Posts by GettinSadda 615 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Mar 2007
"Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Tab 7.7 Android tablet and, with its 1280 x 800-dpi touchscreen..."
"Samsung was keen to highlight the Tab 7.7’s media viewing capabilities with its display capable of showing 1080p videos at full-resolution"
One of these two statements is false - I wonder which.
P.S. 1280x800 "dpi" ?
I have thought for many years that there needs to be a system where in an emergency all cell phones (other than those of emergency service workers and a few special cases such as blind users) are restricted to sending texts only.
It may even be possible to either automatically queue outgoing texts, or use extra bandwidth for texts at these times.
But how many of those would change their mind when you tell them that they will end up paying twice for all calls, texts and data used in their own house with one of these boxes. The companies selling these awful devices still charge us exactly the same for every byte we send through the device as they would if we were to make the same call etc. using one of their towers, yet we are the ones paying for the back-haul of that same data.
100% rip-off
The problem with NFC is that there is no action taken by the card-holder to signify consent. With old-fashioned cards this was signing a slip, with C&P this is entering your pin. With NFC your consent is supposed to be signified by you placing your card on the machine - however how can the system tell the difference between a card placed on a machine and a machine held against the pocket of the card-holder in a crowded place?
I can see loads of ways to game this system to get extra payments, even as simple as placing a reader (perhaps a clone of the main reader) under the counter in a shop - any customer who places their card or wallet on the counter while queueing gets an extra charge of £2.50 for a latte.
A bit of modification to a card reader and you could probably skim a few quid off everyone that passed though a doorway.
If I ever end up having to have one of these cards, it will be kept in a metal container when not being used!
So, you can now file a patent that is very broad, so broad as to be found to be invalid. Then at a later date amend that patent to specifically cover devices that have been on sale for a considerable amount of time. And it is now a valid patent which you can use to sue the makers of the 'infringing' devices?
Logic error - please reinstall legal system!
Yeah, we are already at the point where films, music and everything else entertainment comes downloaded or streamed to your box.
That's why no optical drive in the Wii U.
Oh... hang on... what is that slot in the front?
For the games discs you say?
Um... so why have physical games discs when you just said everything will be downloaded or streamed now?
It seems every argument for why Nintendo want to sell games as physical discs can be made by film or music companies arguing to sell those on physical media.
If you were told at the time of purchase, or beforehand in any official ad or literature, that a Gingerbread update would happen then surely (IANAL!) a contract was formed that has just been broken.
If I had one of these phones (and now I will make sure to avoid HTC) then I would be requiring a free upgrade to a Gingerbread enabled model. I would not be afraid to sue for such!
Yay! A commenter who seems to understand the article.
However, I would pick a small nit - I believe that the location data is not sent as part of an emergency function but to do with extra features that the car will regularly get fed data about.
The way I suspect that it happened is that a feature was thought up to give regular info to the car/driver about the driving stats and it was also thought desirable to be able to check the same stats from your home PC. Someone then came up with the idea of supplying the data in the form of an RSS feed as lots of code already exists to handle these. This also added the wizzo feature that the car could receive other RSS feeds such as news and weather. At some point someone realised that you could tag extra info into the RSS request to make the send-info-to-server and read-stats-in-car part of the same data exchange. Some silly sod then forgot to code it so the extra data ONLY went on the Nissan RSS request.
"He also said that each camera cost £7,000, with the columns for each site costing from £7,500, and that they have a success rate of 95% at minimum."
So, does this mean that the cameras fit the columns 95% of the time? Or the columns stay up 95% of the time? Or 95% of all cameras work? Or 95% of all cameras lead to prosecutions? This is a vague and unhelpful statement!
OK - my experience with randomly bought stuff of my own or belonging to other family and freinds:
* Printer
Some do work, with a lot of effort, but many of the cheaper ones rely on Windows drivers and so will never work properly under Linux - if at all.
* Scanner
Do you really think that most people buy network-attached scanners? These days USB ones are cheap, cheerful and good enough for 99.9% of home use. Unless you expect to find one that works under Linux.
* DSL modem / router
Several ones that I have bought recently come with a CD-ROM that you insert into your PC to set them up. This runs a wizard that goes through all the required items. Windows only of course! Sure, they are not the best kinds of routers, but your granny will buy the one that the guy in Dixons or Walmart offers, not the one that got 5 stars in last month's Linux User Monthly.
* Digital Camera
Generally you can get these to work under Linux, but the CD-ROM full of goodies is basically just a coaster. Which is sad when some cameras come with loads of interesting and useful extras.
* Digital Video Camera
Yes and no. Again, you may be able to get the videos off and play them, but the supplied video editing software and the tool that automatically uploads your stuff to YouTube won't work!
* MP3 player
Chances are, most average users want an iPod. And iTunes. Oops! You may not rate these, but there is a reason Apple have stacks of money!
* Smartphone
My smartphone only came with Windows software. I know of several others that are tied to Windows and/or OSX.
"Which means hand editing config files. Or changing boot parameters so that you get something other than a black screen etc. I would like to say that once fixed in linux it stayed fixed, but this is not the case anymore. The EEPC901 wifi driver needs to be recompiled from source with every new kernel for instance"
Ah - now that sounds like the sort of stuff I end up having to do to get peoples machines running Linux - and trying to talk the mother-in-law through that over the phone when something goes wrong is not exactly fun!
