Posts by Julian Cox

Adobe to sue Apple 'within weeks,' says report

Let's forget this is about Apple iPhone for a second...

... and lets say this was a company that developed for arguments sake an Operating System that ran on, lets call it, Personal Desktop devices.

Let's now assume they said "the only way you can buy software through our website where we take a cut of everything".

Let's now say they mandated "only applications developed through our .TEN APIs will be allowed to be submitted to our site. Sorry Sun/Java... sorry all those innovative people who've invested time and effort into alternative technologies... f##k innovation it's our OS - we'll do what we like!"

Now let's say that company was called Microsoft... what would you Jobsian brown-nosers be saying then?

Hey - guess what they don't need to ... they have the market sewn up through innovation in a generally (?!) competitive market on that platform... and yet PCs outsell Macs how many to one?

I'm not an evangelist for any particular company or technology - I am an evangelist for Open, innovative IT! Proprietary sucks... and then it dies. That's what history shows us.

Palm Pré to arrive next month?

What are legacy palms to be called

When the Palm Pre comes out with WebOS just how are we meant to refer to legacy Palm devices that run old applications... (wait for it)... Pre-Palm-Pre?

Emotional arguments do not make Street View illegal

What a palaver

I had to be amused by some of the TV news reports on the day of launch, especially the one where Channel4 news filmed a presenter standing in a London square with hundreds of (unblurred, recognisable) people milling about, then comparing it to the view in Google Streets and droning on about the possible issues where someone's face isn't blurred or is otherwise identifiable.

What's the chances of someone who shouldn't have been there at the time (at least date was known) being spotted on C4 news compared to a low res picture out of millions of scenes on GStreets?

What if a policeman is identifiable in the pictures though? But that's another matter...

(Paris - 'cos she'd be upset at having missed millions of photo opportunities ;-)

Wanted: £160k-a-year Twittercrat

Is this a done deal?

Interesting - "Digital Jam" - I can sort of imagine it. Maybe a bit of a barcamp fell, mixed with some Cameronesque "professional but made to look amateur home video" style?

Best link I could find is to some films done by theEngineGroup.com and available on YouTube. If only my work firewall didn't block you-tube I could check it out! Could it be that someone close to theEngineGroup wrote the job description?

Or maybe it's just a fancy, hip name for a webCast~webMeeting?

Outsourcing suddenly less popular

Exchange rates

Let's not forget the effect of exchange rates here - any budgeting a year ago based on USD~GBP exchange rate of anywhere between 1.5 and 2.0 will be wondering why they bothered!

(Paris - cos even sh'e worked out it's best to be in the UK right now given exchange rates)

Stob latest: It was a cunning trick, says Open University

What a shame Darrell

What a shame - Darrell Ince's books were prominent on my bookshelves in the early '90s when OOAD related methods/approaches were gaining credence in the Industry. Sounds like aspects of this course such as content and thought leadership haven't changed since then...

(Hi-level content icon as after years of leading/training/coaching OOAD inc. whole lifecycle modelling & development in a variety of contexts, from Agile thru RUP to PRINCE2 that I'm obviously missing the importance of the ability to critically analyse the relevance of questions to higher education standards)

Chinese crackers blamed for US power blackouts

always causes a stir

I've given up worrying about the hacker vs cracker distinction in reality simply because no two people will completely agree, but I do like some of the comments above.

To sum up, logically I accept (=> means implies):

Cracker => Hacker

...but do not accept ...

Hacker => Cracker.

However I do love dropping these debate bombs every now and then to see the passion it can evoke over such matters: Now where's a thread where I can raise the "should the opening braces of a block of code go at the end of a line or be indented the same as the closing brace" debate ;-)

Crackers vs Hackers: my joy was short lived

You have no idea how excited I was to see a reputable source (well... a source) using the term Cracker to refer to someone who accesses a system unauthorised and with malicious intent.

You have even less idea how disappointed I was to see the next paragraph refer to these same self people as 'Hackers', which I've always reserved for those of us who can hack together code/solution to fix a problem. Similar skills but VERY different intent.

Then they revert to crackers again - are there two groups at play here?

Apparantly the headline writer was simply going for a cheap gag and the author was not the enlightened individual I'd hoped.

Paris, as apparantly she's a cracker in front of a camera... (so I've heard)

Brazil bitchslaps ratification of OOXML

Brazil is good at governance...

When a country where CObIT is a required practice by Law objects to dodgy governance they obviously know what they're doing ... ;-)

Download al Qaeda manuals from the DoJ, go to prison?

Hang on - who owns the IPR on this?

While I feel that there has been a certain over-reaction to this by the authorities I do have to wonder whether the DoJ obtained the necessary permissions from the author(s) to re-publish their IPR!

Or maybe that was their sting - "if you feel you are the owner of the IPR of these documents please contact us so we can take the appropriate actions..."

Man cuffed for lamppost sex outrage

"Quite how you catch the clap from a hoover, we know not."

If you think about it it's obvious, and so's the solution - DON'T SHARE HOOVERS!

Apple iPhone storms world smartphone biz

Define Smartphone!

Just what defines a smartphone? Here's a few criteria that may apply

- full PDA functionality inc. synchronisation with standard servers

- running an 'open' platform with third party applications possible and available

- touch-screen and/or full keypad (e.g. QWERTY) interface

...or just any device that does a bit more than a cheap phone and possibly allows email access?

Nokia (and I'm not doubting the quality of their products) may stretch the definitions with some models; and as we know Apple falls foul of the open platform at present...