Posts by Wardy01
68 posts • joined Tuesday 8th November 2011 15:25 GMT
Re: Too litte too late
@Charlie Clark
"One should never say never but Apple and Android now have established ecosystems of users, manufacturers and software developers in the mobile space and, by the looks of it, better toolchains for cross-architecture development."
Did I just read that right ... you mention "cross architecture" and "Apple and Android" in the same sentence?
WTF !!!!
Microsoft appears to be the only vendor developing an OS that runs on both ARM and x86 architectures from what I've seen. Apple only have 1 set of hardware specs to work from, Microsoft simply have a basic interface on which their code sits.
Not related to you but ...
I love how Apple does something 10 years after Bill Gates says it will happen and everyone thinks the sun shines out its arse and Microsoft still get met with "some 20 years ago they did something shit so we hate them".
Re: And think of the kids ..
You're working on the assumption that GG is used purely to record and keep everything the wearer sees?
My understanding is that GG would do things like use facial regonition to overlay a persons current facebook status on your world, yes GG could be used to record in that fashion.
So does leaving a smart phone on in a stand on charge overnight apply the same ruling if it's borrowed by someone under age?
People forget the key point here ...
You can't be in public these days without being tracked / recorded in some way.
Cameras are everywhere, from CCTV to traffic cams to god knows what.
If you don't like being recorded / tracked, don't go out in public, live in a concrete box and buy anything, never talk to anyone or have any form of contact with anyone, never have a credit card, bank account, oh and a birth certificate so you can't be born either, and you can't have a job because that ties your earnings to nationally trackable social security / national insurance number.
Face it, its the world we live in, Google are simply making that point totally clear.
I like the idea of Google Glass but it needs some good applications, I think the government are just being a pain in the ass because they know Google are better at data gathering than they are and rather than admit it they will come up with some legal reason to get the full details of how this technology works and then give it to some shady part of the government.
Think about scenarios where your part of a forum or group with special interests, or "i'm lost where are you".
So even if Google get told no ... this is going to happen!
Its still crap
Why ...
It's a bitch to install on my hardware because it doesn't understand one of the most used GFX cards on the market.
File transfers to and from my linux based NAS are more than double the speed on the same machine running windows.
It still (IMO) looks like crap, anyone can add a few gradients to an interface and call it new, try creating something new!
No I don't feel like spending hours removing everything I don't want and setting up a ton of small apps that basically don't like each other because versioning on dependencies.
Begin flaming and down voting.
It's purely because it's Microsoft
If Apple released an OS that looked identical to tifkam (metro) people would be all over it saying how visionary it is but Microsoft with their "capitalist agenda to take over the world" (so 20 years ago) sad geeks stuck in a forgotten decade would rather just bitch and whine about it.
It's optional, configurable, and if you really know your stuff ... TURN IT OFF!
Idiots!
Begin flame and down votes!
Re: Hmm...
@Eadon
"Second thing is this: switching it off means that newbies suddenly need expert knowledge to install a different OS, they can't just pop in a disk."
What ... like virtually every linux distro you mean, yeh that would make a change wouldn't it?
Re: Hmm...
@Eadon
Um no ... UEFI is a global standard and does not require anything from Microsoft to work.
Microsoft offer signing as a free service for those that want it, but it's definately not required.
and this ...
"Anyway, that list is not about people being resistant to change, it's about people being resistant to change that was instigated for marketing reasons - to get people familiar with Metro in the hope that those people will then demand it on phones and tablets."
... reminds me of the huge negative feedback people had about microsoft introducing the mouse.
It'll sort itself out in time.
Re: Once again...
@Eadon
Wow that says a lot, the fact that you don't rate me actually means i'm pretty clued out considering some of your average blanket statements on here.
My point was simply ... "given away freely" and "allowed to see the source" are both considered part of the whole "open source" agenda and you bang on about how the world runs on code like this ... yeh maybe it does at a kernel level but that's about it, beyond kernels find me a company that can truely claim that they only run on open source solutions for their key business process.
If you can't do that ... STFU because you are so full of telling everyone else what you think you know you fail to realise how dumb you sound.
Now say something as equally childish as "Everything else you say is equally clueless." I can't wait as it will basically prove my point that you can't find such proof thus proving your stupidity.
Re: @Wardy01
@eulampios
bloat is bloat however you look at it, windows requires about 15GB of space to perform an install but has a clean instal footprint of about 4GB, most linux distros i've seen install about 10GB of "extra stuff" that I didn't ask for. I think that many are getting better at this though and offering more "choose what you want" style installs so give it time and i'll happily conceed that for the most part i could one day find a "bloat free linux distro".
My nVidia GFX card is usually the biggest headache (of many) with linux but I found even the very first step of the installer doesn't work for me unless I load the installer with some command line switch (its been a while so don't ask me what that is).
The point is, options like that are usually point and click on a radio button or tick box in a windows installer but with linux you have to have some command line knowledge of the options available to get the install to work on my pc.
I may just be unlucky in that I have hardware that for some reason is not considered important for linux distros but again, in a windows scenario I do nothing more than literally hit next a few times and type in a product key to get to my new desktop and I have never seen that with any linux distro.
Needless to say, I do like what Linux distros stand for and the fact that linux support is improving is a good sign.
Re: do not understand open source ... prefer not to be honest about it
Microsoft sells solutions, very few companies build good competitively priced solutions that offer the same flexibility and the same ease of use so it makes sense.
Canonical or Red Hat are some of the better names but they won't provide you an end to end solution without some big bucks and if they do ... it still aint "open source" so it's the Microsoft deal again.
People seem to think "open source" means "not Microsoft" ... what gives?
Let me put it bluntly ...
Ubuntu is open source, but if you hire canonical to do something proprietary for your company that is not an open source solution. It simply sits on top of an open source platform.
