* Posts by Adam Starkey

43 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Oct 2007

Teufel Audio iTeufel Air

Adam Starkey

Re: Call me crazy

>But i'd rather buy an airport express, and a powered monitor combo

I did exactly this to set up a whole house audio system. In-ceiling speakers, auto-sensing amps in the basement, a rack of Expresses[1], and the wife's iMac as a media server. I wasn't really expecting too much when I first started setting up, mostly convenience and the wife approval factor of no visible wiring, but it sounds great, and ended up costing far less than competitive approaches.

[1] that do occasionally get borrowed when I need decent swiss army knife for networking issues.

HTC Sensation XE

Adam Starkey

Beats Audio

The Sony MegaBass for a new generation.

M-Audio Keystation Mini 32

Adam Starkey

TL;DR

So in short, USB MIDI keyboard behaves like USB MIDI keyboard?

Why a full page talking about iPad compatibility? By far the vast majority of USB MIDI keyboards work fine with the CCK. This is not a new thing. If it shipped with a Dock connector USB lead, removing the need for the CCK that'd be one thing. Otherwise, someone just got sucked in by marketing.

Apple brands Intel 'Light Peak' as Thunderbolt

Adam Starkey

Re: Light Peak

>Let me just clarify something. This Light Peak connection thingy doesn't involve light in anyway, except it's name, right?

Not yet. The first incarnation will use copper. The protocol itself though is designed to transfer to fibre optic in the next revision.

IIRC cost and the need to bring something to market forced Intel to ditch fibre in the first version.

$1,000 reward offered for stolen cancer research laptop

Adam Starkey

re: I smell a fish. Sörströmming...

>Let me have a stab at it. University hospital would be a nice place to do prostrate cancer research.

>Given that, it's likely this researcher might just be connected to the facility's infrastructure. Y'know, e-mails, Outlook, Internet (always useful for research...).

That's not a given. Research institutions turn over staff too rapidly for it to make sense setting up that kind of infrastructure. Increasingly US universities leave Google to provide email/calendaring services.

> In EVERY company I've either worked for, or visited in the last decade or so, the data is ALWAYS stored on the facility's server. Without exception, even (and especially) GCHQ.

Yes, but you clearly haven't worked in research. I don't think you quite grasp the ad-hoc nature of the beast. Further, researchers are largely left to their own devices (no pun).

> No educational site on God's Green and Pleasant is going to pay some muppet shedloads of money without seeing the results occasionally.

Huh? Firstly most US medical research money comes from clinical trials, or government grants. Secondly, the results are published papers. That's all the research institution cares about. The problem is that for a researcher to lose their data, they no longer have the ability to defend their published work, or build new work off of it.

Yes she should have used Time Machine, but clearly IT is not her area. When you can do the kind of research she can do, then feel free to be smug and superior. Until such time, maybe instead remember that a lot of bright people out there can benefit from your skills and experience, but not necessarily the attitude.

Mozilla vows Google 'Crankshaft' riposte

Adam Starkey

Java != JavaScript

You're confusing two different languages. Java and JavaScript (formally ECMA 262) are not the same thing. JavaScript, which is the topic of the article, is a scripting language invented by Netscape. The similarity of the names have nothing whatsoever to do with Netscape trying to ride on the buzz surrounding someone else's product.

Microsoft and Adobe talk acquisition and Apple

Adam Starkey

This is why Ballmer needs to step aside.

Android is unquestionably the biggest danger to MS as it fights them on their own turf. Meanwhile Google are gearing up to go after the living room, thus threatening MS's dream of dominating in that space also.

In both fields Apple competes, but Apple is always happy to be a niche player making a lot of money out of a smaller market. Google is going right after Microsoft's lunch by playing the commoditize and monetize model, except Google money comes from ads not licenses, giving MS a blunt value for money problem.

So why the hell are MS fretting about Apple's clearly self-limiting model? I'd be watching RIM and Google more closely if I were them.

