* Posts by h4rm0ny

4560 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jul 2008

Google claims Chrome is the world's most popular browser

h4rm0ny

Re: IE9 is good?

"But seriously, why should I even bother to look at a software application that runs on such a limited range of operating systems?"

You don't. You install Opera. IE9 is very good (imo), but no-one has ever claimed that it runs under a Linux DE or told you that you should try to. So it's rather straw-mannish of you to try and act disgusted that it doesn't.

Ex-NASA group plans private, crowd-funded asteroid hunter

h4rm0ny

Technology Side-Benefits.

I'm totally up for contributing to this on one condition - any revenue from technology side benefits: patents, gizmos and doohickeys, that spin off from this and are profitable are either (a) distributed amongst investors or if too small for individuals to care, put into a foundation to fund further work on this.

It's a great idea and worthwhile, but I'm not putting money into it just so that some company can use it as research bed to make money from.

Brit global warming skeptics now outnumber believers

h4rm0ny

...We should get poorer in order to protect the environment.

These aren't really the same things. For example I am skeptical about AGW (please don't mod me up OR down just because you've found someone who you think falls into your ally / enemy camp - very few of us actually know enough about the climate to legtimiately claim to have an informed opinion). And yet even though I'm a skeptic of AGW, I am still believe we need to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. I still think we need to stop mass-deforestation. I still think better energy-efficiency through technology are good things. Why? Because there are reasons that have nothing to do with CO2 for supporting these. The best thing we could do for ourselves right now is a major shift to nuclear power. Cheap (at least compared to e.g. wind-power), long-term reserves are available, safe and doesn't lead us to prop up nasty little Middle Eastern dictators or bomb Lybians.

Basically, just a plea not to equate skeptic with someone who wants to burn the world. A lot of us care very much about the environment, we're just not convinced we should be peppering Britain with Wind Farms or fully persuaded that we now understand the complexities of Climate.

Google unveils Nexus 7 tablet, Android 4.1 and Nexus Q

h4rm0ny
WTF?

Re: A Properly Priced Tablet

"The reason it's not been released outside the US, is only Americans are stupid enough to see past those rather important points, and all they see is "shiny cheap tablet"."

Well American's managed to produce this Nexus 7 which looks alright to me. So they can't all be as stupid as you think unless you hate this device as well. Troll.

h4rm0ny

Re: Compare and contrast

Oh please. Have you even given up the pretense of looking for excuses to shoe-horn some MS-bashing into the comments section. This is about the Google tablet. The Surface isn't remotely the same sort of thing. The Surface is a higher-end hybrid device. The Google tablet is a about half the price of the lower-end Surface and clearly set up as an attack on the iPad. Which it looks like it might do well at. Surface and Nexus 7 is not a like for like comparison. Nexus 7 and iPad... well they're both designed for sofa-consumption, really. Exactly how high-end do you need for that? I don't have much experience on Android. I get the general impression that it's not nearly as slick an experience as iOS. But will people really want to pay a premium of over a hundred dollars or substantially more for an iPad when this will do the job just as well?

Oh and as to the Surface, the Netfilx app froze on pre-release hardware on pre-release software the presenter tried for a moment to work it and just picked up a back up from a lecturn on stage. But yes, let's make a great big deal about "awkward shuffling backstage". If you are making your purchasing decision by weighing that against the pure theatrics of skydivers, etc. which you seem to consider so great, then I wouldn't want you in charge of company purchases. Since when did IT professionals start considering the slickness of a company's marketing as something to brag about? Marketing is about manipulation and image, not performance. Your own Nexus 7 will not, I am sad to inform you, be delivered by skydivers.

Microsoft says tablets will trump PCs in 2013

h4rm0ny

"Think it might be true that tablets will become the norm. I doubt that will be tablets running Windows though."

Tablets wont be the norm because cheapish, decent quality hybrids will supplant them. Why have less functionality for no advantage? And Windows 8 will probably do very well on such devices. Not only does it look to be very nice on tablets, the OS and application space is well adapted to more productive work where you might want a keyboard. Not to mention MS have paid a lot of attention to business integration for Win8.

"We already have tablets in our business. They are nearly all Apple."

And yet so many people who have an iPad at work also have a laptop. When laptops can be tablets too, it is the pure tablet that loses out. Apple timed the iPad just as the technology was reaching the right stage for tablets to be affordable and light. But that hardly means that the market will always be theirs. Lots of reasons one might prefer to get a Win8 device. Android will get their act together and produce a better tablet OS at some point as well (to be fair, I have limited experience on an Android tablet and am going on my general impression from other comments for that).

"Most of the desks have a boxy tower PC under them - no reason for that to change."

Loads of reasons. Portable devices are getting ever more powerful. Win8 has a lot of features for BYOD and roaming profiles. Most people with desktops don't use them to nearly their full potential. At some point a tipping point will be reached and you'll see generic laptops and hybrids become the standard. Apple make their sales on selling themselves and the cool and fancy and charging a premium. That doesn't translate well to every user in a business having one.

