* Posts by Paul Shirley

2284 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009

Nokia E7 Qwerty slider smartphone

Paul Shirley

WTF? :battery life on this phone is outstanding

Is this new definition of "outstanding battery life" going to be rolled out to other smartphones? Which would mean around 99% of them have "outstanding battery life"!

I charge my G1 every day and it rarely dies on me. I'd still say it has terrible battery life ;)

More seriously a day and a half life for a Symbian phone is poor, what happened to Nokia's famous engineering talent?

Dig deep! Radio asks taxpayers for blank cheque

Paul Shirley

too many channels, too little bandwidth

With most stations using abysmally low bit rates how do you even notice bad reception? Sounds crap all the time.

Teens who listen to music a lot are at high risk of depression

Paul Shirley
Flame

arse about tit as usual for trick cyclists

Nope, it's just that you can't self medicate like normal teenagers.

Teenagers are supposed to have wild mood swings, I'd worry more about the weirdo's that don't get depressed... the future cult members, psychopaths and politicians.

Mozilla puts squeeze on slow Firefox add-ons

Paul Shirley
WTF?

seems a bit pointless chasing start speed right now

Just had a play and it's hard to tell if firebug is causing 75% extra start time. Mainly because the browser fires up far faster than I can enter my password whether it's off or on! This attack on speed seems more of a pissing contest with other browsers than something that needs doing.

Filtering out the toolbar infesting addons - it's about time. Of course it's really going to annoy folk writing those tweaks designed to restore toolbars Mozilla decided to remove ;)

Google 'clamps down' on world of Android partners

Paul Shirley

that's not how copyright or OS works

Until they release it as Open Source it's not under an OS licence. An OS licence cannot 'infect' the copyright holders private copy, despite Microsoft/SCO/Oracle's best efforts to FUD the issue. And that includes their *original copy* of what was released as OS.

So, they can delay forever should they choose.

Paul Shirley
Flame

spinning like a dizzy top

Gotta love the flip flopping, no sooner is the Reg finished whining about fragmentation in Android that it starts complaining about efforts to reduce fragmentation! Getting dizzy yet?

Honeycomb isn't currently Open Source - can't be without the source. But you need to realise that copyright holders don't abandon all rights by open sourcing, they've simply given you additional rights. Your extra rights extend only as far as the *copy* you were licensed, the copyright holder can do what he likes with *his* copy and any derivatives. Calling Honeycomb OS right now is premature (but I wonder if they have in fact done that) but that's as far as it goes, you either believe it will *become* OS or not.

Meanwhile my G1 phone is running Gingerbread because that version has been released to OS. Running 2.3.3 before most of those Google partners got official builds out the door, on a phone where official upgrades ended at Android 1.6! No need to suggest forking Android, AOSP already is that 'fork'.

Google's 'clean' Linux headers: Are they really that dirty?

Paul Shirley

Estoppel

Supposing you could find kernel copyright holders interested in suing

AND

(find some protectable elements in the cleaned headers

OR

find a lawyer crazy enough to believe interoperability does not dictate the overall file structure)

you just hit the next roadblock. Estoppel.

Turns out, the kernel guys are so fscking useless at maintaining a usable set of ABI headers that cleaning kernel headers is a regular occurrence, not just at Google. And the kernel guys know all about it and have never had a problem. So Estoppel kicks in, they've allowed it to happen before, too late to change their minds and sue now. And notice: they've allowed it to happen with a changed licence at least once - the LGPL is not the GPL V2.

Whilst you could argue whether Googles scripts are any less allowable than any previous method, I don't see that going anywhere. Only an idiot would do the whole job manually and Linux is full of neat tools to automate all or part of the job, I doubt Google were first.

Earlier I said it was 'distasteful' changing the licence this way: turns out I was wrong, the kernel guys pretty much do that to themselves and there's no reason to feel anything but grateful someone else bothers to clean up their offering for public use. Being used is after all what the kernel is for.

