Posts by gujiguju
54 posts • joined Wednesday 26th October 2011 15:37 GMT
Works fine here, using Opera for OSX.
Mind boggling to the think where we've come since Breakout was first released (as if remembering horse-drawn carriages and now watching the moon landings). Astounding advances (in wasting time). ;)
Bill Gates, meet your old VP Dick Brass
While the Tablet PC design was fine for the time it was released in 2001, (I remember getting a 1st-hand demo on a flight with an executive flying in the next seat), Bill (with probably Steve Ballmer's bumbling) blew the first-mover opportunity when they let internal politics in Redmond block development of an MS Office for Tablet PC.
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/02/04/former-microsoft-vp-explains-why-office-sucks-on-tablet-pc/
The Fat Lady sung after that (until iPad in 2010)...
Re: What The Fuck?
Billionaires' "Giving Pledge" was initiated by Gates & Buffet, in 2010, I believe...
http://givingpledge.org/faq.aspx
Re: Hmm
...Except that buying Carbon Beach property means it's wealth being transferred from a billionaire to another billionaire, so basically another tax deduction to an opera or art gallery or some university for some dumb "think tank" pontification.
Other than Gates (whatever you think of his business tactics) deciding to heroically eradicate various global diseases in Africa (like Pres. Jimmy Carter sans his own money) and Buffet doubling down another $45 billion, most billionaires in the world are insanely meek & small-minded in their actions. (Or maybe the news media just doesn't publish others' details.)
Note that it's been shown that philanthropy is sadly self-interested and appallingly stingy (as Teresa Odendahl revealed on C-SPAN way back...).
http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/13246-1/Teresa+Odendahl.aspx
Noblesse oblige, indeed.
Re: Is he bored or something?
Not bored, the LAT article says Ellison enjoys and is inspired by residential architecture...
Leverage with other cities
This is another typical case of free handouts or corporate welfare for a billion-dollar company.
Having said that, Provo has no leverage. If they didn't agree to Google's tough negotiations, they would just to any any of the the other 500 cities begging for Google Fiber.
If Provo mismanaged their city fiber rollout so badly, the citizens should hold them accountable somehow. Chattanooga and others have city fiber networks and seem to be managing it professionally.
Re: anti-piracy ads
As others have mentioned, the only way to avoid this and kill it off, once & for all, is don't buy or rent DVDs and try to use Netflix streaming, iTunes downloading, or other video services. The only message movie studio executives hear is when DVD sales go down (and Netflix & iTunes revenues go up).
Netflix is trying to get to scale ASAP with their $8/month (almost-free) service, so they'll have enough money to buy expensive content from the TV networks & movie studios...and the Netflix global audience will be so huge that the studios can't say NO (as the earlier Walmart example).
Apple has been doing a great job negotiating with the studios, as well, for movie downloads. If you haven't noticed, practically all the latest & greatest movies are available very quickly for reasonable pricing. And many new movies are available on iTunes the same day, as released in the theaters (in the US anyway).
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/to-the-wonder/id627403292
Linear TV (and even set-top DVR use) is going away quickly (except for live sports maybe). Netflix & iTunes & Hulu (as app channels on an Apple TV, for example) are all the new, cloud-based DVRs.
It's as simple as that.
Re: Any Reg readers own a Lamborghini...?
Would that be a Red Barchetta...? I thought so. ;)
Posted in WTF is... H.265 aka HEVC?
Buy it all again
Was just thinking that, as well. hahaha.
(I wonder if Apple or other movie services will be able to negotiate upgrade fees with movie studios, as was done with transition in iTunes music from MP3 -> AAC...?)
Posted in WTF is... H.265 aka HEVC?
Re: Math problems
@Pet:
Who wants 2K or 4K video? No one...until they see it, then it's amazing. My guess is we'll keep pushing display technologies until we get close to 3D resolutions of the human eye...
(Strange that companies waited for Apple to go Retina before others followed with hi-res displays. I guess we can assume Apple will be first with a desktop Retina display, as well.)
Re: Why are the traditional carriers still around?
Not their core competency...Apple looked at starting an MVNO to support iPhones in 2006, but way too many issues.
