* Posts by GrantB

237 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

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Nvidia boss: Windows 8 will run Windows Phone 7 apps

GrantB
Boffin

Why?

I am trying to think of apps on my iOS device that I would want to run on my desktop... I can't think of any off hand. For instance there is a RWC2011 app that I have.. but sitting at my Win7 desktop, I am not going to run the same app - I would just use the website in Chrome and use the extra space.

Most 'phone' apps are going to assume (quite rightly) that the device is mobile and has hardware like cameras, accerometers etc as well as a small screen. Apple can get away with some cross-over between Lion and iOS as they certify apps can run on 4" iPhones, 10" iPads and that the MacBooks running Lion have most of the same hardware.

Could work out quite badly for WP7 in comparsion; if a full-fat Windows 8 OS indeed runs on a mobile device (which it will) and can run mobile apps, then why would developers target a much smaller WP7 market and build any apps that use any phone specific API call? Companies like Nokia might be best to stick Windows 8 on highend phones with enough memory and CPU.

I still think WP7 is doomed to be squeezed out between W8 on desktops, tablets and highend phones, and cheaper OS's for low-end phones (Android/Bada/Symbian etc). That is a niche that won't be profitable for MS to continue investing billions into developing and supporting WP7

Would you be seen dead with a shopping computer?

GrantB
Boffin

$300m a year

Still buys a lot of development resource; and from what I read Google are pretty good at churning out code. I suspect the legal budget might be signficant however - good lawyers are actually more expensive than good coders, (sadly)

If Google are spending significant amounts of money, it gives hardware makers a good reason not to fork. Even the top-tier handset companies don't have that sort of money to throw at maintaining changes in things like browser technology or payment systems or whatever is required next week in a mobile platform.

Adding another layer or removing stuff only works for so long; somebody like Amazon would struggle to compete with Google software development, so a standard Android 3.x install on a generic chinese handset will have a state of the art Chrome/WebKIt browser whereas the Amazon tablet will quickly fall behind. After all, whats the browser or twitter client like on the Kindle at the moment?

Not to mention that Google can start playing games like embedding ebook readers and access into future OS versions that Amazon will have to cut out of any bug-fix updates.

Amazon will have to struggle to stop the jail-break crowd getting an alternative Android install running on the tablet as well.

I think Google should just offer multiple Android versions - a free open source version, and a paid for version ($10 per handset or whatever) that gives hardware makers protection against patent claims. Given the amount of Android handsets, Google could make a lot of money.

Thought also occurred; Google still have plenty of money in the bank. own Motorola mobile business.. and Nokia's value is being driven down by Elop.. people assume that MS will buy Nokia once it is cheap enough.. but Google buying Nokia would be 'interesting'

How are we going to search our hard disks now?

GrantB
Boffin

amazing that search is so borked

I need search to work on my local drives; I have thousands of source code files in multiple development languages and trying to find functions, tags, variables in source and related log files or other output files (XML, CSV and PDF etc) that contain key words is stupidly hard for something that should just work (and used to).

Windows 7 and built in search can help narrow files it knows about, but is amazingly slow; I can start a search for a keyword in an indexed location, and manually open a command window, grep and find the files I need faster than it can complete. WTF?

Google Desktop was even faster, but didn't give much in the way of narrowing selections (I didn't generally want email searched for instance). Sad but true - in 2011 we still have to resort to command line grep

Last ever batch of TouchPads isn't coming to Blighty

GrantB
Boffin

How does the HP CEO keep his job?

I mean, managmenet seemed to have no idea that the Touchpad would fail at $400, depsite lots of early reviews indicating that the software was not fully tuned and needed a 1.1 release to fix.

Then dumping it on the market for less than people were willling to pay..you don't need a Phd in economics to have figured out that they probably could have sold them all at 25% more.. and made significantly less loss.

Obvious (and not just in hindsight) thing to have done, would have been to sold the first run at a little below cost ($200-$300?) and established the brand and WebOS ecosystem. HP must have mastered the art of getting PC's to customers at the least possible cost, so within a year or so would no doubt have got the cost of the build down to the point where they made money. In particular if they used the business channel and got the Touchpad into companies as a device suitable for vertical markets.

Sony prices up PlayStation telly for UK

GrantB
Boffin

Split Sound?

Ok, so you can have two screens showing seperate images for two gamers parked infront of the screen; I thought about ways of doing that with LCD shutters ages ago.

But how do they deal with sound? Maybe two headphone sockets but then how does the PS3 deal with splitting the output - deviding up the 5.1?

Harder to shutter two seperate sound streams via LCD googles...

Tablets will overtake consumer PCs, says Fujitsu CTO

GrantB
Boffin

Already there

Gave up on PC gaming ages ago - not worth the expense of maintaining a gaming PC for the odd game, so play Killzone/GT5 etc on my PS3 in the lounge on a 40" LCD.

About once or twice a month I use the home computer (sitting in the study) for printing or creating documents, and at work I have a decent laptop, but I find the laptop tends to be used more and more as a desktop & I rarely undock it these days. My wife and kids use the home computer a little more (online games in Flash being one reason) but Android tablets do that as well.

For pretty much everything else, such as reading/interacting with TheRegister/Slashdot/newspapers etc, I find tablets more useful. I can flick on the iPad and immediately read email or flick to a site to check for an update. I can't think of much I can't do; and people thinking you can't do light weight image or video editing on an iPad should take a look at some of the apps on iOS.

Compare that to my newish HP ProBook running Win7; arrived at work late the other day, flicked it open to check which meeting room I had a meeting in at 9:00am .. crl-alt-del, finger print check, flick to Outlook, found some issue with it still thinking it had multiple monitors so would not show, try Win-P to revert screen display, try closing and restarting Outlook, fail, restart windows.. taking ages to close down running background tasks, ... in the end at least 3+ frustrating minutes to get from opening the lid to Outlook 2010 actually showing the calendar. That is not that uncommon experience, in particular crusty Windows machines after a few months or years of software and patches installed.

So yes, tablets won't totally replace PC's - and the Fujitsu guy didn't claim they would, but for large number of people, most of the time, they do fine. Issue for MS is that I see no need to upgrade my home PC - its still running XP and other than hardware replacement when it fails, I can't see any reason to replace it with Win8 or anything else as tablets do 80 or 90% of the work.