Java daddy borged by Google

Paul Shirley
Flame

Java: bloated, badly designed and massively fragmented on mobile

Amazing. The fragmentation in Android is insignificant compared to the problems Java ME brings for dev's, write once, test on hundreds of devices, patch and pray it runs on enough of them.

And Java is so full of historical crud it beggars belief. Layer upon layer of hacks to modernise the core language and its libraries. It's a miracle it works at all and endlessly frustrating every time you fall off what the supplied libs provide. Libs almost designed to make you buy more powerful hardware to cope with their flabby bloat.

Many of us welcome a world where interoperability is not really an issue if everyone can cheaply use much higher level software than Sun/Oracle want to sell. He's still stuck in the mindset of catering to the lowest common denominator, meanwhile Google are changing that lowest level, pushing it up.

Libya fighting shows just how idiotic the Defence Review was

Paul Shirley

who stole the real Lewis Page?

The real Lewis wouldn't be frittering away time on Libya while yesterday New Scientist posts scaremongering headlines like "Fukushima radioactive fallout nears Chernobyl levels".

Come on Lewis, you've had a day, where's the soothing snowjob?

Google open sources MapReduce compression

Paul Shirley

@andy 37

...you're assuming I (and the other programmers implementations I know of) didn't tune our compression codecs for speed and compression. Mine got continuously tweaked, measured and improved for >4 years. I didn't throw in 'similar compression rates' for no reason.

What is different is Google need to tune the compression end, not just decompression. I also did that but just because it was fun!

Faced with the same problem G chose the same old solution. Well known pattern recognition algorithms are blindingly fast, entropy coding never is without hardware assistance.

Paul Shirley

old as the hills

So basically Google have rediscovered what game developers were doing 2 decades ago? And network engineers probably 2 decades before that ;)

Back in the early 90's, faced with unpacking graphics from ROM to graphics RAM in real time, I used a variety of hand tuned, entropy coding free, codecs and achieved similar compression rates. It ain't rocket science, especially if it has to run on an original Gameboy or Sega's 8 bit consoles.

That's why they're giving it away, where Microsoft would BS the US PTO into issuing patents.

Still, having a standard scheme across vendors might be useful for net traffic... a bit like the compression modes modems used to use!

MeeGo or MS? Nokia ponders tablet OS

Paul Shirley

simples

Microsoft will get round to telling them which version of Windows it runs soon enough...

Microsoft sues trio over Androidian book reader

Paul Shirley

went 'right' for a reason...

went 'right' for a reason... they found a desperate proxy, run by a sue-happy cretin and hid in the shadows while the proxy committed very messy suicide. We can disagree about how 'right' it went beyond MSFT so far escaping any liability for the whole fraudulent affair.

This time they don't have a proxy to hide behind. It won't be so cheap or consequence free.

Paul Shirley

Obvious

Pretty obvious, patent trolling relies on targets just paying up because it's cheaper than fighting. For larger companies the costs stay the same but the payout increases, above a threshold size it should become more cost effective to fight. Given the shocking quality of US issued patents it's a fair gamble perhaps 90% can be invalidated. Attack Google and winning could be at the cost of losing many of the patents at issue.

Don't forget, MSFT were involved enough in SCO's 'sue the deepest pockets' adventure to know how badly wrong that can go. They'll tax the smaller players.

One delicious possibility arises here, MSFT might end up forced to reveal the terms of any previous patent deal it made with HTC along the way. If it turns out HTC's WP7 support is being compelled that would be devastating for MSFT... ;)

Google copyright purge leaves Android developers exposed

Paul Shirley

who said Linux folk raised this?

The Linux folk *aren't making this claim*. A pro Microsoft IP lawyer is, backed up lobbyist willing to take Microsoft money. Do you smell FUD yet?

