* Posts by Giles Jones

2536 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Dec 2006

The DNA database and you

Giles Jones Gold badge

@Eh?

Nothing to fear? how about contamination?

Or suppose you worked in a clothes store, sold someone clothing which was then used in a crime. Suppose your DNA (hair) was on that item of clothing and got collected.

Now if you're in the database you would immediately become a suspect! It would then be up to you to prove your innocence (guilty until proven innocent).

Who's got more cash? Apple or Microsoft?

Giles Jones Gold badge

Microsoft tax

Microsoft's figures aren't that great given that the purchase of pretty much any branded PC from a shop results in you paying the Microsoft tax (OEM licence).

Fifty years later, steam appears on British railway

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@too slow

>This country is going backwards....bring on high speed rail...

>unless this is some kind of tourist route..then im all for it!

Congestion is a huge problem on the railways, expansion of the network is needed before high speed is realistically possible. While a faster train would spend less time to do a route it is all the other slower trains like freight trains that get in the way.

Roadpricing satnav spybox trials under way

Giles Jones Gold badge

Road tax

>So what exactly does the exorbitant money I spend on road tax actually pay for?

It's not been 'road tax' since 1936. It has been called VED for years. It's a tax on car ownership and more recently the pollution your car causes.

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

So next time you moan at a cyclist about who's paying for the roads you might consider that the cyclist is paying for them via some other tax (and just because they're on a bike it doesn't mean they don't have a licenced car at home).

Berlin bans handy iPhone metro app

Giles Jones Gold badge

Why?

Most of these applications just use a web connection to download the latest info, parse the HTML and create a Cocoa touch interface to the data. There is no data being stored on the device AFAIK and it's hardly different that going to their website to get the info.

Barack Obama will be president

Giles Jones Gold badge

@Who gives a rats...

Simple, if you do anything online that the US think is serious then you'll be extradited and you might then be interested in how you will get treated.

Something like cracking the protection on Blu-ray (even though they may be a legit reason, to watch films on Linux) would be enough to get you over there these days given how well represented the media giants are in the senate.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 Windows Mobile smartphone

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@Hardly cutting edge then?

>Having used WM6 on a phone I have to say it's absolutely pants!

>SE's hardware is often very nice - why saddle it with a joke o/s that is well past its best?

You'd better get used to it, WM8 is where all interface design is due and WM7 isn't out in 2010. So WM8 won't be around until 2011 or 2012!!!

It's astounding how long Microsoft can keep dragging their heels with WM development. I bought a Toshiba E800 in 2003 and some other WM phones. From a user perspective the OS has barely changed since WM2005!

Giles Jones Gold badge

@Levente Szileszky

Chill out, it's a phone.

The days of C64 vs Speccy playground arguments are long gone.

If the iPhone was so bad then Google and others wouldn't be ripping off it's design, app store etc.

Windows 7 borrows from OS X, avoids Vista

Giles Jones Gold badge

Webster thinks the disabled are stupid?

>I'm just hoping that there won't be that childish bouncing dock icon or magnification mode for the aged or stupid.

The magification mode is for people with eyesight problems, people who are partially sighted!!

Do you think it is funny to mock the disabled?

As for the elderly, why shouldn't they be able to use a computer? many of them are quite wealthy!

I'm sure if you ever had an accident leaving you disabled then you would be glad of any assistance you could get.

For the record I am not old or disabled, but I can appreciate that everyone should be allowed to use technlogy where possible.

Microsoft unveils 'lightweight' Office for Web

Giles Jones Gold badge

Buy Office to get Office on the web

That's what I'm sure I read you had to do. Buy a copy of Office to get a web version of it? why not leave your home PC switched on an RDP to it instead.

Eee PC maker readies Android phone for 2009

Giles Jones Gold badge

They advertise

I saw an Asus 'netbook' (I forget which one as they do so many now) TV advert the other day. If they produce a reasonable looking device, not too simple, not too geeky and with a camera to please the happy snapper/slapper crowd then it may take off if they advertise it on TV!

Home Office guides plods on photography

Giles Jones Gold badge

Cameraphones

I'm sure if you use a cameraphone you wouldn't get arrested. Why does a photographer with a decent lens = terrorist?

If you're trying to secretly take pictures for use in planning a terrorist act then you would do it fairly covertly or just logon to Flickr and browse the thousands of readily available pictures of the same place.

Dell unveils 12in Vista-based notebook-not-netbook

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Speed

Will be interesting to see how well it comes with Vista. It must be almost minimum spec for Vista.

Run Mac OS X on a PC

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Old kernel

Running a hackintosh is fine if you want to run a 3rd party compiled kernel that's way out of date compared with the official kernel.

