Posts by Mark Dowling

Duke of Edinburgh gives spintronics researchers a pile of cash

Who put together this quantum state?

Looks like it was put together by a (insert ethnic group here)?

'London black cabs to go electric in 2 weeks' – Boris Guardian

Hybrid taxis

Seems to me that taxis in a Volt style setup should be able to keep the battery topped up without plug-in while stopped in ranks etc. It is certainly worth subsidising taxis or short hire cars like Zipcar or Autoshare over private cars for hybrid tech since most private cars spend 21 out of 24 hours a day parked.

As for electric - probably better to look at trolleybuses rather than a set of charging points which would be oversubscribed (like the Boris bike points at railway stations). The overhead wire would be problematic but perhaps Bombardier could be persuaded to adapt their PRIMOVE technology for high-density buses.

Telegraph to charge for online news

Sad to see, but probably inevitable

Torygraph was among the leaders in putting content on line, especially having internal links to archived related stories within article copy. Now everyone has caught up and money is tight.

Microsoft pings first Office 2010 service pack beta at testers

I'd rather Office 2007 Service Pack 3 please

The number of patches required to bring things up to speed now is crazy.

(Oh and XP Service Pack 4 would be nice too but I guess that's pushing my luck!)

Google snips Facebook's Gmail line

Good for Google

My data is my data not Zuckerberg's ... bitch.

Dell dumps RIM, saves fortune

How's that Streak thing going anyway?

Dell have yet to prove their bona fides on mobile platforms.

Shut up, Spock! How Battlestar Galactica beat Trek babble

Jump viewed inside the ship

Oh yes it was.

From within CIC when they jumped to the nebula

From within the baseship when the hybrid was jumping randomly.

Google releases stable version of Chrome 7

I just love the other Google Chrome feature

accidentally closing a multitab window without an option to confirm. Open Chrome again, click to reload all recent tabs, and sigh.

Opera: Can someone free Korea from IE?

Free trade INTO S Korea?

That'll happen. Right after Korean "safety regulators" find the iPad in their to-do list.

RIM goes for Documents To Go

Apple Store door slams in 5,4,3,2...

Just kidding Steve!

Google's Wave flop: Spare us the warm fuzzies

MMS

"while MMS is only eight years old and has 1.9 billion active users."

Really? I don't know anyone who uses MMS at all. Email, SMS and BBM, sure, but MMS?

Just wondering what "active" classifies as - ability to send, or actually sending.

Hands on with RIM's BlackBerry Torch 9800

Can't understand why RIM persist with Maps

Google Maps is so far ahead it's ridiculous. I guess they are now a competitor with Android but I load GMaps on any BB I get my hands on.

Blackpad to 'cost $500, launch in November'

killer schmiller

>> the only "iPad killer features" it may seem to provide at the moment are the front and rear facing cameras <<

Apart from the fact that it is almost certainly able to be managed by BES? Apart from being able to deploy apps without bowing to Lord Steve and his App Store? Apart from its security model which makes governments scared?

Retirees and 3 year olds aren't going to be buying these things - corporations are, and given Microsoft's inability to get its act together on a slate OS, the other option of a Win7 pad under AD/GP isn't around the corner.

On the other hand, Jim B - don't waste our time with something that has to be tethered.

Amazon's profit disappoints, thanks to Apple's iPad success

Here's a thought for Jeff Bezos

If you're doing the majority of your business outside the US, maybe you should start launching models outside the US, and let the US wait for the new graphite model instead of the other way round?

X-51 ordinary-fuel scramjet to fly on Tuesday

Takeoffs with a turbojet?

That should bring airport noise levels back to the 1970s in a hurry...

Vote Lib Dem, doom humanity to extinction

You can have a Navy or Trident. Pick one.