The sooner cellcos act like smart utilities for fast cellular connections & reliability and nothing else, the better.
Re: telcos .... dumb bit carriers..
Dumb pipes have all they've ever been...and all they can ever aspire to be. While they seem to be able to push bounds on network design and cellular connectivity, mobile telcos are utterly worthless in building any value-added services (while raking in billions of your money).
Can anyone name any service they've invented? SMS? MMS? Yeah, cool innovation from 1992 in a Danish pizzeria, any other enhancements after that? VOIP, high-res photo & video messaging, delivery & read receipts, HD video calling, mobile screen-sharing, etc...? Oh, those were BBM, Skype & FaceTime 10-15 years later.
Do you remember when carriers were dictating handset designs before Apple's agreement with Cingular/AT&T to release iPhone 1...? And Nokia & Blackberry tried, but were perfectly powerless to stand up to the carriers before Apple got into the game.
Affecting profitability
The silly joke of the studio conglomerates' lawsuits is that no movie was unprofitable because it was pirated...and no TV series was canceled because of low TV ratiings due to after-the-fact pirating.
In fact, as the "Where's the 'any' key" executives and attorneys at TV networks & movie studios spend millions on legal fees, they could've used that money to hire great technical teams to build any-device, time-shifting, place-shifting video services. (See Aereo, as an example of Barry Diller doing just that.)
And the Nielson rating company monopoly in US, was being lazy in not adding viewership statistics from DVRs and YouTube, so some shows that were actually popular were canceled because the ratings measurement was incorrect.
James Cameron proudly proclaimed that as "Avatar" zoomed past $1.5 BILLION in revenue, it was the most pirated movie.
The intrinsic friction here is that the movie bosses want to artificially reduce day-one demand, because they think they'll be able to milk revenue through all the various distribution "windows."
o Theater
o iTunes/Amazon
o Netflix (expires if movie wins an Oscar or sold to HBO for a 12-month window)
o DVD
o HBO or other movie channel
o Basic cable channel
o Free TV broadcast (after 15 years)
o Etc...
In fact, it may be likely that many people with families, busy schedules, less disposable income, traffic/parking annoyance, ugly local theater, whatever reason...would rather watch the movie at home on their internet set-top box or tablet...
Btw, note also, a movie ticket for the Wizard of Oz in 1939 was 23¢.
Re: "Competitors are nipping at the heels of the once unassailable Apple"
Except in Economics 101, if you don't make any profit selling your widget, you will eventually go bankrupt.
No company other than Apple & Samsung make any profits on their handsets. (And Apple's profits are 250% of Samsung, so you do the math...)
It's hilarious to keep reading these comments about zero-profit, market share numbers. How will these company stay in the mobile business without any profits? (Maybe Microsoft can fun Nokia for another 5 years, but who else?) Only Apple, and to a lesser extent Samsung, have any non-zero profits...
Re: Apple's problem with flash
Except that there's been a YouTube icon on the iPhone homescreen since day one in 2007 -- and iPad since 2010 (along with Safari in-browser support for embedded YouTube videos), so what's your point..?
Re: Why the hate?
Not really "hate," just cynicism...and the reason is because Samsung leaked a possible new "feature" to the NY Times to create hype before the new model, instead of just doing a great announcement demo during the release event.
(Also, cynicism pointed at news media, like NYT and others, that are happy to shovel rumors via anonymous sources for page views & ad hits, instead of real reportage.)
For those engaged in the continuous Apple foodfight, my guess is every handset maker or mobile OS maker has this in their R&D labs, it's just about thinking whether it works well enough or will confuse their users (or just release it as a hyped check-box item).
Tepid
@successcase:
Well said.
Let's be brutally honest: anyone that has lived or studied the last 15-20 years of IT history, must admit to the Surface as being a laughable device.
This is simply a warmer-over $2000 Tablet PC with Windows from 2000 that has now been upgraded with the laziest design sense to a....$1000 Surface with Windows for 2013.
Whatever or however you feel about Steve Jobs & Apple, the iPad has, simply and irrevocably, changed the world.
