Posts by Magnus Ramage 206 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Feb 2009
"the USPTO has rendered a dispositive decision"
For a horrible moment I thought this was an ugly bit of lawyer-euphemism for "negative". Thankfully it's an ugly piece of lawyer jargon instead, being an adjective form of "disposition". Phew!
(Where's the icon for <wipes-pedantic-brow>?)
@ribsome: I'm sure you know this, but the book of Genesis wasn't written originally in Latin... (Not that that stopped the Catholic church from treating the Vulgate as the only proper translation for centuries.) I don't have the Hebrew to comment on the original, but it's worth observing that the context is immediately after the story of the Flood, when Noah & his sons are being told to repopulate the earth. In the context of such a flood (for which there's little archaeological evidence), a few centuries of condom-free re-population might have been in order. But times change.
What's different about only offering an iPhone app? Sounds just like the other lazy sheeple developers (cf. BBC etc) who think iOS is cool and developing for the most popular smartphone platform is too much like hard work.
That said - the restaurant sounds great and this is a good advertising ploy.
It's even better than they're saying if you pay up-front - the newspaper subscription is £312 for 18 months at £4/week, so the Nexus 7 is effectively free. Except you have to give the money to Murdoch and read the Times.
If it were the Guardian, or the Independent, it would be a huge bargain. But it's never the good guys who go for these things.
I think this is a great article, but the link to Niall Ferguson's dreadful Reith Lectures (embarrassing in their partisanship given that he's a serious scholar) is wide of the mark. Surely this is a different case altogether? I disagree with Ferguson that the bankers were over-regulated, but the point is that they were being trusted with other people's money to manage, so need in some form to be watched and to be stopped from misusing that money. Users of a software product are in a completely different position - we're not placed in a position of trust in any respect. OK, it was only intended as a partial analogy, but given that it rests on such dodgy grounds to start with, it doesn't really work.
"they expressly forbid tethering"
I don't use GiffGaff but this is only partly accurate. They do indeed expressly forbid tethering on their £10/month package, but they have other packages on which they do allow tethering (their data-only 'gigabags' starting at £5 for 500MB lasting one month).
I also think this is an excellent review, once of the best I've read for the new iPad. The point about not having a monopoly ecosystem is an important one - all through the IT world, systems are better if they have competition. And there's nothing wrong with liking Apple on a partly subjective basis. The subjectivity comes across as a lot more nuanced and well-grounded than Charles Arthur manages at the Guardian (a good journalist and a well-informed man, but manages to sound like a fanboy even when he's trying not to be).
"Until someone realizes mobiles need this level of simple upgrading then there is always going to be po'ed customers wondering why they can't at least try out the latest apps etc."
I don't quite get this post. Are you referring to OS updates or app updates? If it's the latter, then Android at least manages something quite similar to your Thunderbird & Firefox experience via Google Play - I regularly get notifications of app updates, and it's very easy to go in and install them; I presume iOS does something similar via iTunes.
What's more of a problem for Android is the OS update cycle, which is partly a result of there being so many Android handsets, each with specialised drivers etc; and partly as a result of manufacturers/operators insisting on installing their own junk on top of stock Android to differentiate themselves from the competition. Unless you go down the Flash ROM route (not hard but not for the average punter) it makes it difficult to keep up.
Apple is better in this respect, of course, but they have it easy with supporting just a few handsets at a time (and refusing to support some of them) - and even there you have to accept that if you want the upgrade, you take their broken Maps apps etc.
"To be honest, most people only use a tablet for web browsing, messaging and email once the novelty has worn off anyway, so why spend more to get less when pretty much any Android tab over £100 will do the job perfectly?"
I use an Android tablet, and I agree about the value for money issue. But I can't agree about just using it for web + email. It's extremely useful for document viewing at work via Dropbox, and for updating files on the go. And there are plenty of good apps if you want them.
"Members who own Kindle devices can also choose from thousands of books -- including more than 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers -- to borrow and read for free, as frequently as a book a month with no due dates, from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library".
from https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=lp_mem_help?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200182130
Clicking through to the link for the Kindle Owners' Lending Library confirms that it does not work with Kindle apps on other devices.
