Posts by Paul 25 181 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
In any other article about someone losing a patent case everyone would be up in arms about the stupidity of software patents and how everyone that sues is a troll and the courts are dumb.
But when it's Apple they are automatically guilty? In this case software patents are entirely justified and the courts displayed insight and common sense?
Figures.
(Not an fan of the fruit, my next phone will be a droid, but I do think the double standards are entertaining).
I would really love to see this built, but wasn't part of the problem originally that Babbage, being terrible at just sticking to one thing and getting it done, ended up coming up with loads of half-finished designs?
Also, I seem to remember that building the Difference Engine that lives in the Science Museum actually helped drive the engineering company that built it to bankruptcy.
This is all based on what I remember from the book "The Cogwheel Brain" so I might have it wrong.
I would be first in the cue to see a working AE though so I'm really hoping someone steps forward with the cash.
rsync
I don't know what the state of rsync servers on windows is, but on unix systems it's the one true way for copying files over a network.
It's fast, handles failure well, doesn't get it's nickers in a twist when doing large recursive copies, and will run over ssl with a bit of work. It can also give you plenty of feedback about progress if you need it.
The idea of copying that many files using something like a file manager or cp, no matter how good, just fills me with horror.
There will still be meteors this evening.
Last night was the peak of the shower, but it lasts for several days. Tonight won't be quite as good as last night but if you can find somewhere dark then you should still see something, assuming the weather is ok.
If anyone is in Bath this evening there is a star/meteor spotting evening in Victoria Park, starts at 9pm outside No 1 The Royal Crescent. I think there will be some astronomers and possibly some telescopes (I think), although I'll probably take my binoculars with me. Details at http://www.bptlearning.org.uk/index.php?cat=6
@AC - That's the same slice that Google take on the Android Marketplace as well. I think it's a bit steep, but seems to be the standard rate for things like this. Given that they handle everything from credit card fees to hosting for you I can kind of see why though.
I'm also not surprised that people who are willing to spend at least $500 on an iPad would be happy to spend $5 on the magazine, at least as a one-off. If you've got that much money sloshing around in your wallet then you'd probably not notice $5. Not sure it'll work long-term though.
Personally I don't see the benefit, but then if you are buying Wired on a regular basis you are probably not that bright.
...in the event of an accident.
Even as a trained first aider, treating people can be pretty unpleasant with all the bodily fluids involved. Not sure I like the sound of trying to give CPR to someone whose head is covered in something designed to smell horrible.
So long as it doesn't actually leak out it should be ok though.
If cancelling the ID card scheme "won't change anything for anyone out there" it rather implies that the whole idea was rather pointless, doesn't it?
And I'm sorry, but you do not need some über-database in order to provide an ID card the is sufficient for travel in Europe or to control access to public services.
They (the politicos and journalists) keep missing the fact that my objection (and many others) was not to a voluntary ID card, after all my driving license already gives me that, it was to the database and the amount of data that was to be collected and then made available to so many petty bureaucrats.
They had some muppet who had paid for one on the Today programme this morning claiming it was useful because he could open a bank account with it, although he still needed his driving license to prove where he lived. So just like using a passport and driving license then to open a bank account then.
If you want an id card that lets you travel in Europe we can still have that, just upgrade the driving license, or provide a card version of the passport. You don't need an über-database for any of that.
No one is forcing you to live in the sticks.
You don't move to a village in the middle of nowhere and then complain that there is no multiplex cinema nearby.
I f I decide to build a house in the middle of nowhere all the utility companies will charge me thousands to connect it up, which is why many opt for oil tanks, personal generators and digging their own wells.
As others have mentioned, there are alternatives for broadband. They might not be as good but that's what you get if you choose to live in the sticks.
Wherever you live you have to make compromises to an extent. I get good broadband, plenty of pubs and two local cinemas, but can't afford somewhere with a garden, get to have my lungs destroyed by pollution, and there is not much in the way of peace and quite.
I am curious as to exactly what they would have to upgrade given she is only three miles away, but £130k isn't that much given the cost of carrier grade gear, and the probability that it would involve digging up a road or two.
This is what happens in the open market, some customers are just not worth selling to. I'm sure BT would be happy to let her go to a satellite or wireless carrier rather than lose £130k on her.
If you want universal coverage then you have to nationalise BT Openreach (which I'm actually in favour of).
