Regardless

Whether or not a believer in AGW, does it hurt to stop living like a pillock. In retrospect, when I say this I mean things like:

- Walking to the corner shop 5 minutes away instead of driving

- Turning off the lights when you (or noone else) are in a room

- Wear warmer clothes when the weather gets colder as instead of turning the heating up

- Wear less (and sleep under less) if the weather is too hot instead of turning the AC up.

- Buy food you will eat rather than throw away due to waste/rot...

- Drink beer really cold, it is much more refreshing than "lukewarm"

Little things like those stated above make more a difference in the long run make more of a difference compared to bickering over the climate like little girls in the playground.

Left for dust

I remember well the experience I had when i had just left university that could sit on parallel lines but in England for this.

I serviced hardware/software chip and pin machines and would always try to find ways to make it both more pleasant and efficient. Here is a list of some of those and the effect

- The software we used was hosted on an intranet and only updated every other week. I would download the relevant tools if changed and put them on my desktop for one click use. This saved my having to go through the company intranet pages which were 2 deep and slow so. Much faster and convenient, I could lay them out in order as needed. Management response (some young man who clearly enjoyed his position too much) made me stop doing this as it meant my toolchain would always be outdated....

- The units that came in would just be thrown in to a box with the only thing differentiating them a label; each station would take a different type of "fix" at different times to keep it a little different. One morning, whilst getting my devices, any devices that didn't meet my current task, would put them in a separate making someone elses life easier, it certainly didn't make mine any different. The manager came over and was furious, accusing me of wasting my time tidying up the devices; at this point I still only had half of the devices I needed.

Not meaning to blow my own horn, I was the most productive worker in that workshop by at least three times, most of the others were very lazy polish who couldn't speak much English. I was late the next day after the above instance (5AM start!) and I was welcomed by the manager smiling telling me to go home. It was his victory...

I believe the problem is rather simple. It isn't just that China is (for now cheaper) it's that Britain has lost a lot of the fire to its flame.

What is his alias here?

I have respect on one hand and realism on the other with regard to Stephen Fry. Some of the stuff he does is both informative and amusing. However, I'm glad to see the Reg trolling in the cases given as it is all due.

What I want to know is his screen name on this site! Without doubt, he is the kind of person who subscribes to the Reg. My guess....Stephen Fry....is....Amanfrommars!

Place your bets

Only encouragement from me

I have been living in China for the past two and a half years. As a Linux advocat, this is the best news I think I have ever read. I would like to very briefly paint a picture of IT within China.

1) The vast majority of people use a pirated copy of Windows XP, there seems to be one image that everyone and their dog has. People will even install Windows XP from this disc on their Apple computers because they only know XP. Because they can't download updates, people install a program called 360. 360 does everything (particularly make a device slow and unresponsive) from giving you a replacement start menu to delivering windows updates, to telling you the weather and modifying the vast array of system files. This thing spies like someone stood 10cm in front of you with a pair of binoculars.

2) The level of computing proficiency is very poor to the point people who work in computer shops don't understand and will hop on to baidu (web-search) for almost everything unless they have tried it before. When it comes to performing a task, this can result in amusement for the observer but a big vein popping out the forehead for users.

3) China is filling up with consumers who demand fashion, particularly following the "latest and greatest", Windows XP is something i remember using way back in school and considered very uncool. The chances are this generation will soon be upgrading to the latest pirated version of Windows 7/8.

With the current scene set, we have the following opportunities

- When it does come time to put an IT curriculum together, it will be based on Linux

- When people can control their device, even if the repositories are limited, they will experiment more, many people using open source software; testing it, possibly contributing to it and definitely not pirating it.

- Don't you think it would be pleasent to have less vulnerable devices on the internet to be abused?

- Until China is well versed with the Linux ecosystem, there will be plenty of opportunity for service oriented commerce from other countries.

- Hang Mark Shuttleworth by his scraggly balls to pass that suitcase (more like warehouse) full of cash he will be getting in the general direction of Linux

In sincerity, I feel this move (even if only talked about) puts China in front of our own governments with regard to technology. Anyone who feels this is a step in the wrong direction is just bitter.

