Posts by Stephen Bungay

Nope...

You got it all crooked. The patent is for an idea, anybody can come up with an idea (like matter transmission or invisibility cloaks). The hard part is in actually building the invention. Like the patent held on the automobile by George Selden (1846-1922), the idea drawn on paper and described in legalese is not enough (as Henry Ford proved).

IMHO if you patent it you had better darn well be actively trying to bring it into existence... else you're a stone in the shoe of progress, working to prevent civilization as a whole from moving forward.

If you did actively try to sell and bring your product to market (like say time-delayed windscreen wipers (just to keep the car analogy going)) and one of those who turned you down then manufactures and profits from your hard work (you should have a working prototype and they should have signed something to keep them honest) then you have every right to take them to task for stealing your work.

So in short Kudos to Apple for an actual invention, something that could be built. Now, make it work, as claimed, to improve the tactile feedback of slim devices. If you can't, then what is the point?

Both are easy to use

Ease of use for both the iPad and Xoom are 10 out of 10, but web browsing on the Xoom is fully functional on more sites than the iPad. This may or may not be a deciding factor, but for those who visit flash enhanced sites regularly the iPad is not the right choice.

Want software then goto the market and browse to your hearts content. One of my favourite apps on my Nexus One is RealCalc, a nice calculator that can be set to use Reverse Polish Notation like H/P calculators. Made me laugh the first time I used it on the Xoom as it came up full screen in portrait mode. Works like a charm though, no problems.... and REALLY easy to read.

Graphics are silky smooth, java enabled web-sites run properly, as do flash enhanced sites. What is annoying is that many sites see you using Android and default to their lesser mobile site (IMDB is one of these) and you have to select the full site to appreciate that the Xoom really is a full blown dual core computer.

The user-facing camera is great but Skype needs to get off their arse and actually implement video chat. To go off on a tangent for a little bit here Skype also has no way to quit their app forcing you to go to settings->applications to shut down. Bad Skype.... no biscuit. That said I use Skype hands-free and it works wonderfully as a telephone and text-chat tool. Back to the Xoom.

Compass, Gyroscope, and accelerometers are great standard features and all work as advertised. GPS is very sensitive locking onto satellites quickly even when in concrete buildings with steel rebar running through the structure. I was impressed, my N810 is terrible in comparison.

Battery lasts a very long time and due to it not using a 5 Volt USB source it recharges quickly (Xoom uses a 12Volt power source to recharge). Having used the iPAD, and "fixed" a few of them, I would recommend the Xoom to anyone who is looking for a tool that performs with easy excellence both for business and personal use.

100s of Atmospheres...

Yeah you could do that, but that would be one heck of a pile of work. I'd use high volume compressor plumbed into the gas bags along the length of the ship so that one could more accurately control the air-ballast. Use a composite tank that runs the length of the ship (or series of them plumbed together). Why composite tanks? Well they are good for extremely high pressures (doesn't mean you have to use them that way), making them nice and safe when used at high altitude in an unpressurised environment (why have the tanks in the pressure-vessel?).

Continuous daylight...

You could do this above the arctic circle during the summer..... wouldn't be intense sunlight but it would be constant.

Funny...

I always thought "multithreading" was "multiprocessing" by another name. For an event driven multi-process OS look at the Amiga.

Trouble is...

Microsoft does not make the custom driver software for hardware... the manufacturers do. Nvidia makes the nvidia drivers, AMD/ATI the drivers for their stuff, and Intel does their thing. Microsoft only makes the basic OS, everything else is tweaked by the manufacturers.

Regarding the tablet manfacturers;

What floors me is that the hardware manufacturers still don't "get it". A tablet must support wifi but does not have to support 3g, and or 4g. A PCMCIA slot could be used to add cell phone (and therefore 3g/4g) functionality to the device. Sell the expansion card through the cell phone providers... this frees the tablet to be sold through more channels at a lower price-point.

All tablets must have

* A responsive capacitive touch screen,

* Forward and rearward facing cameras

* 1GB+ RAM

* Capable of using 16-32GB SD cards.

* Blue tooth

* User-replaceable battery

* USB Support

* WiFi g/n

* A pop-out stand to hold it upright on your desk or night table (they make a dandy alarm clock)

Optional nifties you should be able to add-on

* HDMI out (can be on an upper level model)

* GPS receiver

* Accelerometers

* Magnetometer

The price should be around $250-$350, the cost of the PCMCIA cell phone expansion would depend on the service provider you choose, what contract (if any) you want, etc etc.

Lorries pay their fair share...

Don't think for a minute that those trucking companies have a free ride on the motorways, there are plenty of taxes and usage fees being paid that the average motorist is oblivious to. The telecom company infrastructure is the business, without it there are no customers, to provide better service upgrades are required, plough some profit back into infrastructure upgrades (fibre is good) and you will have very happy customers happy to pay for the quality service. Start screwing around, artificially degrading performance, or operating the infrastructure like a slum-lord while whining about maintenance & upgrade costs and you'll just piss everyone off.