A Blu-ray Christmas? Don't bank on it

Giles Jones Gold badge

How to get blu-ray to take off

Simply combine DVD and blu-ray films into one box. Buy one film and get the DVD and blu-ray version.

This will mean people will have a watchable film no matter what, plus those with DVD will have plenty of blu-ray titles when they do upgrade and won't have to re-purchase all their films again (which maybe a money spinner for the film companies, but it is a major reason for not upgrading).

Either that or allow people to swap their DVDs for the blu-ray version, since they are effectively buying a licence to watch the film, not the media.

Advent 4213 HSDPA 3G-enabled netbook

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It may be over £300

Having 3G gives these devices some purpose at least. Having the Advent name on it should lower the price more than other brands.

Apple and Psystar enter out-of-court counseling

Giles Jones Gold badge

Yawn..

The XBox was built up of PC components, only the slightly different unified memory architecture set it apart from a PC. I'm sure if someone had made XBox games run on PCs then Microsoft would have sued. How is this different to Apple protecting their own business?

Microsoft's 'ordinary Joe' promises Windows 7 bliss

Giles Jones Gold badge

Unfair on Jim Allchin

Jim Allchin saved Vista from disaster, the fact that the OS is so slow and DRM laden (Apple has DRM, but it doesn't cripple the performance of the OS) is not his fault. He retired the day Vista was released (smart move).

He wrote a memo to Ballmer and Gates in 2004 saying Microsoft had lost their way and he would buy a Mac if he wasn't working at Microsoft. So the guy really is in tune with how bad things are at Microsoft. I would imagine he's bought that Mac by now.

Man buys new MacBooks, pulls them to bits, takes pics

Giles Jones Gold badge

@32-bit

Discussion on it here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=6431823

Conclusion is people have got early 2008 MBP's to run up to 8GB in Linux, 6GB in OSX. So a newer laptop should be even better.

I very much doubt a newer chipset would be inferior. Don't forget these are standard off the shelf chipsets, not Apple designed chipsets.

1980s Apricot reborn in noughties as netbook seller

Giles Jones Gold badge

Just an revived brand?

Just like commodore, atari and others have been used to badge generic products are we sure this is apricot and not some venture capitalists using the name?

Android comes with a kill-switch

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Freedom

If you seriously want freedom then you need to turn to the world of pengiun and get an OpenMoko based device.

So long as a phone or platfform is developed by a large organisation and is sold under contract you won't be able to do what you like with it.

McCain begs for YouTube DMCA takedown immunity

Giles Jones Gold badge

One rule for them....

Another rule for the rest of us?

Surely they should be paying the artist and publisher to use the music if it is used in promotional material. They have enough campaign money to do so!

Apple revamps MacBook as 13in MacBook Pro

Giles Jones Gold badge

Firewire

Firewire is better than USB, but this is a consumer laptop. The average consumer doesn't use a firewire audio interface, they probably rarely use anything firewire these days.

Many camcorders are dropping firewire/dv connectivity, many of them are either USB or simply don't need firewire because they use memory cards or hard drives.

There's plenty of USB audio interfaces around, while they aren't as good as firewire ones they're fine for the low end user.

It's a strange omission given how Apple were one of the pioneers of firewire, but you either need firewire or you don't.

Linux at 17 - What Windows promised to be

Giles Jones Gold badge

Kernel

Linux is a kernel and this kernel isn't exactly radical. It's monolithic and that's hardly cutting edge. There's some cool filesystems and schedulers in there, plenty of hardware support.

Of course if you talk about Linux distributions having come a long way I will agree with you. The name gets associated with a complete OS when it is not.

Samsung Omnia 16GB smartphone

Giles Jones Gold badge

Who's the fanboy?

Just for the record I have owned two Windows Mobile touch screen phones and one Windows Mobile PDA. There's only so many years you can keep buying and using the same badly designed rubbish (the desktop design paradigm doesn't work on a mobile device, ie. Start menus, close buttons etc).

It gets tiresome using those silly little stylus pens on the move.

I have also owned two non-touchscreen Windows Mobile smartphones. These were much nicer to use than the touch screen version.

I've also owned a Symbian phone which was ok, dull like Windows Mobile too.

I also had an OpenMoko development handset.

So just because I like the iPhone and think some thought has gone into its interface (which Google and Microsoft are copying) does not make me a fanboy.

It's entirely possible to never need to connect your iPhone to a computer (except for activation of course). I can't say that is true for Windows Mobile, installing applications often requires connecting it to a PC (and yes, it has to be Windows most of the time). At least the iPhone works with Windows and Mac OSX.

