* Posts by DrXym

5327 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jul 2007

Strong ARM: The Acorn Archimedes is 25

DrXym

Amazing performance

I remember frequenting a small computer shop which had Atari and Amiga sections. One day they put the new Archimedes on display and my jaw hit the floor when I saw the lander demo. While Zarch eventually appeared on the Amiga & ST (and ZX Spectrum!), at the time it was just incredible to see the raw power on display.

Sadly for Acorn, the power was matched by absurd prices which instantly meant it stood no chance supplanting either the Amiga or ST. It cost over 2x the price of the integrated versions of each of these which meant nobody could afford it. Being Acorn they found sales in the educational sector but I can't help thinking they would have had a lot more success outside of that if the A3000 had been there from the beginning with it's ST520 / A500 style form factor and lower price.

Still I guess someone from Acorn had the last laugh given how ubiquitous ARM processors are these days.

Sony PlayStation 4 will not be download only

DrXym

Here is a simple way to hasten digital downloads

Stop ripping off people who buy them. Digital downloads are supposedly piracy proof and second hand proof. Yet they cost MORE than discs through retail. Discs that have production, shipping, returns costs associated with them plus all the middle man costs retail less than a bunch of DRM protected bytes on a server.

I don't single out Sony with this since the same is true virtually regardless of the service. Go to Steam and see how much a new title costs. It retails for the RRP when the physical copy is discounted for 30% including free P&P. To add insult to injury the physical copy might be steam enabled anyway so you're not even suffering from disc based copy protection either.

It's a scam pure and simple and I think people recognize it too. If downloads were cheaper it would motivate people to use it more, which in turn would have knock on effects for ISPs to provide the broadband to do this. And perhaps then physical media could be done away with or at least consigned to some expansion peripheral.

Windows 8 release preview imminent

DrXym

Re: hoo ray

I should proof read. Vertical = horizontal.

DrXym

Re: hoo ray

"Nobody wanted to use a stupid Start Button either in 1995."

The main criticism of the start button was it said "start" which didn't make a whole lot of sense since the computer was already started. As a launcher though it proved very successful especially considering what it replaced in Windows 3.x.

The issue for Metro is that it doesn't provide any advantages over start at least for mouse / keyboard setups. Instead of a compact alphabetically sort list of programs you now have a contiguous smear of large tiles running several vertical screens sideways. It's a huge waste of space, requires a lot of mouse travel and mental effort to use and by flattening out groups it loses any sense of sorting.

MS could do a lot to improve the experience. First off would be to allow program groups. Most program groups contain 3 to 5 icons pointing at READMEs, help, uninstall etc. Just grouping stuff would save 3-5x the space in metro.

Second allow users to zoom in and out so that the tiles don't waste hideous amounts of space.

Third provide users with the means to multiple select tiles and ranges of tiles and sort them. Also provide a way to auto sort tiles.

Fourth, provide a metro launcher which provide some visual context of their desktop while they're doing this, e.g. the way GNOME's activities launcher does.

Fifth, put the Windows start icon back in so people can discover metro is there in the first place instead of expecting them to discover it by accident.

All of these things are simple and obvious ways to improve the experience. If they implement them they would improve the metro experience immeasurably over what is there. Whether it is "better" than the start menu would remain to be seen but at least it would make the experience tolerable.

DrXym

Hope metro has got the work it needs

The consumer preview was a really shoddy experience for desktop use. I'm hoping the intervening time has been put to good use and look forward to seeing what has changed.

Online bookie can't scoop £50k losses made by 5-year-old

DrXym

My Rabo account makes you use a hard token to perform any sort of transaction including buying or selling funds. You fill out the transaction detail, then log onto a hard token, stab in some server generated code and then type the resulting number back into the transaction form. Makes it pretty hard for anybody to do anything without possession of a lot of info.

That said, I have an online account with a US trading firm where once you're in you're in. I haven't tried borrowing on margin or whatever to see if extra security is invoked but for regular trade tickets your login is good enough to see it filled. That said, the site throws you out quite quickly from inactivity and has other session checks.

