* Posts by Steve Todd

2644 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Sep 2007

Undercover BBC man exposes Amazon worker drone's daily 11-mile trek

Steve Todd

Re: Is this a story? @stephen gray

I could manage a 20 mile walk back when I was 12. 11 miles in a day isn't excessive for anyone with a reasonable degree of fitness (it's probably even going to help).

It's not the kind of job I'd like to do, but that's more because it would bore me rigid.

Little devil: Electric Imp is an Internet of Things Wi-Fi PC-ON-AN-SD-CARD

Steve Todd

Re: Missing the point @Andy 73

Yes, you need a ZigBse gateway on your network, but then the cost of the nodes drops and the range improves (it's a mesh network, so messages get relayed around to the extremities that would normally be out of range).

The Philips Hue lighting system is based about this technology, it has clients for iOS and Android. It's not something that consumers would write themselves, but the API is open so you can if you wish.

Steve Todd

Re: Missing the point

That's what ZigBee is for. There's no need for a card factor controller (that requires some sort of adaptor shield) and programmability if you are targeting consumers with this.

Steve Todd

Or there's the DigiX

Which gives you true Arduino DUO compatility, 99 IO pins, 512K of flash, WiFi, mesh networking (nRF24L01+), a real time clock, MicroSD socket, USB OTG port, audio out and support for The Intermet of Things.

See http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/digistump/digix-the-ultimate-arduino-compatible-board-with-w

(it is now shipping out to Kickstarter backers and will be available to the public shortly)

'Best known female architect' angrily defends gigantic vagina

Steve Todd

Canary wharf

When it was first built looked pretty much like a gentleman's sausage with accompanying balls. It's not like architects don't have past form at this sort of thing. Saying that, it's not a bad looking design, certainly not one I would complain about.

Lead ONTO your pencil: Bill Gates pours cash into graphene condoms

Steve Todd
Joke

There's a joke from the Second World War. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were having a meeting. Churchill asks Stalin if there's anything he can do to improve his troop's moral. Stalin says yes, they need more condoms. Churchill says how many, and what size. One million, and the standard size for the Russian army, 12 inches he is told. Somewhat embarrassed by this he talks to Roosevelt afterwards and asks him what he should do. "Stamp them as medium and send them" he is told.

Jury: Samsung must cough $290m of $379m Apple wanted - NOT in 5 cent pieces

Steve Todd
Stop

Re: How sad

Yes, because any company, having come up with an idea, should allow their competitors to copy it for free. That way there's so much incentive to research new ideas for the next big thing. /s

Steve Todd
Stop

Re: It's about "innovation" and "hard work"

The latest Android builds bounce back, but in a way that is sufficiently different to Apple's patent as not to infringe. The patent is rather more specific than you seem to think.

US Patent Office disputes crucial scroll-and-bounce Apple tech – Samsung demands patent trial halt

Steve Todd
Stop

Re: "scrolling and bouncing" is patentable?

Once again, this isn't about windows bouncing. Android still uses a bounce effect, but one that isn't covered, it's about the type and method of bounce. iOS windows overshoot and then move back to their end position rather like a critically damped shock absorber. That's the type of bounce that is covered.

This isn't a case of just tacking "on a mobile device" on the end of something, Samsung showed desktop based systems in their attempt to prove prior art and I'm pretty sure they would have provided the Amiga examples quoted if they helped their case.

Steve Todd

Re: "scrolling and bouncing" is patentable?

As always, there's some fool here who reads the headline description of the patent and says "that can't be patentable"

Patents are always about method. If someone else can figure out another method to do the same thing then they are free and clear. This wasn't about scrolling, but the method that Apple chose to implement the detection of scrolling gestures. Likewise bouncing was about the method that Apple chose to indicate the end of a scrollable document. Google seems to have quite happily worked out how to get around these in Android. Newer Samsung devices also work around them. This trial was always about older devices where Samsung had gone out of their way to copy Apple's methods.

Macy's: Now with Apple's Minority Report ads system that TRACKS your iPHONE

Steve Todd

So you need to have downloaded an app

And not deleted it, and not disabled location services (which can be done on a per-app basis) to finally get location based adverts trying to sell you stuff. It seems to me that if you've got that far then you actually were interested in seeing what the shop had to sell you.