"I'd be surprised if they amounted to even as much as one tenth of the devices people are using here by this time next year."

Well there's a v. large install base of non-Win8 out there. 10% of people upgrading their devices from now until June 2013? Sounds a bit high, but maybe. Let's instead compare how many sales are actually made as a more useful indicator of preference.

Anonymous turns ire on Japan after anti-piracy law passes

h4rm0ny

Re: Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

"I'm no expert on law, but doesn't that seem to go beyond piracy and perhaps stray into a rights issue?"

If it's that extreme then yes. Any extreme enforcement actually does. I'd like to see what is actually in it (and I don't read Japanese so it's difficult) as criminalizing someone watching an infringing YouTube clip in a foreign country sounds pretty crazy. Are any laws about activity outside of Japan simply to deal with people who offshore the behaviour... for example hosting the torrent server in China or something as an easy dodge? Without details, everyone just brings their own preconceptions to the debate - you, me, all of us.

h4rm0ny

DDoS attacks really achieve little more than publicity, though in some cases that can be useful such as drawing attention to Bharain's human rights records.

The much rarer leaks of information have more lasting impact, but these are rarer and I think mostly matters of opportunity rather than targetting.

Ultrabook makers take the Ivy Bridge path

h4rm0ny

AMD

No mention of AMD's forthcoming efforts? Intel seem to rule the high performance end but AMD's new APUs should be appearing in ultrathin laptops before the year is out for cheaper and with Good Enough performance for what they are. Also, any word on re-pricing for Intel's efforts? I understood that they'd done the early adopter milking and were going to be putting prices back to saner levels this Autumn?

Acer big cheese: Microsoft Surface sales will be 'superficial'

h4rm0ny

Re: Wait for the backlash

"As for pro-Google / pro-Apple comments, I think in both cases it comes down to both companies fostering genuine support far more than Microsoft ever did."

It's basically as I said. You yourself do not appreciate how cool much of the new MS stuff is, thus you have difficulty appreciating someone else's sentiment as sincere. But if someone is enthusiastic about an Apple or Google product, that wont be astroturfing because these companies are good / worth being enthusiastic about.

Have you considered that accusations of astroturfing are both offensive to many and actually unethical to make? You are, after all, attempting to damage the reputation of a company with no reasonable evidence. Is that a good thing to do? Would you like it if the same climate was fostered against any other business?

"Uncritical adoration of any company isn't as bad as astroturfing but it's not rational either."

And allowing that it may not be astroturfing, you fall back to implying that if it isn't, then it's "uncritical adoration" instead. I think firstly that I don't see "uncritical adoration" much for MS. I see posts saying what is liked, often enough with criticism, but seldom if ever posts expressing 'MS is the best ever and can do no wrong' which is what "uncritical adoration" means to me. Why would you see such? I might post on the subject of my WP7 device that I really like the interface or that it only cost me £160. I'm not going to randomly tag on that the Calendar app in Windows 8 needs a three week ahead view as well as calendar months. It is just not relevant. That doesn't mean that my post is "uncritical adoration". It's just On Topic.

Secondly, I point out again that if you don't like something yourself and lack the ability to see things from someone else's point of view, then you're going to see positive comments from others as "uncritical adoration" or "not rational". You should be very, very sure that you yourself do not have a bias before attempting to judge whether someone else's comments are biased.

h4rm0ny

Re: Wait for the backlash

"However the number of posters on Slashdot of late who have low, throwaway histories who have only positive things to say about Microsoft products IS suspicious. It's reasonable to believe they are either astroturfers or trolls posing as astroturfers. Personally I think they are genuine astroturfers given recent launches by Nokia and the build up to Windows 8"

Well your first mistake is thinking Slashdot isn't awash with trolls and muppets in the first place. ;)

But secondly, do you apply the same criteria to people who just make a stupid anti-MS comment? Or a pro-Google or pro-Apple one? Have you checked whether your perceptions match up with the actual number of new users there? Because it will be a lot. And again, I repeat the question as to why you would conclude that people are paid astroturfers rather than newly arrived people who genuinely are enthusiastic? Especially during an exciting new product launch. What is your evidence or reason to believe it's not the latter? I was one of those people once. Except I wasn't posting endless enthusiastic comments about MS, I was doing it about Linux and OSS. Different religion, same unreasoning faith. I dare say you could find some absolutely embarrasing posts by me on Slashdot if you wanted to. But just as I was a young and starry-eyed UNIX developer, I'm sure lots of people come to it through the MS path before equally just settling down to realize it isn't a war and everyone has something to offer. There is such a thing as confirmation bias - if you are expecting such comments, you'll see them and this will reinforce your perceptions. I'm not insulting you here - this is a real psychological phenomenon that affects everyone unless you go to a lot of effort to avoid it. And by a lot of effort I mean actually going to look at the data and seeing if it measures up to what you thought.

