Re: Alternative app stores

The average person doesn't need to know how to install some alternative Market or anything like that. You run a web site that hosts APK files. The user needs to know how to navigate to www.somesuperappstore.com and click on a link. In some cases they might have to go through a standardised procedure (settings->applications->click the checkbox saying 'unknown sources') for it to work, but it's hardly rocket science.

As for people who don't understand they can get apps from anywhere else, are you sure about that? Are you sure that, say, Amazon couldn't run an advertising campaign saying "lookie, we do Android apps now"? Or "get the new SuperFooBar for Android exclusively from Amazon!" Again, not exactly rocket science. Plenty of people have Amazon accounts. All Amazon would have to do is add an "Android" category to the rest of the shop. All the Amazon "app" itself needs to do is be a glorified bookmark.

Or are you saying that people don't know how to get Windows applications because Microsoft don't lock them into one single method of purchasing apps?

How about...

http://www.reghardware.com/2010/11/16/ten_essential_budget_android_smartphones/

I'd stay away from the ZTE Racer/San Fran though. I know it's had some favourable reviews, but after pulling it out of my pocket to find it had dialled the emergency services a whole load of times, it now has a permanent place on the Naughty Step. Same with any phone that allows the screen to be activated in your pocket.

Crippling the web.

And like I said in my original reply, there would be a little green robot in the other corner laughing its little head off and shouting "over here, chaps! I run at top speed!"

Seriously, after all that noise Apple were making about running the "full" web, I imagine various manufacturers would have a field-day over such a bone-headed decision as to deliberately cripple performance of the entire World Wide Web on the iToys over a few businesses putting up websites with paywalls. I didn't say Apple WOULDN'T do it. I'd just be giggling uncontrollably if they did. As would, no doubt, various people from Google, Samsung, HTC, Sony, Archos, ZTE... you get the idea.

Just imagine someone with a "premium" iPhone being unable to view a website or having really crappy performance, while the guy next to him with a budget no-name Droid sails ahead smoothly. What do you think their next mobile device will be? Just how brainwashed would this hypothetical person have to be to continue thinking that they have "the best"?

In fact, I don't think "stark, raving bonkers" would even begin to describe such a decision.

Anonymizing the googlebot?

Problem there is, the spammers would then probably start showing Google-ified results coming from anywhere in 1e100's IP range.

Of course, Google could then offer incentives to their own employees to use their home connections for some distributed webcrawling. Beat that, spammers.

It's a standard Android feature.

Though what that has to do with wireless Smart Meters is anyone's guess.

Frequency?

There's a lot of expensive equipment goes into making sure the frequency of AC doesn't change or, more importantly, go out of phase between different bits of the grid. If that happened, "kaboom" would be an understatement. You'd see engineers having to go out and replace every fuse or reset every breaker from your supply up to the power station and everywhere between.

Voltage perhaps, but even that isn't an indicator of demand when you consider just how big the grid is, how many interconnecting parts it has and how many generators are all feeding into the system at once (again, may I add, having to be locked in sync so you don't end up with massive beat frequency oscillations and other such loveliness that can literally rip a rather large generator's rotor off its bearings if the fuses don't blow first).

Anyway, I'm not so concerned with Smart Meters, and more concerned with recent legislation that makes it illegal for you to so much as extend a ring or add a spur, yet perfectly legal to wire an entire garage extension into the house, so long as you do it via a plug. What's with that? And how does anybody know you fitted things before or after the law came into force?

They could do all that...

...meanwhile a little robot will be sat there in the other corner saying "Hi guys. No problems here!"

Apple would have to have a collective mental breakdown and go completely stark raving bonkers to even consider making web apps run like a three-legged dog. Mind you, nothing much would surprise me. After all, forcing news sites and the likes to go for a multi-platform technology by introducing extortionate charges to their own App Store is hardly a level-headed approach. For an increasing number of people, "Not An iPhone" is either inconsequential or worse, a selling point.

£200? Depends on how it's subsidised.

After all, it took Microsoft until 2008 just to break even on Xbox sales. Most games console manufacturers make a loss on the hardware, assuming you're going to buy a few of the vastly more profitable games for your new toy.

