* Posts by Henry Wertz 1

3137 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS: Like it or not, this Linux grows on you

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Re: yes, yes, that's all very well

@llewton, re... some files not playing "out of the box". Sorry, but have you tried this in Windows? It'll fail to play almost any video, then offer to find and download codecs (nice), then say there's no codec available (not nice.) Then you have to start googling for a solution (just like you would with Ubuntu.) Any OS I've ever used is imperfect at best out of the box, that's just how it is with computers being a general-purpose device and all.

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

gnome-session-fallback

"Balls. I'm all for new ideas, but not if they come paired with "Hey, we've thrown the stuff you're used to away" - nobody seems to be bothered with fallback."

Yep this is what i ***HATED*** in Ubuntu 11.10 (I'm still running 11.04 and am GLAD I ran 11.10 in a VM first.) Running 12.04 (in a VM), they have fixed this.

This is far from ideal but:

install gnome-session-fallback (sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback in a terminal..) The package manager in Ubuntu 12.04 gives you no way to force it to reload package list, or to indiicate when it's completed, so if you use it, it'll fail to find gnome-session-fallback at first but eventually it randomly will.

Then logout, and log in to "Gnome Classic" (if you want the compiz-style drop shadows and etc.) or "Gnome Classic (No Effects)" if you don't.

'Geek' image scares women away from tech industry

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Geeky women...

I've seen geeky women, but I do doubt that there are enough to try to approach a 50/50 split in those jobs that really should have geeky people in them. Some companies do try to get by with putting "normal" people into the kind of positions that should have geeks, and I suppose they will have less problem with this.

I've heard enough complaints about places that try to overwork and underpay their IT employees, that this may drive geeky women into other professions (either completely different profession, or freelancing.)

iPhone 5 in ICE CREAM SANDWICH photo riddle

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Trademark and non-4G

Trademarks are industry-specific. Otherwise, Apple Computer would not exist. They were in fact sued for violated the trademark of Apple Records (Apple Computer one, with the agreement they would stay out of the music business. Which they violated, got sued again, and this time lost.) This company can call their ice cream "IPhone5" if they want, as long as they don't start making cellphones.

As for "4G"... I'd prefer a phone to not falsely call upgraded 3G technologies 4G (and shame on the ITU for basically saying "4G is whatever companies decide to call 4G".) There were data speed overlaps between 1G and 2G (CDPD over analog did about 9600bps, as did the original GSM and CDMA data). Latest-stage 2G and earliest 3G nearly overlapped (EDGE ran up to 220kbps, while UMTS started at just 384kbps.) So just because some 3G upgrade approaches the lowest-end 4G speeds does not make it a 4G technology. If your speeds and service are good enough, it doesn't matter what "G" you are running, but the fact of the matter is 4G technologies like LTE have a long upgrade path ahead of them while 3G technologies (like the HSPA+ that both AT&T and T-Mobile here in the US falsely call 4G now) are near the end.

Apple claims Aussie 3G is so good it's 4G

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

ITU is going all mushy

I'm disappointed that the ITU got all mushy on this. It's clear-cut. CDPD, which added packet data to what was otherwise an analog system, got 9600bps. The earliest data options for CDMA, GSM, and TDMA were 9600bps and 14400bps. EDGE is 2G but runs up to 220kbps, while UMTS (a 3G tech) started at just 384kbps. So, no, I do not consider an evolved 3G technology to be 4G just because it is approaching the speed of the earliest 4G deployments.

We've got areas here in the States where an EVDO network (3.1mbps) handily outruns a competitor with 14.4mbps HSPA (which they now claim is 4G.) Certainly due to congestion. Not too many places though, which is why the EVDO carriers are generally rolling out LTE now ASAP (while the HSPA carriers are beginning to call their 3G networks 4G instead.)

In the end, though, what matters is typical speeds. If the typical speed is quick enough to do what you want and the price is right, then it doesn't matter what G the technology is.

Apple throws free Snow Leopard bone at MobileMe punters

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
WTF?

will this update work?

"On the contrary, paying for an OS is a bit like how I pay a plumber to fix my plumbing, because I can't be arsed to waste my own time doing it."

I'm not saying you shouldn't buy an OS if you want to, but that argument is not sensible. The alternative to buying an OS is not writing one yourself. You know how an Ubuntu install goes? Pop in the CD (or USB stick), boot, click "next" a few times (language selection, keyboard layout, timezone, etc.), reboot, run updates. *Exactly* like an OSX install. They both have upgrades from one version to the next too.

Anyway... I don't see the logic of this. Free updates are never a bad thing, but giving people an update from an OS incompatible with your product to a slightly newer OS that is still incompatible with your product? I don't see that being very persuasive towards getting people to use your product.

India's new Atom-powered Xolo X900 ISN'T Intel's first smartphone

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Nobody cares about AC97

"For all intents and purposes, for the current era of smartphones, this is Intel's first model."

I don't buy it, the older smartphones were smartphones, and had Intel CPUs in them. I could use the same logic to claim some 2012-model PC was the first PC to ever use an Intel CPU. Nevertheless, the older devices that used Intel CPUs were not running x86, they were running Intel-built ARMs.

To run my favorite OS, Linux does not care one bit if you have AC97, VGA, or even a PCI bus. The fact of the matter is, though, unless the Atom has changed radically of late, the Atom draws more power than a similar-performance ARM both under full load and idle. I would not be interested in an Atom-based phone.

