Posts by Ed
289 posts • joined Thursday 5th October 2006 02:33 GMT
Posted in Microsoft goes open source - almost
Re: Cancer
I believe Bill Gates said the GPL was a cancer, not open source. I have to agree to an extent with that too - the GPL makes it impossible to use GPL covered code in any closed source project, even if you're just linking to it as a DLL. This is very frustrating, but it's obviously within developer's rights to use it, and I'd likely want to use it myself if I made an open source project.
WebKit & Acid3
WebKit/Safari nightly build scores 82/100 on Acid3 - better than any of the other browsers.
This is more significant than Opera in many ways as WebKit has a larger market share by most counts...
http://nightly.webkit.org/
Great!
I'd certainly buy an Apple TV if the iPlayer was available for it. I agree these prices are a bit high - frankly I'd probably only pay 50p maybe 75p for an episode... It's a good start though :)
Posted in Nokia 7900 Prism
Software?
I know this is Reg Hardware, but you don't comment on how the phone is to use at all... Isn't that relevant?
Bricking
I don't think anyone has actually permanently bricked their iPhone yet - not that I've heard of anyway. Generally the worst you can do is get stuck with a phone you can't use as a phone...
Posted in Google in mass 404 land grab
Different...
I agree with A Gould - it is completely different. If the user wants software that will replace default error pages with google search pages, that's their choice. The only thing I'd do is make sure the user is aware that they're choosing to do this - something thats very hard to do as users don't read things you stick on the screen...
Forget it!
Couldn't you just happen to forget your password/encryption key?
Me too...
I was billed for 2008 too, I haven't heard anything from Dreamhost apologising for it either.
Well...
There were fake lists like this last year too, I think the Mac Pro reference makes me think that it's fake.
So...
What about my SSL encrypted Usenet access? How are they going to examine the packets there? The technology will work around the restrictions, whatever happens...
Posted in Remembering the Cray-1
RE: Robin Williams
Exactly what I thought - I thought (before I read the caption) that they must have got Robin Williams to do the PR for it...
PR?
Sounds like a PR stunt to me. They've got more PR from pulling the ads than they would do for having the ads. They even had the BBC writing an article saying they were 'considering' pulling the ads last week...
Patches...
We've been patching OS X since day one. I'm not sure what's suddenly changed here?
Jason: Microsoft calls their program Windows Update/Microsoft Update. Apple calls theirs Software Update...
Well, they were warned
Apple have warned developers for over a year that they shouldn't modify their own app bundles while running for exactly this reason...
Posted in Apple's Leopard leaps into action
BSOD
The so called BSOD is caused by a hacky 3rd party program thats well known for crashing applications. And incompatibilities with Java 6 is hardly an issue - it's not as if Vista is compatible with it, is it? Nor is Java 6 actually massively different from Java 5.
I'd say there were other more valid issues with Leopard you could mention...
Profit...
Apple still make 30-40%+ profit even without any money from AT&T...
Have they actually tried...
cutting off fingers to see if the scanners can detect them? I'm not sure how they can say that their scanners 'require a pulse' otherwise...
A good system
I installed one of these in a small office the other day and was impressed how well they worked. Sure, they're pretty expensive - £85 for a pair, but they're truly plug and play, unlike wifi which is considerably more plug and pray...
I was dubious, but I think it's a pretty good system for when you want a reliable connection without new wires...
Posted in BT aims to make UK a Wi-Fi kibbutz
Re: security
Robert, FON users are put onto a separate network that can't access the main LAN.
FON has been running this for about 2 years - I've not seen any reported security issues in that time.
Posted in First RIAA file-sharing trial begins
Hard drive replacement
According to the records on Ars Technica, the hard drive was replaced a month before she was informed that legal action was being taken against her....
Saw it happen...
to a guy in front of me in the queue with a Maestro card on Saturday afternoon...
Posted in IPTV over wireless? Why not?
Well, sounds good, but...
I regularly (nightly) stream recorded TV (MPEG4) over WIFI through three floors of a Central London terraced house, without any issues.
Maybe I'm just lucky :)
Badly written...
Interesting story, but the randomness made it very hard to tell what parts were jokes by the author and what parts were actually part of the story...
Posted in Microsoft shouts 'Long Live XP'
I'm switching
I've always followed Apple and encouraged friends and family to get Macs (because I don't have to support them!), and I'm finally about to switch myself. There's no reason not to now - you can run Windows and Linux on Macs anyway...
Posted in Firefox-Google marriage on shaky ground?
"Shut it down easily"
No, they can't shut it down easily.
It's open source.
Firefox is open source.
If either block the other, then they'll just get forked which isn't in Mozilla's interest (nor particularly Google's, if that's less people being directed to their site).
Plus it'd be bad PR for everyone involved.
Posted in Firefox hits 400m download milestone
Google Desktop?
Did I miss something? Why is Google Desktop a browser?
Re: No one actually buys from iTunes!
They've actually sold 3 billion songs, they announced that a few weeks back. So, thats 30 tracks per iPod. Your point still stands.
I believe Apple are actually making more money on iTunes now than they were, due to better a better credit card transaction system (amalgamating small payments together, to avoid paying high charges on small payments). When you're dealing with very cheap items, credit card charges can be your highest overhead (after the cost of the initial product).