Still, Apple is the old enemy, and Ballmer is nothing if not backward looking.

Coders tip Google Android for eclipse of the Steve

Adam Starkey

Re:Apps will be the determinant

>Since we want to use standard off-the-shelf products our choices are being determined by manufacturer policies.

>I believe, eventually, this and App availability will determine the dominating OS and, at present, that appears to favour Android.

Except that for in-house apps, the enterprise license explicitly provides a mechanism for developing and deploying apps to corporate devices without use of the app store[1], and for the kinds of apps that are sold to the public, or other businesses, but are not publicly available, you have the definition of 'niche'.

Apple's management of the app store *may* kill iOS, but it wont be for the reason you stated above.

[1] http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise/

I'm surprised that during your evaluation process you'd missed this rather large detail.

iOS 4.1 out today, iPhone hackers say

Adam Starkey

Trap?

While, personally, I'd probably never bother to jail break an iDevice, I have no issue with the jail break community. That said, rhetoric like "Don’t accept it… it’s a trap!" makes them look like idiots. It's not a trap, it's a security fix.

The question should never be: "are Apple being mean and taking their toys away?" The question instead should be as it always is: "why was that vulnerability there is the first place."

If Apple are at fault (and they are) it's for screwing the pooch on securing the OS, not on retro-actively fixing their cock-up when a handful of users have found useful side effects of said cock-up.

Jobs woos devs with iPhone OS iOS 4

Adam Starkey

Re:Oh Goody, Unavoidable Adverts #

Don't be an idiot.

Of course you can avoid the adverts. Don't download free, ad-supported, apps.

There's that's not so hard is it?

Apple adds 'make the web go away' button to Safari 5

Adam Starkey

Terms and conditions?

Are they insane? When I navigate to a site, unless there is some obnoxious landing page, in which case I'm going to navigate clean away again, I don't ever see a TaC page. How can they expect me to be bound by something that I would in all legitimacy never have seen?

I don't block ads (except flash ads because they're just bad) because I accept the right of the publisher to make money. I'm not in anyway legally beholden to view those ads though, and there's a reason why a web browser is a called a 'user agent' not a 'service client'.

This looks like a nice feature, well implemented, and I'm looking forward to trying it out. Especially on multi-page articles it could make browsing much more pleasant. The NYT needs to get a grip.

Developers turn sour on Apple iPad

Adam Starkey

CocoaTouch v4?

Given that it is a pretty poorly kept secret that Apple have multitasking in the pipeline for OS4, and given that we can reasonably assume that OS4 will drop with the next generation iPhone sometime around June, this is a bit of a non-story, isn't it?

Carphone Warehouse splits with self

Adam Starkey
WTF?

Support?

> Best Buy has high hopes for the UK market, and will be targeting Currys. But with real supermarkets like Tesco and Asda rapidly moving into electronics it remains to be seen if UK consumers want advice and support from blue-clad experts, or discounted boxes balanced on top of shopping trolleys.

BestBuy competes effectively with WalMart in the US, I see no reason why Asda(WalMart) or even Tesco will be a more effective competitor on price alone in the UK.

Moreover, the staff are *not* what drives BestBuy's business. They're no more clued than the idiots you typically find in a Currys. Some will know what they're talking about, and a few more will try hard to be helpful, but BestBuy is a box shifter, and its staff are trained accordingly. The reason most people shop at BestBuy is because they are ubiquitous. For most of America, the BestBuy will be in the same strip mall as the big box grocery store. If you're just after some Cat5 cable in a hurry, BestBuy is easier to deal with than a grocery store, and you aren't driving any further to reach it.

If the major grocery chains are easier to reach, and provide more parking, they'll cream BestBuy in the UK, but BestBuy is not a stupid company, so I would give them at least an even chance.

Sony PlayStation Move: your questions answered

Adam Starkey

(a || 0) || (a && 0)

Looks like an Hitachi MagicWand. Does it come with vibrate functionality?