I don't think I've ever seen a company that can safely say "we are open sourced and everything we run on we provide the source code for".
Re: Once again...
You are just as wrong as Eadon, unless you'd like to show me where the source code is for your corporate code that you have this "considerable budget" for?
The component parts might be open source initially but the solution (which is Microsoft sells) is very much closed source.
You still pay for support for each of the parts / the developed bit by a third party, and the third party developed bits are still not open source because the internet does not have them listed on a public repo like github.
This is the same solution as buying several off the shelf Microsoft products and plugging them in to each other.
The only difference is that instead of your product supplier and your support company being the same the chances are they are various companies.
People really need to get a grip on what "open source" really means ... SHOW ME THE SOURCE CODE FOR YOUR SOLUTION THEN IT'S OPEN SOURCE!
Re: Once again...
@Eadon -
"I'd say that open source is better for non-geeks. If you let non-geeks loose on the internet with an Windows box, then they will get hosed within 20 minutes. Linux systems do not have that problem, you can give a modern linux distro such as Linux Mint to a newbie and let then surf the web with Firefox or Chrome open source browser, and they will be much much safer. Because the open source solution just mentioned is of a far higher quality than the modern proprietary equivalents (e.g. Windows 8 / IE)"
That may have been the case in the days of windows 95 / XP because MS had the monopoly so it made sense that hackers / virus writers would target the OS, lately Microsoft isn't so much of a monopoly and more and more hacks / viruses are turning up to exploit Mac OS and Linux.
Safety is about assessing threat or risk, and the typical scenario is that the user with the least experience / technical knowledge will be using a windows machine thus the easiest to overcome, with that line fading fast so does the perception that a linux machine is inherently more secure.
No system is impossible to compromise when it accepts connections from the internet, its only a matter of time and the hackers know that but until now they focused on what got them the highest impact (windows computers due to the monopoly) without that monopoly anyone is game.
Some other comments I find questionable ...
"On the server side, critical systems such as stock exchanges, use open source - e.g. Linux based systems."
Linux based yes, open sourced no. You also forget that "Linux" is just a kernel not an OS.
"People on The Reg either do not understand open source or for some reason prefer not to be honest about it."
Yes you appear to be one of them.
Open source = code is given away freely
I have never seen any financial system (as you seem to refer to these as being "open sourced") source code just given away in this manner as it would be commercial suicide to do so.
What you refer to as "open source" is actually "non commercial / not for profit" which has its merits but also has its drawbacks, the afformentioned "financial systems" fit none of these descriptions as they are both "profit based products" and "closed source" the developer being either in house or a third party contractor from some big name.
I find it amusing how people like to think of large commercial solutions as "open sourced" ... find me a git branch with a banks source code on it and I'll admit I'm wrong here.
I do however agree with this ...
"As for comparing MS paid-for support with non-paid for support, it's a false comparison, that's disingenuous. You should be comparing it with *paid for* open source support, which is commonly available these days."
Nuclear because you are soooo unbelievably wrong.
Re: Microsoft's strategy is FAILING
I disagree ...
My hardware is fairly cutting edge as I'm a hobbyiest game developer and whenever i grab a linux distro and try it out for kicks I too have this headache.
I have found that linux installs tend to be smoother on older hardware and even then you get a load of what might be considered "bloatware" if MS had done the same (probably some huge legal debate would ensue too).
People rave about how great linux is, I find it "bitty" some of it ... really cool, other bits a complete nightmare.
lol ... its the same old story .. a random email comes in that I never asked for because once upon a time I was looking for work some 5 years ago or something.
So I think, ok this is vague but kind of down my street i'll give them a ring.
I get the guy on the phone and immediately talk all technical to him about the type of code I write and how I need a company that works the way I do.
I deliberately avoid words like "agile", and ".net" in favour of "iterative business applications using C#" in order to ensure that they know what I'm talking about.
If I get the impression the agent on the phone isn't clued up at least partially I drop it there and then.
I see people complaining about salaries and it reminds me of a conversation I had with my team last week at a regular lunch where the flow went something like this
Me : ... I find getting work really easy, is it me or are general oop skills in demand at the moment?
team: well the problem is that there are a lot of developers out there but few can write business apps
Me : surely you test them right?
team: oh yeh, we give them the usual "build something that does this" in the interview but those basic examples don't show you the flaws.
team: yeh the issue is that you can't really confirm the difference between a programmer that can write code and and a programmer that cand build to business requirements in a couple of hours.
Me : so how many people did you guys interview before you took me on?
team: well we had about 150 CV's passed to us from the agency we dealt with, and only about 30 of those were even close to the job, after interviewing about 10 of those we could get rid of the obvious skill lacking candidates but then you end up with the people that can sell themselves not knowing if they can do the job.
Me : Strange how there can be so much of a gap between "writing code" and "writing solutions that work".
team: yeh, it seems natural to us, because that's what we do but these days you can get an MCPD on a 6 week course and universities seem to teach you how to do research and learn rather than how to be a good programmer.
And here's where the penny drops ...
A university degree is seemingly the "UK standard for determining level of knowledge" but I don't have a university degree, and I beat back the other 15 other candidates that were shortlisted in under 2 hours (i had the job in the time it took me to get home after the interview).
How did I do it ...
It's about proving that you're capable of more than citing textbooks or copy and paste from google search results, programmers that can think about and actually solve the problem are about 1 in 200 these days but the industry doesn't seem to have caught up with that yet.
When the industry does, there will be a huge shift, demand will remain the same but the list of people that have proven ability will be easy to find thus stripping out those other 199 people in every job on offer.
When that happens programmers will go back to being what they once were!
Just to be clear:
I've been a professional programmer now for about 10 years, since about year 3 of my career I have not seen a salary below £30k, if you know what you're worth and can prove it then there is no reason why that £718 average shouldn't apply to you too.
