* Posts by Christian Berger

4850 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Mar 2007

Apple's 13in MacBook Pro in online strip tease

Christian Berger

Hard to use

That all seems preety hard to use. I mean swapping the harddisk when the old one fails is a typical user task, just like replacing a toner cardridge. Although looking back at my experience with Apple computers, you would consider putting the logic board on quick release, too.

Google Squared - the Cuilest search app ever

Christian Berger

Rendering problems?

Well you are using a really obscure browser. Internet Explorer, wasn't that from the mid 1990s?

Microsoft's software vision chief embraces future horror

Christian Berger

@howard hanek

That's a great comparision. Althought you could certainly still operate your lamps with Whale Oil, nobody does it because it's expensive and widely regarded as "wrong". Whale Oil does not offer any advantage over other kinds of fuel just like Windows does not offer any advantage over other kinds of OSes.

LG 42LF7700 HD TV

Christian Berger

How large is the harddisk?

How large is the harddisk? Or are we supposed to record onto USB sticks?

Sky shoots Swan Lake in 3D

Christian Berger

Why settle for stereoscopic?

Why not real holograms. Sure it's expensive today, but once it becomes a mass market it'll be cheap. And just think of the many side products of that.

Microsoft, Asus launch anti-Linuxbook campaign

Christian Berger

It needs to have Windows to be a netbook

If you have Linux it's a full-featured PC. If it has Windows installed it is a feature limited appliance.

Doro PhoneEasy 345gsm

Christian Berger

Motorola had one too

Motorola once had one which had a large electric paper display and easy to use buttons. Additionally it's still small. My mother owns it and she's very impressed by it.

Cobol hits fifty

Christian Berger

"Just works" means a lot

If something would actually work in computing, it's usually a big progress. If C and PHP would "just work" we'd have a lot less problems.

Inside USB 3.0

Christian Berger

Finally they read a book on high frequency electronics

They finally got the brains to actually terminate the bus. Now the only problems will be on the software side, as well as on the power supply and connector side.

We should take bets if Microsoft will implement the 20 most important device class drivers. :) I doubt they will.

Microsoft set to reveal Windows 7 pricing mid-June

Christian Berger

Probably as usual

They'll sell a "cheap" version for development countries, which is limited in something stupid like screen resolution. Then they will sell a "normal" version which includes all the features of DOS, plus a GUI. The "professional" version will include rudimentary file-sharing for up to 10 computers. And the really usefull version will still be sold as "Windows Server 2010" or something which has all the features you need and will probably feel a lot faster.

Microsoft should stop lying about what the normal version is. If it doesn't have any network support, for example to have multiple people logged into your system, it's not really a usefull OS.

European 'standard' e-car power connector details emerge

Christian Berger

Plug Present

The plug present pin has a more serious function. It tells the power source when to power those contacts. This way the possibility of high currents flowing through the plug while it's still not plugged in is eliminated. It's been done for years in simmilar connectors. It's a safety feature.

HP OfficeJet Pro 8500 Wireless

Christian Berger

Would be a killer

It it could do Postscript or PCL, have an actual fax-modem inside, and would do A3.

The point is, laser printers have now developed to a stage where they just work. You just install the driver for a HP LaserJet 4 on your computer and print to the printer. It'll simply work, a feature inkjet printers are struggling to provide.

Nokia's next-gen tablet OS uncovered?

Christian Berger

Thank god it's not a phone

If the internet tablets were phones, they'd be restricted to death like the iPhone.

Ofcom works out why Wi-Fi doesn't work

Christian Berger

IEEE_802.11a

Well but what about the a-standard? If we'd all just move to IEEE_802.11a the problem would be solved. There's enought space for everyone.

Apple bars 2.0 code from App Store

Christian Berger

It's a phone after all

They have to make sure operators can sell new contracts to their customers. It would be a shame if they'd sell a new n year contract and no applications would run.

Kent council plans giant 'Hollywood' erection

Christian Berger

Not so uncommon

German town Cham got some letters for such a project some years ago. Back then another town, having a gardening show had the word MACHT (power) written in large concrete letters. After the show they gave that word to Cham, so they could use it for such a project. I think the main problem was that nobody knew what to do with the T, so the project was never realized.

Flu chip fights pig plague

Christian Berger

It's not swine flu...

... it's "A flu named Babe"

ARIN heads off IP address land grab

Christian Berger

Think globally, act locally

Don't just talk about IPv6, embrace it. Get yourself access at:

https://www.sixxs.net/

It's free!