Apple slapped with second Siri senility lawsuit

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Suit has merit & "that" is a solved problem

"That anyone really believed the hype surrounding Siri, I'm even more amazed that people bought into so easily, I'm even more astounded that they think it is a reason to sue over, and I am flabbergasted a law firm has taken it on."

Apple fanbois believe anything they are told.

As for being astounded, why? False advertising is illegal, so if Apple is misrepresenting the functionality of their product in an ad, then people have a case to sue over it. Scientific and R&D advancements bring new products onto the market all the time, it's not up to the customer to know "Oh, well, language processing hasn't advanced that far yet." It's up to the advertiser to not claim the product does things it can't do. Not saying they should win, or whatever, but certainly there's cause to potentially sue.

"To be fair, natural language processing is a tough nut to crack on the best of circumstances, and asking a computer to figure out the referent to "that" in that kind of situation requires much more cognitive nimbleness than you might think. "

Infocom had that problem licked by the late 1970s for the common case. See Zork and almost every interactive fiction ever made. It's not tricky at all to look back 1 item in a conversation, to understand "Schedule foobar at 4PM..... Make that 3PM." means you want to schedule foobar at 3PM.

IT staffers on ragged edge of burnout and cynicism

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"The W word"

I'm surprised nobody has brought up Windows as a factor. I mean, IT Security is surely stressful in general, but Windows just seems to make administration in general harder, and it seems like trying to plug a sieve as far as I'm concerned.

Ubuntu for Android: Penguins peck at Nokia's core problem

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Just in case you wonder..

I have a Droid 2 Global. This is a single 1.2ghz ARM, and 512MB of RAM. I do have a Debian chroot on here, and a while ago I did install OpenOffice (or is it LibreOffice now? Whatever) and ran it on a remote X display. Not only did it work, it was SNAPPY, and even if I started whipping through menus, preference screens, etc. to try to drive up CPU usage, I couldn't get it above 5%.

So, I could easily see a phone running a full desktop environment with a dock.

Will Windows 8 sticker shock leave Microsoft unstuck?

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Re: Re: What a huge disappointment..

"I've never heard anyone claim WOA would run x86 through emulation... in fact I've always heard this denied, yet people thinking it was the case. Got a source?"

Well, sort of... at the BUILD conference last year, Steven Sinofsky said "If it'll run on Windows 7, it'll run on Windows 8". And last year they kept making statements about the ARM version providing a "desktop experience" and so on, which they no longer seem to claim.

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Question for linux bods... linux is known for running on a far wider array of hardware but does it run identically? How does it handle cases where underlying architecture is substantially different, as MS claim in the "porting x86 apps to ARM would defeat the point" comment?"

Well, see my previous post, as a practical matter it DOES run identically.

From a programmer standpoint?

The actual programming interfaces ARE identical -- even if you are writing a device driver, if you follow the recommended programming practices (which are simple to follow, and probably have to be followed to even have a working driver on x86...) the Linux internals take care of oddities like making sure caches are flushed, handling seperate "regular" and "I/O" memory address spaces, and so on, so even as a driver writer you do not have to sweat the little differences between x86, x86-64, PowerPC, ARM, and so on.

The only thing your really need to worry about is 32-bit versus 64-bit, and little versus big endian. The Linux headers support functions like htons (which would convert a short from host to network byte order -- which is big endian.) If your system was already big endian, htons(x) just returns x and the compiler optimizes it out, so you don't have a slowdown from "unnecessary" conversions. For file I/O, plain ASCII text files use 8-bit chracters to endianness doesn't even apply. For most other file types (Unicode, JPEG, PNG, audio & video formats, etc.) the programmer uses a library anyway, and that library takes care of endian issues.

Microsoft's just making excuses... Windows NT 3.1, 3.5, 4.0 was designed to be portable, but they lost site of this and ended up with something they did not care to port. They are just making excuses at this point.

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
Facepalm

What a huge disappointment..

I mean, I don't use Windows anyway. But, the "scuttlebutt" on Windows for ARM went from just a few months ago being a true port of Windows, with x86 CPU emulation, allowing for preferably (or performance reasons) running ARM applications, but being able to run (at least well-behaved) x86 apps when necessary... .to, within a matter of a month or two, being basically Windows CE/Windows Mobile (except not even being compatible with WinCE apps) with Microsoft claiming "Well, of course it's Windows!" Lame.

Time for people to suck it up and use a nice Linux distro! 1) I've run Linux in the past on a DEC Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, UltraSPARC, and PowerPC (both a Mac and an IBM RS/6000), as well as ARM. There's really nothing to say about it -- there was full driver compatibility, anything I could shove into or plug into the box (i.e. PCI, USB, etc.) just worked (TM) just like it does on x86. The desktop behaved identically. I had the same choice of applications to install. And, if someone does come across x86-binary-only apps... besides the usual qemu mode where it runs an entire virtual machine, qemu has a *second* mode that allows to run (for instance) an x86 Linux binary on an ARM Linux system.

I'm not excited in the least about WIndows for ARM. It sounds AWFUL. I *AM* excited about someone actually coming out with ARM notebooks so I can order it without Windows, or return Windows for a refund, and put a proper OS on there. The ARM makes my Atom-based Mini 12 look like a power hog, these things should have crazy battery life!

Apple lands slide-to-unlock patent blow on Motorola

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Alternate unlock...

