Posts by M Gale 3500 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Apr 2007
"There's no doubt about it, Apple's iPad was the defining product of 2010. No other offering came out of nowhere not only to establish a new category of kit, but to kick an existing one - the netbook - up the proverbial and, into the bargain, scupper another - the smartbook - before it had even established itself in the market."
Nowhere except in the minds of journalists and people rich enough to spend that much on a toy, has this happened.
iPad is a fun toy, but please. Hyperbole much?
Android 2.1. No 3D buildings. I wasn't expecting a two-finger rotate on a single-touch resistive screen, but it's a 600mhz processor and can definitely manage 3D games.
Ah well. Maybe at some stage they can do what people here seem to want and have a cache-to-SD option? Hopefully at least this cheapy toyphone will manage that! And maybe, just maybe, with a future update the various Google Apps will recognise the magnetic compass and orientation sensors on this thing properly. Other apps manage it, but apparently not Google's. The location arrow on Maps rotates the opposite way to reality, and as for Google Sky Map, well that just spazzes out all over the place.
C'mon Google. At least give us an option screen where we can invert X/Y/Z axes?
Ever heard of a local email reader? Y'know, like Outlook Express, for a really awful example?
I know the tendency is to webmail a heck of a lot of stuff, but there's a big difference between a service that's used to transfer shit from someone else to you, and a service where shit stays because it can't be transferred to you.
And as said already, there's some interesting implications when it comes to ownership of "cloud" data.
HAHAHAHAHA... oh hang on, they're serious?
Chrome. Useful maybe as a dumb terminal, company-owned device or info point. Completely fucking useless as a consumer product, with that kind of a price.
Mind you, I really don't know what kind of "home user" would bother with this anyway. Businesses, if it comes with enterprise functions and the ability to detach it from Google's spyware, yes. Me? Give me a hard drive, files to put on it and various and sundry backup media.
Not writing it off yet, not if they get the RDP bit right, but they are going to be screwed if they think this is the next iWotsit.
I have an excellent one. It's called "Firefox".
I understand there are several others such as "Chrome", "Safari", "Android Browser", and even this really bizarre one called "Opera".
There's rumours that Microsoft have one that they called "Internet Explorer", but I'm pretty sure that's just a story made to frighten children.
Already exists. It's for USENET, if I recall correctly. Been a while since I was a trawler of the alt.* heirarchy, but I still fondly remember reading through the list of silly newsgroups like alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk, alt.2eggs.sausage.beans.tomatoes.2toast.largetea.cheerslove and others.
These days, if you describe USENET to someone they tend to respond with "oh, is that like Google Groups?"
Grr.
http://www.google.com/search?q=apple+drive-by+download
I'm the one with a Tuxian machine, but I'm not daft enough to make comments like "lol I'm hack proof". Oh god no.
Please, for your own sake as well as the victims of your zombie computer's botnet rage, reduce your false sense of security.
:(){ :|:& };:
Plenty of times I've had Chrome flash up a warning telling me that such-and-such a site has had some kind of malware on it recently.
I've never seen that in IE, yet.
So. Survey commissioned by Microsoft reveals results that are favourable to Microsoft. Blimey, UK.gov should have took Microsoft's help with the NIR when offered!
I don't use Facebook, I'm not stupid enough to attempt Youtube over a 3G connection, and I really, really don't want whatever crap is on the provider's network.
Seems like we're going back to the Compuserve/AOL days of having "Online Service Providers" and not "Internet Service Providers". Fine, just so long as they don't try to sell it to me as Internet access, otherwise I might just have to mention something about trading standards to them.
As so many people here have already said: BE. DUMB. PIPES. Really not interested in whatever else you have to offer...
"you wouldn't want to be caught feeding a computer into the coffee grinder again."
AGAIN?