Microsoft surprises Street with double-digit growth

GrantB
Boffin

Reading elsewhere

Online is actually a big money pit - that gain in revenue was brought for millions.

And Entertainment & Devices Division Revenue apparently includes the Android revenue.

Love to know how much of the growth was due to Android vs WP7 Phone

Nokia ‘giving away phones at cost’

GrantB
Boffin

except

Its pretty obvious (given the context), that Nokia are selling vastly more dumb-phones than smart-phones right now.

If they are making more of a margin as a percentage on each dumb-phone, then even if the total profit per unit, is less on a dumb-phone, then I would still expect them to be making most of there profit on dumb-phones, in particular if they assigned the bulk of R&D software costs to smart-phones. Not a given that the total profit per unit is less on dumbphones though - your example, the base cost was 10x larger.. I suspect a smart phone does not cost that much more to make, and if (as the story says) the margin approaches 0 %, then yes, the profit on basic mid-range phones will be greater per unit as well as a percentage.

i.e. the cost of developing a Nokia 1100 or 2300 is sunk cost, so sales will be profitable in large numbers,

Earth orbit for £1,000? You must be joking

GrantB
Boffin

people thinking a gun won't work

Martin Budden - trajectory is not a problem - its just a matter of hitting delta-v. if you have enough speed (~Mach 25), then you orbit. If you boosted an ICBM's velocity, (which are designed to come down in halfway around the work), then they would enter LEO - which would decay to the point that they would come down sometime.

James Hughes - "The velocity of the projectile as it leave the barrel would either vapourise the projectile, or, if that didn't happen, air drag would reduce the velocity so rapidly that it wouldn't make it in to orbit".

Except Gerald Bull dealt with these issues back in the 60's, with the HARP project. You can deal with in a number of ways (including ablating the nose cone), but you are through the thickest part of the atmosphere very quickly - you though away most of the casing (the sabot) and use a rocket after that. It does put constraints on how robust the projectile is of course.. but then the explosive launch and high G's also does that.

Andy D 1 - Gun barrels are relatively light and deal that PSI - being perfectly circular helps. The IRAQ super gun and German V3 both had non-traditional cannon barrels - you just need very strong machined piping .. and I don't know what PSI a space cannon would run to but believe that they don't go higher than something like a naval cannon - they instead go for long barrel lengths to accelerate the projectile slower.

John Smith 19 - has some good input. As I mentioned, multiple gas fired tubes leading into the barrel branching style (as with the V3 or as I think of it, a monster potato gun) would one way to accelerate the projectile over the entire length of the barrel rather than one charge. be a machining nightmare (to make strong and precise). Seals, deals with shock waves, and a number of other issues; but you only have to solve the problems by trial and error in a scaled down version; if you build a single rocket, then when something goes wrong (and it will) then you have to start again.

GrantB
Boffin

Captain DaFt is closest I think

Total cost of the gun is not counted, (nor the propellant)? so only the cost of the projectile which could just about be a nicely machined, steel or carbon fibre can with solid state sensors/transmitters inside.

If the barrel is long enough, then the acceleration does not have to be that crushing either; you don't have to hit the same sort of g-forces that relatively cheap smart bullets/shells hit every day.

According to Wiki (I know!), x25 smart shells will cost down to $35 each.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM25_CDTE

Nice thing about the space gun idea is that it has already been partially done. The HARP project back in the 1960's threw 180Kg projectiles to 180km & about 50% of delta-v, all using a 40m barrel which was apparently scrapped battleship cannons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP#Background

Not sure of the maths, but if the target project (minus sabot) was a 20g carbon fibre rod, rather than 180KG of steel, then the height and delta-V would be seriously increased.

Would not be cheap to build the launcher (though within Top Gears budget), but I suspect modern CAM machining could carve out some very precise high quality steel tubing say 20cm diameter, with 10m+ lengths. Could even use the multiple gas cannon inputs idea (precisely timed gas cannons branching off and feeding into the main barrel - aka worlds biggest potatoe gun) to accelerate the projectile at say 10-20g over maybe 100m. A robust sold-propellant rocket might survive the lauch to form the second stage (assuming first stage is a sabot that is quickly discarded). Have the 20g orbiter as the 3rd stage.

Nice thing about the idea, is that once the barrel and cannon propellant are built, then the launch can be repeated over and over again (at least until neighbours/police/miltary/mossad shut you down), with different sabots, projectiles etc.

The rocket/ballon idea is effectively a one shot deal; if the rocket or release mechanism freezes then you lose the balloon, probably the rocket and you lose the money. Even if it works; repeating the process is a one off thing. Once the BFG is built and aimed into space, then you can wash and repeat until the barrel is worn through.

Terrafugia flying car gets road-safety exemptions

GrantB
Boffin

landing on 2 wheels?

Thought most gliders can do it. That's without gyros or any other kinds of Segway tricks.

Hang gliders and birds even manage it on 2 legs.

Power to weight on something like a 1200cc super bike is good, but add flying surfaces and that will suffer very quickly.. not to mention that bike engines are designed for high output for brief periods of time.. not super reliable, high torque requirements of aircraft engines.

Google activates half million Androids a day

GrantB
Boffin

Sales vs Activation; Google don't sell phones

Apple know exactly how many iPhones are paid for as they paid for them to be made. My guess is that there accounting/CRM systems would keep track of every serial number for every SKU and where they are in the sales pipeline. I would also guess they check everything connecting to iTunes, for any clones or unauthorised Taiwanese manufacturers ‘overruns’ .

Microsoft charges their partners $n dollars for every phone shipped with their mobile OS’s so they know exactly how many have been made.. and would have reports showing just how many haven’t been sold.

With Android, Google probably have some very good ideas of how many are made and sold via reports from partners like HTC, Motorola and Samsung.. but I see lots of very cheap Chinese ebook readers/mini tablets that are running some Android version without access to the Android market place. I suspect most of those, the hardware manufacturer has simply FTP’d down a copy of an Android source, compiled a version and sold the device without Google ever knowing.. at least until the user chooses to activate it (if they even do this). In short, Google don’t sell phones ( unlike Apple, Blackberry or Nokia) nor phone OS licenses (MS), so can’t count sales directly.

