Re: Chromebook is doing what Surface was supposed to do...

Google releases Chromebook Pixel with much less fanfare. And wham, the greatest active operating system guru endorses it.

Andy Tanenbaum uses a Chrombook?? Wow. Must've missed that one,

Re: Obvious troll is obvious.

"Apple is a big-time [abuser] of open source"

Just ask BSD.

How is it abuse? They're doing exactly what the licence says they can? Not all open source follows the GPL ethos.

"The Berkeley license is a rather liberal license. All it requires is that the author of the work be given due credit for their creation, and that their name not be used to promote products based on their work. It allows free distribution, as long as the terms are followed, and also allows people to modify the work and not distribute it, if they so choose.[…]"[1]

[1] http://www.netbsd.org/about/redistribution.html

Re: Link your code with some GPL code?

Actually, the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) was specifically designed to allow linking your code to GPL code without having to release your own code ...

<pedant>

The LGPL was designed to allow people to write code that could be linked to non GPL code whilst maintaining the 'change the code; release your changes' ethos of the GPL, but the code still has to be licenced under the LGPL, you can't just take a GPL licenced bit of code and link against it without your code becoming GPL too. For example the Qt framework is licenced as either LGPL or GPL3 allowing you to pick the most apropriate.

</pedant>

Re: BBC lefites

Privatise the BBC - it's just a Labour party propaganda machine, so clueless that it makes a puppet of this tw*t on a kids tv show.

They used a puppet resembling a well respected entertainer with a strong track record for charitable works, the programme was made ten years ago.

Have you ever heard them say anything bad about the EU? Or anything bad about Labour and the Unions for that matter?

Yes; many times.

...I've not watched TV for ten years but I read the media so have a fairly good impression of their bias from reliable sources,...

So unlike most people you don't tend to favour media that tends towards your own political leanings?

If you've not watched it for ten years why get so upset about it? I hope you don't listen to any if their radio output too. (I'm assuming you don't pay the licence fee after all).

Re: Price check, aisle 5

Really? Comes up as £147.72 for me.

The £118 one is a different model. Doesn't look to be IPS, although looks fairly similar otherwise. (Slightly different connectivity though).

Re: $159 !

That was an offer price though, the $199 regular price works out at £123, which with VAT is about £150.

Most of the Sony devices which could record a digital input wouldn't then allow you to make a digital copy of the copy. This was certainly true of MiniDisc Recorders, I'm not sure about DATs (but only Japanese kids had those).

Oh, DAT drives had DRM too, it's not a new phenomenon, and back then it was just as irritating and restrictive by the sounds of it.[1]

Ironically, whilst MiniDisc prevented generational digital copying the format was actually lossy, so subsequent copies would never be as good regardless. (the SPDIF signal being the reconstructed audio, not the actual stored data).

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/24/digital_audio_history_part_one/ - Page 2

Re: Overwriting with zero's is, well, overwriting.

I'm sure I've read before that under laboratory conditions, it is sometimes possible to retrieve information from a hard disc even if it has been later overwritten with zeroes, or even random bytes.

That used to be true with old HDs, but not for anything built in the last 15 years or so.

More <a href="http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html#Epilogue">here.</a>

Re: WinZip?

Dude, you need to stop living in the 90s.

Ah yes, the 90s, when naive software developers still thought they had a right to be paid for the fruits of their labour.

For those who do not recall, WinZip were a troll company who stuck a crappy GUI on top of PKWare's free tools and expected people to pay for it.

PKZip was shareware; you were expected to pay for it.

Re: Looks like a nice enough keyboard

I do, however, use the term "tabby" quite often, but in my defense, I am a cat person.

I knew it was only time before they developed opposable thumbs.

We're doomed!

