Re: Storage costs aren't always commutable
Settings -> Storage -> Menu -> USB computer connection -> Mass storage (UMS)
Posts by phen
18 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Sep 2009
Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4: 4G Android tablet is easy to swallow
Ultrabook makers take the Ivy Bridge path
Google offers Oracle slice of Android profits for patents
Busty blogger bursts Bulgarian airbag in mud-wrestle blunder
Sunday 18th March 2012 01:01 GMT
The uncanny (hills and) valley
Personally I find implants just as attractive as when guys get grooves lipoed into their beer guts. Which is to say, not at all. It looks unnatural no matter how good the surgeon is.
You'd think in this day and age we'd have treatments involving dietary changes and (in severe cases) hormone therapy. You know, actually promoting the underlying fertility you're trying to emulate.
Just like a real computer: Android gets Android IDE
Tuesday 13th March 2012 11:58 GMT
Re: Following in Microsoft's footsteps
I'm a developer... and a pacer. If I sit or stand in one place for any length of time the brain fog starts rolling in. A laptop doesn't fit my use case. No, a standing or treadmill desk doesn't help (much). I need the stops, turns and speed variability to really get my creative juices flowing.
A good IDE on my tablet would (will!) be perfect!
I'm sorry it won't work for you. I guess you could... umm... lets see... not use it?
Windows 8 hardware rules 'derail user-friendly Linux'
Wednesday 18th January 2012 19:08 GMT
Obvious reason to block arm
is subsidized tablets with app/media store. You can't grab that app store money if people can just go around changing their OS all willy nilly. I can imagine MS entering the tablet market at prices similar to the TouchPad's fire-sale if it meant sewing up the market, as long as they can recoup some of the losses from selling apps/games/media.
Fuel taxes don't hurt the world's poor - they don't have cars
Thursday 1st December 2011 10:42 GMT 
If these fuel taxes are limited to only petrol, and do not include diesel (food and goods transport), and paraffin (cooking and lighting in much of the third world), then this would not greatly effect the poor in countries with good public transport.
It will also then not effect the rich, as it just means their next Beamer/Merc will be of the diesel guzzling variety. So it only squeezes those who can't afford a new luxury diesel to replace their ageing petrol cars. It also effects those who rely on mini-bus taxis (the poor in countries with poor public transport). Good work guys!
RIM workforce decimated: 2,000 jobs slashed
Meltdown ahoy!: Net king returns to save the interwebs
Monday 22nd November 2010 10:07 GMT
As awesome as it is impractical
How do they propose to solve the PKI problem? Sure, you and I run our own mini CA's, but my parents wouldn't have a clue.
On top of that, my cellco charges by the meg. Am I going to be able to tell this protocol I can't afford to host youtube's most popular videos?
TCP/IP works because almost everyone (techs included) can ignore its existence. This seems a little more intrusive.
Google spits back at Oracle's Android suit
How Ellison could fight Google's Android - without lawyers
Monday 20th September 2010 23:57 GMT
It can't be saved
It's always seemed ridiculous to me that J(2)ME developers have to get their (our) apps tested and signed at extortionate prices for *every single model* we want to cater to, but the mobile manufacturers can put any half baked JVM on their phones, complete with subtle differences and serious omissions, and market it as "Java".
No thanks. I don't care how much market share these "dumb" phones have. The majority of the people who won't spend money on a "smart" phone, aren't going to spend it on apps either (at least not enough to cover the cost of certification and development and still leave a reasonable profit).
Privacy watchdogs: Silence isn't cookie consent
Tuesday 29th June 2010 09:33 GMT
A difference of policy and implementation
The fact that this policy requires your explicit opt in, will in practice mean that either:
A) The ad companies will have to track your unwillingness to be tracked.
B) They'll have to ask you every time.
Choosing B will allow them to pester you into eventually giving in just to shut them up. Option A will allow them to track you while claiming they're only doing it to ensure your wishes are met.
The internet isn't a country of its own with a police force that will stop you doing things some body somewhere says you shouldn't. The only laws that are followed are those that are technically imposed.
The best a policy can hope for is to push the offenders into a different legal jurisdiction where the laws are more lax. Unfortunately, the laws there will often be more lax in other areas too.
Monday 28th June 2010 13:53 GMT 
Easily achievable, most unwelcome
Imagine a world where your browser was set to "Ask me about every cookie", but you couldn't change it. That's basically what this proposal boils down to.
The real answer is to redesign how cookies are handled at the browser level. A default policy of "No to all cookies" coupled with a NoScript style button that allowed you to grant specific sites the ability to read and/or write specific cookies from a selectable list of user inspectable cookies, is a step in the right direction. Of course, it's still difficult to say what a cookie is for just by reading it, so this is only part of the answer (although sorting them by domain helps if the domain is named something like, say double-click ;).
The obvious benefit is that cookie makers (ad bakers?) don't have to be trusted to obey such policies. They can't abuse them because the local browser is in charge. It is opt in by design, rather than social contract.
Jobs tells iPhone users to get a grip
Sunday 27th June 2010 23:08 GMT
Two handed dialing?
I'm interested to know if you're by any chance older. I (and most people I know) do one handed thumb dialing, holding the phone as one might a remote control. I know one girl who does two handed texting (ie two thumbs for speed), but the only time I've ever seen anyone use two hands as in index finger and and cradle, is in 80's movies when dialing land lines. Just wondering.
Waledac botnet 'decimated' by MS takedown
Wednesday 17th March 2010 09:47 GMT
That's what you get for using an American dictionary
My New Oxford Shorter marks this as "loosely" and further explains:
"Loose usage prob. stems from a misunderstanding of sense I as 'execute nine out of ten of'."
I'm not some staunch grammarian. I fully endorse mixing up "there/their" and "its/it's" as I don't believe this creates much ambiguity, but when we muddy the meaning of words we lose precision and conciseness.
Channel 4 raises Bing word-extinction alarm
Saturday 21st November 2009 20:13 GMT
So like Google image search?
Or do they mean I have to draw a picture of what I want?
I hope they don't mean I have to navigate a 3D environment.
"Excuse me, where is the online PC shop?"
"Oh, just click past the food court, then click left at the gift store. It's a few stores down on the right."
Packing heat gets you shot, say profs
Does the Linux desktop need to be popular?
Wednesday 23rd September 2009 00:05 GMT 
Pareto's Chicken Salad
Polishing apps that last 20% seems exactly like the kind of things the big distros should do. This is just Pareto's law at play, right? Developers are smart that way ;-)
Linux is already easier to install than Windows, unless you use Gentoo (I do ;-) ), it's just that most Windows users don't ever even install Windows. You really can't expect them to install an OS. Even if it is as easy as popping a cd in and filling in their names, the fear of the unknown is just too high.
The biggest problem I see though is still hardware compatibility. With more and more notebooks out there it's about time we get this ACPI thing licked. But that's either the chicken or the egg. I forget which.
Until there's a large install base hardware manufacturers won't care about Linux compatibility and until there's hardware compatibility there will never be a large Linux install base.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
