Posts by Bill B 287 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2009
> it certainly wasn't obvious back in 1995
and this is part of the problem. A patent stands for 20 years, regardless of whether it is hardware, software or the pace of innovation in the given areas. The question is whether such a period of time allows the patentee a good return on investment or just stifles innovation.
Er .. why did you upgrade?
Personally speaking my iPhone is still on IOS5 because the mapping is important and the iPad is now on IOS6 just so I could see what the problems are.
A brief comparison of my locality shows Google seems to be similar to (or slightly worse) than Apple in the location of places. Weirdly in IOS6 maps things that are misplaced on the map are properly placed in Yelp when you tap them. Go figure
Mark .. the nature of a trial is that the decision you have just come to on the basis of the evidence that has been presented to you (presumably from a reliable source) must be made in a court based on the evidence submitted to that court. Even though you may be correct and your sources impeccable there is the faint chance that they are slightly biased and the full evidence hasn't been presented (which is the job of the defense).
The media are good at making judgements but thank god our justice doesn't yet rely on trial by media. The UK justice system (from which the aussie system is probably derived) is particularly sensitive to 'trial by mob' which is why it is a possibility that a Facebook page that only presents one side of the story, if widely publicised, could result in the prosecution of the individual failing.
Um yes. The company i worked for made embedded controllers and yes, we did have roll over problems that we had to fix.
Y2K was a non event because we put work into making it a non event. There seem to be a large amount of ignorant people who claim "it was a load of hype because it didn't happen"
I am not sure why commentators here assume that a driverless car is wholly driverless .. that it's all or nothing. Think about cruise control .. useful in certain circumstances, not in others. Or automatic gearboxes .. many of these have a semi manual override now.
In the same way i would expect a driverless car could be used on a motorway (freeway for the colonials) but switched to manual 'town and country' driving when required.
For long distance driving this would be a god-send .. I look forward to it happening.
As far as I can understand, Google doesn't get paid for the use of Android. The assumption is that they then get their money through the use of the Google services that Android provides.
But does this hold true in China? Is Google benefiting from the use of Android in such a market, or has it just shot itself in the foot?
This is all very well but assumes connectivity. I've just returned from the States, and for me connectivity didn't exist. There was no WiFi in the state park I was in, data roaming is an eye watering £9 per MByte and when I looked around Walmart for data sims all I could find was sims that charged $15 per day for 1GB
The operators aren't in a rush to improve matters which makes it dangerous for a traveller to keep stuff in the Cloud. Since one of the selling points of cloudy access is that it allows you to get access to your data wherever you are, the lack of support from operators is a big minus, but of course Gartner, in their rather narrow minded blinkered crystal ball gaze probably haven't taken this into account.
The date order MDY is fine if you are just an American company. Trouble is, international companies that originate in America (and whose servers reside in America) still use the MDY format. As a company just been taken over by an American, I'm waiting for that big order due on 3/5/2012 to go horribly wrong.
Comparing platforms rather than companies hides the revenue stream. A company needs a revenue stream in order to survive and also to innovate. The revenue stream for IOS devices is clear .. Apple gets all of it. The revenue stream for Android is split between Google (who gets revenue from apps running on Android, not from Android itself) and the phone suppliers (who are a very broad bunch so the revenue stream is watered down).
So if you were to ask "who gets the largest amount of money to pay for development" it would be Apple
The system of Jury trials is that the jury must be convinced, beyond all reasonable doubt, on the basis of the evidence that is presented before them, that the person is guilty. There are a number of things here that guard against arbitrary justice (mob rule, kangaroo courts or the decision of a single person).
Firstly the person must be proven guilty. Not proven innocent but proven guilty. Note that mob justice is often the other way round.
Secondly it is 'beyond reasonable doubt'. If a jury thinks 'he might have done it' then its not good enough to find the person guilty.
Thirdly it is 'on the basis of the evidence'. It is the job of the police and prosecution to gather and present evidence, the job of the defence to test that the evidence is properly gathered and not just made up. It is the job of the jury to listen to what is said and weigh up and make a decision based on what is said.
The system is imperfect. A lot of people who have committed a crime may go free. The lawyer may be rubbish and fail to extract proper witness evidence or highlight significant evidence. The police may fail to gather sufficient evidence. The jury may have a concious or unconcious bias (the accused was ugly/black/gay/a woman/looks like a criminal/done it before). But it's the system we have and it's a damn sight better than the knee jerk justice of mob rule.
... a big touch sensitive screen (say 2ft x 3ft) that can be laid flat (or angled slightly). Happy to have a soft keyboard on it. Must have ledges on side to put coffee cup, chocolate bars and screen wipes.
Get the best of both worlds then. Space to layout my work any way I want (I use two screens at the moment) coupled with friendliness of touch and support for hands, fingers (and a nice warm surface when i sleep on it).
Thinking about it, a touch stylus would be a useful accessory when fingers aren't accurate enough.
So let's get this right. Asus have a new product that transforms from a laptop to a tablet and they have decided to call it Transformer Prime?
Hasbro have built up the Transformer franchise so that the words 'Transformer' and 'Prime' (especially when put together) is very likely to evoke images of a 20-30 foot robot. Hasbro have also attempted to build up the 'Hey Cool!' image of this robot, especially among young geeks (who are probably now slightly older geeks with hopefully cash to spare).
Then along comes Asus, selling into the geek 'Hey cool' market using a product name that could help them sell more of the product. Yup, I can see why Hasbro might be a bit cheesed off.
... it's the content creators. As long as there are sites whose content uses FLASH you will have users who will use FLASH enabled browsers.
I don't go to the BBC because they have FLASH on it. I go to the BBC site to get news and information. Unfortunately they like FLASH so I have to have it enabled to get full benefit from the site.
Mind you what I *can* do it email bbc on a regular basis asking them to look at moving to HTML5, but until they decide it's a technology mature enough to use, it won't happen.
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