Posts by Jim Hague
36 posts • joined Friday 15th June 2007 19:05 GMT
Re: Nook
I ordered one via the Blackwell's website on 1/5. Got the following today. Looks like I have time for a few refreshers before it arrives. I'm buying because the price is a good 'un. Considered a Kobo but never plunged. Rootable Android is a bonus :-)
****
We understand you are still waiting for your NOOK® Simple Touch. Due to an unprecedented number of orders, NOOK® have been delayed in delivering the stock needed to fulfil your order.
We sincerely apologise for this delay and would like to assure you that we are doing everything we can to expedite this delivery. We have been informed by our supplier that the shipment is on its way, so we expect to be able to start despatching orders by Wednesday next week. We shall of course confirm by email once your order has been shipped.
We would like to thank you for your continued patience and apologise once again for any inconvenience caused in this matter.
With very best wishes,
The Blackwell's Team
Re: Sadly, the under 40s
Liberalisation of phones happended before the privatisation of BT.
I asked BT to reactivate the existing phone line in my new flat on 29/11/12. It took them until 15/1/13 to do it, and then a further 8 days to activate ADSL.
Posted in Paying a TV tax makes you happy - BBC
Re: NZ Has No TV Tax
Australia also funds the ABC out of general taxation. When I lived there some years ago, ABC TV was (is?) ad-free. The ABC's commitment to regional radio is impressive, plus there a couple of decent-ish national stations. Nothing quite up to the standard of Radio 4, though some of Radio National (plug for Robin Williams and the Science Show, better than anything on the Beeb). 2BL, the main ABC radio channel for Sydney, is rather reminiscent of BBC Radio Oxford in terms of content.
So, perhaps Blighty should make a similar move? Personally, I think not. The naked threats to the ABC from politicians at election time - give me coverage I want and like, or I'll slash your budget if re-elected - are unedifying in the extreme, and the fact that they feel able to make those threats openly is Not Good.
And oh God, the commercial channels. Ads every 10 seconds, imported series slashed to ribbons to fit the ads in.
The licence fee is not a great system. But to me it looks an easy winner in the least-worse stakes.
Re: Programmer's File Editor
PFE was nice in the day. I used to use it myself. But single platform (look, some of us don't live in MSland 100% of the time), no syntax highlighting, no development for 14 years and no source.
I mean, why would you?(*)
OK, so syntax highlighting is really only useful when spotting missing multi-line comment closures or as a buggered-up syntax early warning, but the first of those is well worth having and is the first reason I went elsewhere.
(*) Says a man who still prefers trn4 to read newsgroups. Mind you, trn4 has source.
Re: MS java versus Sun
Sun never intended Java to be a single-vendor system. They recognised, correctly, that developers are reluctant to commit to a new environment that is someone's exclusive property. So from the word go there was a process to allow others to develop complete Java implementations. These had to be compatible at the bytecode level at runtime, so that Java could interoperate at the binary level, and pass an extensive compatibility test suite. Once complete, you'd get a licence from Sun to call your product Java(TM). 10 years ago, I was working on a JVM at a company that did exactly that.
MS also took a licence, and then released MS Java. MS Java included additional methods in the standard classes, methods that the documentation did not even identify as not being part of standard Java. The clear intention was that developers would be suckered into writing Java that was not portable beyond the Microsoft system. This was a naked breach of the terms of the Sun licence, and it was on that basis that Sun sued.
Android uses Java the language, and provides compatible versions of some of the standard Java classes. But it does not use the Java runtime bytecode; instead, it uses a completely different bytecode and VM, Dalvik. You can't plonk a standard Java binary onto an Android device and expect it to work. The important point here is that Google do not claim to be shipping Java(TM), believe that using Java-the-language is perfectly permissible, and have no Sun licence.
So the legal matters at issue are completely different.
IANAL. But if the original vendor of a language has the power to stop others doing compatible implementations, or demand royalties, as long as no trademarks or patents are violated, it's news to me. And as others have pointed out, if this were to turn out to be the case, m'learned friends at IBM, where SQL originated, will doubtless want a very, very expensive word with Oracle.
Re: glad I still have the old cable modem
Me too. I am terrified of being lumbered with one of these disasters, and so am avoiding upgrading to a higher speed than my old Surfboard can handle. Even modem mode connecting straight through to my OpenWRT WRT54GL sounds a risk.
