wheels allow the cutter to reach right to the edge which is obviously desirable.
Re: I shall be following this project
Traditionally the price of a teenager/child to provide motive and brain(!) power was regarded as extremely good value, and enabled the lord of the manor to supervise (beer in hand and body in hammock, of course), or not.
However, I too shall be following this project; and I don't even have a garden, let alone a lawn.
Duckduckgo...
I've pretty much given up on using Google for general searches, in favour of Duckduckgo. Silly name but it does the job, and at least makes an attempt to show the user some respect.
Excellent.
More of this please, distro developers. I'd even pay a bit.
Ever heard...
...of a 'metaphor'? ;-)
Posted in LOHAN gets hands on mighty thruster
Yay...
as previously stated, I'll be happy to stump up some(!) cash towards the sintering, etc. when (and if) requested.
Posted in Why GNOME refugees love Xfce
Just for the record...
...I'm quite enjoying Gnome 3. Have used Gnome (for years), LXDE, xfce, but have never really got on with KDE for some reason. Granted Gnome 3 is still pretty raw and lacking quite badly in some respects, but hopefully will improve, but even so after using it for the last two months, interspersed with a comparison with xfce, I just like it, simple as that!
Posted in Death haunts government petitions site
Just hang everyone who's guilty...
then top yourself when you're done. Result.
When the time comes...
count me in for a donation towards the cost of printing LOHAN.
If the Yanks want to patent...
the gas that comes out of their butts because they think they can monetize it, let them get on with it, but only in the USA!
So far as anyone knows the rest of the world is not the 51st state, much as many within the USA may believe/wish it to be so. A lot of the problem is the complete spinelessness of other governments (and businesses), who still actively allow the US to call the shots as though it owns the world. Shock, horror: it never has, and it never will.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, the more 'underground', i.e. non-proprietory, "FOAD patent trolls" OSes and software generally worm their way into the everyday lives of ordinary people all over the world, the less grip the patent/corporate fascists/mobsters will be able to exert their greedy and malign influence.
Posted in Moderatrix kisses the Reg goodbye
And I always thought...
we were quite a polite and seemly bunch, but then maybe that just shows how well you've done your job; with some style and grace too!
All the very best.
Bugs R Us @ 1935,
are you for real? Please re-read what you posted and apply yourself to the category question: 'nutjobs' and 'people who have religious faith'; do either of these categories exist totally, or even substantially, within the other?
I'll save you some time: answer = 'No'. In fact a wonderfully small part of the 'people who have religious faith' group shares space with 'nutjobs' group, and an even smaller subset of that fall within the 'actively violent religious-nutjob' category.
I think you may well find that it isn't 'religion' per se that is the source of your angst, but 'people', particularly a relatively tiny group who use 'religion' as a justification for their bad behaviour. If you took that justification away they would almost certainly find another in short order.
As for the matter in hand: unless compelled to visit the USA I strongly recommend travel via Singapore/Hong Kong, etc. where transit passengers are treated as normal human beings rather than inconveniences/criminals-who-just-haven't-been-caught-yet.
I've already done the deed...
...and jumped ship---to Arch Linux. The initial setup is a bit of a faff, and definitely not friendly to anyone who wants everything to 'just work', but the sense of relief that I'm back in charge of the system makes it all worthwhile.
Ubuntu was great while it lasted, but I think we've reached a fork in the road.
Posted in MeeGo or MS? Nokia ponders tablet OS
Not so much missed the boat...
...as dead in the water.
It's a crazy, fucked up world...
Fact: Firearms, hand guns in particular, are generally designed for the purpose of wounding and killing human beings.
So, lets glorify something that has as it's primary purpose the destruction of life.
What 'weapon' someone chooses to use against someone else is utterly irrelevant as to whether a handgun is something a morally sane human being should hold up as an object worthy of state recognition, or any other kind of glorification.
'You have heard it said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth', but I say to you: love your enemies and do good to those who hate you'. Glorifying any object designed for the purpose of killing our brothers and sisters doesn't seem to sit well with the man's words, now does it?