No Mr Johnson, it will not pay for itself
We will pay for it.
It's "voluntary"? Yeah right, try getting by without one in ten years time when every government agency will demand it if you want to do anything.
If everyone (or most people) in the country have to pay the government then it's a tax, one way or the other.
"Paying for itself" would indicate that the savings from using it will outweigh the cost. E.g. "This new car will pay for itself in five years through improved fuel efficiency".
Johnson is one of the (numerous) reasons I will not be voting Labour.
I've got friends who worked for Nokia and Vodaphone and it was fairly standard practice for employees of both manufacturers and networks to use prototype phone in the real-world to get an idea of how well they perform.
They also get lost all the time, the reason you don't tend to hear about it is that mostly people are not that interested in the next minor increment of a Nokia, but are obsessed by everything iPhone related.
Given that this guy appears to be working on the baseband software (i.e. what connects the phone to the network), then it would be reasonable that he might have one with him to test out the reception and call handling.
Also, naming the guy really sucks. Gizmodo should be ashamed of themselves. There was no need to name the guy, he's probably in enough trouble as it is, there's no need to make sure that he is forever-more known as "the guy that left his 4G iPhone in a bar".
Too often ORG's arguments sounded like the kind of thing you'd hear in student politics.
Shame really. The UK really needs a decent organisation to do what ORG is supposed to be doing.
They need to look and behave a little more Liberty, or other similarly principled but generally sensible campaign groups, and a little less like a campus political campaign about boycotting Nestle.
I thought trademarks were only exclusive within an industry, where there might be confusion, not across the entire span of human endeavour.
So I could trademark Micro-Soft pillows without getting sued by the beast of redmond, but couldn't set up a software firm using that name unless I had very deep pockets and the desire for a fight.
From what I've been told by graphic designer friends, Photoshop has been becoming a more PC centric product for a long time. Apparently the Mac version is feeling increasingly like a port from Windows, and less like a purpose built product.
I think the days of the mac as the be-all ad end-all of the designers world are pretty much over.
I believe companies are required to accept anything defined as legal tender, so cash and cheques (not credit cards). In theory I think you could pay them in pennies if you wanted to, although obviously that would be a bit pricey to ship.
Companies cannot claim you didn't pay them just because they refuse to accept your legal method of payment.
but if they do then I would be very tempted.
Sounds about the same size as one of those pad things from Star Trek the next generation, but in colour. Not a big fan of the later STs, but I always really wanted one of those pad.
Of course this is from an "analyst", so I'll take it with the usual truck load of sodium chloride.
It'll have to be a fairly sizeable subsidy. I have seven FM radios, including the car.
Since the cheapest DAB radio is about £25 (and that's for a really crap one) I have felt no desire to splash out on replacing them all with DAB to get no noticeable improvement in quality (at £25 it's the speaker and amp that make the difference not the broadcast tech), and only one more channel that I might listen to (BBC7), but probably won't.
Until they get the cost of the gear down, and significantly improve the power performance I won't be buying.
My portable Sony cost £12, sounds fine, and runs on a pair of rechargeable AAs for about 6 months. The cheapest small DAB receiver I can find it £25, and uses 6 AAs. I'm not spending £25+ just to listen to the radio in the shower.
I just don't get what problem DAB is trying to solve for most people.
Given the battle the BBC has every time it suggests turning off Radio 4 Long wave, expect a bloody revolution if they try to turn of FM in the next 5 years.
Hardware sales chart - http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=Wii®1=All&cons2=PS3®2=All&cons3=X360®3=All&start=39880&end=40244
The Wii is still selling 275k/week, compared to the 360 and PS3's 153k and 168k respectively.
While I fully expect Wii sales to slacken more and more, it's going to take a lot for the PS3 to catch up and then overtake the Wii on installed systems. The Wii currently accounts for just under 50% of the installed market. That's a very big lead to catch up.
Neither the 360 or PS3 show any significant trend upwards for the first part of this year. Sony are going to have to pull off something special to significantly increase their sales.
But that's "analysts" for you. I have yet to read anything by an analyst that turned out to be right.
It's a shame that Sony seem to have forgotten how to innovate. I'll be interested to see how well the new controller works, but they could have tried to leapfrog Nintendo (as MS appear to be doing with Natal) rather than just aping them.
...my dad does.
