* Posts by Bad Beaver

846 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jul 2007

Bjork, 500+ novelist pals ask UN for 1 bill of digital rights to RULE 'EM ALL

Bad Beaver
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Re: Mmm

You want to pick up a copy of Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" if you haven't read it already.

Ex-Nokia team unveil Jolla smartphone with added Sailfish OS

Bad Beaver

Re: Don't think it's a good idea

So you really just created an account here to share your lack of VISION?

Bad Beaver

Review it!

A venture this bold deserves support.

US puts Assange charge in too-hard basket - report

Bad Beaver

Beat me to it

Sure smells like one.

Don't feel dirty, it could be worse. Know any Michael Bay movie quotes?

Norks EXECUTE 80 for watching DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES

Bad Beaver

"Allegedly." -> Thank you

Thank for making that point and making it so very clear. There is no doubt that NK is not a very nice place to be but the way some of the press here is reporting this "story" is way below any standards of decent journalism.

Steve Wozniak: 'I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners'

Bad Beaver

Combinded efforts to use ressources for the common good? Why not?

It's called The Venus Project.

Nokia tears devs' hearts out, shutters Symbian and Meego stores early

Bad Beaver

Good job

fucking up one of the greatest brands ever. Yet another promise kept, hm?

This is bad news, especially considering that a lot of people in the developing markets might be much more dependent on the store than us jaded first worlders.

Regardless: Hats off to all the Symbian and Meego developers whose tireless efforts have brougth us countless benefits over the years. Keep the good stuff coming, we'll keep paying you for it.

Travel much? DON'T buy a Samsung Galaxy Note 3

Bad Beaver

This is a hoax, right?

Please supply us with a reply from Sammy should you get one. This certainly is a runner for the top ten of "how to fuck up your brand" premium-bad-ideas(tm).

Apple blings up new iMac with latest Intel chips, next-gen Wi-Fi

Bad Beaver

Never again

I vowed to never again buy an iMac with my own money. Too expensive for a SPOF design. They are great machines as long as they work but then they … well they stop and should that happen out of warranty you might as well dump them.

THE TRUTH about beaver arse milk in your cakes: There's nothing vanilla about vanilla

Bad Beaver

Meanwhile…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine

Jolla Sailfish OS to support Android hardware, apps

Bad Beaver

Re: *TEST*

No, you are not.

Bad Beaver

Re: proper compartmentlization...?

Look up how to replace the battery on the N9. They are dead-cheap and only a few torx screws away.

Bad Beaver

Re: What would be the point of Sailfish?

Maybe you can find the time to look into it a little more, you might like what you see.

Bad Beaver
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Looking forward to the final device

It could all turn out pretty nifty. Jolla folks have the best possible background so expectations are quite high but the "other half" concept provides a an excellent USP. Android is the cherry on top and the saftey line for all those afraid of "dead ends". I might actually succumb to pure technolust and get the Jolla device despite my private Nokia N9 being all fine. All thumbs up.

Stylus counsel: The rise and fall of the Apple Newton MessagePad

Bad Beaver
Go

Keep the green! Probably the best computers I ever had

Wanting to put an end to endless piles of papers during my studies I picked up a second hand MP130 on the cheap. I quickly got hooked and ended up with the 130, the original Message Pad (for novelty) and two MP2100s. The latter machines are still there and they still work perfectly well even after years of use and abuse. There used to be a very true saying on the old NewtonTalk mailing list that "Newton never dies, it just gets new batteries". (A community was full of tinkering geniuses that constantly taught the devices new tricks. We ended up with WiFi, Bluetooth, hardware hacks of all sorts, full system emulation on more modern hardware…) To me, the Newton was invaluable. Incredibly powerful for its time, it was also very intuitive, built like a brick, worked like a charm, lasted forever on a single charge, was small, light and unobtrusive enough to take anywhere – and it had all my data, right there, at my fingertips (or on one of those massive 32MB cards)! A 90's cyber-dream come true.

Fanbois smash iPhone 5s much sooner than iPhone 3s ... but WHY?

