Posts by Chris
40 posts • joined Tuesday 15th May 2007 13:14 GMT
Posted in Next-gen e-book readers to slim down
Only when they're dirt cheap.
£200 to read books? It's not sounding appealing, when you can just buy a paperback for a few quid.
I can see the appeal, but if anyone expects me to buy books AND pay £200 for the pleasure of reading them, they're going to have to cut prices a whole lot and improve the tech plenty. Once these things are reasonably priced (£50 or less sounds reasonable), the battery lasts a few weeks of reasonable use without a charge, and it's cheap + easy to get decent content onto it, I'll certainly look at buying one.
Until then, I'll stick to my current set up: a big pile of cheap, user friendly paper books and a big pile of ebooks on my iphone, which has the unbeatable advantage of always being with me when I want to read something.
Posted in Intel hit with largest ever EU fine
Good, but perhaps too late
This is a good result I think, but it's possibly a bit late in the game for AMD.
A few years back in the P4 era, AMD was shipping very competitive products at very competitive prices. On a level playing field, they would have grown massively and made a ton of money during this period. That would have left them with enough cash (or at least hugely less debt), and they'd be spending more on R+D to make better chips to compete with intel now.
Instead, AMD is pretty much crippled, and has chips that don't compete on performance. Worse, they're a generation behind on production, meaning that their chips are bigger than intels and cost more to make. They have to sell them for less than intel does as they're slower. End result is that intel is selling chips for a good profit, AMD are on razor thin margins. Intel has a lot more money to spend on R+D, new manufacturing processes etc. The gap will widen... I can't see how AMD will remain competitive or in business for much longer. (Then again, have they EVER made a profit? Somebody seems happy to pay to keep them running :)
Posted in Palm bets the farm on WebOS
Good luck palm!
I used palm's pdas for many years, and in their prime they made superbly good devices.
When I came to replace my last one, a great little T3 that was on it's last legs after 4 years odd of loyal duty, it seemed like the devices hadn't moved forward much if at all, and the software hadn't been updated. It seems they really screwed up their software strategy, and lost the way a little on hardware over the years.
I picked up a first gen iphone instead, and it's given me the same warm glow of quality hardware + software that palm used to. It works the way a phone/pda should do, rather than like a desktop cramped into a case that's too small the way windows mobile does. Plus the updates seem to improve it regularly.
I'd love to see palm back on form, and I'll seriously consider a pre instead of an iphone next. It'll have to have a good sdk + supported app store though, as I'm doing iphone development lately. Either way, apple need some stiff competition.
Posted in Brit nuke subs exposed on Google Earth
Crop circles!
I knew it! The SAS have been taken over by alien mind control rays! There's clear proof right there in the new google images: a series of crop circles in that last image at the top right of the picture!
CALL THE NEWS OF THE WORLD!!
Posted in Mobile shields man from death bullet
Maybe the phone was the target?
It's pretty vain of the guy to assume that he was the target, and not the phone. If the marksman was that accurate, they'd have gone for a headshot to be sure. They sure did a good job on that phone though.
Another obvious error...
Sure, you reduce the size of transistors, and you can make the same chip with less sand. But you don't keep selling it at the same price, or you go out of business fast. You either make it cheaper, and add less GDP for less sand, or you increase the number of transistors to add value and add the same GDP for the same amount of sand.
I didn't bother reading the rest after seeing such obvious mistakes in the first paragraph of an article supposedly explaining economics.
Can't see it
From what I've seen, there are 4 main groups of music buyers these days:
1. people who buy mp3s. They already have an ipod or whatever, and this would be a step backwards for them.
2. people who download mp3s illegally. They also have an mp3 player, and wouldn't pay for this.
3. people who buy CDs because they realise that buying mp3s is bad value, so they get the CD and rip it. See 1 & 2.
4. people who still buy CDs because they don't get on with mp3s. This is sandisk's real market, and it tends to be people who don't bother with the latest technology and would rather stick with the ease of use of a CD. I just can't see them going for something like this.. they won't understand it, and it won't play on their home stereo.
Besides.. microSD? I bet people will spend as much on replacing lost cards as buying new music!
