* Posts by baswell

24 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Dec 2008

Telstra inks 4G roaming deal for Hong Kong travelers

baswell
FAIL

Rack up charges at $150 per second

Find a good location, a fast site and rack up charges at $150 per second.

Awesome.

iPad no flight risk says Federal Aviation Authority

baswell
Boffin

Re: Lower fares?

Negative, ghost rider. Approach plates and other procedures are either taken out of the binder (or the whole binder is used) and put into a clip board as they are needed on either the yoke or one attached to the side.

Trying to fly an instrument approach while holding an iPad in your hand doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me. (Or very safe)

(Yes, I am a pilot.)

baswell
FAIL

Lower fares?

With 1.2 million flights a year, there is $1 to be divided between all passengers of each flight to lower fares.

And that's without taking into account buying these iPad to begin with. If they buy one for each pilot, we're talking $5M initial outlay in hardware alone. And then there's the installation of brackets in each aircraft to hold the iPad.

Expect a fare increase to pay for it all!

E-tax may return to Mac OS

baswell
Go

Web based?

Last year, ABS proved the government can do a well working, cross-browser, high-load web application for the census.

Get the people that made that one to make a web-based e-tax and it will work on any platform.

One last production run for TouchPad

baswell
Go

Left over parts?

They may well have a warehouse full of parts and assemblies that they can't use for anything else.

That means they might limit their losses by producing a bunch more and selling them for, say, $250.

That way they get $250 back for each $300 investment, which is a better deal than scrapping $200 time 100.000 units in parts, losing $5M instead of $20M.

Amazon is best hope of a viable alternative to iPad

baswell
Jobs Horns

Not until june, now!

"when it introduces new rules on in-app purchasing at the end of June".

I have an "external subscription app". All my updates (new features, bug fixes) are being knocked back by Apple because of this rule. "Must use in-app".

And if you have an app with multiple levels of subscriptions, like mine, you can't let people up or downgrade their subscription with the Apple API.

TiVo hits pause button in Australia

baswell
FAIL

Only way to watch FTA

Tivo is really the only way to make watching free to air in Australia bearable. It's actually really, really good.

Too bad Hybrid TV never bothered to tell anyone, beyond some expensive spots showing people marching through the street claiming that it was a "TV revolution".

Mainstream media reviews criticising the device for being always on and not having a display on the front - the reviewers thus entirely missing the point - probably didn't help much.

Shame, I just hope they don't turn off the service.

(I never bought anything on demand, but season passes and recommendations are fantastic)

California's green-leccy price system will stifle plug-in cars

baswell
Thumb Up

Works fine at night

Charging from your panels works fine at night, because during the day, your panels feed into the grid and you neighbours use it (instead of the coal plant) to do their laundry.

At night, you take from the coal plants what your neighbours didn't use during the day.

(This strategy obviously fails when everyone has panels on their roof - which is not going to happen any time soon)

iPhone apps put user privacy at risk

baswell
FAIL

It's to build an underground lair

The idea is that I can know your UDID and any other personal information you might enter in the app. Then when you use another app with the same UDID, that developer will already know it and ask for some more little bits about you to add to our database, because, as is widely know, there is a large network of evil app developers that make 99% of the applications in the App Store. We all share this data amongst each other and eventually, we have enough on you to steal your identity and get a home loan in your name, so we can build an underground lair, put "lasers" on the moon and hold the UN ransom for ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!

Muhahahuha!

Either that, or you'll get some more precisely targeted ads

Seriously, this has been going around ever since cookies were introduced. I can't for the life of me figure out why people think their privacy is invaded when a soul-less algorithm knows some of their likes and dislikes.

Can all those concerned please post some real-life, practical exploits? Either that or STFU.

Aussie broadband is slower than a slow thing in a slow town

baswell
Paris Hilton

Not just a technical issue

There are an enormous amount of idiots here on old plans from Telstra Bigpond (the largest ISP) and paying double for a fraction of the speed and download quota they can get from competitors, or even from Bigpond themselves if they simply called up and asked to be moved to a different plan.

Yes, large parts of the country are underserved, but a boatload of ignorant consumers are on slow, expensive connections due to their own inability to shop around.

FLYING CAR, full hover, fairly quiet, offered to US Marines

baswell
FAIL

I call bullpoo

We've heard it all before: some developer comes up with some idea of a super efficient aircraft that on paper looks to outdo anything else out there...

...indeed, on paper. Further into the development process, engine power needs to go up, speeds go down, payload goes down. Oh, and vertical take-offs are not possible at full loads.

I am sure the fans are efficient, but a Robinson R44 helicopter needs just about all of its 245HP to hover in ground effect with full load. And that's 4 small people, not 4 big-ass marines with survival and zap-o-kill equipment.

I doubt it'll go straight up at FL110 as advertised, certainly not fully loaded.

Oh, and that "turbo-charged racecar engine"? Not too many racecar engines I know run on diesel fuel, which is what JP-8 is, just a more refined version suitable for jet engines.

I am not holding my breath.

Yahoo! brews HTML5 mail for iPhone

baswell
FAIL

Missing the point?

Uhm, isn't web-based email primarily for those without a computer they can put a real mail client on? Including for those families too stupid to use multiple accounts on the single home PC?

The iPhone by definition is a personal device, sharing it among people is rare. It has an IMAP client that's a far superior experience to what any HTML5 implementation could ever be.