Re: ARM emulator
If you're targetting an app at, say, both iOS and Android, it may make sense to write the main engine in C++ and do the platform-specific GUI stuff in that platform approved manner. AIUI, this is not uncommon these days. Ergo, a chunk of native code.
Which you get to run in emulation. Hmm.
Re: Orlowski gets it wrong
Are you saying you believe that everyone is quite happy that NoTW accessed the voicemails, and if only the (inadvertant) deletion on the mails hadn't happened nobody would have any problems with NI at all?
Anyone ever seen the e-gates at Luton working?
Theve've always been switched on, and arrivals at Luton is plastered with signs telling you to use them. But after a couple of years passing through Luton monthly, I've never seen them open for business.
Bristol now seems to post a list of restricted times the gates are open for business. I just missed this last time, and access was barred. So, I get to wait for some time in a queue for a bored official to insert my passport into the reader and see if the computer says no. Presumably the machinery needs a little lie down.
Luton too
Luton too is festooned with signs urging you to use the ePassports system. It's been installed for years.
I've never seen it open for use.
Par for the SMH course
Back around '97 the dear old SMH reported breathlessly on a homegrown talent who had apparently produced a codec capable of sending full screen full motion video and audio over a dialup modem link.
Of course no technical details could be disclosed or anything seen other than a staged demo with no opportunity to kick the tyres offered, because of pending patent applications and confidential talks with potential investors etc. etc.
15 years later I'm still waiting for this technology to arrive. Funny, that.
Re: Airbus Crazy
Based on a play last night on an official A320 sim (full motion an' all, owned by Czech Airlines), I can tell you that yes, you can move both input controls at the same time.
And if you do, the warning voice bawls 'dual input' at you. Repeatedly. Which I submit is a respectful request to the overlord meatsacks to bloody sort themselves out.
We'll have to wait for a real Airbus jockey to come by and tell us if the mode is apparent. Based on the response to an engine fire on approach, I suspect that yes, it does let you know. And probably advises on what to do about it.
As an aside, the instructor took us for a most entertaining low-level pass by the Eiffel Tower. Said warning voice was fully occupied yelling 'Terrain', 'Terrain, 'Pull up', 'Terrain'. The sim was colossal fun. I want one.
Posted in The BBC Micro turns 30
Someone is confused about the Model A and Teletext mode
The Model A *did* have video Mode 7 (Teletext mode), which was indispensable because it only consumed 1k. It was only the Electron which didn't, which promptly made the Electron unable to run vast swathes of BBC Micro software and killed its major selling point.
There's an upgraded Model A in the loft somewhere. I got it at the launch price. The memory got upgraded pretty swiftly. It later acquire a floppy drive at horrid expense - Acorn had used an Intel FDD controller chip that went out of production soon after launch, and the price climbed horribly. ISTR having to pay about £50 for mine. They keyboard was great, the only keyboard on a home machine in which you really could type. The other major upgrade was a Sideways RAM board, built from a design in one of the mags. I spent countless hours honing my 6502 assembler skills on that machine....
Oxford ACCU will toast this significant day tonight. I'll make them :-)
Posted in El Reg follows World Solar Challenge
Stopping at 5pm sounds sensible
The bloody roos gather by the roadside in the twilight, and when approached by a car with lights on manage to make pheasants looks like keen students of the Green Cross Code.
And it is bitumen all the way, and you definitely don't need a 4WD.
If you can, take a diversion into the town centre of Woomera as you go past. The park is festooned with bits of tasty old range hardware - a Gloster Meteor, bits of Black Knight, all kinds of old missiles and rocketry. And if you ask the right person at the hotel, the local astronomy club may give you a run on their telescope.
No chilling effect? Really?
It may be true that no consumer has ever been prosecuted for format shifting. But nevertheless it remains illegal. Are you seriously suggesting that doesn't act as some kind of brake on manufacturers? Like, oh, http://www.brennan.co.uk/itemcontent.php/content/Copyright2 for example?
Posted in London's Olympic clock claps out
Re: web site wont go down...
The Olympic Visa-only rort is not a UK invention, and is nothing new. You could definitely only pay with Visa at the Sydney Olympics. Blame the IOC, not Coe's lot.
Rare to find any of them in operation
I've used then once each at Bristol, Brum and Gatwick without a problem in the last couple of years, and jolly nice it was too escaping the long queue for the wetware-scan. But the bloody things are almost never in operation. There's a nice set of them at Luton which must have been there for a year now and which I've never seen working, despite the tons of signage instructing you to use them.