Posted in Googlephone unworthy of Satan tag
I'll develop for it!
There's no way my app would get passed the censors at apple, so it's off to googleland I go. If anyone is in need of an app that promises free smut, but actually just silently calls premium rate numbers all day while you're not using the phone, you'll see it on the google app market soon!
Seems stable now
I got a free trial a while back to see how it worked. At first, I wasn't too impressed.. the apps are good etc., but nothing I thought I really needed, and the push service didn't work with my iphone at all (I have it without contract, and without any data plan, but it's usually connected via wifi).
The push service was fixed a few days later though, and works very well. The idisk is immensely handy, and the other web apps are pretty useful if you want to look up a contact or check your diary while out somewhere. I'm pretty tempted to pay for it now, so I guess they got something right.
Visual voicemail with unlocked phones?
Sounds good to me. I'm already on orange, with an iphone (best of both worlds - phone cost only £170, and my 'value promise' plan with orange costs on average a quid a month. Somebody somewhere is losing money, and it's not me ;)
Anyway, does this mean that visual voicemail will work with unlocked iphones on other tariffs?
Rob Haswell: I doubt it'll end up on ebay. I moved from a palm (I've been a fan of them for years, especially after trying the horror that is windows mobile a few times) and the iphone is so far ahead it's untrue. I'd love to think palm will release a huge OS update that gets them back into the game, but I don't see it happening, which would be a real pity.
Posted in Apple takes the operator's shilling
PAYG
This article might make more sense if the iphone wasn't available on pay-as-you-go, which it is, from O2. No mention of what it'll cost without a contract yet, but it'll be a ready supply of phones for the unlockers.
Posted in Japan's Softbank signs up for iPhone
Confirmation of 3g
Consider that concrete evidence of 3g - I just got back from Japan, and a 2g iphone doesn't work there at all as the phone network is different.
I think iphone will do really well in japan - the japanese phones are really big and clunky, and look really crap to use. About the opposite of what you'd expect really!
Link needed
We need a link to a site where we can paste our emails in and find out what sex we are please.
The casio mp3 watch
I have an ancient casio mp3 watch at home (a present, not the kind of thing i'd buy!) Actually, it was pretty good for exercising with, and I could fit a good 20 or so tunes in the 32mb of memory with some careful tweaking of the mp3 encoder (goodbye stereo, hello 22khz :)
Unfortunately, it was yet another product that had potential but was let down by absolutely awful software. Praise be to itunes, you have your deficiencies, but at least you woke up the rest of the market and cleared all of that crap out.
Posted in Asus unveils 42in Linux-based Eee TV
42" LCD TV for £100?! Sign me up!
"The E-TV is a 42in LCD TV, but it will have computer technology on board running Linux to allow users to surf the internet and read email. Asus said it will retail for no more than $200."
If they can sell it for $200, I hope they're going to make a LOT of them, because they'll be selling faster than anything ever sold before.
Posted in SMBs grasp Vista nettle
"Evaluated"?
We fall into the "evaluated or adopted" category here - we evaluated it, and rejected it. We'll stick with XP for another year at least.
So, does this survey actually tell us that only half of businesses are even taking a look?!
An example of Microsoft listening to customers perhaps?
"Windows XP SP3 does not bring significant portions of Windows Vista functionality to Windows XP."
Thank god for that!
Posted in MI5, EPA clean up dirty bomb dirt
Sleep easier?!
"According to the Environment Agency, running the disposal programme in cooperation with the police and domestic spook service MI5, there were believed to be 11,000 surplus radioactive items at large initially. Since the initiative began in 2005, 9,000 sources have been processed.
"People in the UK should sleep easier, just that bit easier, knowing that there aren't these sources out there," the Agency's Chris Williams told the BBC."
... so, I didn't know that all these sources were out there, and was sleeping just fine. Now, I know that there's 2,000 radioactive sources suitable for making a dirty bomb, and they're out there. Just how am I expected to sleep easier again?
Posted in Amazon's $399 folly book reader
Nice idea, but...
I've been reading ebooks for a few years now, on PDAs. Ideal for when you have a few moments of boredom (which is often in IT, "slave to the blue bar" and all that), and the best device I've used was an old palm V. Black+white screen, battery life of a month or so - perfect. I reckon amazon are on the right track there.
