Posts by ThomH

Re: gLol

You probably don't want to live there; the residents are always jumping out and hassling you whenever you attempt to cross a bridge.

Re: Re: Amazing how much better (AC, 20:47)

So that's two trolls not to feed.

Re: has apple already got a patent on this?

Apple possibly has something amongst the haul they got from FingerWorks — the latter was a gesture recognition company that specialised in multitouch but which presumably patented the gesture stuff independently of the specific technology.

Hopefully everyone will have had their fingers so badly burnt by the patent process by the time that this stuff is commercialised that it won't matter.

Re: Nah- this is the iPad 2S

The high resolution rumour appears to be quite likely for my money — based on the fact that it has proliferated enough that Apple must be aware of it and they've released a flier that clearly shows a very high resolution screen. That'd give Apple the highest density display on the market by a significant margin, matching their position as the supplier with the highest density display in mobile phones (albeit by an increasingly slender margin, it being almost two years since they took the title).

The main difference between the 4S and the 4 was the move to a dual core processor with a faster and better specced GPU. So that was unambiguously a minor update but if your fictionally generalised "Android users" expect their CPU and GPU to change with every software update then I'd suggest they look up the difference between software and hardware.

In reality I'd suggest that (i) the users of different handsets aren't locked in the eternal combat you imagine; and (ii) nobody expects more than minor incremental improvements from anyone at this point in the technology lifecycle.

@amck, others

DVDs and BluRay discs have DRM. Implementing that did not require any changes to the fundamental data distribution network — I can still walk into a shop, pay with cash and walk away with a disc that I can play on my player, which needn't have any sort of network connection of its own.

One would therefore assume that a minimal form of DRM might be simply to transmit video using asymmetric key cryptography, with individual vendors given a key derived from a common route that can decrypt the stream.

Encryption and decryption keys would be protected contractually. So to obtain a key you guarantee you're not going to publish it.

Mozilla would presumably opt out and Google would probably simply reserve it for the binary release. At least in Mozilla's case, I expect they'd provide some sort of mechanism to allow third parties to provide a binary blob that could push decrypted video in place of the normal video playback mechanism. The blob would be much simpler, and hopefully therefore much less error prone to implement, than Flash. There would be commercial value in making sure that someone supplies the blob for companies like Netflix, Hulu, etc, so it's reasonable to expect that someone would.

Of course the scheme can be broken — as others point out, DRM can always be broken because it's an inherently conflicted technology, and I'm aware that both DVD and BluRay have been broken — but as it'd be at least as secure as BluRay it'd presumably be secure enough for content providers to continue to provide content.

Re: DfID

To equate the poor and needy of the UK to the poor and needy of India shows a lack of understanding of the levels of poverty throughout India.

It's a serious simplification to suggest that there is one politics of India that always moves together; it's a federation consisting of 35 states or territories, many of them no more willing to help their neighbours than you and just as quick to play the 'look, it's none of our business what happens over there' card.

If you make the fair redistribution of wealth a criteria before a country qualifies for aid then another way of phrasing that is that you're reserving aid for strict socialist countries, of which none currently exist.

The logical conclusion of 'if we help some we must help all; otherwise we should help nobody at all' is that even if we hypothetically had the money and the means to prevent the deaths of 99% of those that starve each year then we shouldn't do so.

About 40% of the population of India lives below the international poverty line and hence face a daily struggle for food, suffer from curable diseases, etc. Our aid to India helps improve conditions for some of them. If we withdraw the aid, those people will be worse off. To my mind, that justifies the aid.

Re: Re: Re: Scores

Or better yet, ditch the scores entirely and assume we're capable of comprehending the prose? El Reg's reviews already have a 100-ish word summary verdict for those that just want to skip to the end.

Re: Re: Re: It is my understanding that ...

Sure, make fun of the iPad, but the PlayBook's mess is entirely of RIM's own making. RIM has one unique selling point — secure push mail — but has managed to give their tablet a native email client only almost a year after launch.

If you want a bargain media playback device, go Android. Let's not try to paint RIM in a positive light just because of dislike for the iPad.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I suppose

No, Nokia sued first. Apple countersued. Source: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2009/tc20091212_551557.htm

Re: Love it! - and quite culturally astonishing

The iMac was actually quite speedy for 1998. The other issues you mention — the hugely outdated OS and screen too small for the Mac's niche audience of design and publishing houses — were greater problems.

Re: Err...

On the other hand, to me the London Olympics logo still looks breathtakingly awful even five years after its unveiling. Though it's possible I'm a minority?

Re: Er, you nay-sayers do realise that...

It's not the first logical fallacy nay-sayers tend to learn though; they arrive at it only after years of using less fallacious logic.

Re: Not going to happen...

I actually wonder if this wouldn't give more oxygen to Windows tablets, doing more harm than good to Android.

@Aaron Em

That we've both received down votes would rather seem to disprove me, wouldn't it? Though our totals are tiny compared to the 50 who took the time to vote on the first comment so that's at least positive.

@Fred: directing a rant about tautologies at me might be benevolent trolling?