Paul Shirley

it's a distasteful situation but a bad analysis

After 30min browsing through the affected headers I've not found anything that wouldn't be covered by the interoperability exception in copyright law. I doubt there's any macro in there that could actually be written another way unless the raw kernel headers are even worse than normal kernel coding (which ain't pretty). That's not to say the kernel devs couldn't deliberately introduce something like that though... ;)

Where the analysis goes badly wrong is in discussing UNIX as the context for there being many ways to write the same system macros or implementations. Which is true, *but this is a header for 1 specific UNIX implementation*, the available expressions of that interface are much more heavily constrained. It doesn't matter how a BSD or original UNIX implements non POSIX functionality, only the Linux version will work.

The licence change is distasteful but the reality is the choice of creating these headers manually would give them little more legal protection than they already have, there would still be 'copying' just done differently.

I doubt this will go further though, unless the Linux kernel guys want to see Linux vanish from Android rapidly, though Linus may take that position. With few native apps being written an overnight switch to BSD is a very real option, one with more clarity and less fudging of licence issues all round. Which would be a shame for Linux, the rest of us wouldn't notice any change.

O2 ups 3G speeds by 30%

Paul Shirley

not just the DNS

O2 has appalling latency on everything, not just DNS, caught it taking 30+ sec to *start* rendering pages last week. Complete waste of time expanding the radio coverage if the stupid sods forget to upgrade the backhaul infrastructure.

Getting tired of having no signal indoors in most of the city and GPRS speeds even where I get 4 bars of HSDPA. Now I'll (eventually) get better signal but bet I won't get better data.

Really glad I bought WiFi capable phones, cause O2 don't do data in any meaningful way.

Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now!

Paul Shirley

we're still monitoring radioactive caesium contamination in the UK

No effect apart from those 350+ UK farms *still* being monitored and subject to livestock movement and sales controls. 25 years on and we've not reached the 1st half life of the caesium contamination.

You can pretend those 4000 notional deaths are fiction if you want, there was a cost to saving lives that will still be being paid long after we're all dead from Chernobyl. Of course we'll never know how many really died thanks to government ordered misreporting on Russian death certificates.

Paul Shirley

not be persuasive with El Reg's readership!

If Lewis wants his argument to be appealing, or even better, believable enough to deserve spreading, he needs to invent time travel. Then go back and unwrite the large body of blatantly biased propaganda with his name on it.

If anything Reg readers will be less likely to be convinced by this than the wider public, we know his bias. Bias is bias, whichever way it swings and I know we won't get an accurate view of what happened till the courts force full disclosure 10+ years from now.

Microsoft 'paid Nokia $1bn' for WinPho 7 deal

Paul Shirley

Meego, the Qt connection

@Ian McTroll Gumby: "what makes you think that Meego is dead?"

...selling the entire Qt software biz Meego relies on was a MASSIVE clue...

Paul Shirley

probably mapping service prepayment

I find the careful avoidance of any claim of hard payments from either Nokia or M$ noteworthy, Elop in particular sticks to 'worth XXX$' to Nokia. We know one huge chunk of 'worth' was reductions in their R&D budget, suicide masquerading as cost cutting.

One likely possibility is the $1b is a structured minimum licence payment or advance on actual sales, not a straight payment and also likely to have all the legal trickery that brings. We worked out on day1 that Nokia's only actual benefit was the licence revenue M$ replacing its mapping support with Nokia's would generate. The mapping app overlap with Google Maps was blamed for Android not being adopted.

That licence fee has a downside: companies may prefer to drop WP7 rather than subsidise a direct competitor. If the $1b really is an advance Microsoft could easily come out of this owning Nokia's map tech, if WP7 fails.

Three pushes UNLIMITED data to PAYG punters

Paul Shirley
Flame

nearly there...

...but giffgaff still beats "3", albeit narrowly (unlimited vs 3000 SMS) on the £15, hammers them (1500 vs 500 minutes) for £25. Must try harder and I don't think I'll be trading in my old 3PAY SIM.

Of course, in half of the country O2 forgot to install any 3G towers in, unlimited at GPRS speeds isn't worth using. And maybe this will finally force giffgaff to allow tethering, the other big advantage with "3".