DrXym

I wonder

If the trades had made him money if he'd taken the thing to court to refund it to Spreadex. I do feel some sympathy because kids can be devious destructive bastards but at the end of the day I don't see why it's someone else's fault if you let one of them near a computer running trading software.

Friends fooled by Facebook Timeline 'removal tool' scams

DrXym

Re: I don't think you can blame Facebook

"Yes you can, and I do. The new look should have been opt in, not force fed. If they'd done that, there wouldn't be a problem."

The feature may have been unpopular but that doesn't mean their security or lack thereof is to blame with the subsequent trojan. If it hadn't used this as a ploy it would have used something else.

DrXym

Re: Facebook = New Microsoft

"Wow, that actually worked...."

Er no it doesn't work unless you missed the rather massive point that Facebook is a website. It cannot control what you do on your own machine or outside of the browser or even inside a browser if its not pointing at their website. Facebook may be able to mop up spam messages and assist users in cleaning up the mess, or failing that suspending accounts but they can only react after the fact.

This is in stark contrast to the situation with Microsoft where they made a number of very poor security decisions with Windows and software like MS Outlook, Internet Explorer which directly affected the operating system and everything running on top of it.

DrXym

Re: Facebook = New Microsoft

The problem here is that the Facebook user base is very large and contains a lot of computer illiterate people who have a poor concept of online security. It's not hard to see how somone could send out some trojan purporting to disable some unpopular feature and people would actually install it.

I don't think you can blame Facebook for this since it's largely out of their control. They can attempt to monitor and block infected users but they can't someone from installing software from a third party site through a browser on their computer.

Julian Assange extradition: What's next for WikiLeaker-in-chief?

DrXym

Re: Bradley Manning

Crucifixion? Good, out of the door, line on the left, one cross each.

Apple's Ping has fatal pong, says CEO

DrXym

Re: Spotify

Not just Spotify but Netflix too. I find it annoying enough that Netflix tells other members of the family or visitors to the house what we're watching, let alone telling complete strangers. At least it's optional but the question is why is it there at all.

Fedora 17: Mm.. this stew of beefy source tastes just right

DrXym

Re: No joy on VirtualBox

Hmm, now I discover it did install the kernel but didn't put it in the grub bootloader. But after updating the bootloader I get a bunch of errors about configuration issues. It's depressing when crap like this happens. I think I'll give up and reinstall.

DrXym

Re: No joy on VirtualBox

I don't think it even installed the fc17 kernel at all. All grub shows are the fc16 ones. Probably explains why it won't finish its init.d properly.

DrXym

No joy on VirtualBox

I have a FC16 image on VirtualBox and I went through the motions of installing the "preupgrade" app, running it, letting it go all the way through. Now I have a system which boots but shows "Fedora 16" in the console progress bar and then stops when it hits 100%. As if some .rpmnew is sitting around for me to discover that it didn't replace the boot sequence from FC16. Not a good first impression.

A laptop at home which I installed from the live CD worked a lot better.

Study: The more science you know, the less worried you are about climate

DrXym

Re: In other news

You speak too much sense to be commenting here.

DrXym

Re: This must be why

@pierre, Wikipedia provides this useful list of specific endorsements by leading scientific institutions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Statements_by_concurring_organizations

That endorsement easily qualifies as scientific consensus, representing the informed opinion of the members of those institutions. Consensus does not mean every last scientist in the world, including the cranks concur with an opinion. Consense requires that the large majority do and that is clearly the case.

Of course if you consider it to be a "fraction", provide a list of institutions of equal scientific standing who dissent.

Now I don't know about you, but if 98 doctors said my son was dying and needed urgent treatment and 2 said to wait and see or denied the illness outright I'd sure as hell know who I'd believe. The question is why when the question is applied to climate change that people choose the other option.

DrXym

This must be why

Every prominent climate agency and scientific academy is skeptical about global warming. Oh wait, none of them are. They all publicly endorse the notion of climate change and of it being man made.