Apple will 'own games industry'

GrantB
Boffin

Maybe not such a mad prediction

Lots of people dismissing the idea, probably don't have kids (and don't realised that iPads are capable of not only pushing quite a few pixels, but also can output to HDMI for big screen gaming) .

My kids are not very interested in console games other than as an occasional social things with multiple people in the room. No wonder when consoles are relatively expensive with expensive games.

They do however all have iPod Touchs, want iPad's and have hundreds of games on the iPods. The iPod/iPads are essential devices to them as they can buy music/games with pocket money/iTunes gift cards, as well as browsing the internet and with math/science/language apps for school/homework.

Nintendo also see the Apple monster, with the Wii replacement having a controller that is the closer to a tablet than a tradtional controller. Nintendo must have also lost a far few sales of DSLites to iPad Touches.

So unlikely as it seems, something like an iPad3 with more grunt, easy sync to a HDMI screen, could maybe become the game console of choice for many people. May not be as good as a dedicated console, but then there is a small core of hardcore gamers who regard consoles as not upto PC standards either.

No reason as well when I think about it, that something like Kinect or Move style controllers could be added to the iPad .. sit it beside the TV, use the camera, and a bluetooth connected controller for taking gaming a bit further. Whether Apple wants that is another story; and with Apple it comes down to whether Jobs wants to hit the gaming market.

World+dog yawn over NFC smartphone shopping

GrantB
Boffin

So many people don't get this

So many lame comments around the idea of planning to steal money via a backpack mounted scanner or the 'advantages' of cash in wallet.

If you plan on skimming 'money' from NFC phones, then you might want to stop and think about what the hell you are saying. You are not stealing money, just sets of data bits - assuming you have valid merchant codes of course.

Good luck on spending those bits - depending on scheme implementation, there is generally a reconcilation process that takes place overnight as part of a settlement process so that the cash you spent on topping up your phone or when you pay your phone account is actually passed to the merchant. Generally people who look after cash and payments take it pretty seriously if they see any potential holes or flaws, so contactless smartcards have been around a long time now without anybody actually seriously exploiting them at least compared with the about of cash that gets stolen in any given day.

People not seeing the point probably don't see the pain points in areas like mass transport or sports events where you need to get hundreds or thousands of people very quickly through choke points and bloody oldtimers dicking around with coins and notes are a pain to everybody. Not to mention the hassle of parking meters/vending machines/coffee vendors etc for people like myself who rarely carry cash.

Yes, you have to deal with issues like multiple competing card formats, but right now I have 3 or 4 contactless cards on me. I would guess that most people do these days even if they are not aware of it, but how many people know what is stored on those cards?

I would rather that instead of people issuing more smartcards to me, they simply talked to my phone and used the smartcard in that. Means that I can check balances and transactions with a decent screen, can have more control - i.e maybe set it to play a 'ca-ching' sound everytime a transaction is made - things that existing smartcards can't do (and cash won't warn you of pick pockets either). If I lose my phone, I could remote wipe/disable (with the bonus of setting of alarms if somebody attempts to use the phone).

And yes.. I have worked in this area in the past, so most of the comments above do strike me as being from people who don't have a clue what they are writing about.

That being said, I think it needs critical mass from somebody like Visa/Mastercard/Apple to make NFC useful; it has to become ubiquitous, built into all new phones and payment terminals to really displace other forms of payment.

Microsoft squeezes out Windows Phone Mango details

GrantB
Boffin

Fact check time?

Dell - they made a Win7 phone? Must have missed it as it appears to sunk without a trace. They are also AWOL from the list of Mango HW partners so possibly have already given it up.

Samsung, HTC and LG; all of whom have churned out millions of Android phones, with Win7 phones being a sideline - they probably get paid by MS to make a few.

Asus - why would they bother producing a Win7 phone now?

Question remains; even if you wanted a Win7 phone (and it seems the market is prefering Win6.5 devices or anythign else to Win7), why not wait now until Mango ready hardware is out?

Given that even minor Win7 phone updates appear to have taken months and months to slowly leak out, I wouldn't trust that Mango is going to be out anytime soon on existing devices.

Microsoft warns asks WP7 users to wait for the real thing

GrantB
FAIL

Just like Windows Mobile 6.5

No upgrade provided for Windows Mobile to Win7, so not a great indicator of MS playing nice.

If they have sold as few WP7 phones as suspected, then I would guess that means less incentive to provide an upgrade from WP7 to W8 Mobile or whatever it will be called.

Add to that, the Silverlight solution looks dubious; within MS, Silverlight has largely been placed on the backburner and the future is HTML5.

I imagine WP7 will be replaced; and few will care, with Nokia maybe never actually releasing a WP7 device, and most people happily using Android, iOS or other

Apple limits Design Awards to App Store residents

GrantB
Boffin

not that I am defending the rules.. but

"11.3 Enemies" - So, if someone wrote a game about the conflict in Vietnam, and the Western troops are attacking the Viet Cong, wouldn't that identify or target a specific race AND culture AND government?"

Er, the 'Viet Cong' are not a 'real' (as of the present day) government.

I played Castle Wolfenstein as a free download from the app store (the enemys are Nazi's) so I doubt this rule has a lot of applicablity. I suspect you would only fail this test, if you had a game in which you get to kill Steve Jobs repeatedly.

>Is that guideline really enforced? Is apple playing revisionist historian? Or, are combat games >banned in the istore/itunz stoore uummm App Store?

Take a look. The answer is no, its not really enforced other than (I assume) extreme cases with individuals, company trademarks, current affairs etc.

"2.19 Apps that require license keys or implement their own copy protection will be rejected"

>Huh? I don't know how the app store works, but how does a developer ensure someone >doesn't illicitly duplicate and share an app? Does apple provide that service?

You should probably have stopped after confessing that you don't know how the app store works. Yes Apple provides quite a lot of useful services for there 30% cut including copy protection - and its a good thing, better than lots of developers trying to roll there own & failing to do anything other than making life difficult..

"3.1 Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other computer platform will be rejected"

>What about in body of the app, or in any user guide/instructions/how-to? Can a developer say, >"Our app also works on Linux running kernels 2.6.32.17 and Windows versin 7.xxx and >SparcStation version X?"