Which would contribute more to UK Defence Objectives in the next 30 years. More Astutes and Type 45s (among other conventional forces) or 3 Vanguard+ and a stack of Trident IIs. Pretty soon the RN will be 40 flag officers and 3 submarines - based in Scotland which will create England's own Guantanamo Naval Base, and just as unwelcome.

A multitasking iPad? Let's bin the netbook

A netbook that can't print?

Unless ol' Stevie has a plan to completely redo printing somehow (and let's face it innovation in that space would be welcome) it's a big PDA, not a netbook.

Microsoft to cough up surprise SQL Server 2005 SP4 furball

Many SME admins have no choice

They may run apps like Blackberry Enterprise Server which in an SME environment is used with SQL2K5 Express and have no option to upgrade

Star Trek to boldly go (again)

Borg - DO NOT WANT!

God almighty - the obsession with rebooting now exists within reboots!

Beeb reporter breaks Sonim's 'unbreakable' phone with fishtank

and of course being British

he immediately apologises having been given carte blanche...

Sarko gets crypto mobe after BlackBerry ban

Good enough for Obama

Another French Not Invented Here fail.

Boris bares data bunker

Sounds something similar to what Toronto is doing

See here:

http://www.toronto.ca/open/

BlackBerry outage hits America for second time in week

Stupid thing

If BBM is causing outages, block connections from buggy versions (or better yet - all versions). It's only IM so it's not like any of the traffic matters.

Apple said to have axed Atom support from OS X 10.6.2

were you asleep for the last time Apple allowed 3rd party h/w?

"Indeed, it's surely better for Apple to sell a copy of Mac OS X than have one of these guys run Linux or Windows on a machine Apple's going to make no money out of one way or the other."

Not if you're so obsessed with stability that you want to be gatekeeper of primary hardware. The guys who would hack their way to an OSX on non-Apple are the same ones who will bitch on the interwebs if there are any crashes.

Norway warns Amazon against Kindle launch

amazon's likely response

fine, we won't sell there, like Canada. Boo hoo.

Has IBM grown a new Lotus?

Notes 8 heavy?

@Phil Rigby - there's always the basic client - keep the server side improvements, client side stays at the 6.5/7 experience.

Microsoft enlists WSUS, ex-Superman, and puke in IE8 push

You can install IE8 via WSUS already

You just have to manually add it from the Windows Catalog to your WSUS server.

DataViz Documents To Go 1.0

has been on Blackberry for a while now

nice of Apple to catch up I suppose :)

http://www.dataviz.com/products/documentstogo/blackberry/techspecs.html

MPs slam 'disgraceful' Type 45 destroyers

Would the Aegis ships be fully capable?

The Americans have a tendency to try foisting "crippleware" and closed source codes on those who buy their stuff. (See F-22, F-35)

Microsoft abolishes Money

Why kill it?

If I was an MS shareholder, looking at all that shareholder value flushed down the tubes I'd be asking why Microsoft didn't spin out these products into a subsidiary "Softmicro" without all the overhead and organisation cruft of Microsoft. After all, shouldn't ongoing maintenance of these products be simpler than designing them from scratch?

They won't open them, they won't maintain them, they just dump them into the land of Abandonware. Idiots.

Apple adds 'S' to iPhone 3G

Next iPhone...

iPhone 3G SL

next one...

3G SLi...

Microsoft backs 'Bing' with big ad push

Bing?

Is that something to do with a weenus?

US students 'required' to buy iPhones

No wonder current journalism is fail

If this is the quality of people teaching it, no wonder the people doing it have failed their readerships so miserably in the last decade.

Renault intros e-MPV

Charging port?

Shouldn't the flap angle up, as a moisture deflector when refuelling during rain/snow?

Privacy watchdog barks for federal Gmail probe

oh, and give us and our mates $5m

58. Compel Google to contribute $5,000,0000 to a public fund that will help support research concerning privacy enhancing technologies, including encryption, effective data anonymization, and mobile location privacy.

Google mistakes entire web for malware

saw this when it happened

a copy and paste allowed me to keep working but I bet it would freak out non-techies...