What I want to know is why The Register is so firmly in the denialist camp. Is it just for trolling and the lulz or is someone paying them to do it.

DrXym

There is reporting and then there is systematically cherry picking and spinning.

Why Zuck will go soft for Facebook Phone - and rebrand Android

DrXym

Re: Lack of services

I think that is different since Google specifically sells GMail to businesses.

I'm referring to the likes of Bing, Yahoo, Amazon who might have the services that a Facebook phone needs to build out but are hardly going to be happy about playing second banana to Facebook. In the case of Bing, it's questionable if their interests are served by running on Android at all unless they hope to fragment the platform. And Amazon probably have their own aspirations to think of.

DrXym

Lack of services

Google has email, web search, VOIP, social networking, news aggregation, mobile advertising, maps / directions and an app store.

Facebook only has a fraction of that. I really don't see how they could possibly build out a phone by themselves. They'll have to go to people like Amazon or Bing (Microsoft) or Yahoo to provide all the services they don't have themselves and I really don't see any potential partners having the slightest interest in providing service to someone else's branded product.

I can understand why Facebook might want such a phone (given that Google is their rival) but for end users this looks like a losing proposition. They can already get Facebook on their phones without sacrificing functionality so what exactly would be the attraction in a branded phone?

Free Windows 8 desktop app development is dead

DrXym

That isn't the issue

Metro probably is okay for touch based apps. It absolutely is not okay for mouse / keyboard controlled apps. This can be seen all too well in the consumer preview. So by excluding support for conventional Windows apps, Microsoft are artificially restricting the appeal and utility of their software.

As it's free I can't really bitch and moan about their choice but it does seem a bit of a risky proposition to make their software LESS useful when it's not like there is a shortage of affordable / free development tools out there.

DrXym

Use Eclipse instead

If you want a free development tool for Windows, use Eclipse. It won't help with C# but you can develop Java apps just fine, even visual ones now that Window Builder is part of it.

You can also at a pinch develop C/C++ apps using Eclipse and MingW. C++ development certainly isn't as user friendly as DevStudio but it works.

Toshiba America says no to new netbooks

DrXym

Doesn't make much sense

Toshiba is proposing dropping netbooks, which cost £200 or thereabouts and selling ultrabooks which cost £800 or thereabouts. And they think people who were previously going to buy a netbook will splash 4x as much out on an ultrabook? More likely they'll just buy a netbook from another manufacturer.

Aga cooks up phone-controlled 'iOven'

DrXym

An app in search of a point

People set timers on their ovens usually to take something out, or to put something in, or to start something after so many minutes. I really don't see a huge benefit from putting an app to do this since you will be standing by the oven anyway.

I suppose if someone absolutely wanted to start warming the oven 30 minutes before they got home or some other fairly tenuous scenario then it might be of use. Given how hideously energy inefficient AGAs are, perhaps this is more relevant than it would be for conventional ovens. It still seems like a pretty pointless gimmick though.

Nokia and Symbian still number one in China

DrXym

Baidu

I just wonder how much the results are skewed by the fact that most Android phones are going to be pointing at Google's search engine, not Baidu's.

It's kind of like Microsoft coming out and trumping up the probable fact that Windows Phone users represent the largest % of Bing mobile hits.

HTC One V Android smartphone

DrXym

Not enough flash

940MB sounds a lot but games and apps are getting increasingly chunky and you'll soon fill it even if you know how to move app data to SD card.

Knowing HTC they probably bundled apps and assorted crapware like Facebook, Dropbox, Flash etc. into their phone's readonly firmware. What that means is that when an update arrives for these apps, which it will, you eat up double the space for the app. The update resides in flash and masks out the one in firmware.

Fake Angry Birds app makers fined £50k for shock cash suck

DrXym

Re: One more time -

"That doesn't mean that the model is broken ... it means that it doesn't operate the way you think it should and that people are ignoring the safeguards put in place. Nothing broken about it."

It is broken if people are ignoring the warnings, and the system provides no further safeguards once an app is installed. You can't ignore human nature in this sort of thing.