"Personally I think they are genuine astroturfers given recent launches by Nokia and the build up to Windows 8"

This is probably informed by your opinion that these aren't awesome things. Windows 8 has all sorts of great stuff in it. Native vector graphics are a small thing that I love, but they have made it easier to develop for WIndows than ever before. I'm verging on saying that they've made it easier to develop full stop, than ever before. And I don't mean the obnoxious Visual Basic dumming down sort of development. They're adding all sorts of good things. Windows Phone 8? You have almost a single unified development environment that will take you across Phones, PCs and probably even consoles! And all sorts of clever ways of integrating things. Just read through the developer blog on how contacts will be handled and an API for them provided. Basically, there's no reason why you shouldn't see new and enthusiastic people being positive about MS. Just as there's no reason why you shouldn't see new and enthusiastic people appearing positive about Linux. But the install base of Windows is vastly larger than Linux and much as I love gcc and vi, you can't deny that MS Visual Studio (free, incidentally), is pretty good fun to use. I'm just getting into it. So I hope you're taking that into account when you start counting pro-MS comments and comparing them to the number of new users and reviewing people's histories to see what else they say.

"It's certainly not hard to find other people voicing suspicious about astroturfers. Look at this one about Amazon reviews for the Lumia 900 for example"

No. But it's not hard to find people voicing suspicions about the government, Google or aliens. This is just circular reasoning: I think there are astroturfers because I can find someone else who thinks so. And they can say the same about you.

And if none of that will make you reconsider throwing accusations around, and if the sheer obviousness of how people more rapidly get voted down for a positive comment about MS than up doesn't disillusion you from the MS Marketing conspiracy, then I ask you to consider, at least, what sort of value there would be in spamming Slashdot? ;)

h4rm0ny

Re: Wait for the backlash

Or it could be just that MS is doing some really good things these days. Do you assume the same thing about any positve comment about Apple products or Google products? Seriously, if someone is so blinkered that they can't understand enthusiasm about a product without thinking it is a plant, then they have no business being in IT in the first place because quite frankly, MS have brought out some great stuff (as I'm sure Apple and Google have, but I only really know MS and Linux). Go and read the Windows 8 development blog and see all the cool stuff going in for developers and then tell me someone is wrong to be enthusiastic.

Look at these forums without bias and what would one logically conclude? Seeing numerous posts heavily down-voted just for being positive or enthusiastic about an MS product, one would conclude if there were anything going on, it would be against MS. So why assume the opposite? Because it fits ones own preferences better? It's the only explanation I have.

h4rm0ny

"Everyone I know with a tablet also owns a laptop and sometimes several of each to go round a family."

Then surely there is a market for a device that is both. Convenient and (unless you want to buy very cheap tablet / laptop) a cost saving. And less hassle moving from device to device when you want to do different things. Also, as it actually has user accounts (there's an idea!), those of us who are a bit less well-heeled, aren't quite so pressed to buy them for all members of our families.

"I think manufacturers have mistaken the swapping of laptops for tablets as a sign that people really want both, when in reality they've often worked out they don't need the laptop at all"

Didn't you begin your post by stating that everyone you know who has a tablet also has a laptop? There's obviously a market for people who want both. Even your own experience supports it.

The Acer spokesperson, well, unless they're very, very sure that their comments are going to reach investors, they aren't going to say anything other than that they don't think the Surface is a threat. And the analyst is going down the wrong track in comparing it to an iPad in the first place. It's only a competitor to an iPad in that it has a superset of the iPad's functionality, not the same set. Saying that people don't use Office on their iPad is like saying in the 80's that people don't use the Internet whilst travelling. It just wasn't affordable or convenient. But when it becomes so, then why not?

The real question about the Surface is not if it will sell. It's whether MS will make enough for everyone who wants one or if they're just using this as a stick to beat the likes of Acer.

h4rm0ny
Facepalm

Re: Wait for the backlash

Funny. Because if you make a pro-MS software comment on these forums, someone will mod you down no matter how factual your post. Yes, it must be a great conspiracy of paid astro-turfers.

Why the Windows Phone 8 digi-wallet is different to the others

h4rm0ny

"I own a WP7.5 device (Nokia Lumia 800)."

Just upgrade to WP7.8. It will be almost the same as a WP8 device. Most Apps will be compatible. It's a lot less fragmented than Android market, isn't it?

h4rm0ny

Re: not without some justification

It's probably worth adding a bit of information on some of the security measures about contactless payment (or what we expect to be the measures in implementations such as this). For a start, systems like this are in place and in use in places like Japan or China. In some places, people will just walk on and walk off a bus without having to worry about talking to the driver or fiddling with coins. Ditto all sorts of other use-cases. The thing with instances like this is that they are all low-cost items. People are willing to accept the security risk when it might mean they lost £5 or less in exchange for trouble-free experience the rest of the year round. If something tries to charge you £20 or £50, that's not going to go through without you entering a pin or approving it in some way. Similarly, these devices wont allow massive and rapid deduction of small amounts either - so that's not a way round this. If someone follows you round all day and bumps into you every twenty minutes, sure, they might get a larger sum off you. But most people would notice.

