Posts by martinX

Why run Java?

Good question. So I have disabled it as of now. Doesn't Open Office use it? Oh well, no loss. Maybe Steve's right when he disses Java and won't have it on the iPhone. Who am I kidding? "Maybe" - of course he's right.

Who is Frank?

Wait - you guys have a drug education program called "Frank"? What's your financial education program called? Bill?

Another anecdote

I have to say it's been fine for me. I went with the beta, then upgraded a week after the full 4.0 came out and it's been fine. If anything, the full 4.0 reloads pages faster when using the Back button, which is nice. The only time I have ever had trouble with any version of Safari, it was due to 3rd party plugins. Ditto Quicktime FWIW (Perian plugin was the problem, but it's all good now).

@Steven

It's when you use an Apple product that you finally get what all the fuss was about.

OK, it's an emu on our coat of arms

Hey, I woke up at 3 am with a headache and sore throat and proceeded to post on El Reg. I'm sorry if our $#@#ing emu looked like a ^&%$ing ostrich in my befuddled brane :-S . What's he doing with ostriches anyway? That's un-Australian, Bruce.

To make up for my mistake, I'm using the Tux the Emu icon.

Video calls

But will it make video calls yet. That is the one feature I'm waiting for. Yes, I'll probably never use it but I want it anyway.

Like the Irish email virus

This is as much a security breach as the Irish email virus. Come on, you have to deliberately download it *from a warez site*, install it and (because it's running as root) probably put in your admin password as well.

(http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/565/)

Keynote, not PPT

cirby said: "You might want to back off of that "science is done" bit - even Al Gore is starting to back off of a lot of his claims. Several slides have disappeared from his famous global warming PowerPoint show, "

Al Gore used Keynote, not PowerPoint. That's why he was able to be so persuasive. But I suppose in that case he should have used Persuasion, by Aldus.

Is that really a graphics update?

"The main change is the use of a new Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor to replace the feeble Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics used in previous models."

The new mac mini shows an improvement in the OpenGL scores (~25%), but virtually none in Quartz rendering (~3%). I would have thought that the thrust behind Apple moving to an Nvidia graphics chip would have been to prepare the way for Snow Leopard's ultra-cool graphics that will look dazzling on the lowest hardware made in the 6 months leading up to its arrival.

If that was the plan it has either failed or Apple will be improving its drivers fantastically sometime between now and Snow Leopard.

Passwords, pretty please

Well this is obvious. They're being nice to him up until the day he goes to prison so he doesn't screw their system. When he goes to jail, they'll say "We need to hire a temp to fill your position for, say, 4 years with time off for good behaviour. So could we pretty please have all the passwords. All of them. Yep. All. Please. Yeah, you can have your job back when you get out. Sure. Just write them all here. kthxbye"

Listen up, drones.

GOOD CITIZENS OF EARTH. Stay in your homes and lead cold, quiet lives. THANKYOU FOR LISTENING. CANADA OUT.

(Angelic Steve because I'm using Safari 4 Beta)

AppleTV anyone.

Guffaw guffaw, said the AppleTV owner. Not perfect, but quite resilient.

History Repeats, History Repeats

"Late to the table with a shoddy offering that shows poor understanding of the market they are trying to muscle in on. "

That sounds just like a Zune comment. Maybe we could abbreviate to:

LTTTWASOTSPUOTMTATTMIO and use that for all future MS endeavours.

@Gianni Straniero

"Tell that to the Australians."

Tell me what? It's summer here and it's hot. Like it is every summer, and I've seen 44 of them. What we're seeing now is the rise of the air-conditioned generation who ascribe every deviation from 25 degrees C of greater than 5 degrees to some malevolent force. Mind you, I love living and working in aircon, too.

Expensive Plasmas v Expensive OLED

"I know alot of people will cry at the £3000 price tag but its the first get of a new technology, remember when Plasma TV's were £20,000, way back, when they first come out!"

Yes but the first plasmas were BIGGER than any other TV you could buy at the time. This thing is pretty much the *smallest* TV you can buy (and it's not even portable). It would certainly be the most expensive TV per inch you could buy now or ever.

I know that thin is in, but @#$% me that's an expensive 11 inches.

This colour or that colour?

Here's how I see videocalling being used: :Honey do you want this one, or this one? (holds up phone to view two similar doily-girly-fluffy things in the shops).

Trivial usage, but isn't a lot of what we use tech for really trivial?

New Pana units

I'll be upgrading/consolidating my equipment once the panasonic unit I want comes down to a reasonable price. Twin HD tuner, hard drive, blu-ray, can burn to blu-ray.Nice.

@Alien8n

I realise my comments may have sounded glib, but I do have an inkling of how hard (and how much it costs) to get these things up and running. But I still don't think it's a good idea for the word "monopoly" to be chucked about every time a customer doesn't get what they want. There is 'monopoly' and the is 'abuse of monopoly power'. There is also collusion to distort markets, which has the same effect as abuse of monopoly power.

If the options are: force a manufacturer to make a product at a price a customer wants, or allow market forces to influence prices up and down, I think we're all better off with the latter. If the US military is the only customer for this in the whole world, then they are gointg to have to get used to the idea that they are going to be at a disadvantage.

The alternative for them is to start their own fabrication plants. Competition is good, but forcing competition is a slippery slope.

What is it with their components anyway? Are they the only people in the whole world that have spacecraft or aeroplanes?

Scroll wheel on unit.

I took one of these for a spin and hated the control on the front. It's supposed to be touch-sensitive but its sensitivity left a lot to be desired. When I want to turn the volume up, don't make me try and figure out exactly how I'm supposed to place my finger in order to get the system to respond. Pity, because otherwise it was an OK system. I ended up getting a Panasonic.

Big Blue iPods?

I'm not sure what IBM's worried about. IBM makes big things, not teeny iPod-sized things. If Mr Papermaster (what a great name) was to put IBM's secrets to direct use in the iPod division, expect to see "the iPod Macro - three cubic feet of music-playing wonderment". Maybe he's just a smart guy and nerdy IBM is upset he's gone to play with the cool kids.

Hands off the public service

I can't understand why USians, who seem to get the whole 'separation of church and state' thing, don't get the 'separation of powers' thing when it comes to the public service (aka Civil Service).

Here in Oz, politicians (i.e. anyone voted into office) are supposed to have a completely hands-off approach to how the public service carries out its functions. It doesn't always work but it's salient to note that all of the voter frauds I can think of have been carried out by political party members outside the Australian Electoral Commission. No-one has ever accused the AEC of voter fraud.

Another thing, what's with the obsession of signing up as a Democrat or Republican (or something else) from age 18. All that does is firmly ensconce people into one of two opposing camps (be quiet, Libertarians). I think it discourages swinging voting and encourage a team mentality with respect to how people view political parties ('my team is better than your team') rather than an examination of policies.

Unfortunately, politics in Oz is heading the US way and getting nastier all the time.

The Mac, Xerox, the joke

Andrew Moore: Apple's engineers (and Steve Jobs) toured Xerox precisely to see what they were doing. This was with Xerox's blessing. Xerox got Apple stock as payment. Win-win, as they say. The article referenced also says "Of course, there were some ex- Xerox people in the Lisa and Mac groups, but the design point for these machines was so different that we didn't leverage our knowledge of the Xerox systems as much as some people think. "

Secondly (everyone), Cade's article is a joke. A funny. Laugh. Or don't. But don't take it seriously.