Let's try a counter-factual: the iPhone & iPad were never invented by Apple. Would Microsoft have released this Surface POS now?
One step further: let's grant that MS actually does care about R&D and innovation, and they actually did release this in 2010 (again, with no iPad). Would the world give a rat's ass about the Surface as "a game changer"...? No. They would've sold 5,000 Surfaces, as many as Tablet PCs were sold in 10 years, and we'd be stuck still buying ugly, lame netbooks that were slow and crashed every week (and/or that sucked hours per week of my life to do personal and family and colleagues' tech support).
And while there is a Cupertino bubble, the Redmond bubble is a much different place with really shortsighted outcomes and unoriginal results.
The confusion stems from Apple not fearing to cannibalize OSX, while Microsoft can't see beyond protecting their Windows & Office monopolies. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, in 1999, could have been allowed to beak up Microsoft (like Standard Oil or AT&T) into separate Windows & Productivity entities, and we would have Office, identically, on 10 platforms now and who knows what else.
There. I said it.
Re: Preferred
Good point...it's that kind lame thinking that wasted billions of user-years since 1990.
Speaking of which, I discovered Opera for browsing back around 2001. I've haven't typed "www" or ".com" for over a decade... ;)
DND or Mute or Don't Answer
When did the El Reg readership turn old-fogey and senile...?
Since when did it become too complicated for tech-aware users to ignore incoming voice or video calls, texts, IMs, email notify, calendar invites, etc...? (Especially, as others have pointed to using invisible status or mute, etc.)
Gotta love the hyperactive headline. Since multitasking APIs were added to iOS a few years ago, battery-efficient background tasks have been the norm (with VOIP, such as Skype, then in 2010 with always-on FaceTime with phone# integration).
(I said, "battery-efficient"...please no flaming. Maybe WinCE and PalmOS had multi-tasking in 2001, but no one cared.) ;)
Hoax story
Everyone just got duped by Samsung.
https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/242686975834992640
Re: Apple Schmapple
If you had one more year of "working in IT", you would have known to look inside this top-secret, hidden dialog box in iTunes called "Preferences" or "Options."
Inside, you will see two confusing (almost invisible) checkboxes:
o Manage music files manually
o Sync over WIFI
I'll let you figure out how those cryptic settings will work. (Your decade of "working in IT" should serve you well here...finally.)
And don't tell anyone about these iTunes settings. Very hush hush.
As to Bruce Willis' "issue", all his mp4/AAC files are DRM-free. I'm certain his lawyer didn't point that out before asking for his retainer-fee payment.
Hedge Fund short-selling
Behold the symbiosis between click-baiting tech media, anonymous sources and Apple short-sellers.
http://duckduckgo.com/?t=ous&q=Jim%20Cramer%20stock%20manipulation%20
1000% profit
Is there any other company or organization being allowed a 300-1000% profit margin...other than the Mafia?
Come on.
This is a no-brainer for govt regulation to help protect consumers from extortion. (And note also that while you're roaming internationally, do you get a credit for 2 weeks of domestic non-use of voice or data? Heck no...! Nice racket, if you can get it.
Supporting browser innovation
Good to hear that Opera was able to re-up with them, despite Google's ongoing attacks at discrediting Opera usage...which is, frankly, weird to behold.
Google continues releasing updated services that break in Opera and it takes 6 months of "consultation" to get it right? Sure. (And pundits wonder why Opera desktop share stays stagnated despite their phone/tablet share is booming?)
Btw, if you're worried about your 3G/4G data ceiling, try out Opera Mini with it's built-in 80% compression. Amazing cloud browsing innovation that remains under-utilized by most mobile users.
http://m.opera.com
Re: Foundering?
Most of the IPO issues revolve about Wall Street corruption, I think..the rest is outside investors with imperfect knowledge trying to pretend that insider trading doesn't exist...