So instead, people wanting to exploit this would be trying to skim small amounts off large numbers of people. People are more willing to tolerate this risk than anything that is large scale to themselves. They might rightly point out that they're more likely to lose a physical fiver from their pocket as to get robbed of the same.

The attempt to skim small amounts off large numbers of people is problematic in the first place anyway. For a start, whilst the chance of someone reporting (or noticing) a fiver lost is much lower than them reporting £400 lost, the chance of someone in a hundred victims noticing and reporting is almost a certainty. And once that happens you have a problem. Because this isn't physical money. It is inherently traceable. That loss that someone reported isn't a missing fiver, it's a record of a transaction from them to thee. If you want to steal money this way, you first off have to be able to fool the proximity of the device (possible, but you need to be able to get away with getting your device in a few centimetres of other people's devices repeatedly and potentially triggering whatever security measure they have on that - e.g. a motion-sensor based bump trigger they have to do with their phone by tapping it against the receiver). Even just identifying which users have a suitable and enabled device in their pocket is a technical challenge unless these things become ubiquitous. And once you've done this, you're in a race to get that money out of the receving account and somewhere safe before either someone reports it or (more likely) an automated system notices and raises an alarm.

You need a business account that is approved for receiving funds by some reputable bank. So you're already moving into money laundering to enable you to steal money this way. You need to be able to get the money from that account quickly. And the limits on the amounts people can transfer this way without PIN or similar are low so the quicker you acquire money, the faster you set off alarms, get the account frozen. And then if you want to do it again next month, you'll have to be trying to set up a new approved receiver, etc.

The main scope for abuse of this is a legitimate seller of a service over-charging people and hoping they don't notice. But someone will and at that point it's quite easy to reverse the process and give the money back to everyone who was overcharged. Much more feasible than tracking down a few thousand visitors you had to your bar / shop / train / whatever over the course of the past year and each giving them their £2 back. And thus much more likely to be forced to do it (plus any applicable charges).

And when all that is done and taken account of, banks and credit card companies will want to use this system because it leads people to think less before spending so they will happily absorb these low risks by guaranteeing to cover your losses if there's a problem, just as they do with credit cards and for the same reason. What does MasterCard or Visa care if they have to cover the occasional small loss? If they didn't provide this service, people would move to someone who did. and in the meantime they'll rake it in. And they'll happy crash down from a great height on your behalf upon anyone who uses this system to defraud you.

Although I instinctively distrust this system because it rings all sorts of alarm-bells, on a society-level, it's probably fine and safe and the individual risk is low. It might even be safer if it means a mugger has to be a professional money launderer in order to rob you (or else march you to the shop to buy things for her). I'm more personally concerned about privacy implications than security. Which gives me small relief in seeing that MS are partnering wth your choice of backer rather than, e.g. Google with GoogleCheckout or a proprietary one with Apple. Or (Hell no!) PayPal. It looks like you'll be able to use or not use which you want. And I'd prefer doing business with a company that just wants my money up front, than think they can make money off my data.

h4rm0ny

Re: I like the network setup thing

No, you're not alone. There are lots of us who are wary about this sort of stuff. We're called old people. : (

The Beatles Yellow Submarine restored

h4rm0ny
Unhappy

The Sixties

The Sixties. The horrible realization that our parents may actually have had more fun than we did...

h4rm0ny

Errrr... if you read the review it says that the original (which you want to stick with) wasn't on release and was starting to decay. You may not be aware of this, but George Lucas actually was not the director of Yellow Submarine.

Neo-Nazis scoop YouTube ad revenue from UK telcos

h4rm0ny

Re: Confusing

"Would you want me to have the right to go up to your mother and randomnly slag you off to her and list a whole load of heinous and made up crimes that I think you are guilty of?"

These are not free speech issues. You are confused. In the first instance, personally targetting someone to upset them (the mother example) would normally fall under harrassment. Similarly the made up crimes fall under slander. If it can be shown you are making it up then a case can be made for damages. However, someone promoting an ideology that you find offensive is not making a personal case against an individual nor forcing someone to listen (as in the "going up to" in your example). The analogy you give is a bad one.

Are you a hot BABE in heels and a short skirt? SCIENCE is for YOU

h4rm0ny

I want to be sick.

Althought the original video has been taken down in a panic (presumably), it's easy to find on YouTube by searching "Science it's a girl thing".

That's the most offensive thing I've seen in years. Someone should be shot for this.

h4rm0ny

Re: The hard sell

Science *is* cool. The best thing you can do to encourage women (and men) into the profession is to lose this weird American cultural export of the "geek" or the "nerd". You don't get a social stigma attached to being a Doctor or an Architect. No-one says: "Oh, you're a dentist, you must like Star Wars". It's got nothing to do with, for example, C programming, but in the US media, that translates into "geek". Drop the stupid association. It puts people off. All that matters is whether you're interested in the subject and if you're good at it. Social factors should be minimised to allow people to chose it without acquiring other baggage.

Iran: Our nuke facilities still under attack by US, Israelis 'and MI6'

h4rm0ny

Re: Hey Iran...