Apple video shows Flashed iPad

Adam Starkey

Poor Adobe

They're on their way to being squashed by three evil empires. Between Google and Apple championing HTML5 and JavaScript on the one hand, and MS hefting their not inconsiderable muscle to drive uptake of Silverlight on the other hand, it isn't looking all that rosy for Flash.

Not that I give a crap personally. Flash needs to be dragged outside and shot, IMHO. The web survived the fall of Java just fine, and I don't think anyone greatly misses RealPlayer either. My guess is that banner ads will tick on just fine when Flash has likewise been relegated to the legacy pile.

Video streaming is a dogs dinner right now, but that will change, even if only by sites supporting dual formats for Ogg Theora and H.264.

Either way, no flowers.

Malware cleans out jailbroken iPhones

Adam Starkey

@Oliver Jones

What are you prattling on about?

Nothing about idiots enabling SSH services that they don't need, then ignoring the warnings to change their password is "security through obscurity". It's pilot error, pure and simple. You can't even blame modern jail-breaking apps, 'cos as far as I've seen, they all go to some lengths to stop people from hanging themselves.

I think either *you* don't know what that term means, or you still haven't managed to comprehend what's actually going on here. Either way, you're coming over like a clueless gobshite.

Nokia sues Apple over iPhone

Adam Starkey

Hypocrites.

Curious. I recall Nokia singing a wholly different tune when Qualcomm were getting all heavy with the lawsuits.

Odd how times change.

That said, Apple should just pay the damn license, unless they think they have Nokia over a barrel on some other technology, in which case both parties should just quit the public posturing and get back to the table.

Windows 7 versus Snow Leopard — The poison taste test

Adam Starkey

@charlie wallace

I develop daily with raw GCC on Linux, VS on Windows, and XCode wrapping GCC on OSX, and yeah, VS is always my preferred IDE.

That said, XCode is moving away from GCC. LLVM and Clamp allow for much better interactive functionality. I think XCode will probably catch up with VS on many fronts over the next few years.

Opera chief: history will silence Unite doubters

Adam Starkey

@Chris C

> "But if you're technical enough to do this from Apache or anything else, one, there's no problem with that, and two, you're probably not going to understand Unite anyway."

So... If I'm smart enough to set up an Apache server, then I'm too dumb to "understand Unite anyway"? That sounds remarkably like Apple's marketing department.

Well since you missed the point, I'd have to suggest you might be. I can set up an Apache server, and FTP server, or an SSH server if I need one. My mother can't. If I want this kind of service on my home machine, I'll do it with tools I can control. If my mum wants to do this kind of thing on hers, I'll point her to Opera. If your world view is, I can do it the hard way, so these idiot tools serve no use, then yeah, you're not going to understand the point behind Unite.

> "What we're trying to do is take something that currently is very difficult and make it easy. We're tying to give you something that you can describe to your parents or even your grandparents. And I believe we've achieved that."

So did Geocities. And look what happened to them.

Geocities did not make things easy. You still had to faff around uploading files, and more importantly, since all most people want to do is share photos, back in those days, you had to faff around scanning the images to be uploaded. Your analogy fails because we aren't in the 90s anymore. Digital cameras are ubiquitous, as are hard drives full of digital photos. The utility of a one-click 'share this folder with my friend in Germany' button should be pretty obvious even to the most self-righteous of geeks.

>1) Most ISPs (such as Comcast and Verizon) explicitly state in the Terms and Conditions that you are not allowed to run servers of any kind.

Oh well. That'll stop people from using Unite then.

> 2) Upstream speeds. Most ISPs provide people with relatively little upstream speed (1Mbps for Comcast cable, 128Kbps for Verizon DSL),

Yes, and people said that streamed video would never catch on because even ISDN wasn't fast enough to sustain a decent bit-rate.

> so anything hosted on your system will be displayed to your visitor very slowly. This will be exacerbated when you have multiple people trying to request data from you simultaneously.

