Posts by David Gallmeier
23 posts • joined Wednesday 1st April 2009 19:09 GMT
Posted in Developer slips tethering into iTunes
I'd like to do a study
...on how many complaints directed against Apple products come from actual Apple customers.
Great!
What's the URL so I can block it?
It's like..
the more Internet we come across, the more problems we see..
Hmm
Okay, so now YouTube is next, right?
Wish I never bought
... an Xbox 360. The money would've been better invested in PC gaming. Then again, I spent little compared to other people (since I bought a broken xbox and fixed the RROD). Still, I know no one who can sell 512 flash cards at 50 dollars these days besides M$$$$$$.
The best is yet to come? Yeah, for their revenue stream maybe.
Posted in E-book readers are a satisfied lot
Concur
I'm the proud owner of a Sony PRS-505. I have no incentive to purchase an iPad (or any other Apple products for that matter). I imagine that the iPad's biggest dealbreaker is probably lack of E-Ink more than even battery life (though E-Ink and battery life are a package deal).
Posted in Adobe heats up iPad Flash bash
Let Apple squeeze their own customers
by not allowing Flash apps. Good thing for us is that it helps move Flash off the web. Bad thing for their customers, but I could care less: if you buy Apple products, then you vote with your money that you want to live in a jail (albeit a nice jail, but a jail nonetheless).
Posted in Adobe heats up iPad Flash bash
Flash on Mac and Linux
...IS SLOW! And it ratchets up the cpu-usage to 100% much of the time. On an iPad, this will slay the battery life and/or turn the metal back into a hot-plate.
Adobe needs to get their SHIT together and put out flash that doesn't set computers back 3 years when they don't run Windows.
Even if flash didn't consume so much CPU, I really hate how it's being leveraged to cram ads down our throat and add more bullshit to websites in general. You have to enable Flash and turn on the ads and bullshit to get a lot of sites to function properly. And I think that more malware is propagating through embedded scripts these days - even high profile sites like BBC and Bank of America have had serious security problems recently, so no one's safe to trust with embedded scripts (in windows).
Yeah, iPad missing flash sucks but let's not forget that Flash also sucks. Maybe a high proliferation of Flash-less iPads might bully websites into standardizing Flash-less alternatives. If the iPad lacks flash, we may see a cascading effect of similar net-enabled tablet devices similarly lacking the feature (as in with the iPhone, after which, smartphone offerings exploded in quality and quantity). I say lead on Apple! BTW, I own no Apple products, nor do I intend to ever.
Also, Adobe Flash might criticize Apple for consumers' sake on the surface level, but really, they just want to force their shit on the entire Internet and rake in lots of cash.
@The stakes are too high
Why do the Global Warming Warriors always pretend that their side of the argument doesn't stand to profit from AGW policy?
Stop saying "The science is settled" or "Overwhelming evidence this" or "Vast majority of scientists that". Those aren't arguments - you aren't bringing any information to the debate. If you don't really know what you're talking about, go on believing what you want to believe, but stop trying to influence others' decisions when you really don't know.
NASA's damaged credibility
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/28/nasa_climate_theon/
"Dr John Theon, who supervised James Hansen - the activist-scientist who helped give the manmade global warming hypothesis centre prominent media attention - repents at length in a published letter."
@"Fresh Ink and Paper"
I seem to hear this sentiment most often from people who do not own an ebook reader.
Posted in E-book readers attract unwanted VAT
Solution
Buy the physical book, then go torrent the ebook. I see no moral trespass here. What is the difference between downloading a book you own and OCR'ing the pages?
They're considering VAT in the States. Maybe this is the Democrats' way of just giving up.
Shoe alarm...
Have you ever bought a new computer? One with arrayed with Office, Norton and other trial software suites preinstalled? Then you're familiar with the parade of alerts, warnings and errors scheduled for the 60th day of ownership - a personal holiday, commemorating the expiration of all your trial licenses, celebrated by torrent of advertising.
Whose hand do I get to shake for making this experience available to me as a proud new shoe owner? I for one am lost without any patented indicator to warn me when my feet are being damaged!