ONS base their stats on the entire UK, London and other highly built up areas often pay a premium for getting a person to come in to the city, I live in the south west of England and have gone to interviews where the salary on offer is the "average for the area", someone else on here quoted a Bournemouth role offering "£20k something", and on more than 1 occasion i've attended such an interview and told them under no circumstances would I accept less than £30k (or whatever it was I was worth at the time) and been "reluctantly called back" by a manager some 2 months later because they employed some cheaper alternative that didn't have a clue.
The point is, many "IT Managers" these days are "Managers" and many have come from roots in business not in IT, so when you tell them what a skill is worth they will often take their typical "Manager" point of view and say something like "Well I know I can get someone with your CV for cheaper" my response is simply ... "OK do it, but when they screw up i'll charge you a premuim to fix it" ... when their manager (possibly the MD) comes back with something like "you better get this right this time" all of a sudden they want to spend real money on talent.
It's time managers in the business learnt that IT talent is not something to be taken lightly when an average project is to develop software that will enable your business to turn over millions. It's not until that system has problems or is unable to deliver for some reason that this sort of thing comes to the surface ... be wise people, know the manager you're dealing with, if they can't see the value in your skill set move along to the next job because you'll be shat on the whole of the time you are there else.
And to quote someone else: "outsourcing is good, I get more to fix the problem in the longer term".
And a final note: aren't programmers meant to be well known for thinking outside the box ... so start doing that guys! I won't be told by some overpriced MD that IT isn't worth getting right and any MD that feels that way can employ some indians then let me know when they feel they learn't their lesson.
Disclaimer: I'm not racist, when I say "Indians" or other terms that come across insulting I'm generalising the industry's complete lack of ability to spot lack of talent when looking for a project team, typically it's India I see the outsourcing going to because "its cheap", in my opinion "it's cheap for a reason".
"When I ring my ISP I don't want to talk to someone in India because my problem is with someone in the UK", it's not the Indian peoples fault.
That might be so but that also has nothing to do with this article.
They are specifically talking about sending light down a fibre and 300GHZ is not a light range frequency.
The point being, that fibre technology is looking like it's on the horizon of some improvements !!
Posted in Amazon yanks SimCity download from store
Re: No one has the right to complain, they should read the EULA for EA.
Everyone has the right to complain.
An EULA may be a legally binding contract between you and EA but a contract has 2 sides and if EA fails to live up to their end as a product / service provider you have the right as a consumer to cancel the contract which may include refund of charges.
Failing to provide a suitable solution / alternative to the given "breach" in the contract puts EA in a legal minefield, by effectively failing so badly they are making themselves a legal target dispite the EULA.
I've this time and time again, the big company says stuff like "you can't sue us when we suck and we will do what we want so suck it up", but the loophole states that when the contract itself is in question the terms are determined by the courts (in the EU anyway).
Big american companies tend to put clauses like this in an EULA as a deterrent as it works for the most part and saves them a lot of cases, but it can still be challenged and a court can still give the consumer the right to compensation for their actions.
An EULA is not the last word when it comes to law, a judge is!
Posted in Amazon yanks SimCity download from store
Been there, done that ...
I had problems getting connected to EA servers for battlefield 3 (everything from random drops to excessive lag) and put a string of tickets in to their support team.
They wait a week then auto close them regardless of state because it looks good on some call center stats.
I then bought Need for speed (cant remember which one) which has this "autolog" thing in it which is basically another EA product.
EA has (in my opinion) never been able to produce a good quality reliable server connection in any game that I've played and I should also point out that origin is still in beta.
I currently have a ticket open with EA that I have repeatedly forced them to reopen to fix my problems in need for speed, I have also told them that until they cant fix this problem thus proving to me that they can actually provide a working server I will not be buying another EA product no matter (which is a shame because i'm a big fan of Assassins Creed).
The funny thing is, when I told EA that they said "i'm sorry to hear about your ongoing problems, would you like a 20% discount on another EA product while we investigate?" ... why would I want that idiots?
EA deny there is there is a problem and yet in my current trail of problem solving they gave me a tool to trace the route between my house and their server which clearly shows 100% packet loss at the point of which their server is connected to the internet.
They advised me to "consult with my ISP" because of my poor quality internet connection.
Yeh its so poor I have a thinkbroadband monitor on it showing no loss ever of any packet and AVERAGE ping times of 20ms to 30ms to which EA clearly states i need to be at least less than 200ms.
At one point an EA rep complained that my connection was too slow hense the problem ... yeh i guess my fibre optic 120mb/s is a bit poor these days aint it?
Until EA grow up and learn how to employ developers that can actually write code that works i'm not buying another EA product and I would advise anyone that asked me to do the same.
Big shame because EA do bring some really good games ... if they worked of course!!!
<--- nuclear because of the rage I feel for EA.
Typical Apple and yet ...
They spend all their time working on their "image" and here's the best irony I've ever seen for Apple!!
It seems to me that their whole "owning an Apple product makes you cool" and "it just works" philosophies are now gone.
I've been telling the idiots round the office this for years but do they listen!!
Even Microsoft wouldn't get something this fundamentally wrong and everyone still holds the 80's against them for being THAT wrong!
Ditch Apple guys ... and do it fast, we owe Steve Jobs that much at least!
Dam guys ... At least get the comarisons right !
It should be:
XPS 10 = Surface = ipad
XPS 12 = Surface Pro
An ipad is a mobile platform on mobile hardware, so is a surface.
A surface pro / XPS 12 is ultrabook / laptop grade hardware running a desktop OS.
When you get that ...
They are roughly comparable, and at similar prices for the spec.