Amazon have the Apple-style advantage of being able to control everything from hardware to content. They can make money on e-books and online ordering while promoting a cheap but good tablet as a loss leader. Especially if they can nail a few good exclusives for an Amazon App Store to run in conjunction with the usual Android Market.

Add in Whispernet capability, and that's something that NO other tablet manufacturer has managed yet. Maybe license Notion Ink's dual active/passive display (assuming it's any good) for incredibly enhanced battery life. Impossible? Nah, I wouldn't say so.

Bigger telescope

Like the Hubble?

It's amazing how much better the view is when you don't have a few hundred miles of atmosphere screwing with things. That and, well, finding a way of producing energy off-world might be good for the climate on-world, ya know? Do all the dirty stuff on a dead planet or other floating rock, and send the hydrogen or whatever other storage medium over here for use in keeping people alive and supplied with iToys.

It might be expensive right now, but that doesn't mean it will still be so in 50 or 100 years. Just think, only 100 years ago, someone made the first journey into the sky. Just a few years prior to that, people were saying it was impossible for humans to fly. Now, while aircraft aren't exactly 10p a dozen, they are more than affordable enough for wealthy individuals and other private interests to be able to turn a profit. I see no difference between that and asteroid mining.

Journey of a thousand miles, single step, and all that.

Sheesh

When you can tell me what the big advantage of the 3.x UI is over the 2.x UI, I might consider it. Until then, the only thing I see is "you should have Honeycomb.. it's like, version 3! That's one more than the other guys!" Really, if and when I upgrade to another tablet, one thing I'll want to do is to find a launcher that resembles 2.x. That's without going into the under-the-hood changes like not allowing Mass Storage mode over USB any more. Proper bluetooth keyboard support might be nice, but with the rest of the changes it's like giving with one hand and taking with the other.

I'm happily using 2.3 on this Tab 7. Yes, Galaxy Tab, 3G version. What is the compelling case to go out and hack a 3.x OS onto it, asides permanently losing pixels to a navbar that I don't need?

Heatless bitch?

Have they been spayed?

Not... quite.

There's a lot of things that third party developers can do with an Android phone. However, Manifest.permission.DELETE_PACKAGES and Manifest.permission.BRICK are both amongst those that you need a signed key either for the device or platform to use. Basically, the only organisations with access to those permissions are going to be your phone manufacturer or Google. Joe Random Developer is not going to be able to accidentally (or purposefully) tell your device to kill itself, nor are they able to uninstall other people's packages.

Send/receive SMS, make phone calls and the others, yes. It's how people make alternative launchers, diallers and the likes.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3435316/how-can-i-brick-the-android-emulator

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3476600/why-are-these-permissions-being-refused

Sigh.

This law is specifically about tracking cookies, not session cookies. That is, the cookies that Google et all like to set that have expiry dates of some time after 2030. Not a session cookie that helps your site maintain state while the viewer is watching it, and expires some sensible time later (say, 24 hours).

Normal cookie usage is unaffected. You may feel free to POST a session ID instead though, if you want to make sure of your legality. Just don't use GET unless you want your users getting hacked by copy-pasting a URL to the wrong people.

Last time I solved this...

...it was for a little homebrew interpreter based on Multi User Forth. Stack-based reverse polish is a lot easier to parse than conventional languages, plus your programs end up looking like Yoda made them (whether this is a bonus or not is up to your own preference).

Anyway, the script file was converted into objects via two stages. In the first stage, I'd detect and objectify strings using a variable called in_string, which could be either a single-quote, double-quote or nil. Okay so there was a little more complexity for detecting escaped quote characters within strings, but not all that much. If you're not in a string (if in_string is nil) and you come across a quote character, fill in_string with the character and continue. You're now in a string (and therefore code comment stripping should not apply) until you recieve another matching, non-escaped, quote character. Detecting escapes is really simple stuff (at least compared to parsing and organising multiple nested IF statements, which was eventually solved using a depth counter and object-in-object-in-object recursion), but I wouldn't want to do T-Mobile's job for them for free.

Simple enough algorithm, and could be applied to stripping comments from web pages "properly" in just one pass. That is unless the web page has some really funky way of using quotes within <script> blocks. As for my choice of writing a language interpreter in Ruby, well.. I did it because I could. That's my excuse.

