* Posts by Paul Shirley

2284 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009

Google U-turn DID preempt ICANN's block on corporate gTLD-snatchers

Paul Shirley

ICANN need a good slapping

It remains true that these domains should not have been made available this way, this is a colossal ICANN screwup. It doesn't just open the door to massive abuse, it almost compels it, for defence even where there's no malice.

Hard to tell if ICANN see a goldmine or were just too fscking lazy to quickly identify and reserve the most obvious cases - like all the ones Google applied for. They should have been dealt with in weeks before anyone wasted much money on the process.

Operators look on in horror as Facebook takes mobe users Home

Paul Shirley

Re: Not for the likes of us

@Ledswinger: yes, FB have a long and disgraceful history of battery sucking Android apps with unparalleled levels of bugs. They haven't even needed GPS to achieve record power drains, just a complete inability to play nice with the system and let it manage power use.

They're the last people I'd trust to run my lock screen responsibly. Also the last people I'd trust to not open gaping security holes to make life easier for the FB sheeple.

MoneySupermarket: Google never warned us about payday loan AD BAN

Paul Shirley

weren't Google forced to hilight their own search results?

Oh yes, whining that Google was showing it's own services as normal search results forced them to highlight them in results... that didn't work quite the way the competition expected did it ;)

Unless they seriously believe Google can be forced to hide it's own services completely I can't see how everyone can be satisfied. Won't stop the whining though.

Microsoft: 'Facebook Home just copies Windows Phone'

Paul Shirley

'people' is not what I want from my phone

Long, long ago, I actually tried a small pile of apps/skins designed to aggregate communications and make contacts the centre of my Android phone. Hated them all. Disordered information overload getting in the way of using the stuff I want.

Today the Jelly Bean notification bar gets it about where I'm happy, by telling me there's all sorts of crap waiting, even putting them all in one place but crucially only bothering me with them when I choose to look. Then it fires up my chosen handler for each type instead of pretending one interface handles them all.

I know I'm at an extreme but I'm convinced the few that love the MS way are equally rare. Facebook are treading a dangerous path, 'people' is just one of the things smartphones do. In some cases one of the minor features ;)

Freeview telly test suggests 4G interference may not be a big deal

Paul Shirley

Re: I checked last week

...and replacing my Freeview equipment with Freesat equivalents will reach around £500+ even if I install it all myself, Freeview tuners are cheap, satellite not so... but I really hate climbing ladders, drilling holes in the building and pulling cable through an uncooperative building.

Paul Shirley

I don't think the rate they found counts as 'vanishingly rare' and I do question whether the test area is actually representative of real problem areas.

Where I live, on the boundary of 2 main transmitters coverage in the suburbs, after switchover and full power, reception is just possible without boosters. Just, on many days I have a couple of unusable muxes on Waltham. That's a high density of houses in a very problem area.

Also worth remembering there are likely to be amplifiers in any daisy chained devices - set top boxes with passthru to the TV for example. Wonder if any of them will get swamped, even with no aerial booster to blame?

Paul Shirley

@mantissa

Remember that until recently those 800Mhz frequencies were legitimate TV channels that amplifiers *should be amplifying*. Shitty or not, anything older than the freq reallocation announcement is legitimately designed to handle the 800Mhz 4G frequencies and these things last a long time. My last amp died last year in a thunderstorm after 10+ years.

What's depressing is boosters covering 470-862Mhz are still being sold.

Smartphone running 'Facebook OS' said to debut this week

Paul Shirley

Depends on what they remove or replace.

Sony Ericsson manage to infest their devices with FaceBook integration and multiple FB apps, multiple Sony owned app stores, customise many default apps and reskin the UI. But they remove nothing Google cares about - maps is still there, the Play Store is still preinstalled and so on.

Nokia rejected Android because G wouldn't let them *replace* Google Maps. At the time Orange had no problems shipping devices with their own maps app prominently displayed along with the full G package - crucially including G Maps.

It's so easy to replace or modify key parts of the system you don't even need to fork to heavily customise Android. That said I expect FB will fork to ensure they capture as much profit as possible. With every app store containing the same apps it wont be too hard populating a shiny new FB version and they won't even need to pressure devs to include FB support since every damn app I see seems infected already.

Review: Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2

Paul Shirley

It's a Win8 device. The pen is the after thought or more accurately the work around for an inprecise, work unfriendly touch interface.

Revisionism. Only works when everyone that lived through it is dead or senile. Come back in 50 years.