"If you'd had any sort of IT security in place whatsoever, it wouldn't have happened in the first place"

£20 says that Mossad and the US government could penetrate any system you're responsible for...

Why I love Microsoft’s vapourware tablet

h4rm0ny

Re: The Crash

The "ultrabook price" is for the x86 version and that basically is an ultrabook but with all the touchscreen, stylus stuff and the ability to turn into a pure tablet. The ARM version is supposed to be price competitive with other tablets, e.g. an iPad. Though again, it has the keyboard, etc. so it's not exactly an iPad equivalent.

Amount of meat we eat will barely affect future climate change

h4rm0ny

Re: h h4rmony

"I think you'll find "cutting back" is the fundamentally immoral part. Most people I know think that killing humans because you've decided there's too many for your liking, or forcing abortions/population controls (like China does now) is pretty immoral..."

Then may I suggest you read all of what I wrote rather than just selecting bits that will annoy you. I wrote that we have a very effective and ethical means of reducing the population which is greater education and work equality for women. It's provenly effective and has greater long-term impact than oppressive governments can manage with one-child policies (which also lead to gender imbalances in some cultures).

"How about in Australia where we got millions of acres of ground to fill with cows that arable crops like corn can't grow on, and humans don't want to live on? - no problem with space here"

And how about other areas where we don't? I see you like to play the "scary numbers" game. You should join Friends of the Earth, they like waving the word millions about without context as well in an attempt to bolster their argument. I have no idea where you got your figure. "Millions" is a pretty astonishingly large variation of error, btw. You could mean a 2m, you could mean 5m, which would mean you were casually hand-waving whole multiples of deviation. It suggests you don't actually know and are just (Greenpeace style) plucking numbers you think sound good. They don't. For a start, do you actually know how much an acre is? It's quite small actually. It's 0.004km^2. Did you know from 2000 to 2005, the mean average amount of rain forest destroyed was 5.5million acres per year? It's not massive as a proportion but it is ongoing. How quickly is Australia forming new land? Now some of it is due to biofuels (but the poster earlier is incorrect that it is most - the big majority is actually cattle feed, and I'm citing the Centre for International Foresty Research, not just stating something I think like the earlier poster). It is undeniable that meat consumption is leading to massive negative environmental change.

Also, quite frankly, I think I need to see some actual figures for your comments about using non-suitable land for pasture. It shows an ignorance of modern beef production. For the most part, modern farmers far prefer to keep cattle in a small and controlled site and feed them intensively on imported feed (e.g. soy from South American rainforests) than have them roaming up and down hillsides burning up all that lovely energy roaming around being cows, rather than in a few small fields turning it straight into meat. Plus the rounding them all up, etc. You are aware that most land that could be used for pasture but would be difficult for crops is due to the terrain being uneven or fragmented? Makes herding them around a pain. In short, whether there's land available or not, farmers prefer to just use cattled feed as evidenced by the US and elsewhere. In short, I think you don't know what you're talking about.

This meme of using land for pasture that is unsuitable for any food crops is becoming some sort of Gospel Truth. I would like to see some actual figures. How much land? Why is it unsuitable and is it unsuitable for all crops or just not a massive field that can be ploughed by machine for cereal crops? Don't just repeat something you read from another poster and liked, back it up.

h4rm0ny

Re: h h4rmony

"You supply absolutely no reasoning as to why we are "over-populating" the planet beyond your own socio-politically-induced guilt."

You clearly didn't understand my point or have chosen to ignore it. The attack on the argument wasn't that the number of people (7bn) was too much, they said the argument was fundamentally flawed and immoral. Now unless you think there's no point at which there could be too many of us and we ought to start cutting back, then you're not addressing what I've said.

"Great, so you stop the evil burger industry and instead replace it with the evil corn/wheat/vegetables industry"

Basically yes. It takes a lot less ground to support someone by direct food growing than via cow. Or do you take issue with that.

h4rm0ny

Re: Only one number that really matters

"Your argument is flawed and immoral."

What's flawed or immoral about saying there's a finite number of people the planet can support and that if the human species is to not negatively impact itself, it must keep below that number? That's certain, all that's left is arguing over what that number is. Now Gareth says 7bn and I'm inclined to say that is already too high, but you haven't argued why his number is right or wrong, you've declared that the entire argument is flawed, which it is not.

As to means of population reduction - we have one ethical and provenly effective method available right now: better education and work equality for women.

Oh, and this article is pretty poor. Who cares about the CO2 from cows, etc.? The environmental reasons for eating less meat and moving to a more vegetarian or vegan diet, is that it causes less major and negative shifts in the environment such as massive deforestation in South America to grow cattle feed for the US. Who I think we all agree could on average cut back on the meat at least a little bit.

Surface: Because Microsoft does so well making hardware?

h4rm0ny

Re: Who wants to bet its a toaster?

"We won't expect to see a 'ruggedized' version of it that is water and drop proof, then."

It shouldn't make any difference to drop-proofing. But I concede it is at a competitive disadvantage to all those water-proof laptops people regard as standard. Oh wait - it has a fold out sealed keyboard. It's actually more coffee-proof than a regular laptop.

