Posts by TimM

Extra possibility - .Net apps

If that Windows app is a .Net app, there is some chance you might get it running under Mono.

Mono is the linux port of the .Net runtime, and you should just be able to do something like (I forget as its been a while)...

mono myapp.exe

If it's an app using standard runtime stuff it has a good chance of working. If it uses a lot of Windows Form library stuff (or whatever it's called now) it may struggle, depending how much has been ported of the runtime so far.

However, .Net is looking like a much better way to get cross platform "binaries" (if you can call them that). Though things work much better if they're built for mono and then they'll usually work fine on Windows.

Anything complex is unlikely to work (so sadly I can't get Nikon's fantastic Capture NX to work under mono, though it uses more than just .Net anyway).

damn Experts Exchange

Pain in the arse that it is because it pollutes the search results, if you do really want to peak at the so called "expert" answers and your browser isn't giving you the results just by scrolling down, then the answer comes from this very article.

i.e. Google's cache has them perfectly unhidden.

Mostly a waste of space though. Better to filter them out of google entirely. Along with the hundreds of other sites that just are copies of other knowledgebase and forum posts in response to questions.

Anyway, googles cache is very handy I find. Not just for hidden stuff, but for viewing sites that are slow or down.

Risk is higher, but same with cash

I'd rather not be carrying a wad of hundreds of £ in foreign cash (that I'd likely have got at a rip off tourist exchange rate) and get mugged whilst looking like the typical Brit tourist that I am, than risk plastic.

Just carry some back up cards and the phone number of the relevant card issuer to get it stopped and report relevant fraud.

Though I do agree there is a higher risk. Many places in America for example just take your card out of sight, it's swiped, and that's it. You may sign a receipt but that makes crap all difference, the payment is done. Usually you sign and leave without anyone checking. Petrol (sorry "gas") stations can sometimes require you to leave a card behind the till while you fill up the pre-arranged amount you asked for. Who knows what happens to your card then? ! (which is why I try to find pay-at-pump places, though they don't always accept my card or they demand a ZIP code).

Anyway, using (of course) Nationwide for the no fees, both a debit and credit card, then take out small amounts of cash from a reputable bank ATM as you need it and pay the rest on credit card, and carry another card or two as back up. Other than that, I get a small amount of cash up front from Travelex ordered online (best rate) for bus/taxi/drinks/whatever before I can get to a local ATM.

And just avoid in-store ATMs which may charge a fee (regardless of being with Nationwide).

64bit Windows

Let's be real here and recognise that Windows vastly dominates the desktop, so let's push the Penguin into the water for a start (yes, yes, it's wonderful, better than Windows, OS X, and whatnot)...

The main issue with 64bit Windows is the lack of support by software and more importantly hardware manufacturers. Drivers really are the big problem.

Another important point is that 64bit doesn't automatically mean faster & better. It's just a wider address and register space. For computational purposes, 32bits is just fine for most things the majority do with a PC. In terms of memory, few need more than a couple of gig at present anyway (and remembering most software is bloatware consuming far more than required). In graphics it's another matter but then we have GPUs with more "bits" than CPUs anyway for this.

Just simply compiling your favourite app in 64 bits and running it on a 64 bit processor isn't going to make it any better or faster though generally. Not to mention that many of the current 64 bit processors are optimised for 32 bit performance.

Should also be noted that it took the DOS/Windows world quite a long time to move up to 32bit. Whilst NT was the first of Microsoft's 32bit line, the majority sat on DOS and Win 3.1 for years (with some hybrid 32bit layering available later on), before finally the masses adopted 32bit Windows 95 (and even then it was still essentially a hybrid 16/32 OS). True 32bit from the core adoption by the masses in Windows didn't happen until XP!

Lenovo have one too

ThinkPad W700 with quad core, 17" high gamut display, built in wacom pen pad, option for 2x 200gb HD (can be RAID, and/or one can be flash I think), Quadro FX graphics (up to 1gb), Blu-Ray option, etc.

For photographers supposedly.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0808/08081204thinkpad.asp

Very tempting.

Re: we need a moon base

Just have to make sure that they don't store nuclear waste on the moon base, else risk the moon flying off round the universe ;)

Choice

Give them a choice and they'll pick an easy option like media studies every time. That's why true sciences suffer. It's the same at University.

Even goes for languages. I dropped French because it was optional at GCSE at the time, even though I would have probably done well at it. I wish I'd continued it now (if only so I know how to be rude to them whenever I'm over there). A few years earlier or later and I'd have been forced to take it. Instead I took an easy design subject. Got an A in it, but it's been crap all use to me really.