Re: Interesting

I'm on a 15 quid a month SIM only iPhone contract with O2, the text I received the other day said:

O2: From July, we're changing the way you use your mobile in Europe. You'll pay 50p connection charge to make or receive a call, then use your UK call allowance. And no more than £1.99 for a day of data. For more info, visit http://go.o2.co.uk/o2trpm

Looking at the terms it's limited to 25MB a day though. Still outrageous, but not the daylight robbery it once was.

Fun point to ponder: what will that display do to 1080-line video? It'll have to scale by 166%

Surely as most 1080p video is 16:9 and this is a 16:10 display it has to scale by 150% and add black bars top and bottom?

Re: Downloaded it, picked a colour(!), got to the desktop...

Nothing like a thorough, considered, evaluation.

Sometimes though you don't need a thorough evaluation.

When running windows desktop apps, it's quite likely win8 will end up pretty similar to win7 in use, however there's a rather obvious and jarring paradigm shift in the interaction with the computer as a whole that's immediately obvious.

For some people, this is probably enough to move them away from windows, simply because if you're going to adapt to a new paradigm you might as well take the time to adapt to a different OS instead.

Personally I've stuck with windows because it has become 'good enough', windows 7 is a nice little OS that makes an okay job of years of bloat and UI cruft; windows 8 is different enough that I'll consider giving Gnome 3 a try.

In contract, I installed the win 7 CP in a VM and had a quick play, liked it enough to install it on my desktop, and am still using that same install several years later (upgraded to the release version of course.)

Unless Windows 9 is a serious refocus on the desktop I can see more people making the switch once 7 gets long in the tooth.

Re: >Do you have children?

She was really pissed off by Apple, not allowing to give her a way

to let her children download free apps without risking her money.

Give the child their own iTunes account and don't assign a credit card to it.

Or don't assign a credit card to your iTunes account, just add it when you make a purchase and remove it afterwards.

Granted there should be a way of specifying a card isn't to be stored and used for a single transaction only; however it is possible to remove it afterwards.

another alternative would be to give the child an iTunes gift card, say once a month with their pocket money on it. They can spend it on what they choose until it runs out.

Or a prepaid debit card such as this:

http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/prepaid/prepaid-card-faq.html

http://www.mastercard.co.uk/prepaid-card.html

(Don't have kids, but don't have a credit card assigned to my iTunes account either. Yes it's a faf, yes it's inconvenient, but it's not impossible.)

Re: Easy...

>Pr0n creates TERRORPEADOS!!!

If that doesn't end up as a Gery Anderson series then the world's just not fair.

Re: Such a shame...

Vasectomy? Is that like an ironyectomy but not as funny?

Re: Confused

"Nope.

int x = 12; x.toString()

Ouch time if you are not writing this in Groovy."

That's just removing primitives though. It doesn't make the language more or less OO, it just makes it easier for people who don't understand the distinction between primitives and objects (and possibly some of the confusion around the auto boxing introduced in 6.)

Re Smalltalk: I wonder if they're going to change it to message passing like objective C too?? ;)

Aren't we always in a transitional phase though? It just takes a generation or so to really see it.

Perhaps the (relatively recent) proliferation of mass media will make this more obvious as time goes on, but it's probably just a lens on an effect that has always been; just a consequence of the wider berth of human experience modern communications offer us.

@Trevor_Pott

I really want to visit Alberta now. Sounds an interesting place. (I'm British; but from a part of the country that also likes to call a spade a spade).

Re: A bold leap?

"The form factor of the day is currently the tablet, whether it will take over from the desktop/laptop is uncertain."

It won't.

It'll augment it, and in some areas supplant it, but for the kind of general purpose computing most people use desktops for there's not really a viable replacement.

And nor should there be. Desktop computers have their place, just because technology has allowed the same power and flexibility in smaller form factor devices doesn't negate that.

It does amaze me that MS seem obsessed with creating a (apparently quite nice) tablet OS at the expense of the market they currently dominate.

I mean desktop as an app?? It's a paradigm ffs, a paradigm onto which your applications should be laid.