Going to be a fun few weeks waiting for the response over at giffgaff ;)

WebGL: Interwebs 3D tech emerges from puberty

Paul Shirley

OpenGL not rare on Windoze

As far as I can tell OpenGL support is widespread on Windows, certainly every NVidia and ATI/AMD driver has it built it and even Intel's woeful chipsets do a passable imitation. It's been many years since we had to install separate OpenGL over the base graphics drivers. ID saw to that by building so many essential games on OpenGL.

Despite Microsoft's sometimes desperate attempts to kill it, OpenGL 1 & 2 is near universally available. Even if under the hood they sometimes had to layer it over DirectX to sidestep Microsoft ;)

Virgin offers unlimited action for a fiver

Paul Shirley

no data

You did notice there's no inclusive data? 30p/day if you use even a single byte is far from cheap.

Mozilla confirms Firefox 4 beta 12 is FINAL test build

Paul Shirley

beta11 seems good

After the disaster area of beta9 I expected plenty more betas - but beta11 has surprised me. All the annoying broken UI elements seem fixed, seems at least as stable as FF3 (yeah, not saying much) and I can live with the RAM use. Looks good to go.

Oracle: 'Eight Android files are decompiled Oracle code'

Paul Shirley

my theory of what happened with PolicyNodeImpl

No need to wait for discovery, we know about PolicyNodeImpl and friends because the repository has already been looked at. It tells a rather obvious story: engineer does bulk checkin (2500+ files), 8 weeks later engineer reverses the checkin, some time later a corrected checkin happens.

That suggests to me simple error, an engineer committing more files that (s)he was supposed to, an error quickly fixed by Google. Remember, this all happened more than a year before Oracle started alerting Google. My own daily battle with SVN tells me how easily these tools will stab you in the back if you aren't constantly vigilant.

Changing the licence is a serious problem, even if done accidentally (running automated search&replace on copyright&licence headers is fairly common), but if Google can establish this was a corrected error de minimus neuters the penalties.

The other half of the issue is the nature of copyright: copyright controls *copying*, it does not directly control *use*, that's what licences are for. And that's how its possible to legitimately have copyrighted source in a working copy that cannot be distributed, because it's possible to have a licence to use without a licence to copy. The source for these particular files was available under a variety of permissive licences (including direct from Sun), severely reducing the scope of Oracles complaint to just dumping them into a public repository with a changed licence for a couple of weeks.

Oracle may be able to win on the fact that the files were made available for distribution, they can't win on Google *using* these files, cant establish Android needs or uses them and cant establish any meaningful damage was caused. So good Google bashing PR that leads nowhere.

Paul Shirley

you think you're joking....

...but Google already told the court 2 of the 14 files Oracle identified were written by Google and contributed *TO* Java.

Suing the real copyright holder didn't work out too well for SCO. Wont work out too well for Oracle.

Paul Shirley

G built Dalvik because Sun wouldn't play nice

If Google had licenced Java, Android *could not exist as a useful OS* because Sun absolutely refuse to certify anything above ME for mobile devices. In that scenario Android would be just another Java phone, with its own new set of incompatibilities with every other 'standard' Java phone.

Dalvik exists because of Sun (and now Oracles) intransigence, Sun wouldn't play nice so Sun got bypassed in the Android ecosystem. Oracle is a near step for step repeat of SCO vs IBM, new guy asserts claims that the history does not support and spends years blustering on, hoping the rising costs will force a settlement.

Only this time it wont fizzle out in an engineered bankruptcy with nothing important decided and Google have more than enough time to remove Java completely if things start looking bad. In about 9 years time this will be decided, either Google wins or Oracle gets a chunk of cash but there's nothing left to tax. The beauty of Dalvik is: it's not Java, it doesn't need Java source and the VM patents aren't likely to survive.

Firefox 4 squeezes onto phones

Paul Shirley

sync for the built in browser

For everyone stuck with phones unable to run FF, grab Shaman off the Market for a passable rendition of bookmark and password sync with desktop FF4. I can live without the rest of the FF4 goodies until it slims down a lot more now sync's sorted.