It could be fixed in a manner such as I suggested. Cyanogenmod already features functionality to override services on a per app basis. It just needs to be implemented in the standard Android build so it can percolate out into all devices and become the default behaviour.

DrXym

Re: One more time -

Android's model is broken because once you install you have no second chance to modify the permissions. It's obvious some people do not read the permissions or do not understand the dangers of leaving them open. It's likely too that people trust Angry Birds / Cut the Rope not to use those services maliciously any way.

What Android desperately needs are trust zones. Apps that don't come preinstalled should be regarded as untrusted by default. Any time they perform an action which could cost a user money such as send an SMS or make a call, a popup should appear on the user's screen asking if they wish to grant that access. Users who don't like these popups can dig into their app settings and mark the app as trusted.

Android should also permit what the playbook does where you can revoke permissions of an app even after you have installed it.

In other words secure by default.

DrXym

Re: Reprimanded?

And probably various computer and telecommunications related offenses.

Anonymous hacktivists dump 1.7GB load slurped from DoJ site

DrXym

Re: An End to Corruption

Anonymous is just engaging in some post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. They found some weak site, hacked it and after the fact came up with some pathetic excuse for justifying doing it. They'll engage in more faulty reasoning to justify whatever their next target happens to be.

Facebook IPO plunge sparks tidal wave of lawsuits

DrXym

Re: Rules of investing

I personally believe Facebook is way overvalued but that doesn't mean that Facebook or their underwriters can say X about their books and the reality is actually Y or that investors have no legitimate grievance to sue somebody over when the truth emerges. It is clear here that there were issues about how the IPO was managed which meant it was not conducted in a way which was fair or transparent.

DrXym

Re: Rules of investing

The problem here is that the rules of transparency concerning the IPO were not followed so the picture painted to potential investors was untruthful.

VIA outs $49 Raspberry Pi-alike

DrXym

Re: Looks more useful in some ways

You don't need to program to a GPU to benefit from a GPU. If your desktop windows are rendered into surfaces they don't need to be repainted every time some other window is dragged over them. This reduces the amount of repainting and context switches which results in a more responsive desktop.

DrXym

Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

I studied the screenshot and it's powered by a WM8750. According to the spec sheet for that it supports OpenGL ES 2.0 *and* 1080p.

http://www.wondermedia.com.tw/en/products/platform/soc/wm8750/

Why this Via says 720p only is a mystery. Maybe it hasn't the VRAM for any higher.

DrXym

Re: 720p

Even as a media player it could be okay. Not everyone has 1080p content. It might also be capable of downscaling 1080p to 720p. Really depends on what GPU is in there, the size of the VRAM and how much hardware acceleration it offers.

DrXym

Looks more useful in some ways

More memory, onboard flash, more USB ports. I'd be worried about the 720p output though. What's that mean for the GPU / hardware decoding capability of the device.

Star Trek's Scotty boldly goes where he always wanted to

DrXym

A portion of his remains

Sounds like they divvied him up just in case (as happened) rockets failed. Makes you wonder what will happen to the rest.

Evernote

DrXym

Re: I wish there was a notes app built in

I don't have a Galaxy S phone. I have an HTC desire which has a really crappy sticky notes widget that transforms writing into illegible scrawl.

I think it would be nice to have something built-in. Nothing fancy, just functional.

DrXym

I wish there was a notes app built in

Doesn't have to be much, just something you can type or scribble in. That would probably suffice for 90% of people.

Review: Raspberry Pi

DrXym

Re: Desktop performance is not surprising

Our company (back when I worked on STBs) had Android running on a 256MB MIPS SOC complete with mouse and keyboard support. I think you'd probably get the 2.x branch working relatively simply. It doesn't matter if Google support it or not since the community would maintain their own clone of the source and release their own binaries.

Nor is it hard to get the Google apps and once you get them you gain access to the marketplace and all the other apps. Any apps with native code (i.e. most games) are very likely to be filtered out though.