Bad Beaver
Gimp

Maybe they needed a reason to upgrade to a Nokia

Good hardware design anticipates user error such as "drop" and taskes proper precautions. The GF managed to fling her brand new Lumia across the pub (upon arrival, mind you), having it slide glass down over the floor and crash into the wall. Once dusted off there was a tiny little dent in the polybody, period. Lots of accidental abuse later, that phone has aquired a few warts but still works like a charm. No cracked screen, loose buttons or whatnot. This reflects my personal Nokia experience. The worst thing that happened: I once had to bend a metal connector back into shape after dropping my 8110i so hard the flap came off. 1 minute with a toothpick. Apparently, they just know what they are doing. You see plenty of old Nokias working just fine, you never see Lumias with a broken screen – but about 1 in 5 iPhones has glass damage and I'm not even looking at all those androids. Call me a fanboy, but this is part of the "experience of a product" that Apple is so busy promoting these days.

Nokia tears wrapper off Lumia 1020 monster imaging mobe

Bad Beaver

Re: Replace N808

I'm torn, for all the points you just made. I see they did some nice things with the 1020 but it STILL falls short of the 808 in terms of useful features.

Ex-Palm CEO Rubinstein wishes HP sale never happened

Bad Beaver
Pint

Re: I've seen the future and it will be

No worries Mr. Pock, I got it and it made me smile.

Bad Beaver
FAIL

A waste indeed.

I remember slamming the table in anger and frustration when HP cancelled the Pre 3 days before release and then started to pull off their terrible "maybe we'll sell some of them today, maybe not" games with no clear future for the OS cut out so you didn't know whether you'd be buying a useless brick at insane prices on eBay. At least when Nokia burned Symbian and MeeGo you got some kind of roadmap.

Bad Beaver

Re: Numbers Game

Ever heard about Sailfish? I'd call that quite compelling.

Apple at WWDC: Sleek new iOS, death of the big cats, pint-sized Mac Pro

Bad Beaver
Facepalm

Mindbending

I did not get into the details much as of yet, but even the casal observer will notice that…

• iOS 7 "borrows" quite a bit from the other kids, including Sailfish, WebOS, Symbian …  (!)

• if people spend MEGABUX on a Mac Pro maybe they want to be able to stick their long, hard edged thingies in it. Or cram a number of them in a rack. Or stuff the thing full of platters. Or … well, do stuff pros do.

It's amazing how much the company lost the plot. This from a dyed in the wool Apple kid. And I don't give a damn about how they name the OS.

Amazon faces its third strike in Germany

Bad Beaver
FAIL

Re: Also...

Shove it, Jim.

Living with a 41-megapixel 808 PureView: Symbian's heroic last stand

Bad Beaver
Go

I was into video

I would totally pick this up. For the money, nothing can really touch it, video and audio are both excellent. Just look for concert footage taken with it. Symbian Belle is also very workable on a device as powerful as the 808.

Rogue Nokia splinter cell drops its Jolla phone A-BOMB

Bad Beaver
Go

Re: N9 Meego....

Wazapp works fine – until the folks at Whatsapp mess things up on purpose, then you sometimes have to wait a little for an update. There are some motivated folks working on it and they deserve a little tip for that every now and then. Anyhow, talk.maemo.org is your friend.

Bad Beaver
Go

Looking forward to it

My N9 is doing fine but I might just preorder this. Been following Jolla for a while and watched the live stream. These folks deserve some success for their enthusiasm and BALLS to pull this thing through alone, even before seeing that the expandable hardware idea is pretty nifty in and by itself (check your facts, El Reg, the covers supposedly can do more than just be a memory card). Could not care less about specs with this OS running on the device.

Android device? Ooohhhh, you mean a Samsung phone

Bad Beaver
Happy

Re: Design?

I think we actually agree to a pretty high degree, I just happened to employ certain … trigger words :D And I still think Samsung looks terribly bland. The N900 and even more so the N9 a perfect examples of designs that are very, even extremely reduced and "out of the way" yet also manage to provide excellent "feel" – and this very much includes the interface and what you can actually do with it.

Bad Beaver
Paris Hilton

Re: Design?

Sorry guys, if you think that an attractive design that connects with the user is worthless, then you utterly deserve the dreariness of those phones. Even the most utilitarian things can exude a character that makes using them a pleasure. And some things are just… boring.

Bad Beaver
Coat

Re: Design?

Guess I deserved that ;) Sure, the games move you - but what you *feel* is the controller (unless you are actually moving in front of some motion sensing device… darn modern times) and if the controller feels right it will help your immersion. Just because it's a device it does not mean that it should not be a pleasure to use all by itself. Ok, that's it, coat…

Bad Beaver
Facepalm

Re: Design?