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/facebook-ipo-shows-extreme-corruption-mcnamee-says-BLhoC6ayQFOFXSwaBaYAfQ.html
The Muppet behind the sheep behind the wolf, behind the curtain
The ignorance and hypocrisy (and chest-thumping) is truly astonishing to read in the comments, even at El Reg (which is British-based, but still)...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/20/julian-assange-right-asylum
$13M past settlement
I'm shocked, just SHOCKED that Microsoft would not spend a bit of time testing in Opera for its 300 million users. They would never do it intentionally would they? Nah.
http://news.cnet.com/Microsoft-behind-$12-million-payment-to-Opera/2100-1032_3-5218163.html
(Remember Google, for that matter; 9 months to fix Google Instant, when changing the UA string to FF in Opera prefs would make it work...)
And guess what? The strategy works to scare less-knowing users away from Opera to IE or Chrome. Opera does giant heavylifting to handle sitepatching while waiting for web sites to workaround legitimate bugs or problem, stop discriminating with UA sniffing or sit on their hands and just wait for users to stop using Opera.
http://my.opera.com/sitepatching/blog/
Here's the jsQuery minify problem with Outlook.com.
http://my.opera.com/sitepatching/blog/2012/08/02/hotlook
Blinders
Whatever your pre-bias about Apple may be...give them credit where due.
They've designed a quite secure mobile ecosystem from day-one. It's not perfect, but they evolve...and quite rapidly (unlike other vendors we can indict that have been sloth-like. Note also how many person-decades those others have wasted on tech support disaster mgmt for us, for our family, friends, and colleagues).
They've utterly dominated the mobile industry profit-wise and don't seem to relent or relax (again, unlike others that go on 5-year hiatus until their monopoly-trapped customers have been immolated).
As others have mentioned, more info at Black Hat would've been great but they don't telegraph intentions and don't do FUD (unlike past IT history shows those others doing).
For a hint, Apple just bought AuthenTec, a fingerprint sensor firm.
(To those frothing at the mouth...no, Apple won't claim they invented fingerprint security, but it will likely be implemented delightfully in iOS 7 in the next 15 months. Just admit it and enjoy the ride -- and how the industry reaction will veer off to hysteria & desperation.)
Specifics
I have to give credit to Big Bad Bill. He just keeps going & going & going.
Can we get back to some figment of reality?
No price. No idea about battery life. No availability date. No one has used that Surface keyboard.
The wild thing about long-unchecked monopolies is that they have unlimited resources. As Microsoft did in decades past (while this Surface is Tablet v2.0), they'll likely need to do another iteration to Tablet v3.0 until it becomes "good enough."
Yes, it will be nice for someone to push Apple on tablets, but they don't really seem to be getting fat & lazy like some other companies did, since about 1998 (i.e., XP, Vista, IE, no auto-backup, no auto-restore, no save state, no window management, etc... I mean comparing what the last few releases of OSX have improved and Windows is laughable).
If anyone is straight about what's happened since 1998-ish, the waste of time & resources that Microsoft has caused is catastrophic. Yes, great for millions of tech support minions, but look how much every regular user HATES their computers. This is one of the reasons, iOS appliance-like devices with a child-like touch UI are booming.
So, we'll wait until someone can actually use this Surface device. (And let's hope this time, Ballmer isn't dumb enough to not direct an Office for WinRT to be released concurrently.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Opera hybrid model
Interesting take on things the blurry venn diagram of profits and market share.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Opera's browser and their HUGE (and growing) market share outside of North America & Europe, supporting 3000 handsets and tablets.
http://techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/opera-mini-5-1-download.html
Opera having an Opera-branded "Mobile Store" in their Speed Dial, while offering a low-cost browsing solution on more than 3000 phones/tablets is impressive and quite unique. The unacknowledged fact that Opera is the #1 mobile browser globally is more than a bit humorous...
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201105-201205-bar
Right idea, wrong implementation
Is it just me or is this a total ratf-ck of a solution?
I don't know how long it will take, but why is this not all cloud-based or server-side? The TiVo/DVR physical-box complexity seems unnecessary. There was recently a judicial precedent when Comcast (I think) got sued by the TV network dinosaurs about its cloud-based DVR. These loud, hot, power-sucking settops in every house -- in every room, now -- is a user & support & energy-wasting disaster.