Giles Jones Gold badge

Another typical WM handset

Full of hacks, OEM extensions and clueless bad design patterns that ruin the user experience.

WM is dead, by the time Microsoft get the modernised WM8 on the market (2012) Google android and iPhone will own the smartphone sector.

OpenOffice.org overwhelmed by demand for version 3.0

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And to make matters worse...

News sites are covering the failure. This encourages scores of internet users to test the site, even though they were previously unaware that 3 was out.

BenQ E72 budget Windows Mobile smartphone

Giles Jones Gold badge

@Wonder

They make you use task manager as it's designed badly. It should have a nice easy to select way of closing down an application. Not scrolling through a ton of menus to find an application.

Apple rattles legal sabre at Canadian tech school

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Nothing new

Microsoft got lindows banned. A made up word similar to a dictionary word which they somehow managed to trademark.

Big corporations are very heavyhanded when it comes to their brand.

Asus sexes up Eee line

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Cost

Costs too much.

It's obvious the Eeepc only sold as it was a smidgen over £200.

EU battery rule may zap iPhone, blow away MacBook Air

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@Good

So camera phone had 2MP in 1999?

One of the first camera phone was the Nokia 7650 released in 2002. It was VGA!

Megapixel count is a poor indication of photo quality. What is for sure it the iPhone's camera captures a photo in poor light without a flash, some of these 8MP phone cameras would need to use a flash (they call them flashes, they're just powerful LED lights). Flash photos almost always look bad (unless you're using a twin head setup in a studio).

As you increase the megapixel count you tend to reduce sensitivity to light and have to boost the signal more (boosting using analog amplification) which means more noise. In good light you don't need to boost, but in dim light you get loads of chroma and luminance noise.

The sensor sizes and optics in a camera phone can never be good, phones are too disposible to ever have any quality.

Jesus Phone vuln delivers fanboys to phishermen

Giles Jones Gold badge

Only a problem if you open the message

The email app shows a preview, which is more than often shows the email as being spam.

These security researchers do tend to target Apple, there's almost certainly tons of holes in Windows Mobile purely because the Internet Explorer and Email apps in WM don't get updated like the desktop versions do. Your phone vendor is unlikely to give you a new ROM to fix a security hole and so you're stuck with a compromised phone.

At least with Apple they fix such problems.

Nokia's Communicator to make a comeback?

Giles Jones Gold badge

Dual screen

As much as I liked the dual screen, these days you can get opening mechanisms that mean you can have the keyboard and the screen with a single screen.

A simple hinge is faster and easier, but having two screens adds to the cost and complexity of the device.

Apple royalty skirmish ends in stalemate

Giles Jones Gold badge

Eh?

The whole row is about the producers trying to hike up royalty payments for digital downloads above the rate which they get for CDs etc..

They're making a special case about downloads. Why should they get more when you're giving the public less? (they don't get a physical item, the music is lossily compressed, no album cover).

When the music industry starts complaining that they don't get any money from the sale of iPods then you know something is seriously wrong (ie. they're being greedy).

Apple probes poison-pumping Mac claim

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Happened before

It's happened before. The chinese plants where the PSU's are built have sprayed them with insecticide and other things. This should have been cleaned off.

Carphone Warehouse Webbook

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@Windows v Linux

It's much easier to tweak applications to run on the strange low resolutions these laptop screens have.

With Windows you end up with dialogs appearing with buttons that aren't visible. In the Linux desktops you can CTRL drag the window so you can see the buttons, can't do this with Windows!

Hands on with the T-Mobile G1

Giles Jones Gold badge

So what's it's USP?

I thought this was to be the FOSS alternative to the closed source approach of Apple and Microsoft? yet it's on contract, will be locked down and there's lots of commercial applications.

It just looks to me like a Google clone of Windows Mobile with some iPhone features on typically badly designed ugly hardware.

Trackballs? why not force users to plugin a mouse and be done with it. A properly designed mobile interface does not need trackballs and millions of buttons. A keyboard is justified if the device comes with mobile office software.

T-Mobile joins 3 UK in prepaid mobile broadband race

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@I DON'T WANT A DONGLE!!!

Sell it then. There will be many people who have a contract SIM who only want the USB modem.

Blockbuster: DVD to Blu-ray shift slower than VHS to DVD

Giles Jones Gold badge

Price and copy protection

DVD Players are dirt cheap, Blu-ray is not.

The quality increase from DVD to HD is not dramatic unless your TV set is 42" and over. Also you need a HD TV with 24Hz mode to get smooth motion with blu-ray as the films are encoded to the same frame rate at the original cinema print.

DVD's can be ripped and transferred to other devices like phones, mp3/mp4 players etc.. Some people like to backup the DVDs for use in the car or so they don't get damaged by their children.

