Re: Bye, Star Wars...

Don't worry, I'm sure they'll make the good news available as a £19.99 DLC package.

Re: Most likely...

You need to show "willing intent" to be visible on the photos. I was told that apparently, if you print out a photo of yourself and stick it to your face, Google won't blur it out for this reason. Or at least, they'll consider not blurring it out, presumably based on how stupid the photo looks.

Re: Google Music please.

Best put that computer mouse down then.

Re: Still no buttons

So wait, your solution to my problem is to buy reading gloves? Thanks, but no thanks -- I have a nice pair of soft, warm gloves I'd rather not swap for a crappy capacitive pair every time I fancy a bit of reading.

Also it doesn't address the waterproof bag situation mentioned above.

Re: Still no buttons

Touch screen doesn't work with gloves on though. With my current, outdated Kindle I can read my book in a chilly train station without getting cold fingers, something that simply isn't possible with the touchscreen designs.

Re: "Apple has launched an overpriced and under-specced turkey"

I can hold my Kindle up with two fingers, and it weighs only 25g less. I think the all-around grip photo is a bit misleading, since you can probably just hold onto one edge, like with an e-reader.

Re: Oh great...

Care to enlighten us as to how you'd design a state-of-the-art smartphone then, oh master engineer?

Re: Disputed figure: 1 or 2 % disable javascript

Uniques. And a billion will always be a million million, I say!

Re: Disputed figure: 1 or 2 % disable javascript

I believe Limited Run themselves expounded on the problems with detecting JavaScript usage. The main issue is that most analytics programs require JS to be enabled, so NoScript users will always fly under the radar. Apparently to overcome this they wrote their own analytics program, and it's from that they got the 1-2% figure. Other studies (and there's not been many of them) seem to confirm this.

NoScript (the extension) is very uncommon, by the way. Have a look at the Firefox page for it and you'll see it has 2 million users. It is probably safe to assume the number of people who have disabled JS through other means also number around 2 million.

For comparison, Google gets around two (US) billion visitors per month. 4 mil is a drop in the water as far as total Internet users is concerned. This is very wooly stats of course, but it's fair to say that the influence of non-JS users is microscopic.

Developers still need graceful degredation for non-JS though. 1% may be very little, but in that category we have almost every single search engine bot. Catering to them is kind of essential, at least as far as finding information and links is concerned.

Re: Old news.

Actually more like two decades ago now. Just to make you feel old 'n stuff.

Re: Street sited?

I imagine it'd just cost too much, both to install and to maintain. The point of them being above ground is so that BT engineers can easily reach them to patch cables and so forth.

Yep

Cancer does that.

Probably not

GA requires a bit of JavaScript code to run, which will probably be fetched with the rest of the page but likely won't get run until the user hits enter. And this is Google anyway, I'm sure they've considered this.

The low-hanging fruit

I called my MP3 player an iPod for years, despite the fact it had nothing to do with Apple or their products. But two syllables are easier to pronounce than five. Similarly, it's a lot easier to just say "Kindle", a well-known brand, than "e-Reader", which, to be perfectly frank, is a pretty stupid name to begin with.

Not to mention

Including a beta version of Firefox 3 with one of their releases (I forget which one). That's the default browser for the entire operating system, updated to a testing build. The mind boggles.

Re: "Will Twitter and Facebook be blocked next since they facilitate riots?"

Basically, yes.

You seem to have described Microsoft Exchange there. Or just IMAP through SSL.

Accessories are your friend

For example: http://store.griffintechnology.com/iphone/navigate

You can do everything with USB? No!

The dock connector supports way more than just a USB connection, that's why it's so huge. To name just a few, it has:

- Line out

- Line in

- Composite video

- Component video

- Some kind of serial (other than USB, for low-level comms with accessories)

- USB itself

- 12V charging

Ever tried sending component video down USB? Yeah, good luck with that. And if you want to have music on your hi-fi (direct line out) whilst charging via USB, the dock connector will let you do that too. USB can't.

If all the iPods had was a USB connector, they'd lose a massive amount of functionality. That means reducing convenience and flexibility for the end user, the very thing you claim the dock connector prevents. Whoops.

Re: *

"There is nothing inconvenient about swapping a battery."

Steps to swap a battery:

1. Power off phone

2. Take old battery out

3. Swap new battery in

4. Power on phone

Steps to plug in external battery:

1. Plug in external battery

Yeah, clearly I'm doing the wrong thing here. Shucks.

"..when you got home you had... oh that's right, two batteries to charge sequentially to get back to square one"

In parallel, actually. And having two phone batteries would land you in the exact same situation, so no gain there.

"Desperate to find fualt much?"

I find fault with crap information, yeah. Agree with a few of the other points in the article though!

Viruses

"viri" is not a word. Although at least you didn't use "virii", which is less of a word and more of a five-character facepalm.

Apple approves malware disguised as Flash for sale in its App Store, citing it as a "reasonable alternative to the Adobe product".

I lost track of it. What were we listening to?

Works in Lion

Lion allows you to run in so-called "clamshell" mode - i.e. with the lid shut. I believe there was a way to force SN to wake up in clamshell too, certainly I've seen these docks around prior to Lion's release.

D'oh - percentages are a nuisance really...

Not on my street!

Every day on the train, the carriage is full of Kindles. Far from being a dying technology, eInk is very much in demand thanks to Amazon. Their screens are far better than any OLED offering for reading books, and that's not likely to change any time soon.

If you've ever read books, there's no way you'd opt for a backlit screen on an e-Reader over an eInk one. It's just a silly choice. They are two completely different technologies designed to address vastly different problems.