CM7 has an option (and I've also seen this on my firend's phone with whatever firmware the maker shipped it with) where there's a 3x3 grid of circles, you drag your finger across the circles in some pattern (to "set" the password) then the unlock is to drag your fingers in the same pattern later. Of course, if your "pattern" is a left-to-right swipe... well, that's just some coincidence isn't it?

Two thirds of Brits crippled by mobile phone loss terror

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

@Arrrggghh-otron, sounds like your employer is a prat. You HAVE to be assertive, and point out you will either be paid on-call pay or a quite fat salary to compensate for wokring for them 168 hours a week... or you are not on call. It's really as simple as that. I came to an understanding with a boss that tried to do that to me... I still got a handful of calls a year (usually 5 or 10 minutes after I left, because nobody with the alarm code had remembered to arm the buliding alarm..) which was no problem at all, but I made it clear I was not working 168 hours a week and so couldn't expect calls 24/7 on any regular basis.

@jake, you don't sound like a neo-luddite, you just sound like a luddite. Landlines? Please, it's not the 20th century. heh.

Not to sound too "out there", but I see cell phones tying into Kurzweil's views on a "technological singularity", he postulated people enhacning themselves EITHER through 1) Direct medical/genetic manipulation. 2) Implants. 3) External enhancements. Cell phones are essentially #3 depending on how they are used, I've seen people text or IM and talk AT THE SAME TIME, at that point the texting/IM'ing is almost like a technological replacement for telepathy with your friends. When these people get cut off, they are almost like a Borg when it's cut off from the collective... they really do miss that constant contact. For a lot of people who AREN'T so Borg-like, losing the cell phone would be like (20 years ago) losing the landline and the Rolodex at the same time... I have my contacts on my cell phone AND it's my only voice contact number. I also have my E-Mail go right to the phone, but since it's GMail I "can" read it on a computer if I need to.

Microsoft explains bland new Windows logo

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Not distinctive...

I don't use Windows anyway, so I don't REALLY give a toss. But I think those who point out it's not distinctive are right on

Firstly, they've used variations of the Windows 3.1 on up Windows logo for a looong time, and it is certainly recongizable by a lot of people. Throwing that out the window is not smart. Although, they are completely redoing the interface anyway.

But, more significantly, using 4 blue squares as a logo, umm... it doesn't stand out, and it's easy for some unrelated on-screen element to look like some blue boxes, especiallly given the fvwm-like (or dare I say it twm-like?) interface they seem to be favoring.

Kia Rio 1.1 CRDi EcoDynamics

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Junky tires, and a nice car.

@Ian Stephenson, yep these kinds of tires are rubbish, they allow for a (slightly) higher MPG rating while compromising handling, braking, (maybe) acceleration, and safety. @armyknife, one aspect of being a good driver is keeping your vehicle in safe condition. These tires I'm sure are technically legal, but they really are not remotely safe tires. I've been in several vehicles with these types of tires, and they don't corner worth a damn, don't stop worth a damn, and don't give any warning they are getting ready to let loose. So, if someone stops short in front of you and there's a drop of rain on the road, you WILL ram into them. My friend got rid of his after he got stuck because *1* out of 4 tires was in about 2 inches of snow (with the other 3 tires on dry pavement.) That was too much for it!

That said, I wish they'd sell some cars like that here in the states. They are starting to pay *some* attention, finally within the last year or two more 40MPG (that is 48MPG in your British gallons..) cars have come out than just the Prius and a few inflated-MPG Honda Hybrids, whereas before... well... you could either get some car with a nice torquey V6, where they'd pull out the stops for MPG and get 30MPG (that's 36 UK MPG), or a little 4-cylinder that they instead tuned and geared strictly for power, so it'd still be far slower than the V6 but also get about 30MPG. (This is why us US'ians had this apparent obsession with V6s and V8s btw... the car companies were supplying 4 cylinders with no mileage advantage over the 6, so why buy it?) But over 75 (US) MPG? Yeah, I'd be interested in that.

Symantec: We've plugged up pcAnywhere holes

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
Trollface

They could just use VNC

That way, there's no worrying about *if* your session is vulnerable to sniffing or man-in-the-middle attacks -- the whole session (including password) is in the clear, so you KNOW it's fully vulnerable! Problem solved 8-)

Ukraine file-sharing site disappears

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

No deduplication...

That is probably why they have 6,000TB of swag. If I were to run a Usenet server, or file sharing site, or whatever, I'd definitely invest in deduplication -- either in hardware or software. Because, honestly, what they probably have is like 50 different people putting up the new..umm... Linux distro... yeah. And 35 copies of the other one. And so on.

For those who don't know, deduplication compares new data to existing data (either at the whole-file or the block level), and if the data is identical, only physically stores one copy. (Well, hopefully at least 2 copies, in case of a disk failure.) The upside? Potentially massive reduction in storage used. The downside? All that extra CPU time, disk I/O, and housekeeping to determine what can be deduplicated. Deduplication is either done real-time (reducing write speeds, perhaps considerably) or as a batch process (so you get essentially full speeds when you need it, and queue up the deduplication to happen at 2AM or whatever when your disks are at minimal load anyway.)

Fotoshop by Adobé: The miracle beauty treatment

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

US doesn't enforce thruth in advertising

@David W., I guessed from the article that this was being marketed in the US given the statement wondering if it'll make it to his side of the pond or not.

