Posts by Mage

Cheer up Samsung! You might get back $400m for copying the iPhone

Re: Ersatz Scamsung

Samsung 6400 family layered package for ARM, Flash & RAM, simple to layout I/O.

Cut down OSX -> iOS

GUI bought in from fingerworks. Trolltec actually had similar.

Switch from resistive (needed for handwriting and miniaturised desktop GUIs) to LONG EXISTING capacitive touch as the Fingerworks GUI didn't need the better resolution input.

Basically catalog phone parts slapped onto an iPod.

Less features than other phones, but well marketed and killer feature was unlimited or large data from some carriers when most users paid lots per megabyte. It was the simple (bought in) GUI and the data use bundle plus Apple hype / reality distortion that made the original launch a success. Marketing, Not R&D or even the appearance which was bland and minimalist and not creative at all, copied from 1950s to 1960s products, replace a 1970s calculator front with an LCD touch screen.

Missing important point!

The scope of the design.

The extent to which the design determines the overall appearance of the product.

Other components in the device.

The extent to which those other components can be separated.

** Extent to which the the infringed item is frivolous, obvious or a slight variation from prior art (like rounding corners is on every hand held thing back to wax tablets and slates). Thusly a bottle can't be a registered design / patent because it's a rounded rectangle cross-section, but needs to be more distinctive, like Cola-Cola's fluted bottle.

Burger barn put cloud on IT menu, burned out its developers

Re: Getting rid of your Devs and giving work to Oracle?

Getting rid of bespoke IT and using cloud for anything other than an auxiliary customer facing web site (not the backend database and Co-Lo makes more sense) or temporary collaboration tools across sites is madness.

The Cloud providers are in it to make profit (or in some cases mine your data).

Security, resilience, privacy, backups, disaster recovery, bespoke applications etc? Ultimately you have no clue how the Cloud provider is REALLY (if at all) doing these.

I fear the "Cloud" failure apocalypse when too much has moved to it more than WWIII

Pocket C.H.I.P. makers go Pro with cloud-linked ARM-flexing module for IoT gizmo builders

Interesting

Complementary to Pi and Ardunio, I think.

Oracle: We're going to be the practical AI people, we swear it

A good plan

Now figure AI that's not fragile and not annoying.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster

Boost Ofcom's powers and fix mobile market woes, Three and TalkTalk tell MPs

Ofcom needs reformed

But don't listen to ANY operator!

There are some really crap budget phones out there. Vodafone's Smart Ultra 7 isn't

Re: young kids

Should anyone under 10 or not allowed to wander the streets at night on their own, have a phone at all?

Locked.

Though at end of initial contract period they now have to unlock for free?

There should be affordable 6 month contracts.

No contract subsidy, that's hidden HP

Here the minimum contract on many sorts of subscriptions has crept up to 18 months and meanwhile PAYG credit expiry period keeps dropping, making it nearly impossible to have an emergency phone in glove compartment or drawer.

RIP Samsung 'Death Note' 7

Hmm

Are they too thin?

Is it a bending problem or bad design of charger HW?

Intel is shipping an ARM-based FPGA. Repeat, Intel is shipping an ARM-based FPGA

offload the StrongARM/XScale division

Though I don't think they gave up ARM licence and I think they did keep at least one communications controller with an ARM core.

Lots of PCs have ARM cores on Marvell Ethernet / SATA chips and on the hard drives. The profit margin is too low for Intel on ARM, also "Not Invented Here" syndrome.

They have a dilemma now with Altera. FPGAs are lot more actual profit per chip than a $1 ARM SoC, the main competitor of Altera is Xilinx which has a flagship ARM core FPGA. So Intel can hardly abandon FPGAs with ARM and no X86 (there is only a tiny market to have both cores, people will want one or the other and often later go to volume SoC ASIC unless it's a niche market.) FPGA have two distinct markets, stepping stone to volume SoC / ASIC and niche markets where there isn't volume, but the chip is volume product for foundry as the same chip can serve many different niche markets as well as development as it's user defined hardware.

Chipzilla's long-rumoured desire to put an x86 on an FPGA ARM core into a 14nm-process FPGA.