The signage, and the ads in the inflight magazines, serve as an annoying reminder to me how much of the nation's hard-earned has been pissed up the wall on this one. One would think the whole point of the evaluation was not to splash everywhere before you knew the gadgetry was working.
Part of me, though, wonders whether the reason they are always off has more to do with border union relations than the tech. Mind you, they are Windows-based, so I'll give the unions the benefit of the doubt for now.
Posted in EC parades common phone charger
Re: Car chargers
There are actually two different sizes of fag lighter sockets in cars worldwide. Better than phone chargers, true. Just don't expect your Euro lighter plug to fit into a car on the other pond side.
Coat. Exit.
Nitpick: Bodleian is not just for Oxford Uni
I got a readers card off them once, and I'm not a University member. I do live in Oxford, and I did have a semi-plausible reason for wanting access to the library for research purposes.
Coat. Acquire. Door.
Posted in Google Nexus Two 'lands November 8'
So, Google figures Samsung need a hand with their Android firmware
Not surprised. I've suffered with the original i7500 Galaxy for a year. Apart from not fixing the bugs, a year of 'Donut will be released next month'. 'Next month' meaning never. Galaxy S sounds the same story; not bad hardware, let down by firmware. GPS not working, forsooth.
I wonder if Google figured Samsung were slowly tarnishing the Android brand.
Google switch Android to OpenJDK? Why?
Android is not Java-the-System. It uses Java-the-Language plus parts of Harmony to provide the standard basic Java types, collections, networking etc. libraries. Most everything else is Android specific, including the JVM.
IBM may have been Harmony members, but AFAIK they never shipped anything based on Harmony. Certainly the AIX JDK is completely Sun based. I would guess IBM regarded Harmony as insurance against Sun somehow taking their ball away.
So the Harmony project's goal of a complete Apache-licenced open source Java SE may be a little further away, but that's irrelevant to Google. They don't want or need Java SE. Or ME.
So, the author's Samsung Galaxy S has problems
If the quality of the firmware is anything like that on my original Samsung Galaxy i7500 (Cupcake-only abandonware only a few months after purchase), I'm not surprised.
I've been playing with a G1 of late, with HTC issue 1.6 and various Cyanogen versions. Android doesn't have to be flakey.
Posted in Brits not buying into Freeview HD
Have you tried to buy a Freeview HD telly recently?
I did. There's a lot of weasling about being 'HD Ready' but models with DVB-T2 HD built-in are pretty thin on the ground, and as near as non-existant as makes no difference at the cheaper end if you're looking in the bricks and mortar world(*).
I'd have bought a Freeview HD ready TV if I could, but it wasn't an option.
(*) I was unloading DSG vouchers so was restricted to their stores.
Posted in Android apps: Shifty little bleeders
Re: Excessive Permissions
Apps looking for 'net access, location data and other surprising items can just be because the dev has included one of the ad presenters.
Got alerted to this when the torch app I'd been using suddenly demanded net and location. Checked with dev, who explained about ad package. Didn't downgrade to the new version, though I understand the wish to make some change. I did ask for a payware adless version, but nothing came of it.
@Good call
So, every country in the world which has hung parliaments has nightmares getting things done, and it would be a disaster?
Remind me - it's obviously Greece, with it's record of strong majority government, that is currently bailing out the Federal Republic of Germany, which has enjoyed a mere two years of non-coalition government in its history. Or did I get that wrong?
Oh, and it's a crap piece too. The question, Lewis, is whether you want a Trident replacement to deter the Soviet Union, or a carrier that might actually be useful in the modern world. We aren't going to afford both, thanks to a financial disaster produced by organisation that boast both NuLab and the Tories as their cheerleaders.
LibDems never opposed the invasion of Iraq
Oh dear. I've been duped by a biased media into believing the LibDems whole-heartedly supported the Iraq war. I was mislead by their cunning tactic of indicating wholehearted support by voting 'no' on the relevant parliamentary division.
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2003-03-18&number=118&display=allvotes
Of course, I'm a complete political simpleton, lacking the sophisticated understanding of such matters in Parliamentary circles. Now I see that when my local Labour MP voted consistently in favour of Post Office closures, he was actually doing what his publicity plastered over the local rags and junk mail claimed, and opposing them.
It's scary that I'm allowed to vote, really.
Samsung code quality
Judging by the competence of the Samsung bits of code on my Galaxy, this developer will be in no hurry to cross swords with an all-Samsung software environment.
