* Posts by Giles Jones

2536 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Dec 2006

Dear Dell and Microsoft: You're not Apple

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Erm Netscape

I think you need to go back and use some of the old alternatives to IE.

Netscape was a bloated clunky pile of junk. Only Opera provided a truly compelling alternative, but it was £30 or so to buy at that point and didn't work with all sites.

IE was fast and stable in comparison, it just had a lot of quirks when sticking to standards.

Apple defends iOS devs from patent holder

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APIs

In-app payment is provided by an Apple API. By using that API you aren't infringing a patent that has been licenced by the provider of that API (Apple).

Just suppose a game developer used DirectX and there was a patent dispute against DirectX, you wouldn't expect a person using DirectX to have to also pay for a licence when Microsoft had already.

It sounds to me like a very greedy patent troll. But by feeding them in the first place you sustain them.

Explosion in iPad factory kills two, injures more

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LOL

So you won't be buying anything made in China then.

I would imagine that rules out almost every laptop, smartphone and games console in the world.

Apple to support reps: Don't confirm Mac infections

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Not quite.

Not quite correct. Much of the malware that dogged XP was automatically installed by exploits and flaws in the OS or by services like the Messenger service.

This OSX malware has been chosen to be installed. There's not much anyone can do to stop malware being installed if the user chooses to do it.

Desktop OSes give users total freedom to install what they like. The second anyone stops you doing so will result in lots of complaining from users wanting to install all their dodgy warez.

How to choose the right screen size

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Fireplace

They're freeing up floorspace by not having a TV cabinet but don't wish to get rid of their fireplace.

I got rid of the fireplace, mounted the TV just above the gap and put three shelves in the gap where the fire was. Perfect height IMHO, although I do worry about the TV being so low that the dogs will damage it when playing (they're quite tall dogs).

Why are Microsoft and Intel slapping and pulling hair?

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A bit harsh perhaps

I'm probably being a bit harsh about Microsoft as they did launch tablets in 2001. But they completely botched the idea and just couldn't get internal teams to support it.

It seems again that they are still unwilling to use a mobile OS on the tablet and let it gradually develop. Instead trying to remould and prune the full desktop onto a tablet.

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Too slow

It says a lot when Microsoft are promising vapourware while everyone else in the market has the first product out and are working on their second version. Apple has their second version out and are already working on the next one.

Microsoft don't bring you the future, they bring you what was new 18-24 months ago.

Mobile x86 just doesn't cut it, you simply can't build a mobile device around it when ARM delivers twice the battery life.

New PlayStation Network hack hijacks user accounts

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PSN is free

Sony's gaming network is free. XBox live isn't.

It's just a hobby project for Sony but a money making service for Microsoft.

Microsoft waves CentOS club at Red Hat

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Terminal?

Unix doesn't have a standard graphical user interface typically and there's no standard shell, so your arguments about what the user comes into contact with is pretty irrelevant.

Open a terminal on OSX and you'll see the bash shell and standard GNU type commands. It's good enough for me.

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Why?

Are we really saying that people can't create a decent OS from scratch these days?

It's not so much that Windows is flawed because it isn't Unix, it is flawed because it tries to retain so much backward compatibility.

If Microsoft created a new OS from scratch now then it's possible it could be better the any Unix OS. It's just that would cost a lot to do.

I suspect most of you are running x86 which is just as bad as Windows for being full of quirks and backward compatibility.

Apple proposes even tinier SIMs for future iPhones, iPads

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Standards often suck

Standards generally suck and take a long time to progress as everyone moans about backward compatibility and don't want change.

It's why USB2 will be here for a very long time yet even though USB3 is faster.

It was Apple who started off the death of the floppy drive and were one of the first to adopt USB.

SIM cards aren't very large true, but the tray in the iPhone takes up a fair amount of space. Other vendors stick the SIM under the battery but if you don't have a removable battery then it has to be accessible from the outside.

