Posts by Max

Google lets you code for Googlephones on Googlephones

If only

If only I could write some Java on my Blackberry for my Blackberry. All that time spent on the train/in the car/standing in queues/etc I could have written so many wonderful apps.

RIM are you listening?

Cobol hits fifty

@Roll on Cobol.NET

Too late!

http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/nrsurapaneni/4MSNET12052005053040AM/4MSNET.aspx

LG shines light on world's brightest 3D TV

Headache box

These flat panel 3D screens are nothing but headache boxes. The 3D is achieved by first showing the frame for the left eye, then the frame for the right, back and forth lots of times. Unless they have fixed the 'switch' rate, or whatever you call the time it takes to go from right to left and back, then no dice. On the versions that I saw last year the switch was much too slow and though it did appear to be 3D (which was cool), you couldn't look for more than a few seconds without overloading your vision and shutting your eyes in pain.

Videogame history project successfully emulates CRT on LCD

@ Matt

Also dont forget...skipping eating lunch at school and using your dollar to play a couple quick games.

Web 0.2 archivists save Geocities from deletion

Thanks!

I havent seen that Netscape gif in ages!

China goes gung-ho for EVs

USA

Thanks for the article. Hopefully - with GMC being changed, the US will take a similar approach, and get a head start as well. I see no point in moving GMC forward with taxpayer money if it continues to churn out petroleum based fuel guzzlers.

EU: Our Members need 'increased wood'

Very interesting

Reading this article led me to trying to do some estimates and I found this very helpful guide for forestry and carbon relations:

http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2_now/journal/articles/2_global_warming.htm

Google, Mozilla back 3D interwebs

Ummmm, VRML?

Has this standard not been around for at least 15 years?

Boffin builds DIY solar cell from doughnuts and tea

Brilliant!

More articles like this please :)

Microsoft promises 'lessons learned' on IE 8 download day

I have an idea

IE8 should default to show web standards. The people who want to deviate from standards should be the ones inserting the tag into their code!

Great Aussie firewall claims first victim

Do you hear that?

Its the sound of free speech dying.

Mobile companies unite on Apple - Google threat

iPhone, for business users?

"at least in the iPhone's case - slowly establishing a firm challenge in the smart-phone market for business users"

Not likely. I don't know any self respecting business user who would rely on an iPhone to handle their business needs. Sure its great for farting applications and playing music, but have you every tried to type 30 emails an hour on a touch screen iPhone that doesn't even cut and paste? 'nuff said.

As for Eclipse, I've used it before and was not very impressed. Mind you that was four years ago so things may have changed. If it makes it easier for me to develop Blackberry apps though, I'll give it a go.

Orange and Barclaycard partner on touchless pay-by-phone tech

Please make a note:

That your credit/debit card and the cash in your pocket never run out of power.

I'll stay with cash and off the grid, thanks.

Snacker discovers Nokia phone in crisp packet

ROTM?

Surely the unsuspecting woman could have been poisoned or attacked by an unsafe knockoff battery crisp 'surprise'?

Canadian prof: Green IT is a waste of time

What a terrible attitude

If you are a professor and go about thinking "lets not bother fixing A because B, C, and D are still broken anyway", what does that tell us?

The reality is that IT, Cars, Planes and just about every other bit of technology needs to start becoming much more energy efficient. And this efficiency is needed now.

Additionally, we are at a time when the economy could use a boost from new innovation and energy efficient design. I wouldn't call the opportunity a win-win, because we are still losing the climate battle, but it is an opportunity that must be seized immediately.

Saying it is a waste of time to fix one is not only silly, its dangerous.

Life hands Sun steaming sack of...

Market

You will never see either Java or Flash on an iPhone...because both allow app developers to circumvent Apples lock on what is allowed to run on it or not.

The people who use Blackberries don't care if Java or Flash runs on their phone because they are too busy emailing.

Whether or not you see it on Windows Mobile phones doesn't matter because if you are developing an app to run on a windows mobile phone you WILL use the Microsoft framework

You *will* see it on Symbian that owns more than 50% of the Market share though...but people are only going to use it to develop another version of tetris and snake.

Satellites crash over Siberia: Iridium bird destroyed

Superman

I hope this hasn't put any of you folks off satellites. Statistically speaking, its still the safest way to communicate.

NASA ponders Spirit's erratic behaviour

@Mr Lodestone

You beat me to it!

The Onion truly is America's finest news source.

RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900

3G

I own a Bold (got it in October). I love it. Best phone I ever owned.

However, having 3G turned on sucks the battery down much too quickly. I switched off 3G, still get my data at a reasonable rate, and now the battery lasts 2.5 days instead of 1.

That being said, I can safely say that RIM probably realized this and just left it off the Curve, allowing for a reduced price point and a (default) higher battery life.

Obama: 1m electric cars on US roads by 2015, please

@Why electric?

