Posts by Shonko Kid

In-app payment patent scattergun fired at small devs

Surely Apple themselves are infringing

Do they not provide (force use of) a mechanism to do in app purchasing through iTunes? or did I dream that story last year about them grabbing hold of that revenue stream?

[insert ObPatentRant here]

Nokia finally gives Ovi brand a mercy bullet

"the slightly better-known Nokia moniker"

Though they seem to be doing their very best to fix that!

Brazilians slap health warnings on knickers

Victorian Prudishness KILLS!!!

"...but it's hard enough teaching adults (or even schoolchildren) how to inspect their naughty bits in this country..."

Proof right there, with the word 'naughty'

Now, if we can somehow construct a class action suit against Wacky Smith and her ilk, that would make my day.

Facebook pulls plugs on Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile

He should just change his name.

Not that big a deal.

Oops, sorry! Wrong arrogant CEO.

Perhaps he should email the other Mark with a line such as "I'm Mark Zuckerberg, Bitch!"

Or throw chairs...

The Industries top bosses are beginning to look like the 3 stooges.

Microsoft Skype: How the VCs won and Ballmer overpaid

He looked pretty pleased the other month

Shaking hands with his old pal Elop, and getting one up on his old boss Gates in the process - he never managed to get that deal with Nokia...

What treasures will the US really find on bin Laden's hard disk?

homophobic extremists surfing for gay pr0n

I don't find it surprising, that for a few this is the case. An inward guilt ridden self hatred directed outward.

Or, as Messrs Curtis and Elton observed so long ago;

"I see three paths.. Kill yourself... Kill Bob... KILL EVERYONE!"

DARPA, NASA look to spawn STARSHIP enterprise

It depends on how you choose the 200,000

While your math may be good, your lateral thinking is off.

What if we only ship out women who are just about to go into labour. I think you'll agree that will make a dent in the exponential growth

Online car-buying firm agrees to more transparent pricing

Re: Avoid at all costs?

I don't know about you, but the adverts tell me that alone.

Sony Ericsson sanctions smartphone boot loader unlocking

Suddenly...

SEMC are cool again.

Duke Nukem Forever DELAYED

When I first glanced at the headline..

I read 'Duke Nukem DELAYED Forever'

Ofcom gives shonky Sitefinder Google Maps boost

Crowd Source it

Given that by their very nature these things are fixed, and broadcast their identity, how hard is it really for anyone to build their own database of them?

I really don't think the information can be all that 'invaluable' to the competition after all.

Capitalism killed the Martians, suggests Hugo Chavez

Mammon

The elementary force particle of attraction to breasts?

BT, TalkTalk in court seeking axe for Digital Economy Act

Could almost forgive them

If they pull this off, I could almost forgive BT for Phorm. Almost.

Firefox 4 debuts: The last kitchen sink release

"The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on..."

What utter crap. What about when the browser IS the OS?

What they meant to say is that, due to a management oversight, all of middle management were given a bonus goal for 2010/11 of making sure none of their devs were running XP anymore.

MeeGo or MS? Nokia ponders tablet OS

MeeGo today, M$ next century?

I'd have hoped they'd have something in the labs by now FFS!

4G über-auction coming next year

"..certainly won't raise the £22bn..."

Awww, can't all the netops bid themselves out of existence? Don't they know the taxpayer will bail them out, I mean mobile telecomms are almost as essential to modern society as the bankers!

Apple sues Amazon over 'App Store' name

Calm down dear...

I think the word your looking for is 'popularised'

AT&T ends illicit handset tethering

Be interesting to see how 'they know'

As just looking at headers such as the HTTP client is going to be easily fooled.

WTF is... cloud gaming?

Doomed to fail

Technical problems aside, this is essentially an attempt to shift the business model currently in use by the main console players to something akin to that used by iTunes, and in turn taking away a massive revenue stream from Sony, Nintendo and M$. A bold move, but I don't fancy their chances.

Technically of course, it's doomed to fail. It will always be far better to have the game hosted on a box under (or inside) the telly. The lag is just unacceptable, and would only get worse as the userbase scales. It all seems like a solution without a problem, and a poor one at that.

BBC accused of coming out for porn opt-in?

Don't know where to start on this one..