If it's all server-side, you don't need more complex hot & loud DVR boxes, it's all integrated on the back-end -- and time-wasting linear TV is dead. All channels will be on-demand video, as it should be. (And 5-yr-olds growing up on iPads will stop asking their parents, "What is this twice-louder cereal ad for 30 seconds, every 10 minutues on the TV, instead of my favorite show that I want to watch now??"
And trying to program a 6-tuner DVR manually of their 500-channel programming grids? I've wasted hours & hours helping friends & family with their damn gadgets; all because of brain-dead DVR & Cable TV product managers?
My guess is if someone doesn't fix this mess sooner than later from an architectural standpoint & from a UI standpoint, a small group from Cupertino is going to make them all look extremely unimaginative & lazy.
Re: My first thought was that Bill Gates didn't have any..
Excellent recall about XMLHttpRequest...however you ignore the salience of it.
It was only beneficial to all and revolutionized web apps until those same, ingenious Microsoft developers got recruited away, to go to Google in Mountain View.
They then used it to design Gmail and other cool, new web services & browser UIs. (Besides, remember that Microsoft's "vision" was relegate it, only using XMLHttpRequest in OWA...and ONLY when viewing in IE. Using Netscape or Opera back then defaulted it to an archaic, simple HTML version with less features.)
Torturing monopolist, indeed.
Posted in Tim Cook spurns $75m Apple divvy
Re: Why?
Yes, we've seen so many Wall Street & City CEOs turn down extra money because they just hate paying their taxes (especially when they money-launder it in Geneva or elsewhere).
Let's just be honest. There's a vile & repulsive gene that we've seen revealed in the run-up to the Collapse in 2008, and Cook definitely doesn't have it, in his DNA. He seems to be a better man. (The kind Peal Jam seemed to be looking for.)
Re: 3GS still on sale
...or "homeless iFans", since a 3GS is free (w/ the requisite 2-yr data contract).
AdWords, not Search
Nice sleight-of-hand in Google's non-sequitur.
India CCI is not investigating if general users are being strangled into NOT using Bing or DuckDuckGo, it's about their restraint-of-trade with Google's advertising customers regarding access & transparency to eponymous keywords.
Duh.
Amazon high-growth/no-profit ramp-up
Sounds like OCZ is doing interesting things in the SSD market and thinking long-term. My question is does Ryan Peterson look like Jeff Bezos...or just he just strategizes like him? ;)
Re: $25,000 fine?
Sorry to be tedious, but it's actually like being fined 22¢... ;)
<http://www.propublica.org/article/why-the-fcc-fined-google-just-68-seconds-in-profits>
Tail wagging dog
Nice to see Opera 12b going public. It's a great update.
Their Vega software backend is fast enough that they've decided to turn-off HWA until they can tweak it further with all the combinations of graphics cards, OpenGL, WebGL, DirectX. It is blindingly fast w/o HWA still -- as long as web devs don't browser-sniff and send the wrong code (Google, Flickr, *ahem*). Changing the user-agent string usually fixes any hanky-panky.
Opera has 250+ million users, and continues to innovate (in terms of speed per watt).
http://www.7tutorials.com/test-comparison-which-browser-will-make-your-laptop-battery-last-longer
Opera market share is #1 on mobiles, while their smaller desktop/tablet share is just a bludgeon used by the others to discredit.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201104-201203
It's really worth trying for a week. (And don't forget to enable "On-Demand Plugins" for even faster browsing.)
Circulation would go down 50% tomorrow if they ended Page 3 girls.
Opera On-Demand Plugins setting
Nice to see Apple getting around to inoculating their customers with this update...few weeks late, but still. I like the timed-disable, good idea.
I must say, that Opera's On-Demand Plugins setting that I've been using for ~3 yrs (as an offshoot from Opera Turbo), was a beautiful browser innovation that makes these security issues much less worrisome (and helps browsing speed & less energy drain, as well).
Shame it's taking longer for the other browsers to add this, and make it the default. Chrome seems to be following Opera Next snapshots, and I noticed latest FF dev build seems to have it in the pipeline.