Paul Shirley

Re: muddying the waters with Windows RT

Bear in mind Intels persistent failure to deliver on power consumption promises. Even when they get close ARM moves ahead anyway. It's wasn't unreasonable for MS to target ARM, wouldn't stand a chance in mobile or basic tablet against IOS/Android, even in RT mode, the battery life isn't there yet and that was entirely predictable.

It's the idiotic and deliberately deceptive confusion created between ARM Win8 and x86 Win8 that needs questioning. ARM RT devices are necessarily crippled by having insufficient CPU power to emulate x86 support and with desktop mode denied to 3rd parties no apps will be recompiled for native ARM. Pretending they're more similar than the reality is a scummy marketing lie.

Next from Microsoft: 'Blue', the Windows 8 they hope you don't hate

Paul Shirley

Re: Wrong move

Ubuntu is not the solution. Microsoft are *following* it down the same hole Ubuntu has been digging, copying the same design errors, ignoring the same user complaints. Only ahead on deploying to phones, where Canonical are now chasing Microsoft despite the evidence WP is failing.

Both screwing their existing customer base.

Paul Shirley

Re: Start Menu?

Just tried it and as expected, it didn't bring up all the launch shortcuts my Classic Shell menu shows, most significantly it won't show the 'open on screen N' shortcut variants of my media apps.

Metro Start isn't just a deficient UI design, it's functionally inferior to the old Start Menu, which can take a wider variety of link types, is easier to edit and offers more control of launch properties.

Paul Shirley

@mmeier

"How many programs can a ARM toy tablet run at the same time?"

Why should your cheap, battery dependent, small screened, input deficient ARM toy dictate the behaviour of my high end, hex core, multimonitor, mains powered PC?

Microsoft cross promotional marketing requirements is not an acceptable answer.

Paul Shirley

Re: I don't miss the start menu

It's a reasonable position and you're doing nothing wrong. You don't need it, that's fine.

The retards who tell me I'm wrong for using it are the problem and unfortunately some of them work at Microsoft. Taking away features because only a minority use them is barely justifiable, taking them away when there's no need to do so at all is unbelievable.

Taking features away because it serves Microsoft marketing plans is simply abuse.

Paul Shirley

Re: desktop

WOW! Must have missed the bit where Metro apps now work on the desktop...

Win8 is a schizophrenic OS and MS will not maintain both halves of it. I have no intention of staying quiet while they let the half I need rot, however many halfwits they hire to shout for Metro.

Nanowires boost photovoltaics sunlight capture by 15X

Paul Shirley

Re: Not sure about this - a further thought

It looks like it's lensing the light in free air/vacuum onto the junction. That would give a small improvement over traditional lensing with glass or mirrors. The big gain would be concentrating light directly onto the junction from the sides without needing to penetrate layers of semiconductor.

Review: Sony Xperia Z

Paul Shirley

Re: "nobody else is doing high end waterproof phones right now"

Sony certainly do high end pricing however I don't believe they do real high end devices. More halfway between mid and high range with a hefty Sony branding tax.

They're firmly down in 5th place because few believe the Sony brand justifies a 10-20% premium.

Paul Shirley

Re: After so many many SE phones...

The innovation was last seen when they buried the R800 (Xperia Play) in a shallow grave...

Though I'm not convinced having around 14 unremovable apk's supporting FaceBook is innovation worth having ;)

Sysadmins: Let's perch on Microsoft Santa's lap, show him our wish list

Paul Shirley

a MS wet dream

Not seeing how lubing our wallets is a compromise...

Samsung's new co-CEO: 'Windows isn't selling very well'

Paul Shirley

It's hardly surprising there's so little difference between WP phones, the spec is tightly locked down by Microsoft. Specifically the software can have almost no customisation.

While I actually quite like the idea of near stock devices, phone makers put more into distinguishing their brand and individual devices by software than hardware spec (which is now less tightly specified by MS). Android sales show the public disagree with me, voting for variety over conformity. Meanwhile the carriers selling most devices simply can't resist messing with (and messing up) the software.

It's should surprise no-one that manufacturers and carriers aren't keen on a device so locked into Microsoft branding. Unlike iPhone they can afford to boycott it, to make half hearted designs to test the water (and fend off license blackmail over Android).

Samsung don't need these sales and the mainly "big screen+heavy skinning" strategy that got them to #1 in smartphone is a poor fit for WP license restrictions. HTC and Nokia are fighting for survival, they need to try harder - and it's winning them a bigger slice of a microscopic pie.

Microsoft Surface Pro sales CANNIBALIZING Surface RT

Paul Shirley

not cannibals

I too doubt there's much cannibalizing going on. IT insiders were already waiting for pro, I suspect 400k may seriously overestimate ingoing interest, with the fans now satiated.