Seriously what drives you to try so hard to make something so promising sound so bad? What is your motivation here because it certainly isn't fair and honest appraisal.

h4rm0ny

Re: MS have a few problems here..

"If Win 8 included an XP-like UI and you could flip to the other one if you really wanted to use Metro on the desktop, I'd stop complaining"

I'm a bit confused by this, because you can flip between Metro and the desktop. You just tap the Windows key or click on the bottom left. It toggles between the two extremely quickly. The desktop in Win8 is not substantially different to the Desktop in Win7. The only real difference is you have a Start page, instead of a Start menu and that's very easy to get your head around. So I'm not really sure what you're saying you want as you seem to have it/

h4rm0ny

Re: Who wants to bet its a toaster?

I'll bet that it is not. I've watched the presentation. It actually doesn't have a single vent, it has an all round "vent" that is basically a small groove that runs around the entire device. So no matter where you hold it, you can never block its cooling. It's very nice.

h4rm0ny

Re: This is how you build a PC?

You should be able to disable Secure Boot on the x86 version and install whatever you want. On the ARM version, I'm moderately sure that putting a different OS on it will be very difficult and it may never become anything other than a PITA to do so.

h4rm0ny

I am also a programmer and I have two monitors at present (both 24" 1920x1200). Windows 8 actually has *better* multi-monitory support than Win 7. There's an interesting article on their design blog which is actually surprisingly interesting: Link. Seriously, if you have an open mind on this subject still, then give it a read.

I consider myself a power user. I counted up how many programs I commonly use - all the VM software, IDE stuff, the works. And it actually only came to 20 applications. Sure I use more, but nothing frequent enough to say "two clicks to launch this once a month is enough reason to throw out a design approach over". On my laptop, tweny is coincidentally the default number of applications on the Metro page. But fully three columns of those are double-width, easily changed. I can easily boost the Metro start page up to 32 applications and that's on my smaller laptop screen. I think on my desktop monitor it's more like forty by default. For my desktop purposes, Metro is essentially a full-page Start menu and given that I can toggle between the two extremely quickly, I'm actually fine with it. Normally I just tap the Windows key and type the first, sometimes second, letter of the program I want and hit return. Like I said - power user. But even when I want to select it from the screen it's actually faster than a Start menu. Not fast enough that it's worth having Metro just for that, but fast enough and easy enough that it's not a drag at all. Also, Win8 brings in a lot of new stuff for developers when it comes to APIs for layout, different screen resolutions handling, native vector graphics (which KDE has had for a long long time). So it's more than worth it to me. Anyway, not saying you should like it, but just saying that I'm a programmer too and on multi-desktop it actually works really well. For me, anyway.

Microsoft set to 'do a Nexus' with its Surface tablet

h4rm0ny

Re: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTrWPqS4Kxk

"Post an example where Apple have had such a problem? perhaps only once with the iPhone 4 when they couldn't get wifi on it. But it's happened to Microsoft quite often. Why show off incomplete products to the press? leave that to the developer shows where the level of understanding is higher."

*shrug* So you're making a big deal out of them demoing something you say is incomplete but rather than treat this as an understandable reason why they might have a glitch, you condemn the device for being incomplete. Doesn't really make much sense to me. We'll see what it's like when it comes out.

The raging glee some people show at trying to make a big deal out of some tiny hiccup in pre-release product is beyond me. All I can think of is if people with an obvious bias are reduced to shouting about this, it must be a pretty good product.

h4rm0ny

Re: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTrWPqS4Kxk

"That is all."

I am dumbfounded. A pre-release piece of hardware running a pre-release piece of software froze!

I take it you have never worked in either the hardware or the software industries. Show me on the little doll where Steve Ballmer touched you.

Microsoft's uncloaks Phone 8 developer preview

h4rm0ny
Headmaster

Re: Global Control AIR&id Development for CyberSpace BaseD Land Grabs

No, he's highlighting the increased capacity to use encryption and the in-roads into privacy that this heralds and pondering the interaction of this increasing capacity amongst individuals with the desire of entrenched powerbases to track and scrutinize those individuals; essentially posing the new OS as the start of a sea-change, rather than mere iterative development. All quite clear, I thought.

h4rm0ny

Re: "Phone 7 users won't be able to upgrade to Windows 8"

"How can anyone possibly vote your comment down. You say you have a Lumia 710 and you don't mind not being able to upgrade, what is there to disagree in with that?"

I have no idea. You get comments here expressing great joy just because something freezes during a demo. People don't seem to realize that the better MS's products are, the more it forces Apple, Linux and all the hardware manufacturers to up their game. It's some sort of bonkers tribalism. Further up the thread I was told I was "not the brightest spark" because I was happy with my phone. Hey, it does what I need and it cost less than £200 quid. I must have been an idiot to buy it because the moment Windows Phone 8 comes out it will turn into a pumpkin. Apparently.

h4rm0ny

Re: "Phone 7 users won't be able to upgrade to Windows 8"

"iPad owners have have had one major OS upgrade and countless smaller improvements. Hardly comparable."

