Posts by David Hicks
1061 posts • joined Tuesday 22nd April 2008 12:44 GMT
Re: Chairs
Pretty sure that would be my clue to get the hell out of such a dysfunctional place.
If someone has time to be the chair police, and actually believes that that is a useful function, then the company has become so ridiculously rules bound that it's not worth staying.
Obviously in an ideal world, where jobs are easy to come by. But they are in the tech sector aren't they? Only last month I turned down about a dozen interviews for perm jobs, and that wasn't even in London.
Re: 400 quid?
Why would you want to?
400 quid?
I'd wait a week and a half and grab the Nexus 4 for ~£280 (240 for the 8GB version)
Re: The reason for Ubuntu's fall from grace?
You know that R comes after Q, right?
There's a few years left in their first run around the alphabet so I think we're ok for now.
Re: Debian please
It will be done. You can install debian on *anything* if you put enough effort into it. My NAS runs debian and it only took me a month to find the onboard serial port, figure out the kernel changes I needed to make and how to package and flash it, after that bootstrapping debian was easy...
My first thought also, nice if it can be repurposed, not really sure what Chrome-OS is for otherwise.
@RyokuMas Re: Still no evidence of actual fragmentation
Right, so, let's see if I get this -
different versions of android providing all sorts of compatibility and some upgrades = fragmentation.
different versions of windows mobile with limited or no compatibility and no upgrades = not fragmentation.
Double plus good citizen! I can see I'm starting to grok this newspeak!
Re: Gabe!
It's not so much that I *need* Open Source everything on my system, but I am going to be deeply suspicious of any and all DRM schemes that come to Linux.
I don't mind things checking for licenses, but if there's any messing around with the system I'm going to be upset.
Still no evidence of actual fragmentation
OMG! Different versions of the OS are out there! OH NOES!
Even a cursory glance at the android development environment and SDKs will show you that -
- Most software built on older versions is forward compatible
- There's a compat library so software developed on newer platforms can run on older ones.
Still not seeing this fragmentation people keep bleating about.
Yes, it would be good in manufacturers got their arses in gear and gave updates to the latest OS to everyone, but it's not like (for instance) Windows Mobile fragmentation where things either have to be rebuilt (7->8) or just won't run at all (8->7).
Squeeeeeal piggy!
Sounds like someone's had the wind put up them.
The shipping thing always amazed me. How the hell is it cheaper for me to get an item bought and shipped from the US, even by a proxy shipping service, than it is locally? Surely individual item shipping is orders of magnitude more expensive than the bulk shipping that's available to retailers?
The answer (the only answer) is that people at various points in the chain are making out like bandits and are now getting pissed off we've noticed. Now they're afraid they may actually have to engage in that dirty word 'competition'
Posted in Marlinspike demos MS-CHAPv2 crack
Chapcrack? We'll have none of that on my internets thankyou...
I know some folks object to the publishing of exploits, but it really is the only way to ge the industry moving most of the time.
It's been seen time and time again - if you write an academic paper on a crack and speak privately to the affected parties, nothing happens. It's only when you demonstrate how easy it is and publish in the open that anything gets done.
Posted in Job ad seeks 'mediocre' developers
Sounds like my next gig!
Kidding... though it probably would tempt me if I was in Melbourne and it was an ad for a C position. Put me in the 'capable but lazy' camp. i love tech, but there's more to life than coding all night for your job.
Most superstar/ninja/ultimate warrior type programmers aren't actully all that hot anyway. They think they are but they make as many or even more mistakes than anyone else, in a very self-assured way. They do tend to have enthusiasm in droves though, which I guess is a positive. Most of the actually supremely capable devs I've ever met were rather understated about the whole thing, they just get on with it.
Posted in Google suspends 16GB Nexus 7 orders
Re: Does Google not know why people want local storage?
As someone with a NAS that refusese to do UPnp/DLNA, can someone please tell me what I need to make my android (ICS) tablet play media off SMB shares?
In the context of this discussion, please note that a file manager that allows you to copy files across is not an adequate solution - you need local storage space and copying the file leads to a significant delay. I want to be able to just play the media like I could on a normal computer.
Posted in Australians receive SMS death threats
Why is the ACCC involved?
Surely this is actually threatening people?
I'd be surprised if at least a few people hadn't absolutely crapped their pants over this. Shouldn't it be a police matter?
Re: winFAIL
Ah yes, it is entertaining. The great redmond messiah, Windows Phone 7, hailed by every shill on the 'webs as the best thing ever for developers and users, even well before release , is now subject to revision. Of course Win phone 7 was only the stepping stone to the real treat, Win Phone 8! Of course, it was never meant to succeed for nokia, who only pinned their smartphone portfolio on it for a laugh!
No really, 8 is going to revolutionise everything!
It would be funnier if it hadn't exposed to me jsut how many paid interests there are commenting on tech sites to try to 'shape the conversation'.
Posted in Darth Vader is a pansy
Re: Wood Jerry, Wood
And for those without the 'leet skills to carpenter themselves up a wooden PC, there's always fablon!
Re: I smell some sport! - @bdam
Err, as an ex-Londoner I'd like to mention here that the majority of Londoners didn't want the cost or the extra people crowding the city, neither did we want the extra taxes. The whole 'sell' for the 2012 olympics was a tapestry of lies and half-truths about it being the best way to regenerate parts of the city, when in fact it's pretty obvious it would have been cheaper and easier just to invest the money directly.
