Posts by Bod

@AC

"The simple fact is that Opera wrote some new software and it has some bugs in it"

There's introducing new bugs, and then there's repeating the obvious mistakes that have gone before.

This was a schoolboy error. If you are implementing a JPEG library, given the history of these vulnerabilities, it would be one of the key things to check. Given also how mature JPEG rendering is, the thing should work flawlessly without possibility of crashes by now, but then it's madness to be reinventing the wheel in this case.

Of course if Opera was open source, some eagle eyed geeks would have spotted this flaw immediately before the code was allowed to get beyond beta.

@AC

"Who would want laptop which can not be controlled by user, where the manufacturer decide which application can be installed and which can not, and where user can not even see his own hard drive ?"

Hmm, you've just described an iPhone there ;-)

However that's not a fair comparison because unlike the iPhone, S60 devices do expose a file system (abstracted from the concept of hard discs and flash memory), it's just that areas that are dangerous for users to mess with are hidden (unlike on Windows), and generally there's no simple obvious file manager included on S60 devices, but then on a phone it's not really that necessary. Many apps for S60 will let you browse the public file system however, and not just those dedicated to that task (e.g. office apps etc).

What gets installed and what doesn't is just down to signing your apps. With S60 you aren't restricted by the manufacturer in doing so and essentially you can install whatever you like. Again, unlike Apple where apps are strictly controlled and only authorised apps can be installed officially.

That operators lock down the phones further is another matter, but no fault of Nokia, S60 or Symbian.

P2P

Are they still using their resource sapping P2P technology? That is the question.

There's a reason why most hardware manufacturers go for SIP instead, despite consumer awareness of SIP being low. It's standard, it's cheap, and easy to implement in embedded devices. Not to mention easy to support in ISP QoS routers and servers to ensure call priority and quality.

Skype is a kiddies Windows app that has been shoehorned into a few embedded devices with some difficulty (requiring external boxes, a lot of power in the device itself, or a 3rd party proxy server to do the main work).

The other question is does 'open' mean they'll allow peering with SIP services to allow SIP in and out calls (for free)?

Quality

Undercutting local jobs may suck, but frankly when you see the quality of work, speed and dedication of many of the Polish who come over here compared to the shoddy lazy over-running and over-priced work of some British labourers, there really is no argument. If you want to compete, improve the service and quality FFS!

Of course that's not to say all Brits are like this, but I do dismay at my own country sometimes. Public sector work is especially bad. Just look at how long it takes to dig a hole and lay a pipe along a short section of road. Go to some places in Europe and certainly North America, and it would be done in a few days, a week at the most. Britain? Roadworks for 3 months and watch them scratch their arses all that time (if they're there at all), and we pay for it in our taxes!

The Polish are a bit of an exception though. There are some countries who are sending over plenty of rubbish quality workers (especially in IT) who are undercutting British jobs. However British companies soon learn the mistake here as they realise they aren't up to the job.

@blackworx

Sure, you don't *need* 51 AF points. You don't even need 1. It's an assist that's all.

The main benefit is in object tracking. You can do it the hard way manually of course, or let the camera track and continually focus on a moving object. More points makes it a easier for the camera to track accurately (in Nikon's case at least it works on a lot more than just having more AF points, and uses various scene evaluation techniques to find the object you are trying to focus on and keep it focused).

But it's an optional feature to use. The point is however that Nikon and Canon's top end cameras provide far better options like this than Sony obviously are. Hence for the price I'd expect far more.

Now I don't really need it, which is I don't spend £2000 on a camera! But if I did, I'd want my money's worth.

Full price

Paying full price really depends what you spend on calls etc. If you are a heavy user then subsidised contracts can be justified. However a lot of people don't consider just what they are paying in total for their cheap phone with a new contract.

New contracts are massively more expensive than they used to be. I remained on my old contract with is about £12 a month now and just buy SIM free phones instead. The total price I pay over a couple of years is the same as if I was on a £40 contract and got the phone "free" or cheap, but because I make hardly any calls, just receive them mostly and use the Internet capabilities via WiFi now, it makes more sense. Especially as the phones come unlocked and unbranded (not counting the iPhone of course).

However £600+ for a top end Nokia is still way OTT. I'd normally be looking at the £300 mark for a new sim free smartphone phone.