Awaiting the Pengiun fanboys...

... just to pre-empt them. I update my linux* server every few weeks and almost always there's some 20 to 30 patches. Far in excess of the Windows patches usually.

Frequently these include a core kernel update. How often does *that* happen on Windows? !! ;)

So in other words... non-issue. Software needs updating, regardless of OS. Deal with it.

* Yeah, I run windows *and* linux. Both fine for the jobs they are used for.

@ those @Tom Maddox

Didn't you spot Tom's tongue-in-cheekiness there? lol!

Point is...

It's fine enough for people to argue "who cares?" because few have decent equipment, but that if you think about it, you are being sold music which you may want to keep for years and will never be able to hear it in better quality should you one day get better equipment.

Should be stressed though most of the poor quality MP3s are the result of bad quality rips, which is prevalent because extremely few people know how to rip properly or use the right software to rip exact copies (that don't just sample off the decoded audio, but actually read the raw data exactly), and don't notice because they play back on an iPod with the crappiest of crappy earphones. Combined with the poor quality encodings that commercial companies use when flogging download music.

Anyway, the problem is that CD is lower quality than Vinyl, and downloadable music in the form of MP3, AAC, whatever is lower quality still. Matters not to the majority when they are under 18 and don't care, but the music still suffers and when they grow up, get a decent job and can afford the kit to enjoy "proper" music, they'll realise their entire collection is actually shit and the industry no longer produces anything of decent audio quality. The only way they can hear music as intended is to go to a concert (talking of which, how many who say MP3s are great, have gone to a concert and heard so much detail they never hear in their MP3s?).

Worse is the fact they are being ripped off at CD prices for less than CD quality, with no packaging, and DRM on top!

P.S. Bet if this article hadn't mentioned Apple, the responses would have been quite different ;)

My response

Dear Mr Killer,

Unfortunately I have already taken out the services of another hitman on my own life as I want to end it all anyway, but if you pay me the amount I paid him, I can have the contract cancelled and then you can go ahead with the hit on me.

As I am rather wealthy I have lots of cash to dispose of through the insurance on my life once it is over, however I need help to distribute this and need the sum of $100,000 from yourself deposited into my bank account to release the insurance money. In return you would get $1,000,000 of my insurance money.

Of course I will need to see the dead body and have your $100,000 first before I can release the insurance money.

Thanks, and awaiting your payment.

Dabs

Ordered an extended warranty pack for my laptop from Dabs, which is no larger than a few sheets of A5. Came in a huge square box (sort of A4 cubed size) with loads of that plastic sheet stuff that suspends the item in the middle of the box!

Crazy.

Okay a box full of air is not wasting much more than a thin one, but at least something A5 size would fit through the letterbox!

Re: Here we go again

"I'm sick and bloody tired of Firefox updates, I'm seriously considering going back to Internet Explorer."

Well the latter has just the same level of updates, just the fixes are rolled up and issued less frequently, leaving you vulnerable for longer in theory.

Don't see why it's a problem for you though. It auto updates and takes a few seconds, and you don't have to reboot your computer unlike you probably would with IE.

Face it. Software will always need patches to update and fix issues that just could never be foreseen. Lack of updates on a software product generally concerns me more. Updates are a good thing.

Still, thank yourself lucky you're not running Linux. It's pretty much daily now that updates are issued and a very large amount of those are security fixes!

p.s. shock horror... a Mac OS X vulnerability! surely not? !!!! ;-)

Hot Swap

Reading the headline I thought this meant you could actually pull the GPU out of the machine and swap in another. Now *that* would be really useful. Upgradable GPU in a laptop... ;-)

USB modems

USB modems are a rare bread these days I would say. Even BT wouldn't give out one of their old frogs now. a) they want to plug HomeHub, but more importantly b) the USB modems are a notorious nightmare for support as they were more than likely the main cause of connection problems. I remember even NTL used to strongly advise against connecting their modems via USB because of all the hassle it caused and would ship Ethernet cables to customers as the immediate solution regardless of what the problem really was.

Anyway, the majority are no good for "8mb+" broadband. Yeah we know it's a myth but even to get beyond 1mb you really need a proper dedicated router/modem.

Besides that the majority probably get wireless broadband routers for free with their ISPs (not knowing why they need one). All NATed up and ready.