Bearing in mind Microsoft have their hands in Dells pocket right now (to the tune of $2bn) I doubt their offerings are going to be that different so as to leave either side completely at a disadvantage ... if anything I suspect both would be overpriced as per some high level Microsoft demand in order to take the apple angle of "lets make it exclusive so people want it" lets face it, it's worked for apple for years and Microsoft is very good at copying other peoples approach.
It's also worth noting that the comparison between an ipad and an XPS 10 is a fair one and the study shows how much dells study lacked depth because personally I would have put them on roughly even ground based on what I know about the 2 products.
Personally, I think the best tablets on the market are the Surface Pro at the moment.
You get a full laptop effectively in the tablet form with ultrabook grade hardware inside, but a bit more flexibility in the spec would be cool however the top model does feature a 128GB SSD which spec junkies will like.
I think the use of an i7 cpu is fairly new to tablets as most have stuck to the i5 due to power requirements, for that reason I can't imagine the real world battery life of an XPS 12 giving a lot of up time before it needs a wall to slurp from.
I don't see a comparable product from Apple ... that would be like installing Mac OS on an ipad+ (+ meaning something of higher spec at least) but when you look around companies do offer to build Mac OS tablets ... for about $3,000 so in all fairness to Microsoft I think they might be on to something here witht he surface, its a good mid range product with a good balance of feature offerings.
My problem with dell as choice of partner ...
My XPS m1730 (apparently the mutts nuts of laptops at the time retailed around $2,500) was ok but like many others had many "little issues" that I had to go back to dell for.
A mate recently bought what he thinks is the best thing since computing began (yet another dell laptop) ... he's on his 3rd replacement (that alone says it all to me).
We use dell around the office too ... the number spare parts floating around is beyond a joke ... its an office not a dell storage facility.
When dell start making reliable products that actually look good (lets face it, for style I definately prefer the ipad to any of these XPS tablets) i'll start to seem interested, until then there's always something like the asus iconia w710 which is just as good and at a cheaper price point.
And lets face it:
All that "security stuff dell is so proud of" is built in to the OS so any windows 8 tablet has it, expensive or not!
I don't think i've ever seen dell advertise something they added to a product, they always seem to advertise that stuff that Microsoft did.
And yes ... this is basically an "edvert" anyway ...
Eadon
You're a douchebag ... deal with it !
Go flame some other forum.
The most epically failed statement ever:
100% of all viruses are for windows
... riiiiight ... I know of at least 3 for mac and i've read somewhere on here recently that some hackers are chucking together android viruses ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17623422
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20768996
And those are just in the top 2 results for some basic google searching ...
What a total tard!
Anyone else fancy confirming what a tool Eadon is ... upvote this comment!
As for McAfee ...
I generally hear good things about them, but me personally, I wipe my machine clean and restore from an image (network stored) every few weeks so I don't bother with AV.
I'm also very careful about where I download and run executable code from.
Have I ever had a virus?
yeh once ... when I used to use AV, and it's solution was to destroy my OS install.
Posted in Linus Torvalds in NSFW Red Hat rant
Is this about UEFI or SecureBoot?
UEFI is a global standard and has members from all the major OS players in it.
So what's the big deal?
If i'm understanding this right ...
Linus doing his usual bitching freak out over a global standard ... and what's even funnier, this thread has become a Microsoft bashing sesh again ... WTF !!
seriously people?
Red Hat could get the code signed by verisign not Microsoft but it would cost them, and Microsoft are offering to do this for free (which I think is pretty good of them) so why wouldn't Red Hat want that?
Many have failed to understand that in a corporate world very little is open source, and corporate guarantees are more important than "openness and fluffy ideals". I challenge you Linux obsessed to find a corporation that runs on key software that isn't in some way either bought from a big corporation or written almost entirely internally.
companies need stability and assurances not ideals.
Linus is well known for sticking it to the man with this attitude but it's about time he stepped up and showed us all what a real OS is ... BY MAKING ONE!
When he's done with that I'll be interested in what he has to say, until then ... seriously ... back in your box child!
That said ...
He may be right at some level that i've missed, that being the case, he still needs to grow up and learn to present arguments professionally ... I can't respect a guy that can only solve his problems by ranting like this.
and ...
This basically has nothing to do with Microsoft so STFU all you M$ haters and get a real argument that isn't like 30 years old.
.. finally ...
Yeh I know how this comes across but it's not about if i like linux or windows is about cold hard facts ...
Why do people always feel the need to bitch about Microsoft even when they have no involvement over some anticompetitive practises from way back?
Its pointless and serves no purpose other than to prove how narrow minded you are.
How were the boys in danger?
I fail to see the problem ...
Should google be brought up on charges too then?
Since technically ANYONE with an internet connection might see boobs on google from any number of potential search terms.
Really ... ok so UK law aint much better ... in fact law in general is complete bulls**t these days and what it really boils down to is who can put forward the best argument at the end of the day ... this reminds me of the tv series "suits".
If the police have nothing better than this to do ... cut their budget!
I'll stick to my Microsoft stack ...
I write business apps on the Microsoft technology stack (windows / .Net) and never worked / even heard of a business that has no Microsoft presence in it at some level.
This stuff just works and always has a tool for my next technical problem ready to help me which is why I use it.
Someone else had a point before ... build an API / Framework / Both and let the developer choose.
Do I fuss over pointers or every last CPU cycle ... no!
Do my apps work and deliver what the business needs in a timely fashion ... yes!
Do I really care what language the CPU speaks "at a ones and zero's level" ... no!
Do I have to regularly tell management "go fuck yourself" ... no!
Do I ever have to say "this is just plain stupid or cannot be done" ... no!
... and yet the linux app domain and everything that sits on it is still facing this common problem daily.
It's a case of "every tool has a job it was built for", you wouldn't hammer a nail with a bucket would you?
