Posts by David Dawson

Email was designed decades ago, I'm sure we can do better now.

Screen (biggie), extra memory, patent/ license fees for various things, telephony chips and radios, battery, integration costs and testing.

I can't imagine the processor is actually that big a cost out of the £500, although a modern armv7 will be quite a bit more than the armv5 they are using here.

I believe that one of the things keeping the costs of these down are that a couple of the broadcom chips that power the device are being sold to the project at manufacturing cost, as an employee or two of broadcom are working on the project.

I do wonder if this could be adapted into a basic android phone somehow. Anyone know how expensive telephony radios/ processors are?

i for one

Think that a fine should cause some material damages to the fined party, otherwise what's the point?

I have to agree here.

'Lazy parenting' ? Quite a value judgement there, care to back up the 'undeniable' part?

When you have kids, you try to teach them to understand temptation and how to resist it.

However you certainly do not put temptation that they are unprepared for in easy reach. This is bad parenting.

If the 14 year old can't go through the night without playing daft games on his phone, you either take it away or disable the function, as this application does.

Talking to him and trying to convince him of the error of his ways won't work, he's 14, the temptation will be too strong and you should simply remove it until he is capable.

You have to treat them as children, because _that is what they are_, to do otherwise is doing no-one a favour, least of all them.

@AC

Argumentum ad hominem.

Tosser.

you mean at a price near enough to zero that people won't think anything of avoiding downloading it for free?

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I think I agree with the post above. Its not a rush to the bottom.

The biggest problem with the music industry when napster came of age was that you couldn't download a track and play it on an MP3 player, or on winamp (remember!) without jumping through loads of hoops, if you could get it at all.

It was a pain in the rear to do.

Napster and its ilk were much, much easier.

I happily downloaded music when I wanted it, as it was easy. Every so often I bought an album of a band I liked, but never singles. What would be the point?

Now, however, I buy all my music. I have a spotify subscription for my daily rock fix, and then I buy all music I actually want on the various online shops (I'm a bit of a tart when it comes to that).

The point is, its now easy. Very easy, to buy music, so I do. I'm sure that I will be getting the real thing, at a proper quality (I know about spotify, don't go on). P2P downloading is now harder than buying it, and the product is not of the same guaranteed quality, so, they've made a better service.

I think this is what the above poster was getting at. Its not a rush to the bottom (although some will always be cheap to the point of being criminal). It needs to be a rush to the top. If I want to read a book on my phone, let me do it and charge me for a top quality experience. I'll pay, i think most other people would do too.

Its about charging people to do what _they want to do_.

The basic premise of business, in fact.

I for one

Don't think that its bollocks. Climate changes, always has.

I do think that the incessant moralising and apparently fraudulent behaviour is just bang out of order.

Does it blend?

eeepad transformer

With my wifes eeepad transformer, that is the case, it doesn't seem to do that.

I for one..

Quite like guice.

Compiler checked config instead of an XML file. Seems like a good idea to me if it fits with your app.

Sorry to burst the balloon. Helium doesn't burn except when its undergoing fusion.

Yup, just did.

@Loyal Commenter

Yes, all very true; and I too don't really have the energy for a long drawn out pluralisation debate.

That said, I put it to you that the majority (microbiologists notwithstanding) would use the word 'bacteria' as both a singular and plural; so the use of 'bacteriums' is really a moot point, given that english has 'singularised' (for want of a better word) the latin plural.

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"there is no 'correct' systematic way of pluralising a word that has originated in another language."

Yes, I agree and happily concede the point.

I've used GWT extensively, and I would certainly agree with the advantage being the same language on client and server.

It just struck me how similar the description of the way Dart is supposed to run is to the way GWT works.

Maybe its just that they know how to do the whole compilation to JS thing (and quite well), so they are doing it again with this newcomer.

And yes, Mr Anon, 4/10 for observation ;-)

I would. I feel the need to document my own injuries for posterity. A glass shard (stem of a wine glass) impaling the foot and some amazing burn blisters are in my collection so far....

I think you might find

That the 2 points of view are the same thing at heart.