Who wants a Xeon-powered, 12-core, RAID 10 … LAPTOP?

Steve Todd

Re: I estimate

For a computer, as it was then implemented, he was right. They were big, heavy, expensive, used huge amounts of power and needed a trained support staff to manage them.

I don't think that this machine has the same scope for reduction in size, power and price. What's more a standard laptop is good enough these days to demonstrate server software, or you run the job on a cloud server.

3D printing: 'Third industrial revolution' or a load of old cobblers?

Steve Todd

Re: Short list of things that can't be printed by 3D printers

Ah, someone who hasn't heard of SLS (Selective Laser Sintering). You can use it to print parts in anything from nylon to titanium. The titanium parts are strong enough to be used in rocket engines.

3D printing isn't the solution to everything, but it's surprising what it can and has been used for.

Steve Todd

Re: Yes, a "solution looking for a problem"

One per shark

Rogue trader gets 2½ years for BILLION-dollar Apple share plot

Steve Todd

You think

That they had $2.5 billion in cash to pay for the shares? That and the company was a brokerage, they weren't supposed to be holding positions in a stock and the SEC would look upon them with disfavour for doing so.

It's the games, STUPID: Sony makes 'about $18' on each PlayStation 4

Steve Todd
Stop

Re: The problem is

Firstly there's no way that AMD could even make an FX for $0.30, never mind sell them for that.

Secondly FX's don't have integrated GPUs, which make them much smaller chips and much cheaper to make.

Thirdly custom parts are always more expensive than off-the-shelf.

Fourthly the speed of the CPU isn't relevant here, nor are the number of controllers. This is for a gaming box and is going to be limited by the GPU most of the time and has zero need for expansion.

Steve Todd
Stop

The problem is

that it ISN'T an FX core. The closest thing you can buy off the shelf is the A10 series, but this is a custom chip with double the number of CPU cores and 3 times the number of GPU cores.

Why not build a cluster out of WORKSTATIONS?

Steve Todd

SETI@Home

Clustering general purpose/home machines isn't a new idea. For something that needs a lot of GPU work it's not a bad idea, or in the case of SETI if you've got lots of spare CPU cycles going begging. What they do lack is the resiliency of full server class machines (no ECC memory for example).

Steve Todd

Re: Brute force

Bitcoin mining on anything GPU based these days is a no-go. The latest ASIC based machines are homing in on the 1 terra-hash/second mark. You'll be unable to compete and you'll struggle to cover your power costs.

iSpy with my little eye: Apple wants to track your every move

Steve Todd
FAIL

Re: Beware the heathens

Since it is implemented using Bluetooth LE (which is well documented) perhaps you could explain how it could work WITHOUT Bluetooth being enabled? Thought not.

Steve Todd

Re: I presume...

It's part of the Bluetooth stack. Turn bluetooth off and it's gone. Also, as it is part of location services, you can enable/dissable it globally or on a per app basis.

Boffin says astronauts could hitch to Jupiter on passing asteroids

Steve Todd

@Pascal

For the types of bomb needed the fallout is actually quite small. Even given the fallout of conventional bombs they calculated that the amount of energy needed for one launch would result in statistically 0.1 to 1 extra death in the world due to radiation. To drive the ship more conventional explosive would be used, and less fissionable material (you only need blasts in the low kiloton range, not the megaton monsters that the military had been testing).

Either way, building the ship in orbit mostly from space-sourced materials gets around the problem.

Steve Todd

Or you could go back to an old idea

And use the Orion nuclear pulse drive from the 1950s. That could in theory shift a 1,600 tonne payload out to Jupiter and back.

See S.M. Stirling's alternate history "Stone Dogs" to get an idea of what could have been done with these things, if international treaties banning nuclear weapons in space hadn't put paid to the idea (they worked by basically throwing small A bombs out of the back).

'Daddy, can I use the BLACK iPAD?': Life with the Surface Pro 2

Steve Todd

Re: we will get some

If you're restricted to an office then who cares about needing to be permanently connected. If you're out and about then you'll want a cellular modem anyway (and can get one built into tablets).