Umm, but it's not got an x86? (As well as the ARM), or did I miss something.

Isn't this mostly updated process technology for Altera FPGA? ARM cores in an FPGA have been around for a while. A good way to prototype an ARM SoC especially at the source can produce files for FPGA or ASIC (dedicated SoC)

Google hires comedians

Clowns

Nothing to do with scary Clown craze?

Nokia crawls towards comeback with new phones announcement

Current Linux, Mint 17.3 with Mate and no Compiz

Works on some 14 year old laptops and PCs. Admittedly good ones.

Internet of Things botnets: You ain’t seen nothing yet

Re: Turn off uPNP

No one EVER needs uPNP. Configure the ports manually. If the SW can't use that, it's garbage. uPNP and related stuff are stupid, even if it's going to be on the LAN, no router should EVER have it.

It's a similar badness to Autorun, which should not exist.

Samsung halts production of Galaxy Note 7

Re: A lesson to be learnt

Issue is battery replacement more than in use standby.

I agree expandable RAM will not happen.

Re: Waterproof

Lots of things in the past were MORE waterproof and had removable batteries.

It's just a little more expensive. The problem (and reason for Apple ditching headphone jack) is cost reduction.

Watches to portable test gear.

Russia tests sat jamming

the rest of the space i.e. over the equator?

Same gear on a sub or ship or aircraft.

Stickers emerge as EU's weapon against dud IoT security

Energy Rating stickers

A, AA, AAA, AAAA

The cleaner won't lift dust, the dishwasher will leave cups stained and have no rinse cycle, the lamps won't be bright enough and omnidirectional to light a whole room, the toaster will dry out the bread and only brown it at max setting and only take pan sized slices, not larger batch loaf, the coffee machine won't even keep warm for mandated 40min max but 20min ... etc.

Sadly we do understand the evil energy saving stickers.

Hubble telescope spies massive 'cannonballs' of fire from dying star

smaller, invisible companion star

That's no star—

…<loss of carrier>

Actually, yes, Samsung, you do have to pay Apple $120m

Stupid

Why don't they fix the USPTO and stop feeding the lawyers.

In a sane world a huge percentage of USA so called "Design Patents" (Pure look & feel) and actual patents would be invalid in the first place.

Four reasons Pixel turns flagship Android mobe makers into roadkill

Re: Lots of conjectures

Yes, it's at Apple prices without the Apple reality distortion.

Google's home stuff is totally irrelevant.

At least El Reg isn't captured by Big Companies. The UK media Eulogising every Apple release (though iPhone 7 not so much) and now lauding Amazon's Echo as "innovative" and "great". How much is Amazon paying them?

Pay up or your data gets it, Fandroid

NoScript

Why can't I find it for Firefox on Android?

Invasion of the virus-addled lightbulbs (and other banana stories)

Great stuff

I'd have written something similar, but too polite and boring to read.

AI doesn't worry me at all, but the idiots marketing the "Cloud" and IoT are the enemies of civilisation, besides which Google, Facebook and hackers are mere annoyances.

Sociopathic spawn of Satan. Even lawyers and weasel megacorps are not looking so bad.

Robots blamed for wiping 10 per cent off the value of sterling

crashes tend to get corrected pretty quickly,

Except in this case it's more like a dead cat bounce.

Sterling, on average, is going to continue to fall.

The FTSE 100 is mostly international megacorps, so now that it's clearer what May will do, it is logically rising, nothing much to do with export of UK services and manufactured products.

There is a short window for people to buy Sterling priced products and then there will be inflation on price of UK exports or web retail sales.

Ofcom kicks off 5G auction consultation

5G is NOT about spectrum

5G is about consolidation of back end infrastructure and better use of channels simultaneously, even if on separate bands.

Zilog reveals very, very distant heir to the Z80 empire

Oh Reggie! Don't sell yourself short!

>> “provides a platform for developing a number of power management solutions such as electric vehicle chargers, air conditioning systems, high-power LED lighting, and wielding equipment.”

Okay, okay, that's not something many of you will use any time soon. <<

But I bet nearly all the folks developing this sort of stuff come here. After all Wireless World is gone.