RIM BlackBerry PlayBook 7in tablet

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Signature feature

RIM's edge when it comes to push email is their patent on it. Everyone else can do push email but they have to implement it differently to RIM and the alternatives are not so battery friendly.

Security features can be implemented by anyone. Although some countries dislike the security.

In-app payment patent scattergun fired at small devs

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Too generic a patent

Indeed. The whole concept of having a limited service and then paying to get extra is rather generic. Sky could be infringing this one as you get free to air and then pay Sky to receive more.

Software pirates should offer up more booty, says BSA

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Overpriced software

The problem is that the big established players sell software at stupidly inflated prices.

Is Adobe Creative Suite really worth £500? what family is going to spend that amount of money?

Microsoft Home Office is about £100 when I can get iPad office apps for about £5 each that do much of what most people need.

Glass aeroplanes and iPads on the way, say boffins

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Prior art

Wonder woman's plane was transparent too.

Renault readies sub-£7000 e-car for Blighty

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Still too much

Doesn't make much sense for me. Firstly the battery rental cost, what are the chances that Renault decide to hike that charge at any point?

Then there's the electricity usage and with a 15% - 25% hike on the way it will get more expensive. Then you have to buy the damn thing as well.

At it stands I'm better off running my diesel estate, it has enough room for a fridge freezer in the back. 5 people with the seats up and my monthly fuel spend is only around £80-100.

Microsoft, Nokia, HTC fight Apple's 'App store' trademark

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Microsoft are the worst offenders

I don't think Microsoft can complain about normal words being trademarked, look at the Office trademarks. Even "Office" is a trademark.

http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualProperty/Trademarks/Usage/Office.aspx

Publisher and Project too. Even the actual word "Word" is a trademark.

You could be on shaky ground if you called your product Acme Word Processor and Microsoft would argue that it might sound like a tool that processed Word documents.

Give the Met Office £10m, says Transport Committee

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Waste of money

You can't predict the future. So why spend to much time, money and effort trying to do so?

When it gets to Winter you should be prepared for anything. Just like you expect it to be warm in Summer.

Better spending £10M on new winter equipment.

MicroSkype: Andreessen settles accounts with Ballmer

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Fairly true

Some will mention XBox, but it's success was timing. It came with a network port just at the time when broadband and online games were starting to appear. Also they tended to brand it as XBox, with the traditional Windows and Microsoft branding absent (even though it is based on Windows).

As for Skype, Microsoft was just buying the user base with the intention of marketing everything else they do to you. I think however than Skype will be about as good as MySpace is soon, it will get rewritten and dicked about with until it is a slow bloated incoherent mess.

Dixons warns it's getting worse

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Beige boxes no more

Much of the traditional PC business has gone. People don't buy expansion cards, 3.5" drives and 5.25" optical drives so much now.

It's all laptops and tablets. For the big box computers there's plenty of online sites or even fleabay.

Sergey Brin: Only 20% of Googlers still on Windows

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Lesson from Microsoft

Microsoft famously used to use all their own tools, write all their in house systems and so on. Once they changed they were saving vast amount of time and money.

Few companies tend to use their own software internally, it creates a lot of distraction as there proper support protocols can be bypassed and crucial developer time can be spent fixing up simple problems in software.

Microsoft Skype: How the VCs won and Ballmer overpaid

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Much earlier than that

Same with Blue Ribbon Soundworks in the 1990s. I used to use their really cutting edge MIDI Sequencer called Bars and Pipes on the Amiga. Nothing else at the time did real time MIDI adjustments using a pipeline and plugin tools (think real-time quantise, real-time echos, real-time transpose and so on). I still don't think any other sequencer to this day does, the focus is now on audio plugins.

As far as I can see Microsoft bought them and never used any of their technology.

IP firm claims ownership of DVD video-menus

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Prior art

While the menus weren't videos, the video CD format (VCD) supports menus and was available a year before this patent.

