Tempting.

The other gorillas.bas copies that Rovio do all have had major permissions creep, blamed on "the advertisers". Funny, since plenty of other app developers release ad-supported apps without asking for the moon on a stick.

I just don't know if I trust Rovio NOT to creep the permission requirements up once they have a few captive^Wpaying customers. It's thanks to the actions of developers like this that I get more and more tempted to root my phone and install a selective permission blocker.

Re: There is no such thing as "free" TV

See my other posts: businessess don't get into loss-making ventures deliberately, and would not advertise if it were losing them money.

Commercial telly is not a tax on your food supply for fuxache.

Re: What's wrong with a licence fee then?

A business will only advertise if it stands to profit from the arrangement. That is, the extra products or services sold due to the advert will outstrip the money spent on the advert.

Suddenly the FUD about commercial telly being a tax on food or some other bullshit is exposed as just that: Thick, stinky bullshit.

The license fee is still extortion and threats though, however you slice it.

Re: What about commercial TV?

I call shenanigans.

Those companies have an advertising budget. TV or no TV, that money would be spent on trying to persuade people to buy more of their produce. If it works, it brings in more than it cost, so that "hidden tax" that isn't, is SAVING you money, if you want to play that way.

The BBC and Crapita on the other hand, survive on extortion and threats.

That was fun.

"You have new mail"

Followed by the email client squealing and complaining about the gutbustingly-huge content. Not sure how many lines were in it, but I know my main account's elreg-specific email address was in it.

Ho hum. Be interesting to see how many spammers/scammers actually use it. Haven't spotted any yet that have made it past my friend Mr Bayes.

If you're all for the license fee...

...you pay it. Don't go pretending that the rest of us should finance your particular tastes in goggle-box programming.

Voltages.

Yup. I remember finding this out myself. Basically TTL chips like to run between 4.8 and 5.2v. I remember the tutor saying how wonderful CMOS technology was because you can run some of the chips on damn near anything from less than 3v up to 18v or so.

That said, I wouldn't want to take the chance on the phone's built-in power management being so smart. Regulator ICs are cheap and pretty efficient, and the phones are probably built in the same place as the chargers, after all!

Re: SONAR

Well, you might only need two if the beacons are just acting as locators, so long as the robot can't get to the other side of the line between them and confuse itself. I'm wondering how doable it is to have each beacon mark out the vertices of a polygon that describes the boundary of the lawn though. Stick a light on top and make them look like solar garden decorations.

If each beacon can talk to the others and they can triangulate their positions relative to each other, then they can chat with whatever system is aboard the lawnbot. Maybe even in real-time, so you can move the beacons around mid-mow and define areas where you can sit and enjoy your G&T while watching the mechanized underling beavering away in its half of the garden.

Like I said though, however you design the positioning system of this thing, I think it would be prudent to have a SONAR or RADAR system on the lawnbot itself for detecting obstacles. Nothing fancy, just a kit or COTS box that you point at something and it gives you a varying signal depending on whether it's pointing at anything and how close it is. Stick it on a stepper motor for 360 degree detection, and possibly hack it up with an MP3 player to provide random BOFHisms and threats toward whatever ankles, cats or plant pots get in the way.

Re: SONAR

About as reliable as it is in the parking alarm sensor sat next to a chugging exhaust system. Or, in an old TV remote competing with the din coming out of the loudspeaker.

I can't see why it wouldn't work, myself. Couple of locator beacons on the lawn boundaries effectively broadcasting small signatures to say "I am boundary vertex number 0x0001", and some transducers (or a single rotating transducer pair) on the mower sending out a simple ping every 20ms or so and listening for the reply. The former lets the mower know where it is, the latter lets it avoid unexpected pets, toys and test engineers. So long as they are taller than the grass, of course.

Of course for extra propellorheadedness, make the whole system self-setting. Plonk the boundary beacons in, they talk to each other, find out their relative positions automatically, and feed that to the mower's onboard computer to tell it what part of the mowing boundary each beacon represents.

Then patent the lot and become the next Dyson. Muahahaha, etc.

Re: No decent droid handsets at £150

I think you just haven't been looking hard enough. Once you get past the sub-£80 600Mhz ARM11 almost-a-smartphones, you can pick up a decent handset running a decent, official revision of Android for much less than that price. Hell, the Sony-so-it's-expensive Xperia Mini is still being sold in Tesco for a shade under £125, if you fancy a phone with a slidey keyboard. Anything 2.x is not going to be shabby, will support the vast majority of all market apps, and you can always install Launcher 7 if you absolutely must have a launcher with mahoosive buttons^Wtiles. Pretty sure you can get some Gingerbreads for the price of a Lumia.

Or is this a ploy to get some commentards to do your shopping for you? Sneaky Spartacus, go do your own Googling.

Re: Paper is a rubbish format.

Nope.

But I can read a book without switching it on. Doesn't demand that I download the latest version of the English language either. Or become unreadable because everyone has moved to Book v3.2.

Yep, digital information is more conveniently searchable. It's hardly a good archive format though.