Y'know that ridiculously expensive Oculus Rift? Yeah, it just got worse

Re: Facebook of all companies ...

Sure they do, monetising your private data by selling adverts. Not as well as Google, but far better than Twitter, Microsoft etc.

desire to create an entirely walled garden.

Just like Facebook.

Why COMPANIES, never mind consumers use Facebook is a mystery, but perhaps Amazon and eBay don't let you hire labourers, sell baby hedgehogs and weapons?

ISP GMX attempts the nigh impossible: PGP for the masses

Re: How long until it's illegal in the UK ?

April 2019

OK Google, Alexa, why can't I choose my own safe, er, wake word?

re: now voice recognition is more advanced,

Really? Or just more hyped and available?

Twitter to take buyer bids

BBC should buy it?

They behave like it's part of their org, or else why do they promote it when they have their own websites?

It's time for Microsoft to revisit dated defaults

Proper Windows installs

Twenty to forty minutes to 1st boot.

All day to change all the settings, most of which are stupid defaults for the majority and have been for 20 years.

Unless you have preconfigured images etc.

No wonder most consumers home PCs are badly set up. This is not just an AD problem, but historic to almost every configuration issue of Windows.

After baffling Falcon 9 rocket explosion, SpaceX screams: Hands off our probe!

Re:the wings could not provide enough lift

Hybrid aircraft, blimps, balloons, rigid airships, helicopters etc don't have wings providing enough lift.

What is needed is competent independent investigation of all accidents, especially explosions.

Giant explosions & Rocket Launches.

Seems daft that FAA or some other independent of Politics and Manufacturer organisation doesn't do the investigating.

It should be treated more carefully and openly than an exploding aircraft, or by crazy logic are those only manufacturer investigated too?

The potential for cover ups or plain un-audited mistakes for self investigation is too high.

A year living with the Nexus 5X – the good, the bad, and the Nougat

Re: Re Battery Life: Where am I: GPS

I always know where I am. I am here.

I don't always know where other people are, because I am not God, Google, NSA etc...

Google's hardware extravaganza: Ad giant takes on Sonos, Roku, Linksys, Amazon, Oculus... you name it

Google Wifi: a mesh system of routers aimed at stealing an emerging market.

Probably more aimed at "stealing" personal information.

Beware Geeks bearing gifts!

Though the Pixels are obviously not gifts at those aimed at rich prices.

‘Andromeda’ will be Google’s Windows NT

Google’s NT You mean BSODs? Actually, no

As an aside, the original NT was solid from 1993 to 1996, NT3.1, NT3.5 & NT3.51

MS broke it by starting to "migrate" Win9x features such as "video / print drivers in Kernel" and Autorun :)

I want to launch thousands of drones, says Facebook's flying Wi-Fi router chief

Bonkers

Why are these people allowed to to peddle this?

With 60,000ft altitude the range is massive, forget cellular style frequency reuse. With massive range the capacity per user drops.

Unless they going to use 400GHz to fixed LOS small dishes? Even so, one street of fibre is more capacity.

Brit telcos plead with Ofcom: No one should own more than 30% of available spectrum

Re: Simple solution

They could still charge licences for the retail / resellers, though really it's a tax on consumers, the cost gets passed on.

700MHz

TV needs it, or else you give a win to Sky & cable forever.

Mobile doesn't need 700MHz and the part of 800MHz isn't as much use as 1800 in reality.

The way to better mobile is more smaller cells.

The 0.92 GHz to 2.1GHz bands are already badly utilised.

2.3GHz is fine for smaller cells.

The 2.3GHz and 3.4GHz good for femto cells, LTE should have ZERO access to WiFi band.

3.4GHz though is better for roof top LOS or open plan office femto than conventional mobile.

Simple solution

No-one should "own" any of it, it's a fixed size national resource. Have a highly regulated single infrastructure with no licence fee.

Have all the operators as resellers / retailers.

The Spectrum licence windfalls result in poor licence condition for performance and coverage and Regulatory capture.