Sun: OpenSolaris 'pretty freaking amazing'

Giles Jones Gold badge

Pretty freaking rubbish

I bet OpenSolaris still looks like it's stuck in the 1990s. I bet using it requires a working knowledge of Unix to do anything basic.

If you want a Unix based OS to do anything productive on then OSX is the one. If you want a Unix based OS to learn Unix then any of the BSDs will do. Some of the Linux distros are a balance between the two, but Linux differs somewhat.

It all boils down to if you own a computer to run software and get things done or own a computer to spend all your time editing config files in /etc. I got fed up with Windows and it's rubbish timing stability when running MIDI software, I got fed up with compiling kernels.

OpenSolaris is probably 5 years behind Linux in terms of ease of use. Linux is about 5 or more years behind OSX in terms of ease of use.

G1 Android launch pictures leaked?

Giles Jones Gold badge

Geeky phone

It's a shame that Google (household name) can't produce the smartphone for the masses.

Instead they have to go down the usual route of producing a mobile platform and not try and set a form factor.

Dumbphones are a joy to use because the the software is written to suit the hardware. Not the other way around.

Only Apple have a mobile platform where the hardware and software work as one. It's ironic given their hardware is the most minimalistic of most smartphones.

Multitouch should be standard! not just because of pinching and zooming, but because it means applications like drum machines (I have one on the iPhone) and musical keyboards are possible.

Confirmed: HTC's big-screen Touch HD smartphone

Giles Jones Gold badge

More of the same

HTC produce yet another handset with minor improvements over the last one. When will people realise that it's the windows mobile platform that needs all the work. It's still stuck in the 90s. I mean cmon, requiring a PC to install software onto the phone or going to a website and downloading a cab file?

Toshiba have had 800x480 handsets out for some time. But they were buggy and very average. Much like most HTC phones are.

I've never seen a Windows Mobile device with a good camera. So I doubt even 5mp counts for much.

Sony Ericsson confirms Xperia X1 UK launch

Giles Jones Gold badge

Camera phones

Sensor size is the crucial thing and camera phones always have small sensors. I can't see the point of 8mp on a phone when half of the pixels will be chroma or luminence noise.

No amount of post processing on a camera phone shot will give you detail and low noise. You have to pick one or the other.

iPod Touch, Nano disassemblies reveal surprises

Giles Jones Gold badge

@pity

It's a US design, radio stations in the US are know to be dire with loads of adverts. They don't have a BBC style service on FM there?!

As for accelerometers instead of a Nike+. That would just record the number steps, the Nike+ measures distance and speed. You can do this with GPS, but why go to the trouble when something like a Garmin Forerunner watch is much simpler and feature rich?

Customs raids tech trade show

Giles Jones Gold badge

Steal an advantage

Go to trade shows, steal competitors soon to be released products. Claim patent infringement (even though there's probably prior art), steal all their good ideas (early demonstration and development products may be easier to copy as they can have debug information in the code or on the PCB).

Garmin: Nuvi satnav phone release set for Q1 2009

Giles Jones Gold badge

Don't get it when it first arrives

Will need a few updates behind it to be fairly bug free. Garmin seem to release early and get lots of customer testing to iron out the bugs.

BBC iPlayer upgrade prompts new ISP complaints

Giles Jones Gold badge

Still don't see the point of iPlayer

PVR, VHS, DVD recorders are cheap and do a better job.

Save the Internet bandwidth for better things.

Spice up your Apple applications

Giles Jones Gold badge

A little too dull

Apple is partly correct to make pro applications a little less distracting. But I agree, the font sizes are too hard on the eyes in places. Especially Logic Studio when running on a 22 inch widescreen (I'd hate to run 24-inch iMac resolutions!).

Microsoft Silverlight: 10 reasons to love it, 10 reasons to hate it

Giles Jones Gold badge

Remember the days of This Site is Optimised for IE?

Well it will be coming back thanks to Silverlight. Lots of sites developed for Silverlight and brain dead web developers saying "Install SIlverlight then" as a response to "I can't use your site". Forgetting that not everyone has access to or wants to install Microsoft junk on their computer.

I thought we had moved on from the days of flash intros and non standards based sites?

If you can't be creative using standard DHTML then you probably are still bitter that multimedia CD-ROMs are a thing of the past.

Road Pricing 2.0 is two years away

Giles Jones Gold badge

Cows produce methane which is 10 times worse

Methane is 10 times worse than CO2. In fact this is why the melting of ice is a really bad thing as there are areas where methane is trapped within ice and when the ice thaws it is released.

Cows produce a lot of methane due to them being fed pre-processed feed instead of letting them chew on grass.