Posts by xj25vm

"the middle classes discover the joy of dodging Waitrose's organic price tags by having a few convenient rods on what would otherwise be wasteground."

Where did that came from? With land being so scarce in the UK - I'm pretty sure any allotment site abandoned by gardeners (not that it would ever happen) would quickly be snapped up by developers and turned into some housing development of one sort or another. Specially as all sites around here are bang in the middle of towns/cities - as that's where people need them.

No differentiation

As the others pointed out - I went to Best Buy and couldn't tell the difference compared to one of the other big electronic retailers - specially PC World. I was really hoping to at least see some kit you can't buy else where. That doesn't include the silly and overpriced electric bikes and scooters. Also - I didn't spot any prices which seemed attractive in any way. So why would anybody have bothered?

Does it really take a genius to predict that launching a chain of electronics stores, in the middle of a recession, with no edge over the competition, and prices in some cases above the competition - in a market segment which is in steady decline on the high street - is doomed to fail? How dumb to you have to be to throw £200 million at it before realising you don't stand a chance?

Oh - and the staff uniforms were beyond dreadful. Which colour blind moron designed those? Maybe Americans prefer their sales staff dressed in awfully fitting, bland and mismatching colours garments. Who knows.

What about the PCB?

I understand the bit about this new bendy screen technology (well, I don't understand it really, I just accept it :-) ) - but what happens to the electronic bits behind it. The rule was, for years, that any motherboard that you bend at all risks delaminating the layers inside and becoming useless. Is there a bendy PCB technology behind the screen as well?

So, those pictures. Are they the Oz version of going caravanning for the weekend? I bet there is plenty of room for the bog in there :-)

I smell somebody lobbying for the big telcos here. I take it new and disrupting technology is not exactly tasty to big, entrenched operators, isn't it? By "scam" the article actually means "a practice which we don't like and reduces the amount of profits we *could* make otherwise".

Get over it and move on with the times. This is not 1950's, when the big telco's could charge whatever they wanted and get away with it. Internet, VOIP, sip, Asterisk and other technologies provide alternatives nowadays - move on with the times or be extinct. Not using a big telco's network in the most expensive way doesn't equate to scam. All participants in the scheme described pay for the services they consume. The article conveniently fails to mention the fact that phone calls between the two networks get routed through the Internet - and that is really the part that is itching the telco's, isn't it?

Tough.

Battery life

The main thing I was hoping for out of a new generation of Atom processors would have been a better battery life, better power consumption. A 20%-30% drop in power consumption, for roughly same speeds would have been really nice. It would have given some chance to x86 (and hence proper Linux) based tablets with 10 hours real battery life. Alas, not a chance with the Cedar Trail then. How in the world do Intel hope to get closer to the mobile/tablet market? By keeping power consumption steady at current levels?

The increased GPU performance might be useful to others though. From where I'm standing, waste of a whole new generation of CPU's though. Give us a 1GHz clocked Atom - with amazing power consumption - and I'm sure it would be enough to drive a tablet or modest speed netbook - with a really long battery life.

Simples

I tell you what. I can save you $250000 dollars. Quite simple:

1. How about you take security of your software seriously at the design phase, instead of hurrying them to the market and then spending the entire life of the product relentlessly patching them?

2. How about you stop pandering to your marketing department, stop adding needless silly new features, and concentrate on the core of the software and do a good job of it?

3. How about you leave in place features which have been part of your software for years, and which have been, by now, sorted out security wise - instead of dicking about and changing things for the sake of changing (sorry, I think you call it innovation) - just to discover you've opened new security holes? Many changes from XP to Vista to Windows 7 come in mind - which have absolutely no functional advantage. Just change for the sake of making things different.

4. How about you stop trying to re-invent a rounder wheel - and you learn from people who've been there and done it before? Unix world used and uses a (relatively) simple security architecture, every file has strict permissions and insists on never running as root/admin. Instead of listening to that from the beginning, you've tried any variation under the sun - just to arrive to (almost) the same principle - 20 years later. Sometimes there is no "easy" way - just the proper way to do things.

5. How about you release software when it's actually ready - not when you want more money?

6. How about you think through properly important architectural decisions - instead of applying "quick fixes" on so many things that you do - just so that you end up rehashing the same thing again and again with every version of your software until you get it right. One simple example is the location of program data (not binaries), accessible to all users on the local machine. It has been absolutely all over the place - including in "program files" over the years. Finally somebody figured that a separate folder called "program data" is what was needed. Just like /var under Unix. Was it that difficult to figure that one out that it took 20 years?

There you go - you can thank me later.

Bugs

The darned import of contacts into Thunderbird from Outlook still chokes aplenty - bug which has been with Thunderbird for years - but clearly fixing it is not sexy enough work for the great minds at Mozilla. Why don't they give the money they receive to some other group of people ready to do all that boring - but desperately necessary work of building useful software.

Oh - and if they want a new project - why don't they work on a calendar and contacts server to go with Thunderbird and Lightning - capable of seamlessly syncing few thousand appointments over a slow link?