False advertising is nominally illegal here but it's not enforced. I think the FTC relies on customers filing complaints before they do a thing, and customers here have gotten used to ads straying further and further from the truth so they simply don't file. You've got ads claiming "3x more" when they mean "3x as much", you've got ads saying "20mbps" when they can't provide the speeds, you've got ads with some truck literally skiing down the side of a mountain and doing backflips (not even a blown shock!)*, continuing ads for mobile broadband showing people watching movie after movie, when the carriers have gone from unlimited data to cripplingly low data caps (they don't mention watching that movie would cost at least $20!), it's normal now for companies to list "$20 a month for 6 months", without even listing *in the small print* what the real price will be. The Enzyte guy (Enzyte is an alleged wang-enhancement pill) was thrown in jail for fraud, but he wasn't required to pull his ads so they are still airing like a year later!

That said, I've never heard of this product.

*The joke of it is, the "realistic" truck or SUV ads will claim how rugged it is, while showing them driving down the nicest, smoothest bit of manicured sand or gravel I've ever seen, you could seriously drive down them in a golf cart.

iPhone 5 rumoured to be packed with pay-by-bonk tech

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Double fail....

First off, why would they assume with Android devices having NFC, that it'll magically take off just because it's in Apple's next rather mediocre phone? Fail number one.

Fail number two is the whole tech. I just don't see the appeal of having money sucked out of my wallet by radio, as opposed to pulling out my card and swiping it or (god forbid!) paying cash. I just have the feeling this is going to have grave security problems sooner rather than later. As a practical matter, here in the states, I've never seen as single credit card machine that would read a chip, and have only seen one card with a chip on it.. the magnetic strip is king here.

Angry Birds boss: Piracy helps us 'get more business'

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"In my humble opinion the music industry is suffering because it has almost nothing substantial left to offer. They are churning out "pop stars", they are not producing musicians. Pop Stars with no apparent musical talent, their talent lies in their capacity to simply "produce" what the Music Company dictates."

Yup. The big problems of late:

1) Autotune. Used subtly, it's pretty unnoticeable. But that's not how it's used any more. Now, there's simply no concern if the artist can hit a note or not, they just crank up the autotune and let it warp the singers voice by an octave or so. This sounds downright bad,. (Note, I'm not counting songs where Autotune is *intentionally* cranked to make the singer sound like a robot., I don't like the sound of that either but that's a special effect)

2) Artist selection by computer. Yes, I read about this years ago, the main record labels throw their existing artists albums (and slaes figures) into a computer, then when they scout *new* bands they feed THAT music into the computer, and just pick out whoever the computer says will have highest sales based on it's model. And you wonder why so many bands sound so similar these days? 8-)

3) Irrelevancy. I've spoken with a few local bands. None had a dream of signing up with some big record company. Firstly, they knew the record co would screw them over. Secondly, they can put up and sell MP3s themselves, and get their own runs of CDs to sell too. Thirdly, in general when a band goes on tour the record co doesn't have anything to do with that either.

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Just an excuse...

"Some countries have structured their IP laws in such a way that if you turn a blind eye, then you risk losing control of the IP."

Some companies maintian an iron grip over their so-called IP, up to and including suing fans.. and want to use this kind of law as an excuse to divert blame away from themselves by saying they are required to do this. They are not.

These types of laws do have a purpose.. Firstly, to prevent an unscrupulous company from sitting on something for years, and by inaction allowing people to either assume this item is public domain or that they tactily approve use of it.. .then popping up after years and suing everyone. Secondly, to prevent a company from accumulating so much IP they can't even keep track of it all, so they didn't know they even had the rights to something. Companies do both, but at their peril.

In this case, they are NOT really turning a blind eye. In the case fan items, as Craig 12 says, they are interacting with their fans. They aren't charging a licensing fee, but they are effectively maintaing control by approving of the items produced.. since they are in close contact, they could say "no" to some or all items down the road. As for the Asian counterfeiters, they say it's not economical to go sue each and every one of them.. but at least this means they have stated their disapproval for this counterfeiting. Both avoid the main peril under the law of saying nothing at all, losing control by letting everyone assume tacit approval. In one case they give explicit approval, in the other they give explicit disapproval.

'Space Monkey' craze: Texan students 'get high' by choking each other

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Hmm...

Well,

a) I just have to say, Texas is the most redneck-filled, screwed up state in the country. And anything you read about Texas (fried butter, almost everyone carrying guns at all times, etc.) does not represent the rest of the US.

b) I've never heard of this... At my high school, if people wanted to get high they just smoked some weed (disclaimer, I am a giant nerd and did not partake). We even had a rastafarian teacher there. They did have to go out to the parking lot, but other than that the teachers and administration looked the other way. It actually worked well, the students that otherwise would have skipped classes, and maybe over time some would have drifted to harder drugs, would instead have their toke and go to class... our school did very well academically, even the stoners.

Sony reveals old hardware still sells well

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Not a surprise...

First, not a surprise that a brand new unit, that just came out in Japan, that is not being advertised anywhere else (I've never heard of PS Vita until now...), and has how many games that are written specificially for it?.... is selling fewer units than the established system.

Second... "three times fewer" is a negative number. If the PSP sold x units, x-(3*x)=-2x. I know people are now abusing the English language by saying "3 times fewer" when they mean 1/3rd as many, or "3 times more" when they mean 3 times as many, but it's wrong and I request you don't do it please 8-) And, no, it's not just pedantic, ads here in the US are now saying things like "3 times more" when they really mean "3 times as many", inflating the figures on how sweet their soap or credit card or whatever is.

George Lucas: 'No more Star Wars'

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

CGI was the big problem.

