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* Posts by Tufty Squirrel

76 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Jul 2010

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Windows 8.1: So it's, er, half-speed ahead for Microsoft's Plan A

Tufty Squirrel
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Childcatcher

Re: LOL yet another big FU from MS

> Microsoft need to get their heads around the fact that a mouse is not a finger and a finger is not a mouse.

Fingermouse, Fingermouse

The never stop to think a mouse

The always on the brink a mouse

Fingernouse, that's me

I am the mouse called Fingermouse

The mouse with guts and verve

I get past cats so easily with my favourite body swerve

Fingermouse, Fingermouse

I'm a sort of wonder mouse

A hit, a miss, a blunder mouse

Fingermouse, that's me

Won't somebody please think of the children?

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Throwing arms let humans rise above poo-flinging apes to play cricket

Tufty Squirrel
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Coat

Re: Technical mechanics...

As opposed to "three hours of inaction crammed into five days"

Coat? Yes, mine's the white one.

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Report: Android malware up 614% as smartphone scams go industrial

Tufty Squirrel
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>> They get what they deserve, especially since Android tells you that an application has

>> permissions to send SMS under a large heading that says "services that cost you money."

The problem is 3-fold, and categorising those affected as being somehow "deserving" is both condescending and hideously unfair.

1 - Pretty much *every* application demands a raft of permissions. As a user, you have no way of knowing *why* they are demanding those permissions, or what, exactly, the application will do with them.

2 - The user (self included) wants to run the application (it's why he / she has downloaded it in the first place, doesn't necessarily understand what the permissions mean, and is already used to simply clicking through without thought (see 1 above). So they simply click through without thought.

3 - Android doesn't give any option of "install this app, but disallow this subset of the permissions it's asking for". It's either "install the app, and give it what it wants", or "don't install the app". And the user, as previously noted, /wants/ to install the app.

I would imagine that the percentage of apps which fail to be installed at the point they've hit the "wants these permissions" screen of the installer is vanishingly small. Android's "wants these permissions" thing is far to little, and potentially worse than the "do nothing" option.

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Review: Beagleboard Beaglebone Black

Tufty Squirrel
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Mainly because pretty much all the other A10 boards out there are using the Allwinner reference designs, and those don't expose the SATA either. When you're making peanuts on boards like this, and it really is a dog-eat-dog world, there ain't much time for designing and debugging new boards. Hats off to the Cubie guys for doing it.

Another one to watch is Olimex. They're about to release - the betas are all sold out - their A20 board, which is basically their original A10 design with the A20 plugged in (not the A10S board, the A10S doesn't have SATA). They also have an A10S board, which is pretty nifty if you don't need SATA or the grunt of the A20. Olimex are cool guys, too.

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Tufty Squirrel
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Re: Pi Power Supplies

The issue with micro-usb is twofold.

The first is the shift from switchmode regs on the alpha boards to linear regs on the production ones. They use more power than is necessary to get the job done.

The second is that the market is flooded with crappy chinese USB cables, and USB "PSUs" which are, in fact, chargers. Charges my phone, right, must be good enough to power the Pi? Wrong. 500mA USB supplies abound, 2A ones don't. Especially not ones that actually put out what they say they put out. Added to the fact that the power coming in is often marginal in terms of voltage levels and regulation quality, it's a recipe for, if not total disaster, at least a lot of confusion. And there's been a lot of confusion.

The alpha boards, on the other hand, took anything from 9 to 16v DC (from memory), which leaves a lot of voltage headroom, and it's hard to find super-low-power DC bricks in that kind of voltage range.

Like I said before, the decision was understandable, if a little naive in terms of performance expectations of real world chargers and cables, but it was still (IMO) a bad decision. And yes, when a "marginal" cable can pull the whole power system down, that's a problem with power design.

As for edjerkayshun, the Pi's been a runaway success. Perhaps it hasn't made massive inroads into the classroom, but it's raised awareness of the problem, shown that something *can* and *should* be done, it's shown teachers that they have the power to do something, even if it's not directly Pi-related.

Yeah, the majority of Pis have been sold either to the clueless tinkerers brigade, the vast majority of whom are underusing it in their "hacks" in the same way they would underuse an arduino, and a lot of the rest oversold to those with expectations way above what $35 buys you. But even that's a win. Because it's shown there is a market for affordable "dev boards", from the teensy 3 (cortex-M) all the way up to things with multicore Cortex-A SoCs.

