Posts by Richard Tobin
105 posts • joined Monday 13th August 2007 19:53 GMT
You can see right now at http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_air. What Samsung announced is the non-Apple-specific version of what Apple already has.
Style over substance
Apple needs to get over its obsession with thin edges. As you point out, you can't even see them when you're using it. It started with the Macbook Air, which Apple had obviously hoped to sell as the lightest laptop, but when they found that it wasn't they had to settle for "thinnest at the edges". I use a previous generation iMac and giving up the optical drive for something I'd never notice is absurd.
Re: open handset alliance
Is Firefox OS really an Android fork? Isn't it just another Linux-based phone OS that shares some code with Android?
Scientists are easily fooled
Did they put an ammeter on the earthing cable?
Truffles
Exquisite truffles are not found in jars. They must be eaten fresh.
Fry' comments have a perfectly reasonable interpretation
The term "universal machine" does not only apply to the theoretical tape-based machine described in Turing's 1936 paper. It is quite reasonable to consider the ACE as an attempt to implement a universal machine. I don't see anything in Fry's comments to indicate that he thinks Turing built a physical "Turing machine" in the silly sense you imply. Fry is quite correct that Turing developed the idea of a universal machine and then went on to build - or at least design - a machine that implemented that idea.
Re: even ~600m is ridiculous
They haven't had the appeal yet. This is about how much Apple gets supposing that Samsung don't overturn any of the verdict on appeal, which they most likely will. The final amount will probably be much lower.
You should see how outraged the fan boys are on sites like Apple Insider.
Suspicious figures
"100 per cent rating at killing rootkits, compared to 83 per cent for Microsoft and 67 per cent for Symantec". Did they by any chance test exactly 6 rootkits?
Date ushed back 5 times
My exchange and cabinet were originally scheduled to be enabled in September 2011. The date has since been pushed back by 3 months 4 times and by 6 months once and is currently listed as March 2013.
Wii U
The Wii U already has a placeholder Lovefilm application installed when you buy it. But when you try to run it, it says an update is needed, and none materialises. The Netflix application is similar, but something does get downloaded.
At least you didn't fall for this one...
... like Slashdot did: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/11/29/2331246/nasa-curiosity-has-found-plastic-on-mars
Maplin
Well that will be the end of Maplin then. They'd be better off remaining what they are.
Maybe more trouble for Apple
The court required Apple to make the announcement (rather than leaving it to Samsung) because it had to come "from the horse's mouth". The newspaper statement does not say that it's Apple who is making it, so they may be in for another hard time from the judge!
What they don't mention...
... is that they have also delayed many already-announced exchanges. My exchange was due to get FTTC in summer of 2011, but every three months, a week before the deadline, they put it back three months (and yes, today it's changed from 30 September to 31 December). So these 2013 announcements should be taken with a pinch of salt.
NFC off by default
You have to enable NFC explicitly, so most users will not be vulnerable.
Entirely Apple's own fault
<Nelson>Ha ha</Nelson>. Apple's uses fanbois' obsession when it suits them, so it's nice to see it hitting their sales. Secrecy is their choice, and those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.
Posted in Google in the clear on Oracle patents
100% record
Has Florian Mueller ever been right about anything?
Re: Absolute nonsense Zurich graph
The coloured dots indicate missing observations - 200 years ago there wasn't always someone counting sunspots. They have nothing to do with the number of sunspots.
Absolute nonsense
We have not had any "decades-long trends of declining sunspot activity" as Battsman claims. On the contrary, we have had 70 years of high solar activity. See for example http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/Zurich_Color_Small.jpg which shows the sunspot number for the last 250 years.
I wouldn't put too much trust in predictions of a forthcoming long minimum either. Only 6 years ago many scientists were predicting that this solar cycle would be another big one, for example http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/21dec_cycle24/ which forecast "one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago". On the contrary cycle 24 was delayed and could well be the weakest since the 1920s. The mechanisms of solar activity are becoming better understood, but any long-term prediction should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
"split on party lines"
Tories are denouncing the report as partisan - Labour and Lib Dems support it, the Tories don't. In other words, Murdoch can *still* rely on the Tories to protect him. What has he got on them?
Unrealistic pricing
The author seems to think that because the BBC can't make all programs available free, anyone who won't pay to download them is being unrealistic. Why? Maybe, like me, they just don't think it's worth the money. The TV licence is 40p/day, so why would I pay more than a few pence to watch a single program? The suggested £1.89 is absurd.