As to why do it at all, I think it would be useful for a couple of reasons. First because Android is rapidly becoming ubiquitous and therefore there are a lot of useful apps and widgets. Second Android is more lightweight than a desktop OS and is therefore better suited to the hardware.

I also mentioned Meego (or Tizen) being other alternatives. Basically something that doesn't overburden the hardware but makes it graphically useful for something.

DrXym

"You'll have to make sure all your video is h.264. It doesn't support anything else outside of software. "

This is quite common for SOCs. The hardware might be quite capable of running h264, vc1, DTS etc. but they're individually disabled unless you buy software tokens which are installed at the factory which enable the functionality. Even if they are enabled, it doesn't help much if the APIs to get to them are undocumented or proprietary.

I imagine that most people would choose to encode their content with h264 anyway so perhaps it's not such a big deal. MPEG4 ASP could probably done in software if its not hardware enabled, at least for SD content.

DrXym

Re: too much of a salesman

It's more than sufficient to run a web server, or to run a few discrete apps such as a media server.

Once you pile a desktop on though it probably does suffer. It has a fairly underpowered CPU and a brick wall of limited physical memory. The only place to go is to cut the desktop to the bone and / or enable swap. Swap would have to be on the flash or USB neither of which is going to be very fast.

The issue is compounded somewhat because X11 is a context switching bloater. I think Raspberry Pi would benefit a lot when Wayland appears since it cuts the memory bloat and context switching right down. Wayland is even built on top of OpenGL ES so it would be hardware accelerated. It still wouldn't be a good desktop but it might be tolerable.

DrXym

Desktop performance is not surprising

The Raspberry Pi is far better suited to running apps like XBMC. This is more or less how most set top boxes function today - an embedded Linux supporting a single foreground app. It was fairly predictable how lacklustre desktop performance would be, at least to anyone who has programmed set top boxes or used a comparable memory constrained environment such as Linux on the PS3.

I don't think the box would be suitable for a desktop unless someone ports Android, or Meego, or Wayland appears and cuts out all the X11 bloat. I think Android or Google TV would be particularly attractive if someone could get it going.

Nasdaq red-faced after software snafu stalls Facebook IPO

DrXym

Re: Whenever bugs are in the System, and they are, who knows what will happen when you feed them?!.

I think you've used a few too many elastic bands to secure your tinfoil hat. Anyone with secrets to hide or who simply values their privacy can do so just by not using Facebook or similar tools. Or if they do they exercise a little thing called lying.

DrXym

Re: stabalized?

FB shares took a crap today. Looks to me like many investors chose to offload them quickly because they didn't rise after their IPO. All that selling and no underwriter caused the price to slump. Facebook does have value as a business but it seems to have been substantially overhyped.

Hopefully they won't become another Groupon with extremely volatile shares going up and down like a yoyo but trending downwards all the time.

Waterstones stores surrender to Amazonian invaders

DrXym

This will not end well

Waterstones is selling a device whose sole purpose is to lock owners into Amazon's online store. What possible reason has Waterstones for selling it? Every one they sell is a customer lost forever.

They should have released their own ereader, or formed an alliance with WHSmith, Tesco and others to produce a brand of readers that ran over an open platform so that each of them could run their own stores and benefit from a shared ecosystem..

Hands on with the Motorola Razr Maxx

DrXym

I wundr

If ze razr maxx hazz a szplchkr

Microsoft to devs: Don't ruin Win 8 launch with crap code

DrXym

Are Microsoft implicitly admitting...

... that the only way to install apps is through their store? Because that would be an awfully shitty thing to inflict on users if its true.

Iran threatens to chuck sueball at Google over missing gulf

DrXym

Persian Gulf is fine

But Iran's attitude is not. It's a really stupid argument over a large expanse of water that Iran does not control. If consensus amongst countries in the region were to change the name, then the name should be changed. If the name continues in dispute then I see no issue in calling it Arabian / Persian Gulf until some international body sits everyone down and resolves the issue.

I'm not sure why Google should give a shit about which of either name is right. They certainly shouldn't try very hard to molify Iran given their obsession to isolate the entire country from the internet.