So it's only a good deal if you've got the kit.
Well if it went the way of the HP TouchPad, that would be more like 7 weeks. Disastrous for HP, but brilliant for consumers. I have one, recently put Android on it and it runs like a dream - fantastic hardware once you get past its somewhat incomplete onboard software. If Microsoft did something similar, they'd do a lot of people a big favour!
My hunch is that they won't though, and that the Surface will do well, at the least with the corporate sector who are extremely committed to Microsoft. The iPad's sold well in that market (all the senior managers at my work have one), but I can see the lure of MS and especially of full-blown Office to be pretty tempting for corporate IT depts.
She did at least have an Oxford college named after her (albeit posthumously), which is better going than a programming language that's now hardly used outside the military.
Proper recognition of women in the history of science is very difficult. I wrote a book a few years ago on the key figures in systems & cybernetics. Despite a lot of agonising, we were only able to include 3 out of 30 who were women. That wasn't because we didn't try, it just reflected the sexist history. It may also have reflected our own biases, of course.
I have a bit more sympathy. Regarding free vs paid, multiple versions of Android apps often exist, some free & some paid; it's not always obvious (even from the Google Play description) which is which. I have no sympathy for someone knowingly trying to get a paid app for free, but it's possible at least people scammed in this way didn't know what they were installing.
On the matter of permissions: undoubtedly it's really important to read permissions very thoroughly before accepting them when installing a new app, especially if they say "things that cost you money". But the longer and more comprehensive some permissions lists get, the more they feel like the Android equivalent of click-through EULAs - at best the average user will scan the list in a couple of seconds in case anything jumps out, but more likely they'll just say "sod it" and click accept without reading... Not the best policy, but human nature.
"But since most folk will still call this a backlight, I think we can afford not to be too pedantic about it."
Well it's your party so you can be not too pedantic if you choose. But I have to say that for me, "backlit" = LCD screen - at first glance I assumed this was another tablet-style screen rather than eInk screen. Arguments still rage which is better, but they're clearly different. Of course the article itself makes it clear this is an eInk screen, but first impressions matter a little bit.
Activity theory is neither as obscure nor as Marxian as the article and comments imply. It's a pretty mainstream part of human-computer interaction theory. It has its roots in Soviet psychology, but has long since gone beyond those. It's really very interesting, and has particularly been influential in Scandinavia (notably through the work of Yrjö Engeström, who's Finnish like Nokia and is not especially Marxist at all). There's a good article on AT at http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/activity_theory.html.
I've had Virgin Media for TV, internet & phone for more than four years now, and mostly very happy with it. We have the odd problem now and then (such as router going down for no cause every few days, sound sometimes not working on CBBC first thing) but it's mostly pretty minor stuff. I've seldom had cause to call customer services though, and when I have I've regretted it.
@Flugal: "Why do people feel the need apostophise acronyms?"
Agreed about the apostrophes, it seems a very odd practice. It's a form of greengrocer's apostrophe. While we're enjoying some pedantry, I personally wouldn't regard LOL as an acronym, as I pronounce it letter-by-letter (EL-OH-EL) rather than as a single word ("lol" to rhyme with "doll" or perhaps with "coal"). In that case it's an abbreviation rather than an acronym. Just saying, and others may pronounce it as a single word anyway.
(No doubt there are errors in the above paragraph, and I will get the usual fate of pedants of being hoist by my own petard.)
This sounds perfectly dreadful for all the reasons you say... if it's true. As commentators on the BetaNews page observe, the announcement is really ambiguous. It say you won't be able to "download Google Docs in Office 1997-2003 format (.doc, .xls, .ppt)". If "download" means just that - downloading a file held in Google Docs/Drive to your PC, in a format of your choice - then all this change entails is restricting the choice of download format.
The announcement says nothing at all about *opening* (i.e. uploading) files in Office 1997-2003 formats. It may be implicit that this won't work, or it may be quite the opposite. It's a perfectly good reading of the announcement to assume that we'll still happily be able to upload & open older Office files in Google Apps after Monday, just not export from Docs into those formats. But it is a bit unclear!