See http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/04/23/itunes_store_a_greater_cash_crop_than_apple_implies.html
Organised networks?
What "organised networks" - are we talking about p2p networks here? The Mafia? Al Qaeda?
I suspect the former, which is hardly sinister!
Posted in Ban texting while driving, say Americans
Well, its a failure of democracy...
The issue with democracy is that you've got a bunch of people who are employed full time to make new laws.... We just get more and more laws and more and more restrictions on our personal liberties as a result.
All they've done...
Is patent an on screen keyboard that the use doesn't have control over. Quite how that's really patentable I don't know. Apparently there are issues with the "prior art" that mean that existing keyboards can be resized or closed accidentally, their patent solves this.
I hope Apple don't pay out.
Posted in The romance and mystery of a good hack
More to the point...
Why does whoever moderates these comments not notice it?
Posted in Red Hat delays Global Desktop
How can they call it Global...
... if it isn't available globally?
Has anyone actually bought Works?
Has anyone actually bought Works? I've only ever seen it bundled and never seen it at retail... Its an annoying waste of space - it introduces more incompatible file formats that just confuse matters. They'd be better of using Office as a base and making "Office Lite"...
Smartphones Pete, Smartphones
Pete Wailes: The iPhone is a 'smartphone', as such it isn't really competing with the "free" phones given out by networks.
It is unprecedented that a new smartphone from a company that has never made a phone before sells that many in two days. Find a precedent if you want to disprove that.
It might work for a while...
I bet small visual changes in videos, e.g. a small watermark, or a change in the brightness/contrast/tint could fool a system like this...
Broken next Tuesday...
Apparently the next Patch Tuesday update will break all existing methods for loading of unsigned drivers...
http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=41691
Posted in Windows Vista unreadiness revealed
Surface Computing
Surface Computing, as Microsoft is showing it is a gimick, to give the impression that Microsoft in innovating. You'd never see Apple (or many other companies) announce a product that is so impractical...
Doesn't work
Couldn't get any of the examples to work on the latest firefox... Seems pretty unreliable.
Excel Spam
I've had quite a lot of excel spam at the end of last week, maybe 10 a day for a few days, but not much over the last few days... At least with PDF and XLS spam, I don't accidentally read the them...
Posted in TomTom bids €1.8bn for map provider
Not sure what this has to do with social networking...
What has this to do with social networking? TomTom can integrate whatever they want with their maps, they don't need to control the data collection process for that...
Seems like an interesting move, but if TomTom do annoy other companies that use Tele Atlas as their data provider, we could end up with having all maps based on NavTeq, the only other real competitor...
Doesn't seem like a "huge success" to me...
If I can do the maths correct, it looks like they sold on average 18.5 copies per store per month... I'd say that was pretty disappointing!
Plus they've taken less than £50,000...
Posted in Wikipedia clarifies steam pipe menace
Gerard Krupa...
The page was moved to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_district_heating_system earlier today, so you'll need to look in the history of that.
If you look at the history of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Pipe you'll see that the same IP vandalised the page again about half an hour ago.
Posted in Wikipedia clarifies steam pipe menace
Well, it was only vandalism
The page was only like that for 3 minutes...
Posted in Microsoft rigs Live Search traffic
Well,
It might make the advertisers happy, but is it really giving them a good name? I don't know what the games are exactly, but I can't believe any adverts get many clicks, purely because people aren't actually interested in the things they're being forced to search...
Maybe Google should offer a free iPhone for every 20,000 searches. I believe they make on average around 10 cents a search, so they could afford it ;)
Posted in BT to drag T-Mobile onto 21st Century
They should get their act together
I use Virgin for my mobile, who use T-Mobile's network, and I'm fed up with their poor coverage. My house in central London frequently has 0 or 1 'bars', and I find the same all over the place...
Typical
Whole Foods Markets recently took over a local shop here in the UK, then closed it down and opened their new huge shop in Kensington, despite it being 2 or 3 miles away. We lost our local shop as a consequence. Throughout this, Whole Foods Market were completely unfriendly to the customers - sent back curt "tough luck" replies to emails, don't have a UK phone number and were generally rude and unhelpful. Its can't say its surprising that their CEO behaves like this.
NotARegisterReporter: I'm not sure what you're trying to say - You wouldn't be John Mackey by any chance?
heystoopid: I agree, although its highly unlikely he had any influence on the stock price, his actions seem very fraudulent to me...
As someone in the beta...
I'd emphasise the fact that the iPlayer doesn't actually really work as being a fairly major issue. Sure it works some of the time, but the amount of effort I had to put in (about 2 hours of deleting hidden system files and registry entries) to get it to work was ridiculous.
I think the issue is that the BBC choosing to go with Windows Media DRM will make people think twice about 'switching to mac'. I don't think this this is a role that the BBC should be in...
Equally, I can currently download any program I want from the BBC, ITV or Channel 4 (or any US network) over the internet in superior quality - what is the DRM actually for?
I'm impressed!
That's an impressive number of people's details to steal. Its remarkable that companies still get away with such negligence with almost no regulatory come-back...