Metadata....

and basically, I can't imagine sticking anything but the standard meta-data into a iOS app. It makes so much more sense than other platforms where you have to install the correct 32/64bit version for platform XYZ.

"3.6 Apps with app icons and screenshots that do not adhere to the 4+ age rating will be rejected"

>I guess a developer is not allowed to put a ratings-and-password-for-adult-owners-of-device >module in. As many kids as i see letting their toddlers play with the phone, apple is taking on >the role of parent, I guess. IS apple "enchildening" its customers?

Arrgh. They are talking about the app icons and screenshots, not the applications.

That just means that when prudes or 3yr olds are browsing the app store, they don't get to see anything good. You can have some smut in the app (though I think Apple are too restrictive on this) and let your kids see it if you are so inclined, but as for the app store.. again makes sense

Alcatel-Lucent touts bit-blazing 100Gbps for Kiwi NBN

GrantB
Boffin

Alcatel-Lucent in NZ

One of the key players for the UFB contract is Telecom NZ. This is the company that was publically humilated by the failure in a bit of kit made by... Alcatel-Lucent.

I assume that Alcatel-Lucent has made up with Telecom over recent years.

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/massive-outage-reveals-xt-s-achilles-heel-116425

Fujitsu relieves Ballmer's iPad pressure

GrantB
FAIL

April?

You mean that about the time Apple roll out the second generation of iPads, building on the market that they created and dominated over the last year, some Japanese company will release a more expensive tablet featuring an OS not designed for tablet usage?

And the key selling features are things like dumb finger print scanner (I have one on my lappy & it takes longer to log in via fingerprint than to enter my password) and a stylus; something that tablet users have been rejecting for years..

Amazing how slow and cumbersome MS is looking these days - even Android tablets will be second gen by the time this thing rolls out. What took them a year; the hardware is obviously largely generic, and they are just sticking Win7 on it?.

The fact that MS are not looking at Win Pho 7 on tablets, suggests even more strongely that they don't believe that OS has a future.

German Foreign Office kills desktop Linux, hugs Windows XP

GrantB
Boffin

IT department fail

Surely it has to be on a case by case basis.

The fact is that OO is not as good as Office 2007 or later, but how many people does that affect in the organisation?. In a lot of organisations I have looked at, there is a big percentage of employees that have very light office suite requirements; they use Outlook as a simple mail client only, occasionally Word for knocking together a memo or letter.. and Excel and Powerpoint are mainly just viewers (with PP used to open the odd email of funny pictures in my experience). These people could be and should be (given the tax payers in Germany are paying) running cheap secure Linux boxen + OpenOffice and accessing Windows apps via RDP/Citrix on a case by case basis.

People who really have a need to Windows based apps like Office 2007/2010, should have notebooks running Win 7. Allow them to have RDP sessions to the standard linux config if need be.

I assume like a lot of modern offices, the IT department also support special cases like Mac users, tablet users etc who need access to corporate data, so rather than forcing everybody to use Linux (which will always cause some unhappiness for people who need special Windows only software) or forcing uniform XP/Office, then perhaps they just need a better CIO and IT department who can cope with a providing the right tools for the right people?

To get more freedom and bargining power for the future, the organisation also needs to move to platform agnostic Web apps/cloud based apps over time; in theory MS are all for this now as well. If your standard business processes can be carried out via a standards based Web UI, then these political debates go away, and the IT department can buy whatever is stable/cheap.

Apple iPhone 4 vs... the rest

GrantB
Boffin

Icons vs Widgets

Odd thing about iOS screens is that the icons are capable of being stateful widgets; the calendar icon also changes date to show the day, the mail icon shows the number of unread messages etc.

They could easily do a release at any stage to allow other icons to change (i.e. for the weather icon to show current weather), but I suspect this is one of those strict Apple UI issues; they want the home screen to be consistent with icons that are always recognisable and the same rather than showing more information.

Judge puts Assange behind bars ahead of extradition hearing

GrantB
Boffin

"Mr Assange's guilt or innocence lies with a jury"

True, so why then are the Swedish authorities doing PR, releasing information about the case to the media long before it gets to trial? Why release accusations that would damage anybodies life/career even if he is later found not guilty, before supplying information to the UK magistate or Assange lawyers?.

Given the timing (months after the incidents) but at a time when a number of organisations would like to devert attention away from the contents of the leaked information and towards a fall-guy, then I do find it quite remarkable.

I mean sex without a condom being an offense that causes somebody to be banged up in a foreign jail without bail, when a famous movie director can have sex with underage girls (which is technically rape as well) & get away with it...

Gran Turismo 5

GrantB
Boffin

User Interface

I have designed the odd User Interface for various bits of software and website, but anybody who has done any UI analysis, would quickly be able to pick out a number of glaring (and easily fixable) issues with the previous GT4 menus and general UI.

With other companies, I have spent time sometimes documenting a few key issues and emailing the company some ideas. With Polyphony I found that like so many companies, they are not interested in hearing from fans. A few years ago when I got really frustrated with a couple of glitches in GT4, I tried contacting Polyphony but gave up - it was too hard.

I really hoped that Polyphony would have least spent some time doing UI analysis, looking for beta tester feedback or brought in some very good designers to fix it.. but apparently not. Makes me wonder if the designers are complete tech heads who spent 5 years tweaking the car's responses to road camber and just not noticing that the menus' are slow clunky and illogical.

Hopefully fixable with patches, but I suspect they just don't get it. I brought my PS2 when GT3 was released and was about to buy a PS3 for Christmas this year with GT5.. and probably still will... but hope like hell I don't have to wait until GT6 to see any improvement.

Silverlighters committed despite Microsoft's HTML5 love

GrantB

MS programmers

Me thinks you have not been doing web development with non-MS tools if you think the choice is between Javascript and Silverlight.

For a start Google Web Toolkit (GWT) means you can write you code in Java and have it output HTML/Javascript on the client.

Silverlight & Flash are generally used embedded in HTML with lashing of Javascript as well.

I think even Apple & Google would advise you not to write complex applications in Javascript (though JS speed & tools have improved out of sight in the last few years), but as a scripting language it works well and runs everywhere. For the

Android out-runs Windows Phone 7 on price comparison site

GrantB
WTF?