Re: so-called "most favoured nation" clause
Yes, MFN is the real anti-trust issue here...and in Macmillan CEO John Sargent's statement, he dodges it. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/04/a-message-from-john-sargent
Educate yourself
Wow, funny reading, Lewis.. You sound like an oil executive, ranting, over drinks after the 18th hole.
Read this twice, please. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/
Re: Nice.
Wow, a defensive Ford Focus owner. Who knew?
Apple commented to...
You almost had me...until you mentioned that Apple commented to you and answered your queries.
That ain't gonna happen for a while longer, me thinks. ;)
Posted in Russia plans manned moon shot by 2030
Re: You are missing the point
The salient "missing point" is actually that the only reason why China is going it alone in space is because they were snubbed by NASA about joining ISS, many years ago.
So, now, we've given them a reason for everyone to waste a trillion dollars in all separate, but duplicate US, EU, Russian and Chinese space programs....
Smooth move, NASA. We showed them.
Data cap?
Sending up 4K stereoscopic 48f/s footage via satellite for editing; sounds cheap. Over their data cap yet? ;)
History, dear people
Great comment by @Ian, but I would add a couple things that's been mentioned elsewhere.
The NYT know how to report on important news, but also how to propagandize like Pravda did, let's be honest. (We all know how reliable anonymous sources have been these last 10 years, though they do have a place when used responsibly per Glenn Greenwald).
If you read the NYT article closely, Apple's 40% margin is not really the deciding factor to be in China, it's the flexibility and massive engineering manpower that's available 24 hours/day on 6 hours notice when a component needs to be changed after a product mgmt decision...that is absolutely NOT possible in the US now.
Also, I love that while we've been saving billions on Chinese products since Nixon set the table for us with Mao in China in 1973-ish, all of a sudden, there's indignation? Come on. (Anyone hear about the China supply-chain mafia kingpin, known as Walmart? Duh.)
Every country is going to go through their Industrial Age exploitation phase like the US did 110 years ago with the Triangle Fire and the UK with the London "black fog" earlier. We can speed it up a bit now, but everybody: Please, get off your high horses...
And China, India, Brasil may have a tougher time, because of the fine mess that Wall Street/City created for us...along with their humungo populations that need to get off an agricultural, non-modern economy and raise their standards-of-living.
Tough decisions, all around.
(Though, let's all keep wasting time taking potshots at an innovative gadget company with a 5% global PC share, 8% phone share & 58% tablet share, while all the other Fortune 500 firms get a pass in China. Makes sense.)
Chrome = IE6
While Chrome has made some browser advances -- just as IE6 did back when it was current, Google's shameless illegal-tying to their own sites and dragging their feet with the other majors, including Opera, is ugly... (Ever tried doing a weather search in the pathetic Android, unChrome browser? Notice no slider in Opera Mobile or iOS Safari?)
With 90% monopoly search share, when will dozing regulators wake up...? (I guess all that Google lobby money in Washington is paying off...)
Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Boss.
www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397158,00.asp
Thoughts on Flash
You mean after years of screaming and hand-waving and belly-achin', I don't have to read another pathetic paragraph about Steve Jobs' Stalinist tendencies at crushing and humiliating patriotic, freedom-loving Flash users everywhere and their beloved blinking ads & Windows-only GPU-accelerated, 99%-dual-CPU, gale-force-fan, 45-min-battery-life-sucking whining and cheesing...?
Being in the software industry, I've never seen a more pathetic public display of "It Really Works!" tech reporting, cringe-inducing, "woe-is-me" antics with "Look Here!" vaporware, Flash-on-mobile YouTube videos.
How much farther along wouldwe be with HTML5, SVG, CSS3, & ECMAscript relating to non-desktop web design be if Adobe had been less juvenile in 2007 about Flash on mobile...?
There. I got it out, hyphens and all. ;)
(And El Reg, knowing better, buries the lede in this article. Nicely played.)
Posted in Samsung PS64D8000 64in plasma 3D TV
Portable Nuclear Reactor needed for power
As @David mentioned, plugging in this Samsung model could cause blackouts in your neighborhood. ;)
Avg of 300 watts, with a full-screen IRE window. (Why not add a sentence about comparative energy consumption, moving fwd?)