I'd like to punch someone's face in for this. But not before I invent and patent a new "system", which fits over the face and sounds an alarm to its wearer in the event that the face is being damaged.
Posted in Hackers break Amazon's Kindle DRM
All DRM must fail because
from a pretty good paper on DRM (and why it's bad):
"DRM systems are usually broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely,
months. It's not because the people who think them up are stupid.
It's not because the people who break them are smart. It's not
because there's a flaw in the algorithms. At the end of the day,
all DRM systems share a common vulnerability: they provide their
attackers with ciphertext, the cipher and the key. At this point,
the secret isn't a secret anymore."
http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
Posted in Hacked climate Prof stands aside
Props to El Reg
They've *actually covered* this atom bomb of news, while most MSM outlets are so preoccupied with agenda that they've forgotten what news is, while it was staring them in the face.
They're finally catching on, but this incident went public Nov 20th and it's now December - quite a poor response on part of the MSM. Their failure to treat the event like news shows that the majority of them aren't in the news reporting business anymore.
Posted in Hacked climate Prof stands aside
Emails
Undeniably, these emails have cast light on a lot of disingenuity and malfeasance on part of CRU researchers. The code is revealing more (on which the MSM has been silent), but the emails can be nothing short of revelation for AGW proponents.
Student discount in US
Students get Windows 7 for 30 bucks in the US. I go to a Tech University and major in CompSci and it's automatically included in my MSDN license (which the school gives me at no additional expense).
Wonder how much of the pie is taken up by these kinds of student sales.
Posted in eBooks: What to read on which reader
Sony epub support
As much as I despise DRM, it seems that the retailers have to include it, or risk litigation from rights holders (same with the physical devices).
Epub is an open format, which can optionally support DRM. I hope this format wins. While it seems that very few ebook retailers are offering DRM-free options, epub comes close, as its DRM can be easily stripped.
Sony's been heading in the right direction - they recently killed their own format in favor of epub.
Posted in Sony Reader PRS-300 Pocket Edition
Ebooks not where they should be
The DRM is probably the biggest blight on ebook consumers right now. Though some publishers are starting to figure out what the RIAA finally admitted about DRM - that people don't like it - they aren't enough and the amount of ebooks they offer in DRM free formats isn't yet enough either. There are horror stories of publishers going bust/offline, taking the validation services with them and users being locked out of their content indefinitely.
I think that the retail publishers are also in a tight spot - being forced to secure their products with DRM or expose themselves to litigation. It seems to be a deeper stemming problem than bull-headed online ebook brokerages. Other than attacking publishers' bottom line (I'm talking about boycotting, not stealing), I don't see any other way to communicate dissatisfaction with DRM, sadly.
A compromise is that secured epub files can easily have the DRM stripped by a few simple python scripts.
Posted in Sony Reader PRS-300 Pocket Edition
Video comparison of Sony's readers & Ebook DRM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ienWSPtcs
I chose the 505 after seeing that. 300 & 505 have a clearer screen than the 600/700 models. Unless portability is a high priority, the 5 inch screen is a drastic reduction from the 6 inch models.
Robert, you will spend more money on ebooks, or at best break even - certainly more if you would rather purchase 2nd hand mass-paperbacks. I think Sony's the best choice currently - the DRM strings attached to the Kindle (1984 debacle) alienated that option from me. Epub has DRM but from what I've read, can be easily stripped. Sadly, DRM has been a drag on the ebook market. Sony's moving in the right direction though, ditching their own proprietary format for epub, I think.
BTW, ebook readers are NOT ready for textbooks (I own the 505 and am a student). You can scan through a textbook much quicker than on an ebook reader, due to refresh rates & manual, tedious page turning. Small screen size also frustrates the use of an ebook reader for reference type materials.
mwk, turning a page isn't long enough to bother anyone reading literature, but with any reference material that is scanned for info, it is tedious and frustrating. The video I posted will demonstrate.
Of course, we'll have to see what the Nook is like in a few days. I expect Barnes and Nobles to blow Sony and Amazon out of the water, but it may not be available in your country.
I didn't laugh once...
reading your entire article.
vector623
How many times did Microsoft have to apply for their FAT patent again before it finally passed? Can't remember exactly, but several, at least.