It would be more efficient use too. Up to twice the capacity or more. Because if you chop it up between operators, statistically one in an area might have almost no users online and another operator at same location can be oversubscribed.

The current system is purely to benefit treasury and is a misuse of the idea of competition serving the consumer.

Source code unleashed for junk-blasting Internet of Things botnet

Lack of regulation, blah, blah

Regulators and Government are "captured" by Telcos and Big Corporations. Thusly they avoid pro-actively enforcing existing privacy, SOGA and other consumer rights. They figure it's only worth bothering if the medja and a large number of activist voters protest,

Radio call in shows are a panacea, they only count OFFICIAL complaints, the actual department to complain to and the procedure are usually opaque.

This could be easily dealt with, products could lose CE / CSA / UL / FCC etc, companies and directors could be fined, as could importers and retailers. But Governments are not interested in enforcing EXISTING regulations.

EU turns screws on Android – report

Apple

Android has the vast bulk of market.

Google licences the playstore accessible version of Android with "Blob" to 3rd party makers.

Apple doesn't licence iOS to anyone. They make their own massively overpriced phones and tablets that no-one else makes. They are a niche product. It's not a crime to be a luxury priced product.

Alphabet / Google are quite different in their approach and make money downstream from their advertising dominance, the Android privacy slurp (on Google licensed versions with the not open "blob") search, analytics, location services, Youtube, API hosting etc, and playstore usage is quite different from anything Apple does. Apple are merely a greedy niche supplier, sucking up 4 of every 5 dollars smart phone sales profit and then sitting on it. It's only tax / accounting that Apple needs to be investigated for.

Alphabet/Google and most other Multinationals need closer scrutiny on tax etc too. But there is a serious issue how the version of Android allowing Google services is supplied and the information on users Google is gathering.

One solution is to only tax dividends, share speculation profits, etc. Workers and purchasers are taxed already. The current high USA corporate tax rates are damaging.

Google / Alphabet need examined closely

Not just competition, but privacy, political manipulation/ lobbying, dishonest marketing, fake or Alphabet funded "activists" etc.

Arduino vs Arduino

Good

A rare bit of good news.

Regulatory compliance problems? Promontory, my dear Watson

real challenges still facing human civilisation – regulatory compliance.

No it's not a huge challenge for human civilisation, but for corrupt boards, CEOs, management etc..

It's a matter of actually reading the regulations and a commitment to meet them. Many companies put huge resource in loopholes and even outright lying and cheating.

The biggest issues with a computer system are:

1) Putting the regulations into it correctly.

2) Correctly inputting your own system to be tested into it.

3) Having managers etc that don't ignore it.

Asimov or someone wrote a story highlighting the psychology of it. It's not a technical problem, but a human one. Certainly a searchable computer database and consultancy will help, but I'd predict that Watson AI will make little or no difference to company cultures.

Building your own storage startup: Whatever you do, don't let lead dev be CEO

Whatever you do, don't let lead dev be CEO

OTH the CEO needs to follow the strategy of the visionary founder, who may or may not be the lead developer. Same applies to R&D Manager, a person that on any size of team needs people skills more than development.

But the managers / CEO etc must not be "mere" Accountants, MBAs, Lawyers. They need to truly understand the technology even if they don't have the talent and skills to develop it. They can even be moderately poor programmers, engineers, scientists as long as they understand what the good ones are talking about and only manage people, marketing, supplies, resources, money etc and not the technology itself.

Firefox to doctor Pepper so it can run Chrome's PDF, Flash plugins

Re: So Mozilla, why should I use Firefox?

Certainly they have concentrated on maiming the GUI, making it like bad version of a mobile app and ignoring important issues. Print Selection? Has it ever worked properly. If selection is on 7th page it might print 6 empty pages with headers and footers.

"Shrink to fit" seems dodgy.

Security defaults are wrong and awkward.

PDF viewer?

Viewing PDFs IN a browser is mad.

There are many reasons why it's a seriously bad idea. Why was it so hard to disable Firefox PDF viewing when they added it?

Well, killing Flash may be the only thing that Apple and I agree on.

Telcos hit out against plans to hike their broadband rates

Madness

See title.