The ordinary public meanwhile have seen RT and ignored it. All they know is Pro is heavier and more expensive. A few know RT is crippled a as a traditional Windows machine and will assume Pro is also. Microsoft's deliberate ploy to confuse RT and Pro versions is hurting them badly, not cannibalism but devaluing the entire product line to its LCD.

Smartphone users prefer LOVELY apps to fiddly mobe websites

Paul Shirley

Re: Apps > Sites

If I hadn't recently noticed a 475Mbyte browser cache folder when backing up my wifes phone I might have agreed with you. Haven't checked what mines using but I do know there's more free space available than I allow FireFox on my PC ;)

...and yet that huge cache still can't overcome the effect of terrible 3G latency, the real reason (along with the cost of data) most of us prefer apps over even the prettiest website.

Uni profs: Kids today could do with a bit of 'mind-crippling' COBOL

Paul Shirley

Re: Learning a language at uni for a job?

If a CS grad applies for a job and can't demonstrate the 'vocational skill' of actually being able to program well, they're screwed.

The reality is, picking up a new language is indeed not hard for a new grad. A new physics grad, a new maths grad, a new chemistry grad, any real science or engineering subject. And if we're going to have to train them all or give them all time to train themselves, the guy with the math skills is getting the job, not the CS grad.

The world needs many more competent programmers than computer scientists, a bit more vocational training would serve everyone better at undergrad level.

Dear Facebook: I heard the news today, oh boy

Paul Shirley

Re: Ponzi...

Up vote here if you don't have a fb account ;)

Paul Shirley

hope to get more people to hang around longer

I've lost count of the number of internet companies that tried creating portal pages we'd all be irresistable drawn to hang around on. It's a desperate plan that predates 56k dial-up and I don't remember it ever working.

The only advantage FB has is a service supposedly more addictive than crack. I suspect that won't work any more than it did in the early days, when the Internet itself was seen in much the same way.

Here's the $4.99 utility that might just have saved Windows 8

Paul Shirley

@Keith 72

My problem with Metro is that MS dethemed desktop mode to match it's fugly look and that materially affects its usability.

In Metro mode it really doesn't matter if you can't easily distinguish window borders, since you can have 1 or 2 of them in constant positions. On busy desktops it causes just enough confusion to annoy me.

In Metro having UI elements poorly marked on a monochrome background might work - you don't *need* to use scroll bars with touch for example. On the desktop it makes for a hard to use and headache creating mess.

My Win8 desktop became a whole lot more usable after installing the Royale 8 theme and restoring some sanity to the desktop chrome. Pity that takes hacking a 3rd party theme engine into Win8 and inevitably affecting stability.

Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

Paul Shirley

leading down a sinkhole

Leadership is necessary but the destination it leads to is more important. Strong leaders can lead to disaster, mediocrity and irrelevance or more rarely, success.

Canonical has not been short on leadership, enough to lead Microsoft down the same dumbing down sinkhole with Win8. It's dangerously short on respect for those it leads and totally blind to criticism. Well on the way to irrelevance with hints of disaster thrown in.

Google, MPEG LA kiss and make up in WebM patent spat

Paul Shirley

hope we see the license deal

We can only hope the ongoing MS+Apple v Motorola+Google fight leads to MPEG LA being forced to reveal the licence terms, the same way they were forced to reveal Googles H264 licence. Not very likely though.

If it were anyone but Google I'd assume they'd just done the expedient thing of licensing regardless of the merits of MPEG LAs claims, to cut at least 3 years of damaging delay while grinding through the courts. Invalidating patents is neither cheap or quick sadly.

But it is Google and they don't normally roll over like that. I'd like to believe MPEG LA found just enough to cause problems but not enough to make Google worry or fight a cheap/free license. More realistically it's the shitty US patent regime and simply impossible to create anything new without patent challenges, however hard you try.

Redmond slashing Win8, Office OEM rates for small devices

Paul Shirley

Re: despite Microsoft offering customers deep discounts on Windows 8 upgrades

Pedants really need to remind themselves that MS have a long history of giving new names to old things, so they can 'own' them. Bring your MS<->rest of world phrase book to any MS story.

It's a practice IBM pioneered... so another thing MS didn't invent but 'borrowed' ;)

Review: Toshiba Satellite U920T Ultrabook

Paul Shirley

Re: Windows 8 - It should go away.

"get win8 hard sell due to DUMB plus 'greedy for their commission' salesmen...."