It's down to the developer to choose the tool that fits the job, most developers are therefore fluent in more than 1 language and any developer that tells you they only code in a single language is clearly either full of it or inexperienced.
In my experience:
When dealing with people that code for Linux / something that sits on it I am met with a very opinionated person, talented i'll admit but often too opinionated for me to want to deal with all the time (i'm not saying that's always the case just people i've met tend to be of this nature).
This reminds me of the crap Microsoft had to put up with when it launched .net with comments like ...
"JIT's just slow things down"
"C# is never going to be as fast as C++"
Since all that Microsoft consolidated .Net making it useful to solve almost any problem it's development community has so it's been a solid success and resulted in things like the Mono project.
That's what the gnome team need to focus on ... building something that solves any problem that it's developer base will have, if they don't solve that they are going to have to deal with angry developers constantly.
From what i've seen (not that I really follow gnome) they seem to consistently stick themselves in the line of fire over daft technical decisions, why don't they just stick to building a framework with a strong API and let the developer talk about languages instead of this constant "what can we do to piss off our developers this week" attitude?
I feel for you guys writing code for gnome but I only have 1 piece of advice ...
Move on if you don't like it, it's clear the solution aint coming fast enough and the guys over canonical seem to be doing ok.
Failing that ... there's always the Microsoft stack (much cleaner and hassle free in my opinion).
... and in true "Linux guy" fashion let the trolling begin ...
My thinking on this ...
Yeh lets just rewrite the internet on proprietary technology to save ourselves a ficticious 30%.
Won't take long will it ... pfft !!!
Sounds about right
I get the impression telecoms provision from networks is either very short sited or seriously in a situation of over-demand.
Either way both scenarios would result in a major job loss in any other job would they not?
So why does the likes of BT get away with this?
(oh yeh, thats right, it used be gov owned so it's ok [insert bad language here])
Where I used to live was (and I quote) "a major backbone connection passes through your area" ... at said location I was lucky to get a stable 0.5mb/s in any direction.
I moved to my now "somewhere between major cities for the area but in no way central" (none of which seem to have great connectivity) and I have a good solid 120mb/s down 12mbp/s up.
I get comments like "well your quite out of the way there but we should be able to give you something", followed by "oh you seem to be right off a major exchange so we will give you our top package"
How does that work????
The only thing I can say for sure is: I'm definately not on any BT kit (my broadband is cable based from Virgin).
I've seen people complain about virgin but that said "slow" on virgin is well above these national averages ... I'd like to see something happen that allows virgin to spread to more areas ... and maybe a law that states something like "for every X number of people in urban areas upgraded to super fast the provider MUST upgrade Y number of rural connections" this might take a hit on their profits a bit but lets face it, these aren't the sort of companies you expect to go under any time soon.
I feel for you guys out there on poor connections but also take the attitude ... if it was that important you might well have moved by now would you not? I get the impression the the speed of your internet connection is not something people are willing to move over ... they would rather sit at home and complain, my thought on that being ... you are likely gaining in some other way like maybe the 100 acres of fields you see out your back window (on average of course - i acknowledge there will be a few exceptions)?
All that surveys like this prove is that infrastructure is first and foremost a city provision, outside of which you are basically looking at pot luck (some peoples luck better than others).
Those living in a city but still getting poor connections ... WTF !!!
Wasn't there a load of "BT is and UK Gov are going to revitalise the UK network in order to generate income" following that banking crisis? What a crock of s***.
Netflix is good but ...
... it lacks real substance.
When they make it a viable alternative to TV i'll drop my TiVo subscription.
My subscription: cancelled!
You're missing the obvious
Windows 8 was never intended to be a corporate / business product.
It is aimed at the consumer market mainly to compete with products released by Apple and Google.
Admittedly it could do a great job in a business environment ... my guess is that a business product for this is in the works.
You also have to acknowledge that Microsoft is having to rebuild a 30 year old company in to something new at the same time ... Microsoft has a lot to live up to ... dominating markets has always been easy in the past but with the state of play at is it Microsoft now has to start proving it can compete when some other company releases the next big thing.
Apple pushed to people on to tablets ... the world ate it up ... so Microsoft follow to show they can do that too.
I just wish they would sort out their supply channels ... pretty crap that in the UK you still can't really get a surface RT several months after the official release.
SORT IT OUT MICROSOFT !!!
Some good points from @ShelLuser and @Jon Green there:
That price point does feel like it needs more to really appeal to people ... I'm hoping that more happens to show off the Not Metro UI side of things more but it requires a big shift in thought patterns about computing with Microsoft products.
The key point being that Microsoft has always (in the past) pushed for the business customer and this time they are pushing for consumer market ... Companies like Apple have the benefit of being "designers by nature" so are used to making stuff look good which is at least in part why iDevices flew off shelves so fast, Microsoft however have always been technical problem solvers, the people that make your business do its thing ... they are used to solving problems not looking pretty.
I don't think Microsoft has worried too much about it's image in the past because it's had the benefit of dominating in its field ... all that is changing ... I'm looking forward to seeing more from Linux as a result of this type of thing.
The guys canonical (behind Ubuntu) have been talking about intel driven mobile devices that have dual touch / desktop UI's depending on weather the device is docked or in hand, this is something I can see working ... but i'm still waiting for linux to have a decent touch framework (android excluded - or maybe canonical can use that?).
Microsoft seem to have a habit of making stuff easy to do on their platform, something that again Linux has often fell behind with ... that catch up process for Linux is nearing it's end when you consider the innovation of the people behind technology in products like android it makes me think that there is more ... something has been missed ... a gap that needs closing.
I doubt this time round Microsoft is capable of doing it on their own ... as stated many times before, Microsoft are not really that good at true innovation (generally speaking although kinect shows promise), they simply buy a small up and coming company that is and use that to solve the problem, but with competition being what it is today Microsoft certainly can't keep taking that approach, it needs to learn to innovate ... maybe by buying a company that looks something like Apple from about 10 years ago?