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Tufty Squirrel
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Re: And you missed...

WRT the power issue, I criticised the decision to go micro-USB with power on the Pi when it was announced, and I stand by that criticism. It was an understandable decision, but a bad one, even ignoring the poor quality of most micro-usb "power supplies" out there.

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Tufty Squirrel
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Re: And you missed...

Ah, you may be right re: USB, I believe Gordon's done great work there. I've not tried the latest firmware or kernels, I tend to spend my time in the bare metal world.

However, the documentation is *definitely* lamentable if you're not relying on Linux to deal with all that "hardware" stuff. Unless you happen to have datasheets available for the USB controller, SDIO controller, full explanation of how the GPU interacts with the CPU, etc, in which case a good deal of people would be very happy to hear from you.

Yeah, yeah, the (linux) code is the documentation, you say, but that doesn't cut it when you're coding to the metal. Especially when the code in question (a shining example being the USB host code drop from Synopsys) is shot full of bugs and implemented in what appears to be the least efficient way possible.

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Tufty Squirrel
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WTF?

Re: Cost.

> The Raspberry Pi is most likely a re-branded Japanese product

Is it cobblers. It was designed in the UK by guys working for Broadcom. The problem with the Pi's documentation isn't to do with translation, it's to do with getting Broadcom (and the various IP vendors) to release it.

As for video performance, I'm almost certain the videocore blows the SGX out of the water /generally/ in terms of processing power. It certainly does in terms of H.264 (and certain other codec) decoding, as the SGX has no specific video decode hardware.

It's often better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you an idiot, than to open it, and prove it.

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Tufty Squirrel

And you missed...

Documentation - The Sitara chip has copious and usable documentation. The Broadcom unit on the Pi doesn't. The SGX530 has a technical reference manual. Broadcom's videocore doesn't, at least not outside of Broadcom.

Power - The beaglebone is far more flexible in terms of powering. PSU "issues" are one of the major issues with the Pi.

USB - The Ti chip does not, as far as I'm aware, use the same undocumented, buggy, USB host IP the Broadcom one does. Even with the recent fixes, simply using a USB keyboard and mouse on the Pi will eat around 10% of your CPU. ADD USB networking or anything more meaty, and you don't have many cycles left.

So you get slightly lower HDMI resolution, but everything else is made of win.

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Sneaky new Android Trojan is WORST yet discovered

Tufty Squirrel
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Non-problem? Hardly.

>> you have to download and install the malware - which means you have to agree to the permissions it needs to run.

Quite, but how many people actually take any notice of, or understand, the permissions warning screen? After all, if you've downloaded <x>, it's because you already /want/ to run it - Android doesn't give you any option of "stop this application doing this, but it might compromise functionality", it's all or nothing, "install it or don't". Everyone I know, *myself included*, hits "install it". So all you need is something that people *want* to run, and you're on a load of devices.

Your issues 2 and 3 are largely moot because, once you have code running on a machine, you effectively have physical access. Privilege escalations are hardly unknown, after all, and Linux kernel + Android runtime provides a pretty large attack surface, especially given the likelihood of anything having been patched since the device left the factory.

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Look out, fanbois! EVIL charger will inject FILTH into your iPHONE

Tufty Squirrel
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Pirate

Re: Trusting ANYTHING plugging into a USB port....

I strongly doubt that "it doesn't mount as a mass storage device" is going to save you. It's more likely to be posing as a HID device or similar.

That's how I'd start off, anyway.

Allegedly.

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Apple's next OS X said to be targeted at 'power users'

Tufty Squirrel
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Re: Confused

>> One of the major areas it doesnt work for me is I cant see how to drag a copy to a new folder,

>> it always seems to be a move op, maybe i need to cmd click or something.

Yep, the option (alt) key swaps between move and copy - the default when dragging on the same volume is to move, hold down option and it becomes a copy (with a helpful little green "plus" on the dragged icon), when you're dragging to another volume the default is a copy (with plus), and the option key turns it to a move (the little green plus goes away)

Finder's still shit though. Pathfinder is loads better, and its "drop stack" feature is a godsend.