Security luminaries chew the fat on e-voting

Christian Berger

democratic eVoting

Democratic eVoting is as impossible as time travel.

The main problem is that a democratic voting protocoll needs to be completely understandable and verifiable by the large mayority of the population. It's no good if you need a degree in mathematics to be able to understand it, or you need to disassemble code stored in a ROM on a computer. Only if at least 90% of the population can understand the system enought to be able to check for fraud themselves, the system is OK. Till now, no other system than pen and paper can provide that.

For security's sake! Send your kid to hacker camp

Christian Berger

Side effects

Well the problem about this is that knownledge about computers is more wide spreadt. People will then stop buying DRM encrippled things or accept current copyright legislation. This would threaten the status quo and then the terrorists would have won.

The only chance of an oppressive government is to keep it's citizens dumb.

Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000

Christian Berger

Focus? Zoom? Iris?

Where are the rings for focus, zoom or the iris?

LG insider points to Apple OLED notebook

Christian Berger

Cost savings?

Isn't OLED _way_ cheaper than LCD? I mean why else is it used so frequently in cheap devices?

Microsoft gears up for Windows 8

Christian Berger

Yes, but...

...will it run all Windows 3.1 software? Seriously that is the reason why people haven't yet switched to Vista. That also is the reason why they won't switch to Windows 7 or 8. Most Windows software is legacy software, abandoned years ago.

TVonics MDR-250

Christian Berger

If you'd do normal DVB-S...

...budget would be 10 pounds, like in the rest of the world. This whole "let's make our own little market with Freeview and Sky" really raises the prices.

RedFly goes soft

Christian Berger

There is a use for it

There is a use for beeing able to remotely log onto your mobile phone to execute applications on it. In developing countries, the first computer most people have will we a mobile phone. Now imagine a small business running some management software in a phone. Eventually they will want to have a bigger screen and keyboard, but they don't want to loose the possibility to have everything on the phone. Just loging into your phone and executing the phone applications on a large screen would be usefull then.

However Windows Mobile has the problem of beeing incompatible to the rest of the world. Therefore there are only few applications availiable for it.

Apple Mac Pro

Christian Berger

@George Schultz

Well of course, the top notch Macs always had the possibility to have several harddisks. However the smaller ones didn't. You always have to mess around with external USB disks.

Christian Berger

A mac like a PC

Well the Mac Pro series seems to mimick PCs by allowing more than a single harddisk to be buildt in. This way you build a RAID and use the hardisks to store data.

I don't worry about the software aspect of it. As Macs traditionally are appliances, the firmware manufacturers will soon adapt to the new hardware.

Laptop Hunters snare Microsoft on Linux

Christian Berger

Linux has gone a long way

Today on most hardware you simply install your modern (k)ubuntu distribution and after one reboot you're left with a fully functional system. There's no need for endless install orgys where you pop in CD after CD, and if you make a mistake, you'll have to start all over again.

Even the hardware support has gone a long way from what people are used with Windows. At work we had 2 workstations, a normal Kubuntu 8.10 one, and a Windows Vista (32 Bit) one. We got 5 random USB devices. 4 of them conformed to standard USB classes and therefore should run on any OS. One was a proprietary WLAN USB stick. The standard devices were a USB->Serial adapter, a USB->ethernet adaptor and an USB->Bluetooth adaptor. All of them, even the proprietary WLAN stick worked as soon as you plugged them in under Linux. _None_ of them worked out of the box on Windows Vista!

So unless you are prepared to get lots of support calls talking users through the process of installing drivers for hardware without having a CD-Rom drive, you might consider giving Linux a try.

Microsoft cries netbook victory against Linux

Christian Berger

Well Windows simply fits the definition of Netbook better

I mean a Netbook is supposed to be a locked down limited functionality device which is not supposed to be able to do serious data processing. That's just what Windows gets you. Your stock installation of Windows doesn't even include network support. You cannot even log into other computers via ssh! You cannot even connect an USB-Ethernet adapter to it and expect it to work. (such adapters are defined in the USB standard)

Pure Flip Mino HD

Christian Berger

Focus? Zoom?

Where are the rings for focus and zoom?

Research spies holes in Fortune 1000 wireless nets

Christian Berger
Joke

But it's _RADIO_...

It's radio, it's invisible. Nobody would ever be able to analyze it.

Fable creator: How DLC ruined my summer vacation

Christian Berger

Wow

How insane does someone need to be to _still_ install Windows natively. I mean he's sacrificing the whole Internet just to run legacy software.