Intel boss searches planet for post-Nokia MeeGo spouse

Paul Shirley

at least Android has an escape route

Moving to Android would at least have held open the option of implementing Meego over the Android Linux base sometime in the future, along with retaining any hard won Linux skills they've accumulated. A dual boot option would have been worth seeing. More likely they'd just manage to salvage some of the work to differentiate their Android releases, despite Googles increasing focus on preventing companies messing up the end user experience, that could have worked out well for Nokia.

Nothing is ever going to run on a Microsoft kernel but Windows, it's a one way trip. To escape a perpetual Windows future Nokia will have to start all over again, after watching 2 or 3 ecosystems evolve beyond their ability to catch. After watching all the engineers walk, some of them to Microsoft.

Windows 8 squeezed to fit 2012 Dell fondleslab?

Paul Shirley

Silverlight?

<<XAML markup at the interface layer with a web store>>

Isn't that just Silverlight running as the UI on any convenient OS kernel they have lying around? Android has proved you can build an app ecosystem around XML with sometimes token amounts of supporting code, not surprising if Microsoft decide they can do the same with XAML.

Silverlight hasn't set the world alight but that's never stopped Microsoft forcing an unwanted tech on the world. I suspect there's less to this version of Windows 8 than first appears ;)

Microsoft bans open source license trio from WinPhone

Paul Shirley

Qt is GPL, banned on WP7?

...seems as the days pass Nokia have less and less to bring to the WP7 mashup!

If they'd gone with Android (or at least been platform agnostic), their Linux engineers could have kept on working to resurrect Nokia as a platform owner. Retrofitting Meego over an Android Linux system is at least possible, probably easy. Seems even building any Qt based layer cant happen with WP7 and replacing or dual booting the OS isn't an option.

Google asks US Patent Office to rethink Oracle Java patents

Paul Shirley

copyright headers can point out ownership

If the removed notices contain a permissive licence binding on the complainant it blows their fairytale out of the water.

If they contain valid copyright notices that prove someone else owns the code, that's perjury.

Right now we're just waiting to find out which it is for each specific sample...

Paul Shirley
WTF?

the copyright Oracle stripped was Googles...

It get's even funnier. 2 of the files Oracle claim are infringing copyright were written by *Google* then contributed under an open licence to Java *from* Android!

Removing copyright notices that identify Google as the copyright holder is about as stupid a mistake as it's possible to make. Did they forget Google are in the information business, that sleight of word processor couldn't be hidden?

This really is closer to the SCO fiasco than even I believed, the same not even knowing what they own before storming into court. Really need a popcorn icon ;)

Anonymous security firm hack used every trick in book

Paul Shirley

Hardly 'every trick in the book', hardly any challenge at all

Strange to say most people seem to think this was an easy hack, mainly because HBGary were so damn lax about security best practice. A simple sequence of basic methods, I'd bet anonymous wasted more time wondering when they were going to hit the real security measures than on the actual job.

Spanish whispers on Microsoft and Nokia

Paul Shirley

competing with HTC

<<Android offers risk as well as a trap where Nokia would have to compete against the HTCs of the world.>>

Which bit of 'HTC already ship WP7 phones' don't you understand?

Nokia cant avoid competition, just choose how small a market niche they want to compete for.

Paul Shirley

@whiteafrican

You seem to have the bizarre idea that we give a rat's arse if Google make money or not on Android activations. You don't need to be a fan to understand every Android activation is a potential lost WP7/IOS/Symbian etc. activation - you know, 'the competition', the thing wiping out Nokia. If you insist on thinking Google are in effect subsidising Android activations what benefit does Nokia get by not accepting that 'subsidy'?

Is WP7 the lesser of 2 evils? We'll never know. What is certain is Nokia will just become another commodity phone producer, albeit at the quality end fighting with HTC but with NO USP. They've chosen a short term advantage over the direct competition but abandoned any chance of escape later. Shutting down their R&D seals Nokias fate as 'just another phone maker'.