The catch though, is that I wouldn't even consider a dedicated reader. I wouldn't carry it with me, and I wouldn't value it at anything more than £20 (which is around 10% of the value of the amazon kit!) Most of the time, a real book is cheap, convenient, easy to keep around, and most of all more enjoyable to read. For the rest of the time, if it's not available on something you already have with you (which would be a phone or pda), forget it.
Are any bookies taking bets on this thing? Put me down for £20 on it flopping within a year.
Good article
It's rare that I see a balanced article on apple from the reg, so big thumb up for this one! I'd add a thumb up graphic, but I've adblocked all the little pictures so I don't have to endure the Face of Horror (yes, Paris Hilton).
Posted in Apple hit with another class action
You're all missing the point!
Americans don't file these law suits because they actually have a serious problem! They do it to amuse us Europeans!
Posted in ID Cards cost cut to £5.6bn
"delayed applications"
I "delayed" my passport application - by applying 5 years early for a new one. That way, I'm off the ID card database for the next 10 years, by which time perhaps they'll have scrapped the whole thing (or at least made it secure). I guess enough people did that for it to affect the budget! Shame they didn't get the hint.
Posted in HP to quit digicam business... sorta
Disgusted with HP
I'd never, ever buy a camera (or anything else) from HP. Not since they moved their sauce production to Holland.
Posted in Mac OS X Leopard - Time Machine
Re: Two cheers
TIme machine doesn't take a full backup each time, it does that once (which will take 40gb). The next time, it will backup anything that's changed, and put links to the first backup for anything that hasn't changed. The backup folder LOOKS like a complete backup, and reports that it contains 40gb of files, but it probably only takes a few MB in reality.
For comparison, I have about 70gb of data being backed up to a 320gb disk - there must be 30+ backup folders now, each reporting 70gb of files, but I have about 120gb free (and there's a lot of other stuff on the disk, not just time machine!)
In practice, it'll keep hourly backups for the present day, then (if i remember right) daily backups for the last week, weekly backups for the last month, then monthly backups until it runs out of disk space (at which point you start losing the oldest backups).
And for everyone that doesn't "get it" - sure, backups are nothing new, and backup to an external hard disk isn't exactly perfect. But the key to this is that the vast majority of people DON'T backup, and find it difficult to figure out what they need to buy or do. A lot of mac users have an external hard disk already, or will buy one to use time machine. And all they have to do is plug the disk in, and click ONE button. That's it - they have a good backup routine established. The fancy 3d interface and stuff is over the top, but it's kindof fun and it's easy to understand. No grey windows with lots of options.
I.e. - people will ACTUALLY USE it! How many people use windows backup?
Posted in Mac OS X Leopard - Time Machine
Vintage cheese
There IS a back-up now button - right click (or control-click) on the time machine dock icon. Does this mean it gets 100%?
Also, I'd like to thank apple for this feature. I switched almost all of my relatives (whose PCs I get lumped with supporting) over to mac, which has cut the amount of work down by 80% or so. Time machine will cut it down even more, and I'll be able to stop reminding them to make backups! Ah, more time for actually doing stuff instead of fixing stuff!
Now, go fix the UI stuff you uglified mr. jobs.
Units of measurement
Since computers are so fast now that the measurements we use tend to be so long that they're just a meaninglessly long row of zeros, I reckon all computers should be measured in terms of mouse brains.
That would have an additional benefit - it'll be a few years before the humble mousebrain gets outgrown, so the boffins have plenty of time to figure out how many mouse brains make a rabbit brain, how many rabbit brains make a dog brain and so on. With a bit of luck, they'll get the paris hilton brain in there too, although obviously they'd have to be very quick.
Posted in Apple's Leopard leaps into action
OS X on PCs
There are plenty of reasons for apple keeping OS X off generic PCs. Apple keeps all the hardware sales to itself, making more money and keeping out competition. But more importantly to us users of it, it means that there's only a handful of different machine specs so apple can keep good standards of software control. Getting a dodgy driver is very rare.