@Ken Hagan and @AC, the special effects in the original Star Wars movies has aged reasonably (well the death star explosion wasn't too great.) What *HASN'T* aged well is having rereleases with like 90% original special effects (more or less -- I'm sure there's some color balance changes and such) and the other 10% cheezy, in-your-face CGI with no effort to make the CGI look anything like the rest of the movie. I think some of the other changes (Hans did shoot first!) were pointless, but I honestly wouldn't whinge about them, but the added cheeze is pretty bad.

The new movies? Well, no comment really. The big problem from what I've heard regarding the acting and such was so much was done in front of a blue screen -- like, even if it's 2 people talking, instead of having both of the 2 in front of the blue screen, they'd be filmed seperately... it'd be like "say line 3, wait 3 seconds then look angry, then wait another 3 seconds, say line 4 and storm off". It's a lot easier to make that look natural when the other person is actually talking for 5 or 6 seconds than to react to someone that is not actually there!

Best Buy fires parting shot at Dixons with closing down sale

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

@tmTM, yeah that's how Circuit City did it too. They are like "Oh, we REALLY need to clear these stores, we're CLOSING!!" and then they'd have a game "discounted" to like $55, when it was $40 at some nearby store. I could see doing this at first? But, they were at the final days and STILL didn't drop the prices. They just ended up closing the stores like 1/3rd full.

Canonical releases first alpha of Ubuntu 12.04

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

@Boris the Cockroach, a) As a few said it's an alpha. b) Agreed though! I've found almost every Ubuntu release to be shockingly buggy until about a month after release. Then I can upgrade, or (for a fresh install) install and run the update manager right away.

All I can say, is they really better get a gnome-2-like interface (which they were calling "Ubuntu Classic") working again or I'm bailing. I'm running 11.04 right now; in 11.10, Unity might be OK for a tablet but it's awful for a desktop. And "gnome-session-fallback" in 11.10 is based on gnome 3 instead of gnome 2, and it's like they got midway through setting it up then quit. It looks just plain broken.

Verizon slips $3.6bn shiv into AT&T, T-Mobile ribs

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

@186k, well, AT&T played up the "oh, we need so much spectrum", but in reality I think they wanted to buy T-Mobile to eliminate the low-cost GSM competition.

For you Brits, a short recap of the US cellular market... in general, AT&T and T-Mobile are the high and low-cost national GSM carriers, and Verizon Wireless and Sprint the high and low-cost nationwide CDMA carriers. Then there might be a few extra carriers in the mix in any given market. AT&T and VZW have both gone from $30 for unlimited data to $25 for 2GB (AT&T) or $30 for 2GB (VZW) with $10/GB overage. T-Mobile charges $20 for 2GB, *but* throttles rather than charging cash so you don't really have to worry about usage. Sprint's $30 unlimited data is still unlimited.

Anyway... as for the spectrum.

"Normal" cellular service here is at 850 or 1900mhz, either GSM/EDGE/HSPA or CDMA/EVDO.

Verizon Wireless has started running LTE at 700mhz (which is SICK -- I got 28mbps in a speed test at the store with only 2 bars, and people have gotten like 75mbps now and then.) VZW has 700mhz licenses covering the continental US in it's entirety, but intends to use AWS to add capacity.

AT&T has rolled a bit of LTE as well, I've heard in both 700 and AWS. They intend to use 700mhz for LTE as much as possible, but use AWS (1700mhz uplink, 2100mhz downlink) to add capacity or fill in coverage (in places where AT&T has AWS but no 700mhz.)

AWS is already used by T-Mobile (for 21mbps and 42mbps HSPA+... they run GSM/GPRS/EDGE at 1900mhz) and by MetroPCS and Cricket (they run CDMA/EVDO at 1900mhz, but run CDMA/EVDO in AWS in markets where they didn't get any 1900.) MetroPCS is also running LTE, I think also in AWS.

It's kind of a balancing act -- if VZW gets enough LTE phones (especially when VoLTE -- Voice over LTE -- gets implemented) they can start shutting CDMA and EVDO channels off and run more LTE at 850/1900. But they can't shut them down too quickly and degrade service for people who don't upgrade their phones.

Microsoft's uphill battle to push Win8 tabs into punters' paws

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

(From the article)

"Forrester Research has published a report that claims consumer interest has "plummeted" during the past nine months. The bean counters are vague on what the tab-happy public has grown tired of - be it Windows 8, tablets, or tablets running Window 8 - but the conclusion is that Microsoft's got a hard act to follow."

----

Absolutely it has plummeted.

For some history on Windows. So, Windows 1.x-3.x, then 95, 98, ME have a common lineage. NT was basically from scratch, and started with NT 3.1. Between NT 3.1 and 4.0, it supported (besides x86) MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC. The Alpha version even had an x86->Alpha translator supplied by DEC.

Given this historical context, I read talk months ago about Windows 8 for ARM being targetted even for ARM-based netbooks, and people filling in the blanks assumed an x86->ARM translation thing, and so x86-like experience but on an ARM (with performance and battery life getting better as more ARM native apps come out.) Porting an x86 app for ARM would have been a recompile (plus taking care of any inline assembly.. which hopefully should just be a snippet of MMX or 3DNow... most ARMs have a SIMD instruction set called NEON that should be applicable to keeping the ARM version fast.) Of course for code that was already "managed code", this shouldn't even need the recompile.

Now? Windows 8 for x86 is supposed to have it's own interface, AND a second one that is Windows 8 for arm like. The ARM one looks like Windows phone 7, but instead of even using .NET or anything it's supposed to use HTML5, Javascript, and CSS.

