Posts by Charlie Clark

Re: So in theory, it'll run Slackware?

In theory, yes. As with all phone hardware a lot of the drivers are only available as binaries.

Want a phone that promises to be able to run Linux? Then look at the Gemini.

While I don't think Samsung gives much of a toss about Linux on their phones, they're very keen on DeX because it's something that nobody else has. And I think they're also smart enough to see that the developers market is big enough to keep the proof of concept going. If they get the volumes then they can expand the DeX eco-system.

If they pull this off then Samsung will be the company that killed the company laptop.

If they were on the open market then they weren't from Snap. That kind of sale would have to have been accounted for in the balance. Just goes to show how poorly most people understand the stock market.

Looks much more like TenCent is taking advantage of Snap's weak shareprice to move capital to the US. An inversion at some point is possible.

Re: News

That's fine if it agrees with your own viewpoint but I prefer more balanced coverage myself not that you can get that.

You do realise that you're asking for an oxymoron? If you think coverage is balanced then it's almost certainly biased towards your opinions.

Some degree of bias is unavoidable but I can live with that as long as facts are checked and are, well, facts. The dumbing down of the news to little more than a series of quotes to try and show balance is what erodes news broadcasting.

No, no, no: the problem is quite obviously with "viewing angle hue shift and god awful Pentile layout." because the poster knows better and can make better screens with his toaster… Obviously, Apple's geniuses could easily develop better screens themselves but they're too bus at the moment adding notches to them that people didn't know they needed until now…

Can't use it on my phone 'cos I rooted it to keep it up to date…

Re: Guzzling?

Frankly, I think that electric cars deserve a subsidy.

Your logic is, for anyone outside the US, somewhat perverse. Car engine sizes in the US are somewhat analogous to motor sizes in vacuum cleaners in the EU: a bigger motor used to be seen as correlating with a more effective cleaner. Cheap energy has become a holy cow in America and has led to perverse pricing: the duty levelled on fuel that is supposed to pay for motorway maintenance has not been raised for years because would mean people having to pay more for their gas guzzlers, which are kept popular by tax breaks. There is simply no incentive to drive something with a smaller engine and meanwhile road maintenance lurches towards bankruptcy. Of course, more gas sales means bigger profits for the oil majors and extra helping for all those on the gravy train.

So, what's the solution in the land of free enterprise and small government™? That's right, more subsidies.

Re: Musk, the new Jobs?

I'm a moderate fan of Tesla, the car, a doubter of Tesla's, the company, financials and an opponent of excessive electric car fiscal carrots.

Got to admire Musk for his real entrepreneurial spirit and often putting his money where his mouth his. The conventional wisdom was always against the Model 3 and the financial engineering only seem to have confirmed this. The initial Tesla's were based on getting a Toyota car plant cheaply and the subsidies continuing to flow. This was always going to be difficult to repeat for the mass market.

Still I suspect it's a win-win for Musk even if it fails: he'll easily be able to sell Tesla to another manufacturer, though I suspect some investors might well find themselves out of pocket.

And he's bound to be back with another idea. Might be more shit like hyperloop but could also be something magical and revolutionary and personally I'd rather see a hundred more Teslas than another Facebook.

Re: Hell froze over

It's Andrew Orlowski. As he has got to know Apple better…

Long before Andrew was writing puff pieces for Windows Phone or the copyright industry he had latched onto the good things that Apple does and produces. His phone reviews, even the Windows Phone ones, are always worth reading. I think most of the team uses at least one Apple device and has done for years.

Tim Yong Eun's beef with El Reg seems to be, that unless you always gush about Cupertino's toys, then you won't get an invitation to any of the shows.

Re: Interresting question: Do people have a right to a twitter account?

Is the typo deliberate?

Robot Wars, innit.

Re: Interresting question: Do people have a right to a twitter account?

No, no one has a right to an account. Standard T&C's but Donald Thump is great for advertising.

Re: Obviously...

bigly? yuge? pussy? fake? great?

Does he know any other words?

Re: "the Mac had its best-ever full year for revenue"

I thought people were buying the 2015 models with an escape key and a proper collection of ports. At least that's what I did.

Quite funny really.

Must be a barrel of laughs in your house.