Egg on face

I just moved from the mainland to Hong Kong, Damnit!

Rock on

This quite simply means a variety of debian to use on your phone; no need to have Unity in desktop mode is there? For me this is a great win for the community at large with no cost but, I guess there will always be haters. You really need to stop hating things which are provided for free!

As an Arch Linux user, I favour no distro more than the next, just what is good for my needs. I'll be having a go at hacking this on to my tab 7.7, the phone UI looks quite interesting.

So, good job Canonical, I appreciate the work you do for the community. Sticks and stones may break your bones, may trolling morons mourn on themselves.

Moore's Law and ignorance

I believe we should blame Moore's Law, when the computing power available to us double's, it used to make a vast difference. I,e The upgrade from a 486 rated at 66MHz to a 586 at 133MHz was huge in terms of what we could actually do with the device. Many here have already stated their 6 year old computers work just fine, I support this view.

I run Arch Linux on a ULV Lenovo Thinkpad and it is blindingly quick; two VMs and all development environments open. It is pretty much impossible to notice the difference on my older (but much faster workstation) unless compiling programs. Why upgrade?

There has been a lot of controversy relating to the death of PC/Laptops in favour of tablets recently and I am a strong believer in the survival of the former. With that said though, my next purchase will probably be the upcoming Nexus tablet though. Why? Very simple.

When a tablet (hackable with support for *nix) comes with a resolution twice that of my laptop and twice the battery; it's a no brainer, 2560x1600 for pity sake! People say it all the time here; FOAD 1366x768. I can honestly respect all that device manafacturers do however, if they start complaining about sales they should pull their head out their ass and address this very simple issue. I would certainly change my next purchase option from a tablet back to a laptop if it allowed me to work remotely and comfortably as ranted about in this paragraph.

For the record of opinion on the matter, I already own a Galaxy Tab 7.7 and do use it to emulate *Nix whilst still remaining an android phone/tablet so, I do understand the difference between using a laptop for Linux and a tablet for Linux well.. I'd just love something that can be booted natively like the Mer/KDE combination.

Interesting

I just bought one of the new Thinkpads and have to say, they are rather fine pieces of kit; my only grudge is the 1366x768 screen resolution *sigh* just like every other half serious computer user on Earth.

With great build quality, it also came with a small 16GB SSD stick to act as a cache alongside the 500G HD. With a little format here and a little Linux there, it screams performance at a low power cost.

All in all a thing of beauty if you like simple black, my partner thinks the thing is ugly though. So, this move might address her only concern; looks.

Jaa yo Lenovo!

good

As a web developer, I think this is quite good news. Not everything adobe do is bad, just as not everything apple do is bad.

I recently used a canvas library called easel which brings an equivalent of actionscript straight in to the browser and was most impressed. It turns our, some adobe emplyees are responsible for it. I'm not so much concerned about the overall package but, you have to admit, there are quite a few areas of HTML that need to be buffed up.

I beg adobe not to reinvent the wheel though, use what's already here, maybe basing an SDK kit on jquery in a jquery like manner

I live in China

It may be a developing country, but it sure has a lot going for it at the moment. There are both exceedingly rich and exceptionally poor people here; everyone, other than gold diggers try to work. The only shortfall is quality, business here tends to reach a certain level of success and then the people who run it don't seem to care as it has made them money.

This in turn (with a strange logic) loses a lot of customers, loyal customers still pay/go though...Until, the business pushes up the price to deal with a loss of customers which loses the loyal customers at which point the business closes. Very few businesses do any marketing at all after they open. The place I work has paid attention to this "fashion" and my words, it rises like the year this dragon itself is.

In short, China REALLY doesn't need any Western influence. Please, don't take this the wrong way, people in China laugh at the majority of Americans as both shameless and quite pathetic on their worldly outlook. Happily, I am English though and we as a race are seen as quite proper and gentle when times are warm; purposeful and firm when times are tough.

After being here for so long, after a lot of reflection, England (that's us) really needs to turn away from Americans quite a lot and rediscover that which once made us a great nation...It's called pride and hard work.