U2 song whacked my hard drive

Christian Berger

Fairly simple to find out

Just play a very slow sine sweep. If any part should vibrate more strongly because of resonances, you will be able to measure that quite well.

Pioneer rebuffs reported rush to end plasma TV production

Christian Berger

@20yrs behind

The problem is that Japan jumps at the first best technology. That's why they had NTSC as a colour system which never worked sufficiently. I guess for 3d television they will use that cheap 2 camera system instead of true holographic systems which are harder to do.

Will Big Blue mainframes run Windows?

Christian Berger

I wonder

I wonder when they will support all those old proprietary word processing systems that were popular during the 1970s and 1980s? I mean is it really a good strategy to shift legacy Windows code to Mainframes?

Kaminsky: MS security assessment tool is a 'game changer'

Christian Berger

Kaminsky lives in a strange world

One day he mentioned, he's doing security research for Microsoft because people like his mother are not going to use Linux. What strange world is he in where you can give a Windows system to an elderly person? I mean I have tried that once, and it resulted in constant calls why something didn't work. After the switch to Linux everything worked fine. Windows is just not yet ready for the desktop.

Much of the rest of his discoveries are actually quite obvious, like that DNS flaw where everybody thought "_That_ hasn't been fixed yet?"

Occasionally he does something cool like streaming web radio over DNS, but most of his fame comes from his hillarious talks.

Philips 42in Ambilight LED array TV

Christian Berger

Why not OLED?

OLED panels are 20 Euros a piece in normal sizes, end customer price. That's why you find them in MP3-Players, mobile phones and other devices.

Apple Mac Mini (Early 2009)

Christian Berger

Yes, but why Apple?

I mean seriously what's the big selling point about Apple computers? It used to be the GUI, then the PowerPC then MacOSX, but now you can get usable Linux distributions which have virtually every kind of software availiable at a touch of a button. Additionally the build quality of Apple hardware had it's weak times with "Logic Board Failures" becomming a common phenomenon.

So, what's the f**king difference between a Netbook and an ultrathin?

Christian Berger

What abou?

What about Windows XP or Windows Vista? Those are cut down versions of the real Windows lacking any networking functions.

Orange and Barclaycard partner on touchless pay-by-phone tech

Christian Berger

Buttons?

Wait a minute there are buttons from 1-9, OK, but what does 10, 11 and 12 do?

Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Mini UI 3520 netbook

Christian Berger

Shiny screen...

zero points

I want to see what's on the screen, not my reflection.

Skype to give away wideband audio codec

Christian Berger

Speex?

Speex can do that, for free and without having to install spyware on your computer.

Humax Foxsat-HDR Freesat HD digital video recorder

Christian Berger

You do realize

You do realize that you can get the same from just about any Linux-based DVB-S reciever if you install propper software. Freeview is nothing more than DVB-S with it's own form of EPG and channel numbering. With such a solution you are easily able to use a comfortable web interface for scheduling your recordings. Further more you can record directly to NFS shares where you can encode them automatically.

Brother MFC-990CW all-in-one printer

Christian Berger

Uhm????

So you'll have a phone and a Fax on the same phone number? How is that supposed to work?

AMD aims CPUs at 10in SCCs

Christian Berger

One problems with laptops

While Netbooks typically have high quality screens, laptops increasingly have cheap glare displays which are unusable in real life.

Microsoft plays with small, sleepy servers

Christian Berger

Great idea

That way they can easily multiply the licence costs as every board probably counts as it's own computer and you need to have a Windows licence for each one of them.

World's 'smallest, lightest' laptop launches

Christian Berger

Usefull....

if it runs Linux. Then you can easily connect a large X-terminal to it and do anything you want. Essentially you'll have a portable storage unit you can easily see and manipulate the contents of without using an additional computer.

Apple shares MacBook break-in tips

Christian Berger

And?

I mean no average user buys a macintosh. Macintoshes are for people who like to deal with binary code. People who can disassemble x86 code they see in a text editor. Those people probably don't mind complicated to open cases.

You average "I just want to _use_ the computer"-user will stick with his Ubuntu on a cheap PC.

Satellite-hacking boffin sees the unseeable

Christian Berger

Before you ask

There is more you can do with satellites. In fact most US military satellites are completely insecure.

You just send up your signal and it'll come down on a different frequency.

http://www.uhf-satcom.co.uk/

Intel to put internet in your pants

Christian Berger

Main problem

Will it be a gadget running Windows, or will it be a full fledged Linux computer? How well will one be able to use a console on such a device?