Posts by nemo20000

You are almost all talking bollocks

The amount of ignorance or wilful misinformation in these comments is staggering.

If you think that an internal combustion engine is more efficient than electric along the whole supply chain, you are wrong. Stop repeating that shite.

If you think electric cars would melt the grid, require more power stations or cause rationing, you are wrong. Stop repeating that shite.

If you think that hydrogen fuel cells are "the answer", you are not only wrong, you have absolutely no grasp of the laws of physics or are paid by the fossil fuel companies that manufacture the vast majority of available hydrogen supply.

If you think ALL people who have electric cars are richer than you or vainer than you or that solar panels only exist to assuage privileged people's guilt, then you have issues that no forum post can cure, so I won't bother.

Writing this is the ultimate in futility but I'm calling you out anyway. You're an idiot, whether you know it or not.

Stuff and nonsense

You can’t copyright a URL. You cannot copyright anything that cannot be expressed any other way - if there’s only one (or a small number) of URLs that will fetch particular content, then that URL (not the content, the URL) CANNOT be copyrighted. That’s already law with plenty of precedent (eg SEGA). Since the URL cannot be copyrighted, copying the URL (linking) is not an infringement.

As to trying to enforce copyright on something that cannot be seen (or express its copyright status) until it has been transiently copied... good luck.

No chance. NO. CHANCE.

I had the original. To say “it didn’t work” is an understatement.

They’d have to give me this, refund the original AND compensate me for the stress and wasted time of trying to get it to work before I’d even consider using it.

And then IF I considered using it I’d choose not to. It’s a watch that you have to press a button to find out the time – that was rubbish in 1975 never mind 37 years later. What century is this?

But what have they ever done for us?

To date nothing has beaten the venerable G1’s keyboard – that was superb. I’d like a G1 mark II with appropriate hardware improvements, but the form factor was right (for me) from day one.

I’m currently using a Desire Z, which is good, but I miss the G1’s keyboard. But I fear the future is bleak for those of us who were sold on the G1 – they’ve shed the physical phone buttons, they’ve discarded the trackerball, and now they’re scorning keyboards.

It’s the Fall of the Roman Empire all over again. It’ll be glass windows, central heating and decent roads we lose next.

Unravelled? Who was pulling the string?

Acorn didn’t unravel, it was systematically and clinically dissected to liberate its incredibly valuable ARM shares whose dividends were subsidising Acorn’s latter-day navel gazing.

Acorn shares were worth a fraction of the ARM shares it owned, and cunning bean-counters worked out a cunning wheeze to get much richer more quickly. In the process they destroyed one of the most innovative and influential computer companies in the world.

Psion committed suicide, but Acorn was murdered.

Related?

I’ve recently started receiving somebody else’s Gmail. Without naming the accounts in question, my example@... account is now also getting exam.ple@... mails.

Surely that’s not right.

Great...

But what about the rest of us software developers. You know, the ones who don’t get to play games all day? <runs and hides>

I just invented this

Make a handwriting font with four versions of each letter. Write an innocuous letter. Hide actual message two bits per character by the choice of letterform. Receiver OCRs the result and extracts the 2 bits per character.

There, we are now ALL in possession of information that may be of use to a terrorist. :-(

It’s surprisingly good

“but a reliance on the display for navigating the UI is unnecessary”

To clarify, the Vita’s OS does not use the hardware buttons AT ALL... which is a bit like running an Android app on the Desire Z and finding it ignores the hardware keyboard. Minecraft PE I’m looking at you.

It’s a terrible mistake and a very bad bit of UI design – you cannot even move the text cursor using the D-pad! This needs to be fixed. Jabbing at the screen to try and move the cursor a few pixels to the left is a ridiculous encumbrance when the device is loaded with HCI hardware.

As for the “overpriced memory cards” are you sure you’re not comparing apples with oranges?

Sony Vita 16GB memory card at Play.com £39.99

Sony PSP 16GB pro duo mark 2 at Play.com £48.99

So if you’re saying that Sony stuff is more expensive than cheaper brands, you’re right. But as a Sony memory card the Vita is not particularly expensive. Do we want third-party memory cards on the Vita? My considered response, having suffered a fake Pro Duo and having witnessed the impact piracy had on the PSP, is no. I bought a 16GB on launch day, I won’t need to buy another. So be it.

BTW Having lamented the poor functionality of the non-game apps compared to a phone (apart from Flickr, which is very good indeed), and immediately wished the Vita ran Android, I realised that the non-game functionality has to be merely competent, but not good enough to sell the Vita on their own. Otherwise non-gamers might buy it, and Sony won’t claw back the game profits.

It’s a shame though. The Twitter application in particular needs fixing – there’s no point clicking a link because the browser probably won’t display the page right and then Twitter will have forgotten where you were in the feed.

