* Posts by David Hicks

1235 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Apr 2008

Google pushing Jelly Bean updates to Android devices

David Hicks
Linux

Re: To those not about to get Jellybean...

Given you're the only reply...

Yes, I heard about the possible brick issue, and I wasn't going to go CM yet anyway as CM9 is not released and CM9 Note support is definitely not released. I think it was only a couple of weeks ago they announced beta support for the S-Pen. I also don't have an issue with the stock firmware, now that I've loaded up Apex-loader.

But by the time CM10/JB is ready, these things may become a little better, and that would actually be a reason to try a non-stock ROM. Maybe.

David Hicks
Linux

To those not about to get Jellybean...

... have you considered CyanogenMod?

I'll certainly be looking to them for updates for my Galaxy Note rather than Samsung.

Religious wars brewing in ICANN gTLD expansion

David Hicks
Devil

Unlike, say, religion?

Which doesn't in any way seek to undermine critical thinking or rewire childrens brains?

IBM lets fly single-socket Power7 Penguin server

David Hicks
Flame

Re: Not the same as Linux x86

No, it's entirely different to Windows RT on ARM.

With the huge open source software ecosystem already available and already built across multiple architectures, you already have a hell lot available for linux on non-x86 architectures that you don't on windows.

As for closed source, well what do you need on a server that IBM don't provide? Why would you want non-IBM software?

;)

Geek darling GitHub nabs $100m investment

David Hicks
Boffin

Re: .... uh.... whatever that was.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here, but I feel privileged to have been a part of it.

+1, total biscuit.

David Hicks
Linux

Why look at a resume?

Could it be that it's a bad idea to restrict your search to github when a fairly small minority of developers work on open source projects?

FOSS devs are not a bad choice - the subject their code to public scrutiny and (if not employed as a FOSS dev) are dedicated enough to do this stuff in their spare time. But of the few hundred developers I've met, very few contributed to open source, even amongst the top end.

I find this whole thing deeply weird actually, $100 million to a centralised source repository to create more of a social network, it's silly money. And if they bungle it at all then people will just move on to some other free service.

Museum of Computing recognised as PROPER MUSEUM

David Hicks
Devil

Why isn't our national museum of computing in Bletchley Park?

That would seem the obvious place to me....

Who wants to go to Swindon?

ACTA can't get its act together

David Hicks
FAIL

Re: No information economy without intellectual property

"very soon there won't be any protection for IP"

LMFAO.

Copyright on new works is protected for longer than any of us will live, presuming the autor lives another decade or so after publication (not unlikely).

I'm not sure how this translates in your head to "No IP protection soon!", but I can't say that it screams to me that we need a new treaty, longer protections and harsher punishments.

Software patents are just ripe for abuse, as we can see with Apple and Samsung dragging each other through the court systems worldwide.

I can see sense in trying to get China and other Asian nations that don't respect any sort of IP to play ball on these rules, but do you see China on the list of treaty signatories? Hell no. We see the usual suspects who are looking for a way to crack down on the public in the usual countries with a nice long list of new offences and penalties. Bugger that, mate.

David Hicks
FAIL

Not secretive?

What planet does this guy live on?

Secret meetings and secret treaty text, negotiated between governements and large corporations, explicitly keeping the public out of the loop that there was anything going on, let alone the real shape of it... yeah, totally not secretive. And of course you believe it's fair and balanced, you're an industry shill that probably helped pen some of it.

Yuck. ACTA should not be forced through in a few places, nor should it be renegotiated and forced through afterwards, it should be chucked. On the off chance that we actually need an anti-counterfeiting treaty, and I'd argue that we don't, but *if* we do then the whole process should be started from scratch, with democratic oversight and public input.

Open source incest: GPL forked by its coauthor

David Hicks
Linux

Re: @heyrick - A few sore spots with the GPL...

And some GPL haters obviously have their own definition of free and open computing that doesn't involve preserving freedoms for the user.

Yes, I read the compat clauses - all the compat licenses are copyleft licenses, mostly copyleft licenses that are substantially similar to the GPL. I'm still not sure of the point you're trying to make here.

Note that if using the EUPL you're really releasing under the most permissive of the compatible licences, likely the Eclipse public license or Common public license. These provide weaker protections (and therefore less 'freedom', which seems to concern you so much) for the end user.

David Hicks
WTF?

@heyrick - Re: A few sore spots with the GPL...

"The problem I have with the GPL is that of code reuse. If I wish to use some GPL code within my "open source" project, I am obliged to release the project as GPL."

That is a feature, not a bug.

"Maybe one day, we'll all have an open source licence that promotes true freedom, not trying to squeeze in restrictions while talking big about supposed freedoms [hint: EUPL (pdf) is a good start]."