...though this time the salesmen all seem to hate Win8 and push Win7 instead. Even a dumb greedy salesman can get it right sometimes (by accident!)

BlackBerry Z10: Prices pruned despite eager iPunter interest

Paul Shirley

Also doesn't tell you how many BB fans defected unwillingly for a better featured device and are returning in hope that BB is improved enough. That's likely to be a one off launch surge that will slow as the less keen wait out their contracts before deciding.

Given the removal of the dedicated messaging USP that may be a very small trickle of future returnees.

2nd quarter sales will be much more informative.

Judge slashes Apple's pile o' cash Samsung judgment

Paul Shirley

Re: bias or incompetence

Rather than bias, I see a judge who at every opportunity chose what would get the case off her docket quickly over what would best serve justice. US judges have discretion to relax rules, this one took every opportunity to impose them strictly, regardless of the effect.

Whether that reflects bias or just incompetence, it severely tilted advantage in the case unfairly. Given how well it served Apple's cause they wouldn't have complained and would have contributed to the appearance of pro Apple bias.

I see a judge that put more effort into coercing settlement talks than running a fair trial. It's now coming back to bite her.

Paul Shirley

I find it easier to believe she's begun to realise quite how badly she messed up the case. Koh is racing to undo some of the damage before a higher court does it for her. Judges really hate that and it does their future career no good.

Being independent is not really a good thing in the legal system, it leaves everyone wondering WTF's going on and opens the door to abuse by all parties. In this case abuse and error reached all the way into the jury room.

Google open sources very slow compression algorithm

Paul Shirley

Re: -bzip2/xzip is the way to go

@stanimir: I suspect without IE support it would be as successful as WebM/P, JPEG2000 and countless other badly supported file format changes have been :(

Be nice to see exhaustive search applied to more compressors, to see how far they converge on the same 'perfect' compression ratio. Or more immediately, all the PNG files on web recompressed, though the streamability requirement might limit the gain.

Paul Shirley

@Field Marshal CantReadALot

Did you even read the article? Is Slashdot having a holiday - we seem to be overrun with the 'can write but cant read' halfwits usually seen there.

Paul Shirley

Re: -bzip2/xzip is the way to go

On a completely arbitrary and wholly inappropriate dataset, using 7z, lzma2 did 2.8% better than bz2.

Neither of them will decompress with zlib and there's no realistic chance of updating enough of the worlds browsers with alternatives in a hurry - I imagine Microsoft would resist supporting bzip2 with a passion! We have universal zlib because PNG requires it (or a compatible implementation) and the permissive licence makes using real zlib a no brainer. Even for Microsoft ;)

There's no killer application to drive bzip, lzma2 or any other advanced compression. I expect someone to improve the compression speed pretty rapidly so it probably doesn't matter anyway.

Take that, freetards: First music sales uptick in over a decade

Paul Shirley

sales rise as DRM-free takes hold?

Surely no coincidence that download sales improve as more providers go DRM free.

It's not a connection the 'biz' will ever accept or even consider and happened despite them. The Apples & Amazons of the world might scare the hell out of the music cartels but are the only way their business model will ever be changed enough to save them.

Samsung Wallet slavishly copies inspired by Apple Passbook

Paul Shirley

2 of them obviously more suitable

Pretty much what I expect to see from both Google and MS. The usual cryptic crap icon from Google I'd struggle to associate with it's function. A flat monochrome effort from MS (because that's this weeks 'design language') that eventually I'd learn to associate - but different more because that design language makes using images we might recognise bloody difficult.

Whether or not Samsung deliberately copied Apple, both efforts work so much better than the others Apple really shouldn't be allowed monopoly rights to pretty obvious imagery.

Apple patents situational awareness for oblivious fanbois

Paul Shirley

like Locale with extras

So it's the Android Locale app with richer triggers. I feel patent abuse coming on.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.twofortyfouram.locale&hl=en

That Firefox OS mobe: The sorta phone left behind after a mugging

Paul Shirley

Re: Graph with *3* lines on it

WP - " a massive company backing it" with more 'form' for shafting it's collaborators than almost any other.

Microsofts size + Microsofts past behaviour + Microsofts total lack of monopoly leverage = Microsoft fail. It's too late for the industry to stop Google dictating terms to them, it's the perfect time to hobble Microsoft and they'd be idiots not to do that. Even if I agreed WP is good, good for business or desirable, having Microsoft in your market never is.

