Posts by chr0m4t1c 939 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2009
"Why has it taken them 6 years to decide that they are entitled to this share"
So someone else does the hard work of building the company to its current size.
I'm with you on the other stuff, though. This all smells a bit fishy, it doesn't tally with the way freelance coding usually works.
Paris, because, well, you know...fishy.
Is this the content providers finally starting to get it?
Or will they make an effort to fusk it up again by silly pricing - e.g. expecting us to pay £150 for a film on the grounds that we can play it on 10 devices that we would previously have had to buy separate copies for at their suggested retail price of £15 each?
I wonder if it will be US only since Tesco are involved.
The reason why the police use helicopters is because they can hover over an area where a suspect has gone to ground and/or chase after speeding vehicles. In both cases they are used to direct ground forces as well as collect video surveillance.
I can see how these would be of use in addition to 'copters, but if they can't hover or fly at suitably high speeds, then they're not likely to be good replacements.
Wasn't there a problem with flying auto-giro with too-high a wind speed causing them to fail in some catastrophic way? Or am I thinking of something else like microlights?
"And crucially, we'd add, a sign that the iPad isn't solely selling to fanboys."
How dare you come in here and spread such malicious rumours! Take it back, this instant!
It's not possible for any rational being to buy an iPad, or any other piece of crApple kit because they're all overpriced for the specifications, therefore anyone who buys any crApple kit *must* be a fanboi.
What we tend to forget when talking about the inefficiencies of generating electricity for electric vehicles when compared to diesel/petrol vehicles is the additional pollution caused in getting those fuels to our vehicles in the first place.
IIRC, to get fuel to your vehicle it goes something like this:
Drill->Pump->Store (at well)->Pump->Store (at distribution depot)->Pump (into tanker)-> Transport->Store (at refinery)-> Pump->Refine->Pump->Store->Pump->Transport->Pump->Store (finally at the filling station)->Deliver.
If your electricity is only generated from gas, oil or coal then that process is largely the same for all fuels, but if you generate from a renewable or something like nuclear, then the electric vehicle does start to look much better.
IIRC, each litre of fuel adds something like 250-300g/km to whatever your car produces.
Mind you, the arguments over what pollutes more are largely redundant if you consider that fossil fuels are a finite resource anyway; if we don't stop using them voluntarily we'll have no choice once they run out.
N.B. I am not a "Peak Oil" or Eco nut, just someone trying to take a balanced view.
Apple did license their OS and all that happened was that a bunch of cheaper clone machines cannibalized sales from Apple themselves without increasing market share and Apple almost went under.
Of course the PC market and the mobile market are largely different playing fields, but the early versions of Android looked like "slightly better" Windows Mobile or Symbian S60, so we *may* have Apple to thank for what we have now.
Mind you, the Palm Pre would have been a huge leap forwards if the original iPhone hadn't already stolen some of the thunder, so maybe that would have been our benchmark product for everyone to bash in the forums.
IIRC for some programs in Vista/7 MS included a "helpful" option to allow things to be activated by just leaving the mouse pointer over them.
Problem is that when you're starting to learn the new system, you can easily activate something while you're still reading the popup/menu to find whatever it was that you were actually doing.
It's one of the accessibility options in the control panel and for some reason a few manufacturers have it switched on as part of their default configuration.
I can see how it might be useful if for example you had arthritis and the action of clicking a mouse button was painful, but conversely it's a bit of a pain elsewhere if you're just someone trying to read what their options are.
It's not actually MS at fault here, but they get perceived as being the problem because they push the branding so hard.
They can't have it both ways - the one hand saying "Buy a machine with Windows because it's standard across all of them" and then, when an OEM does something to bork the installation, saying "It's not us guv.".
I've stayed away.
My local cinema is a bit overpriced anyway, but they've take the opportunity to up their prices for 3D films *and* they pretty much only show films in 3D now.
Consequently I haven't been to the cinema for over 12 months now, even though there have been a good number of things that I wanted to see.
Having not seen them I probably won't buy them on DVD/BluRay and I have no idea about what's coming up in the future either. Ultimately it's probably saved me a fortune as I now just wait for the 2D version to show up on Sky Movies. That is until Sky try to force 3D on us and I cancel my subscription to that too.
Naturally, their loss of income is due to "piracy", not bone-headed thinking on their part.
Cybercandy?
www.cybercandy.co.uk or their bricks & mortar place near Covent Garden if you're in reach of London.