I don't think the point is to be running an industrial grade server. I think the idea is that from time to time, friends and family can browse my photo album.

> 3) VoIP. Go ahead and host your files on your own system, then wonder why your VoIP connection is choppy and poor quality.

What? VoIP services are packet prioritized. I have VoIP alongside my Comcast cable service, and I can be maxing out my Internet access in both directions with no impact on my phone service. Unless you're talking about Skype of course, but that's hardly the same thing, and probably of very little concern to most users.

>4) Always-on requirement. Most people don't leave their computers powered on all the time, so trying to connect to their "website" will be hit-and-miss. Some people may choose to leave their computers powered on all the time to combat this, but will probably change their minds once they realize the additional electric cost (and heat) this will cause.

If you'd bothered to read the article you;d have noticed he's envisaging a time when all household appliances are always on. A Mac Mini uses about 20W today. Such a box would be more than capable of providing always on support for Opera, managing the household photo and media collection, as well as serving double duty as a backup server and even a set-top box. In a few years you could easily shave 5W of that total, halve the price of the unit, and imagine a world where such devices are starting to become basic consumer electronics. We're almost there already!

> 5) It failed before. People don't care where their files are stored as long as it's easy to make a "home on the web".

Exactly, and how much easier than Unite does it get?

>. Then again, considering the global dumbing-down of people in the last 15 years, this point may be nullified.

A very succinct example of why you don't get it.

Pocket Universe 1.7

Adam Starkey

GoSkyWatch

I prefer GoSkyWatch. I've been using it on my Touch for over a year now, and it works great.

At six bucks it's more expensive that this one, but it eschews the stupid LCARS interface for one that actually make sense.

Apple races developer to censor smut

Adam Starkey

So it's just a straight TaC violation...

Not much of a story then, is it?

After six months, Steve Jobs speaks

Adam Starkey

re: With over 50,000 applications available ....

>Yet there is no app for turn-by-turn navigation.

There are at least three of them in the store right now, though some are country specific. At least another two are in some active stage of development.

LG shines light on world's brightest 3D TV

Adam Starkey

@lord_farquaad

Some people are far more sensitive to these kinds of visual effects than others. That's why the 'rainbow' effect on early 2x DLPs caused some people problems. Just because it's comfortable viewing for you, doesn't mean that a significant number of people wont be bothered by it.

In truth, most people get headaches after extended periods with fake 3D displays, no matter the underlying technology that is used. Your eyes are focussing on an unnatural point in space, which leads to fatigue of the eye muscles.

Microsoft in the Pink with Verizon on iPhone?

Adam Starkey

@Tim Cook

My understanding is that Ballmer wishes to have more control over the whole experience, ala Apple.

As such, this is likely to be a device where MS work with select partners, or make specific requirements of the hardware when granting licenses. I don't think this is intended to be just another WinMob phone.

Microsoft downsizes Seadragon and Photosynth brains

Adam Starkey

iPhone?

>>Design group director Don Lindsay, who also helped craft the iPhone's interface during his time at Apple before Microsoft

Are you sure about that? Don Lindsay joined MS in 2003 if his bio is to be believed. I know Apple have long development cycles, but 3 years of UI design for the iPhone seems unlikely (especially in light of the working beta that was on eBay with a different UI).

At best he'd have been at Apple during the design of Tiger's widgets, which would *sort* of relate to the iPhone, but that's a stretch...

Apple muffles PC noisemakers

Adam Starkey

@Silencer? & @What? Apple patents "silence"?

@Silencer?

That only works if your ears are positioned such that the two sound waves are perfectly out of phase. Noise canceling headphones work because they know where your ears are. A laptop doesn't

@What? Apple patents "silence"?

Try reading the article.

BMW opens up to haptic car doors

Adam Starkey

Technology that thinks for you...