Oh, sorry, I forgot - they are only capable of copying whatever fad the other big IT companies are into right this minute.

Lenovo in UK

>"Anyone you spot on the Tube using a ThinkPad has almost certainly obtained it from their employer," claimed the reporter.

Oh heck - big mystery there. As Lenovo in the UK barely have any machines available through retail channels - what a shocking revelation! How many machines in the Argos, PC World, Comet or any number of large retailers' offerings are Lenovo? Very few and far between. So of course most machines will be from their employers (most of the times medium to large organisations). Lenovo seems to be focused in the UK firmly on the corporate market.

What is the reason for that? Heck if I know. But it does mean that, being hard to find through retails channels - it is less likely that people will buy them themselves. Of course, the fact that their professional grade machines are not exactly "consumer" priced (and probably rightly so) - doesn't make them a favourite with the average man/woman/cat on the street.

There you go - mystery solved for you. No need for fancy statistics based on Tube samples.

Same attack on Linux

Do I take it if such an attack would be targeted at Linux (or other *nix) - that although the mouse would indeed be recognised as a mouse (or keyboard) by the kernel and subsequently allowed to pass commands to the current screen or terminal - it would really be limited to the privileges of the currently logged user? Thus, if this attack would be run against a reasonably secured box - without additional sophisticated privilege escalation techniques - I assume it would have really limited impact, due to the limited privileges normally assigned to a regular user?

Attitude

Maybe Mozilla is right. Maybe they have their reasons. But those answers typify the head-up-the-backside, we-don't-give-a-toss, we-are-always-right, screw-those-who-don't-like-it attitude. Mozilla seem to be increasingly living in their own little world, with their own little views - where the "principle" is more important than the actual user. It's about their grand vision of taking over the world - it's not really about the needs of the people who use their software.

It wouldn't have killed him to be a bit more amenable and show some disposition for compromise. Yes, maybe they have their reasons to target home users more then corporate. But statements such as these essentially boil down to "you're not worth our time, we have better things to do" arrogance. I reckon they've been suckling too much on the big corporate tit.

It would also explain why they are dragging their feet developing Thunderbird + Lightning into a solid email and calendaring platform. They are filling the web and the real world with their dizzy marketing hype - while one of their core pieces of software is still stuck in the '90s. Corporate users do need an alternative to Outlook+Exchange - even in these days of clouds. But corporate users are not your problem now, are they Mozilla?

Perspective

OK - so they are making a profit out of spectrum given to them for free. OK, so it wasn't very wise to give them the spectrum forever (if that is the case). However, nobody seems to be mentioning in the same context that these same companies paid insane amounts of money for 3G spectrum - and us all + UK government happily rubbed our hands at the prospect of that "windfall".

And very few bothered to think about the fact that it's us all who paid (and are still paying) that money back to the mobile companies anyway. And nobody seems to be mentioning the fact that we seem to be right at the bottom of the 4G adoption curve compared to plenty of other countries - not in small part because so much was spent by mobile companies on 3G spectrum, that they are not keen on doing the same thing again for 4G spectrum.

So before jumping up and down, it is useful to look at the matter from all angles, and see who is winning and who is losing in the long term, and what other implications there are aside from a particular sum of money changing hands in the immediate future.

Redefining trends

It is rather amusing how everybody is in a rush to define the next generation of portable device - trying to see what will catch on and what will fall down the drain of the history. Yet, very few seem to bother on improving on what was already promising and (almost) delivering not long ago. The netbook was a wildly popular product. But then various actors on the scene got worried that it might just start eating into their more expensive lines. So they did all they could to make it less useful and capable. MS imposed all sorts of restrictions on who could install XP on them and under which specific (crippled) set of hardware spec. Intel imposed other restrictions on OEM's as to what other hardware could go with the Atoms they were supplying. And so the saga continues. They strangled the platform in order for it not to compete with their other products - and now they are investing millions (billions?) in trying to invent other products because netbooks don't sell that well.

How about:

1. Give netbooks a reasonable resolution - 1300x700 or thereabouts. I've worked on the rare small machine with this resolution - and they are incredibly usable.

2. Pack as much battery life in the damn things as possible. There use to be netbooks out there with 9 cell batteries - now everything is on 3 cell and 6 cell. If the current 6 cells can stretch to (theoretical) 12 haours - a 9 cell should be a heck of a mobile little machine.

3. Equip them with integrated 3g - for pete sake. There initially were few netbooks with 3g onboard - then you could not buy any model with it inside. Who killed it? Was there really no interest from people?a Everybody preferred a dongle sticking out on the side? Oh - and don't charge a fortune for this extra - while you are at it.

4. Make the processor and anything else on the platform consume a lot less during idle. It is one of the key disadvantages of x86 processors - they are not good at idle-ing from an energy point of view. Work on that - instead of diddling with marketing terms.

And there you are - you would end up with a truly useful machine - without re-inventing the wheel.

