* Posts by jjbd

18 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jan 2010

Sony seeks mojo reboot with 147-inch 'honey-you-can't-afford-me' 4K home projector

jjbd

Re: Title is too long

Here's some low-hanging fruit for him: they can improve my late 2011 Bravia right away with the decent firmware update they should have given me a year ago. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/24/sony_denies_netflix_app_to/

Adobe's revenge on Steve Jobs: HTML5

jjbd

Re: Erm, am I missing something?

Just to point to one place - an enormous amount of eLearning content on and off the web still is in Flash. YouTube propelled video to top of the Flash application charts - unfortunately overshadowing all the richly interactive applications of Flash that HTML5 remains some distance from matching.

jjbd

Re: "Adobe for its proprietary approach to Flash."

'lean' - I assume you mean running lean, but one thing they were very good at was lean downloads (of the player!) - that's how they got onto those close-to 100% distribution figures. Became a pain in later versions with a separate text framework that needs downloading by the client (done in the background, blocked by aggressive firewalls); but their small plug-in download with a clear version path is why it was such a great development target - particularly if you compare it to shockwave or java.

Ten badass brainy computers from science fiction

jjbd

Re: The Matrix?

Though this seems to me an aribitary ruling against it; prejudges quite a big question about computer science and brain science - couldn't all those intelligent agents running in the matrix be considered subprocesses of a single computer?

Mars probably never wet enough for life, nuclear bomb crater indicates

jjbd

Re: Well....

Hell...OOO...Did you happen actually to read the post?

The chap's making, on the face of it, the reasonable suggestion the water may be a good place to look; if there's any on or just below the polar surface (rather than just drifting down, frozen from the sky).

Educating Rory: Are BBC reporters unteachable?

jjbd

Re: Err...

Here - I've found it, and not only that, there are two IFs here - the one you can see, and the one the non-compliant browser doesn't...

<!--[if !IE]><!--> This ain't IE! <!--<![endif]-->

(http://stackoverflow.com/questions/738831/how-to-display-browser-specific-html)

If anyone bothers to vote on this post, then judging by the rest of this board, it'll likelier than not be a dogmatic down-vote. But the point at the top of the 'Err' thread is not that to learn HTML is to learn to code - but that it's a good place to start.

Samsung Chromebook: The $499 Google thought experiment

jjbd

I think I like it

I think this is exactly what I'd want from a netbook. Years ago I had a desktop mac and a windows laptop – what I wanted to do was flick open the laptop when I wanted to do something quickly in email or on the web; but I very rarely did because I knew I faced a slew of updates and syncs before I could get going, and the longer I postponed, the worse that got. Instead I only used it when I needed Windows.

I don't mind administering my main machine, but I'll happily let someone look after my netbook. I guess I'd want Skype, though.

Facebook riddled by 'my first ever status message' scam app

jjbd

Category difference

See Who Viewed Your Profile does exist on other social network sites... called 'footsteps' on the big Japanese one, as I recall...

Sarah Palin calls for US to stand by North Korea

jjbd

ambiguous

To be fair - If I remember the facts, they were the 'know-nothings' because it started off a secret movement that its members denied knowledge of - and not because they were professing their general ignorance.

National Rail tweaks departure board API, 'orders' coder to kill site

jjbd

to be clearer still

Most of this functionality existed in MyRail Lite, which at the time of forced withdrawal, was a free ap. As I recall, the developers eventually intended to charge (as you say, for the functionality, not the data) - hence the 'lite' moniker. The £4.99 ap, (at least when I saw it), was in functionality terms, essentially a copycat ap.

jjbd

Disgraceful

That this information is allowed to be treated as commercial property is a disgrace.

The injury added to the insult of the banning of the fantastic original free iPhone ap a few years ago was the naked profiteering of the £4.99 price tag of the licensed replacement.

3D films fall flat

jjbd

waste of a perfectly good dimension

that's the real point, isn't it? There was a great scene in Avatar where some of our heroes were in a small prison cell. They were in a deep plane, while some guards were much further forwards, and so couldn't hear the prisoners' whispered conversation. I didn't see how it worked in 2D, but it struck me as great and innovative use of 3D for the story-telling - and that kind of thing will happen more as everyone involved becomes more comfy with the technology (including the audience).

Google image search gets facelift

jjbd

broken Google

I agree - image search was good for general search - but that relied on you being able to see which website each image was from as you scanned the results. This has greatly lessened how useful it is.

Fake joke worm wriggles through Facebook

jjbd

enough of this

Boltar, and everyone else who posts this stuff; how much do we need to wade through? Seriously, every story about Facebook?

You may want to medicalise the motivations of the enormous number of entirely ordinary people who use Facebook; but it's blindingly obvious that for the most part they use it alongside living a healthy life. Do you know that many more people, representing a broader cross-section of humanity, use Facebook than post on the Reg with flame icons (or, indeed, reply to such posts)?

I, and many others here, are interested in Facebook's security issues for a whole host of reasons. This being the Register, one of those is because we develop apps for the site; I imagine others are interested in the security issues as it impinges on the network and users they manage.

So please - please - can you avoid sinking all Facebook threads under this kind of garbage? Since you can't be posting here either for reasons of egocentrism or HPD, perhaps you can look on the ream of similar comments that have been posted on this board for years as having sufficed to get across the point of view you represent.

Google Street View logs WiFi networks, Mac addresses

jjbd
Unhappy

FFS

You know, I feel a bit like I'm on Wired when I feel the need to log in just to vote someone down. I recommend, however, that the author of this post reads what yesterday's mail ingeniously called a 'Nazi Smear':

Or as the Guardian sub rather more straightforwardly called it at the time: Don't mention the war. Grow up.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/19/eu.germany

Official: Apple iPhone is a chick magnet

jjbd

Calumny

I think you underestimate your readers - plenty of us are familiar with SOAP.

Opera alerts EU to hidden Windows browser-ballot

jjbd

More British English...

I see you're all from the US and so the South Park reference is obviously it - but for what it's worth:

In British English fag has two slag meanings I don't think it has in the US, and neither has anything to do with homosexuality or South Park.

The one you all know about is cigarette; the other is anything which is a pain in the neck to do, because it takes time or is boring or tricky. Having to click through nine screens of browser set up, or then choose a browse on the ballot screen, both definitely qualify as 'a bit of a fag'.

Google taps Gmail for more clicks with ad tweak

jjbd

Not already happening?

I already had the impression that the ads i was being served were informed by the rest of my inbox - but maybe that's just an illusion, just like those people who thought they had psychic iPod Shuffles.

Gmail ads are great though - unobtrusive and relevant.