They have all sorts of stuff from around the world (including Japanese Kit-kats). They have all sorts of stuff going in and out of stock all of the time, so it's worth e-mailing them if you're after something specific that isn't shown on the website.
"Microsoft is treated as legacy software; they have moved to other platforms, and started down the long road to “not Microsoft.”"
I don't know if it's millions of companies, but one of our services is about to move an application off Windows to Unix, meaning we can de-commission about 140 Wintel machines. The 12 Unix machines the app is moving to have been in place for ~5 years running another app. They'll still be running that app in addition to the migrated one in around two months time.
Should free up some data centre space.
That said, Win 2008 is starting to be deployed elsewhere in the company, so it's not like we're dumping MS just yet.
All that's really happening is that Windows is becoming just another choice when picking a platform instead of the default choice that it was in the last 15 years or so.
Is why they can have an entire season of a TV programme available for 3-4 months after it's broadcast, but they only keep radio programmes there for a week.
I missed something on R4 the other day because I only remembered about it 7 days and one hour after it was originally transmitted, so I wasn't allowed to listen again.
Mind you, it's all a bit hit-and-miss, it's almost impossible to say with TV programmes will be available for any length of time and which won't.
As a former developer I can say that what I wanted to happen in the OS adoption patterns of the public very rarely happened in practice.
The problem with the mobile landscape is that something which catches the public's imagination can change the whole playing field in less than 12 months. Look what happened with the RAZR and compare that with the relative flop that was the RAZR-V2 and ROKR.
It's entirely possible that Nokia manage to get their act together and make an extremely desirable phone that works properly so that Simbian becomes the next big thing (again) or that Sony make a WinMo7 phone so desirable to the public as to make WM7 huge.
The only thing you can say about the future is that it's rarely what's predicted.
Now, if you'll excuse me I need to don my little silver cape so I can go on my day trip to the moon. Oh, wait, that prediction was wrong too.
The previous sentence was suspended for 12 months from April 2009, so expired in April 2010, which is why she didn't go directly to jail.
Also, the nature of the second offence would normally be taken into account by the courts. In this case she would probably have ended up in jail as it's the same offence, but if (for example) she had been caught speeding it's unlikely she would have been carted away as speeding does not normally lead to a custodial sentence.
The UNIX core is doing well on phones because it was originally written to allow lots of processing to happen on single-CPU systems with limited memory.
It was also written by programmers for programmers. That's programmers, not someone who drives a rapid-development GUI.
Sheesh, I'm getting old.
But I just tried the "cup" on my N97 and lost three bars off the signal strength meter.
Pot, kettle?
Mind you, this whole issue with the iPhone4 has made me pay more attention to my phone's signal & explains some of the reception problems I have at home (normally only have 1-2 bars that vanish when I try to make a call or send a text).
The iPhone has "Data Roaming" turned off by default, as well as the Nokia N-series and I'm pretty sure Blackberries do too.
Mind you, if you turn it on for one trip and then forget...
Generally it would be better if the operators could join us in the 21st century and recognise that we're becoming a global society. Especially the ones who are global companies already and who presumably own the whole network end-to-end anyway.
IIRC, Nokia borked their Bluetooth stack in the 6230, but then (for some reason best known to themselves) never fixed it in the handsets following on.
The E series appear to be derived from that original broken technology strand, but the N series appear to have been given a different stack.
Oddly enough it's one of the few things on my N97 that just works as is should. The phone syncs over Bluetooth every 15 minutes when I'm in range of my laptop and doesn't even blink if I use my Bluetooth headset in the middle of it.
Naturally Nokia don't want to tolerate this behaviour and keep popping up messages in PC-Suite trying to get me to switch to OVI Suite, because that's broken and doesn't provide the functionality I need. Or "better" as they put it.
Mind you, I'll probably spend about as much on Olympic stuff as I have done in previous years (i.e. nothing), so I don't care.
I doubt that any of the events will be as compelling as The Reg's comments section when all the fights break out about how crap/brilliant the iPhone 6 is anyway.
Not that anyone will be able to buy one, since Apple appear to reduce first day stock every new launch there's every chance that only one will be allocated for the whole of the UK.
I'm not sure that being in the market first is much of a defence, Nokia were in the market much, much earlier than HTC.
All three of them are being sued by a company called ADC who aren't even in the market. They all end up in counter-attacks anyway.
It's just the broken US patent system, they'll all end up in cross-licensing deals eventually and in the mean time every time Apple gets involved all the commentards can start frothing at the mouth and saying "See?! See?! Apple are evil b*stards!!!!".
