* Posts by David Arno

20 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jan 2008

Twitter bomb threat joke man faces possible jail sentence

David Arno
WTF?

WTF?

Insane story.

Considered using the hand grenade icon but some idiot police office might interpret it as me sending a menacing message

Westminster politicos told to grasp Vista nettle

David Arno

@nematoad

I have both solaris and ubuntu VMs on my WIndows 7 machine that I regularly use. Command line use is essential for both solaris and ubuntu. It is very rarely required for WIndows 7. Whilst VMWare Workstation does an excellent job of configuring the initial install of ubuntu, I got as far as needing to install the Java SDK before I had to resort to the command line for example.

As a developer with experience of both unix and windows, I have no beef with the former. My OS of choice is governed primarily by the investment in tools that I've made, rather than any silly claims of one being better than the other. However Linux remains years off of being a suitable OS for non-technical folk that don't have a pet geek at their support beck and call. To claim that Linux is a viable alternative to Windows for the average user is ridiculous.

David Arno
Happy

@Fatman

You are of course correct. Thanks for the typo fix :)

David Arno
FAIL

Oh dear

Luckily these folk only run the country.

David Arno

There is no viable alternative

That's an easy question to answer: it's because there is no viable alternative to Windows. OS X is tied to Apple machines and thus too expensive and Linux is only of use to die-hard command-line using geeks, not technically clueless MPs.

Can anyone explain the chunnel fiasco?

David Arno
FAIL

Wrong sort of management

As one of the paper's put it this morning, the real cause of failure is that Eurostar employs the "wrong sort of management".

BBC's speak you're branes collapses under Brand-Ross sex outrage

David Arno
Joke

Who's Ross?

When did this happen then? First time I've heard about it.

Dawkins' atheist ad campaign hits fundraising target

David Arno
Thumb Up

Why are so many people confused over agnostics and atheists

I believe there probably isn't a god. This makes me an agnostic atheist. Agnostic and atheist are NOT mutually exclusive terms.

I think the bus ads are a brilliant idea.

Google: The Satan Phone cometh

David Arno
Thumb Down

@Mike Kamermans

As you say it's a "first of a product generation", what do what do we expect? The iPhone 1 was a "first of a product generation" as well, was it not. Guess we were all expecting something AT LEAST as good as that therefore...

Royal Society says goodbye to creationism row vicar

David Arno
Thumb Down

Ignorant, stupid or insane?

The fossil record alone is more than enough evidence to prove evolution beyond all rational doubt. DNA variance between species alone is more than enough evidence to prove evolution beyond all rational doubt. Observed speciation events are more than enough evidence to prove evolution beyond all rational doubt. Taken together, the evidence is just plain overwhelming.

Robert Harrison, the fact that you are oblivious to all of this sadly means you are undeniably ignorant, stupid or insane.

David Arno

Why the fuss?

Since evolution has been proven beyond all rational doubt, those that do doubt it are ignorant, stupid and/ or insane. That's all a science teacher need say on the subject of creationism. This hardly impacts on class time at all.

Commodore launches little laptop

David Arno
Thumb Down

Wot, no AmigaOS?

"There'll be no Linux option, apparently, only Windows XP."

If it came with a 2008 version of AmigaOS, then I might have got excited. Instead it's just another bland overpriced disappointment from a brand name that ought to have the grace to just die.

Supercomputer to improve UK weather

David Arno

Does this mean?

Does this mean that the BBC will start doing forecasts that bear some resemblance to reality?

Sun's JavaFX must toolup against Adobe - pronto

David Arno
Dead Vulture

JavaFX? What's that?

There is a major brawl coming: between Silverlight and Flash/ Flex/ AIR. JaxaFX might snap at the ankles of these two combatants like some demented hamster, but it is more likely to be crushed underfoot, than be noticed and considered a worthy opponent.

AJAX patent threat to giants under the hammer

David Arno
Thumb Down

Bogus claim

The patent in no way describes AJAX technology. AJAX technology does not involve the server getting clients to perform tasks and send the results back via a secondary comms channel.

See http://www.davidarno.org/207 for more details.

Microsoft Mobile presses Flash

David Arno

What actually does it mean?

So if this deal "doesn't mean that every Windows Mobile device will suddenly become Flash-capable", what does it mean? Will I be able to bundle flash lite on my proprietary hardware running windows CE wia a license bundled with Windows CE, or is this purely for phones?

David Arno
Flame

Flawed logic

"The world doesn't need any more proprietary software on phones..."

Java is used on phones for games, and precious little else. It isn't a PDF reader and it failed as an RIA platform. The future of apps on phones is web-based Flash and Silverlight solutions, not Java. Thus whether Java is available on phones or not is of little consequence.

Microsoft's LAMP answer arrives in pieces

David Arno

MISS does miss

MISS does miss the point, true. Scripting services? Get real!

The equivalent of LAMP (a dev environment) would be Vista, IIS, SQL Server Express and VS Web Developer Express. It fails to match LAMP on three levels:

1. Vista costs

2. MS won't release IIS 7 for Vista (through fear that people might not then buy the more expensive server 2007)

3. VISV isn't as good an acronym

Major HTML update unveiled

David Arno
Thumb Up

HTML has layout tags already

"They need to address layout by having a table-like set of tags that can be ignored/understood by non-visual user-agents (readers etc.)"

They have this: it's called the table tag. The table tag is brilliant for laying out content that is readable in a text-only browser. The key is to actually check your design in a text-only browser (or Opera's text browser simulation) as you develop it. That way nasties can be caught and fixed early. As an added bonus, this method avoids the unreadable vile bodge that is DIVs & CSS used to do little more than simulate tables.

Will Microsoft parachute Windows 7 in early?

David Arno
Coat

You are counting it wrongly

Seth Galitzer,

Windows 95, 98 and ME were all windows 4 (v 4.00, 4.10 and 4.90 respectively). XP was windows 5, Vista is windows 6 and the next one will thus be 7.

2000 wasn't part of that numbering system. There was windows NT3, NT4 and 2000 (NT5) and then that series was killed off when NT5 (2000) and windows 4 (ME) were joined before becoming XP.