Biggest risk from ISP hardware is use of WEP encryption and default passwords, but even that's a low risk really.

However, a company I worked for used to be anal about security, firewalls and virus scanners, but their laptops that were the only authorised ones to go onto the network would go out of the office with no firewall at all, and I'd seen one plugged direct into the net with no NAT and sure enough within minutes it had pop-ups all over.

Though these pop ups are really nothing to write home about. Just old netbios message windows, like the kind you used to get to tell you your print job had finished.

Another thing. Of the "clueless" who buy from PC World etc, who would really end up with a PC with raw unpatched Windows XP pre-service pack? Likely they'll be shipped with the latest service pack at least (with Vista these days anyway), which has enough lock downs to get you going. In the case of Vista, probably enough to stop you getting anywhere in the first place ;)

Screensaver

Imagine how fast we'll find E.T. now when the screensaver kicks in running Seti !

@A J Stiles

One word... Dualit

Outsourcing

Not to worry. Once it's realised (like so many have) that quality drops with outsourcing, they'll be demanding UK techies again when things pick up.

Though the worrying thing is the amount of skilled techies who are leaving the UK.

Re: what is the point?

Future of the web is the point.

Faster streaming videos

TV on the net

HD movies on demand

All your apps online, with no delay when editing docs, photos, videos, whatever due to painfully slow connections (though this does mean moving away from the current asymmetric nature of broadband). Key to the likes of Google to offer an online desktop OS for example. YouTube et al also where you could directly stream your videos and have them edited online (shared editing even), rather than using a powerful PC and very expensive video editing software.

Online/offline backups without having to wait for days.

Play your media anywhere in the world, fast.

Plenty of uses for home working where fast connections are a must to make it more like actually being at the office where you normally have 100mb+ networks and need to transfer a lot of files about, work easily on a lot of source code without having to use portable drives or remote desktop into a PC/server sat in the office running 24/7.

And plenty of stuff to support the bloat that goes with Web 2.0.

i.e. it's not just about big single downloads such as "linux distros" and pirate music/movies, it's about speeding up the net to allow us to do so much more.

Not that I hold out much hope for Fibre Britain. It'll be limited to a few places in big cities close to exchanges (and don't for a minute think that fibre solves connection hassles we have with copper over long distances).

And then what of cable companies? Despite what Virgin currently claim in their misleading adverts, their cable is *NOT* true fibre. It's only partially fibre. Much of it, including the stretch to the home, is coax. Very badly maintained and designed for analogue cable TV in the early 90s, not broadband, hence why their ability to provide a decent signal is so crap!. Hell, their coax stuff is broadcast based much like old coax Ethernet, sharing your data with your neighbours and all the traffic collisions that go with it (not to mention signal leak due to unterminated connections).

Do Getty get all rights to your photo?

Once you agree to get your (likely small) financial reward, is there a catch such as all rights are signed over to Getty and you no longer "own" the photo as such?

Though not sure any clause could sign away copyright, but they can have lifetime exclusive rights.

What basis do they pay anyway? A one off fee, or royalties?

Problem is, most of this stuff undermines the whole stock photo market. Used to be you could earn £100s for the use of a stock photo whereas now you'd be lucky to get £1.

I can see Getty likely sees Flickr as a source of cheap photos from users who are just happy to be asked. No where near as bad as the BBC and Sky who get their photos free from gullible mugs who send in photos of events.

I wonder what Getty will do also if you have your photos flagged for commercial use. Likely you won't be getting an email invite, they just use them regardless. On the flip side if you have them as 'all rights reserved' (as anyone with sense should), then do you get an invite at all?

Still, at least they are offering money. Most just ask to use without any offer of money, and many more just steal.

Melting ice on land

Regarding Greenland and the Antarctic. Melting ice arguments make a huge assumption that all that ice will fall into the sea. Few take account that lakes could form for starters.

And then there's the ability for ice to act as an insulator, keeping the core much colder than the outer. After all, take a huge block of ice and it will take a lot longer to melt than the same volume chopped into small blocks.

Another point that seems lost also is that isn't the Antarctic often around -20 to -40 C? How would even a 5 or 10 degree rise cause that to melt? !!! (ignoring the massive assumption that an average global temperature rise actually means the Antarctic will rise in temp at all, as it could quite easily fall or stay the same. It is an "average", that's all. Much like how the UK could actually fall in temperature if global warming causes the loss of the Gulf Stream).

