Posts by ceebee
85 posts • joined Friday 30th May 2008 01:02 GMT
yes but....
Marissa better get over to Flickr, she has a fire raging there... 20,000 complaints about the new interface on Flickr and no response from Yahoo! since Monday.
But then she doesn't seem to care ... yahoo! is not interested in adults just tweeners with smartphones!
yahoo!! hahahah
I would not believe a word of Yahoo!'s corporate spin if my life depended on it.
They always makes these sorts of comments when they buy something. They made the same sort of soothing noises when they bought Flickr years ago and have progressively destroyed the site.
There are literally 20,000 complaints (178 pages of them) on the Flickr blogs at the moment demanding that Yahoo! undo the changes to the interface that were implemented on Monday, without consultation or any warning.
Yahoo! won't take any notice of course. The changes are part of targeting Flickr at a different audience and Yahoo! has basically told its existing Flickr users to just go away, which they are doing in droves (to French site Ipernity.com)
What the Yahoo! experience shows Flickr users is NEVER EVER trust the cloud or trust corporations to take care of your data.
Tumblr users can look forward to the same behaviour from Yahoo! ... why should we think otherwise.
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
The revised Flickr site is slow (ie as in molasses) is so cool it is unusable and double the cost and with less services (ie stats are no longer available) for "Pro" now "ad-free" accounts.
It looks like it was hit by a bad dose of Google black and Windows8.
But most importantly it makes searching, displaying and commenting images on images so much more difficult.
The Flickr blog is full of negative comments.
This is what lies ahead for Tumblr users.
The Flickr site today has none of the feel that made the original Flickr so good to use ..simplicity and speed.
Fail Yahoo! FAIL!
oh! NO!!!
they destroyed Flickr! do not let them near Tumblr .. pleaseeeeeeeee!!!
a small policy
A typically cynical small policy from a small minded party with no long term vision.
Just a pity the other lot are so hopeless!
really!
With approximately 30% or so of all PCs running WinXP I just do not see how Microsoft can cease support. From a practical point of view security of one third of PCs will be at risk and that simply is not acceptable.
Whilst it is unfortunate it is inevitable that XP will live on well beyond next year!
i don't normally double post on a topic but...
Quite separately, I checked the system requirements for Office 2013.
Win7 or Win8
1ghz processor,
1024x576 pixel screen, 64mb video ram
.NET 3.5, 4.0 or 4.5
3gb of disk space (3gb!!!!!)
so NO Vista or WinXP users may apply.
Whilst I can understand the requirements I find it odd that Vista is not supported? What is missing from Vista that is required in Office 2013? It is just an office suite we are talking about!!!!!
interesting move there Microsoft....
This goes with the apparent move to lock down games to a single xBox (or Playstation).
Microsoft and other players are trying to kill the secondhand software and gaming market as well as extract maximum cash from the punters now via subscriptions and sleight of hand changes to licensing and pricing (witness Mac Office prices increases).
So goodbye MS. The new Office is ok but there is nothing in Office 2013 I need particularly that is not in Office 2003 for which i have a legitimate and TRANSFERABLE enduring licence. (And do not have to put up with the awful ribbon UI).
LibreOffice is getting there and includes a vector drawing package that Office has never had, so a combination of Office 2003 and LO does me fine.
MS has rocks in its head if it thinks I am going to pay a subscription fee for basic word processing!!
but then....
a lot of big businesses are deeply welded to Notes.
The main user complaint I get is about the UI. (Which is actually ok..just different once u get your head around it). Everyone is used to MS stuff.
I hope 9.0 has improved that but at least it is not that stupid MS ribbon based!!
Posted in Apple updates iOS 6, Safari
safari... well just...
Apple of course has not updated Safari (or much else) for Snow Leopard users who are stuck with Safari vs 5.0. No security updates ..zilch..typical...
Of course as good little Apploids we are supposed to drop everything upgrade to Lion or Mountain Lion ..fine but then I lose a range of applications needing PPC code (yes they still exist).
