Posts by Daniel B.

Yeah, right.

Because you don't need to copy that stuff from Excel into that e-mail you're sending. Or use the calculator while sending an SMS. Or having some app open, take a pic and return to the app.

Things that my BlackBerry can manage, but the Jobsian gadget still is unable to do. Regular users may not care about this stuff, but *smartphone* users expect to have these features on their smartphones. This is one of the reasons the iPhone is still seen by many as an overpriced toy phone.

I'd think about going up to Win7...

I might think about going all the way up to Win7... but good ole MS seems to ignore the fact that many of us gave a pass on Vista. WinXP *CANNOT* be upgraded to Win7. Too bad for MS, that means that even if I have a valid reason to jump up to Win7 (specifically, I'd like to see the full 4Gb o' RAM in my PC) won't do so.

MS FAIL.

In fact, TFA is right

What the article states is that Jobs is basically running the company as if it were *his* company, as in "I own all the stocks", or as if it were a private company, not a publically-traded one. Yet another sign of his control fetiche showing its face.

I think that when Jobs leaves (or dies), Apple might stumble, but all the "control freak" stuff might go out, and *then* Apple will once more be a nice company. Currently, it seems like they turned into the very Big Brother they "attacked" in their famous '1984' video.

It ain't the only one, silly!

The PSP Go manages to do most of that as well. And you can buy real games, not some cheap knockoff on popular titles as well!

Blackberries FTW

Given the battery life on a BlackBerry, I'd bet on one of those for 24/7 operation. The only way I've ever been able to drain a fully-charged battery is by running a crapload of apps, turning on GPS, WiFi *and* 3G while having a -120 dB signal, while chatting away on MSN Messenger *and* Yahoo Messenger. Even then, it worked for 10 hours on a single charge. I'm pretty sure that without GPS, the battery might even break the 24-hour barrier even with both 3G and WiFi transmitters working.

Also, BlackBerries seem to take a good deal of abuse without breaking... the iBone's main feature is also it's main vulnerability: the touchscreen. It is a nice toy, but it isn't quite cut for serious use.

District 9

As it was the best movie I watched last year. Avatar was good, but not *that* good.

So?

My mobile e-mails say "Sent from my BlackBerry". I actually like that to be sent, so that the other person knows I'm not behind a PC and will probably take some time to take whatever action he requested as "urgent".

My RAM is expensive

I remember running up costs for RAM in November. I was seeing $30 2Gb DDR2 RAM sticks, and thought "nice, I'm gonna get me that lean mean 8Gb machine for me! Whoops... the RAM had jumped to $70. So I'm stuck with a 4Gb box, 'coz its expensive.

It seems like its time to buy a crapload of RAM sticks and sell 'em for more... prices are definitely going up.

Oh yes!

Having to deal with those lazy Flash-only sites from time to time, this is one thing I can actually thank the iPhone for. Flash is for games, anything more complex is a job for HTML, JSP, ASPX, PHP, whatever.

Good riddance!

Apple II

Maybe they're talking about the Apple Computer in the 70's ... those used to be very common before the advent of the IBM PC. Most of the stuff found in Apple Computers dominated the 8-bit personal compuer market up to the 80's; see the MSX and Commodore for that.

I do wonder if that gives Apple the right of "igniting" the PC revolution, though.

Hm...

"you don't need 10 year old jimmy posting Wobble shots of his teacher on FB, and getting her fired, or using the "naked" app to post child porn pseudo images of his classmates and getting the whole school shut down"

I'm pretty sure that all of this can be done without an iBone, any pen cam will suffice to get the "sample" and would get uploaded by, you know, *normal* PCs.

Problem with OGG

... is that using that thingy means downloading stuff into your PC. Codec-hunting. Which is fine for techy, nerdy guys like us, but extremely annoying for common users who want their stuff to "just work".