Unless the software is some kind of monster CPU/RAM hog then you don't need to be very far up the modern hardware scale to support multiple users on one server these days (you can even manage on a desktop box with Windows Server installed).

Steve Todd
Stop

Re: It doesn't just compete with Apple.

Underpowered? You know that MacBooks use the same Haswell generation of Intel i processors as the Surface Pro? They even manage a pretty fair stab at running Windows code, either by dual boot or inside of a virtual machine. The Pro also ends up costing about the same (or more) than a MacBook Air.

Steve Todd

Re: we will get some

Windows Terminal Services? Install the Windows app that they MUST run on a Windows server and share it out. You need an RDP client on whatever environment you chose, but the clients don't need to be Windows any more and can be as small and light as you want (Microsoft do an official client for the iPad for example).

Apple kicks iStuff-sniffer out of App Store

Steve Todd

Re: So the T&Cs of Apples web site - @Stretch

It's not the looking that's the problem under the T&Cs, it's the automated passing on of that information.

Steve Todd

Re: So the T&Cs of Apples web site - @Stretch

But you can agree only to provide that fact subject to terms and conditions.

If I went to the Apple website, looked up a fact and told a friend about it then this is within the terms and conditions of use. If you write and automated scraper that extracts those facts then you are breaking the T&Cs.

Steve Todd

Not copyright

Terms of use. It's a contract between you and the owners of a website. They offer to provide you with data providing you agree to restrict what you do with it.

Oh, and you CAN copyright data. A JPEG image is just a block of data, but is eminently copyright-able (and has been upheld as such in a court of law).

And to use your analogy, what Apple have done is similar to a high street shop not allowing photographs while on the premises. The public are allowed into the shop, they can look around, but the shop is within its rights not to allow certain uses of the information they find within.

Steve Todd
Stop

Re: Apple's responsibility

You're going to have to explain how you expect companies to prevent screen scraping while still allowing users to view the data (there's always going to be some way of getting the data out). That and "they were asking to be burgled, the door wasn't locked and their stuff wasn't nailed down" isn't regarded as a good excuse in the eyes of the law.

Steve Todd

Re: So the T&Cs of Apples web site

There are many public websites that don't allow scraping, search robots etc. It's up to the sites owners to define what may or may not be done with the data on a site. People using those sites should respect the owners wishes. What crosses the line for me is that these guys were making money out of Apple's data.

Steve Todd

So the T&Cs of Apples web site

Say no scraping or otherwise extracting of the data on it, but these guys saw fit to ignore that and publish it on their own website, without permission and allong with a bunch of ads. Not too surprising they got a snotty letter.

It's one thing to say that Apple should make it easier to locate a store with stock. It's another entirely to say that they should allow all and sundry to scrape their data.

Oracle's nemesis MariaDB releases sleekest seal yet to beta

Steve Todd

Not in my web browser

I get the occasional popup form wanting me to take part in some survey or other, but no ads centre screen.

Fury as OS X Mavericks users FORCED to sync contact books with iCloud

Steve Todd
Stop

Re: Molehill->mountain @roo

Why do you find it hard to accept that the number of people for whom this would be in any way a problem is small? You seem to have started from the premiss that this is something that you cannot live without, but then posit situations which are at best rare and unlikely to be a serious inconvienience.

Steve Todd

Re: Molehill->mountain @roo

You missed the bit about an iPhone being usable as a Wifi hotspot?

Most road warriors that I know connect back to home base. Do you have a particularly ineffective IT department where you work?

Steve Todd

@AC - check the definition yourself

It's much wider than you seem to think. It's defined as unwanted electronic advertising.

Steve Todd
Stop

Re: Molehill->mountain @roo

Firstly, did you not read the part of my post that said you need not use iCloud? You can use your own internal servers or a 3rd party CalDAV server. Corporate types can use their Exchange servers.

Secondly your use cases are, to say the least, extreme. You're on the road, have entered data into your laptop, can't synch the laptop and the phone to your calendar server (remembering that iPhones can work as Wifi hotspots) and are unable to re type a couple of entries into the phone? This is about something that users have to do regularly (like connecting to their company email server), not making it slightly easier to do something that they do one or twice in a lifetime.