: main

"Hello, World" "#test_channel" say

time "The time is " swap concat "#test_channel" say

2 2 + 4 = IF

"I'm working fine." "#test_channel" say

ELSE

"Something's not quite right." "#test_channel" say

THEN

;

Yeah, I suppose writing a language interpreter in Ruby was a minor crime compared to the language itself.

Another one for 3

They do some attractive PAYG Internet options. Even on this old SIM I can use £5 of my balance and get 2GB for 30 days. Newer SIMs do a £15 30-day offer where you get a few hundred minutes, a boatload of texts and as much data as you can cram down the line (allegedly).

Only complaint I have is the awful censoring that happens until you either give them credit card details or walk into a shop and loudly proclaim that you want to watch grumble flicks on your phone (or just view EncyclopediaDramatica), while at the same time giving them a bunch of details that they don't need when you're visibly old enough to make your own decisions without having to present a card to anybody. That's another subject though, and a crappy "feature" that all the mobile networks seem to have.

Easy.

$12bn on a boatload of patents is better than a few billion wasted on nothing. They'll always have those patents to wave around at any potential aggressors, regardless of the merits (or lack of) of Oracle's accusations.

Really, the Cold War situation of software patents and "intellectual property" is pretty well known and you need to know why Google bought a load?

7" Tab owner here

And previous owner of a Commtiva N700 that developed an annoying charging issue. Both tablets were rounded rectangles. Asides that though, I don't see the similarity. Unless you mean "has icons you can tap on", of course. I think Apple think that they invented the idea of a touchable toy computer, and it's a shame that some EU court has agreed with them.

That said, I also have widgets I can look at, alternative launchers I can play with, tethering I can use for free and various other tricks that the iPad simply isn't capable of or won't be capable of by design. I also get to see if that "free" Flashlight app also wants access to my contacts, or be able to send/receive SMS messages, make phone calls and home in on my location via GPS, before I make the mistake of installing it.

Oh yes, I can also run Flash pages, though that's really a mixed blessing.

But hey, it's a rounded rectangle with a screen on, so I can see how you would get confused.

Re: Clearly...

Careful. That sounds dangerously like innovation, and you know the freetards have never invented anything, right?

Multitouch

"Multi-touch technology began in 1982, when the University of Toronto's Input Research Group developed the first human-input multi-touch system."

--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch

Apple were the first to put it on a phone, that's all.

As for the iPod UI, are you seriously suggesting that Apple invented the concept of a grid of icons? Really?

And over in the Linux world, how about Linux itself? Or hell, if buying patents counts as "innovation" these days, how about this: http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/pat_owned.php

Coo, look, a shitload of patents.

Ice only forms in the presence of water vapour.

With that in mind, the whole launch vehicle could be stuck in a tube with a latex seal on either end. The air inside can be dehumidified on the ground, and when it's time to fire up the engines, the little rocketplane can burst through the latex.

Also, if LOHAN is the project and Vulture 2 is the spaceplane, what do we call the launch platform and the possible rocket vehicle that Vulture 2 sits in/on? I'm guessing "Falcon" might attract unwanted attention from a certain commercial rocketry outfit, but you get the idea.

A few little nitpicks:

"You could take the easy way out and buy Class M solid fuel rocket engines premade and with a proper multi stage design reach 100,000 ft."

Or, hang the lot under a triple triplet of balloons and reach truly insane heights due to not having to push through the troposphere and all that pesky weather. Sorta like what I drew on page 7.

Also I think Lester has ruled out home-brew rocket engines, possibly for the same reason he's ruled out inflating LOHAN's orbs with hydrogen. No matter, as you can get M-class engines pre-made. Stick one in the bottom of a fibreglass tube with fins on, light the thing up and watch it go.

And no, that's the warning for "Highly Flammable". The oxidizer warning is a flaming circle, sorta like this: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/202/261/chas53/chas530904/chas53090400023/4656700-united-states-department-of-transportation-oxidizer-warning-label-isolated-on-white.jpg

(excuse the long URL)

Folding wings

I think you're both right. In the (awful MSPaint) design of mine on page 7, you can see the idea of a spring-loaded pivoting wing. I can see this working, however it may well be possible that you'd get more lift by having full-length spars (possibly wing-shaped at the leading edge), with some thin nylon or silk fabric forming the rest of a membrane wing.