I looked at that license, have you read it? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, that license is substantially similar to the GPLv2, in that it requires source provision when distributing and specifies that derivative works must come under the same license.

David Hicks

Crowdsourcing implies to me ...

a commercial entity trying to get stuff done on the cheap by throwing it a crowd of ill-qualified numpties.

Collaboration in OSS tends to be small-ish numbers (on any given project) of highly motivated techies.

IMHO, of course, but that's the difference I see.

Pandora plays beta beats downunder

David Hicks
Linux

Ah Pandora.

Great service killed for most of the world by petty region restrictions. They could have had the market by the bals at this point, instead they now have to play catchup with the likes of spotify.

LOL

Texas Higgs hunters mourn the particle that got away

David Hicks

Two downvotes?

For a semi-relevant futurama quote?

You people have no soul...

David Hicks
Happy

So I said super-collider...

... I just met her! And then they built the super collider.

Anecdote accepted. Snappy comeback not found.

Now Apple faces Siri court room showdown

David Hicks
Coat

Re: So we can decide we 'own' animal names now then?

Of course anyone should be able to trademark "leaopard" if they want, because it's not a real word.... bugger.

David Hicks

Re: So we can decide we 'own' animal names now then?

Argos not so much eh?

I'm not saying they can't call themselves that, I just disagree with the violently litigious cordoning off of language in this way.

David Hicks

So we can decide we 'own' animal names now then?

I suppose the company in question is named after a fruit....

Personally I don't think anyone should get to own trademark use of common nouns like apple or leaopard.

What is the Nokia Secret Plan if Windows 8 isn't Windows gr8?

David Hicks
Meh

Re: I think the new plan is...

Yup, that's what I've been waiting to see - Nokia, armed with a portfolio of patents that actually do have some substance, from the late 90s and early 00s, decide to take the nucleur option and destroy the industry on their way down.

I think it's a pretty real possibility that (because they're failing as an actual producer) they'll decide at some point to let the lawyers take the leash and make everyone else's life as hard as they possibly can. Except MS, of course.

David Hicks
FAIL

Re: ICS/Jellybean apps

Actually, (and I'm just starting to experiment with android development) it appears that google supplies a support library that allows apps built against the latest APIs to work on platforms all the way back to ~1.6

Not much of an issue there then really.

'Young people don't want to become like us', say IT pros

David Hicks

You could say

I travel round the world, alternately taking myself round thousands of miles of rugged coastline or staying in luxury resorts in faraway places. Oh you mean how do I pay for it? Yeah, inbetween times I have to work on IT systems. Pays the bill you know?

You can try and explain how well-constructed algorithms are are like poetry or how a distributed system working in harmony is more beautiful to you than the finest ballet ever performed... but unless you're preaching to the already-converted it's not going to work.

UK.gov proposes massive copyright land snatch

David Hicks
Thumb Down

I usually disagree with pretty much everything you have to say

On any topic whatsoever. However this is a travesty.

It's hard to understand why anyone would think this is a good idea, unless it's the likes of Spotify who have a business interest in being able to pay a flat fee to some or other official body and then stream what they like.

Legislators clearly just have no bloody idea.

Dixons and Best Buy start selling Google Chromebooks

David Hicks

$500?

Hell, I can buy most of a proper computer for that, or a 'real' laptop. I guess it's not really 'expensive', but it's hardly a cheap consumer device at that pricepoint either.

Brit global warming skeptics now outnumber believers

David Hicks

Re: Nicely left out the progress being made

@g e

Maybe they don't question that it's taking place *any more*. That is amazing progress, IMHO.

Maybe now we can move on one stage in the discussions about what might be causing this, and what (if anything) is the appropriate action to take. One tiny step away from the morons/paid shills bellowing about how it's all a lie is one positive move in my book.

Of course I don't believe for a second that humanity thinks long-term enough to void making life on this planet very difficult for itself in coming years. I think we'd rather bicker than deal with even clear and present danger, let alone nuanced evidence about our current polluting activities having a downside for future generations.

Still, no sense worrying really, because you can't change people.

David Hicks
FAIL

Nicely left out the progress being made

That only -

"21% of Americans (+1), 22% of Britons (+1) and 14% of Canadians (=) think global warming is a theory that has not yet been proven"

So reality seems at least to have impinged on the general herd to some extent, in that only around a fifth of people in the US and the UK flat out deny it's happening.

I'm also amused that you think it's meaningful that a large proportion of people don't want to hamper the economy right now. You know, in the midst of the global financial clusterf*** we're currently sitting in. Frankly if 43% of Brits say they would be willing to hamper economic growth for the environment it's something of a miracle.

Also please note that they said they were willing to hamper growth, not get poorer. Your agenda is showing again, might want to pull those trousers back up a touch.

Sony SmartWatch Android remote

David Hicks

@Dave 126 - Re: So.... pebble watch was not a totally new idea?