This'll be fun if ever one is unlucky enough to say, break down on a train track. You'd be mighty pissed if your car decides it really isn't a good idea for you to try and exit the vehicle right now on account of the 80 tonnes of 8:15 to Paddington baring down on you.

I must be getting old. quite like the idea of doing my thinking for myself, and having technology just doing what I tell it to do

The death of mobile innovation?

Adam Starkey

"and Infineon is only a supplier to the impoverished and maverick Apple."

Most likely that sentence is just missing a comma.

Calm down people.

Apple proves: It pays to be late

Adam Starkey

@Lantz

"the Classic, well that's just a leftover from early days and doesn't really count. The Touch is the replacement for the Classic and represents the high end music player."

So neither the Nano or the Touch offer storage capacities greater than 16GB, whereas the Classic offers 120GB, and in your world the Classic exists purely because someone at Apple forgot to remove it from this year's product line-up.

Don't be a pillock. The Classic will be around at least until the Touch can reach 64GB at an acceptable price point, and even then, it'll likely still have a place in the market. It exists, because it fulfills a need that none of the other iPods can. So, yeah, there are *four* products in the iPod line, all of which are very different, and are marketed in very different ways.

Anyway, what was your actual point again?

Adam Starkey

@Will Wykeham

Whilst I also don't necessarily see the draw of Apple running multiple lines of iPhones, you're not quite right when you say "I feel Apple will would see multiple models as a dilution of the the brand", I think you're forgetting the iPhone's closest corporate relative, the iPod. Apple have clearly 'diluted' the brand here. Once upon a time the iPod was the iPod. Nowadays, it's everything from that ridiculous new nano thing, all the way up to the iPod Touch. There are flash versions, hard drive versions. Some have screens, some don't. Some come in a thousand fruity flavours, ... well you get the idea.

At this point, the iPod Touch is closer to the PDA you always wished Palm would have made, than the original iPod. It's a long way away from the "it does one thing and does it well" ethos that was the original iPod mission statement.

So yeah, I disagree with Andrew Orlowski's take on where Apple should take the iPhone, but if Apple see a way of creating new product lines that wont cause too much user confusion, don't doubt they'll do it.

Apple Mac Mini (Early 2009)

Adam Starkey

@Dan

I use a Mac at work because I need to develop software for Windows, Linux, and OSX.

As such my *last* gen white mac book is running XP and Mandrake as VMs under OSX. 2GB is obviously essential, as a base point. It also goes without saying that having both windows and linux running simultaneously under OSX is asking a bit much of a laptop, but aside from that, the machine is completely up to the job.

Apple's Snow Leopard set for June 8?

Adam Starkey

Amazon?

What on Earth does Amazon have to do with anything? They have no more information than anyone else, so those release dates are every bit as speculative as all the rest.

There's an awful lot of echo chamber/recursive reinforcement going on in this article.

Personally I rather hope Apple have learnt their lesson from Leopard and MobileMe, and will hold off until SL is properly ready rather than just trying to hit a convenient release target.

(Real estate) developer sues Apple over Jesus Phone browser

Adam Starkey

Am I misunderstanding this?

Unless I'm reading this wrong (I haven't read the patent) it would seem that they're describing a page slicing approach, whereby an intermediary process breaks a full page into manageable chunks for a small display browser. AFAIK, that's not how Mobile Safari works though. I think Safari is pretty close to a standard HTML renderer. In other words, is this troll going after the wrong company?

Apple takes wraps off rumour-matching MacBook Pros

Adam Starkey

Not a particularly good effort.

HDMI is *not* a problem. With an adaptor DisplayPort will run most things.

Lack of FireWire on the MacBook *is* stupid. There's way too many Camcorders out there that still require Mini DV connectors, and with the heft price jump on the MacBook, I doubt most buyers will have change left over to replace a camcorder that may only be a few years old.