Re: SONAR

Something like this. Can have some transducers on the lawn boundaries broadcasting identifiers, along with maybe some kind of rotating transducers atop the bot working as a SONAR beacon for detecting unexpected cats, dogs and legs.

Re: Paper is a rubbish format.

That's a bit like saying your car has a digital original because it was designed in a CAD program?

Like I say, presumably there will still be a print button.

Re: History almost repeating ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project

It wouldn't be the first time.

Re: Paper is a rubbish format.

The problem with being digital-only is that bit-rot and the tendency of late to DRM everything to death tends to act faster and much more efficiently than physical rot in rendering information unreadable.

Still, I guess there's a "print" button.

Re: Sod them

Indeed.

I will buy games though. Just not games with mandatory Steam registration, or by EA, or Ubisoft.

Apparently my money isn't good enough for them and they want me to create accounts? More forgettable usernames and passwords on more hackable servers, an implication that I'm a pirate and a bunch of shite installed alongside the game to go with it? It's a toy, ffs. Either you give me something that works without a load of shit installed, or I buy elsewhere.

Showed the world you could put a game on an optical disk.

Sega Mega CD? Amiga CD32?

Re: games vs cars

Run the servers? Maybe for an MMO that you pay per month for anyway.

Most "multiplayer" games rely on one of the players running the server, and yes that includes the rip-off Xbox Live service. Never seen the "migrating host" message on COD when some kiddy spits his dummy out and switches their machine off halfway through a match when they are the host?

False argument. When the devs are running the servers, you tend to pay for them.

Could be worse.

Multi User Forth.

: main "Yes really, multi user. Share the insanity!" me @ swap notify ;

Vaseline?

Partly for the garden shed engineering angle, partly because it would make a good seal, and partly you're mixing LOHAN, REHAB and a lot of lube.

I'll upvote you just for being pedantic...

...and raise you a "Android isn't even the OS, that's Linux. Android is a whacking great stack of software running on Linux, the visible part you see of which is the Dalvik virtual machine and whatever launcher is running."

But yes, the permissions model does need a bit of a remodel.

Probably for adverts.

So here's a suggestion: PERMISSION::ADVERTS, PERMISSION::ADVERTS_GPSLOC, PERMISSION::ADVERTS_TOWERLOC, plus any others that are specifically related to the advertising framework you're using.

Now offer users a central control panel with checkboxes that say "Yes, adverts can know my location", "Yes, adverts can read my contacts", and any other permissions that Adwords and other approved advertising companies might use. I say this because "approved advertising companies" is better than "whatever advertising companies the local monopolies commission says you HAVE to work with".

Make sure the user can always turn all checkboxes off. Doesn't stop an advert-funded app displaying adverts, just that they would be more like billboards and less like a personalised sales pitch.

Does anybody remember the utter stink that Go!Zilla and Aureate kicked up? It wasn't just because of the ad banner.

Re: Avatars

Has anybody suggested a Karma-ish system yet? If posts_total - posts_reported < some_percentage then bingo_you_has_imagery(uid). Well, something like that anyway, and it could be extended to other plusses, eg if someone really can be trusted to play around in a simple scripting environment without breaking the site layout and pissing everyone off. How hard to make a little box the size of a post with a canvas area and a very simple tablettish VM in javascript, does anybody have the spare time to implement it, and more importantly could it have a checkbox so users can say "no I don't want funky Javascript running everywhere"?

Might help to have some feedback as well, if you're trying to make the forums more self-moderated (ie: users can banhammer each other). Having a flag next to the post in the Your Posts list with "X number of people have reported this post" or similar might promote a more graded response than "you posted something shit, you're lolbanned."

Re: Non-eco eco car

I have to wonder why they don't use a bog standard Fork Lift Truck battery connector or similar. If that thing can stand a 3500Ah 72V lead/acid battery dumping enough current into the hydraulic motor to lift two and a half metric tons into the air, it can stand an E car.

Not using it for a while? Flip bonnet/boot, grab both side of connector and yank sharply. Problem solved.

Re: I cant help it but...

Also read up on the history behind the name of Donkey Kong. Quite the complex interplay of translation cock-ups happened for that one.

Right Wing Good Left Wing Bad

The only thing the nazis thought "must be done" about the poor was either using them to build roads or giving them a free shower session, yaknow?

The BNP is right wing. So is Combat 18. Just to throw some perspective on the above post.

And what's more...

...I don't have to put on a faux American accent to help it understand me. It gets my unique mixture of South-east, Midlands and Lancashire quite accurately.

Google Voice Search

"Pubs in Manchester"

...followed by a list of search results. Took about 10 seconds, though I guess it would be faster if you are in an area with better mobile coverage.

"The register we never actually said siri would work in the UK."

...followed by a search page with this article on top. Even got it despite the title not being exactly what I said.

"The register Chad H besides the point"

I'll let you guess what that comes up with.

Come on Apple. Keep up, won't you?

I MUST WHIP MY TITTIES OUT, IT'S NATURAL.

So is having a dirty big shit.

I'd rather F Microsoft...

...by not giving them money.