The only dispute that appears to have been really significant was NTP vs RIM back in 2002 when RIM lost a case that covered the core "push" technology that was (is?) their USP. RIM were hit with a massive fine and faced having to close down because their products would have been banned in the US - pretty much their only market in those days.
What were you doing for those 30 years?
Of course applications need to be written to make use of multi-tasking. They should be written to make efficient use of machine time, not just hog as much resource as the OS dishes out.
Ever used a Windows machine when Outlook is having problems talking to Exchange? That is what happens when applications aren't written to make correct use of multi-tasking.
A bad application will spin and eat up resources when waiting for something, a good application will register with the OS that it wants to be woken up for something and then go to sleep.
That stuff doesn't just happen because the OS supports multi-tasking, it has to be specifically written into the application. What Apple have done with iOS4 is impose the restriction on developers to do it the "good" way instead of just allowing them to do what they please, but apparently this is a bad thing if the comments are to be believed.
Bad examples, there.
Virtual desktops weren't even vaguely new when they finally arrived on Linux, they've been around since the 1980's on X-Windows systems and probably somewhere else less popular befre that. I am interested in why you think the Apple version is "crippled" though.
FireWire is Apple's brand name for the technology *they* created to oppose USB, *they* took it to IEEE and eventually it was turned into IEEE 1394. Most implementations call it FireWire too, although Sony call their implementation i.Link. What technology do you think they are pretending to have invented?
Airport, again is just a brand name they have given to their implementation. They don't do it to make people think that they invented it, they do it so that Joe Public doesn't need to know about 802.11g/802.11b/etc.
You need to brush up on your history before you start throwing stones at other platforms (to mix a metaphor).
"Slightly off topic: £929 for the new mac mini??? Are Apple taking the p1ss????"
That would be the server version with the server OS that normally retails for £400, so it compares reasonably well with a Windows equivalent which would probably cost about the same (the lower cost H/W being offset by the £600 Windows Server license).
£630 for the entry level machine *is* taking the Michael, though.
Yes, I'm well aware that someone here could build something with the equivalent functionality for free from bits they have lying around and a RedHat DVD.
You had to have a passport already in order to get an ID card.
The people pushing the cards kept "forgetting" to mention that, otherwise even fewer might have taken them up on the offer.
What they /would/ be useful for is emergency backup documentation to travel on within Europe, they're essentially a duplicate travel document that you could legally acquire and then keep separate from your passport in case of loss.
A bit like the photo card that comes with driving licenses these days.
Of course, to do that all they needed was to duplicate the information on the relevant page of your passport and *that* could have been done at a fraction of the cost (a sort of Passport Lite). But for some reason the idiots at the top thought the best plan would be to build a massively expensive new system to run alongside the old one and collect all sorts of personal information that they didn't need to meet the stated aims.
Are selling the factory unlocked iPhone4 in the UK, you can pre-order from today.
What's the big deal with getting a factory unlocked one? None of the iPhones on sale in the UK today are branded in any way by the carriers, so if you buy a PAYG one then pay to have it unlocked you get the same phone.
No, those ones don't need to be unlocked again when you upgrade the OS because the unlocking process is done via Apple though iTunes. You pay your unlock money to the carrier & they tell Apple to unlock the phone, then you get a text/email/whatever saying the phone is unlocked and you need to connect it to iTunes to complete the process. Job done.
O2, for example will unlock a PAYG iPhone for £15:
http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/unlockmyiphone.html
I'm pretty sure the other "official" networks offer similar deals.
And people already realise that they're buying the phone on credit, which is why very few people pay full price for sim-free or unlocked phones. Usually there's some kind of additional incentive from the provider that you can't get on a non-contract phone (such as free access to wi-fi hotspots).
I'm not sure what your actual beef is here, other than Apple not wanting to sell sim-free phones, but the reason they don't do that is because they want the networks to support the phone properly, with add-ons like the free wi-fi and visual voicemail.
There's not much point in buying a BlackBerry and sticking it on a network that doesn't support their push e-mail, because that's their main selling point, for the same reason there's not much point in using an iPhone on a network that doesn't support its features.
I have a T-Mobile 3G dongle that I bought because it was the cheapest on the market and I couldn't be sure how much I would actually need it.
Turns out that I haven't needed it very often and that turned out to be a Good Thing. I think the most charitable way to describe the performance would be "not very good".