Users and aging distros?

What's the problem? You get the machine, spark it up and it looks for updates. Same as that other operating system that they pre-install.My biggest problem is when updates break things.

* I dumped Windows because Microsoft's updates broke my Win2K install (yes it was that long ago).

* I dumped UBUNTU because their updates broke a critical php app and I couldn't (easily) roll back the change.

* I dumped KDE because they released a really incomplete & buggy 4.0 which the distros picked up as if it was a clean and functional GUI. I still don't like KDE4, but that may change.

Whats with the push?

The answer is simple... control and money. The hype to herd everyone to web-based applications is there because when everyone depends on the web (at the moment we do not) then the gravy train is once more leaving the station.

We are fast coming full circle. In days of yore dumb-terminals gave you access to mini or mainframe computers. Replace Mainframe and Mini with Internet and PCs (no matter the O/S) and replace dumb terminals with more sophisticated thin-client devices (smart phones and tablets (again no matter the O/S) and were back in old model of computing from the mid-to-late 1970's. Much prettier, much more capable, much more affordable, and a whole lot more fun, but the same business model.

The web is a great tool, I use it all the time, but I make sure I do not rely on it. If the Internet went dead tomorrow (not gonna happen) my business operations would only suffer because the Windows PCs I service would not fill up quite as quickly with Trojans and other assorted malware as they do now.

I agree with Goat Jam

And to Fraser, yes I own a mobile phone and yes it cost as much as a new laptop (which is ridiculous), but it is the cell phone service provider's game and in order to get an unlocked phone that can be used (almost) anywhere you have to pay the price. The nice thing about it is I am not held hostage for things like ring-tones and applications, which I can (and do) create for myself.

Yes seriously.

Like the those at h/p who thought that Woz's computer would never catch on, the execs at Xerox in the '70s who gave away the modern GUI to Woz and Jobs, and the agents who turned down acts like the Beatles, if you think the Android is not going to be hugely successful then you are mistaken.

With any tablet or mobile device the hardware part has been easy to do for a couple of years now, what was missing was the software to run it and the leadership to make it in the right form-factor and promote it. Kudos to Mr. Jobs and Company on that score. As is the norm for him he didn't follow the herd and make his tablet yet another laptop with a rotating screen and stylus. He made it a tablet, more in the vein of Star-Trek meets Minority Report... and the world instinctively knew it was "right".

Now that the masses know what they want (the form-factor), as long as the losers (and Apple is not among them) don't screw it up, the iOS devices and Android devices will compete and the world will have products that just keep improving. I do not think Apple and Google, unlike another company which enjoyed zero competition, will rest on their laurels, .

As it is now the Android UX is very good, even if some apps don't make good use of it. Couple that with a greater opportunity to create for the Android platform (you don't need to buy a Mac to develop for it) and you have a huge talent base on which to draw. This is going to be fun!

There are reasons to dislike MS....

People who dislike and mistrust MS do so for good reasons. The company has

1. A history of back-stabbing "partners"

2. They really don't compete, they wall in their users and wall-out the competition (much as the Jobsian Co. now does). i.e. When all you can buy is a Lada then a Lada is the best car to buy. In the case of the Jobsians substitute "Lada" with "Cadillac".

3. They were (are still for the most part) resting on their O/S/ monopoly laurels (see #2).

I for one, while firmly in the "don't do business with/trust Microsoft" camp, applaud their coming to the fore and meeting the challenge of HTML5. Good Job M$! Now, lets see them move out of their comfort-zone and make their browser equally functional and available across all platforms. Show the world that you can compete. If they actually rise to that challenge then they are starting to change their mindset. When people can download and install the Big Blue 'e' and run it on their *NIX box with all the same functionality of running it on Win [XP/Vista/7] then Microsoft will truly be starting to compete in the software marketplace.

Now here's where my mistrust of M$ comes in. My best guess is that M$ is exerting a huge effort in IE standards compliance because that is where the spotlight is, and it is where they have been loosing large chunks of market share. To stop the slide they need to get Windows users to stop looking at the grass on the other side of the fence.

((Open GL != Clunky) || Slow) && Netbooks != Underpowered

"Aligning themselves to horrible, clunky old GL graphics is an increbibly blinkered move. Open? Who cares? It's slow."

Open GL is difficult to learn to write apps for (I certainly have not mastered it) and this might be interpreted as being clunky, but it is exactly the opposite of slow.

I think Shuttleworth is equating the popularity of Android and the iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone devices to mean that people want these kinds of GUIs on their netbooks. In this I think he is mistaken, for exactly the same reasons that notebook PCs which rotated their displays to become tablets never took off when running a traditional GUI. It is not what people expect.