"It is an excellent OS - albeit it is still version 1.0 - give it time people!"

Why would an owner plead to people to 'give it time'?

Surely you buy a phone to use from the day you unwrap it, and not just hope that the version 1.0 bugs will be ironed out one day. When you brought the phone, which I presume was the same price or more than a well proven Android or iPhone model, then you presumably brought it for a reason; and having less apps and less features doesn't seem to swing it.

The odd thing about reading about the features of Win7, there is almost nothing there. The hardware is of course just OEM commodity stuff, the core OS offers less than the competition or even in some cases less than Win 6.5 (i.e. full multi-tasking), so what is left is a new UI layer (which could come to Android via something like the HTC Sense UI) and a few MS apps like Zune/Xbox music/games. In other words, is there anything MS couldn't just have sold built on top of Android if they could actually have swallowed developing for an OS they didn't control?

f not, then Win7 could well be replaced with a Chinese clone UI built on Android, leaving it with nothing other than being more expensive than the competition.

Christians vs metalheads in FB flame war

GrantB
FAIL

democracy developed in Protestant Christian countries

Really? copsewood, you really must tell the greeks who invented the word 'democracy' quite a long time before Christian sect split from the Jews.

The irony of post claiming Christians invented free speech in response to an article about Christians suppressing another groups right to religious expression is amusing at best.

As for Christians wanting freedom from slavery, you might want to check the bible again. Start with the question, 'Why can't I own Canadians'?

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/drlaura.asp

First Windows Phone 7 handsets sell out

GrantB
Boffin

one reason to downvote Jim

"At 12:43 GMT, Jim Coleman simply posted that he hadn't experienced a crash on his WP7 phone and 4 people down-voted his comment. Seriously, El Reg readers, what gives? Do you just really hate Jim? Do you WANT phone operating systems to crash?"

Jim has a phone on pre-order and does not have one.

So downvoting is probably in order.

Jim is a fan - no better or worse than Apple fanboys, but MS have paid for astroturfing/shilling before so any fanboy posting is always a bit suspect. Apple fans posting.. that is another story as Apple probably haven't paid them...

Android Market shows hand at 100k Apps

GrantB
FAIL

Why?

Why do you think the Android market guaranteed not to have 200000 fart apps?

I thought it was an Android feature that you could have all these without Google bans?

The odd thing about Android apps that I have seen, is that in theory the should be much more free to release anything without Apple checking everything, but I can't say I have seen any Android apps that are not already on the iPhone. I assume there are (tethering apps, wifi finders)? but not exactly he wild west market with Hentai & what ever else I thought it would be

Ten... bedside iPod docks

GrantB
IT Angle

How bright?

I have an iPod dock / clock / radio that looked & sounded great in the shop... but the LCD display goes from 'light up the room' blue when switched on, to 'dim' at night which is still bright enough to read by.

Setting alarms and time is also pretty easy, but still largely made more difficult because they use buttons & a limited LCD display. Its stupid to manually have to adjust the dock time after say daylight saving kicks in or when the power has gone out, when the iPod docked to it has already has the correct time; and can offer a far nicer UI for setting stations, alarm times etc.

In the end, I use the dock (with a book over the display so I can sleep at night) as a charger & to play music at times, but use the cellphone or iPod for an alarm.

Would like to see reviews that mention this sort of detail.

Makes me wonder of course, if any of the product designers actually use the things beside the bed as intended?

US raygun jumbo fluffs another test missile-blast attempt

GrantB
Boffin

True

Very true that mirrors & spinning won’t work, but I haven’t seen analysis on ablative surfaces? I presume a few cm's or more of carbon or asbestos layers would reduce the impact of the laser on a missile (assume the missile could lift a thick layer of armour). Liquid self-sealant layers under the surface that boil out when the missile surface is punctured might also work?

I am guessing here that the lasers destroy fast moving missiles by punching holes in the surface (air-pressure & hi-mach air-flow doing the real damage to shift the missile off target) and through killing critical components within the missile (i.e circuits, fuel tanks). Simply punching a small hole in a missile doesn’t seem to be a death blow otherwise.

Strikes me that a precise high energy laser beam could blow a (small) hole right through a battleship; but a large vessel with lots of redundancy would not be affected all that much compared with the impact of another missile hitting (kinetic energy) or exploding.

Microsoft loses chief software architect Ray Ozzie

GrantB
Boffin

Innovation

If you think Linux was porting Unix to the PC, then you really missed the point of Linus releasing it as an open source operating system, (you may have also overlooked the fact that Microsoft had actually ported Unix already to the PC - Xenix, long before NT).

Dave Cutler wrote a 'new' operating system that borrowed rather a lot from OS2 which was already at 1.0 by the time he started at MS. He is a smart guy no doubt, but I would say MS buying in a guy with an OS in mind (Dave had already developed the concept behind NT at DEC), shows the lack of in-house innovation; and even with Dave Cutler and other ex-DEC people, it really took 10 years until Win2K when NT finally came of age.

I know what SQLServer does - the same as all the other RDBS do, and many of which have done so long before SQLServer.

Azure.. an innovative OS? I believe you will find that Google might have done clouds right, long before MS. The point being that to be innovative you have to be first, not following Google and Amazon (an online shop, rather than an Operating System giant).

MS do some things well; I like Word, and Excel to a lesser extent. I like Ribbons when they are well setup, and MS have innovated a few nice little things - the first time I saw misspelled words highlighted with red wavy underlines way back in Word 6?, I thought it was an obvious good idea, (then everybody & products like Thunderbird adopted the convention, while MS held back adding inline spell-checks in Outlook and IE for some reason).

MS don't have to innovate; they will make billions for years to come churning our the same boring mainstream business stuff, just releasing products like Win7 (Vista with the main problems ironed out), so I think they don't need an Ozzie & develop entirely new products ; but they do need somebody to keep the focus on releasing products that are good enough - i.e. Win7 rather than Vista.

Bonfire of the quangos begins

GrantB
FAIL

Yes Minister

I am sure that there was a Yes Minister episode on this, that should be compulsory viewing for any new Minister.

Quangos have been described as being like cockroaches; new governments come in and tend to try and stamp them out. Then they get tangled up for years just trying to figure out what all those hundreds of bodies are, what they do & if they are required. Most they find are impenetrable or well protected by well connected political interest groups. After lots of time & effort they generally kill off a few of the weaker ones, each of which are inevitably replaced within a few years by two more.