Make no mistakes, this is a political pride/legacy play, nothing to do with the people, be they Londoners or otherwise.
It's good people are enthusiastic about this stuff
But the Pi si seriously underpowered IMHO.
I shall be contemplating the ODROID-X, personally, as the Pi feels like a step backwards from the sheevaplug I bought a few years ago. I know, these are different use-cases to the Pi, but I can't actually think of much I'd want to do with the Pi. Most Pi users seem to want to use it as a media streaming/cheap desktop box anyway, for which it seems pretty underpowered.
Yup
And long term studies seem to show that (despite the claims coming out of the sporting cabal at the top of the UK olympics team) the hosting nation of an Olympics does not see a rise in sporting participation. We would be doing much more for the people of the UK if the money had been spent on an expansion of the UK's cycle-path infrastructure, removing the current "I don't want to get killed on the road" disincentive to taking up a healthy and non-polluting form of transport.
Re: Erm?
"Don't worry Richard, I think it was funny. Bit too subtle for others."
In my defence I'd like to offer up Poe's law....
Re: Rdad - all of those points also apply to android
There's nothing unique to windows phone in any of the points you made about things working out of the box.
And this is just priceless - "it may be that it's too far ahead of the curve"
Seriously? I know you seem to view the lack of ability to customise as a bonus, but even non-tech people like to be able to do things like add a new ringtone, which every other phone has been able to do for a decade. Not so WP7 until 7.5. And with 7.5 you have to figure out how to edit your MP3 into a 40-second or less sub-1MB specialised rington file.
This is not a user-friendly tool, it's a clusterf*ck.
Re: Erm?
Yes I have looked into this. The story seems to be this -
Brave Maverick Scientists(TM) discovers totally implausible new scientific process which will revolutionise the world! But only if he can have your money, now! No, there will be no scientific or regulatory oversight!
It's got scam painted all over it in huge letters, regardless of his history. The fact that he's got fraud convictions from previous scams is just icing on the cake. And no, none of it is 'quite informative' in the face of the fact he won't let anyone verify his apparent 'results', his video is nothing but propaganda and part of the scam.
Re: No room for 3rd ecosystem.
Yup, I would have been in the queue for a nokia android - I mean, assuming they had still gone ahead and ditched maemo/meego.
Nokia still says "quality handset" to some of us, and I believe they could have turned that into a reputation as a high-quality European android manufacturer. But nobody wants windows phone.
However, the E-Cat has been a hit among...
...green energy enthusiasts morons as a "save the world" technology.
Keep up the good work, these conmen need the light of day shined on them, and I for one enjoy it when they get shot down.
Although some of them seem to keep ticking over for years as true believers continue to try and make their revolutionary technology work through sheer bloody mindedness, even though it's now established it can't and never has. (Orbo, I'm looking at you)
Re: This really does go to prove that web companies are a bad investment
I'm not *sure* fb is going to fail anytime soon, but I do think it was massively overvalued. A lot of the other things you mention that aren't going to fail I agree with - but these are more traditional businesses that rely for the most part on paying customers and actually selling a product.
I agree that a lot of these things follow the wrong success stories as examples. The other problem I see at the moment is overestimating the stickiness factor of these sites/services, and in doing so performing some sort of direct conversion between number of current users and available dollars. The reality is that for an awful lot of these services (and product, like nokia) there is no real stickiness and people just migrate when things change or something else better (or just newer) comes along.
Either way, there seems to be a buttload of money going on uncertain ventures at the moment, and Digg ought to be a case study for the investors.
At $150....
That's not bad, assuming it can be reflashed with something less... jesusified.
You'll notice it also has a micro SD slot, something the nexus is sadly lacking.
This really does go to prove that web companies are a bad investment
How many times do we have to see it before the investors realise, I wonder?
Company forms, comes up with a good idea, gets huge, cruises for a few years and then plummets as the next big thing comes along.
Sometime in the middle there the founders (if they're smart) cash out for a few hundred million, though that didn't happen here, then the new owners or public investors are left watching their 'investment' leak cash and drop in value.
This is why things like the facebook IPO and the recent github VC funding both entertain and annoy me - these services are barely profitable, they have huge userbases but no real must-have product that couldn't be provided by someone else. Yet the cash-vomiting 'genius' investors see fit to throw ludicrous wedges of money at them, seemingly oblivious to the way these things fail, and how the cycle of growth and failure is really quite rapid in the tech world.
So yeah, the Digg guys should have gone for the 200m, and I gotta get me some of that.....
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.
Unlike, say, religion?
Which doesn't in any way seek to undermine critical thinking or rewire childrens brains?
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.
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?
;)
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.
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.
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?
Posted in ACTA can't get its act together
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.
Posted in ACTA can't get its act together
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.
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.
Posted in Pandora plays beta beats downunder
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
@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.
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.
Two downvotes?
For a semi-relevant futurama quote?
You people have no soul...
So I said super-collider...
... I just met her! And then they built the super collider.
Anecdote accepted. Snappy comeback not found.
Posted in Now Apple faces Siri court room showdown
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.
Posted in Now Apple faces Siri court room showdown
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.
Posted in Now Apple faces Siri court room showdown
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
$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.
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.
