Posts by Christian Berger

I'm sorry, but it's not WinRT that brings ARM to workstations

WinRT is just a cut-down version of Windows which somehow manages to be even less useful than regular Windows.

The start of the real revolution are devices like the Raspberry Pi, which are more or less ARM PCs. You have your operating system, which can be Linux or *BSD or whatever on a removable storage medium, you can connect a monitor a keyboard and a mouse and there you go, the full power of a workstation, but running on a tiny little ARM. It's not an appliance, but a full blown workstation capable of doing any kind of data processing imaginable.

What Microsoft doesn't seem to understand

People don't buy Windows because it's "good" or "innovative" or whatever. They buy it to run 1990s software they spent lots of money on. Now if Microsoft could come up with a clever way of making that old software accessible on mobile devices, they have a good chance. Otherwise they will need to compete on a market that's already full.

Create a hash over the first few seconds of the call

Then compare. Since robo-calls are computer generated they might be bit exact in most cases. If not use a "fuzzy hash".

One should note...

...that previously "walled garden" approaches to networking and payment has actually lead to lots of porn constantly being advertised. For example I somewhere have an old "Datex-P" magazine from Germany which was full of advertisements for Porn-Sites on "Datex-P" (old walled garden online service in Germany).

Same goes for "premium rate phonecalls" or SMS services. Porn is always way up on the list.

Education needs to start from a base

That's why I'm all for mandatory programming classes. Just like with math, school children need to have a basic understanding what a computer is.

A school child can watch "The Numberwang Code" and understand that it's all complete nonsense. They know that numbers are neither good or evil or neutral. They understand that there are no deadly numbers. That won't make them mathematicians, not even by a long shot, but it gives them some basic understanding.

However when it comes to IT people are clueless. They believe in cyber terrorism as if IT systems somehow had intrinsic vulnerabilities. They believe in "copy protection" although computers are more or less designed to copy data. They probably even believe that "privacy" settings at Facebook mean anything to that company, or that they somehow can magically make data disappear from the Internet.

If children would have a basic understanding of what a computer is, and if they would have understood a basic loop, they could make informed decisions in their lives. Then you can start teaching about such media and they will understand why they are like they are.

However there's little profit in this, therefore politicians won't allocate any resources for it. It's just the future of your society, no politician cares about that.

Race to the top

The problem is, that since nobody can really judge the competence of a worker in that field, and people want to get the best paid jobs they can get, all the positions are filled with the most incompetent people.

I mean once you understand concepts like "loops" you'll probably leave your computer repair job and move on to web application development in PHP. (with desasterous results) The rest stays, re-installing Windows at a computer repair company.

The same goes for hardware, if you know about electronics, you'll go to a TV repair shop or even do engineering. So what's left in computer repair is the bottom of the barrel.

Actually the iPhone...

Actually the iPhone more or less lowered the expectations we had of a smartphone. Before that the ability to run your own software was one of the main features of the smartphone distinguishing it from feature phones.

One of the flaws of GSM-ish networks

They were never designed for reliability. That's why they have single points of failure like the HLR (which apparently failed here). There were other network architectures which did have different approaches. For example AMPS (in the US) always accepted the first call from a new phone. It then looked up the identity and wouldn't allow a second call if you were unknown. The German B-Netz in Germany only punched call data onto punchcard, making no real-time verification of the user at all. The German A-Netz had an operator which called you back if you wanted to make outgoing calls.

It's mind boggling to see how much one could save in complexity and cost, if they wouldn't have to bill you for the service. You could use the modern RF interfaces of LTE and simply run Ethernet over it. No MSC, no HLR no VLR and so on.

Of course if it was Sky Germany...

...the real news would be that they gave _any_ reply after knowing it was about a cancellation. Seriously those people don't even get their mail from the post office.

I see something positive in this

It's another incentive _not_ to put DRM into those systems as you'd then need to pay licence fees for this trivial patent.

Missing the point

The Maemo devices aren't supposed to be in the same league as Android or IOS devices. They are supposed to be portable workstations. You don't care about the GUI, you care about the shell and that you have access to unixoid software.

I believe that's the big misunderstanding.

Facebook?

I wouldn't consider them to be a technology company. They are a data/advertisement broker.

Not _that_ important

There were plenty of home computer kits and even pre-made home computers around. Apple just happens to still exist. By the time the Apple 1 came out, you could already buy yourself a Kenback.

Quite simple problem

Business users mostly want to keep running their 1990s software, that's why they need hardware which is compatible with it. So no innovation wanted here. Consumers want to have what they have seen on advertisements and product placement. So no innovation wanted here.

In the past you had companies like Grid which made something which hadn't existed back then. They made stuff because it seemed cool. Today, in order to get a company to invest into something, you need to prove that it's already on the market and selling well. There would be lots of ideas for computing devices which haven't been done yet, or haven't been properly in the last decade or so.

If anybody would ask me to suggest one idea, it would be a "normal PC" inside a Nokia Communicator case which would run just about any operating system you want. If x86 would be impossible, it should have some form of hardware discovery so any OS can find out what hardware there is.

Flip down filter glasses

I mean those lasers typically have one of very few wavelength. So simply make "flip down" safety glasses for the pilots so they can simply filter out that particular wavelength.

Maybe it's even worth to just think about such an idea. Maybe just creating the urban legend would discourage people pointing laser pointers at planes.

Who is the Y in BYOD?

That's actually a serious question. By now many mobile phone companies want you to sync "your" devices with their servers. Often they limit the software you can install or even reserve the right to delete just about anything from your computer.

I mean who's responsibility is is when the maker of the phone makes a mistake or even acts malevolent?

Wait "not a replacement for Outlook"?

Does that mean that mail ap is worse than Outlook when it comes to e-mail? So far I'm always surprised how people can put up with software which doesn't even allow you to properly reply to e-mail.

Unfortunately

They now also have a consumer branch in that brand. So they now have laptops where they keys scratch against the display and the display doesn't close propperly.

I would like to take this opportunity...

to apologize for the Fraunhofer institute. I know it makes us Germans look like a laughing stock. From the me-too MP3 codec to this hilariously bad idea.

Won't work

It doesn't fit into the web. You cannot simply link to articles. It's much more realistic to do that via the voluntary route. Just look at Flattr. https://flattr.com/