I have one in my laptop

I must admit, I was very sceptical to click the buy button; history has taught me to stay away from Seagate as a company. But my netbook needed a boost; do I regret it? Not at all! These drives are awesome, I am a Linux user and definitely feel all that rests below this paragraph is happy living in SSD performance land:

- Operating system

- Development programs

- Browser/media player (music on external drive)

- Web server

Take the plunge today, I live in China at the moment and got the 500GB model for the equivalent of £47. Some people on the web express concerns over power usage; it is true that it takes up an extra ~0.6W compared to the 5400RPM drive I had in before. In all sincerity, it doesn't make much of a difference. People can't believe how snappy my box is, does this comment sound like a plug; I don't care.

They haven't done much

MUIU is a nice custom android rom moving forward in a good direction, this phone doesn't differentiate from anything else other than that.

In China though, I am an English man in China right now, they do a rather good job of taking something that works and throwing the kitchen sink in alongside it though. One day, they will learn to innovate for themselves though; it's in their culture here to accept pure and simple copying.

The five year plan of China is to become the tech centre of the world, here's just one of those starts i guess.

Great but...

I appreciate the effort that companies like Asus put in to tablets, but a big part of me thinks it is all worthless at this point. Give Android some more time to mature (manafacturers pay attention to custom roms, they are much better than yours) in terms of both system and apps and you have another customer here.

However, my phone is just as good as any tablet today and my laptop is much better. I'll be going for a second generation ultrabook instead of this overpriced toy.

<The title ate my dog>

As a westerner living in China, i can believe most of this story. China has a plan that says, within the next 5 years it will be the top tech manufacturer in the world; they have already made a lot of headway it must be said.

Towns can pop up in about 3 months, from small hamlet to having 8 big factories. The government is pouring money in the right places and...in to officials pockets. Banks and lawyers are not Gods here like they are in England so things actually get done.

I would highly recommend the British government start saying FU to financial services and start putting money in to research of tech again if we stand even half a chance...The one thing China doesn't have (just yet) is the level of universities we have in the west. Again though, start saying FU to so many marketing courses though.

My two cents

Why oh why?

This is more a call to Regheads, I think most of us here know how to use a computer.

- If you don't want to be locked in to a book store

- If you don't want to have to send a book through something like Calibre

- If you want your e-book reader to be more

Then...

- Buy a Barnes and Noble Simple Touch

- Root it

Now...

- You pretty much get android 2.1 stock

- You can simply drag books across as USB memory stick

- You can have calendar

- You can have mail

- Take your pick of ebook reading software and read every kind of media...I recommend ezPDF reader. It's got dictionary and annotations amongst other handy features

- You can even have a wi-fi probe...using an ebook reader

- It's only limited by the screen speed, which is quite good

Join the revolution!!! :D

<-- Happy B&N Simple owner

Ugg

As an Englishman in China, I was wondering why my marketplace stopped working. Some things here are great, some things are just plain puzzling.

...Damn.

A guy in China

I've been in China a while now. What makes this country so "productive" compared to England and other western countries boils down to quite a simple opinion I hold.

Here, people are not frightened to go out on a limb and start a business, naturally, many will fail but by sheer weight of numbers a lot grow to be very successful. People here (the ones who work) generally don't slack, they push and push and push. There are few obstacles in place other than dealing with peoples "attitudes".

Sometimes my mind boggles and when going back to the UK for Chinese new year, pace of life is sure going to be a brand new culture shock!

This is insane

I know "users = value" in the modern world but, honestly how do such ridiculous sums as this get worked out? Facebook must be providing advertisers with some seriously personal information for each user to be worth about $105; congratulations to the founders are in order I guess.

I wonder what would happen if a black-hat cracking group got in and typed the simple line

rm -rf /

Iraq cost America 3 trillion dollars and a lot of people died. Would whole towns start exploding in this case...? I sincerely doubt it

Badger

Because, what's better than a good ass and badger together!

Validation???

If a web developer is using even some half assed validation on a site, this bug should never come to light in the first place so I can understand why it has taken so long. Even an extreme situation, I can't ever imagine a user sending the web-server a 234-point decimal number and being justified...

Any "web" application that does need such extreme numbers would most likely be built on something other than PHP anyway, and I don't mean ASP either. Test ALL input, simples. The web was a dangerous place before this bug came to light.