Please give me a job working for you guys. I can type fast enough to be a census keyer, spell well enough for the same, and I have a silly sense of humour sometimes. I just want to be in the office on the day Simon tries to feed you all finely-ground and roasted Core 2 Quad.
Which specs? Perhaps Military 810F specs?
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2010/03/25/motorola-i1-push-to-talk-android-based-smartphone-meets-military-810f-standards/
Okay, in my opinion it doesn't have enough rubber around it to be a "proper" mil-spec-looking device, but it does exist.
If some arsehole really wants to get in your house, then they are getting into your house. There is absolutely nothing you can do about a sledgehammer and enough determined effort.
However, if you have decent hashing algorithms you can actually do something about even the most determined of invaders. Short of physically breaking into the server room, that is.
The analogies between burglars and hackers are as piss poor as the ones between computers and cars, or access points and houses. Personally I'd rather a white hat send me a polite email warning showing me where and how I'm at risk, than wait for the black hats to take advantage of a weakness that I didn't know was there.
Crapita/TVLA have a database. On it is every single home in the UK.
Any home that is not registered as having a TV license is obviously evading the TV license, so therefore must be sent intimidating letters. Any area with a significant number of houses not registered on the database must have white vans patrolling prominently with "Detector Van" written on the side.
It's sort of like the National Identity Register, if that had ever come to pass.
"1) if very few people have more than spare change in their pockets, criminals have less incentive to rob people."
And more incentive to point a gun at you and direct you to the nearest ATM.
There's some advantages to plastic, but you'll never replace the instantness and convenience of cash. Plus the government can't stop you spending it, the US government in particular can't decide that you are unfriendly to their interests and bar your account (yay wikileaks), and you don't have every single transaction on a record.
Frankly I'd rather retain that level of control.
Where's that, Harrods?
Yes, £15 is the maximum spend for this sort of thing. So.. you buy £15 worth of something in one shop, £15 in another, £15 in another, £15 in another, and throw the card away when it asks for a PIN. Sell the gear you got for £5 cash each, then go over to your dealers for enough smack to kill an elephant.
Yeah, not worried about NFC at all, me.
Multiplied by a loop that has to execute 5,000 times 50 times per second? Yes I'd call that significant.
If you're after a plug-in free web page with flashy graphics and effects, Javascript with some kind of middleware or abstraction library like JQuery is about your only option. A faster browser means faster plugin-free transitions, slideshows, scrolling, sprites and whatever else you want to punish these optimising compilers with.
And how many patents were bought for a song because they convinced the inventor that it was a good deal?
All software and method patents must die. No ifs, no buts, and no exceptions. It's the only way anybody is going to stand a cat in hell's chance of doing ANYTHING without either paying the danegeld or getting sued into bankruptcy.
Yes, if you're a complete geek.
Now how about remote administration for normal people?
If El Goog get it done right it could be useful. For normal people. And about any data mining, if indeed it's built into the OS (as opposed to in whatever web app stack Google give you)? It's open source. So rip that functionality out if it exists, no?
If Apple had made this announcement, it'd be full of fawning praise and you know it. Don't you dare think that Apple and Microsoft aren't profiling their customers too, and you pay heftily per OS license for that privilege with them!
I've speculated before that a good use for Chrome OS, given the existance of Android already in toyphones and tablets, could be as a smart terminal for business users. You've no worries about data loss if a fondlable device goes missing, and if Google are smart they'll include options for remote wiping anything that is cached locally.
Plus having your home computer on a netbook on the train sounds like fun.
Otherwise known as a shockwave. It tends to burst ear drums and cause all kinds of interesting stresses in hard or brittle objects. I just wouldn't want to be anywhere near something that size if it did go boom.
A shaped cutting charge if you want to use the minimal amount of explosive and contain the blast a little. Otherwise, with enough high explosive you can blow up just about anything.
...but packed with high explosive, I'm pretty confident that something that size could blow an appreciable chunk out of that support pillar.