Ask Dell before you buy
I ordered a Latitude E5400 from Dell earlier this week. It's shown on the website as available with Windows or Windows.
I did the 'chat with a sales rep' thing, and after explaining clearly that the machine was to be Linux, I got a quote with FreeDOS instead of Windows, and a price reduced by approx 50 quid.
Not received it yet, but living in hope.
Shuttleworth, Gent.
Shuttleworth in person comes across as a fully paid up member of the Good Guys. His rationale is simple; he says it would have been impossible for him to get Thawte off the ground and then grow it without all that Linux/Free Software goodness to run it on. Since he has substantially benefitted financially, he feels that he owes that community.
So Ubuntu is a way of repaying that debt, though one wih the possibility that it might in the long term be profitable. He also sees it as a potential vehicle for Africa as a whole to take control of its IT destiny.
In short, unless you are the kind of cripple that reckons accumulation of money is the only aim of a human existance, his actions are 100% laudable and the outward manifestation of a Real Gentleman. Blessings be upon him.
@The French
Yep, they have a sense of humour and a short memory. After all, Paris was successfully defended several times as recently 1914-18. They were largely on their own in 1914 - how big was the BEF? And then there's the defence of Verdun, a hugely bloody French-only operation.
Paris, even though the city is prettier.
@MondoMan
According to the naturalists on a CBC Radio show I caught on holiday in Beautiful BC, the current explosion in the beetle infestation is because the population has historically been controlled by winter cold. Get the temp below -35C for a couple of weeks (something Canadian winters have historically amply provided) and most of the little buggers peg out. Recent winters have not been cold enough for long enough.
Sounds to me like 'warming' is a reasonable hypothesis as to the cause of the infestation.
Posted in Brown quizzed on gov IT failures
So, it's just rules not being followed, eh?
It's worth while doing what you can to stamp out this doublethink that tries to write the loss off as a procedural problem.
I tried a letter to my MP calmly explaining that given the junior had access to the whole DB and the monster amount EDS would doubtless have charged for doing anything trivial, the procedural failure was pre-destined by *policy*. Policy, the bit the politicians reckon they are responsible for.
First time I've got any kind of response indicating he might have taken something on board. I might go so far as vague signs that he (a long-standing Labour trusty) may be beginning to experience a faint inkling that the Home Office Biometric Gospel is a load of cobblers.
There was more than just Windows add-ons
>I never really thought it was such a big deal that M$ was
>making Java work nicely with their OS/Tools.
The COM integration was very nice and useful.
Adding new methods to core classes and not even documenting that these were MS extensions was pure evil. Simply, a MS Java coder could write a pure Java program eschewing all the Windows extensions, and still end up with something not portable beyond Windows.
Posted in Save the BBC - by setting it free
@Anthony
I'm someone with a >£500 HD telly, Freeview and not Sky or Virgin. So no HD signal. But I'm dammed if I'm going to pay the vast sums Murdoch and Virgin demand to ship ad-crammed garbage into my house by the container-load. Because I'm a cheapskate? No, because I can't see anything in their offerings that I want to watch, and while HD would be nice, it's the programming that's important, not the screen resolution. For the (not great) amount of TV that I watch, Freeview plus the licence fee is a compelling option.
By your argument, Sky would have penetrated the market from the wealthy down. I'd argue that history was significantly different.
As to the original piece, it's similar to loads produced a decade ago. 'In the upcoming multi-channel world, no-one will want the Beeb'. Turns out that the multi-channel world of choice is a choice of crap or drek, and a lot of people do still want the Beeb.
A420
The A420 Oxford-Swindon is for the most part winding single-carriageway (50 limit) with small sections of dual. Both types feature regular side road junctions. The road has a bad fatality record.
Autobahn it isn't. 172mph is so far off the sensible speed scale *for this road* that no defence is possible. If this nurk didn't kill someone, it wasn't because of his skill or judgement.
Posted in UK mulls drink-drive limit cut
Random tests, not the limit
50mg and random tests is the regime in New South Wales, and has been for years. Perhaps we could check comparative statistics?
It isn't the limit that's the problem, it's the chances of getting caught. Which are close to zero at present unless you wallop something. ISTR from somewhere that the average British driver will get breathalysed about once every 20 years. The figure in NSW is apparently more like once every 18 months I've been breathalysed twice, once in NSW and once in South Africa, both random tests. I have no problem with them happening here.