Any computer game with menus superimposed over the top of a rolling demo is likely to be prior art as well. Just because it isn't video and is computer generated imagery shouldn't really matter.

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Patents need to be like trademarks

I've said it before and I will say it again. Patents need to be like trademarks. If you have a patent and you don't have a product on sale using it within a year then the patent should be null and void.

A trademark is similar, if you aren't using your trademark then you tend to lose it. It stops people trademarking vast amounts of common words.

Official: Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5bn

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Big bureaucratic MS

Probably more like Microsoft realised they couldn't made their own successful Skype alternative for $8.5Billion so they just took the cheaper option of buying it.

Microsoft poised to make biggest ever buy – Skype

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Buying users not technology

Microsoft could easily develop a Skype alternative. I'm pretty sure the MSN Messenger does everything Skype does now, maybe in a slightly different way.

So in effect Microsoft are just buying users. Surely it would work out cheaper to just pay users to use their software?

Sony mulls hacker bounty offer

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Bounty bars?

Maybe they have a lot of coconut filled chocolate bars to get rid of?

Feds raid home of teen fingered in DDoS on Gene Simmons

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FAIL

Inverse Robin Hood

Nice game plan Mr Simmons, steal off the poor and give to the rich.

Good luck with that.

Apple reportedly plans ARM shift for laptops

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Natural progression

Not to mention you have to look at this as a natural progression of the computer, originally computers were huge and filled rooms and now you can hold one in your hand.

As computers evolve they become more mobile and severed from the mains.

Using ARM can double the battery life of a mobile device compared to x86.

Can you imagine a world where you could only listen to music at home on a hifi? probably not, so why limit yourself to only using a computer in one place?

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Is there a problem with x86?

I'm pretty sure this is the whole hardware industry not wanting to be at the mercy of Intel. It doesn't really have much to do with the chips being good or bad.

With ARM being an IP company licencing designs it means each computer manufacturer can build integrated systems around an ARM design.

Okay, x86 is a mess of legacy backward compatibility but it has worked until now.

Elite coder readies £15 programming gadget for schools

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Clock speed

It was the CPU clock speed that was the killer. When drawing lines it's all about the MHz.

But there weren't all that many vector games really.

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Laziness and profit

Nobody sees it though, they want portability to minimise dev time and maximise profit. Hence awful flash to app convertors.

Android runs with a VM, Windows Phone 7 does similar.

It's all about VMs and hardware abstraction now.

Skype bug gives attackers access to Mac OS X machines

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App bug

It's funny because I remember everyone saying DEP would stop all these sorts of things.

Anyway how can a bug in an application be the fault of the OS? the OS has to give applications access to services and APIs or else the application would never be able to do anything.

If this bug says anything it is that Skype (like many others) can't code OSX apps for toffee.

Samsung, Apple knock Nokia off top handset spots

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Symbian

No love for Symbian then. After all, this is the last chance to buy Symbian phones before that platform expires.

Harman Kardon SB 16 soundbar

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Floored more than flawed

Tv speakers have never been that great though.

The biggest problem now is how they are aimed. Many TVs have the speakers facing the floor when they should be pointed at your head.

Boffins herald end of stiff screens

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Will it be flat?

What do you do when you want a nice sturdy flat screen to view stuff on?

Presumably these screens will be hard to get perfectly flat and if the surface is reflective you'll have even more problem in the sunlight than you do now.

Apple squashes location tracking 'bugs' with iOS update

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Nice trolling

The file in question is a cache of location assistance data *received* and used to speed up the time required to determine your location when using maps and other location services.

The file in question is a sqllite database which had a default size of 2MB, this sounds small but it turned out to be too big for the data in question. This has been reduced in size. It is also not backed up now.

iOS sends information about cell masts and WIFI hotspots to assist Apple in building their own alternative to SkyHook. This data is anonymised.