Form follows function and the netbook is seen as a small laptop, so people expect it to behave that way. A true tablet form-factor computer (i.e. no keyboard mouse or click-buttons) is not the laptop form-factor and as a result (IMHO) people expect (and accept) a different behaviour and a different way of using them. In those environments the Android/Unity/iOS kind of environments are readily accepted.

Now, about netbooks being unable to run a full blown GUI like Gnome or KDE, this is a load of bovine excrement. My Acer Aspire 1 runs Gnome just fine thank you very much, it also runs a second Gnome desktop @ 1280x900 resolution which I pull across the LAN via VNC so that when the netbook is in the office I access it as if it is a part of the larger PC's desktop environment. That little Aspire One runs both GUI sessions as smooth as silk, and no I don't try to run Compiz on a GUI desktop environment that is being pulled across the LAN, that would be silly.

Emotional decisions...

So you went out and spent huge money on a product because it "upset" you? OK, I guess... it's your money... it would be a good thing to let the Open Office devs know what it was that upset you so much, give feedback and effect change.

True for the most part... but...

You can fix the registry using... wait for it....Linux.

Wow... what a troll... feeding time!!

Most of your points have nothing to do with the ANDROID O/S and everything to do with the folks who designed the hardware or wrote the apps. I count 1 possibly valid point out of the twelve made, this is;

1. On screen keypad disappears if phone is moved.

Even this is suspect because it might be something your carrier insisted on as a modification to the telephone interface. I'm using 2.2 on a nexus one and that keypad doesn't vanish unless I tell it to. Do you have an unlocked Android phone?

Everything else is either hardware or application developer dependent, nothing to do with Android itself.

Some sources of Info...

@ Fraser

As I understand it the hack attack on Google was not their public search engine servers et all but against the corporate infrastructure, i.e. the network of desktop machines used in the corporate offices. See http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/google-china-attacks.

Google has also been reported to be kicking Windows to the curb in its corporate infrastructure. See

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-dumps-windows-is-microsofts-os-headed-down-a-troubled-path/35212

for more on that one.

Bad math?

2% of the retail proce per unit does not equate to $0.02, unless of course each unit retails for $1.00, unlikely.

Strangle MySQL?

Me thinks not. A GPLd application is going to be impossible to kill, too many people have a vested interest in it AND the freedom to continue developing it.

Wolf Wolf!

As in the old story of crying "Wolf"! Windows popped (pops?) up so many warnings that really were/are not necessary and many others with wording so convoluted that OK meant cancel and Cancel meant OK, that folks got numb trying to understand what was being presented to them They simply clicked on whatever they got that looked like it would take them to where they wanted to be. Now, much to their dismay, even when presented with a clearly worded and genuine warning they ignore it.

Palm killed Palm...

"Okay, they aren't a smartphone monopoly, but they killed Palm..."

I think Palm killed Palm. They lost their product/market focus and drifted off to MS for their O/S. When Palm spun off their OS as a separate division they unwittingly sold half of their product, what made Palm Pilots what they were, the device + the O/S. If Apple spun off iOS and started selling iPhones with Windows on them the iPhone would likewise sink like a stone.

YAHOO is doing something similar to what Palm did, they are farming their search engine out to M$ bing, loosing their identity in the market place, making themselves irrelevant, IMHO they are giving someone else the keys to their kingdom for a little short-term gain. When they become just a name with nothing behind them, they too will sink into the pages of Internet history.

MIssion Statement and Google...

"I think the posters point was that Google should be suspect themselves for having such a statement necessary".

I think that the founders knew that the temptation would be present (and indeed it has manifested itself) and they KNEW that things would start to go off the rails (greed, human nature). I have no love for Google, but I do not vehemently dislike them. They have not caused me to spend hundreds and hundreds of [insert your currency here] on antiviral and anti-malware applications, Office suite licenses, and O/S "upgrades" that offer a downgrade at an extra cost. They have not broken my system with one of their upgrades, requiring days to get things back to normal, and they don't assume their customers are thieves or lock them out of their systems when a legitimate application glitches and "thinks" it has been stolen.

Someone was thinking...

Nice simple design using existing form-factor. I like it, but you still need to tell the kids about polarity and why it is important, you could use the design of these contacts to illustrate that it was so important that someone came up with this design.

Kudos to the designer.

Netbooks & Business

My Aspire One also runs Linux and serves as a very capable business machine, much more capable than my Dell Lattitude C-810, and it is much easier to carry around. Running a Word Processor, a Spreadsheet, or showing a slide-show presentation doesn't exactly push the limits of the two 1.6 GHz Atom processors.

I wonder if those who claim net-books can't be used for serious work have ever actually used one, and if they did how was that net-book configured?