How's that for a loss of enthusiasm? Going from visions of a pain-free transition from x86 to ARM, to "Well, actually it runs web apps" loses any enthusiasm I had for it. And retreating to tablets.

(Side note, my enthusiasm was actually pretty minimal, I'm excited about something like an ARM netbook, and even an ARM desktop, but running Linux. I've actually run either Debian or Ubuntu on PA-RISC, UltraSPARC, PowerPC, and Alpha besides the usual x86. The user experience is identical. A few years ago, I went on vacation for a few weeks. Some of the guys where I worked actually backed up the home directory and data off my Ubuntu for x86 system, pulled a board out of a PowerMac (dual 800mhz or so) and stuck it into a duplicate of my computer's case, and even used a PS/2->USB adapter so the same Model M keyboard was plugged in. They made sure it was already running when I got back, and took bets on how long it'd take me to realize it was a Mac -- about 4 hours, I finally rebooted it and heard that Mac startup sound. I kept using it for quite a while -- there was really no reason not to. This is what I want out of an ARM system -- the same stuff I do now, but with better power consumption (longer battery life on netbook and smaller power bill for desktop.)

Chinese state research unit pays $1,000 for USB stick

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

This is probably RAM...

I could be wrong, but given the printer and JetDirect, I'm guessing the "memory stick" is a 128MB RAM upgrade for the printer, not a USB stick. Still doesn't excuse the price though.

eBuyer £1 sale fail: Customers vent fury... on Facebook

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Maybe need newer servers?

After all, this article

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/07/07/ebuyer_runs_site_on_commodore64/

says the web servers are using a Commodore PET, a Commodore 64, a ZX Spectrum, an Oric Dragon32 and an MSX system. Oh and a Cray.

Ofcom boss threatens nuclear option on 4G squabble

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Open auction...

"Why not get Ofcom to rent out the available bandwidth to the mobile operators?"

Given the terrible mobile pricing and service you suffer under in the UK, this spectrum should not even go to the incumbent mobile operators.

Anyway, what the FCC has generally done is 1) Some portion is set aside for newcomers to bid on. 2) Spectrum caps. Verizon and AT&T have plenty of cash to just buy up every hz of spectrum that comes up, and just sit on it so nobody else can have it. This prevents that to some extent. The spectrum cap would mean in effect that EE and perhaps some of the others may have to give up 900 or 1800 spectrum depending on how much 800 and 2.6ghz they intend to buy. 3) They don't have buildout requirements any more, but they are an excellent idea, both so one of the "regular" carriers doesn't just buy spectrum to keep it out of the others hands.. and also so if a newcomer buys it and then doesn't have money to do anything with it it isn't just sitting idle because of that.

Ubuntu team questions Distrowatch share slide figures

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Believe it...

So, the "classic" Ubuntu interface was gnome2 based, and was more and more refined (both due to gnome itself and Ubuntu-specific tweaks) from 6.06 (at least) up through 11.04. I considered Ubuntu "good enough" to recommend to whatever random Windows user at about 8.04, it was quite slick. 10.04 was even better. 10.10 and 11.04 continued to improve, although with 11.04 I had to select "Ubuntu classic" (at least on new installs) to avoid the new Unity interface. 11.10? Unity is the ONLY choice, and when I did install "gnome-session-fallback", it is gnome3 based and to me looks incomplete compared to the gnome2-based system.

I think Unity is like the Microsoft Ribbon or something, it's a "love it or hate it" thing, I for one think maybe it'd be OK on a tablet, but hate it on desktop (or notebook....) I seriously doubt there's ANY interface I'd like on both a tablet and conventional computer, they just don't have the same physical interface and aren't used the same way. When I upgraded a 11.04 virtual machine to 11.10, then installed "gnome-session-fallback", the result looked so bad I thought the install or upgrade had failed somehow, and installed a *fresh* 11.10 install and threw on gnome-session-fallback. Nope, that's how it looks now.

----------------

I've heard people that I didn't even know where running Linux comment how they don't like the new Ubuntu interface, and are going to check out Mint or some other distro. Believe it. I'm sure some love Unity (or run Xubuntu or Kubuntu where this doesn't effect them...) But for the rest, those who aren't jumping ship now, are waiting for LTS, and I really suggest you fix the "classic" desktop situation by then.

Cheap-as-chips kit smashes Intel's HD video encryption

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

@Serious answer.. to me, what it requires is two big changes.

1) Recognize that rights restrictions are a waste of money. They *WILL* be cracked, and money spent developing them is flushed right down the toilet. People who download a given movie (for example) can play it on their fondelslab, phone, computer, hook up the TV and show it, burn it to a DVD, and so on. Purchase the same movie? RIghts restrictions trying to keep a physical copy on a physical disk. Electronic copies that try to restrict what they can play the movie on, may need a network connection for license management, need to use a (usually shitty and clunky) proprietary player to play the video instead of whatever they feel like.

2) Perhaps watermarking? I would think for downloads they could be watermarked with the user's name (perhaps a visible watermark in addition to the invisible one -- if a movie said "This movie is licensed to Seymour Butts" at the end of the video, Seymour would think twice about sticking that up on bittorrent.) For DVDs and BluRays this obviously wouldn't work, but perhaps they could at least track back a bittorrent to the store or city it came from, this'd still track Seymour down much faster than "Well, he's somewhere on earth".