Besides all that. The presence of ice on the earth is I believe rather unusual. For the majority of its history it's had none. Yet here we all are despite all that long period of warm, and even conditions in early history that would be considered way over the tipping point these days for turning us into Venus!

That we are warming up currently I have no doubt. I saw graphs showing this as a natural fact way back when I did Geography GCSE in the late 80s before any fuss about man made global warming. Yes, we're on the rising edge of a warming cycle (some 400 year cycle or so). The question is whether we've done any significant damage to cause it to continue when it should fall at the top of the cycle. That I have yet to see any convincing scientific proof for.

None of that means I don't think we should stop chucking crap into the air. Sure, cut all those emissions back. Just I don't think it will make a blind bit of difference to the planet, only our health.

Besides, we are a tiny insignificant blip on the timescale of this planet. We'll soon be gone and no longer a problem.

Model release

Thought Model Release was more for our American cousins who require them for commercial use to cover their arses in case of US lawsuits ?

Other than that I think it's just common practice with models, but in the US you need them for anyone in the photo, but in the UK just any old member of public who gets in the shot doesn't require them I believe.

Anyway, there are some exceptions to this "okay in public" rule...

e.g.

Certain gov 'sensitive' sites

Public places in London that require permits for commercial photos, Trafalgar Square I think for one.

You may come a cropper with trademark infringement if the photo contains a trademark *and* it can be clearly shown in court that you are using that trademark for your commercial benefit. However this is a civil case, not criminal. It's still not illegal to take the photo in the first place or even use it commercially, just that the trademark owner can attempt to sue for damages.

And of course half the Special Constables in the UK seem to think all photographers are paedo-terrorists ;-)

Anyway, Gordo's lot will soon put a stop to photography. Soon pro photographers will need top level security clearance and have all photos checked before use, will need ID cards and be registered on a special database. Anyone else will be limited to a snapshot camera and manufacturers will be required to include image recognition technology that blurs out any kiddies and gov buildings! And of course they'll still need to get a permit to buy a camera and all photos will be digitally watermarked with the photographer's ID which is checked via a genetic DNA scanner on the shutter button.

Take out or leave in? Different rules for US and UK

Heathrow (and others?) now insist you leave laptops in the bag and get uptight if you take them out. I think they have better x-ray systems or something now.

However don't dare to do the same in the US thinking the same rule applies!

Get a right ticking off if you don't take them out of the bag. Oh, and make sure you carry your boarding pass and passport with you through the detector otherwise they get very upset too if you've put it in the bag for x-ray (despite it having already been checked, they want to check again before you can collect your bag). Do it wrong and you go to the back of the queue and are treated like you've just robbed a bank!

Oh and same goes for liquids. Rules relaxed in UK, but US still fuss over tiny bottles of liquid.

Why not...

... just ban all high priced luxury or desirable items on ebay. Probably the vast majority are fake anyway.

I certainly wouldn't touch a watch or a mobile phone on ebay with a barge pole.

Only been stung once so far, and that was with a gameboy game. Digging around after I sussed it, looked like most of them available "cheap" from far eastern sources were fake. Though I have to admit they are very good quality fakes even if they do (deliberately) misspell Nintendo.

VS's killer feature isn't drag and drop...

... it's intellisense and refactoring.

Sure, many of the other IDEs have this kind of thing copied in, but Visual Studio just does it so much better. Especially from 2005 onwards. Debugging tools are unparalleled in my opinion.

Problem also with most other IDEs is they end up written in Java and that means they take ages to fire up and have a sluggish UI. Face it, MS has the libraries built into the OS, and apps that use their libraries will always launch faster. That's why .Net is so great even if the concept is essentially the same as Java (just spread over many languages rather than one).

Talking of intellisense and refactoring, has John Bridges` lost the plot?

"Has the author even touched VS and Eclipse ?

Using VS is like water torture nowadays and the lack of refactoring (and quick) intellisense makes using it on any large project a nightmare"

Huh? Have *you* used VS in the last decade?

a ban for that!

And yet you watch those Police Camera shows and whilst you get some sense of smug satisfaction when the little scrotes get caught, all they get is a ticking off for offences that should be sending them to jail or better still breaking rocks and castration to ensure they don't spawn any more of themselves, yet this kind of offence carries a ban!

Okay maybe dangerous but it sounds like this was blown way out of proportion considering the amount of kids being carried on people's knees.

Re: "selling off the frequencies"

"This may be a dumb question, but who is going to pay money for them? Clearly the traditional broadcasters aren't 'cos they've all moved to digital in this brave new world, right? Who else is likely to be interested?"