But the biggest problem right now ... supply ... still not seeing the RT in shops round here ... despite plenty of demand ... I don't consider surface dead yet but it's long overdue that Microsoft started sorting out their distribution channels!
I think a few people have missed the point here ...
The surface Pro is the worlds first full blown desktop PC at reasonably good desktop spec in tablet form.
Show me where you can get any other windows / mac / linux machine that weighs less than 1kg that will run any desktop built software on the market?
I'd love to see an iDevice of this grade, someone else raised a good point before me about the only other potential option of this type costing around £3,000 ... and yet people on here still complain about price?
Oh and surface sales figures are poor because no one can get one over here ... literally no one seems to have any stock ... when shops start stocking them Microsoft will start selling them.
That and ... it's Microsoft, they will sell, purely for that reason ... Micorsoft seem to have a way of making stuff sell weather we want it or not.
Oh and that douchebag up there saying Microsoft have never made a successful product ... xbox is still the biggest console in the world (based on sales figures) and windows xp was in it's time the biggest selling product in its class.
Some people need to learn to check their facts instead of blindly trashing a company because it already has a bad rep.
No i'm not a M$ fanboi i'm just bored of people of trashing Microsoft for simply existing over some shit they did like 20 years ago that was monopolistic.
Quit being so judgemental and see a little innovation ...
Side note:
Why do people think this idea of "tablet computers" was first Apples idea ... Bill Gates was banging on about this in the 90's?
Why Bother?
With HTML 5 getting more and more support daily i'm writing more and more code that does a better job that a "Peedy-Eff" in that its ...
1. Better quality
2. Smaller
3. Doesn't take 3 weeks to download
4. Is based on well known standards
This IMO is a failing of the provider of the document ... if it's something that "trivial" that you want to glance at it should not be a PDF at all and should in fact just be on the friggin web page.
So to put it bluntly ...
PDF is dead, it's an archaic method of making a document and serves no purpose on the web.
It belongs in a desktop driven world (which basically doesn't exist any more) for larger "100+ page" type scenarios only.
I wish Adobe would just retire that POS so the world can get on with using either OOXML or HTML5 to get the job done.
Im thinking DNLA streaming to your smart TV in your living room.
A great party piece !!
What about home automation ... imagine hanging one of these on the wall in your lobby, you could show really detailed stuff about your house on it lol
Or better still use it just like the original "Microsoft Surface" by placing it on your coffee table !!
I love how some people think its sooo easy to stop spam ...
Give me your email addresses so I can test your theories :)
I have a neat app I wrote purely for testing my ability to block spam on some private domains.
It's not as obvious as you might think.
The most persistent of spammers for example would take to some of the following:
1. faking the from address
2. faking the from IP
3. randomly generating garbage in the subject / body
4. sending 1 pixel tracked images
5. spoofing legit business
6. faking / spoofing subdomains under legit domains
7. using adressing tricks that mean some emails not sent to you end up in your mailbox
To send an email requires little more than 1 line of code these days.
Servers filter email based on rules that you define which are typically based on something like ...
1. the from address
2. a keyword
3. a unique to address (such as the aformentioned "company+me@mydomain.com")
My app code can randomly generate a to address @somedomain that i specify with randomised content.
For example ...
I can put in gmail.com and get out a near unlimited number of email addresses.
If i then send some email content to each of these email addresses stating in the email header that it came from "notifications@facebook.com" how would your email client know it was from facebook?
I can style the body to look just like it came from facebook and need only include a facebook logo image to confirm you read the email.
I then know for sure what your email address is and that you read my email.
I should point out ...
I work for a company that sends about 1 million legit opt in only emails an hour, the app i'm talking about is to test our systems from this type of "attack".
the point being ...
Am i facebook? ... no
Can you tell it came from facebook? ... no
Can your email client tell? ... no
Who would likely get the blame for my spam email? ... not me
Is it spam? ... yes
Did I gain anything from it? ... yes - an email address I could sell
This is not an exhaustive example of tricks used but does highlight a common problem ...
The SMTP protocol (language used by mail servers) is flawed and has been since it begin.
There is no way round this unless the standard for the SMTP protocol is in some way changed so that emails can only originate from trusted non spamming servers that will definately honour an unsubscribe request.
Re: It's simple to stop spam
Section 11 won't stop them all.
Many will simply outsource their marketing overseas so the email is sent by a third party thus avoiding the problem of the DPA (as far as their concerned).
If spam was that easy to stop it would be gone already.
The comment is just plain dumb on so many levels I don't know where to begin.
1. Anyone stupid enough to "buy something to get rid of a sales rep" deserves to be spammed!
2. Not all spam comes from legitimate businesses
3. Spam is often not a sales pitch at all
Re: What I want to know
@Sooty
That's the thing, you don't have to buy anything from them for them to make money from you.
Often "real spam" is an attempt purely for you to confirm your email / other personal details in some way.
Doing so will result in them having confirmation of your personal details which are then sold on.
They can get your address by doing a range of things.
To name a few ...
Randomly generating somename@yourdomain type email addresses and sending a tracked image in it.
Scrape the data from web pages / forums you might have posted on.
Hacking in to someone else' database that has your details.
Others here are also talking about spam through sites they consider initially to be trustworthy but then ultimately do the same thing.
THAT'S WHY SPAM EXISTS!
Posted in Virgin Media's latest throttling rules
Re: Are Steam downloads affected?
Steam servers can't keep up with my connection.
I know because I can pause a steam download that is doing say 8MB/s down and immediately get say 11MB/s down from an MSDN server.
I find steam gets slow at peak times like anything else.