It can be dangerous to kill of seemingly useless Quangos as well. For years small groups doing things like various building standards tick along quietly, seemly doing little other than coming up with arcane industry standards on various obscure topics like timber standards or plumbing qualifications. These get killed off (as they don’t have political clout), then years later you find yourself with things like the multi-billion dollar ‘leaky building’ crisis here in NZ and other countries... or knee deep & crap with people demanding to know how all this went horribly wrong.

It’s like testing; if testers work well, then quality goes up, they find less defects and to some new PHB, the test dept seems useless. So they get rid of the test dept & then start to find expensive, embarrassing errors creeping in, leading to people demanding better testing... and so the cycle goes. Then of course there are groups like the telephone cleaners...

OOo's put the willies up Microsoft

GrantB
Boffin

Anti-piracy measures have helped OO

Some organisations that I have worked for seems to not bother with cost/benefit analysis but just buy Office for every seat (MS make that easy with various site license options). Mainly the organisations wanted to make sure everybody had Outlook, (which really is a pretty good email client), but I personally like Word and Excel 2007 as well. Other Office applications like PowerPoint, Access and Visio, I find can be buggy or at least not as polished as other apps. In my experience Outlook + Exchange was only used for email/calendar/contacts that could setup meetings easily; never seen half the features of Outlook (like journals) ever used.

Individuals on the other hand, when faced with the retail price of Office, for just writing resumes, essays for school etc and/or have a few spreadsheets for tracking house hold expenditure, have to make a tougher choice. In the past (I am thinking back to Win3.11/Win95 days), they had options like MS Works bundled with a lot of PC’s, which was so crippled that generally I found friends and family used to ‘borrow’ a copy of Word/Excel from their work or friend. Using a free or cheap alternative product never seemed to be an option.

Now MS have clamped down with product activation, I find those same people are getting Open Office instead. It does everything they need, so MS must worry that people are not only trying the free opposition, but they might find it good enough that when the kids go off to university & into the workforce, they might be happy enough to stick with OO. Certainly at one place where I had input into buying software, we brought Office 2007 for those that needed it, but programmers and other non-power users* got OO and Thunderbird.

I am amused that MS are always going to be stuck between a rock and an hard-place. They can’t build into Windows a decent enough set of application like Ubuntu or Apple can (despite the fact it would make Windows even stronger), as they make so much money off selling Windows and Office licenses separately. So they end up still having to bundle Wordpad (without a spell check) and trying to ensure non-Office apps are crippled. My elderly father-in-law couldn’t figure out why his new (at the time) XP laptop could not be used as a type writer without buying new software, so he ended up using MS Mail for writing and printing documents until I installed OO for him.

*tip for IT managers – never tell people that they are getting the cheap, low-end office package; half the people find it an insult & want MS Office, even if they never do anything that couldn’t be done in Google Apps.

Opensourcer targets Windows Phone 7 hopefuls

GrantB
WTF?

WTF?

Article reads like a press-release, but the thing that amazes me is the statement that "...making the resident copy of SQL Server Compact Edition only available for use by applications built by Microsoft... It's among a set of restrictions on Windows Phone 7 designed to avoid crashes"

The phone ships with a built in RDB but developers can't use it? Why not?

MS somehow can't share a basic database service without supposedly having the OS crash, seems bizarre; its like MS releasing SQLServer & telling developers they can't use it or they might crash the server. Given that any app has to be certified, then they could check for API use; meaning that the system has to be very flaky if it can't be trusted.

I assume there will be other databases services sooner or later (SQLlite?) without the per unit licenses, but users will end up running multiple database services on there phones.

I still think Win7 is sounding more and more like it will be an epic fail, but we will see.

Samsung backs Windows Phone 7 for the duration

GrantB
Boffin

no copy and paste

People pointing out that the original iPhone also had some of the same limitations, are missing the point; that was over 3 years ago, and several generations of iOS have gone by since

At the time, if you wanted a smartphone that did touch and UI well, you had to put up with the limitations of the first gen iOS.

Its now late 2010, and MS are releasing into a world where the iPhone has been refined over the years, and there is a wide range of very good Android phones. It's not the same; it like in the 1970's you could release a new model car without airbags and ABS, but the market has moved on a lot so people expect much more.

When Apple released the iPhone, you didn't expect to be able to pick and choose tens of thousands of inexpensive applications and games to run on your phone; now I wouldn't buy a phone without being able to install the apps use; which pretty much narrows it down right now to iOS or Android.

Microsoft surrenders Live Spaces future to WordPress

GrantB
Boffin

Choke.. MS moving users to

PHP, MySQL? I assume that most Wordpress users will be migrated to a full WAMP stack.

I never thought I would see the day. Back when MS brought Hotmail, they switched over users to Windows servers, but here they are handing supposedly 30 million users over to run on open-source platforms.

Never thought I would see the day.

Crash grounds RAF Eurofighters - for Battle of Britain Day!

GrantB
Black Helicopters

I know where the UK can get a shed load of jets 'cheap as'

Here in NZ, we have a job lot of A4 Skyhawks going cheap - in fact they are thinking of giving them away at the moment:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10675220

They are upgraded to early F-16 (block C?) standard, capable of firing Sidewinders, and could probably fly off the RN's new carriers at a pinch. They are even kitted out for ground-attack unlike the Tornados.

MOD could buy the lot for the cost of fueling up a bunch of Tornados. NZ would even throw in a bunch of Macchi trainers, though if they rust anything like Italian cars... maybe not such a good idea.

Microsoft: IE9 will never run on Windows XP

GrantB
Boffin

conspicuous by its absence...

No mention of Silverlight in all the IE9 blaze of publicity that I have seen; it all seems to be about Microsoft's new found love of HTML 5, CSS 3 and standards. The HTML sites the used to demo IE9 even showed things like games that Microsoft were/are claiming you need SL for.

I get the feeling that MS are divided into and a significant proportion just don't buy into Silverlight as an answer. Will be interesting to see if Win Mobile will push SL adoption - I personally doubt it.

'Jetpack' inventors: US military showing interest. Honest

GrantB
Boffin

Another kiwi...