Not much in droidland, no. Motorola used to come up with some interesting things. The others are almost nonexistant. I find Samsung's ads an incredible bore. They are like your uncle the hobbyist magician, overly keen on pulling new tricks out every 2 seconds so nothing really stands out. Apple used to be very good but now they feel just empty. Now Nokia's ads wow again and again with impressive imagery, consistent look and feel – and they are pretty much the only ones who know how to properly show a phone … aw crap, I forgot I'm not at work anymore.

Bad Beaver
WTF?

Design?

So Samsung has the best design in Droidland? THAT is the best there is? I mean, you cannot deny their success, yet whenever I look at one of their phones … they are crammed full of the nicest things but they do not move or involve me at all. Soulless.

Nokia's debuts new 'Fastlane' UI in $99 flagship Asha 501

Bad Beaver
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Good Stuff

Love to see glimpses of the N9 design in this little bugger. If I was the target, I'd get this over some low-spec droid in a heartbeat. Great design in quality hardware, fluid UI, designed to work on very little bandwidth (which is sugar on top of the price), great battery life … the only thing a cheap droid has to offer in return is the same price. And you have seen cheap droids, you know you don't want them. Admittedly, no 3G (I hear it will come to Asha soon) is a tough sell to 1st world powerusers but Asha a) is designed for emerging markets and b) not for powerusers in the first place.

I am still repulsed by the idea of a mobile OS that is so inefficient that it needs a high-end device to produce a pleasant experience.

Facebook: Yeah, we'll ban chainsaw beheading vids - when journos call us

Bad Beaver
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yuck

Now you've made me watch what can only be described as a not a very professional beheading. Yuck. No like for that.

Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

Bad Beaver
WTF?

Suckers will be suckers

RE: Music quality goes down the drain – I used to be much more invested in the topic but once I noticed that I, me, myself am part of a significant market – listeners who care about how stuff sounds – I knew that I would always be catered to. There are more high quality music releases than I can find the time to listen to. Hell, MobileFidelity alone releases so many top notch SACDs on a regular basis that they could eat up the better part of my monthly music budget. If you are more of the download type, there are several places that offer a great variety of up to 192Hhz material.

RE: Quality gear is getting too expensive – Far from it! The co.uk area in particular is home to some of the best makers of audio gear on the planet. Linn, Naim, Exposure, you name it – and they all offer affordable systems with excellent bang-for-buck ratio. Sure, you can still shoot for the moon. That is a game of quickly diminishing returns. Plus quality gear is an excellent thing to buy second hand. It tends to last.

RE: Beats phones – who gives a toss? You know they are overpriced abominations for posers and fashion victims. Buy something else and educate your kids about the finer things in life. Stop worrying about how other people spend their money, have more time to enjoy your music.

Bad Beaver
Facepalm

Re: Audio on the cheap

What's your hobby, parkour?

First Samsung Galaxy S4 review leak: Stop FONDLING, start FINGERING

Bad Beaver
Pint

Unleash the power of your mobile phone – by plugging it into the wall

That actually sounds quite reasonable.

Bad Beaver

Re: Why have 12 cylinders when you can have just 1?

Thing is, I have here a Nokia N9 with a measily 1 GHz Cortex A8 single core CPU. It multitasks like there is no tomorrow with no lag and still nets a full day on a single charge of a battery almost half the size of the G4. Why? Because MeeGo is a nimble little minx, that is why. As said, I am really looking forward to what happens when Sailfish is running on more current tech.

Bad Beaver
Stop

Re: Why have 12 cylinders when you can have just 1?

Well, I bow to all your downvotes. Apparently, all those cores, each runnin at almost 2GHz, are SUPER EFFICIENT and have ZERO impact on battery life. Awesome, I want one.

Bad Beaver

Re: Appalling waste of resources

So you do not think that "phones" these days are a little bit on the excessive side in terms of CPU, especially looking at Android?

Bad Beaver

Re: Do you happen to work in advertising…

There really is no excuse. But it takes one to know one … and we do a lot of spine extractions.

Bad Beaver

Do you happen to work in advertising…

… or a related idiot circus by any chance?

Bad Beaver
WTF?

Appalling waste of resources

8core? Does it really take that much to make Android a pleasant experience? Those features also sound as though they could provide plenty of opportunity for the device to fail and annoy in new and interesting ways. I am much more interested in what Jolla will put into their upcoming device. Sailfish appears quite nimble on the extremely outdated hardware they use for demos, so I guess we are in for a treat.