Re: Everyother one

"I think 7 is probably the only Windows version i have used that has come out more or less perfect out of the box"

Windows 2000.

it's pretty much downhill from there until 7 appeared.

Re: Time for the Western World to wake up, stop doing business with China!!!!!

So you're annoyed that China seems quite good at capitalism?

"..but now the Chinese cannot understand what a legally binding contract means...."

Xenophobic racial overtones aside, isn't the point of the story that they can?

French company didn't bother to register it's name in Chinese, when registering in China. (I mean why would you register your trademark in the local language??) French company isn't a large and significant make in China (which just happens to be an emerging potential lucrative market with rapid increase in social standards of the emerging wealthy) and expects to be given special treatment because it would like to be?

Doesn't work like that.

"We need to pull every possible manufacturing contract with China and move it back to Western Countries"

If we did this we would be in serious financial trouble. (Mind you, if China politely asks for that money we owe we could be too.)

Re: @FIA

"I don't think it's foolish to trust a huge IT company to do what you are paying it for."

Trust is fine. Blind trust is foolish.

Re: @FIA

"The number of stars is irrelevant to this.[...]"

There has to be a certain amount of self responsibility though, surely? Just because it's on the internet it doesn't absolve basic common sense.

"This is not about how good a game is it is about people trusting Apple to do what they paid Apple to do and vet the apps.[...]"

But they only paid Apple by /buying the app/. Apple put a peer review system in place precisely so you can make the purchasing decision before parting with your cash, which seems to have accurately reflected the lack of quality in this case, and was routinely ignored. (by a lot of people who seemed only too happy to then go and submit a rating presumably ignoring the irony in the process..)

Do you actually go into a shop and not examine your purchases? The app had 1 star and lots of reviews pointing out the fact it doesn't work, if you bought it without even bothering to read it then sure, you're entitled to a refund (it doesn't work) you can even complain, but it does just come across a little petulant.

Out of interest, what is your actual point? The app store is a market with millions of apps, is it really that inconceivable that they may occasionally make mistakes? Would you expect, nay demand, every product in a large several square mile retail outlet to be perfectly labelled, displayed and priced correctly 100% of the time? Even if you did, would you do it with such self righteous indignation?

Or maybe someone just made a mistake? The problem was rectified by the sounds of the article, it's infrequent enough to make it newsworthy so it's hardly an endemic failure of the stores review process.

Personally, I'd be unhappy to pay to have every app reviewed completely, as each app would end up costing several thousand pounds. In fact each app would probably end up costing more than it's development costs. you can only ever hope to achieve a reasonable balance. Apples continued success would seem to suggest that they have this about right.

Re: Re: Re: Re: A fool an their money

"If users are expected to research whether an application is many good or, indeed, whether it's malicious or (as in this case) of dubious legality even if it does work then what the hell is the point of the vetting process and the fact you are forced to get applications from Apple only?"

I have some magic beans for sale that you might be interested in, I can assure you they are entirely legit.... the single star? oh... /that's/ the star of quality.... yes... yes they do don't they... no... /fewer/ stars is better... yes...did you? well it /is/ a common misconception... now... about these beans?

Re: Mucky old hose = waste

Irony FTW!!

Re: Here's a thought

Apple sell internationally, not just in the US.

By manufacturing in China they are able to take advantage of cheaper labour as do most if not all large successful companies of this type, because the ones that don't simply can't compete on a price level. (There simply aren't enough truly ethical consumers out there.)

By manufacturing in countries such as China Apple indirectly contributes to the industrialisation, which, if the developed world is anything to go by should ultimately lead to at least a basic increase in the standard of living for the general population; eventually. However in the short term it advances the ability of China and other countries to produce the modern goods we so crave ever so cheaply.

This allows the shiny things so many people like to be sold at increasingly attractive prices (in real terms) which indirectly leads to increased revenue for the selling country in taxes and benefits in employment due to still needing to employ peopl to move/ship/sell the damn things.

So indirectly, they do.