@fLaMePrOoF

If I buy an Android device and purchase £25 worth of apps, then switch to an iPhone then I lose my apps. The fact that I could buy them again makes no difference. I'm not tied to any particular vendor and none of the companies on the Android side has put that limitation in place to serve its own interests but I am nevertheless locked in to the platform.

I can't see how that logic requires prejudice of thought.

@EyeCU

The sample size of one was a direct response to your comment and I accept that it isn't a reasonable to assess generalities. But I maintain that you're overgeneralising and that confirmation bias explains how things like this become stereotypes irrespective of any particular truth.

For a suitably non-hyperbolic example — albeit which is still significantly more moronic than anything you've argued — see the things many people will argue are true about all men because, you know, everyone says that they're true and, anyway, in their entire life they can think of three or four examples where the thing they're talking about has happened so that proves it.

My honest belief is that around here the blinkered Apple fans get more down votes than the blinkered Apple detractors, but I'm quite possibly suffering bias of my own.

@Keep Refrigerated, Barry Shitpeas, others

Microsoft currently owns no Apple stock whatsoever.

The first company to sue for patent infringement in the current cycle was Nokia, which sued Apple in 2009.

But I take it what they mean by "[it] supports Flash player for iPad and the browsing of Flash websites by streaming these sites from servers in the cloud" is that there's an Amazon-style proxy network doing the grunt work? It would be understandable if Adobe had simply decided not to go down that route.

However you have to allow for the apps that make a profit other than through the storefront. The obvious examples are those that exist to provide a more comfortable front-end to existing services (whether banking, Facebook or whatever), but there's also large chunks of the business world that are willing to put mobile development into the marketing budget, a high-end example being the Super 8 application that provided the fun distraction of video recording, processed lomo-style to look like footage shot on actual 8mm fine film many years earlier, in return for blatantly advertising the movie.

It is, as you say, incredibly difficult to make an impact with an all-new brand through app stores alone.

@AC

However, I can go to Amazon and buy a 42" Full HD LG LCD for £370 and an Apple TV box for £90, giving me a total of £460 without even having to leave to Apple ecosystem. LG may be significantly lower down the perceived quality tree than Sony or Apple but they're miles ahead of the supermarket brands.

One counter example: I recently had the game, Jetpack Joyride installed on my iPad 2. It's one of those casual games you play for a few minutes every so often so I couldn't tell you my total game time but I had it installed for probably a month or two and had hit all the achievements at some point or another.

There's no reason to assume iOS had any hand in what happened but a few weeks ago it abruptly crashed partway through a game. Upon relaunching I discovered that it had somehow corrupted its state while crashing, with the result that all of my achievements, high scores, etc had been thrown away. I haven't bothered to launch it again since.

That's the sort of thing that I think the average user would care about.

You're absolutely right, though I think the article is written primarily from the consumer's point of view, with iBooks Author appearing only to explain why Apple are worth watching despite being so far behind. So the error isn't a fundamental weakness.

Re: everything else, I have a Kindle and am aware that everything I buy on won't necessarily survive the lifetime of the device. That being said, I've found the electronic platforms to be absolutely useless for reference texts and other things I normally expect to keep around because it's so difficult to flip through and quickly browse, and bookmarks quickly become just another few screens of information you need manually to wade through versus the spatial clues of post-its or whatever. So I've continued buying those on paper anyway. The main losers from my purchase of a Kindle are the friends and/or charity shops I'd normally have given my books to after reading.

I agree; it's a bit like the industry was relying on the deterrent of mutually assured destruction but Apple have gone and hit the red button.

@Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

I think you've misunderstood me. Your earlier post states surprise that you got voted down by 'fanbois' despite having said something positive about an Apple product. However there are actually very large swathes of fanbois that vote down exactly when anyone says anything positive about an Apple product.

It's your belief that an angry senseless hoard exists only in the Apple community that suggests bias. In reality there are at least as many irrational voters (indeed, one would assume many more) using Android because such people permeate society as a whole and the mobile phone they happen to have is an orthogonal issue.

Check out absolutely any Internet forum on absolutely any topic for the evidence. If you think you've identified a special pattern then it's probably confirmation bias.

In fairness to our American cousins, Romney is a particularly unexciting candidate from a below average collection vying for the nomination from a party that isn't known for its balanced world view. I'm not a Gingrich fan but his observation that Romney is "the man who lost to the man who lost to Obama" sums up the situation quite nicely.

@vic 4

If you'd bothered to argue your point, perhaps the replies wouldn't have been so obvious. "It's bad because I don't like it because it's bad" doesn't articulate much of anything at all.

Besides the issues already raised in response, iMovie* does edit video 'PROPERLY', or at least up to the same standard as any other consumer video editor. You see all the video clips on your device, select portions of them and arrange them on a timeline, applying transitions if you like. See e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEaWuCrI24s . I'm sure you can grasp for a distinction from standard consumer desktop stuff but it'll be a post hoc effort.

Similar tools are available for audio and graphics retouching, similarly consumer focussed.

* and, yes, there's probably an Android equivalent though I lack the expertise properly to comment. Let's stick to the capability of tablets in general as the topic, shall we?