Is there some law that any product, no matter how disimilar, must be compared to the iPad? It's a phone. I have a Lumia 710. The people who don't have a WP7 device seem to be getting more worked up about its inability to upgrade than those who have one. It's not suddenly going to stop working or no longer be able to do the things I bought it for. It's still a very nice phone.

Microsoft Surface: Join the Windows 8 teardown

h4rm0ny
Facepalm

"Are you aware it froze mid demo and had to be switched for a working unit?"

Yeah. Big deal. A pre-release piece of hardware running a pre-release operating system froze and the presenter didn't bother hanging around, they just put it down and picked up a different one. I take it you have never ever worked in the software or hardware industries.

h4rm0ny

Re: This is soooo MSFT

"Your WP7 phone just became obsolete. MS has announced WP8 and there will be no upgrades of WP7 phones to WP8."

I would be more concerned about this if I heard people who actually used a WP7 moaning about this. But all I hear are people who obviously don't like the phone anyway telling people who do like the phone why they shouldn't. I have a WP7 (Lumia 710). I paid £160 for it SIM-free and t works really well, And I expect it to continue like that for a good long time. You think it's suddenly going to become incompatible with email, or Outlook or Word?

h4rm0ny

Re: I don't...

"...and neither does anyone I work beside. Isn't anecdotal evidence fun?"

Well at the time I post this, the voting on the OP's comment is 6 up and 6 down. So looks like 50% of voters would like one and 50% not. That's a pretty awesome start, imo. There's no right choice for everyone.

h4rm0ny

"All we have are vague specs, a few pictures and lots of hot air speculation."

Are you unaware of the full presentation showing it in use? Or do you consider that "a few pictures". Granted we don't know all the details, but this has been in development for three years and we've actually seen working examples and they've announced that the WindowsRT version will be going on sale in the Autumn and the x86 version three months after that.

h4rm0ny

Re: whats the point?

"don't get the point of it. I use a Windows PC for work (which I love) and an Ipad (which I also love) for arsing about, one handed surfing etc."

Well for those of us who either want to spend less or carry less, this is both. The keyboard's 3mm thick and folds out of the way. It can also be completely removed. So it's not really a competitor to the iPad, it's not entirely an ultrabook. It's basically both.

h4rm0ny

"what I would like to know is how sensitive the screen is, and how accurate"

In the presentation, MS said that it had 600DPI resolution which is more than visual resolution. They demo'd some handwriting on it and it was pretty slick. The presenter pinch-zoomed what he'd just written to be about three times the size and it didn't become pixelated. Also nice the way that the screen ignores palms, fingers, etc. as soon as it notices the pen is over it. I think this will be plenty good for amateur artists and casual work and roughs. Pressure sensitivity will probably be the big differentiator between this and a real graphics tablet or Cintiq. Someone on a forum said it would be good, but I've heard nothing official on it that aspect unless I missed it. Probably falls into "good enough" category for most of us.

Assange takes refuge in Ecuadorian embassy

h4rm0ny

Re: if the USA wanted

"Julian in Gitmo, he'd already be there. Numerous cases exist of people being lifted off the streets across europe and sent there."

There are. But I can't think of any where the victim was already heavily known and present in the mainstream media. That makes a difference to whether the US will snatch and grab. A big difference.

h4rm0ny
Facepalm

Re: On the other hand

"And how far away are they from Britain? Nearly 8000 miles - a full one-third of the Earth's circumference!"

And? I note that you cut my quote off a sentence early just before I wrote that geographical proximity isn't a good basis for saying that you should rule the inhabitants of somewhere. The relevant parts are that the inhabitants never took that land from Argentina (neither legally nor morally), never displaced any other inhabitants (and Argentina has never had a sustained population there) and that the inhabitants want to remain goverened by the UK. The point of explaining the islands are 290 miles away from Argentina isn't to say that they should be ruled by the UK. It's to point out the absurdity of people making arguments that they should be ruled by Argentina because they're adjacent. This is not an occupied territory off the coast of Argentina. That is the relevance of pointing out where they are.

Quite honestly, your arguing on the basis that history and the will of the population should be less important than who happens to be the least hundreds of miles away from somewhere is actually offensive to me.

"Now consider Rockall"

I'm well aware of Rockall actually. For anyone that isn't (which will be most people for reasons that will be apparent if anyone clicks on the link here), it is officially 31m long and 25.3m wide. Note for people accustomed to sarcasm on the forums, these actually is are the dimensions of the "island" which actually is a rock on which the primary vegetation matter is lichen. Honestly, that alone shows your argument for what it is - a contrived attempt to argue by analogy (and badly). Your "boatloat of Argentine colonistst" would not actually fit on it. But for the sake of indulging your extremely hyperbolic and hypothetical thought experiment, yes, it does "work for me". If by some miracle Argentinians migrated there and sustained a population there for generations, displacing no native (and very cramped) British population, then sure, they would be welcome to call it their home as far as I'm concerned.