Am I missing the point, or is Yahoo?

Steve Jobs – Apple's not business, it's personal

baswell
FAIL

Blame the world...

So his Steveness decides to test a new super-secret device on the open internet and expects nobody to find out?

He should be mad at himself for not putting firewalls up to block sending data to ad and analytics networks. He should be mad at himself for not having these beta devices have device identifiers that are the same as existing hardware. He should be mad at himself for not going to Flurry before hand and say look: "We understand what you are doing, but if you detect any new devices, can you just keep them quiet? Thanks."

But no, he blames the world.

The "private" data Flurry collects for developers is no different to standard web stats: device type, unique users, page flow. There is nothing that identifies anyone personally.

MySQL fork duo tear down Oracle's Iron Man fantasy

baswell
Paris Hilton

If you want open, use PostgreSQL

I don't get why some are fighting so hard to make MySQL truly open when there is a better database out there that has the most open of all licenses: BSD licensed PostgreSQL.

MySQL has always had and always will have a corporate overlord and confusing dual licensing. That's not going to change any time soon.

Just give up and move on.

Jobsian email axes early-iPhone support

baswell
FAIL

Because Android makers are such great supporters

@Code Monkey: Yeah, because HTC, Sony, Motorola and other handset makers have such a great track record of supporting older devices! And no, Android being open doesn't mean you can upgrade your devices yourself.

Have a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_devices alomst 6 months ofter the 2.1 release, the vast Majority of devices are stuck on 1.5. Heck, a major Sony phone released just a few weeks ago runs 1.6!

When it comes to older device support, few consumer electronics companies have a better track record than Apple.

Google and the myth of the open cloud

baswell
Boffin

Apples and Oranges

I just released a website built on the Java flavour of the app engine. Developing from scratch, fitting into the limitted functionality was easy enough. But what it did was free me from having to manage, tune, backup, secure, deploy my own server. That saved me hours, if not days, of work and I am not paying anyone for hosting until the site goes over the free quotas, which it is unlikely to do.

And that is where GAE vs. AWS becomes Apples and Oranges. Both are clouds, but both are a different type of cloud.

GAE is a runtime you can deploy your code in, limiting you in the code you can run and which services you can use to allow it to be massively scalable.

Amazon's cloud, meaning EC2 if you want to host an application, is not much different from hiring a bunch of servers from any other hosting company. They have just made it easy to hire them on demand. But you still have to manage your server software, backups, securing the server, everything. And EC2 only helps you scale your app if you have designed it to scale.

Both have their uses, both are very different.

Neither are very open, at all.

Battlestar Galactica eyes 'technology run amok'

baswell
Joke

Hitchhiker ending

The "B" ship finally made it to earth, including the bathtub in CIC!

I was half expecting someone to clobber a rabbit to turn it into a bag.

Still, good fun while it lasted. Now I have to find something else to watch...

Ice in fuel feed caused Heathrow 777 crash

baswell
Boffin

@ac: water does naturally occur

When the fuel level in a tank goes down, the space is filled up with (humid) air. When temperatures drop, this causes condensation and water droplets get into the tank.

Water is heavier than fuel and sinks to the bottom, so it won't re-evaporate when the temperature goes up again as it is no longer in contact with the air. And of course tanks drain from the bottom, so you do the math...

In small planes, we drain a bit of fuel from the lowest point every morning to see if we have water. (and if we do, keep draining until we don't) Airliners have some more sophisticated ways, but it is an expected problem.

Mac flirts with 10 per cent web share

baswell
Boffin

@any idot who think Safari/Win or FF/Mac changes the numbers

Yo, you ignorant lot who wouldn't know I User-Agent header if it hit them in the face:

You can not only tell the browser, but also the OS and even machine architecture from your access logs.

So Safari on Windows still registers as Windows and Firef***ed on Mac is still a Mac, m'OK?

Google kills iPhone-optimized iGoogle

baswell
Thumb Down

The good, the bad and the ugly

I do like the way this versions re-formats pages from other sites to be readable on the phone. (el reg, BBC news, etc.)

But the interface went from quick and easy access to all content in all tabs to a poorly organised subset of what I have on my non-mobile iGoogle.

They had something that worked just fine, why kill it? The better thing to do would have been to keep the old interface and merge it with the way google mobile mangles pages when you go to read an article.

Fast and 'free' beats steady and paid on MySQL

baswell
Paris Hilton

New release soon

I hear there will be a new release soon that incorporates many of the community patches. Sun will distribute this on 2009-02-29.

Cellular repeaters: Can you hear me now?

baswell

Passive ones won't land you in jail

You can always use a passive one. Hill obscuring your reception? Take two antennas both tuned to the 900/1800 and connect them to each other. Set them up on the hill and point one at your house, the other at a cell tower.

Chances are that's all you need; no expensive equipment or law breaking required.

Three simultaneously cut undersea cables under repair

baswell

@:Suburban Inmate: that is what they do!

They do put it in a trench in shallow water, but sometimes an anchor drags into the sediment as well. Or currents and other activity expose the cable over time.

If you have a few spare hours, this is an interesting read:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html

Egypt offline for weekend after Med seabed cables cut

baswell
Pirate

See me wee?

SEA-ME-WE? Someone must have been taking the piss when they named that cable!

I bet it was pirates that cut the cable. Arrr!