I do hope they get asked some hard questions as well, before getting more public money. The rocket guys also got ~$1m of foundation money to launch a small sub-orbital rocket that I can't see will be anything more than a fun toy to tinker with.

With the 'jet pack' (uggh - its a microlight, ducted fan helicopter), I can maybe see it selling in some niche markets (as with the segway).

For instance, I live on the North Shore of Auckland & work in the CBD. The pack would cost about the same or less than a high-end BMW, Merc or Porsche (which I also can't afford), but an owner could get from home to work in far less time than any car. Drag it out of the garage, flit over rush hour traffic and the harbour bridge bottleneck and land in the car-park at work. Even better if you live somewhere like Waiheke Island - minutes by jet back to downtime Auckland vs nearer to an hour by ferry. Must be other cities or locations with similar bottlenecks.

As Bruce point outs, there are issues:

- it can't lift much. A personal transport only needs to lift one person - but that needs a significant margin to allow for protective clothing, reduction in engine power over time/hot weather and/or fat flyers. Should be a matter of incremental improvement though - surely they can squeeze some more power to weight over time. Micro-gas turbine would be my pick as a replacement engine.

- it's noisy - I haven't heard it up close, but I could image a 2-stroke next to the head would not be fun. Still, decent ear protection & noise cancellation for the flyer.. If the pack spent most of the time crusing at 1000ft, then noise may not be too bad for those on the ground. I wouldn't want my neighbour to buy one though.

- it's slow. Wouldn't want it to be too fast given the pilot is hung out the front. I think the advantage is in VTOL and being able to fly in a straight line, so top speed is not an issue - assuming it has enough thrust to cope with moderate to high winds.

- the range is horrid. As above - you wouldn't want to fly for long distances, but something that could be improved if they can improve the thrust to weight ratio and carry more fuel.

- the fuel economy is horrid. Not that bad for an aircraft. Probably compares well with taking a 5 litre executive car over a commute in rush hour traffic.

- the failure modes don't bear thinking about. Hopefully somebody has thought about it. I assume that between say 10 feet & a couple of hundred feet (where a parachute can be used), there is a dead zone where total engine failure will ensure a world of hurt. Interesting to see how they could deal with that - airbags around the pilot?

I can see some applications in which it would be superior to a conventional personal helicopter as you could potential fly one of these close enough to a building/pylon for the pilot to bump up against the target with no large blades swinging around. You could even fly them inside stadiums. Don't write up some sales to people who will use them as stunt machines, for publicity or to offer the public joy rides. I may not be able to buy one.. but a few hundred for a (computer/remotely guided) blast around Queenstown might be worth it.

Probably not enough applications to make the machine a big success, but then they still make Segways even though they are generally inferior to bikes for most applications as well.

The biggest concern I have is why the aren't producing them; surely they could be doing limited production by hand to get more production? Hopefully this won't be like the Moller flying car and they end up sucking in millions for the inventor to demo a prototype but never actually produce more than a handful

Ballmer and Softies sacrifice sleep to catch iPad

GrantB
FAIL

Still wrong

"He tried to re-assert the supremacy of the PC as a general computing device, saying people struggled with their iPads for typing".

If he thinks tablets are for typing, then there is fail right there. I already have a laptop for typing thanks.

"...we have the application base, we have the user familiarity, we have everything on our side if we do things really right,"

On Windows Phone 7 or on tablets, they pretty much have no application base right now, nor any user familarity unless they are intending to put the Win7 desktop UI onto a portable device. So I think not only are they not doing things right, they are not even in the right frame of mind to do so.

Windows Phone 7 misses big-business support tools

GrantB
FAIL

Silverlight FAIL

WTF - "Windows Phone 7 uses Microsoft's Silverlight" - then you find "Applications that rely on Silverlight or Adobe's Flash in Internet Explorer won't work either, as IE for Windows Phone 7 won't support plug-ins for Flash or Silverlight."

Ok, so MS are still trying to push Silverlight uphill, but to have it on the phone but not have it work with websites, is just an epic fail.

No Bing bang for Microsoft's Yahoo! marriage

GrantB
Thumb Down

People actually downloaded Bing for an iPhone?

Amazing that people actually tried it, but would be interesting to see how many people actually use it on a regular basis (MS would have the stats.

Now sure how they can promote Bing as growing though. Stats I see makes it look like Bing + Yahoo will remain relatively static, and so far behind Google it all seems a bit pointless.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-ww-monthly-201001-201006

Bendy bike inventor scores design prize win

GrantB
Boffin

Meh

ingenuity? innovation?

Maybe, but the yikebike is a bit more clever than that:

http://www.yikebike.com/

The Yike bike takes folding a little further.. and adds electrics, which has to be better for The Reg reading crowd

Ballmer: Windows Mobile lost a 'whole generation'

GrantB
Boffin

Apart from

1) The ability to run 'real' software.

Given that there are over 100,000 apps availiable for iOS4, probably next to zero WinMo7 apps, and very few Win7 apps designed for tablet/touch use, then I would say having a huge number of 'real' desktop Windows apps is maybe not so much use as Balmer expects. I have used a Windows tablet and other than OneNote, found most Windows apps (not suprisingly) worked better with Keyboard and Mouse. Every iPad apps is designed for touch in comparsion. Yes you can have keyboard and mouse, but then .. why use a tablet at all?

"Compared to the range of software available to Windows the app store selection is tiny and clustered around the gimmick and lightweight end"

Which totally misses the point that there is an App Store that works very well; it takes seconds to find, buy and download & install any app on iOS4.. Windows just doesn't have any functional App store that I am aware of in comparsion.

2) The ability to connect to external devices like printers, usb storage, tv tuners.

Riggghttt.. Nice smooth tablet and you want to hook it up to a printer or a TV tuner? Just can't imagine that, but then I have never physically hooked my laptop up to a printer or TV tuneer either (always Wifi to the network printers, even at home).

For TV Tuners, iTunes provides integration for media & streaming anyway, Admittedly, it would be nice to be able to slot in an SD card into a iPad, but I have 32GB on my iPod Touch & its not fill yet.

Again though, if MS are designing tablets like a desktop machine hooked up to a bunch of peripherals & adding storage then they will fail again.