30-35 minutes to sign into MSN - they're joking, right?
Having run out two years ago to get "HD Ready" TVs, then go out again to get "Full HD" TVs last year, perhaps they're not prepared to go out again this year and buy a Freeview HD TV, or maybe a 3D one. Eventually you run out of rooms to put the previous TV in.
Or maybe they already have Sky or cable and a bunch of HD channels already.
How long have MS been selling 64-bit versions of Windows?
And the reason they're not making Mac Office 2011 64-bit is because they need to keep it compatible with the Windows one, which is also 32-bit.
In the egg-on-face stakes, I think MS have won that round.
Although to be fair, there probably isn't that much of a demand. My office machine is five years old and running a ten year old OS, it's due to be "refreshed" this year,but the new machine will still be running a ten year old OS.
Progress? We've heard of it.
According to reports there were 570 WiFi base stations in the room.
That's a pretty extreme case for any phone, are you saying that another phone on the market would have done any better? Evidence?
As for video calling, I don't think any consumers actually give two hoots about it, but I notice that all of the people who were posting those "Ha! The iPhone has no front-facing camera, so no video calling - EPIC FAIL" posts have now vanished.
So, the new phone now plugs some of the other perceived gaps in capability:
Screen resolution. All those with the various Android HD screens have to shift to a different position, from the early comments it looks like the latest stick to beat Apple with with be "Ha! They've chosen the wrong technology!"
Multi-tasking. The shift has already started with this one, the argument goes "Ha! It's not TRUE multi-tasking, the application has to register for events and then go to sleep; it isn't really running.". That's a bit of a lame argument, that's how well-behaved programs behave in other operating systems anyway.
Battery life. Better than previous iPhones, but I can't see the arguments changing much here; there are two camps, those who go through three or four batteries every single day and therefore need a swappable battery and those who would complain even if the battery lasted for six weeks of continuous talking because it's an Apple device.
Camera. 5-Meg instead of some bleeding edge 14-Meg thing. Cue a round of pointless megapixel willie waving. Apple claim to have gone for quality rather than stats and I'm inclined to believe them, the photo industry has known this for a while, it's just taking a bit longer for some consumers to grow up a bit and learn a bit about optics. I have a four year old 7MP camera that produces better images than a lot of current 10+MP cameras because it has a good sensor and a good lens.
I'm wondering what the fuss is about.
Almost every time a new point release of Firefox comes out there are a bunch of plugins that stop working. Typically anything still being worked on is patched within a month and I can begin looking for alternatives for the remainder after that.
That's just a point release, when there is a major release like this you can pretty well forget about using any plugins for a couple of months.
All we're seeing here is who is pro-active, who is reactive and who's given up.
Apple have ~5% of the desktop space and around 30% of the smartphone market (about 8% of the total mobile phone market, IIRC). Oh, and roughly sod-all of the server space.
There's no big ass monopoly lawsuit because they aren't even vaguely a monopoly yet.
Yes, these stories generate huge amounts of hype and yes Apple look to be heading towards monopoly status, but they're still some way off.
It's a bit like the motoring press going bananas over every new Ferrari that's launched, it doesn't make Ferrari into a monopoly.
I don't think you need to be an Apple hater to see where things might go.
First, Apple launched iAds, HTML5 based advertising sold through Apple and easy to incorporate into iPhone apps.
Next, Apple starts pushing out new versions of Safari with more HTML5 compatibility.
Then Apple launches a version of Safari that allows you to get rid of those pesky ads all over normal web pages (Flash ads, anyone? Google who?).
It doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to see that they might put iAds into Safari at a later date and make sure they show up in the current "ad-free" mode.
How much extra revenue will the generate if advertisers can make an iAd that will appear on both the iPhone and Safari *and* isn't easily blocked?
Apple exists to make money, I seriously doubt they haven't at least considered doing this. It's not about being a hater or a fanboi, it's about trying to spot the business opportunities. If Apple thinks they can do this without driving too many people away, then expect to see it soon.
The hackers got in by exploiting Windows machines in use on desktops in Google's network.
Not the servers.
Not the mobile OS.
Not the upcoming desktop Chrome OS.
Got that straight now?
Google have noted that most attacks are made against Windows machines because of their high numbers. Moving to away from that OS to less used/attacked ones is roughly the same as parking your car somewhere that has low rates of car crime rather than somewhere that has high rates. It won't improve the inherent security of the actual vehicle, but it reduces the number of potential attacks; it's about improving your odds.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