I am sorry this continues to be a huge security FAIL!
Re: Not just the file format
It is not just the file formats but also the physical media beit disk or tape or whatever.
I regularly retrieve material from 1980s Mac formats like MacWrite, MacDraw, MS Word for Mac etc. from 400kb and 800kb Mac disks.
I luckily still have a working 1990 MacPlus which enables me to read the disks and bring the data forward to via a usb floppy disk drive to a more recent version of Word or whatever.
Archivists rightly fear the "Digital Dark Ages" as material written only 10 or 20 years ago is increasingly difficult to recover easily.
Even MS Word will not (easily) read files created before Word 97 (for security reasons!).
Posted in Oz gov to test ‘all renewable’ options
oh really...
The OZ government(s) have an appalling history of stalling renewable energy options to favour large coal interests. Both the coal mining companies and mining unions have fought solar and wind power across the country. This review / study is really just another stalling exercise. Anything to avoid actually DOING something.
OZ should be at the forefront of solar power useage but our government continually resist investing in it. They have reduced solar feed-in tariffs and removed nearly all subsidies to home owners.
grrrrr.....
no issues here...
Got mine on Wednesday (ordered it on 28/6)... smooth as silk delivery by FedEx from HK to Australia. Once I got a shipping notice from Google on Monday I could track the parcel from HK to Sydney to Melbourne.
As for the device itself... very happy with it... the screen is great.. the device is fast and jelly bean is certainly a nice refinement of Android.
Almost immediately after booting it announce a system update was downloading! HOOORAY ... one of the big advantages of getting a Nexus!
And that packaging is some sort of Chinese puzzle box designed to frustrate!!!!!!
war crimes....
Seems to me Moses could face a war crimes tribunal in the Hague... smiting 3,000 unbelievers is not exactly PC!
No tolerance in Old Judea! Sort of Taliban BC.
Baal shall rise !!
but....
If Apple follows its normal policy Snow leopard will unsupported with the release of Mountain Lion.
Snow Leopard was released in 2009 and is the last OS to support Rosetta.
If support ends (as Apple usually only supports the current OS and its immediate predecessor) then whilst your Mac may not stop working but it will be increasingly insecure as there will be no further security patches and Safari will no longer be updated.
That is a far more serious issue.
(Ask users of Tiger or Leopard about this!)
Metro the new Bob?
I have tried Win8 and the UI is basically a mess. It may be fast and fluid but it is still less productive and useable.
I am less worried about Aero Glass than the whole mess that is the Metro start menu.
This really is Metro vs 1 not Windows vs 8!
Now where did I put those Bob disks?
Re: Word 2 was a POS
agh ..you needed the WfW2.0c update/bug fix. It fixed many of these sorts of bugs. oh my ... wqhy do i remember these things!!
oh goodie
Given that Australia has already signed ACTA without any input form either our parliament or from consumer advocates and has indicated its willingness to sign the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty (almost sight unseen) we can already see the thrust of any changes to copyright will further reduce consumer rights to promote profit...ooops "innovation".
TPP anyone...
If ACTA is bad the "Trans-Pacific-Partnership" is even worse...it is currently being negotiated in the same secretive way as ACTA was and what has leaked reveals the very sort of scope creep that anti-ACTA activists feared. Even more draconian "IP" rules and penalties.
Of course we are not allowed to know exactly what is being discussed or even by whom let alone see a draft ... gotta love the mix of big content and government bureaucracy.
Posted in Czechs, Slovaks stall on ACTA
"Consultation"! HAH!
There was no real consultation ACTA here in Australia (just as there is no consultation on the Trans-Pacific-Partnership (nice name ..total dud of a treaty).
These treaties have been designed to sidestep the public involvement. Both ACTA and the ongoing TPP processes have been carried out in almost total secrecy.
Thankfully the EU is showing signs of questioning ACTA.