Steve Todd

There seems to be a huge gap

Between what you claim Apple do and observed fact. Their T&Cs may give them the rights, but there is little evidence that they use more than your account registration information to send out the occasional email.

Google on the other hand, there is plenty of evidence of their mining in action.

Steve Todd
Stop

Re: Molehill->mountain

So someone sufficiently paranoid as to air gap a PC (even to the point of not allowing a bluetooth PAN) is going to risk their data on a mobile, Internet connected phone?

Steve Todd
Stop

Firstly you're going to have to explain just exactly what was wrong with what Apple said. Their major income is from selling hardware, iAdd is a tiny blip on the balance sheet. Do you think they'd risk hardware sales to make a little extra off of iAdd? (If so then who's the fool)

Secondly I've only seen one iAdd, and that was for a US car that I couldn't buy anyway. I've seen no sign of them mining my data, unlike Google who keep on spamming me with adds based on my searches (just because I search for something does not mean I want to buy).

Steve Todd
Stop

You seem to think that anyone who lets you use their cloud services is collecting and collating the data. They're giving you a lump of disk to store stuff on and have no financial interest in mining whatever you chose to put there.

Google mine your data to determine what kind of adverts you would respond best to. This may be an indirect sale, but they are basically selling data about the data.

Steve Todd

Except that (1) they don't make money from selling that information to anyone and (2) they use open standards for calendar synch and let you use 3rd party services.

Steve Todd
Stop

Molehill->mountain

There's nothing stopping you using a 3rd party CalDAV server not in the USA or one inside of your own network, or not synching at all if you're a real tinfoil hat type. It doesn't even need to cost money, free server software is available.

Apple frequently drops older technology ahead of the crowd. They've provide users with a perfectly good alternative to cabled synch but all we get are haters ascribing negative reasons for it. Get a grip folks, and ask yourself just exactly what the downside is compared to the advantages (being able to synchronise multiple devices with updates near instantly) compared to a "loss of privacy" that is easily rectified by anyone who is sufficiently concerned.

Your kids' chances of becoming programmers? ZERO

Steve Todd

Re: 6502/6809's rool btw...

As opposed to the 6502 where you could basically treat the first 256 bytes of memory as registers, it had hidden instructions (see http://www.ataripreservation.org/websites/freddy.offenga/illopc31.txt) and could perform memory to memory moves at least as fast as the Z80.

I programmed both at assembler level and generally prefered the 6502. The 6809 was better and the 68000 made them both look like complete crap.

McDonalds ponders in-store 3D printing for Happy Meal toys

Steve Todd

True, commercially printed 3D objects tend to cost rather more than a Happy Meal.

Amazon lashes Nvidia's GRID GPU to its cloud: But can it run Crysis?

Steve Todd

Re: Bitcoin dilemma solution

Probably not, no. Bitcoin mining has moved well beyond GPU compute power, first to FPGAs and now to ASIC processing where the hashing algorithms are implemented in physical hardware and they are able to achieve upwards of 1G hash/sec

iPad 4 is so OVER: 5 times as many fanbois now using iPad Air - survey

Steve Todd

I popped by the Regent Street store after work on Friday to take a look first hand at the Air. The queue wasn't out on the street, but it was still more than 1/2 hour of waiting if you wanted one. It looks like they were selling steadily all day.

Apple will FAIL in corporate land 'because IT managers hate iPads'

Steve Todd

Re: Dropbox? @Pascal

Except they ALREADY support deploying internal apps. You have to have a Dun & Bradstreet company number to prove you are for real, but given that you can sign up and deploy your own apps.

Here's the link to prove it https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise/

Steve Todd

Re: Dropbox? @bill

Did the words "one of many ways" not mean anything to you? Chose one that fits your IT rules and infrastructure rather than trying to think of as many ways as possible for NOT providing a service to your business.

Steve Todd

Re: Dropbox? -@GotThumbs

You seem not to understand the difference between the iTunes application (which is what was been moaned about) and Apple accounts. There is no need to connect an iPad/iPhone to a PC with iTunes any more, hence my comment. Apple accounts are needed to register a device, add applications and synchronise stuff via iCloud, but need not belong to a specific user.