The price? Meh. The old form MacBook needed to drop at least another $50 USD, if not a full hundred. Adding SuperDrive (finally, just as DVD writing is starting to look obsolete) hardly justifies the pricing of what is effectively old kit. As for the Pro-Lite 13"s, they're far too expensive for what they are. I'd be quite happy with a few extra screws and a significantly cheaper to manufacture case, next time Apple.

So-so battery life still too. Apple have the facility, and the margins, to knock one out of the park. They've squandered a lot of chances here, whilst making many of their products less desirable than the versions they are replacing.

Apple channels Pandora with iTunes 8

Adam Starkey

re: Genius privacy?

Since your local copy of iTunes knows what songs you have purchased, it is quite possible for Apple to link your Genius profile, and purchase profile without ever actually needing to see both sets of data side by side. That's the job of iTunes when it creates the anonymized data set.

Apple's secret iPhone app blacklist

Adam Starkey

@aldude

>Paris, cos I feel as confused by this as she presumably does about everything.

You certainly are confused, or at the very least you can't read.

Adam Starkey

re: Anyone else notice

>That the arguments from apple supporters saying why apple stuff is so great and everything they do is for your own good are usually the exact same ones the same people usually throw at microsoft as a criticism

Yeah, that'd be why I allow MS's malicious software removal tool to run on my Windows boxes, wouldn't it?

What's with the legions of idiot fanboys on the Reg comments section? I used to think the Mac fanboys were annoying, but the Windows fanboys are beyond insufferable; there's so damn many of them.

Adam Starkey

Sound idea.

As long as such a tool isn't abused (and I'm sure Webster will be along to provide an articulate and insightful post explaining how it will be), it's essentially no different to any filtering technology that gets a blacklist from a remote source.

What it does show is Apple are a little more realistic about their abilities to catch malware at the submission stage than their press might suggest.

Apple pulls posted pulled iPhone modem app

Adam Starkey

VAT

>> where it could be purchased for £5.99 ($9.99 US, standard crap deal, don't get us started).

The UK iTunes store shows VAT on the price right? So what's the problem? You're paying less for songs than I am. Apple isn't responsible for paying your VAT, and Britons really do need to learn how to add sales tax to American prices.

Motorola accidentally makes a profit

Adam Starkey

ahhh...

So Webster sweeps the floors at Motorola then?

Apple's Snow Leopard to cut the bloat from Mac OS X

Adam Starkey

Re: Cluestick

>With respect, you're talking out of your arse here.

Ermm, no. I think you can't read.

At no point did the article claim that system memory was wasted by UBs, just hard drive space.

Moreover, your claim that UBs aren't installed is also wrong. A free clue to hang on your stick:

Go into your applications folder, get info for Address Book.app. Note the word 'universal' after the 'kind' field. That tells you that the 50+ MB of storage that Address Book is using on your drive is 50%[1] fat. Run lipo on it from the command line, and watch it shrink. Now consider the complete install size of OS X, and halve that. On small laptop hard drives, that's not small beans.

[1] can be more actually, since UBs can contain any combination of ppc/intel/32 bit/64 bit.

Satanic car key traps 12 motorists in car park of horror

Adam Starkey

TLA

Interestingly there was no mention of the lizard army, despite this being a clear skirmish in the gathering storm.

Of course, as anyone who has been reading amanfromMars' posts carefully knows, El Register has already fallen to the invading forces, so it's no surprise they're blocking the awful truth.

More gnashing of teeth after Microsoft update brings PCs to a standstill

Adam Starkey

re: Word game for you

"What company isn't interested in profits (please read carefully before some idiot pips in with a name of a charity and subsequently gets flamed for it).

"

I think what he said was:

"Trusting a company that's only interested in profits is bad. They are becoming more and more arrogant towards customers, and couldn't care less about problems with their software or their ways."

Please read carefully before you act like an idiot and pip in with a pointless snide comment. You may be particularly interested in the use of the word "only" in the quote above. I.E. the question is not whether a company is interested in profit (healthy), but rather whether they are *only* interested in profit (very unhealthy)

Idiot.