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Tufty Squirrel
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Menu bar

Nothing particularly wrong with a single menu bar - it gives you a fixed target to aim for with an effectively infinite height. See Fitt's law. The only time it's really an issue is when you're dealing with multiple screens, with Apple's implementation keeping the menu bar on the "primary" screen at all times - providing an option to move it to the currently active screen might be faster for mouse users (an /option/ as tablet users of the wacom kind would probably prefer to have it fixed as in the current implementation)

NeXTStep's pop up menus were nice, arguably nicer than any other solution, but suffer slightly from the fact they are invisible in normal use.

Most "power users", of course, have the majority of common menu command shortcuts committed to muscle memory anyway and rarely use menus on any platform unless they are using graphically intensive apps like Photoshop where they have a hand on the pointing device at nearly all times.

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iPads in education: Not actually evil, but pretty close

Tufty Squirrel

Programming on fondleslabs is certainly possible...

... but far from optimal. As well as the (platform specific) solutions out there (codea, pjs4ipad, and so on), there's a whole bunch of web-based IDEs for various programming languages which work relatively well on tablet devices. The main downside being that programming is generally text-based, and, as such, programming environments require large amounts of text input. Perhaps our mutant-thumbed txt-generation can handle text input using an OSK, but I can't...

The only concrete and usable implementation of a tablet-based programming environment I've come across so far is "Lisping" (http://slidetocode.com). There'e a load of research projects out there as well, but nothing particularly solid yet AFAIK.

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Bash Street bytes: Do UK schools really need the Raspberry Pi?

Tufty Squirrel
Paris Hilton

Flawed, yes

As someone who's been following the Pi from the start, and who has one here...

Yes, it's flawed. All products are, and when something is developed to a budget as tight as the Pi, by enthusiasts, you can expect a few "rough edges". The ones that can be smoothed, /are/ being smoothed. It is, however, revolutionary, in two ways.

The first is in the way it has pushed the issue of computer science to the fore. Even if the RPi Foundation had never managed to get a single board out of the door, the questions it has raised, the awareness is has garnered, have made the entire project a success.

The second (and incidental to the original aims of the Pi) is the massive kick up the arse it's given the "developer board" producers. Instead of being stuck with crummy 8-bit "hacker" boards, we have an avalanche of ever-more-powerful ARM--based SBCs at affordable prices, as companies have realised that if they produce something at reasonable prices, they'll sell by the barrowload.

There's been quite a lot of fail in the Pi's timeline, and it may never be a success in the classroom. But if it succeeds only in getting scratch more widely adopted, even on the previously Word/Excel/Powerpoint boxes, it's won.

Paris, because I''d kick her up the arse, too. Or something like that.

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Firefox offers glimpse of new tablet version

Tufty Squirrel
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But surely...

...that's another WIN for Opera. It could only get better if it also blocked comments on youtube, and replaced the entire contents of the Daily Mail's site with a giant flashing purple cock.

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Acer insists fondleslab 'fever' is fading

Tufty Squirrel

@Buck Futter

"lack of configuration knowledge" is a fail right there. You shouldn't have to "configure" an OS to run on a particular platform, you should just install it. That's part of where Windows fails for me, and always has : you have to jigger with it to get any sort of acceptable performance.

It's also part of why I stopped using Linux.

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New GPL licence touted as saviour of Linux, Android

Tufty Squirrel

Florian Meuller

...couldn't find his hindquarters with both hands and a flashlight.

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SQL survives murder attempt by mutant stepchild

Tufty Squirrel
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Facepalm

Once you start using InnoDB...

...the benefits of MySQL go away. With full relational constraints imposed, it's slower than Postgres. Not to mention that "relational constraints" in the MySQL world doesn't necessarily mean the same thing it does in real databases. Truncation (i.e. modifying data) rather than raising an error is the norm in the MySQL way of thinking. Yes, there's "strict mode" but that's enforced client side, not server side. Wanna dump some crap in your database? Turn off strict mode and have a ball. Or use "INSERT IGNORE".

Triggers? Make me laugh. Constraint checking? "Parsed but ignored". Transactional DDL? Nope. Transaction locking behaves "oddly" (but, I'll grant you, predictably). Inserting nulls into non-null fields? Check.

I could go on. I usually do. Facepalm because that's what MySQL is.

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Oracle seeks 'billions' with Google Android suit

Tufty Squirrel
Paris Hilton

Write once...