Can we not just send her a document that says all porn on the internet has been eradicated and she can now finally take a break from here long struggle against our freedom? If we 'opted-out' her ISP she'd never know the difference...

Microsoft tablet OS to see light of day in 'autumn 2012'

WTF?!?

Steve. It's simple. Here's what to do.

Kick your weed smoking UX 'gurus' into touch, get WP7 running on a Tablet sized display.

Add in Office and that Handwriting/Note utility from Windows for TabletPCs.

Undercut Apple, and make the device look good (I know, tricky).

Bundle some free Cloud services/storage

Make a killing.

Trick is, you need to be rolling this out this summer. If you can't get that many people, with the amount of capital M$ has, to execute something as simple as that, you need to stand aside.

Autumn this year would be too late. Next year?!? FAIL.

iPad 2? Let's be kind and call it iPad 1.5

Multicore...

"...assuring better performance on apps that can take advantage of that extra core."

If it's up to the application to make use of the extra core, then that is a massive FAIL for iOS. Even the 'obsolete' Symbian OS can manage multicore effectively and efficiently without any real changes to the application code.

Apple to Microsoft: 'App Store name is not generic'

I'm torn on this one...

On one hand I really don't like M$, and the other I really don't like Apple. But which is worse?

There's only one way to find out... LITIGATE!

I wonder if the Apple Lawyers could direct me to a mainstream dictionary that contains the term 'shoe store' Or perhaps I should trademark that?

Council busts breast milk ice cream parlour

We're a funny bunch...

Cow. Goat. Buffalo. Sheep. Yak. Llama! Yeah, go right a head and drink your fill. But milk from ANOTHER HUMAN. Oh no you don't -You might catch something!!

Faces of the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 revealed

"If this is the design for the iPhone 5, could such a grip be a problem?"

Only if you don't hold it right.

Oracle: 'Eight Android files are decompiled Oracle code'

Missed the point

Sure, it is a simple function, and sure, any implementation would likely be structurally similar. But the point is it has likely* been lifted from the Java Source and relicensed as if it were Google's IP to relicense.

*The Android version has tell tale signs of having been produced by a code generator, in it's naming of the local variables, names which wouldn't have appeared in the final compiled .class file. If only they'd had the sense to mixup the declaration ordering of the member variables, that might have been the 'wiggle' room they need to get off the hook.

Windows Phone 7 gets 'goodie' update

THIS is the future?!?

This has FAIL written all over it. In fact, it's papered with FAIL wallpaper, then had FAIL graffitied over that, only to be boarded up and have FAIL tape covering all the entrances.

Getting excited about cut and paste.

iPhone 5 rumors: bigger, smaller, cloudy, keyboard-equipped

One thing we do know about it...

It will change everything, yet again.

Sony threatens to ban PS3 jailbreakers from network

If it's just to stop people cheating on the online games...

Then surely the simplest thing to do is mark their avatars/gamertags as being run on a modded console, then if they are cheating, those playing against them will simply walk away. Let the users do the hard work! No lawsuits. No bad PR.

Unless... THAT isn't why they're doing it?

Microsoft polishes Windows Phone 7

"...but integration is reserved for Microsoft's own developers."

Schmucks.

They seriously think that's the way to woo developers? Who do they think they are? Apple?!?

Microsoft, Nokia, and MeeGo: Are they all doomed?

"..with its purchase of Nokia"

Whilst this may be the de-facto view of the deal, it's not (yet) factually true.

Pwnage seems more appropriate anyhow.

It's official: Nokia bets on Microsoft for smartphones

"considerably better"

In what way? They managed to ship a few million of them in the space of a couple of months. iPhone 1 never managed that. Neither has many (all?) of the Android handsets.

You could qualify that with an "..in the US" but I'm pretty sure that each one of those US sales would've been at the cost of at least 3 everywhere else.

"let down by their OS"

No, it wasn't their OS that let them down, it was their lack of focus on UX and that has let them down. Far too concerned with transitioning to an 'internet services company'. Whatever the hell one of those is. Rampant complacency, silo mentality, and lack of a single coherent vision is where the problem lies.

"An android N97 would be fantastic" You think Android would've run any better on the N97 HW? It's some way short of even the now antique G1

Which one looks happiest?

