Posts by Christian Berger

Far to early

It's far to early for that. What's missing right now is concepts on how to actually do stuff on tablets.

Facepalm

I wonder how those marketing beancounters think.

Now let me explain the situation.

People who buy iPhones, buy iPhones because they are exactly like iPhones.

People who buy different things buy different things because they are different.

You cannot over-iPhone the iPhone, because the iPhone is already the best iPhone per definition.

If you want to sell devices try to do something unusual, something creative. Just think of Maemo, those are portable devices on which you can easily get a root shell. People who buy such a device would not buy an iPhone.

Try to think of something new. Something that's never been there before. Or at least _listen_ to the people and listen to what they say your competitors and you are doing wrong.

Is it even on TV?

An EPG search for RoboCup just gave no results on my video disk recorder.

the rest of the world

The rest of the world sees the UK DAB progress as an amazing feat. You actually have sets at home. You can probably go to a store and just buy one without having to get it ordered. In Germany that's simply impossible.

Easy to find out

Just take a harddisk, measure the current of the voice-coil moving the heads with a transient recorder and read a few sectors on different tracks of the disk. Now look at how that changes when you lightly vibrate the disk.

This is trivially easy to do in less than a week by a semi-skilled worker with about 1500 Euros worth of equipment.

WLAN Meshes

So, uhm how long untill those people set up their own WLAN meshes, Cancel most of their ISP contracts and use a single line to use a foreign VPN provider?

Apparently from another planet

I believe this clearly shows that iPad users are from another planet. I mean who uses suites like "iWork" or "Open/Microsoft Office"? They do nothing more than a typewriter.

Who wants to trust a service like "Dropbox" when you can do the same with any other computer using rsync?

I believe this is the fundamental "flaw" of the iPad/iPhone. It's aimed at people who do not need a computer. The big problem is, that many people believe this demographic is worth chasing. That's why you have products like Android which happily copy most of the iPhone's flaws.

No SD and HD on one channel

Think of people with DVRs. They have a limited number of tuners. It's much more likely they want to record something on BBC one and BBC two at the same time than on BBC one and BBC one HD. So putting the later two on a single mux most likely will not benefit the viewer.

For example my DVB-S setup only has 4 tuners. So since BBC 1-4 are on one mux, I only need to spend one tuner on that, leaving the other tuners free.

Do they even have legal alternatives?

How many DRM-free legal music download services are there in Ireland?

No shell - No sell

It doesn't have a shell, without it it's just an overpriced terminal. Slash the price in half, install VNC and SSH and it might be usable.

Shell?

So does it have an easy to reach shell like Maemo devices have? Does it use Debian packages and repositories? It's no use if it's just another Android/iPhone clone. People who want that buy Android/iPhone.

Actually...

...it's Fertigungstechniker.

However, if it's male and has a wife, that would be the Fertigungstechnikersfrau. If several of them start a book club about antique books, they'd probably call it Fertigungstechnikersfrauenantikbuchclub. And their meetings would be. Fertigungstechnikersfrauenantikbuchclubtreffen.

I'm sorry, but that seems to be a tad expensive

Well it's nice to see that they are using a better than nessesary D/A converter, but considering that even the best audio converters are less than 20 Euros, one wonders what exactly makes that device so expensive.

The electronic parts of "High-End" are amazingly cheap.

Unlikely to have caused any consequences

I mean that was a virus which used a flaw only apparent in a _few_ versions of one of very many operating systems. It's very unlikely, especially at a Security conference that any of the people there had the propper equipment to execute that virus on their main systems.

Go get a brick

I mean what's the point? If you want to telephone outside your house and for some reason you don't want to use the nearest telephone booth, get a feature phone. If you need to process data on the run you'll need to get a Maemo device which will be empty after a day.

Python? C++?

I mean both languages are, as far as I have seen, completely bloated with useless features. I think we can end the discussion by saying that both languages have operators _and_ functions.

I'm always amazed

I'm always amazed how popular DAB radios are in your country. Recently I have seen a documentary on manic depression, and just there in the background was a DAB radio. I am an electrical engineer and have so far seen less than 10 DAB radios in my life. And none of those were at a home.

I'm sorry

On behalf of all Germans I would like to sincerely apologize for this product. We try to keep such things from happening, but from time to time, Management just takes over. Again I'm sorry that this device won't record onto network shares, or USB mass storage devices, or does anything one is used from a satellite reciever.