If that is the real retail price, you can guarantee that it will be a fraction of that price within a year. Maybe that's what they realise, i.e. rapid depreciation.

@Paul Vail

I know what you mean about finding apps, but there is in fact the Ovi App Store coming up in a few months time (so you see they have been spending those millions investing in this stuff. In fact the upcoming N97 is dependent on Ovi). It should then be much easier to find apps.

The beauty of Symbian is that no matter which S60 phone you have you have a rich choice of 3rd party apps and they're not forced through an approval process to run on the phone.

I prefer the 3rd party market to be just that though rather than being strictly controlled by the manufacturer (*cough* Apple).

Downside of Nokia products though is there are so many of them and support does seem to dwindle once they are in the shops as attention moves to new models. However compared to some other manufacturers, at least they have some support (and don't charge you for their supporting software either).

Opt out / opt in

If you weren't on a rolling contract before and they send a letter saying you will be opted in if you don't reply, then you can break the contract with no charge as they have changed the T&Cs. Doesn't matter what they say in the letter.

However I doubt this is actually the case. It sounds like they are doing like everyone else and conning people into signing up to a contract when asked questions like "do you want this *free* offer?".

PlusNet have been doing that in recent years, though the offers are quite reasonable (last was a few quid off my monthly bill for basically staying with them for another 12 months), though sometimes sneaky (e.g. last offer came shortly before they then introduced some bargain "value" deals that are much cheaper).

However unless the contract specifies it's a rolling contract they can't change you onto one at a later date. Well they can, but again you have the right to cancel due to change of contract T&Cs.

Re: Taking the piss

Indeed. His jibe at the beeb about it being a slow news day made me laugh.

For you twitter naysayers

The real money is in the businesses that can effectively advertise on twitter.

Twitter may have started out as a means for people to post inane rubbish about what they had for breakfast but recently a lot of companies, the entertainment industry, and even public authorities, have realised it's a good way to keep people informed. All you have to do is be on twitter and "follow" them. It's like RSS in that way, except the 'tweets' are more than just official press releases.

Hell, even the government is twittering now, with stuff from No.10, and I suspect some MPs too.

Twitter has already contemplated charging companies, rich people and public entities for broadcasting on twitter, but there's a problem there in that if they do that, they'll simply stop using twitter.

Anyway, don't knock twitter until you've tried it. It's more useful than you think. But if all you're going to do is add your friends or any old random crazy teen, then yeah, twitter is exactly as you predict. Used usefully and you don't even need to 'tweet' yourself, just follow people.

Further on the quality thing

Yes, listening to 128kbps MP3s is going to sound rubbish compared to archive quality MP3 encodings, or better still FLAC.

To say these don't improve the sound is rubbish though, even with the poorer quality encodes. Compared to shitty earbuds you get with MP3 players, noise isolating earbuds will reveal a lot more detail, depth and bass. It's the way they seal up the ear and create a good aucoustic environment in your ear.

Fact is that even crap encodings are made worse with poor earbuds. However they will also reveal just how crap encoding is. It was decent earbuds that got me to rip all my CDs to FLAC and use archive quality encodings for MP3, because of all the artefacts I could suddenly hear. It also stopped me downloading or borrowing dodgy rips off other people and I buy CDs now to rip myself (wouldn't buy downloads either).

Treated to decent quality source though these things shine. In fact the argument goes the other way. Don't bother with high quality encodings if you use the cheap ear buds supplied with the gadget.

Oh, and to go a step further, look into Crossfeeding. That's where you can get a more accurate stereo sound from headphones (problem being that headphones isolate the channels to each ear creating an "in head" sound, and are not like speakers where the sound from both speakers actually hits both ears). This can also make listening to stereo music less tiring. Some MP3 players have this built in now, and can be found as plugins for many media players on computers. Rockbox (the open source alternative player for many MP3 players, inc iPod and iRiver) also supports it.

Anyway, don't knock 'em till you've tried 'em.

Transparent ISPs

"The good news is that the vulnerability only seems to affect proxy servers running in transparent mode"

A lot of ISPs work in this mode.

Blu-Ray

Problem is 2.35:1 films (which is the main reason for this set) are presented on Blu-Ray (and DVD) in 16:9 with hard matted black bars. The resolution available on the disc for the 2.35:1 film itself is less than a 21:9 TV will be capable of. The TV will have to scale the image and crop the black bars.

