Posts by The Other Steve

Free markets, except ...

""If the market does not deliver superfast broadband in certain areas, we will consider using the proportion of the licence fee dedicated to digital switchover to finance superfast broadband roll out"

Erm, what happened to letting the market sort it out ? I mean I'm not against a bit of social engineering by infrastructure investment, personally, but aren't these the same Tories who continually bash the lefties for fiddling with free markets ? The consistency is killing me.

Mind you, they probably won't have to roll it out to everyone, because 30%+ of consumers will have been disconnected for file sharing by the time they get started, so maybe it's cheaper than it looks.

Someone's never been a data controller

"That being the case if they are *not* an arm of the government then they must file details to be in compliance with the DPA. Which should be subject to FIA request."

http://www.ico.gov.uk/ESDWebPages/DoSearch.asp ACPO's registration number is Z127313X

So yeah, they've registered with ICO as data controllers. Look at purposes from 4 onwards.

But the point is that since they are a Ltd CO, they aren't subject to FOI at all, and you can't file a subject access request for your criminal intel data, because it's exempt - it might prejudice the outcome of an investigation, this handy exemption applies to HMRC as well.

Besides, what if it wasn't ? Do you think ACPO really care ? What's ICO going to do about it. Cry ? And they could just say they have nothing on file about an individual. Who's going to know ?

Above the law, but obviously not in any way like the Stasi.

Sigh

"but Navteq's requirement that Nav4All not use any competing data source provides more circumstantial evidence. "

Of what ? That clause was in their contract even before Nokia came on the scene.

So this is another in the now apparently continuing series of "Idiots fail to read contracts, assess risks" stories.

"That effectively prevented the company exploring alternatives before the plug was pulled."

No, it didn't. It prevented them from commercialising any alternative system while they were still under contract with NavTeq. Which is different.

Oh FFS

"One could argue that Camiloo shouldn't have taken that risk"

Yes, one could argue that. Because it is, in fact, true.

Having heard nothing back from the BBC, the correct action is to persist in eliciting a response, not start ploughing time and resources into a project that will likely be killed once it comes to light, with clearly no idea about the terms of license under which BBC iPlayer content is provided and just hoping for the best.

Is this going to turn into a continuing series on sparky underdog developers with bright ideas but no fucking business sense whatsoever ? Because if it is, could we maybe turn the whining down a bit and focus on the lessons that these dickwads are learning the hard way ?

Let's take a look at what we've gleaned so far :

1) Always, always, always RTFM and in particular take the time to read and properly understand any legally binding agreements that you are considering entering to. Ideally this should happen BEFORE you agree to them, duh!

2) If you're considering making money off someone else's content, check the legal situation first, most likely you will need to get permission unless it is explicitly stated somewhere that you don't. This seems pretty obvious, but clearly some people are so terminally dense that it bears repeating.

3) Real companies will bitch slap your ass in court in nothing flat if you fail at numbers 1 or 2, get used to it.

4) Real companies do not do 'nice' or 'fair' or any other cuddly anthropomorphic bullshit, because they are not, in fact, people. They are corporate legal entities with narrowly defined agendas and goals. Any attempt to characterise them otherwise will end in tears. Yours.

5) If you are incapable of analysing the inherent risk in your business strategies it is most likely time to fuck off back to the safety of the cubicle farm that spawned you with all the other crayon waving web monkeys. Or if, in your cock waving arrogance, you told your boss to stuff his job up his arse because you were off to be a K Rad iPhone dewd, the dole queue. With the level of business aptitude you have displayed you should have no trouble getting a new job. I hear KFC are hiring.

6) Apple are dicks, get used to it.

Asus nicely in the game already

EeePC T91MT, has a fold out/rotate touchscreen that folds back flat against the keyboard. Very nice piece of kit. Course it runs WIn 7 which MS swear blind is 'touch ready'. That's about halfway true, since the Win 7 API has support for touch and gestures, but you need a stylus to drive windows, finger friendly it aint.

Asus' own touch software is, well, mediocre. I suppose MS could come up with something sexier, a nice touch UI for windows, but by the looks of things, Apple would then sue them. I'd buy tickets for that, Jobs vs Monkey Boy Ballmer would be a treat.

Might happen yet, unless MS have licensed some patents from Apple, because Win 7 uses the same pinch gestures for zooming that Apple seem so keen to destroy HTC over.

Cost about the same as an iPad might (what with pricing still TBA), it's faster, it does more, dev tools are free and I can put any software I damn well please on it. Oh yeah, and it has a camera and proper blue tooth.

Asus have the smarts to kick ass in this market, but then again, don't underestimate the fruit, and don't forget that Jobs isn't going after the same market demographic by a long shot.

80s revival !

Look and feel lawsuits FTW!

Oh, and PKB! Steal ideas from Xerox PARC much ?

Horses for courses vs degrees of autonomy

Fun article, albeit an obvious troll.

As ever, despite all the protests from various camps (mine included), the answer is that there is no one best solution.

Some people like a simple editor and the command line. They can be productive that way. Some people like a shiny IDE. Some, like me, are content to use either/both as appropriate.

As someone mentioned above, if you're running a couple windows with editor, debugger and build output, you are using an IDE. Even more so if you have build scripts/macros. It's just that your brain is doing some of the 'I' part.

In an ideal (from a codemonkey's point of view) world, each individual developer or team of developers would have the autonomy to select an appropriate CPU architecture, OS, language and/or compiler and sundry other development tools such as editors, build tools, source control systems, etc, etc for each project that they are faced with.

In the real world, unless you are an indy (and even then you may well face constraints due to client requirements), or work for a very small shop, you are unlikely to have that degree of autonomy.