But, hey...At least PHP is an open technology to discover such flaws and it can be remedied ASAP. Does this affect any other platforms I wonder?

O.o

We should start a campaign to get as many people as possible with at least one todger shaped bush in their front garden for a year. If people complain and get the police involved, take it to the courts and it would show just how screwed up our own society is.

MOST statues from the past have wangs on them after all, that's all the defence needed surely? It would be the modern equivalent of the Summer of Love against Vietnam in this strange time.

Does the following ascii art make your anger...swell? 8===>

Hmmm

Doesn't this just show how crap a job Ofcom are doing with regards to their primary duty? Things are getting worse when the availability of information (clearly not in this regard) has naturally increased for the average person.

Either there's a swing on the figures not reflecting we now have more Telco's or Ofcom truly fail. From the same report that was carried out in 2006, it would not have been hard to get these companies to pull their finger out over 4 years!

It really shouldn't be hard to get a business with a prime interest in communication to communicate...The only real cost is a device that can output Braille, even for that the telco only needs a slightly different report template and voila.

Come on Ofcom, pull your finger out!

Please oh please

Will the powers upon high, gaze down at the brick and mortar that builds the hills through which the skills of business supposedly rise feeding their pockets. Without surprise, and in only one breath surmise that the protective guise of Microsoft as secure is seen through like manure. Pure and secure by nature is the world of open source (surprise, surprise). Of course though, this side of the world that glides by doesn't have so many people who pull out their horse tackle and shackle such critical systems to their grin for it is a world where people actually look within to see sense and make decisions based on precision and principle. Stuxnet is not new just as the sky is blue, what is new is the rain that forces people to look up without an umbrella :p

*whistles innocently* ahhhh, sunday poetreats :p

Everyone knows...

Flying monkeys > planes

Sharks with lasers > Anything in the sea

Admirals Pie > Actual Admiral

Becoming friends > Making enemies

Last time I checked, the only real conflict to go on recently was:

a: Started by us

b: People with AKs, RPGs, suicide bombs

c: Solved with a smile

Whatever happened to the "prospect of peace"? When my father was growing up, he truly thought we'd be living in a garden of Eden using cool gadgets or out in space. What happened to that dream?

I for one, welcome the aliens to open our eyes to what is important in LIFE...it's not death, that's for sure

Rolling in the right direction

As with most new technologies, it comes with a premium; fair does for that.

It's not like solid state drives are anything like the traditional platter approach. I for one salute Tesla on their product, it might not be perfect but that's all good.

What would quaff well would be the plans for a car like the Tesla up for free on the internet for anyone to take and modify with any (good) changes making its way back in to the original, much like the way Linux has achieved "god like" status on computers.

Who knows, it might become good enough, we can start to slowly say goodbye to our petrol loving ways. One can always dream...Admittedly, fuelling these things is power generated by fossil fuel though, bring on a nuclear icon!

Taking a bite

These cases "should" affect Apple a lot more in terms of credibility than the actual wallet. Unless, thinking back to an article here last week reflecting how the percieved value of Apple makes them the second largest company in the world? I wonder what taking a bite from the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" would do to that

The number of patent infringements as of late seems to outnumber actual companies! Can't we just make the whole world happy and permit people to club lawyers like they were seals

I thought...

It was a scene from the latest Terminator movie.

I want your bike, your evacuated anus and another wheelie

Coincidence

Constellation Libra eh? I didn't realise OpenOffice was getting THAT far away from Oracle.

Coat: Anyone need a lift?

No tools?

Rightly so, a plug trying to get people to use Oracle more and more but...

MySQL Workbench is an amazing bit of kit! I use the Linux version because it's not just a lack of tools why developers avoid Windows...

Shameless plug:

MySQL Workbench is a cross-platform, visual database design tool developed by MySQL. It is the highly anticipated successor application of the DBDesigner4 project. MySQL Workbench is available as a native GUI tool on Windows, Linux and OS X in different editions. See the following link for more information about the editions available.

* Database Design & Modeling

* SQL Development

* Database Administration

Oh, and as well as being very mature, it's FREE!