There's no adjusting users. Sorry, the movie companies may want people to be obedient consumers, but I for one am not a consumer, I'm either a customer or not a customer. And that depends entirely on if I can use the product in question on devices of my choice or if they consider "Windows + proprietary player" to be good enough. Besides personally not using Windows, there's been a real disaster with these rights-restriction products, where purchased items work in Windows version X, but either don't work right or maybe not at all in Windows version X+1 (if the purchaser even has the right to use the same item with Windows X+1, as opposed to that being considered terms for having to repurchase.)

TiVo subscriptions go up – for the first time in 4 years

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Tivo is pretty good...

I don't have one, I have MythTV at home. But I've used Tivos before, they are slick, and even the old generation 1 was quick enough and reliable (it only had 16MB of RAM and a 54mhz PowerPC; I have no idea why such an odd clockspeed.) They really developed -- from scratch (Linux kernel, but from-scratch on top of that...) a good service and product, and I'm glad their decline has stopped and they are not just going down the tubes.

Samsung to 'exit netbooks'

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

A few factors...

1) What Uncle Slacky says. I already have a netbook, and don't feel any need to buy another one. I would guess a lot of people already have theirs, the new ones are not significantly better, so they aren't going to upgrade just to upgrade. (With the lack of Linux-based ones compared to earlier on they actually have been downgraded.)

2) **Windows**. The largest mistake they've made is to stop shipping most with Linux and stick Windows 7 crippled edition on them, then people that review, test, or use them view them as "barely adequate" or maybe just "inadequate", Win7 is too bloated for an Atom. Mine shipped with Ubuntu and it runs great. They've also let prices creep up and up as they add more RAM, faster Atoms, and so on, to try to accomodate Windows, as well as paying for that Windows license.

3) re Ramazan... Some Atoms *do* have this, my Z520 (1.33ghz Atom) supports VT-X (shows up in /proc/cpuinfo as vmx) as well as flexpriority (which apparently helps interrupt handling in virtual machines.) Also, ARM uses 1/10th the power, not "10 times less" (that would be a negative value.)

4) I have no intention of buying another Intel-based netbook. I'm quite chuffed at the possibility of buying an ARM-based one. I have a keyboard on my phone, and am not interested in a tablet without a keyboard either. So, it'll either be an "ARM Netbook", or a "tablet with a keyboard" -- I don't really give a toss which they call it. I like Android well enough but would prefer to just run Ubuntu for ARM (or some other Linux distro if 11.10 stays as wrecked as it is now...)-- I've run Debian or Ubuntu on MIPS, Alpha, PA-RISC, Sparc, and PowerPC (in addition to usual x86) and these are not second-class citizens -- as long as you've got enough RAM and enough processing power, you won't miss x86 a bit.

Disk drive prices swell 5% every DAY in floods aftermath

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Really is a shortage.

@Raz, you may find that Walmart is one of those stores that just updates prices on certain products monthly or quarterly, and have not jacked the prices up yet.

Anyway... profiteering? The fact of the matter is production is WAY down (something like 60% reduction), production will be well below demand for quite a while. This means higher prices. There may have been "a little" profiteering in terms of marking up prices at retail on existing stock, but it cost them more to replenish that stock than they initially had these drives priced at, and no-one wants to lose money in a volatile market, so they tend to err a little on the other side.

Need for Speed: The Run

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed

came out around 2000, it had *really* accurate physics, and a bunch of Porsches from the 356 on. This is what I want out of a car racing game, one where the cars drive like cars. Out of the cars it had, I found the 944 the easiest to drive fast (actually due to it having *less* power -- the 911 is real easy to break the tires lose on a turn, then really easy for it to go *really* out of control after that ... the 944, you have a wide range of throttle to control that with.)

Although I must admit to having enjoyed NFS3: Hot Pursuit. It's amazing how car tech has advanced since then, it had some grade A muscle from that era and it'd just about top out at 130.

Tablets need permanent Black Friday price slash to triumph

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Prices have already dropped...

I got a 7" tablet, 800mhz CPU, 256MB of RAM, 4GB storage (and open microSDHC slot) for $88 about a week ago (i.e. not a "black Friday" sale). Just like the Kindle and such, no Market, but I added it in a few minutes. Done and done.

People are comparing the most expensive slabs on the market and saying "Well, these are almost as much as the IPad!". Well, yeah, if you compare like an Alienware computer, or overpriced Sony notebook, you'll find Apple-like prices too. There's a lot cheaper kit on the market.

Apple pulls games subs app DAYS after approving it

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Whatever the reason, it’s the arrogance of Apple that annoys developers. "

Yep, I wouldn't be caught dead developing for an Apple product. It's too likely I'd go to the trouble and they'd pull my work with no explanation. I won't buy one either.

@zef, not anticompetitive. iPhone is one (rather mediocre...) phone among many, they are nowhere close to having a monopoly in phones, or even phone markets. It's been well known even before iPhone came out that Apple are control freaks, and for some reason seems to be a surprise every time they pull an app for seemingly no reason. It's no surprise at all.

Jew or not Jew app withdrawn from iTunes

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Someone needs to check the meaning of the word "discrimination" then."

Yes, they do. Because according to wikipedia, "Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups...". There's no prejudicial treatment here, or actual behaviors towards groups.

Now, I have not seen the app, it could have been in very poor taste, I can't really say.

Nokia Lumia 800

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Wha?

@Zarniw00p, it got an 80% rating. This isn't some Apple fanboi'ism here, he listed a few things he didn't like and gave it a respectable rating.