But officially ... to answer your question ... no steam downloads should not be affected, but if people are having trouble with the likes of the google homepage after STM kicks in you can be sure of the fact that it would affect steam too.
LOL the super OS fails again
Yet another example of how linux isn't as perfect as some might think !!
<insert trolling / M$ bashing statement here>
My 2 pence worth
Fair enough it is a bit pot and kettle but ...
Google are basically becoming what M$ once was "too big for fairness".
Google has made no attempt to hide the fact that it plans to muscle in on M$'s core product offerings so it should expect a fight.
M$ have the right to complain about stuff that cost them billions in court, taking this approach saves them having to sue google as the complaint could likely result in oversight committee action.
I currently have an android phone (Galaxy S3) which i'm told is one of the best android devices on the market and I hate it. Every Android update results in really basic stuff having problems ... my current issue is that the phone seems to think poor signal is a good thing and actively seeks it out then randomly restarts.
I'm tempted to start using my old winpho ... that got the basics right at least and I could be fairly sure an update wouldn't kill it.
All this crap about linux is irrelevant ... if you hate M$ that much don't buy their products, linux IMO is hard work, I need a trail of 500 different dependencies that don't work together unless you install 500 different versions of each because each dependency is built to work against a specific version of its own dependencies.
I found that what I do in 5 minutes at work on windows takes me hours in Linux which often requires tons of typing stuff in to command lines where as my windows box I can often run a little wizard or something and the system will do it for me.
Linux users bang on about M$ "bloat" ... it's very rare that you find a "small linux distro" that doesn't automatically throw about 10GB of "extra stuff" on your machine most of which you then have to spend hours removing.
Ubuntu is regularly praised as being the god like version these days, copying the ISO direct from ubuntu servers and burning to a disk then trying a default install does not work on my PC, it falls over as soon as i click "install" on the boot menu unless I use some magic command line option I spent hours trying to find the first time i installed it, which from what I can tell basically tells linux that I have a hard drive ... WTF linux !!
My point being ... M$ get stuff wrong ... fair enough but Linux isn't perfect, nor is Google and people regularly hold M$'s 20+ year learning curve against them, and the fact of the matter is that M$ core staff is very different to the staff it had back them ... some of which have been famously poached from the likes of Google / Apple.
I have never worked for a company that doesn't have a single M$ product ... the reason being that M$ work, they get the job done ... no matter what you might think there is a reason M$ is not bankrupt and it's simply that people want their products.
Isn't it about time people moved on and let them play the game that every other company has been playing for years against them despite the pot and kettle element?
Surely this is a huge sign that M$ may have indeed learnt some core lessons?
....
Ok Begin the trolling ...
This wouldn't bother me if ...
... when new phones hit the market I could just walk in to my local phone shop and buy one without a contract.
Most of the time I notice that it's near impossible to get a new iThingy without a minimum 18 month contract.
I agree with the idea of de-coupling the phone from the tariff, the consumer should be able to chose to buy 1 without the other if it suits them.
As a bit of a tech geek I, like many always want the latest gadget but I don't want a 2 year contract with it and it's unfair to force this on me!
I could go directly to the provider ... sometimes, but they usually direct me to my local mobile phone shop!
Also @Roland6 has a good point ... service provision only gets cheaper over time ... this inflation talk is utter crap.
The side of the coin
I work for a marketing company that sends about 1 million emails an hour (through each server we use to send).
The system we employ requires that our subscribers have to make 3 separate "i want this email" confirmations.
This is a real pain in the ass (tracking who's in what state) but it's a side of effect of the internet being in the state it's currently in.
I like to think that we are very good at what we do and always respect peoples right to cancel as a result we are very careful to ensure that un-subscribes are honoured (we've gone to the extreme of giving each email sent an individual unique id to ensure we have complete audit trails on them).
As a result of current thinking we consider a bounce an un-subscribe request in the same way as if someone clicked the un-subscribe link on the email, i personally spent hours spamming our bounce proccessing software (that I wrote to handle this) to ensure it was bulletproof ... something i'm proud of.
I agree with the message being conveyed here though ... not enough companies do this.
For my personal email, like many on here I have my own domain but my mail is routed through google, this basically means google filter all my mail and at any time i can do something like "company+my.address@mydomain.com" to use the afformentioned filtering tricks.
The beauty with gmail is that soo many people use it that it doesn't take long before any new spam is quickly added to googles "learning filter".
The upshot ...
I rarely see or have to deal with spam.
It costs me about £30 a year for a google apps for business account.
I wish it was a free service but seeing stories like this pop up everywhere makes me think ... maybe i can claim that cost back somehow !!!
Re: C# is dead
@ Eadon
I work for a multinational corporation that has teams delivering solutions on both .Net and Java platforms.
When it comes down to it the CTO agrees with the following:
The .Net teams are faster to react to any given business problem and more often than the java team are able to find a solution that meets the business requirements in a shorter time frame.
The solution provided by .Net is easy to provision for at the infrastructural / systems level because other than installing IIS and .Net very little else is needed (these are often scripted deploys too).
The Java equivilent usually results in this "rabbit hole effect" of dependency digging which takes time to both diagnose and remedy, often this time is considered an acceptable loss because the solution being delivered is required "for legacy purposes".
I've seen this time and time again, products built on languages like delphi, php, and sometimes java are referred to as "legacy" because it so much time to build an effectively good solution on these platforms that the product is practically out of date upon release.
I am a software developer and I have developed solution on both .Net and Java platforms ... I prefer .Net (which i'm guessing you already figured out), I think that at the end of the day though it comes down to what you want to achieve.
If you want business applications that deliver business logic / processes and you need them fast that will out of the box definately work with everything in your IT environment .Net is the best choice for many reasons ...
1. the licencing costs are already covered by your server licencing agreement.