Corr Blimey

What's covert about that other than, anyone within a few miles will be deaf after use? Still fair play and good effort with the navigation system

90, a good number

90% of what appears on facebook isn't worth 90 seconds.

90% of the people on facebook haven't read 90 pages of a book.

90% of the good pages/groups on Facebook are buried under 90 metres of solid crap.

90% sure, 90% of facebook users couldn't live without checking their facebook status every 90 minutes

90% wouldn't even know the definition of the word scam is and would click it 90 times if it didn't work.

90 minutes on facebook a year is 90 minutes too much.

I just go on once a month and am amazed at the amount of sheer crap that appears on Facebook. It's got to the point some people I know say 90% of what they do actually say on facebook with 90% more love...Remember when Facebook was about connecting people, not taking over peoples life? :p

To the people "complaining" about use of Flash

Please, recommend a serious alternative that we can use today and is available on a multitude of devices...today. Oh right, I forgot there isn't one!

I use Linux and don't have any problems with iPlayer, at the same time am routing for WebM to eventually be the codec of choice. Honestly though, even if it does become one of the de-facto codecs used, adoption isn't going to happen overnight.

Flash, like squashing an ant with a battleship. None-the-less, it gets the job done properly

You need perspective

For what Flash does within a browser environment and developers ask of it...it's not that bad, I don't consider it a resource hog or unusable and use Linux; the supposed Flash dog. Have you ever tried off-roading in a Mini? I'd take a land Rover any day and sacrifice a bit of mileage. For a whole pages worth of useless effects, Flash seems to work a heck of a lot better than Script and also simpler to implement in 99% cases.

That said, I used to use Flash, now use Script. Flash isn't bad, it isn't great, much like *insert your countries Prime Minister/Warlord here*. The only thing Adobe needs is a big gay mascot like Steve Jobs or Sponge Bob Square Pants to gain support from a lot of these "haters"

$900,000

To get back some passwords? O.o

"Hmmmm, we believe he might have stashed them away on a cruise liner in the Caribbean so, naturally had to check. The Blackjack table was found to be part of his cypher and it was too tough for us to crack"

For that, couldn't they just hire a whole tech support team and just hit the factory reset button, if everything but the passwords was well documented (as it should be) wouldn't take long at all to sort out...$900,000...

Curious...

In 2006-2007, for my dissertation I did a study in to the effectiveness of the right-context menu for both beginners and "experts". In it, two test were run to perform so DTP tasks on a document; cut text here, paste there, insert caption on picture and set headings, etc.

The alternative menu I used was very much like the interface element described above. The results showed it more friendly to new computer users (a right click menu with +15 options is NOT friendly) and the "experts" would either use a shortcut or just one option somewhere down the list. So, for the "experts" and everyone the extra space not being used as a list helped teach the users shortcut keys and provided a short description.

I was under the impression, this element of user interfaces is to do with psychology and the way we use computers...not a patent. At what point will such behavior stop being useful for the furthering of humanity (not just computers)? I think many reading this comment would say, a loooooooong time ago.

It pisses me off that, if someone were to create an application or OS that is logically better for different users, we now have to pay a company like Apple more $$$ than it would probably make in the first 5 years. Can we not just burn the patent book and start again, it's at the point of being crazy stupid.

As a consumer even, most people (I use a flavour of Linux and LOVE the UI) will have to shell out their hard earned money for such idea's of progress when it should be free for all. Surely, the first wheel wasn't round, more octagonal and when someone made it round, everyone loved it, not just the Ferrari's of the day. Not that I'm putting Apple on the same level as Ferrari.

A quick note to the people saying, xxx copies from xxxx; maybe with products but when it comes to HOW we use the products, noone should be able to lay claim to your mind. I like to have chopped banana in my cereal rather than a banana on the side *patents* GIVE me money if you do too...*sigh*

Keep those pedals turning

All these Opera Fanboi's try so hard to justify using it. Why not let bygones be bygones, noone cares about this commercial roots browser but the fanboi's.

It's good to see Firefox development isn't stagnant

Also

How can there be an iPhone without Jobs? :p

eh?

If you are jobless, you shouldn't be wasting your money on a damn iPhone!