Advantage is a greater wing surface area, plus the silk/nylon would be strong enough to prevent the spars from snapping open too hard or too far and flying off. The membrane parts of the wings could probably be folded like a concertina within the Vulture 2's body until it's time to deploy. Essentially, once opened it would look like two right-angle triangles with the longest side facing forward.

Also, elaborating on rocket guidance: If it's shown that (say) an 80-degree-angled tube will align the rocket alright without any complex guidance, could Lester at least think of a single-axis anti-roll mechanism? Not guidance as such, but a pretty simple-to-implement way of stopping the rocket from spinning like a top and making any video footage worthless. Just one gyro, the feedback from which is used to directly control fins on the rocket. The hardest part would be calibrating the amount of gyro feedback so that you get a very s-l-o-w roll, without over-corrections that would cause wobbling. Basically, not very hard at all and probably within the range of many hobby rocket enthusiasts.

As opposed to Mango?

Or perhaps naming all of your major revisions after cats.

Thrust vectoring

Complex perhaps, but I don't think the needs of the rocketry part of LOHAN are all that much. I don't think it needs to go at precisely N degrees from the vertical then fly through a street, stopping at the traffic lights. Simply "somewhere vaguely upwards" would suffice. So maybe launch at 45 degrees and have the rocket guide itself to a point where a few IR sensors are saying "the ground is down there, you're alright"?

Bear in mind that the Vulture 2 will have to be guided by GPS to get back to base, and even with existing autopilots that's not going to be a simple task. That and, well, amateur guided rockets have been done before. It's not too big a stretch to see it being done again for LOHAN, perhaps using some of the same concepts. Plus the onboard footage from a rocket that isn't spinning wildly (as unguided rockets tend to do) would be pretty awesome.

Eclipse framework?

Uhm, App Inventor is the IDE. You use it instead of Eclipse, not alongside it.

As for how good I found it, well it seems like a very very good idea, ruined by having it as a "Cloud" app tied to Google. Go to URL.. wait for page to load... log in.. wait for page to load... open new project.. wait for page to load.. open blocks editor.. click to confirm I want to open a jnlp file.. wait to download.. wait some more to download.. click to confirm I want to run the jnlp file.. click to confirm I want to continue waiting for the jnlp file to run... wait for the jnlp file to run... oh heck, finally I can make the HelloPurr example. Heaven forbid I should try this on a train or something with intermittent Internet availability.

If it ran locally on my own Apache2 (or could just be installed with its own localhost or LAN-only web server) then this could be awesome, and quick. As-is, it feels like pulling teeth with a monkey wrench. Slow, painful, and using all the wrong tools. Maybe the ditching and moving to open-source will mean the above can happen and we get a RAD environment that actually runs rapidly.

Re: Unknown launch attitude

Put horizon sensors on the launch platform as well?

It's quite an impressive sight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lG3zr0yaJw

Basically a big expanding, rising cloud of fine debris. I don't think it's anything to worry about given a sufficiently long line separating the launch vehicle from the balloons (or clusters of balloons from each other).

That video is why I was asking for cameras pointing up from the launch platform. Could look even better from close-up.

^^this

If you're putting a guidance system in, you might as well go the whole hog and have it control the ascent as well as descent.

Also about the weight, I know UK rules state you can have up to a 3 metre wingspan and 7.5Kg total weight (and I think that doesn't include fuel either) before you need a license. Much larger models can be built if you're willing to (or have a pilot who can) get certified for the vehicle you're building. Dunno what the rules are in Spain but I suspect they are less strict than a soggy, heavily-populated island off the North edge of France where you would probably hit somebody with a firework on a stick, let alone an amateur sub-orbital missile.

"OS X is, arguably, a purer UNIX than Linux"

Correct. OS X is a certified Unix.

Gnu is, quite deliberately, Not Unix.

Unless you're hacking the kernel though, I challenge you to tell the difference.

Fortunately this is not Slashdot...

...and you cannot be downvoted to oblivion, regardless of how many fanbois you piss off.

MTP?

Eww.

More reason to stick with the "underpowered" (hahahahaha) 2.x I guess.