Tying up with Microsoft does nothing to help, it's just the laziest decision an incompetent Microsoft trained CEO could make. A CEO who must be wondering why the M$ shares he needs to sell aren't rocketing up on the news. That will have been the moment he realised there was a problem.

What sealed Nokia's fate?

Paul Shirley
Flame

Elop will be eaten by sharks regardless

<<Elop is correct in identifying Android as a mad sharkpool of manufacturers thrashing around in chase of a tiny profit, eating each other in the process>>

So what? Elop is incorrect in thinking that's not the future Microsoft plans for WP7. Microsofts business model is to tax every end user, regardless of middlemen. They want a ubiquitous platform and will sell to anyone to achieve that. Either WP7 becomes a niche market or Nokia ends up in a different pool but fighting the same sharks, for the same eroding margins.

Elop recognises that smartphones are fast becoming a commodity item but doesn't want to play. You might get away with that exclusivity if you control your own IP. Nokia just abandoned its IP.

Adobe open source code backs – gasp! – HTML5

Paul Shirley
Flame

do we want the worlds worst programmers open sourcing?

Do we really need a company notorious for the poor quality of its software infecting HTML5 with shoddy crap? Let's keep Adobe stuck in their Flash ghetto where I can at least make some attempt to sandbox it.

Google open video codec faces second challenger

Paul Shirley

be waiting a fair few years for this

You underestimate how long it takes to get a codec through the standardisation process. A codec they've not actually started build yet... VP8 has a few years before needing to worry about a new MPEG codec. Wont surprise me if VP9 beats them to market as well ;)

After Black Friday, Nokia acts to halt share slide

Paul Shirley
Jobs Horns

and so the Microsoft astroturfers begin..

<<the one thing I've come to realise is share price has no relation to the future of a product.>>

When a company is being stalked by serial predator Microsoft, share price *is the future of your company*, the product no longer matters, maximising how much it costs Microsoft to steal it is all that's left.

Every deal Microsoft makes is a predator-prey relationship, the only way to win is to not play.

Channel Five reborn as Channel Five

Paul Shirley

The CSI Channel

The CSI Channel would be a more honest name...

Microsoft, Nokia, and MeeGo: Are they all doomed?

Paul Shirley

going to piss of other makers

You have to wonder why the other phone makers, currently making high end, high profit WP7 phones as just another niche product, would want to promote an OS that Nokia threatens to commoditise. It's one thing paying a $55 tax on a $600 phone, another on a $200 one.

And it can't be good for them to let Nokia stay a whole generation of phones ahead of everyone because of their input into WP7. Be interesting to see if any drop out now, while there's still a chance to marginalise WP7 and kill it at birth.

That Android already owns the low and midrange (in the growing market) makes waiting a couple of years for WP7 seem pretty risky. If you're going to pick an OS guaranteed to become commoditised you might as well go with the one that's already there. What makes sense for Nokia doesn't make sense for companies already in the commodity phone business.

Patent attack launched on Google's open video codec

Paul Shirley

"Either someone's hard work *has* been ripped-off"

You need to look at some of the crap covered by these pools, there's precious little hard work visible and considerably less real inventiveness. FFS splitting a macroblock and coding the parts individually is an obvious idea you simply test then accept or reject, not something deserving a patent.

Even if you accept that software patents are a good idea the patent pool is a sleazy trick, bury a few worthy ones in a mountain of worthless shit. Inextricably linked so you cant challenge the shit or escape paying for it.

MPEG LA is intentionally anti competitive, taking advantage of a patent system that's lost sight of what patents are meant to achieve - to make new ideas visible that would otherwise be lost, to secrecy or simply discarded unseen. Not to patent simple ideas that will be rediscovered as soon as someone tries to solve the same problem. 60 years on and we're still discovering the simple stuff and thieves are still patenting it.

Paul Shirley

ugly? define ugly

Not sure ugly really describes a highly asymmetric fight.