There are good reasons for this which have fuck all to with 'vendor lock in', corporations with even small dev teams require standards. While the corporate codemonkeys may chafe at being treated like cogs in a machine, that is, in fact, exactly what they are.

It's no good if one member of the dev team, is using one krufty lump of ad hocery while the others use something else, possibly each their own KLoAH. I've seen shops that try and work like this, very few get away with it, usually it is a disaster waiting to happen. Someone gets sick or leaves and some vital bit of process knowledge is lost forever. Having a standard, repeatable, documented process is more important than some whining beardy fucktard's preference for vi, or indeed some mouthy recently graduated drone's obsession with Visual Studio. Or a drooling moron's preference for Eclipse, the second most bloated, ponderous and ungainly IDE in the universe (Monodevelop, in case you were wondering)

Those of us lucky enough to have the autonomy to chose should do so based on what seems to be most productive and appropriate, ideally we should get some metrics to prove it, but that rarely, if ever, happens in practice. Academia, yes, practice, no.

Here's a handy hint for anyone who feels like they're somehow 'locked in to' or forced to use an IDE that they think is not appropriate : Try and write a compelling business case that illustrates why this is so. When you fail, you will understand why your development process looks the way it does. On the off chance that you succeed, well, job done. Grab yourself a boss chair and a business card order form. Attaboy.

Basically, if you're in a position to chose, you've got nothing to complain about and a world of alternatives. If you're not in a position to chose, there is most likely an excellent reason why not. If you don't like not being in a position to chose, you made a poor career choice somewhere along the line.

High skills shops can be more tolerant of individual coder styles, corporate sweat shops and internal IT functions rarely fit this description.

Duh!

Well of course it's not fucking suitable for use as a medical device. There are a whole bloody host of things that it's not suitable for. Basically it's a pretty shite platform for most business apps due to e.g. lack of bluetooth, lack of multitasking (well, not lack, buy you know what I mean) and a whole host of other dumb ass restrictions piled on by Apple in an effort to a) maintain their premium branding, b) control the 'user experience', and c) well just generally be pack of four letter words beginning with C.

And I say that as someone who has recently added 'iPhone' to his development platforms. It's a shite platform for anything other than being a shiny toy, and even as a shiny toy lack of basics like OBEX make it bloody annoying. The vast lack of biz apps that you simply can't build around an iPhone because Apple won't let you is staggering. The very fact that these idiots decided to try is proof that despite it's paucity of features and general unfitness for such tasks, it's overall shinyness makes it attractive enough to close down peoples critical reasoning functions. As with many of the iPhone based biz projects I've been watching fail recently, I suspect what we are seeing is a persuasive dev team who somehow managed to write a plausible sounding business case as to why their employer should buy them all iPhones and pay to enroll them in the dev program. Can't imagine why they'd want that, can you ?

FWIW I hear that med profs actually do like Win 7 tablets, which let's face it are a far more suitable form factor to begin with. Why ? Because they like the handwriting recognition. Hate the fucker personally but then I'm not a medical professional informatics practitioner, or whatever they're called this week. Graffiti FTW, except that I can't sell it to you, cos bastard Xerox own a patent on it.

Also, I should like to point out that even though am I now the owner of several macs, a jesus phone and soon a stupid bloody iPad, I still hate mac fanbois, creepy kool aid swilling bunch, so you are. Oh yeah, and Apple are WAY more evil than MS, can't even change the color of the menubars in snow leopard, fucking retards.

Meh!

Expensive but worth it

Already have clients lined up who want development doing for the platform, and you can sell any old tat on the App Store to the tens of thousands of hopeless Apple cultists whose pre order will sit alongside mine.

So from my point of view, it's like Apple are actually giving me money.

YMMV , obviously.

Do Keep up

"isn't to be taken out and shot as might have been expected"

Who expected that ? Not me, because I've been paying attention. It was very clear from the licensing deal that MS did with BSquare back in November 2009 that there would continue to be WinMo 6.x licences and WinCE licences available.

God knows I don't blame you for not reading the comments on your own stories given the current quality of commentard and the fact that we're always so mean to you, but come on guy, GIYF.

"But Windows Mobile, even version 6.5, is aimed at mobile phones"

Not necessarily, no, it is designed for mobile devices with cellular radios, which is not the same thing. It was shoe horned into being a phone OS, a task at which it is notoriously unsuited due to it's PDA focussed heritage.

"A few diehards might prefer the mobile-computing capabilities of Windows Mobile, but they will be a vanishingly-small minority."

Erm, the vast majority of installed winmo images aren't in phones, but in various other handheld devices, bar code readers, stock systems, logistics kit, vehicle tracking, etc, etc. Always have been, always will be. Compared to those, it is the consumer WinMo phone market that is actually "vanishingly small".

Epic Fail, I'm afraid.

While 18 per cent use Vim

And of those :

Per cent who use Vim because they grew up with it during the nightmarish period when there really wasn't anything less hideously painful available on Unix: 1%

Per cent who use it because, despite having a deep understanding of text editor theory and having kept up to date with decades of usability research including the key studies relating to productivity and modal vs modeless text entry, etc, they just like it : 1%

Per cent who use it because some wank stain on slashdot said that "real men use vi" and they bought into the self perpetuating bullshit, thus condemning themselves to a hell of their own devising for the sole purpose of playing the alpha and waving their tiny geek wangers in peoples faces to show how uber leet they are : 98 %

Per cent of the above who are linux jihadi, for whom purity of ideology is more important than productivity, output or even using the right tools for a particular job : 100 %

In summary then, if you're a Vim user, there's a roughly 98% chance that you're a mong.