I don't believe a word of it
It's inconceivable that Apple haven't been building MacOS X on ARM for years, just as they did with x86 while selling PPC Macs. They may well have had a student do a project, but not because they didn't already have a port.
Did they understand the question?
Perhaps they thought they were being asked how much they would want to top up each time.
Unless they report the questions actually asked, the results are worthless.
"Not how PGP files work"
That phrase makes me distrust whoever said it. Of course it isn't how PGP files work, but it's just a smoke screen - the file was only supposed to exist for a few hours, and be on a secure server. That's what makes it temporary.
Posted in LulzSec disavows alleged Census hack
Grammar flame
That should be "stupider than you and ME". Don't these hackers know anything?
Posted in Is iPhone data collection legal?
The dangers illustrated...
They'd have got Bin Laden years ago if he hadn't been waiting for a white iPhone.
Garbled
"including one in the XSLT generate-id() function heap"
There's no such thing as a function heap. The actual description is "XSLT generate-id() function heap address leak" which means revealing a heap address in the generate-id() function.
Not the fifth free-est
Just the fifth in a list that doesn't include France, Spain, Sweden, Austria, Norway, Ireland, Japan, Greece, ...
Posted in Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs inbound
Bug
I would have thought laptops like the MacBook Air could avoid the chipset bug, as two of the SATA ports work and Apply can control which ones are used.
Posted in BBC apologises for Top Gear outrage
"Only the insecure take offence"
What kind of argument is that? It's ok to offend the insecure? Sounds like bullying to me.
Posted in BBC apologises for Top Gear outrage
Not funny enough
Some people reject a joke because <whatever subject> isn't funny. But it isn't the subject that's crucial; you can have a joke about anything provided it's funny enough. And that's where Top Gear failed. It just wasn't funny enough. It's stretching to call it a joke at all - more a list of insults. Clarkson et al aren't comedians - they're just not good enough to judge the line between humour and unmitigated offensiveness.
Posted in FBI 'planted backdoor' in OpenBSD
NDA?
Does the FBI really use 10-year NDAs for this purpose?
offprints?
300,000 pounds for offprints? These people are nuts!
Remember the "Black Watch"?
If it's up to the usual Sinclair standard you will have to assemble it yourself out of pieces that don't quite fit together, and the battery will stop working after a couple of weeks.
Posted in BBC One HD to go live tonight
upscaling
It's not just a question of the BBC's upscaling hardware being better; it will be working on the undegraded source material rather than the compressed and bandwidth-limited SD Freeview stream.
Iran, India, Indonesia
Is it cleverly targeted at countries beginning with "I"?
Perhaps it will turn out to have caused the Icelandic banking collapse.
Posted in Brits not buying into Freeview HD
HD in Scotland
It's not true that all of Scotland will have Freeview HD in 2010. The main transmitters already do, but many relays will not until the digital switchover next year.
iPlayer on Viera Cast
I mailed Panasonic about this, and they said they have "no plans" to provide it. Which is pretty silly, since they already have most of the necessary infrastructure..
Posted in Nominet chief tells domainers to grow up
"the respectable end of the domaining community"
There is no respectable end to the "domaining community". They're all just a bunch of parasites.
So...
... if it wasn't for the fortunate solar influence, human industrial activity would have had a much greater effect on climate? And now the solar influence has worn off?
Perhaps
It's to go on the front of the new Apple TV box, displaying tiny pictures of album covers.
You're oversimplifying
If a siphon doesn't depend on atmospheric pressure, why can't you siphon water up more than 10m? Clearly gravity is the source of the energy, but it works by the weight of the long side reducing the pressure at the top of the siphon so that the liquid on the short side is pushed up by atmospheric pressure.
It is reportedly possible to siphon in a vacuum if the liquid is thoroughly degassed, relying on the tensile strength of the liquid, but this is not the main mechanism in normal siphoning.
Don't be too sure
Even as we speak, MICROSCOPIC black holes may be OSCILLATING back and forth through the EARTH ITSELF accumulating MASS as they go. It could take WEEKS or DECADES before we learn the TRUTH.
Meanwhile, look for very small holes in the floor.
Posted in BT hijacks business browsers
Great idea
I'm sure they'll be doing the same with phone calls soon.