Posted in The hole in the copy-proof fence
and into the future...
Thinking on this ... think forward a few years.. smartphones with PVRs / tuners built in? Ironically as it stands it is possible to program Foxtel (part owned by Telstra of course) via telephone or web.
How long before I can stream that back to my phone or pad thing ...how long before my phone or pad is the PVR?
The broadcasters and content owners need to think ahead not look back to good old days!
if only...
This decision has big consequences for copyright/exclusive content deals for the telcos in Oz. But then maybe it would be easier if those fancy smartphones and fondleslabs had tv tuners built in (it is 2012 after all how hard can it be!) ..but wait then all that video stuff would not be eating into your data quota...mmm
and what will happen ...
If the new Start menu/screen thingy is unworkable ... and judging by the screen shots it is pretty much the case... users (including your truly) will continue to do what we always have done with desktop OSes... add icons for commonly used programs and documents to the desktop and ignore the Start Menu completely.
(Even with Windows 3.x Program Manager, users created program groups with the most used programs readily accessible and hid the rest).
The XP start menu was the first attempt to deal with the huge Start menu lists caused by programs adding increasing numbers of entries to the menu... most of my users ignored it ...until forced to use it with Windows7.
The original spatial model, pioneered by that well known fruit company remains, for many (most?) users, the most comfortable, logical and useful paradigm.
But this also opens some interesting questions for competitors. If this impacts Apple vaunted A4/A5 processors and the tech is available in products from Via then Apple's competitors in the mobile phone and computing space seeking the sort of speed etc. that Apple claims come from its magical chips, are in a far better position to obtain the technology for their own products.
This is a watch this space issue...
Rosetta anyone
maybe Steve can call Tim and borrow Apple's Rosetta ... which seemed fine for getting PPC code apps to run on Intel... until Apple decided to drop it..
Posted in Why modern music sounds rubbish
of matched impedance...
Volume, dynamic range, equalization and frequency response arguments have been around for as long as we have been recording.. ie. since the 1880s!
When "electrical" recording was invented in the 1920s, essentially by Western Electric working with the Victor Talking Machine Co. (which became part of RCA), many commentators and critics complained of the unnatural brightness of the new recordings.
Suddenly recordings had upper frequencies approaching 9khz ... unheard of in the acoustic era.. but these new recordings sounded dreadful on older gramophones/phonographs. Only newer gramophones with improved horns (look up orthophonic or folded horns) revealed the full beauty of the new electrical recording.
And with electrical recording came equalization which has been an essential part of the recording process ever since.
In the 1950s came the battle of equalizer... as the major record companies each adopted different equalization schemes ..ultimately settled by the adoption of the RIAA standard.
There really is nothing new...
Posted in Yahoo! fires! CEO! Carol! Bartz!
maybe! if!
only Yahoo! knew what it was actually trying to be... is it a Facebook clone, a search engine, an email company or what...????
It seems every time they "refresh" something ... Yahoo! mail or calendar or Flickr or whatever they make two steps forward and three back in usability.
The most recent example were the changes to the calendar, which lost functionality and the link to group calendars in Yahoo groups amongst other things.
Previous missteps include the whole Yahoo360 debacle and the mess they made migrating Yahoo profiles which included losing most users' data (all without warning I might add!)
At the core seems to an inability to decide just what Yahoo is about. They seem forever to be chasing the latest 'net craze and missing the boat every time.
I am not sure Carol Bartz was to blame or just unable to deal with the internal issues that cause the mess.
Posted in Apple ejects FT app from iTunes
oh goodie...
As a HTML5 site ..it will play nicely with my $98 HP Touchpad!
Posted in One last production run for TouchPad
as one ...
...who managed to get the $98AUD Tpad and who is really happy with it... every Tpad sold is one more WebOS user.
If Hp is smart in any way, they will keep some back for the developer community. If it really wants WebOS to remain viable it needs developers producing apps and developers need Touchpads and Pre phones to work with.