Microsoft boasts 'out of box' IE8 clickjack protection

headline quotes in wrong place

Methinks it should have read:

Microsoft boast out of box IE clickjack "protection"

It's about as useful as the rhythm method is for preventing syphillis - if Microsoft's "add a tag yourself" solution worked we wouldn't need this new Compatibility Mode Update feature, would we?

'Miracle' plane crash was no miracle

"American Airlines"?

"I am certainly glad that pilot Chesley Sullenberger was at the helm. Like so many pilots at American Airlines, he's an ex-fighter pilot"

I thought we were discussing US Airlines?

Circuit City goes titsup

Canada

If The Source (Circuit City's Canada ops) goes under, Best Buy should be forced by the Competition Bureau to spin off Future Shop - should never have been allowed buy them in the first place

Retired army generals: Spend Trident money on the army

Useless

Falklands, Kosovo, GWI, GWII, Afghan, Sierra Leone - what use was the Vanguard fleet for any of them? Add to that it has a Scottish base so if they get their independence and decide to close Rosyth what then?

Spend the money on more Astutes and Tomahawk missiles if it has to be spent on subs - a far more credible stick to threaten anyone with than an ICBM.

Redmond security guru explains IE vuln miss

Hire some hackers perhaps?

Seems odd that so many people can find ways to expose bugs in IE but MS' code tools can't. Maybe relying on build code tools is the wrong approach and they should look at how those who expose their bugs are testing for them.

The Mac OS 10.5.6 update saga continues

move the plugins in the file system?

You mean Apple hasn't got an equivalent to Firefox's Add-in manager where you can simply disable them? Weak.

iPhone gets virtual Windows desktop

counterproductive

"Just last night my wife needed to scan something on my PC (she's a Mac person). I had to talk her through it on my mobe. If I had an iPhone + RDP I could have just done it for her.

Not sure how to operate my scanner over SSH if I'm honest."

Sounds like the kind of capability which will mean the people you give tech support to will never bother learning how to do stuff because you can do it for them anywhere anytime.

RIM officially unveils Javelin

At least with RIM, you have a choice.

They offer touchscreen, qwerty and flip - which is more than can be said for the Jesus Phone.

MacBook buyers bite Apple over copy protection cock-up

You're assuming this isn't deliberate

Why would apple buy free monitors for its users? It has adopted an aggressive "my way or the highway attitude" to stuff like interoperability between iTunes content and other manufacturers' devices, so why can't we assume that Jobs hasn't cocked up, he is playing to the RIAA/MPAA gallery to ensure no threats to his precious media distribution game.

All the Apple zealots will bitch and moan... even as they hand over their credit cards to the "Genius" behind the Apple Store counter.

Retro piracy - Should the Royal Navy kick arse?

Where's the tech content here?

Lewis Page on another rant - yawn.

iPhone beats RIM for reliability, sales, consumer favour

Blackberry reliability

Ones which "broke" just as successor models like Curve and Bold came out shouldn't count :)

On a more serious point, most BB failures of those I manage are wheels, buttons and so on. RIM offers form factor choice Apple doesn't yet, and with the Storm is now matching the touchscreen offering.

UK asks to buy next-gen spy planes from US

"next-gen"?????

Lewis Page - how is a converted tanker (model first flight 1956!) "next gen"?

If HMS Victory had state of the art sonar and a couple of depth charges fitted, would that make it a "next gen sub hunter"?

Apple shares plunge after Jobs 'heart attack'

Anything free worth what was paid for it

Has Lou Dobbs even checked that this poster was in fact a citizen and not one of them job stealin' furriners?

Note to CNN: when you cut journalist jobs in favour of so-called citizen journalism, that's what happens.

Orange can't find BlackBerry maps

Google limited?

I always found Blackberry Maps inferior to Google's... not to mention that the latter can do direction finding without GPS.