Posts by JDX

It's lucky surnames are unique

Oh wait. What happens when two famous people have the same name?

Blimey

As title.

Cost

Is there any technical reason a smaller device would cost less to build? Sounds like same components just a smaller screen so a touch less raw material, but miniaturizing tends to cost more not less.

Interesting

A proper 100% browser-based office tool could be great - gdocs is very limited and Office365 IIRC requires some installed component(?)

@JaseP & bullying...

The FSF seems pretty happy using bullying tactics to get what it wants.

Cache and HTML5 offline data

Does that aspect have any issue to Kindle's switch to HTML5 app and offline storage? Or are they separate things?

What did they give the iPhone4?

Seems an important comparison...

Nope.

You very rarely see people using screens above 1600x1200 (or widescreen equivalent) even on 24" PC screens they work on all day. On a 10" screen, 2400x1568 is pointless.

There's a reason PCs didn't continue scaling resolutions ever higher on monitors as graphics chips made this possible - it's unnecessary.

@Grease Monkey

That's just your bog standard arrogant nerd, the kind of person who waits to be likened to Dr. House. There's a few on these forums...

@Jim 59

Well done on finding a way to cram your anti-MS rhetoric into a totally unrelated topic.

@Voland's right hand

I don't think many see WHSmith as synonymous with foreign-language texts. Outside the English speaking world, I don't doubt there are more opportunities - but in the UK itself I doubt it. We know the vast majority don't care about lock-in, only price, UX and convenience. Amazon have gone the opposite route from Apple with their pre-Fire devices and got the same result - a VERY slick product that non-techies buy in their droves.

@Ru

In my experience anyone who plays the "I'm good enough I don't need fancy features" card is the one to watch for bugs. It's like driving - most of us think we're better than average.

35%?

Blimey, no wonder they put the effort in to avoid it.

"While everyone wants to be a bit greener"

Nope. Not really.

Consoles are inherently closed platforms already, I don't see what the fuss is about having an Apple console.

Trolling?

Asking a question without sarcastic overtones is trolling? As a non-Apple user I'm simply interested if I can avoid iTunes, that would make an iPhone more attractive.

"I see Mac OS X is catching up with Vista."

2nd fiddle to Vista - hardly good news for Apple.

they are forcing me into the world of Open Office and GIMP

You poor, poor person. I wouldn't wish that on my enemies.

Not dubstep

I like dubstep, but that just sounds like when people play with a dub-step app to drop sound effects on an existing song.

Terrible. And far too long - 2-3s at the longest for a basic tone.

New language === dumb

If JS is no good, take a well-used existing language and create a browser-safe implementation and/or browser-safe standard library/framework. So we can write client code in Java or whatever (not Java applets)...

Stallman's borderline deranged

Serious tinfoil hat loon. Some of his principles are well and good, but where he goes with them is stupid. Not to mention that the moment he starts describing non-OSS as "evil"...

Not sure if her does more harm or good to OSS' cause these days. Seems to be edging more and more to become a Westboro-style caricature of himself.

It's hardly expensive

And a great service.

£1000

For a wooden bike? Less about sustainability and ecology, more about designer fashion?

Shame because you'd think these would be of use to people who actually LIVE in countries with lots of bamboo, often very poorly.

@Andy ORourke

US beer is about the same strength - 4-6% as the bulk of what we drink. They have that light beer muck but only as part of their fascination with choice, not as a replacement.

Standards

Isn't XMPP the standard?

"For the "discerning one-off-the-wrist", more like…"

Clarkson doesn't do it for me, but if El Reg's writers find him arousing, good for them.

What do the personal decisions of big-shot executives have to do with the rest of us and the platform? In my experience such people are too busy working to mess about on the web, that's why they are in those positions in the first place!

On OSX, Chrome has replaced Safari as my default browser - never tried Opera - due to the fact it is faster and shares my bookmarks/data across all my PCS.

I gave up on FF ages ago - it is by far the clunkiest browser - even IE8 seems more responsive - on my PCs. On my main development PC, I permanently have Chrome open on one monitor and IE9 on the right... Chrome has been my main browser for a year or more and I just updated to IE9 to test it, but was pleasantly surprised how good it is. I don't see serious differences in terms of usability or general slickness, the lack of addons is annoying but I don't spend most of my time on sites with Flash-crammed sites anyway.

Phew

It's rather worrying and depressing how vitriolic people are, on both sides of the argument. Claiming that swappable batteries are not just unnecessary but bad because "then you have to charge them both when they're flat", etc.

Who can care so much about a phone?

@commonsense

That has absolutely nothing to do with commissioning a bespoke product. If you pay anyone to create something bespoke for you and they put a lot of work into it, they will fight very hard to retain some share of the cost if you cancel the order.

@Asgard

That's because you don't understand. That is a TINY salary for someone running a company of such size. $1m is NOT a large compensation for anyone acting as CEO of a large company.

People have been saying MS is on the way out for nearly as long as saying that fusion power is 'right around the corner'. Which is about the same time that 'M$' was sharp and funny rather than pathetic and derivative.

@Michael H.F. Wilkinson

You are entirely correct that self-learning with nobody to review your work can lead to ingrained, horrendous habits... BUT computer science courses are not about teaching students how to program - that's typically seen as too vocational.

The point I'll make is that someone with a passion for programming who spends their free time doing it for sheer pleasure, is probably preferable to someone who has never done any coding before university and expects to be taught it all.

The ideal combination is someone who has a lot of experience from hobby coding, and THEN goes to university to learn the theory side and learn better habits while they are still young enough to adapt.

Lack of keyboard a big deal

If you want to buy content through the Amazon store... typing in a book name or whatever. This is really convenient with a proper keyboard.

Back then, browsers weren't all magical like now. IE6's proprietary features were pretty neat and let you do cool stuff which managers probably demanded so they could "have apps in the browser".

I get this kind of demand for 3D graphics - everything has to be "in the browser" these days regardless if it makes any sense.

@fuzzy

So you're equating "owning a phone" with "having a hobby" or "being religious"? I don't think you're exactly making a good case here.

Some people seem so very obsessed with forcing privacy upon me. They turn it into some huge idealistic idol and tell us anyone is EVIL who wants to use our data to make money.

I'd trade that privacy for better service, but the privacy zealots seem hell-bent on taking away that freedom to choose.

Confused

So are ANY of the new range actually "Kindles" with e-ink, or are they all different LCD tablets? For those of us who want a Kindle to read on, do we pay more for something without all the fancy features or what?

Now all they need is to get Google to pay some tax in the UK.

Stereo

If you want music for dinner or a party, who cares if it's stereo?