Hurray for common sense

Yay for Linus, the man with common sense and head on his shoulders. When so many in the industry are obsessed with ruining perfectly good software or hardware out of obsession for constant "new features" - required or not, the MAN holds his nerve and keeps the ship steady - one small step at a time. I salute you!

Version

So only some light changes - but jumps from 4.x to 5.x. What happened to the traditional .5 release?

Reinventing the wheel

So they've managed to strike a deal with one of the national mobile operators and get some sim cards and dongles out of them. What's the big deal? I would be curious which one of the 3G networks they are piggy-backing on. If it's O2, good luck with that.

Marketing

For goodness sake fire all the marketing people and let developers get back to doing their work. OS was supposed to be the real thing, not more b**locks blabber and image control, like we are used to receiving from big software companies.

Legal?

I can't believe blinkx is actually a legal entity. I only found it installed (without the explicit consent of the owners) mainly on infected computers. There seems to be no difference between the bad guys and the good guys these days.

Utter bollocks

Some people seem to have no connection with the real world at all:

1. At 15 meters, it is longer than a double-decker bus (11 m). One carries 23 passengers, another about 80. Hmm, tough one.

2. At 155mph, by laws of physics, it will not be an efficient mode of transportation - due to high friction at high speeds.

3. How the devils will this be of any use as a public form of transport, when it is so long? What will it do on normal streets, in normal cities, with normal bends, corners and junctions?

4. The idea of being picked up from home is another good one. Do you fancy traveling in a "bus" that goes all over town, and stops every 5 minutes to wait 10 minutes in the street at every stop for Joe Blogs to wake up, kiss his misus and lock the house?

Oh yeah, they can keep whatever they are smoking.

P.S. - if they wouldn't have mentioned "public transport" and "bus" - just call it a fast limo - they would have stood a chance. Then again, all limo's I've seen go slow in order for the gits inside to stick their various body parts through the windows and sunroof(s) and make a racket. You hardly need a 155mph electric machine for that sort of entertainment.

Stick your title hear

Who is Florian Muller and why is he so conveniently the expert du jour for every imaginable topic? On articles about Microsoft, he is the expert insider into what's happening with the next big thing out of Redmond. Now, all of a sudden, he is an open source and patent expert.

Is he the equivalent imaginary friend for journalists in need of some substance to back their articles? Please, enlighten us, or stop quoting him as some sort of super-authority in every single field.

Not about the money

Casting back one's mind to the first days of the Linux kernel (I know, it's not the only open source project, and not even the first one - but I suppose it can be considered the most iconic) - you will find that it wasn't a question of money. I believe Linus had to re-invent the wheel because he wasn't allowed to tinker with the existing one and to change it the way he wanted to.

I think there is a good chance that one day, when people will have had enough of fondling their various iDevices (and non-iDevices) - they will realise how much control there is from the manufacturer. Then, specially the more technical users, will want more alternatives. I think that's when open source will start again making inroads on mobile platforms.

When people will get fed-up with the manufacturer deciding if their older phone/tablet/device will get an update to newer version of OS or not, or when they will be fed-up with the manufacturer forcing them to have an update for the OS which they don't want - that's when they will start to seek the advantages of open source and community developed software and more open options. But that might be a long way in the future.

Late

Is this the same company that had a (supposedly) tablet friendly version of their OS all the way since (if I remember correctly) 2002? Then, when nobody wanted them, they were shoving down our throats tablet pcs and touch friendly input. Now, when the world is finally ready for it (or so it seems) - they are taking another 2 years to re-invent the same damn thing they've supposedly been working on for 9 years now. Damn if it makes any sense.

Same

Isn't the Ampera the European version of the Chevy Volt? If so, is it that different then the Volt? If not, why is it presented like some sort of a new car, when the Volt is already in production?

Also, regarding Ampera's range between visits to the petrol station, my lowly Citroen Xsara Picasso Diesel does between 600 and 800 miles to the tank. I am all for new technology, but please don't promote it based on its weak points - it's rather, well, pointless.

Seriously?

One article for every beta and sub-version they put out?

Lost skills

Next up on telly: Ray Mears re-discover the lost art of manual parallel parking. Out ancestors apparently had to do it daily. Wow.

When open source is not really open source

That's what happens with all these pseudo-open platforms such as Android and webOS. They might be based on Linux - but the amount of control exerted by the manufacturer is far beyond what we know as the Linux environment in the x86 world. You don't see regular pc's released by manufacturers with the inability to upgrade the OS embedded in them (although, I'm sure the manufacturers would love that).

That is why, in spite of it's shortcomings, I still use x86 in everything that I can. Give me a tablet with the new Z6xx Atom inside - with (hopefully) 10 hours real battery - and 3G integrated - and I will be happy to use it as my portable device and even phone (through SIP over 3G if I have to) - and upgrade whichever software component in it I want when I want it.

Anything else is just a single use device designed for manufacturers to make as much profits as possible - while being as useless as possible to me so I can upgrade again and again.