The day that MS includes OGG codecs on its OS will be the day that OGG gains universal adoption. Otherwise, it is only another hoop to jump for "normal" users.

Depends on what you call 'fat'.

If you follow the true three-tier development model, having the client-side component as a Swing UI *doesn't* mean you have a fat client. The whole Business Logic should be processed by the AppServer instead, and the UI is just that: a UI for the user. I for one would rather see actual thin-clients on the, erm, client-side than the diarrhea of web2.0 apps relying on crappy JavaScript or those ugly Flash-based "sites".

Meh

I also worked at a large financial organization, and while IE6 was the "standard", so was Nestcape 4. That was because Netscape 4 is the most recent browser with OS/2 support; go figure.

The good thing is that those OS/2 beasts with Netscape4 are basically malware-proof, as there's no chance in hell they'll even be able to run the malware!

It is here too

The use of "Durex" (or Diurex, as pronounced in Spanish) for referring to adhesive tape is also common over here. Yes, in fact I think that "Durex" the condom manufacturer was also the same "Durex" the tape manufacturer; thus we have the same brand for different, err.... uses.

@Greg J Preece

Which companies? Most of the places I've worked at in the last 3 years have stuck to XP and Office 2003. No one in their right mind has chosen 2007, especially with that "Ribbon" thingy that seems to have eaten up all their beloved menus. Not to mention Vista, which I've seen in only 2 corporate PC' in that same timeframe; and those PCs were new. In fact, I suspect new PC acquisitions have been frozen in most corps *thanks* to Vista. Woo!!!

You didn't read the article?

"MicroSIM is the smallest size currently available. It supports additional address book features, better security and a few other API enhancements *out of the box*"

So, you didn't read the part about the "new features" being available on USIM chips, micro or not? IIRC, the only difference between "mini" and "micro" is the excess plastic surrounding the actual chip, hence the ability to "hack" a normal USIM card into a "microSIM" slot. You're just cutting the useless plastic.

"Apple have a track record of popularising new interfaces and technologies. They did it with USB, with Firewire, with multitouch... and they were (in)famously the first computer manufacturer to drop the 3.5" floppy drive."

... and they were also the first ones in using SCSI as a HDD standard, first to jump into RISC/PowerPC, first in using 3.5" floppies instead of the 5.25" with the Macintosh ... all of these improvements were lost in favor of cheap crap by switching to IDE and x86.

I doubt USB was made popular by Mac, Firewire was better but it didn't quite take off, and dropping the 3.5" floppy *when they did it* was kind of stupid, as pendrives weren't that popular back then.

Yeah, right.

RSA is still secure 30+ years after its conception, the only thing that makes it "weak" is its dependence on key length. IDEA is also quite old, and is still considered secure. Most of the cracked algorithms are usually the ones that were half-baked, short-sighted and propietary. DECT falls into this category.

Erm

You realize it is the *iPhone* the one doing this? The one that the Mactards insist is flawless, and doesn't have any of those "your system is insecure" malware vectors???

As an even greater insult, the "verified" config comes from Apple Computer, which is easy to register as thanks to Apple ditching its original name: "Apple Computer". If they still had that one, the guy who got the legit SSL cert wouldn't have been able to do so. Of course, this also makes you wonder how would a CA not realize that someone asking for "Apple Computer" might be phishing.

And yet...

the Space Shuttle still had some reuseable parts. Constellation was basically stepping backwards and using the shitty 60's tech "just bigger". They didn't even try to do something like the DynoSoar or any similar reuseable spaceplane.

Hell, they even ignored DIRECT, which had a lower cost than the Ares thingies they've just cancelled.

At least I hope that this means NASA will actually work in a real spaceship instead of "use once and discard" toys.

Sun's potshots at MS

I still miss that "Jacques Cousteau" commercial where he dies because his scuba equipment uses Windows NT. "Ze last thing he saw vas not the blue of the sea, but the Blue Screen of Death."

I'm going to miss these guys.