Firefox to spit out third-party cookies

Paul Shirley

Re: This isn't going to have the desired result

"1. A change in the definition of what is considered a third party cookie"

The current FF cookie blocking is worse than useless. Block them and some sites simply won't work, even if you allow it to ask for permission - the GAME website spreads it's load across multiple internal URLs and I never managed to get it to work. If a change can get the blocking to actually be controllable on most sites it might be worth turning back on.

What's rather more urgently needed is more effort to stop killing add-ons with every sodding FF update. That way I can stick with one cookie control solution without losing my permission settings. Not breaking existing addons has never been a priority with Mozilla though.

Best Buy takes axe to touchy Windows 8 PCs - lops $100 off price

Paul Shirley
Joke

PR announcing jump in Win8 sales at 12

Hands-on with Ubuntu's rudimentary phone and tablet OS

Paul Shirley
FAIL

Re: but puzzling nonetheless

It's seriously bizarre shipping even a demo/early preview with so few apps compiled for it.

If Canonical couldn't tweak a few of its own desktop apps enough to throw in, it raises serious questions about the whole desktop/tablet/phone OS compatibility message. At the very least it hints they've dumped the current desktop API and expect everyone to start again, with something so immature they can't use it themselves. Or if we're lucky they just shipped a preview as soon as it could boot a slideshow and many months before it's ready for anything.

Either way, this looks like a fscking stupid idea if they're trying to get app devs to jump aboard. I'd love to say Mozilla will do better but FF mobile has a bare addon store with bugger all compatibility with the desktop, so the same mistake being made there.

Google given more time to prove to Brussels it's NOT 'abusive' in search

Paul Shirley

WTF does market test mean here?

WTF does 'market test' mean in this context? Who decides what success means?

Given the bending over backwards demonstrated so far by insisting the complainants must be happy with any proposed solution, a fair guess would be it's only judged a success if Bing and the vertical search bottom feeders involved all see a substantial increase in traffic. But would that signify a consumer benefit or just distortion of the market in the other direction?

I sure as hell know which way Microsoft and Fairsearch will portray it and if change at Google doesn't push business their way that they will not accept that. I also know just how bad search will get if Google get hobbled down to their competitors woeful performance. It's near unusable already thanks to the SEO industry.

SimCity Classic

Paul Shirley

Re: Ahhhhh

This class of games feels too much like work and real work has a bigger pay off, one where the only micromanagement chores are keeping track of who's round it is ;)

Luckily there's an endless supply of no brain required shooters for me and game makers have helpfully started labelling their mind numbingly micromanaged games as 'deep' so I can avoid them easily!

Ad-titan Google blocks Adblock Plus in Android security tweak

Paul Shirley

don't expect any response from Google

Google did essentially the same to APN setting last year, blocking it on ICS and later. They have so far completely ignored all requests for some alternative solution, shown no interest at all in the apps it broke or the users it's inconvenienced. They didn't even list it as a change, just went ahead and quietly killed it.

They can make as much noise as they like, Google will not change this and it's unlikely they'll even read the complaints. It's the Google way, they don't do feedback from anything smaller than governments. And they don't pay much attention to governments.

Chip daddy Mead: 'A bunch of big egos' are strangling science

Paul Shirley

Re: All Hail the Electron!

When I was young transistors were analogue devices that could also be used as binary switches. Even evolved to function better as logic devices, they're still fundamentally analogue and remembering that doesn't match my understanding of 'awesome'.

Review: The ultimate Chromebook challenge

Paul Shirley

Re: Netbook 2.0?

...perhaps for all the same reasons MS shouldn't have produced a tablet?

Those of us wanting just the hardware without the OS are always going to be a tiny minority. However the general public happy with limited functionality are also getting the same better deal without the MS tax, an overhead that destroyed any price advantage netbooks had.

Paul Shirley

Netbook 2.0?

Really pleased you tested replacing the OS.

Google should be able to stop Microsoft doing to Chromebooks what it did to netbooks. Removing the MS taxes (software license+increased hardware requirements) might bring the cheap netbook market back to life, for those of us prepared to replace the OS.

Google misses privacy-policy deadline, incurs EU wrath

Paul Shirley

Have to wonder if Google believe the US government will ride to the rescue, just like their recent threats over 'right to be forgotten' EU proposals. It wouldn't be the 1st time a US company thought that way and I can't think of any other reason Google would believe they can win on this.

Google normally seem happy to let courts decide things like this, ignoring the politicians and lobbying (often less than honest, from competitors) but I cant believe they found legal advice that this case is winnable in a court.

Time for a bulk buy of popping corn, it's going to be most interesting watching how other US data miners react. For a change they might resist taking cheap shots and lobbying against Google.