He currently uses his iPod touch or most of his emailing and web surfing without needing to use his computer.
He's by no means a technophobe, he's a retired engineer and very computer literate, but spends very little time on his computer these days. He rarely needs anything other than a browser and a mail client. A full-blown laptop would be too much and too big for what he wants to do with it.
He's also perfectly happy to use a touchscreen keyboard despite being 65 and having dodgy eyesight.
Personally it serves no purpose for me, I need a laptop, but for him it's ideal. I suspect Apple are going to sell a lot of these to people like my dad.
Oh, and my dad is about as far as you can get from being an Apple fanboi, having used Microsoft OSs exclusively since the early DOS days. His iPod is about the only Apple exposure he's ever had.
If the javascript is executed on the server side, presumably that means that it can only handle the kind of javascript that runs when you first load the page, nothing interactive.
If this is the case then I can't see why I would use it when there is a perfectly good alternative.
Am I missing something? Is mini actually smarter than that, and can somehow handle interactive javascript?
Currently PayPal are the cheapest way to accept payments online without forcing your customers to signup for an account.
All the other options, such as Google, require you to have an account with them. PayPal let you just use your credit card.
There is a huge potential for someone to develop a proper alternative to PayPal, that doesn't charge you a fortune for the privilege of just having an account, and then screwing you on charges.
With PayPal I only pay for what I use, no setup fees, no recurring fees, just about 3.5% of the transaction value. And there is no need to muck around with merchant accounts.
Annoyingly there isn't anyone that comes close to that. So for small operators like me who are just starting off, it's still the only viable option.
I'd love to move to something better, so if anyone can recommend something please do.
I've always wondered why we continue to have the various forces that we do, and why they all seem to have bits that do similar jobs to the others.
The way I see it we should just merge them all into a single fighting force, with a single chain of command. Each of the services has specialists in different fields (running around with guns, flying helicopters etc) so I don't see why the different services can't just be specialisms within a single force.
It would mean we might have fewer Admirals than ships for a change :)
While I would love to see people back on the moon and mars, sacrificing the ISS and unmanned missions to help fund it was just dumb.
We should be concentrating on developing cheaper ways to get to orbit by fostering commercial competition, combined with a station large enough to facilitate some real science and the construction of craft to head out into the solar-system.
Spend the intervening time developing some of the interesting new ideas for interplanetary drives.
Just building more big dumb rockets to chuck at the moon was shallow popularism by Bush.
@abigsmurf
The jets are (probably, everything about black-holes is conjecture) a result of the massive magnetic fields generated by black-holes. Just as the Sun has a powerful and complex magnetic fields, so do black-holes.
These magnetic fields fling charged particles out along the axis of rotation.
The magnetic force is several orders of magnitude more powerful than the force of gravity, which seems obvious when you think that a little fridge magnet can overcome the combined gravitational force of the Earth. This is what allows the black hole to force some particles away from it, while consuming others.
Whether a form of ID lets you buy alcohol is simply a product of whether your average cashier can actually spot a legit one.
I couldn't tell you what a German ID card is supposed to look like, but I could take a decent stab at spotting a fake German passport.
A border guard will know how to recognise a legit German ID card, because that's their job.
Oh, and I seem to remember reading that currently the Germans don't accept the UK ID card at their borders yet, for precisely this reason, they have yet to train up their border guards/immigration officers.
It's up to the county you are visiting to decide if it will accept a form of ID or whether they want to let you in. Just because UK.gov decides the ID card is legit, doesn't mean other countries automatically have to honour it.
You all do realise that part of the license fee has always been for the funding of the broadcast infrastructure and the work of BBC R&D in developing new broadcast technology?
Don't you?
How is this any different from the terrestrial broadcast system?
Personally I'd rather the 5p of the license fee was spend developing a joint internet delivery system that any broadcaster can use, then all of them developing different systems all based on shit like Adobe Flash.
Yay for common sense.
Despite being a mac user, I actually think this is a shame. Whatever you think of Pystar and their products, this kind of restriction on what people can sell is worrying. Remember, Pystar was selling legit OS X copies, just installed on none macs.
However I never understood why they didn't just sell PCs which were Mac compatible, with all the tools needed to get it running. Then the buyer could pick up their own copy of OS X and install it themselves (it's very straightforward).