2. it will definately work with your existing windows based network (most businesses today are running windows)
3. its fast and fully supported by the same company that's supports your server (convenience)
If you are building drivers / firmware, then it makes sense to use something lower level because you need to in order to achieve your goals. This is the sort of thing that .Net is not designed to do (but can - from what I understand windows is written in C#).
It's a simple fact, .Net is seen as the "quick and cost effective solution" for business applications.
And this is exactly why C# is far from dead ... it's too core to the Microsoft technology stack.
Although i agree that Silverlight was a complete balls up by Microsoft, but Silverlight is not C#.
Dell ... Solution
When he gets the concept of a reliability and the basics of the term "product" i'll take him seriously when using terms like "solution".
Until then ...
ROFL !!
I've never owned a dell product that lasted more than 2 years ... and I bought some high end gear from them in the past ... let me know when when this guy gets a clue !
Re: C# is dead
Wow could you be more full of it?
C# is fundamental to the Win8 and beyond environment as the language of choice in enterprise for delivering applications quickly and to defined standards.
All that open source bloat is just plain crap, you need 400 dependencies to fire up a basic console app.
For example:
I dare not try anything serious on php because every code sample I ever read written in it seems to have no understanding of the concept "team" or "standard" or "maintainable".
Using something like MVC with C# blows that crap completely away.
I think the reason put rubbish like this on public forums is to knock what Microsoft has achieved with windows 8, server 2012, and windows phone 8 ... a unified platform across all devices that all speak the same language and just work.
The toolset comes as part of the product stack and again it just works!
To install you simply setup the framework and visual studio and you are done, none of the chasing around for some botched third party component that you have to compile yourself that ultimately has only been tested to work if you have special other component installed which isn't compatible with something else you need.
It's about time open source users got off their high horse and learnt what "productivity" means!
I have both
I have a samsung galaxy s3 and a HTC HD7 windows phone.
My experience is that each time I get an android update stuff that used to work either stops working or gets worse.
Signal strength has become a really problem in jellybean and I have gone through 3 galaxy S3's so far thinking it's a hardware fault.
My network provider is now basically saying stuff like "it's not our problem blame sansung or android".
With microsoft, fair enough they don't always get stuff right but usually when I get an update stuff only gets better not worse.
To follow my android experience I've had a few technical hiccups and the result has usually been (from the same network) "oh no worries we will just give you a new working one" or "just download this patch from microsoft".
As a software developer I have to say i'm used to seeing people bash Microsoft for trying to give the consumer a good deal (internet explorer bundled with windows anyone?) and it's about time Microsoft said "£$^! YOU" to the companies that have been sh*tting on them for years with legal suits just because they were the biggest contender in their field.
I don't condone this clear cut "we are just gonna b*tch at you for the hell of it" approach but to be fair ... it's about time someone at Micorsoft snapped.
Again in my developer role, I see people moaning that Microsoft craps on the little guy but I haven't seen that, the MSDN has been a solid source of community and really useful information since the release of .Net some 12 ish years ago and still remains strong, people tend to complain when Microsoft follows the rest of the industry and does something that breaks their old legacy crapware because Microsoft is usually the first to bend to consumer will and "suck it up" leaving stuff in that really needs retiring.
I'm positive about what Microsoft has to offer overall but Microsoft is now moving in to a field they are not the big guy in so sure there's gonna be tension.
The thing that cracks me up ... I was watching a youtube video about 10+ years ago which surfaced recently (sorry I don't have a link to hand) where Bill Gates was trying to push tablet devices to the world ... way ahead of everyone else ... and yet the likes of apples are the gods for "being the first to do it"??? really ???
Apple is company full of designers, google is full of data boffs, Microsoft has long been the core of most business solutions in business, and now is trying to get more involved with consumers.
Lets face it ... consumers love a rant it give's them something to talk about ... so in a way the campaign worked did it not ... it got people talking about them (again)?
Re: End of Windows ? At long last, just not all at once.
So little knowledge, or just narrow minded?
Microsoft consists of 94,000 employees, none of these people will want windows to die, and the top 10% of these people have the resources to ensure that this is the case no matter what you might think.
No company simply commits suicide for the sake of it.
Microsoft just like to test their products out there rather than in a dev team which is crazy, but it keeps us amused, they are clearly doing that with windows 8 ... look out for the complete change in direction on window 9 lol.
or my tablet !!
wtf !! lol
Salesforce CEO ? ROFL ... What would he know about good software?
I've never seen a clean Salesforce implementation, have you?
Always cluttered, distusting layouts, promotes poor coding standards, the API is crazy unreliable, and he's preaching about something not looking the way it used to?
WTF ...
When he shows us to make a a good CRM I might start to believe what he has to say a little bit, but CRM is nowhere near OS in product terms.
If windows 8 don't take off like Microsoft wants then its obvious what will happen, windows 9 will be more like windows 7, either way windows aint dead, some 94,000 people over at Microsoft will make sure of that !!!
Posted in Is lightspeed really a limit?
Re: Am I On Youtube?
Labs are boring some people have a life.
Who cares what "the theory" dictates, everyone has an opinion that "speculates" one way or another.
Either way, speculation is all we have at this point until finite proof is found that it either is or isn't possible.
Posted in Is lightspeed really a limit?
Re: Slow
Eh that's hilarious ...
So (by that logic) the speed of light is effectively not constant if no matter how fast something moves it's still in fact moving slowing than this fictitious speed (the bullet)?
"relatively speaking" it makes sense though, something moving very fast then something moving faster than it is still seen to be moving very fast thus difficult to make an accurate measurement of its actual speed.
so for arguments sake lets assume light moves at 1 million metres per second.
Does that mean its impossible to move at 1.1 million metres per second?
All that would mean is that something could happen before it would be observable surely?