I don't know what is going through your mind when you think you would catch me out in some hypocracy because it wouldn't "work for me" if the Argentinians did it too. It's fine. They find an uninhabited island nearly two hundred miles away from any other country without any native or existing inhabitants or recent history and decide to live on it since the 1800's, then fine by me! Argentinian, British, Martian... People's right to self-determination is important. And that's what Argentina is not respecting when they threaten the Falkland Islands.

h4rm0ny

Re: On the other hand

"England's imperialism in the Falklands"

The British have been in the Falkland Islands since before Agentina was even an independent country. The inhabitants did not seize the territory from any native population. Argentina's basis for a claim is that when they became independent of Spain, the King of Spain drew a big circle on the map (not literally, maps were expensive back then) and said "okay, all this area I'm not going to claim any more. You can go ahead and have it". Despite that the British were actually there at the time and the Spanish had no presence. In the ancient history of the islands? There's scant evidence that there's ever even been a ongoing population. A very old canoe has been found and the occasional low-tech tool. All we really know is that the islands have been visited in history. That could be a very small number of people who washed up there and then left again, or else died out shortly after. There's this weird idea in some people's heads that the Falkland islands are just off the coast of Argentina. They're actually almost 300 miles away. That's so far that even if you had a telescope you still wouldn't be able to see them from Argentina because the curvature of the Earth would stop you. If you think the Falkland Islands should be part of Argentina because they're under 300 miles away, then you might as well say that Poland should be part of Germany. And that worked out well. You don't get to tell a neighbouring population that you're nearest, so they have to live under your rule now, thankyouverymuch. The Falkland islanders have been there for generations, they never kicked anyone off the islands and Argentina had no claim to say the islands were theirs. The Falkland islanders overwhelmingly want to remain under our goverment and overwhelmingly reject the Argentinian government. Even the UN has stated that any resolution of the issue must be on the basis of self-determination.

Argentina's sole attempt to populate the island in history consists of shipping a bunch of prisoners there once in an attempt to start a penal colony. The prisoners (and the crew) mutinied and that was that. They also iirc sent another ship out once, and that mutinied too because the Argentinian government didn't pay them, though they did murder five people on the islands before the British captured them.

Argentina has no claim morally or legally to the Falkland isles. If you want to look at "imperialism" look at how the military junta of Argentina, in 1982, invaded the islands without declaration of war or even warning. There were only 57 British soldiers on the island and that was only because the Argentinian government had the lack of sense to attack during a personnel changeover.

The invasion was motivated by the shakey dictatorship in Argentina wanting to distract the population. When the British sent reinforcements out there, the Argentinian government sent hundreds of conscripts to attack. Nearly 300 British soldiers lost their lives and also tragically, over double that in Argentinian conscripts.

The recent sabre-rattling by Argentina is because they are again, facing big domestic issues and the government there wants to distract the population by directing their ire (wrongly) at those islands 300 miles away, and because companies have recently found oil around the islands and Argentina wants it. And again, we've seen how well attacking a country for its oil works out. Just for those who have a pre-existing desire to support Argentina in this, it's worth noting that the oil fields aren't even between the islands and Argentina (as if that would matter). They're primarily North and East of the islands so far discovered. Argentina wants to get the islands and then the oil on the far sides.

Not that many oil companies would be particularly trusting of Argentina right now. Earlier this year, Argentina seized a Spanish owned company and nationalised it with the (loosely summarised) argument of "it's ours now." The Argentinian government are so bad that they actually made me agree with William Hague.

So short version: "England's Imperialism" No. And I think you mean Britain, not "England". You wouldn't be American by any chance would you because they never seem to remember the rest of the UK.

Microsoft takes on tablets with keyboard-equipped Surface

h4rm0ny

Re: Hardware looks good... software?

Thanks.

Chick-lit naughty girl MP Mensch starts own web-jabber service

h4rm0ny

"So you don't get to choose whose waffle you get to see, it's randomly selected for you and (assuming you can) you have to go and unselect those 100 random irrelevant accounts?"

I'm beginning to think random assignment is the only way to stop people just gravitating to forums where they get to smugly hear and repeat what they already believe ad infinitem.

h4rm0ny

Re: Mensh - meaning a person of integrity and honour

You are apparently unaware that Louse Mensch was leading the attack on Murdoch in the inquiry. She was nicely and calmly taking him apart until some absolute loser got in and disrupted the procedings by hurling a pie at Murdoch Snr. That idiot might as well have been paid by the Murdochs for the way he diverted the media from what was actually being said onto his stupid antics instead.

Louse Mensch is one of the few good Tories. I wish we had a dozen of her in politics.

Top US Senator to Apple, Google: 'Curb your spy planes'

h4rm0ny

"As far as some of this stuff goes, figuring out what the images mean can be tricky. It isn't something anyone can do. And it would need close to military levels of organisation to use the info."

Nah, it's easy. Just write a program that goes through Google maps and picks out any locations that have been blurred. Voila - instant target list.