Doing things that way would have made it much more difficult for Apple to take them down. They have largely stayed away from the hackintosh community, leaving most of the main websites alone, which is why there is so much info out there. I think that's because it would be a much harder case to make.
@Robert Carnegie
Shut up.
Verity, as usual, an excellent piece, as all of yours have been for the many years that Robert Carnegie has apparently not been reading them.
His loss (along with his sense of humour).
Loved the Erlang bit. That should be given to every first year functional programming student to see how long they take to spot the problem. Those that can't see what's wrong should immediately change to a pure maths course to save the rest of us from their code.
When I logged in and it gave me this choice, all the radio buttons were set to keep my existing settings.
I clicked one button to continue and carried on with life as usual.
So this is either a cock-up, or a change of heart on their part, or you are misrepresenting the situation to try an make it seem more interesting than it really is by setting all those buttons yourself?
The article doesn't actually make clear if the second image was what you were presented with, or what you set them to based on a recommendation by facebook (which I obviously didn't read).
At least not this really close range stuff.
If it worked over several feet then that could be quite cool, but these inductive chargers just seem pointless.
If I plug in a device, at least I can move it around within the range of the cable while it's charging. With an inductive system it has to sit on the pad all the time.
And is it really that much of a hassle to take a matter of seconds to plug a device in?
The only advantage to this seems to be that it is a going to be a single standard, so at least you can use one pad for everything. But switching all devices to micro-usb would solve the same problem.
"It is remarkable that two designers working on their own could create gloves that meet the requirements for spaceflight - a task that normally requires a large team of experts,"
That sums up NASA's past problems, and exactly why this sort of approach to some (but not necessarily all) of their technical problems can work so well.
I would think that most netbooks get much more abuse than more expensive and larger laptops. I wouldn't think of chucking my laptop around, but I'd be much more rough with a lightweight, and cheap netbook.
For some people that's the whole point, most netbooks are so cheap that people are less bothered if they break and are more likely to carry them round.
Agreed, assuming that these do operate as proper isolated black-boxes, I'm not sure I see what the problem is with these. As a driver I'd have no problem with everyone having one, because then it would be easier to prove that it was the other driver's fault the next time some muppet decides to run a red-light and nearly side swipes me.
if you are, as 90% of the population appear to believe, an above average driver who never causes crashes, and it's always one of the below average driver's fault, then you should have no problem with these.
As far as a hit and run would go, if there is no crash data recorded, I'm guessing that would be pretty damning evidence that the driver was not paying attention, since they didn't attempt to stop. Assuming you could identify the vehicle of course.
Of course, I still think that the best safety device to fit to cars would be a six inch spike in the middle of the steering wheel. People might actually pay attention to what they were doing.
I'd love to move there anyway.
Visited once, really lovely place, terrific people, gorgeous country (and people).
I remember a guide book saying that Lillihammer was in the midst of a crime wave with up to two cars a week being stolen :)
I'm sure it has its downsides, but i couldn't see any.
CompSci in the UK is a really mixed bag. Some of us spent four years studying everything from analogue and digital electronics, through half a dozen programming languages from assembler to Prolog, and lots of mathematical theory to boot.
Other's spend the same time learning to code in Java, and get to build a pissy little website for their final year project.
Computer Science is probably the single least standardised subject in higher education. In physics or maths you can reasonably expect two courses to offer the same essential material, but not CS.
I've known CS grads who could barely code in one language and didn't have any real understanding of the inner workings or theory of computation. But I've also known ones who can do funky things like get a hand-built Z80 micro-computer to display a spinning wireframe model of a cobra mark II on an oscilloscope.
All degrees are equal, but some are definitely more equal than others.
I pay the license fee (yeah, fool me) partly to fund the common broadcast infrastructure and the development of related technology.
BBC R&D were instrumental in developing the DVB broadcast system. They should be doing the same thing now, developing an integrated, efficient and fast internet based broadcast and on-demand system for the internet.
A bit of effort putting points of presence into all the major ISPs, a common software platform, and a bit of common sense, and we could have an open platform for any of the channels, with the same basic access rights as currently exist for the over-the-air system.
And as the state funded broadcaster, the BBC should be at the forefront of this.
We could have the TV system of the future, but unfortunately we have a bunch of old fogeys who seem easily confused by the technology holding everyone else back.
Such a missed opportunity.
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