As many will know, the last thing you want is the image to be scaled in any way on a pixel based set (LCD, Plasma).

Blu-Ray should have been specified to store films and TV shows just in the actual ratio they are made, and let the player or TV fill gaps with black bars. Though tricky with the menus and subtitles which are often placed in black bar areas.

Anyway, whilst a 21:9 TV would be kind of nice for 2.35:1 films (which are impressive at that width in the cinema), there are too many films that are 1.85:1, 1.66:1, 1.33:1 and odd ratios between, and of course TV is a mix of 1.77:1 (16:9) and 1.33:1(4:3).

Solution to the black bar moans though is same as with 4:3 sets... get over it ;). Or just turn the lights off/down.

Alternatively, get a projector and then you don't have the obvious frame to make you fuss about the bars, or if you use a frame around your screen then just do like in the cinema and have it expand to super wide when showing 2.35:1 films. Ultimate cinema experience then :)

N97

Of course, one issue is that although a beta, it needs to be sorted before the N97 launch as that's plugging Ovi integration.

@@Shame

Or the N97 when it's out. Slide-out qwerty keyboard, touchscreen, wifi, and *free* software from Nokia to do all your syncing etc.

Oh dear

Sounds similar to the cheesy Doctor Who / Eastenders crossover. Though at least that was for "charidee".

Obviously cashing in on CC's current role in Corrie though.

Just hope Dave can provide the laughs unlike the Sky/BBC effort with Blackadder Back & Forth.

@billy no mates

And that is precisely why linux won't be mainstream on the desktop.

If Joe Public and his granny needs to muck about like that to run an application, then they're not going to bother with the OS at all.

Or they do like with Vista's UAC and essentially give themselves admin rights to bypass it.

Joe Public with linux will likely just run everything sudo (as in fact I see a lot of linux guides blindly advise typing 'sudo this' and 'sudo that' without stressing the danger of what they are doing!).

Anyway, I laugh at all the PHP hacked servers out there running on... Linux!

In fact half the viruses and trojans downloaded off the web are probably on there because of unpatched PHP apps running on... Linux!

(yeah I know PHP isn't specific to linux, but the point is linux admins blindly assume they are invulnerable because it is linux).

Reason for failure 2

Stupidly large disc !

DVD won the public over mostly in form factor. Small. Like a CD. Fits nicely on the shelves.

Wins over the female audience in that way and that is the critical factor ;)

Resolution was very much secondary. Recordability wasn't even that important as people still had VHS to record and they only needed a couple of tapes knocking around for that.

Blu-ray's appeal to women?...

Battery

I can see why they avoid the netbook term as it's hardly a netbook if official claims are only 4 hours battery life. Very poor for a netbook, especially at such a high premium price (which is higher still when you have to buy proprietary peripherals as Sony like to lock you into their products).

Will you be able to transfer a Blu-Ray you have purchased to this to watch on the move? I very much doubt it. Sony will probably come up with yet another proprietary DRM format, this time a download format launched on a iTunes-like service and charged at a premium (pay per view even).

EV certs

Problem with EV certs is they cost companies a lot more. Fine for big businesses but a small business or individuals running a secure connection that needs certs is going to find EV certs prohibitively expensive.

No chance

The shuttles were never designed for anything other than relatively low earth orbit. The stresses involved in the thrust and gravity fields to take it to mars, not to mention the radiation outside of low orbit, having to refit them for life support to mars (and maybe back)... it's just going to cost 100s of billions.

And that's not even considering the complexity of using the ZX81 power of computing they have to fly to Mars! ;-)

@Lewis Mettler, re: weight.

Indeed. 25 (metric) tonnes in Mars gravity (very aprox). They're apparently 68 tonnes empty weight on Earth. Can go up to 105 tonnes though for an Earth landing (so 39 on Mars). Though would lower gravity allow a greater maximum weight tolerance for landing?

@Paul Murphy

It has bluetooth also.

http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5800_xpressmusic_-2537.php

But for touch from Nokia, there is better to come (e.g. the N97). 5800 isn't the iPhone killer. I doubt the N97 will be either as it's not as stylish, but it will do a hell of a lot more than the iPhone. For those who prefer functionality over style it will be a winner.

The 5800's appeal will be in the music offering probably (sadly DRM'd though).