But then Hp has not shown too many smarts of late!
Posted in Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet goes on sale
loving my HP
despite the Touchpad being a commercial failure ..I managed to pick one up cheap... and you know what it is actually quite good... surfs the web, plays FLASH video ... and has great audio.
the WebOS is so much nicer to use than Android in the tablet form factor ... maybe Honeycomb fixes the tablet issues?
That said I hope someone else succeeds ..having a monopoly player, whether it is Apple or Microsoft or Google is not a great thing.
does anyone...
believe anything coming from HP at the moment?
does anyone believe there is any future in WebOS?
does anyone think that it is worth developing apps for WebOS?
I think that the answer must be a resounding NO!
Posted in Harvey Norman drops HP’s TouchPad
dropped ..sort of...
They pulled them from the shelves on Friday then after a hastily arranged meeting with HP Monday morning they, like BestBuy and other retailers in the US and elsewhere, began a firesale ... $98 for the 16gb version and $149 for the 32gb version..
Not sure of how well they are selling but they seem out of stock everywhere and hour after the went on sale at that price.
Suddenly HP has a "success" on its hands????
Posted in India cracks down on the Blackberry
pressure will build...
With the riots in London I can see pressure on RIM in the UK, at least, to open its messaging and mail platforms.
Tough call... for both RIM, police forces, politicians and the public.... I offer no answers but we do need to debate privacy in the digital era for more than has occurred up til now.
Creeping government regulation and corporate invasion of personal privacy needs proper review.... something neither governments nor business has been too keen to do.
oh Amiga :)
those orange boxes with the meditations used to be the bane of my Amiga days!
Posted in Foxtel gets closer to Austar swoop
amazing isn't it...
that at the very same time the News Corp takeover of BSkyB is mired in the phone hacking scandal that seems to reach to the very heart of the News Corp and monopoly concerns, News Corp is on the verge of taking control of Australia's second satellite/cable company making Foxtel an effective monopoly.
well this cat is not buying ...
Lion maybe very nice... but without Rosetta I will keep my $30 thank you... apart from the 4gb download issue ... losing PPC app support is a deal killer for me.
hardly the cat's meow..
I just do not understand Lion...
Why remove Rosetta? A whole bag of pain for users for little or no gain... and a 4gb download??? Is Apple serious!!
And for what? So my Mac can look like an iPad.
I am aware of the advantages of a full 64bit OS but many of the enhancements seem relatively minor or debatable. The new scroll bars (or lack of them!) seem hardly a reason to upgrade... or the ability to set a single colour for your background ... WOW! ... system-wide autosave seems a nice idea but again hardly a reason to give up PPC support.
Oh and I get to scroll like an iPhone? Full screen apps ..you mean like System 1.0 of Macinstosh.
Not sure I will be moving to Lion anytime soon.
is Apple serious?
Oh let's just spend a week or two trying to get the 4gb download! It may be fine for some Apple fanboi in Palo Alto but has Apple any idea of real world connection speeds?
Posted in ASA smackdown for Yahoo! Thelma & Louise
but is Y mail faster...??
I do not find the "new" Y mail faster and the new Yahoo calendar is a complete and utter dud with major functions removed inc. Blackberry and Outlook syncing, ability to share Yahoo Group calendars and introducing "features" such as minimum 30 minute blocks for meetings etc.
Maybe the ASA could get them for false advertising?
Gnome
The problem with Gnome 3 and Unity is they both seem to distance the user from the basic functions a user needs.
The key principles of GUI design must be simplicity and consistency.. as best I can see both fail this test to varying degrees.
Even Windows 7 and OSX 10.7 (Lion) seem to moving away from the user being able to interact directly with the file system and desktop. (The dumbed down file explorer in Windows 7 is a classic example along with the increasing desire to hide menus or functions requiring clicks or keyboard actions to make them popup)
Have a look at many users' desktops ..they are full of files because it is the quickest and easiest place to put files. This reveals a basic failure of the file management application beit Windows, OSX or Linux.