FCC slips dagger into AT&T, T-Mobile merger

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Jobs" and other false claims

Oh yes, the supposed AT&T jobs. They claimed it'd create "up to 96,000" jobs. But, first off, they were counting over 10 years, counting each job as a fresh job every year -- so the real claim was 9,600 10-year jobs. Secondly, they were using lots of bogus fudge factors, like assuming some new employees would then eat more McDonalds, so more people have to work at McDonalds, and so on, meaning how many *actual* jobs they even predicted is quite uncertain. Obviously, though, this is all fake, mergers result in a reduction in jobs.

AT&T's second claim was they need all this extra spectrum. Also false -- they have far more 850+1900 than Verizon Wireless (who has a similar amount of spectrum), they have a little less 700 than Verizon but a lot more AWS (1700/2100), and they have huge swaths of other spectrum.

The simple reality is, AT&T wants to buy T-Mobile to eliminate a GSM competitor that has better prices and especially better data plans (T-Mobile throttles when you hit your data limit, instead of charging cash overages.) (AT&T and T-Mobile are the full-price and budget national GSM carriers, and Verizon Wireless and Sprint are full-price and budget CDMA carriers here, and there might be local ones available -- where I live we also have US Cellular (CDMA semi-national carrier) and IWireless (GSM local carrier.))

Groupon offer burns cupcake baker’s profits

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

@Stephen 2, etc., you're being pretty hard on this business owner.

Selling items at a loss is done pretty often, it's known as a "loss leader". The theory is the customers that use the coupon will buy some "full price" stuff, either on the same visit to the store or later, to make up those losses and then some.

A few risks of this approach:

* People don't buy at full price, business doesn't recoup initial losses.

* Business is short on cash, and even if they'd have a lot of repeat business, runs out of cash first. Doesn't sound like this owner went bankrupt, but losing a whole year's income is not too good.

* Regard some expense as fixed when it's not. This can turn a sale that would have made money into a fat loss. In other words, the business owner here may not have fallen into the "dot com fallacy" (lots of customers x loss on each customer = fat profits), instead she probably intended to make a small profit per sale, but figured her existing employees would just be busier (fixed cost) rather than having to hire extra temps and work late (variable cost).

Russian Mars probe heads into space WITHOUT ENGINES

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"bump into any / all skys satellites and put us out of misery"

Well it didn't bump anything off permanently, but last year Galaxy 15 here over the US *did* go out of control, and drifted past the paths of Galaxy 12 and AMC11. It's bent-pipe transmitters were still running so it knocked out the signal for each satellite for about 30 minutes as it drifted path.

Anyway, if the sat's tumbling, it probably does have a leak as well.

Will Intel slay or flee fearsome Snapdragon Win 8 tab?

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Agreed w/ both...

...Goat Jam and Arctic Fox.

Windows 8 for ARM looks absolutely balls. It looks like it's just Windows Phone 7, and added a Windows Phone 7-like "second GUI" to desktop Windows so that they can technically claim the same apps can run on the desktop and the tablet. It isn't giving people what they think they want (running the same apps on the tablet as the desktop).

But, Arctic Fox is also right, I don't know if Microsoft give's an F. If they can't have a market to themselves, they simply try to destroy that market. See netbooks -- after seeing Ubuntu netbooks on the market, they release the Windows 7 crippled edition, despite it running horribly on the Atom CPU. People just blame the netbooks saying they are underpowered, not Windows (where the blame belongs -- Ubuntu runs great on my 1.3ghz Atom-based mini), and netbook sales drop off.

I think they'll do the same thing with tablets -- they'll try to force WIndows 8 on as many as possible, no matter how mediocre. If it's mearly mediocre, people will deal with it "because it's Windows" (even though, essentially, it's not) and if it's less than mediocre, Microsoft will hope those people will eschew tablets alltogether and buy (Windows-running) notebooks instead, instead of buying a tablet with a better OS on it.

Microsoft to offer dual upgrade path for Windows 8

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Kudos...

The Ubuntu upgrade is about that simple, you click a time or two to verify you want to start upgrading, and it's just like a normal update except it updates like 800 packages instead of a few.

Kudos to Microsoft for making their upgrade streamlined.

Second water utility reportedly hit by hack attack

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Lies, damned lies, and statistics (and DHS)

"Or we can say they can hack into anything and break anything and start a mass panic.

Dammed if they do, dammed if they don't."

Sorry but IMHO they are damned when they tell blatant, BLATANT lies to the public to try to pacify it, as DHS has done again and again. If they told the truth about the insecurity of SCADA systems, they could sugar coat it ("there may be instances where the security of these systems could be improved..."), they could point out the lack of serious incidents to date, and they could make whatever statement they want about the future (if it's way off mark, it's not a lie it's just an inaccurate prediction.)

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

No financial constraints here...

"Officials are frequently aware of the risks, but financial constraints and personnel matters often trump those concerns."

Bull. If they even restricted access to a limited IP address range, this would restrict off-site access to those off-site locations instead of from anywhere on the planet. Even if they go the expensive route (like a Cisco) that'd still be under $1,000, it needs nothing special on the remote end, and it's simple to setup and maintain. A encrypted and authenticated VPN is pretty inexpensive too, using the modern equivalent of a Cisco PIX for instance. They'd want to add rules so it's not just keeping all ports and IPs accessibile via the VPN,, just what is needed. The reality is that (some of) these utilities believe in "security through obscurity" and just can't be arsed to protect their systems.