@Dave 126

Well, to be fair to pebble, they're still within the time they said they'd be when they launched the kickstarter stuff. It will be interesting to see if they can deliver to schedule and if they can deliver in the quantities they have pre-orders for. I suspect that there might be some growth problems as it got very big very fast.

E-Ink displays have excellent visibility in sunlight. Night time they would need a back (or front) light to illuminate them. Colour... yeah no colour. Pebble, with it's open SDK, could easily be programmed to perform the compass function you mentioned though.

The -1 Sony was not because of this product, its delivery or its execution, it's the other way around. A product immediately gets negative points from me simply because of the Sony label and their (lack of) corporate ethics.

David Hicks

So.... pebble watch was not a totally new idea?

Though the e-paper display might make for better battery life than this thing can manage.

Of course, -1, Sony.

Why the Windows Phone 8 digi-wallet is different to the others

David Hicks

I like the network setup thing

That could be kinda cool.

Am I alone, though, when it comes to an instant distrust of the idea of keeping credit card details, which can be used wirelessly with no pin or signature, inside your mobile phone?

I'm all for device convergence but this leaves me less than thrilled.

European vote hammers another nail into ACTA's coffin

David Hicks

Sick, isn't it.

The rules only seem to get more restrictive, whichever area of law we look at, and laws are very, very rarely repealed. All the bad guys have to do is keep trying until resistance crumbles, or they can slip things through on a technicality.

Look at the software patents thing, that rears its ugly head in the EU every so often, despite having been slapped down multiple times in multiple ways. The last time I heard about it someone was trying to slip them through in a bill ostensibly on 'fisheries and agriculture'.

Finnish PM rules out Nokia rescue package

David Hicks

Good.

It would be a travesty to pour public money into a company that seems determined to run itself full-speed into the ground.

If a company is failing it's usually because something is deeply wrong with it. In this case its the leadership. Just let them go. Maybe the clever tech folk can start something else.

Brit telco flagship BT joins blockade of Pirate Bay

David Hicks
FAIL

Thus ending piracy once and for all!

For all I tell you!

R18+ games still not over the line in Oz

David Hicks

R18+ looking like MA15+ is fine.

So long as they stop banning things outright and then blaming it on the lack of an R18+ certification.

Never mind that what gets through or not is entirely arbitrary, depending entirely on press coverage.

New Samsung chief: I want SOFTWARE

David Hicks
FAIL

Re: They also need

Yeah, the Note does this too. It's a bit weird, when most of the apps seem to be able to handle it fine, but you have to deal with a sideways home screen.

Andoid is very slick now, but the multi-tasking interfaces do seem a little like a step backward from Maemo.

If they're looking for a backup OS, maybe they could get more fully behind Tizen? I know, I know, that's just wishful thinking....

Nokia after the purge: It's so unfair

David Hicks
WTF?

Re: The axe swung in the wrong place

Err, the N900 is a few years old now.

Have you tried the N9?

Neither of these handsets were shipped with Meego either, they're both Maemo. I'm not sure what you mean by a linux distro for tween girls either. It looked fine to me, better than the alternatives when the 900 came out.

I did switch away recently, because the 900 is dated and the 9 was on last-year's hardware when it came out, which is a year ago now. Nokia had dropped the ball on competitive hardware even before Elop's folly.

Habbo Hotel to 'unmute' chat so users can show they love it

David Hicks

Re: The only time I've previously heard of Habbo Hotel

I'm not sure about a 'real' word, but it comes from FPS gaming IIRC. A griefer was originally someone who joined your team and then proceeded to put all their efforts into killing their own side, obstructing progress, and generally being a pain in the ass.

David Hicks

The only time I've previously heard of Habbo Hotel

is because it's somewhere that /b/tards of 4chan like to go and troll, or stand several of themselves in a public area, in the shape of a swastika. Basically griefing the children.

Samsung Galaxy S Advance mid-range Android

David Hicks
WTF?

Re: You'd think

You would think that, given their other new-ish offerings at the moment come with ICS (or are ICS upgradeable). It's very odd that it doesn't.

If this had ICS I would have got one. Instead I'm now awaiting delivery of the Note :)

Foundering Nokia pushes 10,000 bods, 3 veeps overboard

David Hicks
Thumb Down

Re: What new direction?

Your breakdown is nonsense.

There were no problems with symbian and maemo/meego were coming along nicely. The 'new direction' they needed was to get some UI design folks on board, and fire half the management. Cut the number of models down from the hundreds of similar-but-not-equal handsets they were chucking out and get all the engineers pulling in the same direction instead of competing internally on hundred of different teams. Nokia wasn't one company at that point, it was about 8.