KDE's desktop with its strange panels etc. is a prime example of the new style of UI that pushes its way between the user and their files and workflow. Sure it works (I managed to batter it into submission) but I shouldn't need to.
A GUI should get out of the way, be simple and easy to use. Those principles were the same in 1968 at Palo Alto as they are today.
standby...
All the code words are there.... typical conservative stuff... waiting for "labour market flexibility" and "individual right to bargain" etc .. this is all about removing the few rights left in the UK labour market for workers.
The Tories cannot help themselves...
Posted in Microsoft's iOS and Android love deepens
this is precisely why...
I am not yet willing to purchase a Win7 phone. The disaster with the NoDo update shows just how much a mess the update process for Win7 phones has become.
If it is this bad for a simple update or security fix I can imagine how big a disaster the Mango update will be.
Posted in Aus convergence review kicks off
mmmm..indeed...
This review is all about censorship and ownership rules.
Part of the Oz government's never-ending crusade against what it (and its ultra fundamentalist Christian mates) consider smut.
It wants to bring the rules covering TV and film to the 'net and mobile device space and at the same time justify removing the last remnants controls over our media monopolies.
That is all this is about.http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/thumb_down_32.png
yes but....
Nice to hear..but given the mess that is winphone7 upgrades I think we can almost guarantee that current winphones will have to wait for months after Mango's release to get the update if at all.
but ...
FF4.0 and Chrome still manage to support WinXP.
IE9.0s Vista/Win7 only support may make sense in many ways but for corp. users are stuck on WinXP it is useless.
Posted in Apple Mac OS X: ten years old today
oh the Finder...
I am one of those who has never really liked the OSX Finder.... let's be honest I detest it.
I fight with it ... I use it (just like the equally indadequate and dumbed down Windows Explorer in Windows7) but even after 10 years I still believe that for many purposes the Classic Finder leaves the OSX finder in the dirt.
Yes, the OSX file browser can handle large numbers of files etc.better than the "Classic" Finder but for a day to day user it remains slow unwieldy mess that distance users from their files.
Ever noticed how files pile up on users desktops. This is simply because the filing systems have failed the user who want easy direct access to his/her files.
It is interesting that early mockups from 1982/83 of what became the Finder in the Macintosh show a divergence of opinion between supporters of the spatial version ultimately adopted and a browser model, backed by Steve Jobs. So it is not a surprise perhaps that the browser model is what users got, like it or not, in OSX.
why no wifi hotspot for 3gs
I really find the decision not to provide 3gs users the wifi hotspot a serious fail ... the much touted 4.3 is basically meaningless for 3gs users.... a few bug fixes and some slight speed improvement..but clearly aimed at pushing 3gs users to buy new phones.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/fail_32.png
well what would expect...
The Australian government is obessed with censorship ... real nanny state stuff pandering to a tiny fundamental Christian lobby group.
They still refuse to sort out the lack of R18+ rating for PC games so is it any surprise they are terrified of naughty stuff turning up on smartphones.
I can think of many words to describe them but "idiots" comes to mind.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/fail_32.png
but wait...
IE9 is still locked into the whole Windows OS... with all the problems that causes.
Isn't time that MS disconnected the OS and browser.
As for FF4 vs IE9.... I will wait for final releases to really see ... but both are getting so carried away with features and options that nobody really uses!
so what is new...
I am always surprised by people's reactions to the latest twist in Apple's fight to totally control its platform. They have been like this since the beginning.
Part of Job's obsession with control seems to stem from clones of the Apple II that hurt Apple's bottom line.
The Lisa and then the original Macintosh were originally designed with a totally locked down environment in mind.
Apple has a history of litigation and attempts at control... this is just the latest (and will surely not be the last) round in the battle.
If Apple (or MS) ever force me to use an Apps store to install software on my Mac or PC I think the time will finally come to move to Linux despite its many problems.