Or perhaps spray passing motorists with ball bearings, nails, broken glass and other shrapnel.
Even a cup full of black powder when suitably compressed can make a hell of a boom, and these days we have things like semtex and TNT, Torpex, and $_DEITY only knows what else. Choose your poison?
"Smith also ignored scientific advice when she upgraded cannabis from C to B even though downgrading it had led to less people taking it. Maybe we could save some money by just sacking these scientists rather than paying them to offer advice which the government will then ignore."
I blame John Oates. He gave the bastards ideas.
Eh, who actually believes the government on its drugs policy any more anyway? Frank? They've been losing the War On Drugs That Aren't Alcohol since the mid 1920s, and they look set to lose it for another century at this rate. Why did nobody learn from US prohibition and nearly 100 years of propaganda and imprisonments?
As the title says.
Also while I'm here: "Apple's iPhone, the most famously-locked-down of the platforms, has no viruses or Trojans to worry about..."
No viruses or trojans that we know about, you mean? How long did it take Apple to find and remove that sneaky flashlight app from their store that was allowing people to press a secret button combo and get tethering on their phones? Did Apple's infamous close scrutiny spot that, or is Apple's infamous close scrutiny a whole crock of shit that's more focussed on whether you mention a competitor's platform in your app?
You really think Apple would be able to find a competently-made trojan before the developer pressed the detonate button? And so what if they hit the kill switch? The amount of money gleaned from getting a hundred thousand (let alone a few million) phones to dial a premium rate number would probably pay for development of the next sneaky trojan.
Thanks, but I'd rather be able to look at a list of permissions. "This fart app requires: Location (Coarse, network based. Fine, GPS). Services that cost you money (make and receive calls, send and receive SMS messages). Full Internet access. Change contents of SD card. Adjust system settings. Prevent phone from going into standby."
It's not 100%, but then what is? Apple's curated iStore? You're having a giraffe, surely?
I don't normally accuse people of such, but it's amazing how many "anti pirates" crawl out of the woodwork when something even remotely related to BitTorrent pops up.
Yes, I'm a freetard. No, I pay for my music, in CD form so I can turn it into an mp3 or ogg without any hassle.
And yes, I use BitTorrent. I can't wait for the day I get one of the meeja industry's legal love letters through the door. Seriously, I'll frame the fucker.
Overpriced tat that looks nice on the coffee table. But hey, you can get it on a 24-month hire purchase agreement with only £200 paid up front!
The rest of us get Kenwood or Sony or Technics or just about any other gear and it sounds just as good for half the price.
Flame on.
"Keep the PC in the living room - he'll use his phone.
Take his phone - he'll buy a cheap iPod Touch off eBay.
Use OpenDNS filtering - he'll use IP addresses and proxies.
Turn off the router - he'll use the neighbour's instead.
I don't think ISP filtering is the answer - but I'm not sure what is."
By the time your darling is old enough to do all that, he's probably old enough to know a few things that'll turn your hair grey a few decades too early. Censorship by that time is a little like trying to shut the stable door after the entire race meeting has just departed in haste.
If on the other hand a young child even has the requisite debit card to buy something from ebay (and if you keep giving a nowty little sod money to buy an iToy), then you have something wrong there that a national Internet censorwall will never fix.
I could see professional signmakers and vinyl wrappers having difficulty getting this thing aligned to pixel-perfect precision, let alone Joe and Jane Public. That's without considering things like bubbles and creases. Still, as something fitted by the manufacturer I could see lenticular and similar no-glasses 3D working quite well. We'll see how well next year when Ninty goes all 3DS on us.
"So how do you connect your femto cell to the rest of the network? you're in a train in a cast iron tunnel, you still need 100's km of radiating cable."
...it's called, errr, the tracks. They're electric, you know?
And afaik most of the tunnels are lined with concrete and brick, not cast iron. Not that this matters when you're under several metres of terra firma.
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