...run for the lawyers

Oracle need to die, and Android needs to get better.

Paris, because she's nearly as dumb as Ellison

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Popular sites caught sniffing user browser history

Tufty Squirrel
Coat

deserving what you get

>> if you go to a site called YouPorn, you kinda deserve everything you get...

You mean "copious quantities of porn"? That's what I'd hope you get.

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Samsung plans to smash Android rivals..what about the iPad?

Tufty Squirrel

@ Michael C

>> the tone in here is pretty grim for Android.

Yep. For what it is, Android isn't all that bad. It might even be a decent enough phone OS (wouldn't know, don't have an Android phone, only a tablet). For tablet use, it's crap, even with the latest froyo releases. By the time 3.0 has been pushed out (which will allegedly make for a more tolerable tablet experience), the bugs have been bashed out of that, companies are shipping devices running it and software (beyond the eponymous fart buttons and home screen skins that clutter Android's market) is taking advantage of it, Apple will be onto iPad 2 or maybe even 3.

Those who bought into Android tablets already, especially the cheap chinese versions, are most likely gonna end up running to Apple or MS. Will there be a market for Android tablets by the time its ready?

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It's alive! Duke Nukem Forever breaks out of vapour trail

Tufty Squirrel

Review here

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1968-Viewers-Choice-Duke-Nukem-Forever

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Ballmer and Softies sacrifice sleep to catch iPad

Tufty Squirrel
Stop

Prerelease spoiler announcements, again?

MS have lost this one, unless they manage to pull an elephant-sized rabbit out of their hat. And by insisting on Win7 and "brand familiarity", that means they're off hunting elephants in the Gobi Desert. Rather than trying to "spoil" the already burgeoning market of tablets, they need to drop a bombshell. They just about managed it with netbooks, but it probably ain't gonna work with tablets / smartbooks.

Apple understood that mobile computing is different to desktop computing, that although you might use the same underlying OS you need a radically different UI. Shame all they have produced is something for consuming pre-produced media, rather than a real, radically different, portable computer. It's not like they already had one of those at the tail end of the 90's or anything...

With Android, Google have produced a half-way-decent mobile phone OS that doesn't scale to anything other than mobile phones. Anyone other than the most rabid Android geek using it for a significant amount of time on a tablet is gonna get driven to the iPad. It's like an iPad, but slower, and shitter - once you cut away the phone specifics, it's really poo, especially on the lower end of the hardware scale.

Chrome might work if you are permanently "connected", but it's still a "desktop" metaphor, for all it's "cloudy" aspirations.

I predict MS will attempt to make Win7 look a bit like iOS without making any real changes to usability (as per WinCE / Win Mobile). Shame, as they have some killer technologies, and might even have something usable floating around in a skunklabs project somewhere. The main problem with MS at the moment is that Ballmer doesn't have the vision to run a corner shop, let alone a software company.

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

Tufty Squirrel
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WTF?

O RLY?

>> Android: Free and pretty good (Eclipse plugin works well as does the Android device emulator)

>> Apple - pretty rubbish and mac-based.

Last time I looked at the Android dev stuff, it was utter cack. Eclipse is vile, but that's personal opinion. Even when I was developing Java I paid for an IDE rather than suffer Eclipse.

Android documentation is either outdated, partial, splattered across the web on a dozen contradictory blog posts, or simply non-existent.

Apple's devtools are slick and well integrated, and *everything* is documented. You might not much like XCode, but that's, again, personal choice.

I've got a game on the app store. It took me less than 2 days to port it, and it runs well. I'm currently struggling with getting half the framerate on Android.

Java is a shite language for developing apps that have to perform on a platform with limited resources. Yeah, Froyo delivers a new Dalvik with an up to 450% increase in performance, but it's taken 2 years to get there, and it's only out on a couple of devices. And even then, it doesn't stop the "hic" of garbage collection.

For what it's worth, I don't see either Android or iOS as being a sustainable long-term platform. iOS is too limited (in general terms, not in terms of "what you can get approved"), and Android doesn't seem to be interested in being anything other than a "me too" iOS clone. That comes from seeing real innovation being passed by over and over again.

As for android taking over in countries where expense is everything? Dunno, Linux was supposed to do that to the developing world's desktops, but everyone seems to be happy enough running Windows. Go figure.

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