Well, if it turns out that Nokia are paying for WinPhone7, ever, then Ballmer has a right to grin, it could've just bought him a couple more years of chair throwing in Redmond.

No..

All they do is have endless re-orgs and planning meetings. That has been the problem all along. Now at least, the don't have to worry about product development eating into their precious meetings time.

Grief and disbelief greet Elop's Nokia revolution

"a lot of value moving in different directions"

Even if Nokia ARE PAID $55 per device, they've got a bum deal!

And as for trying to out-Samsung Samsung. I don't fancy their chances.

Android's on top – will Nokia and RIM let it in?

"RIM considering allowing Android on its PlayBook device"

"RIM is expected to adopt the Dalvik virtual machine, which is also used by Android, and this would allow the firm's QNX devices, such as PlayBook, to run apps written for the Google OS."

No, no it wouldn't. RIM may well go for Dalvik, and in many ways that would make sense, it's a much leaner VM than that bloaty POS that you get from Snoracle. But in doing so, it doesn't automatically mean it will run Android apps. In order to do that they would either have to incorporate the whole Android framework (which would need porting to QNX) or provide a suitable compatibility layer to map the thousands of Android APIs onto suitable APIs in whatever application framework they do put onto QNX. Neither of those is a trivial task, and neither of those has been implied by RIM, AFAIK.

Court orders seizure of PS3 hacker's computers

T-Shirts

Get T-Shirts printed in Taiwan or some-such that have visualizations of the key emblazoned across them, and distribute at hacker conventions, etc. Piss 'em off good style.

Met re-opens NoTW phone hack probe

Is the 'significant new information'

Yes, they did it.

And

Yes, some people are rightly pissed off?

Mac daddy predicts all-knowing, all-seeing UI

And they say smoking too much weed in your youth..

won't give you brain rot later on in life.

W3C tackles HTML5 confusion with, um, more confusion

Bad spliff?

Either that or they had the whale song on too loud.

Apple's Jobs stand-in touts iPad's enterprise reach

What the...

"Basically you end up with kind of a scaled-up smartphone – which is a bizarre product, in our view."

Here's someone who has been basking in the RDF for far too long.

Google pinpoints bugs that send texts to wrong people

How about

'Phone' and 'Normal people'

Governments stonewall interwebs porn domain

I just don't get it

The only people that stand to gain from a .xxx TLD are ICANN, so they can fleece existing providers (again) in the goldrush migration. But are the old, existing domains, suddenly going to vanish? I doubt it. If a site owner finds He is being blocked from a .xxx domain, they'll just focus on the exiting .com ones. You can't effectively censor on domain names, they're only good for black/whitelists. If a punter finds he's always getting 'not found' errors from typing .xxx into his browser, he'll either google to find out his ISP has configured their DNS to not serve them up, and switch DNS server, or go elsewhere for his pr0n.

If this was going to clean up the internet, then I'd suggest we quickly adopt other TLDs such as .spam, .trojan, .warez, etc.

"The bid has faced substantial opposition from outraged religious groups, which believe .xxx will lead to more porn."

More porn??!? *pffft* Do these people think that there's only a few saucy pictures on the net? Where have they been hiding the past decade?

Apple throws a wobbly over Steve Jobs dolly

The first thing I'd do, if I were MIC Gadget..

Is redo the doll with some not-so-subtle caricaturing. I'm no californian lawyer, but I'm sure a hideous and hilarious balance could be struck that wasn't subject to these daft copyright laws.

MP wants age verification for net smut

How about this...

If you're old enough to have a contract with an ISP, you're old enough to see pr0n? Too simple?

Buffy to slay her way back into cinemas

Buffy the Reboot Slayer

I think it's just the 'not' should be before 'surprisingly'

Google to scrub slurped UK Wi-Fi data

"Google has agreed *TO* delete the slurped Wi-Fi data..."

Why the £^(& do they still have it?!?

How to make boots on Mars affordable - One way trips

"... concern over possible Martian microbes shouldn't ..."

You say that now, but what about in 100 years time when the microbe infected zombies are heading back to Earth, hell-bent on revenge???

Google boss: 'Creeped out by Street View? Just move'

"just move"

He has obviously been hanging around Jobs for too long. Just as well he was forced to quit the Apple board, it's for his own good!