IIRC the rise in sales in China follows a similar dip a year ago. If so, then that is an impressive feat in the face of increased competition in the market. Elsewhere sales do seem to have plateaued though at a high level and with lovely margins.

Apple deserve credit for breathing new life into the I-Pad market with the pro as it seems that otherwise the tablet market peaked a while back.

As for the Mac's I notice it's awfully quiet about that awful touchbar…

Just because people don't have lots of money, doesn't mean they have none: several billion Indians and Chinese with only a couple of dollars a month are still a market and Google does lots of testing to make sure its content and ads is served to them.

And these poor people have just as much a right to use the internet as you, you entitled fanboi.

Re: PHP FFS

Of the three I hate PHP the most because it copied too much from Perl. VB is truly awful but it's also on the way out.

Re: It has served me well

The comparison with human language as two problems: firstly, it's completely invalid on a technical level. But even if computer languages were human languages then this would just underline the problems introduced by flexibility, or to give it a more apt name, ambiguity. Ambiguity is bad not only for anyone reading the code but, potentially, also for the compilers as all the problems with creating a query plan from an SQL statement demonstrate.

Anyone who is proud of their own unreadable code, considering it unreadable only by those less talented, doesn't understand what programming is about. Coding stye guidelines exist for a reason: some other poor sod is going to have to maintain that code that you dashed off a few years ago. But they're also not an end in themselves: foolish consistency is the hobgoblins of tiny minds.

Re: Perl.... Arrggh

The biggest criticisms of Perl would be pervasive support for regexes in the language and the "there's more than one way of doing something". Loved by devotees but despaired of almost universally by others.

It has extensive libraries for just about anything and isn't going away, but it's certainly not growing either.

A while ago it looked like we were all going to have to learn Javascript but it seems that this is going to be eclipsed by WebAssembly getting universal support from all the browser makers.

VB is on life support, just some residual noise from the poor sods who have to work with VBA.

PHP remains my favourite bugbear for its unnecessarily poor choices in syntax.

Re: OLEDs

Unsurprisingly Apple is using screens from Samsung, which is why the new Apple phones can really be called Apple Galaxies.

I've had OLED screens for nearly the last 10 years. All of them have taken at least one tumble, usually from a shirt pocket onto the ground, and only one of them has broken, and that was not from a fall; it now has a diagonal hairline fracture but remains perfectly usable.

The new screens are big and complicated and, hence, expensive. And, if you watch any of the videos about replacing phone screens, you'll know that it's doable but tricky, which makes it expensive. So, while Apple's margin on the replacement will be decent, it might not be as high as some are making out.

The bigger scandal with Apple phones is how much they manage to charge for their "Apple Care" insurance. It's clever marketing, no doubt, but it also demonstrates how reluctant people are to press for their statutory rights as consumers.

Re: Text messages aren't a great way to implement two-factor authentication

Their ubiquity makes them better than nothing but, from a security perspective, they're not safe. As a result you might as well just inform the users that someone's logged in so they than can take remedial action if necessary.

Horses for courses and text-based 2FA can at least be credited with raising awareness a bit. Could be even better if the SMS protocol was updated to include better encryption. But that's likely to hit the same problems as with e-mail: the lowest common denominator wins.

The excuse for this is the idea that private enterprise can handle profitable units better than the state, keep prices low

Not really, the argument for state-built but privately run infrastructure is mainly one about differing goals and cashflow. Public transport may have other desirable returns other than financial ones for the state (less traffic means fewer accidents, less pollution means fewer days off sick, less traffic means more efficient business which means better tax takes, etc.). But also the state can afford to take a much longer view of the returns and issue long term bonds to finance it. Jokes like Dell's 30 year bonds are very unusual in the private sector which generally looks for returns in 2-5 years.

However, when it comes to running businesses, state companies often have a very poor record due to unclear aims and frequent political meddling. France is full of such examples (SNCF is widely considered to be a money pit). Public regulation and private provision can work quite well (Sweden and Switzerland provide examples) as long as regulators have enough power, ie. not like the rail system in the UK, which really has proved to be a gravy train for operators with no downside (Southern Rail…).

I bought a weekend return ticket Amsterdam-Utrecht and never had to show it to anyone.

This is because employing ticket inspectors is expensive but also inefficient, especially on commuter routes. Spot checks that encourage people to buy tickets are sufficient for most people.