Keyboard, you're not my type

Bad Beaver
Coffee/keyboard

Writing this on an Apple Extended II from 1995

So in my book, the best keyboards are the big heavy ones from long ago that STILL LAST today. I thought about replacing the one in the office with the new quiet Tactile Pro as a nice gesture to my cos – but then again those things are bloody expensive and I am sure they are not as well made as the AEII.

All the cheap rubber stuff is simply not cutting it and the laptop-like models deserve a special place in hell (even the ones in laptops. My last lappy with a really decent keyboard was the PowerBook G3 Wallstreet) as they let me produce endless errors and feel flat out wrong.

Nokia's Elopocalypse two years on: Has Microsoft kept its side of the bargain?

Bad Beaver
Facepalm

Poweruser?

The reason why the new BBs will sell like hot cakes is that they bothered to come out with a product that "powerusers" crave: One with a physical keyboard.

A touch-only device can never keep up with that. I use Swype on my N9 (still the best touch phone in existence and possibly also one of the worst "political" fuckups ever) which makes for a very good crutch but it is still not the same and it makes for a completely different writing experince. Touch keyboards without Swype? No. Just no. You can still pick up the E6 and E72 for a reason. Running Symbian. Ha.

BB will likely also let people do all sorts of stuff they expect from a "powerusers" device such as proper BT file transfer and all the other nasty worky stuff. You know, the stuff you used to take for granted on Symbian and MeeGo devices and that nobody at MS botherted to implement since "hey, Apple doesn't do that".

Let's all hope for Jolla not to screw up.

Amazon patents digital resale market

Bad Beaver
Paris Hilton

Brings the LULZ

a) Can we patent it? Yeah, let's patent it.

b) How do you price used digital goods? If I buy a 2nd hand item, I expect and accept a possible degree of degradation. This is why a used item usually sells for less than a new one, unless the market forces imply that demand exeeds supply. But why would I re-sell my digital propert… my license to use a digital content at a price that is any lower than the current new-price? (And "scarcity management" or not, I doubt there will ever be something like a "rare download".)

Because otherwise, AMAZON won't let you sell it.

The whole thing is interesting in terms of being able to sell-off unwanted licenses. Yet it is clear that seller will make a loss, the used-buyer will only save very little and AMAZON's register will CA-CHING every time. CA-CHING CA-CHING CA-CHING…

The ridiculousness of it all tells me that my policy of "only buy phsyical" will not be replaced any time soon.

Apple confirms 128GB iPad. A hundred bucks for an extra 64GB

Bad Beaver
Facepalm

$1000 buy a lot of interesting things

Yet to me, an iPad is not one of them. Admittedly, I had a glimmer of hope the company would hand them out for XMAS as little productivity gifts. I guess they know just as well as I do that they are not really that productive.

Anyway, the iPad mini, with added handwriting recognition (3rd party of course, why the hell can't Apple integrate their own one?)… now that could finally do some of the things my Newton used to be good at … in 1998. Apple, always ahead of itself. Sigh. The Newton MP2100 features: 2 cardslots for up to 64MB (sic! A bitchin' lot and nigh impossible to use up back then) of memory or numerous expansions (WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, GSM, Faxmodem… ), a serial port and, lo and behold, a user replaceable NiHM-pack or optional AA-Battery operation. Which is why a Newton from 98 still works fine these days and will continue to do so for a good while, even if you threw it down a number of stairwells which it likely survived with hardly a scratch. Now that's a proper piece of computing equipment in my book.

Alien space rocks EXPLODE in fireball over Japan

Bad Beaver
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Impressive

Many years ago I saw one of those while taking a walk at night. It's quite the impressive experience.

Microsoft ends Mac users' Windows Phone 8 misery

Bad Beaver
WTF?

Re: Surprising choice

What a strange assumption. Phones cater to very individual needs. I for one have been using Macs since the late 90s, both privately and professionally, and have always been served well by Nokia, was disappointed by SonyEricsson and somewhat bewildered by Motorola. Up until now, Apple never managed to come out with a phone that was even remotely interesting to me.

Bad Beaver
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Good!

It was about time.

Nokia: Ship's now stable, all we need is passengers

Bad Beaver
Meh

What's missing

Is fresh business class devices that people can be truly productive with. The E6 and E7 are both excellent devices in this regard but what are the current options? Cheapish Asha phones. Hello?

Bad Beaver
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Yup

Each and every day with my N9 is proof enough. Power to Jolla.