"Larry Niven based the whole of one of his literary universes around a society who 'harvest' body parts from convicted felons. His conclusion was that eventually people would end up being broken up for offences as serious as jay-walking and tax evasion.."

Bloody hell. That's not good.

Glad I don't live in a country where prison labour can essentially be used as cheap slave labour, as I could see a situation where you could end up with a disproportionate amount of your population incarcerated for increasingly minor misdemeanour's..

Or in fact one that would jail people, without trial, for indeterminate lengths of time because they simply didn't like them.

Ahh, the server hack. That one worked all the way upto 2K if I remember right. There was even a handy utility to do it.

After that trying it makes things go very blue. :(

If you feel really nostalgic, slap NT 3.51 on a VM with a chunk of memory and a couple of virtual CPUs, it's weird seeing that. Runs like an absolute daemon too. :)

As I understand it (not a lawyer), the critical phrase is:

Your statutory rights are not affected. :)

I think these say a product must be sold fit for purpose and free from manufacturing defects. I understand that this is upto 6 years. Obviously the longer you've owned the product the less you'd get back, and it's also what's reasonable too. Spend a tenner on a noname DVD player and you'll be lucky to get much joy after a year, but spend a few K on a high end plasma and you'll probably have a good case several years later on.

The rule of thumb as I remember it (in the UK) is in the first 6 months they have to prove you broke it, after that you've generally got another 6 months before you'll have to argue.

General:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Consumerrights/Yourconsumerrightswhenbuyinggoodsandservices/DG_182935

Distance selling:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Consumerrights/Situationsthatcanchangeyourconsumerrights/DG_183048

<sigh>

You kids......

You'll never know the unbridled awe at what is to become as you gaze in wonder at the majesty of the cover of 'ZX81 BASIC Programming'

If there's ever been anything quite so evocative in the world of IT, well, then I'm just not 9 anymore.

And if that's true.... oh.

Hear hear

Too true, what's needed is bettter understanding of what people are actually getting, and better explanations to customers.

Most people I know are more than happy to pay a relativly modest fee to people like Sky or Talk Talk to get a relative modest internet service, which does them just fine.

If you want higher quality internet it's available, but you have to pay.

I recently did one of those on line speed tests, and apparently I get just over 5Mb in an area where most other people who tested were averaging less than 2. (And I do too, usually download around the 620K/sec mark). Now that can't be down solely to the quality of the phone line as we're all in the same area, so must be down to the traffic shaping employed by the ISPs in use.

It can't be a coincidence that all the other speed tests in my area were all from 'cheap' ISPs, and it does explain why a friend who lives in the same small village (and is on a 'cheap' ISP) is often complaining about Youtube buffering, where I only occasionally see pauses in HD iPlayer streaming.

I pay a decent monthly fee for my internet however; now I know why. :)

(FWIW, I'm with Be Internet, very happy with them! They even deal with BT for me, so when local miscreants stole the phone lines I didn't have to ring people... marvellous!)

@fiddley

Enabling file and folder sharing is enough to have the default share created.

At least this win 7 I've got in a VM seems to be sharing C$, and it's definitely not a member of a domain.

Confused

Why is it typically arrogant? Typical of who?

Given that a statistically significant proportion of earth bound species use some form of EM detection in the visible or near visible part of the spectrum, and you're essentially trying to solve the needle in a haystack problem so should be choosing search parameters that you expect for whatever reason to return the most viable candidates, (and that are detectable, ruling out things like echo location), what criteria would you choose?

The real issue...

...is I can read this entire article, and get halfway down the comment thread before discovering there's such a job as "train captain"?

Where do I apply???!?

to be fair...

...that's just the way capitalism works, and we all seem quite happy to accept the upsides.

As a matter of interest, if you really do think like that, how did you manage to post this message in the first place?

Bye bye Steve, no-matter what anyone thinks, the tech world has just got a little less interesting....

Pffft...

Rich men can afford Blendtec.