You're right about Google Maps labelling. It's not perfect, especially in terms of the places that businesses and buildings are labelled. I wouldn't (and don't) trust it in that respect (though I'm a happy Android user). But it does sound like Apple are worse. The early version point about the new Apple Maps is a red herring, IMHO, because Apple had a good map application on their phones (albeit without turn-by-turn navigation) which they chose to throw away in favour of an inferior application.
They're not running Symbian. They're running S40, Nokia's old but much updated own OS, with a new skin. No doubt the latest version of S40 has learnt from Symbian, but it's a different thing.
For a low-end phone this looks pretty good - won't get much publicity because it's not a 'smartphone' (ie it won't have a wide range of apps) but the build quality and installed software looks strong.
We have an 8-year old HP laser printer at home, which works a treat, except they refused to issue proper Windows 7 drivers for it, and the ones I do have work with one of our Win7 laptops but not the other. Very frustrating.
On the other hand, my TouchPad is a really good piece of hardware (problems with WebOS notwithstanding) and my wife's mini-laptop (netbook format and price but proper screen & processor) is excellent and great value for money. Both these latter two are pretty elegant too. So I wouldn't write off HP quite yet.
If you're in a VOD world (Virgin's TV catchup in our house but likewise iPlayer etc) you're still somewhat at the mercy of the channels, or at least their copyright policy. There's no good explanation that will satisfy my almost-three year old as to why he can watch all the episodes of In the Night Garden he likes on catchup, but can't watch Baby Jake or Thomas.
Hmmm. And the Sept 13th update: hey! the iPad mini is here! It's going to change everything!
Seriously: it's clear that 7" tablets aren't dominating the market, but equally clear they're on the rise. Will Apple want a piece of that? Who knows. We'll find out.
I don't think anyone would call Milton Keynes (and hence Bletchley) the Midlands in terms of political or geographical boundaries, but it's not far off it. There have been a number of planning documents which talk about "Milton Keynes and the South Midlands", which roughly refers to Northampton, Bedford, Milton Keynes and Luton and their surrounding areas (sometimes covering the whole of Northants and Beds), but it's certainly not a well-defined area. The local BBC television for all these areas is the East, based in Cambridge, which makes the local news rather baffling.
I've worked in MK for several years, and now live in Northampton, and it's long struck me that the whole area around MK is basically border country and has been for 1200 years back to when it was the boundary between Mercia, Wessex and the Danelaw!
Apologies for being patronising. I guess I've been reading the Register for about the same length of time. No harm intended. Nonetheless, I do think they're pretty even-handed in their mocking. But I don't use Apple products (not because I don't like them, I just can't afford them) so I'm not especially sensitive to their treatment.
"Ms Leach is, yet again, attempting to be the one who mocks Apple most in what I can only imagine is some desperate attempt to be promoted to the role of journalist."
And perhaps you might read The Register for a while longer and realise that they are equal-opportunities mockers. It's not just Apple - they'll mock anyone. It's their house style, just as much as trendy leftiness and muesli-knitting is the house style of The Guardian, or reactionary hating of minorities and foreigners is the house style of the Daily Mail.
They could put it on the masthead: "The Register: They code. We mock." It's what makes it worth reading.
27 streamed Bible versions is not that impressive. The YouVersion app on my HP Touchpad can stream 29 translations of the Bible into English, plus many more in other languages. The app is available for many other mobile platforms (indeed I also have it on my Android phone). Now 27 *offline* versions would be more impressive, as translations of the Bible tend either to be expensive to get offline, or pretty fringe translations. But this just mentions streaming. (Curiously the Touchpad YouVersion app just allows streaming, but the Android app has some offline versions - not ones most people have heard of, apart from the King James Version, though.)
Basically this is just a standard tablet with a bit of branding. Might be decent, might be rubbish. But the same thing could be done in any number of areas.
Actually I don't find the mobile version works very well at all for me - the buttons are in the wrong positions relative to the keyboard, and it's quite slow, so I often select the wrong option by mistake. It's good to have a mobile site, but it could be improved upon.
Unfortunately this new app only supports Android 2.2+, which I don't have (stock ROM on Orange San Francisco for me still). Another reason to visit CyanogenMod and bite that flashing bullet!
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