On one side we have Google, who protect all their valuable (ie income generating) IP by secrecy and give away almost everything else.

On the other a bunch of corporate interests intent of protecting their cosy club with patents, primarily to avoid real competition.

One side can afford the patent system to be dismantled since they don't rely on it, the other has a parasitic business model doing real ongoing damage to all of us that will collapse without software patents.

It's just been a matter of time till someone with a mountain of cash and nothing to lose from doing it skips invalidating individual patent claims and instead dismantles the entire broken system. Looks like its Google, if the patent holders are idiotic enough to push hard enough.

My prediction: they'll work out the risk their taking and this attack will quietly vanish and MPEG LA will get to carry on running their MPEG and H264 racket for a while longer.

Grief and disbelief greet Elop's Nokia revolution

Paul Shirley
Jobs Horns

how do you differiente a platform meant to avoid fragmentation?

Windows minimum hardware spec and licence fee rule out budget and probably even midrange phones for the next couple of years. Nokia have ceded that market, by the time WP7 runs on lower end hardware Microsoft will have killed Nokia. They always kill their 'partners'.

What's funnier is the crazy idea that Nokia can differentiate on a platform sold on the promise that fragmentation will not happen, that operators ability to differentiate will be strongly constrained to give end users a better experience. So how does that work here?

I suspect the reality is: Nokia will in fact stand only because so few will adopt WP7, if there are only 2 or 3 major WP7 brands it doesn't take many subtle differences to differentiate them. Nokia's brand is going to simply melt away, people will think Microsoft when they see these phones and barely notice the Nokia branding.

This isn't even long, slow suicide, they've knelt down and invited the killing blow. Idiots.

No 'tipping point' for Arctic sea ice - latest science

Paul Shirley

it's the landlocked ice we're worried about

Silly me, all this time I've been thinking the tipping point for landlocked ice to fall into the sea is the problem - apparently it's the floating ice the skeptics think we're talking about. Ice that does bugger all to sea level when it melts and wasn't considered a major part of the heat radiative balance problem.

The big issue with disappearing floating ice is when it's the stuff holding the landlocked ice on the land. Because when that falls off, sea level rises and it takes decades to rebuild. Doesn't matter if the sea ice comes back quickly, it's too late to save the important ice.

Creative Ziio 7in Android tablet

Paul Shirley

if only upgrades were that easy

<<If version x will run then version x+1 is guaranteed to fall on without difficulty.>>

And yet down the years I've ended up reinstalling Kubuntu from scratch every few updates when it falls over so badly that it's the quickest way to get going again. Windows hasn't had much less bumpy a ride here either. The idea that incremental updates are trouble free is laughably naive.

Sadly the same applies to in-place Android updates. However hard the packager tries, some users will end up with a borked phone at least some of the time. The safe alternative of fully replacing the OS and wiping their data+apps is not popular with users. It's a good incentive to put off or avoid updates.

The real incentive is that all the crapware they love to shovel over the OS takes it's own time to repair, as Android moves the goal posts with every release. Embed your crap too deeply and it breaks. It also doesn't upset them to think disappointed users might upgrade phone in frustration and enough will stupidly stick with the same manufacturer that just shafted them.

Let's face it: we all know going in that we're going to get the shitty end of the deal, with any part of the mobile industry.

Paul Shirley

read the Android Compatibility Definition

Check the current compatibility requirements http://source.android.com/compatibility/android-2.3-cdd.pdf, there's NO mention of SIM support.

As far as I can see the only hardware an Android device is required to have is a touchscreen, enough RAM and Flash storage and at least one network connection (of any type). Everything else is labeled as MAY or SHOULD have, not MUST have.

The sad truth is, this story is just that, a story made up by manufacturers that just don't *want* to sign contracts with Google or fulfill the software requirements.

Android goes virtual

Paul Shirley

sure?

So how do you install apps without downloading them? Seems pretty clear if you download an Android APK you're downloading Dalvik machine code that needs interpreting or compiling to run and runs straight into Apples ban.