I would guess once sold off they can be re-used for digital. The frequencies themselves don't make them analogue, it's just the signal used. Though it's a low frequency, but possibly not too low for digital.

As for cars. It's more than just getting manufacturers to include the kit. The system needs to be reliable. Current FM radios in cars with RDS are able to provide a listenable-to quality with maybe some hiss (drowned out by road/engine noise) and swap between neighbouring signals when quality drops. You can (with a national station), roam about most of the country in a car and not lose the station. Can DAB do this?

MySpace - a teen bedroom design disaster

Frequented by teens with no taste. Myspace pages generally look like the hideously bad Geocities pages of old back in the days when people thought it was "cool" to cram every possible bit of media, animation and script on their page and used Frontpage to do the layout!

Teens still think it's cool, in the same way they shove posters all over their bedroom walls, or paint their rooms in garish colours (or just black if they're goths).

Facebook on the other hand appealed more to older generations (approaching Logan's Run terminal age at least!), because of simplistic layout and no options to allow teens to cram their pages with scripts overriding the standard layout.

However Facebook instead allows users to cram their pages with crap applications, and worse all their "friends" get inflicted with requests to add those applications.

Seems perhaps things are going full circle and the granddaddy, Friendsreunited, is finally catching up with Web 2.0 and joined the 21st century in web design. Enough to make it appealing for non-teens, who really just want a site to keep in contact with people without all the crap.

World's best plane replaced by US junk

American build... oh dear.

I assume it comes fitted as standard with the button to blow up British tanks.

Bookmark sharing

"All I want out of FF3... is an easy way to share my bookmarks dynamically around the PCs on my home network"

You can do this very easily with either the Google or Yahoo! toolbar. Centrally store your bookmarks and can access them anywhere in the world that has the relevant toolbar installed.

I use it a lot to access my bookmarks between work and home (used to use the Yahoo one, but since Google added folder support I prefer to use theirs now).

True you need a plugin, stores on "someone's website" (but we're talking Google and Yahoo! here, not Fred the Dodgy Plugin Maker), and have to be online (but who's not online when using a browser? !), and you don't need to request updates as they're synced when you add the bookmark. Doesn't rely on the built in bookmark facility, and works across browsers too (Firefox and IE at least).

720p vs DVD?

"720p h264 encoded is a perfectly acceptable compromise in my opinion, it's a significant step up from DVD quality!"

Don't know about that. UK DVDs are 576i. Difference between the two is minimal, especially with inherently progressive displays (LCDs etc). More so with even a cheap upscaler. I wouldn't say it's significant, especially for anyone with a TV 32" or less sat at a sensible distance from it. Thus it comes down to whether the price justifies it.

Personally I wouldn't bother with the HD downloads for such a small improvement over DVD (and potential artefacts by the compression levels used). But then currently I have a vast source of £5 1080p HD DVD titles thanks to them losing the format war, so don't care anyway :) !

RF adapters

"Saying that HD has no future vs. SD, now, is like saying in 1996 that DVD had no future vs. VHS because people had tiny, crappy TVs using RF adapters."

People still do. A *lot* of people. Mostly the over 60s. Little TV in the corner, and (when they're forced to) a freeview box that has an RF adapter (yes there are plenty of them), plus maybe a cheap DVD player probably with RF again or maybe using up the single non-RGB SCART socket if it's a more modern TV.

Blindingly obvious the difference may be, it still make stuff all difference to the vast majority of the population who have relatively small TVs tucked in the corner of the room. DVD on the other hand had a blatant advantage... no bulky tapes that got chewed up.

And what you see in Currys etc is *not* what the UK public have in their living room. Most people still have that TV they bought 5 or 10 years ago and have no plans on replacing it until it breaks. If they do they go with something that's flat because it looks nice, but don't give a stuff about HD.

Re: I'm immune to this one...

You can be as rude as you like, but the problem is often their system is so automated that they just keep blindly calling you, often with someone entirely different each time (though I've even had the same guy call me 3 times in the same evening, not realising he's calling the same number. He doesn't get a choice, it's just the computer dials it for him and connects. He doesn't care, he's just paid to do X number of calls in an hour without bathroom breaks in his sweat shop call centre).

The easiest thing is to just not answer unknown/withheld numbers or slam the phone down if there's no reply the instant you say hello, as this is almost always a computerised system that only connects you to the call centre monkey when it hears someone on the other end.