It’s early days, I’m hoping for a lot more to come. In fact I was so impressed that if you could stick Warhawk and Skyrim on it I could lose the PS3 entirely.

Where are the steam trains these days?

“I bought a Tesla, ignored the instructions and didn’t keep the battery topped up, and now I have an expensive repair bill” – ooh, class action, end of Tesla, fragile toy.

“I bought <any other supercar>, ignored the instructions and didn’t keep the oil topped up, and now I have an expensive repair bill” – you are an idiot, don’t deserve the car, don’t know what you’re doing.

But of course that’s DIFFERENT isn’t it? Yes. Definitely. I’m sure the rationalisation will be along any moment now... Yes. Oh I know! Something about moving or not moving. Yes. Phew! For a moment there I was in danger of having to rethink my prejudices.

It’ll go the same way as the UFO film

Meanwhile, I want one of these: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHU7-0NMXbs

Annoyware

The thing I’ve been caught out by twice now is innocuous little apps that only ask for internet access permission and behave themselves perfectly for a month, then suddenly you start getting push notifications. When you check the Market to see other user’s reports you find the app has disappeared (so no feedback possible). Meanwhile the only real clue is the “unimportant” permission for the app to start at boot – that’s the giveaway.

I do think that Market pages for withdrawn apps should stay (perhaps only accessible through “My Apps”/“Download”) with no download button, but still there to act as a discussion centre for the app in question. And not just for malicious apps.

I Am Not An AFOL but

Needs some black cheese slopes to smooth out the peak at the back, and the raised keys are all wrong.

Opinion is easy

So far I’m enjoying the comments about the Leaf and the McLaren – neither of which will have been driven by the people commenting about them.

Story?

So identical to the PSP then?

As long as they don’t repeat the region locking fiasco of the PSP where the locking was based on where your machine was purchased instead of where you live and your account is registered... one can but hope.

What’s he selling this week?

And why can’t he just do a press release about that instead of trolling?

Entirely the wrong angle

From the headline I thought “why is Sean Connery whinging about Star Trek?”.

Eee when I were a lad...

When I was a kid and someone didn’t get the joke, everyone else laughed and they felt bad.

These days when someone doesn’t get the joke it has to be reworded and everyone else has to feel bad.

Psion, of course

I was going to say the Psion Netbook/Series 7, but in fact its predecessor was even more astonishing in its time. Behold the MC400: http://justwebware.com/mc400/mc400.html

A fantastic beast which drew admiration wherever we took it, it had an amazing user interface, 60 hour battery life and superb industrial design. It was fantastically expensive, but worth every last penny.

String

I remember watching them (Michael Rod I think) demonstrate the first CD player. I say “watch” and not “hear” for the predictable reason. Hurrah for live TV.

To be honest

I always thought the five device limit extraordinarily generous and out of all reasonable necessity. This is far more sensible.

Hmmm

Finding it difficult to see the IT angle.

And I zoomed in and everything.

Or for approximately £160 less

http://www.tvcatchup.com/

There has long been a bug report on the Android Issues site regarding this issue.

Permissions should be optional, and should act in a safe manner – if I refuse permission for an app to access my contacts, then rather than being unable to use the app, there should simply be no contacts as far as that app can see. Refuse internet access and the app would always get a 404.

Google have shown as much interest in solving this issue as they have in the vast majority of Android Issues – namely no interest at all beyond the smug “Works as intended”.

@ACs

I prefer “they/their” to the thoughtless “he/his” and patronising “she/her”. Anyone complaining about the use of a singular “they” need look no further than the singular “you”.

I must be getting old

I’d swap the bottom screen for a keyboard. Install some great EPOC-like programs. Put a Psion logo on it.

“e-ink is just better in bright light”

I wish you’d avoid this idiom. Do you mean “e-ink is simply better” or “e-ink is slightly better”? “Just” in this context is entirely ambiguous.

No WiFi, no point

My PSP still gets used every single week... as a podcast and internet radio player.

I can’t believe the aerial and radio chip would be much of a saving when a USB WiFi adapter can be had on eBay for less than £4: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-150Mbps-USB-WiFi-Wireless-LAN-802-11-n-g-b-Adapter-/130557933085

Nothing but praise

Ripping CDs to MD via an optical cable. Recording stuff in great quality, then inserting edit points, instantly deleting sections, reordering, then amalgamating into a single track. Named discs, named tracks, brilliant little in-line remote control. All in a tiny, well made and extremely sturdy box that easily fits in a pocket?

MD was amazing at launch and still impresses, and now that part is over. As usual, I blame people. Paris wouldn’t have one – tiny buttons incompatible with fingernails being only the start of it.