The 'teething troubles' mentioned are pretty much insignificant - systems with a 'system hack' application fail to upgrade, and it's a version behind on java (which will no doubt be updated anyway when it's ready). Overall the leopard launch has been surprisingly smooth, and there's plenty of good new stuff in there to justify the upgrade.
The bad news though is that apple have arsed around with a few things and made them worse:
- The dock is now 'reflective', making it less legible. But who cares about usability if it's shiny, right?
- The menu bar is now translucent, making it a LOT less legible. Why? So you can see the top 10 pixels of your background picture. Really useful.
- The stacks are a nice idea, but they have no icon (the icon is just the contents of the stack, all piled up) so if you have a few of them it's hard to tell which is which, and the icons change when the content of the stack changes. The old pop-up menu in tiger would be better for some folders, but it's been taken out.
- The icons for folders are crap. Instead of a folder with a nice colourful representation of what it contains on the top, so it's easy to tell which folder is which, they're all plain blue folders with a faint embossed bit to tell you what it is. At a glance, they look identical!
Posted in PC sales boosted by Europe's laptops
Re: Interesting calculations, Chris
Rate of growth, not size. So it should be 0.159/0.052 = a bit over 3.
Posted in PC sales boosted by Europe's laptops
Lies, damn lies, and statistics
A quick look at the actual report, and the actual figures for apple are that they grew 15.9% in the US only (no worldwide figures are shown). The average for vendors in the US is 5.2%, so "up a bit less than the market as a whole at 15.9 per cent" is outright wrong as Apple grew 3x faster than the market.
Perhaps a calculator for that journo in santa's sack?
Last time BT did this...
Well maybe not last time, as it was 7 years ago and I'm sure it has happened to them since. But back then they left a database of customer details on an open server assuming that nobody would notice it, and therefore it was safe. I know because my details were stolen from the server.
Less than a week after that, I had a call from BT trying to sell me online security services!
Going for the budget crowd?
Looks like they're going for the budget crowd who's like an imac but can't afford it, and would like a machine with a lower spec and a poorer design for less money.
Hold on.. it's more expensive!
So... they're going for the crowd that want a lower spec, lower class imac, and are happy to pay more for the privilege. Good luck finding them.
Old news, and worse - wrong!
Anyone following apple's shares at all would have seen that apple sold 275,000 iphones in the first two days. AT+T's figure is for activations - and we know that a lot of people couldn't activate because AT+T's network couldn't cope.
All of this happened last week, it's hardly a secret, so why publish an article like this now when it's widely known to be out of date and factually wrong? And besides that, 275,000 phones in two days is a pretty remarkable number, should we blame apple for not selling millions or the analysts for expecting them to?
Posted in Canadian iPod user struck by lightning
The real point...
I think the real point here isn't the ipod angle - it's clearly the choice of music. The religious bloke listening to religious music was clearly struck down by god himself and deafened to stop him doing it again, while the metallica fan was actually saved.
Is this really 'green'?
Sure, it'll save a bit of energy if you charge your phone with it. But I bet it takes a lot more energy to build one of these than you'd save during its lifetime.
Seal sticks?
"Assistant US Attorney Andrea Steward explained that "seal penis bones, also known as seal sticks, are believed to have properties similar to erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra"."
I reckon he mis-heard that. I can imagine the scene in the office...
"Hey guys, I need to brief the media on this, what the hell are 'seal penis bones'?"
"Seals' dicks."
"Great, let me write that down... seal sticks. Let's roll!"
Sore arses?
Is it just me, or do half the people on that 'Home' screenshot stand or walk like they've got sore arses?
Life-sized people?!
The museum promises 'life-sized people' - are museums in this part of the world normally run by midgets or something? Or is this seen as proof that the curators did not involve from monkeys like the rest of us?
Posted in Google launches universal search
Correction...
...Now, the same search will also return amateur porn video clips, porn pictures, and even excerpts from erotic books.
Posted in Pipex to shutter UK Bulldog call centres
Bollocks
The 'sale of pipex' hasn't 'failed' - that was press speculation. They are conducting a 'strategic review' which could include a sale of all or part of the business, which is ongoing, 'going well' according to the company, and due to conclude in the early summer. And as far as I'm aware they do this kind of review once a year.