OK - if you want to know why Linux has a major problem being accepted for general use, try the following test (it may be expensive, so you may prefer to do this as a thought experiment):
Take two computer-literate-enough-to-do-email-and-a-word-doc average people. Build each one an identical computer. One running Windows, the other any version of Linux. Next, tell each of the people to go to a nearby computer store and buy:
* A printer
* A scanner
* A DSL modem or router
* A digital camera
* A digital video camera
* An MP3 player
* A smartphone
When they return, sit each at their computer and without any help from you other that verbal advice, see which one can get all of the peripherals fully working. If any come with software goodies such as video editing, ensure that software is also installed and working (after all they paid for it).
"As well as making the first 3G phone call at the peak of the world's tallest mountain, Cool updated his Twitter and Facecrack status, and uploaded a picture for all to see."
I cannot find the picture via his Twitter feed or on the publicly visible part of his Facebook page. So how would this be available "for all to see"?
I wonder how hard it would be to convert an application from x86 to ARM at, or shortly after, installation time, rather than emulating x86 at run-time. A good proportion of the code should be easy enough to automatically recode, and I would expect that anything dodgy (such as self-modifying code) could be detected and passed to an emulator.
According to the site linked from your article:
a) This is a software-only solution - no hardware is installed
b) The software allows remote disabling of the PC and also (if required) pressing F3 (presumably during boot) will restore a clean Windows image.
So, no mention of webcams, screenshots or added hardware.
Something is very fishy here.
"The online retailer also lists an A100 at £400, but the listed specification is identical to that of the £300."
You may need to look harder - it says "3G" at the end of the description of the £400 one.
Also, is it just me, or does the iPad 2 still look a good deal compared to these (and no I am not a fanboi!)
From the International Atomic Agency Organization:
"For two of the three workers, significant skin contamination over their legs was confirmed. The Japanese authorities have stated that during medical examinations carried out at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in the Chiba Prefecture, the level of local exposure to the workers' legs was estimated to be between 2 and 6 sieverts."
Note: 2 to 6 sieverts is 2000 to 6000 mSv
So if I understand this right...
You are saying that NetQin (or a related company) pays 2 Yuan for dealers to install a malware app on users' phones, in the hope that the users will pay NetQin 2 Yuan to remove the malware?
If this is true, then the very best that NetQin can achieve (if every inflicted user pays to have the malware removed) is to break even.
To be honest...
I only found one error, because I already knew that reactors 5 and 6 were powered from locally generators before I started reading, so I stopped soon after finding that mistake.
What I am trying to flag here is that Lewis (who's work I generally quite like!) keeps writing articles that are so full of positive spin that Winston Smith would have thought them unrealistically optimistic, about an incident at a nuclear power station (and I am moderately pro-fission). When these articles also include 'facts' that seem to be poorly researched, I can't help feeling that at the very least he needs to up the dried-frog pill dosage.
According to the second paragraph of this article: "World Nuclear News reports(link) that reactors 5 and 6, which were hooked up to a new power line from off site on Friday, were then able to restart their cooling systems..."
So, I wonder what that linked report says about the new power line link-up for reactors 5 and 6: "External power has now been connected to unit 5 and 6, allowing them to use their residual heat removal systems..."
Yup, that's all the story mentions about the new power link to reactors 5 and 6. If I put a generator outside the building and ran a cable through the wall that would fit with the quoted report, so where does Lewis get the further information that it is "a new power line from off site"?
OK, let's look a little further. I wonder who the most authoritative source on this matter would be... maybe the International Atomic Energy Authority. I wonder if they have anything to say on this matter. Oh yes, yesterday they published a detailed report on their website about the status of Fukushima Daiichi.
So, what does this say about power for reactors 5 and 6: "Officials configured two diesel generators at Unit 6 to power cooling and fresh-water replenishment systems in the spent fuel pools and cores of Units 5 and 6".
Interesting, so not off-site power then? Are we sure? Ah look, the report also contains a nice table entitled "Fukushima Daiichi Summary Table - Units 1-6 (20 March 2011, 21:00 UTC)" I wonder what that says. There is a row for "Off-site power" and under reactors 5 and 6 we can see "Not available".
If you have any doubts about the quality of the data Lewis uses for these articles, maybe this has given you some answers.
Lewis Page (this article): "The highest level reported at the plant was a single brief reading of 400 millisieverts/hour"
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/16/fukushima_workers_evacuated) "...radiation levels now falling from 1,000 millisieverts on Wednesday morning to 600-800"
Also worth noting:
Lewis Page (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/15/fukushima_update_tuesday): "Fukushima update: No chance cooling fuel can breach vessels"
Lewis Page (this article): "The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi powerplant has worsened significantly as it becomes clear that one and possibly two reactors there have suffered a breach in primary containment"
I had chrome running - selected the "wrench" menu and found an option that said I needed to reboot to install an update it had downloaded. Allowed it to reboot to install this update.
Then, "wrench" > "About Google Chrome"
The about screen appears, then after a short while with "Checking for updates" a green tick and the words "Google Chrome is up to date (8.0.552.215)"
I later discovered that although Chrome thought it was up to date, re-downloading the whole thing from Google did get me version 10.0.648.127. Silly me, I thought Chrome knew how to update itself, but it looks like I have to do it manually.
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