By ditching what was at the time the world's leading smartphone OS for one from a company with a history of failing in this arena, they simply torpedo'd existing business and pinned their entire future to a lame donkey.

David Hicks
Paris Hilton

Never heard of vertu before

Guess I'm not rich enough.

Damn those are some ugly phones though.

David Hicks
Thumb Down

Re: They're making the wrong one redundant

What's being a dick about it?

It was obvious that WP was a terrible move from the get go - an extremely late entrant to the market from a company with a history of failed consumer electronics products and shafting business partners. The Xbox does indeed stand out as a counter example, but I'll see your Xbox and raise you a Zoon.

New direction was needed, yes. But even a muppet could see that it was a bad choice, foisted on them by Microsoft's new man at the top.

You can break EU cookie rules ... if your site breaks without cookies

David Hicks
Thumb Down

Re: idiots

I know that most websites I stumble across work fine without cookies, as I reject them all by default.

Perhaps it's you that has a problem with understanding how websites work?

Top bosses admit: Tweets, Facebook Likes influence decisions

David Hicks
Stop

Forward the 'reputation managers'

Who can be found on many (if not most) tech discussion sites and social media these days. They will (for a fee, of course) attempt to make it appear that your product (yes, YOUR product) is the talk and toast of the town, so that these execs notice you and go with your solution!

No, we can't have nice things, ever, because someone will always step in a screw it up for a quick buck.

US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet

David Hicks
Linux

@AC 13:48

"If your software uses OSS libraries you need to make their source available, but not the source for the bit you wrote, unless it's modified OSS."

This is false, depending on license. In fact your whole post is false, depending on the license.

The GPL does not allow you to link to libraries without your code also being under GPL.

The LGPL does specifically allow this.

BSD/MIT license lets you do whatever the hell you want.

AGPL requires you to distribute the source even if the program is a hosted service (like a website).

They are all different and all have different rules, and all OSS inclusions and links need to be considered carefully if you wish to use them from closed source code.

I'd also like to say here that the DOD should be *extremely* careful about the circumstances in which they give source or binaries to contractors to work on. They could find that they've given redistribution rights to their entire codebase to the contractor or (if they make them sign away those rights) that they've violated the GPL by imposing a closed/stricter license on top.

David Hicks
Linux

Contractor's rights?

Surely if they give the source of this mixed license application to a contractor, the contractor (as a wholly separate entity) is entitled to modify and redistribute?

And if they make the contractor sign away those rights it's a GPL violation?

I'd be interested to know a real legal opinion here, but it sounds to me like it's not a proper licensed use of GPL code, and that any copyright holder that had a problem with it might have a pretty good chance of a successful lawsuit here.

Microsoft 'mulled Nokia buyout, ran away screaming'

David Hicks
Thumb Down

Fail...

The lumia phones are overpriced and underpowered. The N9 was last-year's tech when it came out, and is now thoroughly outclassed.

The ball was dropped well before Elop came along, but he's done nothing except make it all worse. Ditch all our leading products! Embrace Redmond's latest failure! It's sure to make us all rich!

Poor nokia, they were the phone company everyone else wanted to be 10 years ago. Now they're just a sad example about what goes wrong when you sit on your laurels.

Firm applies for .sucks domain

David Hicks
Thumb Down

Entertaining idea

A shame that bottom-feeding scum (domain squatters) are the ones doing it.

HTC slips One X, Evo 4G past Apple US patent ban

David Hicks
Stop

Re: Very, very confused

Pretty sure my Sony CMD-Z7 had that feature back in 2002, on SMS's, well before the iPhone was even thought of!

Samsung Galaxy S III

David Hicks

Sigh.

This is an ARM device, there are many variants made by many manufacturers, they don't all work the same, which is why benchmarks are *more*& useful than GHz in this arena.

Olympic Wenlock plod cops condemnation from Amazon wags

David Hicks
FAIL

Grand

People already call the UK a nascent police state. Having one of the mascots as basically a big eye in a police uniform... yeah, that's not going to help.

I shall be staying firmly out of the country until this olympic nonsense is over and done with.

Publishing barons: Free speech a 'cloak for tawdry theft'

David Hicks
Thumb Down

They don't have fundamental rights

They have a right that we as a society have deemed useful and beneficial to all - a limited term monopoly with various restrictions and inclusions. With the understanding that they enter the public domain after a certain time. This is to encourage the creation of works, giving society access to more intellectual or creative material.

None of this is any sort of 'natural right'. And for good reason - works are not created in a vacuum, and works become part of culture and (IMHO) common property over time.

i would argue the exact opposite to him - that for the good of all society we must banish this ridiculous idea of 'ownership' rights over intangibles, where in reality we have a cooperative arrangement that is put in place to benefit all parties.

He's probably just angry because (with the internet and next-to-free distribution of anything) his business model is becoming irrelevant.