3) VPN access. Er, iOS 4 has SSL + VPN built in. I'm sure its a big selling point for MS tablets

4) Escape from the Apple straight jacket.

Riggght.. and into the arms of MS.. who (as KIn buyers have just found) will always look after you. If you don't like Apple restrictions, there is also Android of course.

"Don't get me wrong - the Apple hardware is lovely but it runs a phone os with a meglomaniac holding all the access tokens".

Actually I think you miss the point.. the iPad hardware is nice enough, but its the well designed integration of hardware, software and iTunes (the app & store) that all works. MS are caught between open (Android) and closed (Apple) with something that is probably not going to be either. Even calling it a 'slate'.. already, iAd has such a mind-share that people will refer to it as an 'iPad style' device or (fatally) an iPad competitor.

Might be better for MS to just encourage notebooks, netbooks etc to have touch components which are of additional use, until they can get enough apps together to go sans keyboard.

.NET spell-checker trips over hypenation

GrantB
FAIL

Our HTML editor?

Er, some of us just use Firefox which comes complete with a spell checker (even Australian English). Maybe even just spell check in a word processor before copy & pasting to a site.

Makes more sense to highlight the fact that if you don't build the component into your app, you might get copy like that shown.

Of course, MS build a spell checker into some apps so you think that they should supply a spell-checker built into Windows as a service, so that every application can share a custom dictionary.

Microsoft's .NET at ten: big hits, strange misses

GrantB
Gates Horns

Question is, does MS use it?

For a very long time, it seemed that MS was pushing everybody to use nothing but .NET, but not exactly jumping in and using it themselves.

I know that dropping Office/Windows and rewritng in C#/.NET was not going to happen quickly, but 10 years later on, it still seems like bits & pieces of MS applications (like Shrepoint/SQLServer) use .Net but the core products still very much C++. Remember back in the day, MS were talking up Longhorn (Vista?) being an operating system built around .NET.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/26/dotnet_longhorn/

Looking at apps I use every day, or 'first things to install on a clean machine', things like Firefox, Skype, Office/Open Office, Vuse etc, not appear to be .NET. I think Paint.Net is the most obvious one I have at home.

GrantB
Thumb Down

Netflix

No, it doesn't raise a bell - no Netflix available in my country that I am aware of, so never even seen the service.

I had heard that Netflix used silverlight, but then the Netflix CEO sits on the board of Microsoft... so while Netflix might have made a technical decision to use Sliverlight, its more likely to have been a political CEO level decision:

http://news.cnet.com/Microsoft-adds-Netflix-CEO-to-board-of-directors/2110-1014_3-6170596.html

In otherwords if a board-member of Microsoft decides his company should use MS technology, then its not exactly a ringing endorsement of the tech.. hence something often ignored by astro-turfers promoting silverlight.

So, maybe if there was Netflix in my county, and I wanted to use it, I might install Silverlight.. but for now its not installed in any of my browsers or OS's that I am aware of.

Roll on HTML 5 (I aren't a huge fan of Flash either, but at least I have it installed on everything).

Microsoft's past - the future to Android's iPhone victory

GrantB
Boffin

Enough for most people

Given that Steve (and Apple shareholders) are richer than most, Mac's are still around 25 years without being fully opened (but use open source where it helps), iPods, iPhones and iPads have all largely taken the mindshare (and profits) from their respective markets I would say closed restrictive platform seems to have worked pretty well.

Depending on what you mean by long run of course, but Mac's and then iPods have been around a while. You could argue Mac might have been more successful if they had not open; but other systems have come and gone and they are still around churning out a nice profit.

I suspect the market has room both for commodity open-source gear and some closed expensive designer kit like Apple stuff.

Duff French missiles for Royal Navy finally fixed

GrantB
Thumb Down

Hit and miss

To some extent, just buying off-the-shelf kit might work - lower risk overall, but essentially that is what the Australia's have done without notable success.

They invested in some kit like the F-111 that took a lot of time and money to sort, despite the potential in the air-craft, they also brought F-18's that again took a lot of time and money to sort out early teething problems.

Other projects like the BAe Hawk or F-16's have generally proved successful, but often early in the development and service acceptance phases, it is hard to tell if these things will get sorted and become successful (the F-18) or never get there (F-111). Things like the Osprey - who knows?

Sure you can avoid issues by waiting for things like the JSF to enter widespread service before deciding to buy, but that could be 10 or more years after the design was settled; and then you might have another 5-10 years for them to go through step changes, localisation, production and finally enter service in your country. Add in need to make decisions on compatible gear (such as on carriers designs which will take the aircraft) and the time frames can be huge if you wait and see before starting to design and build around the new equipment.

Could be that you finally get your aircraft or other system 20 years after they were designed, by which time, everything else has moved on & people want to know why you are buying 20+ year old kit, when new/better gear for the current situation would be a better choice.

So no easy answers, other than I would say that like IT, the bigger and more abitious the program, the more likely it is to fail. So instead of huge pan-european projects like Tornado or Typhoon, several smaller, reduced scale projects (like Hawk) would be better even if some fail,

Microsoft unveils – wait for it – another mobile OS

GrantB
Jobs Halo

to quote

"there is an app for that"

While there will be some 3rd party hardware that won't connect to Apple mobile devices,my experience of Win CE development is that you have to test individual models of hardware to confirm that odd-ball peripherals work with your vertical market apps anyway. Your mileage may vary.

It has not surprised me the to recently see iOS devices appearing more in niche markets; I have know of iPhones being used in an operating theatre. People are carrying them anyway, and finding that there are apps for everything, even in obscure vertical markets. Links to old protocols and back-end systems can be found or dealt with by back-end web-services.

I was part of one medical project that I am sure would have used a ruggedised Win CE device in the past, but after analysis, the decision was made to use iPod Touch's. The price per unit (even including a protective cases), was such that you could lose a few & it still worked out much cheaper. It made deployment and end-user satisfaction so much easier.

Next time you have to sign a Fedex unit - think how much small, cheaper a iPod touch would be; and an iPhone or iPad unit could do so much more like record voice, video, send GPS co-ords for live tracking etc. Don't write off the iOS as just consumer level device; it already dominates the MP3 player and other markets, and my experience is that it is killing Sony and Nintendo in the portable gaming niche

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