Google sends the same data but a unique identifier is present on it. So if anyone needs to get their shit together it is Google.

But I'm sure Google are analysing and selling this data on, it could be useful to mobile operators to see where people are most of the time and where they need mobile coverage.

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Plenty to fix

They need to make the data that they collect anonymous for starters!

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GPS logging

I'm sure there are other ways to record a trace of where you have been.

The location data in the phone was just assistance data, it did not show where you had been. I have never been to Bristol or London with my iPhone yet it said I had. This is because the actual data can be quite a considerable distance away.

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LOL

Oh please. The data stored on the phone is not your current location. It is data of cell towers and WIFI access points up to a 100 mile radius in some cases!

Want an untracked Android? Here’s how

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Unique id

The point is Android sends a unique identifier. iOS doesn't no matter what settings you have enabled.

Google shouldn't be allowing such information to be collected. Its obvious they do it to make another few bucks out of you.

Apple refreshes iMac with Thunderbolt, Sandy Bridge

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SCSI, not so scuzzy at all

SCSI was great, all the good computers came with it as standard, so that's Macs and Amigas.

The PC world had to endure bi-directional parallel ports for many things or fit a SCSI card and spend a lot more on hardware.

The first CD writers for IDE were notoriously shite.

Oracle wins round one in bare-knuckle Android patent suit

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Music

What does that have to do with the case?

If you're going to talk about music then surely the case is about Google and if they did a "cover version" of Java or if they just "sampled" it.

Either way you will struggle to convince anyone that the dalvik virtual machine is a totally independent piece of software. Sun obviously turned a blind eye as they realised the contribution that Google made to Java but Larry is obviously more of a capitalist control freak.

Having used C# it's easy to see that that is inspired by Java, but it has enough differences to set it apart.

Fujifilm Finepix X100 APS-C camera

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Concert snaps

Some venues are getting funny about SLRs, some have always been funny about them. Even when you point out that your camera isn't a "professional" camera as mentioned on the venue rules.

So cameras like this Fuji seem to fit the bill. It's better by miles than a compact as the sensor size is comparable to an SLR (except a full frame sensor SLR of course).

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Some advantages over an SLR

That's all very well, but the SLR is heavier and attracts a lot more attention from the Police even though you are taking legitimate photos.

Microsoft maps WinPhone 7 path for iPhone coders

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LOL

It's not the API's you need to worry about, it's the fact that the iOS application is written in Objective C and on the WinPho7 it will be in C# or VB.

Has anyone ever found a code conversion tool that has been worth using?

Storage duopoly to transform industry?

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The future's solid?

Surely the future is solid state? maybe the research money need to go there instead.

All the noise, vibration and heat generated by those discs spinning at 15,000 would be eliminated and performance improved. Not to mention that SSDs fail in read only mode, so you don't lose your data.

2011 Ford Focus

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Over-reliance to follow

Alternately drive safety and better, stop looking over at your passenger, stop p*ssing about with your mobile phone or sat nav. Pay attention to the road and conditions, drive less aggressively. Take a break if you feel tired.

Also, you may have ABS but the person behind might not?

No technology is going to stop you mowing down kids, cyclists and pedestrians. At least not reliably anyway.

Giles Jones Gold badge

Cars are becoming boring?

Exactly, what comes next is an accident and the driver suing Ford for not preventing the accident?

Cars are become too easy to drive, too refined to the point of being boring. They need to be harder to drive and less refined to keep people alert and awake.

Pads propel PC market growth

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Oh please

Once activated you only need to connect it to upgrade its firmware. Activation is useful for iPads with 3G as it sets the device up to work with the SIM card installed, downloads carrier information.

Also firmware upgrades via USB are still more reliable than any other method at the moment. If the device gets bricked the bootloader still works.

I'm sure many people will want to connect it to their computer to syncronise music they have already and other media. If this was not possible then it would mean re-purchasing all their music.