That's all fine and good

But according to this table here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#Industry_adoption

IE7 doesn't run on Windows 2000. So people would have to "upgrade" to newer versions, loosing compatibility with older software as well as features.

I don't get it

Why not just add more RAM. RAM is quicker than Flash and not much more expensive. Plus RAM is far more reliable.

Actually it means more free networks

Before this it was unsure if you could be liable for 3rd party piracy, now it means there's a cap of 100 Euros on it. This is a huge step forward, as it'll essentially destroy the busines model of companies like Logistep which previously got it's money for sending notices to customers. For only 100 Eur it's not worth doing so. The lawyers would cost more.

So the general idea here is that it's now save to run open wireless networks, as the worse thing that could happen would be a 100 Euro fine, and even that is highly unlikely.

Come on people

This is just DNS not the internet. DNS already was a semi-closed hirarchical system governed by politics. So not much will change, other than DNS-spoofing will get somewhat harder. Therefore many forms of internet censorship will, too.

Solving the problem at it's root

When will the industry finally learn to solve the problem at it's root. It's just so simple, just ban cameras completely. Now not only in the cinema, it's to late there, but at the actual place where the talents are.

Just add a codec plugin system

Just add a codec plugin system to Firefox and add ogg theora by default. If an user wants to have h.264 he can it from "somewhere else". I guess the patents will be unenforcable just like with GIF.

It will be exciting tomorrow

There will be an important regional election in Germany. The Pirates Party got 1.7% at the last national election. It was, by far, the largest of the below 5% parties. This got them lots of news and publicity. With a bit of luck, they might get above 5% and therefore get into the local parliament.

First drive with minimal standards so far

That's really the first encrypted drive I have seen which could potentially be good. It doesn't rely on any software on the PC which is, in general, a truely bad idea.

Now if they got the cryptography right, this will be a good product.

Actually a disappointment

Obviously the users interface designers didn't understand what a powerfull device a graphical pointer could be. So far it's just glorified drag and drop. One should send a reel of a GRAIL demo to Microsoft.

It's not the quality of software that counts

If what gets pre-installed.

So to sum it up...

Nice hardware, shitty software. Seriously, who in their right mind would want to spend money on a Windows box only to have a fileserver?

I don't get it

If you are adding accessories to your portable computer, won't it get less portable?

For those not living in the US or the UK

Leonard Nimoy stared in a US television show named "Star Trek" which was kinda like "Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion", but with more episodes, in colour, and with far less budget.

He played a science officer who was half alien. They depicted that by, believe it or not, glueing prostetics to his ears.

I think the shoestring budget was one of the reasons why it was so popular in english speaking countries. It kinda looks like "Ijon Tichy: Raumpilot", but with _less_ budget.

There is a German dub of that series availiable. It was first availiable in 1972 on ZDF and then later migrated to Sat1 and Kabel 1.

When Apple and Adobe are arguing...

this can only mean good news.

Adobe's only chance is to move to open formats.

no market for Wireless shoes?

Well maybe it is so where you are, but in Germany wireless shoes compromise a large market. Nearly all shoes sold here do not come with wires. (unless you count shoe laces)

Bandwidth costs are imaginary

What actually does cost money is equipment. However you need to replace equipment regularly anyhow and that's what your customers are paying you for.

BTW the broadband "boom" in Germany was only due to the fact, that DSL quickly became unmetered. You could suddenly be connected to the Internet without having to worry about 1000 DM telephone bills. It was just about 80 DM a month fixed. That was and still is, highly attractive to people.

Ohh and a little hint to your people. Why not just leave WLAN enable harddisks around without any passwords.

Dot Matrix Printer?

Seriously, it's a Windows machine. Have you ever tried getting a non-parallel printer to run on one of those? It just doesn't work, as you cannot get your OS to make the port availiable as the LPT1 device.

Problem is in the Software

Will it be supported by Software? After all Microsoft still refuses to support USB. Just try to plug in a random USB->Serial adapter into a Windows box. It won't work.

Why not an open bootloader?

Why not just have an open bootloader so I can install any OS I want?

Ternary not a problem

Even today, Ternary systems are widely used in combination with binary ones. For example the UK0 Interface of German phoneline uses a Ternary voltage levels to transmit binary signals.

So essentially a final product probably would have binary connections, but convert that to ternary internally.