My guess on this is the following: (a) most people don't know/care about the difference between hydrogen/hybrid/electric as long as it saves them money and relieves the dependence from foreign oil, and (b) 'elecrtic' is just generalizing to keep it simple for the masses, saying anything else may cause confusion. I'm sure if someone can create a hydrogen hybrid engine to get 150mpg by 2015, the administration will be equally as happy as if someone reaches the same goal with biodiesel or any another non fossil fuel derivative.

Although I don't know enough about the technical details of getting a vehicle up to that efficiency, I am somewhat skeptical of the very tight timeframe. Lets just hope he doesn't expect Ford or GM to innovate at that pace and give them money to do so. As the innovation will most likely come from a fast moving startup or individual.

In any case, I don't know of a single middle class American who wouldn't trade in their current vehicle for a shiny new gas saver and $7000 cash...so the proclamation definitely hits the right spot!

Rapists should be raped, declares Jordan

Hmmm.

Kent Brockman: At the risk of editorializing, these women are guilty, and must be dealt with in a harsh and brutal fashion. Otherwise, their behavior could incite other women leading to anarchy of biblical proportions.

[pause, pounds desk]

Kent Brockman: It's in "Revelations", people.

LG shows off quad-band GSM watchphone

FINALLY!

That is hot. We've only been waiting since Dick Tracy to get one of these.

Now give me my flying car you slackers...

Hitachi highlights gesture-controlled HD TV

Warning!

Not to be used by any family who under normal circumstances fights for control of the remote.

US teen clocks up 14,528 text messages

Math

Estimation: 14000 texts in 30 days, 16 waking hours a day = approximately one text every two minutes for a month.

Zavvi goes titsup

Hmmm

I was in a Zavvi 3 days ago...buying some good DVDs for practically nothing, and the queue was out the door. Its a shame that these shops are going bust especially at the high point of retail. Woolworth's prices on Music and Video were always criminal but Zavvi actually had some good deals going.

Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

"I think it's an issue of fairness."

Hmmm.

There needs to be some legislation put in place immediately to prevent things like this. Who is to say that he will stop with BitTorrent? What if inf the future (when its available) I subscribe to a valid HD movie download service that uses just as much bandwidth? Why does he get to decide what is "fair"?

Chip boffins hone silicon-brain interface

17 years?

This seems like a giant step done since 1991:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/07/rat_brain_flies_jet/

First steps with offline Silverlight and Live Framework

title

Hi Tim, I am doing something similar but until your article have not been aware of Silverlight/Livemesh offline and your approach souds very appealing to me. I am currently writing some software (trying to write it at least!) on the CTP and it has been a bit of a headache due to much of what you stated in the article. When I have something worthwhile I was planning on writing up a step-by-step for CodeProject, but it will be mostly about Azure, ASP.NET, and SDS (not silverlight or livemesh). Since it looks like you have a bit more of a headstart on offline Silverlight/Livemesh would you be willing to share a step-by-step with the rest of us? I already have the CTP invite and am about 1/10th of the way to deploying a somewhat stable simple alpha app.

Many thanks!

You can also see a comment I posted to a cloud Reg item here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/12/cloud_computing/

Any clouds in your sky?

Azure

I am planning to develop real applications on Azure with SDS and .NET. I got a CTP invitation and am playing around with it now and working on navigating through all the preview-level nightmares that typically comes with an alpha level release of this scale. Documentation is sparse and I've had to cautiously install lots of 'This code is not trusted' sort of things to get it to work just on my dev environment. Hopefully soon I will have something worthwhile to post to the CTP hosted environment, and it will most likely be accompanied with a CodeProject or similar article of lessons learned, what to do, and what not to do.

So far as I can tell, SaaS will work very nicely through Azure.

Concerning sensitive data being hosted in the cloud, if it is held with a respected host (MS/Google/SalesForce/Amazon), I don't see small to medium biz minding too much about it because the cost tradeoff is enormous. As for the enterprise, they might be a bit more cautious and have the cash and infrastructure to host in house anyway, so I don't see it catching on for enterprise critical apps anytime soon.

Harvard prof slams US nut allergy hysteria

Sadly reminds me of the old but true joke

Of the back of the peanut bag saying "WARNING: CONTAINS NUTS"

A380 too quiet, moan Emirates pilots

Use my technique

When I'm on a flight and need my peace and quite, I use wax earplugs and noise reduction headphones. I can't hear a thing!

WowWee Rovio Mobile webcam

Is it hackable and how loud is it?

Is it easily hackable? If it is possible to easily DIY the speaker and flashlight then might be worth it as a good toy. Also, what level of 'stealth' does it have? Meaning is it silent enough to sneak in on the wife unannounced for a good prank?

250 quid is a bit expensive, but I bought the first version of the Robosapien four or so years ago when it first came out, and I loved it. The price point seemed a bit high at the time but once it was in my hands I saw that it was just about right as the construction was so good. Wowwee made good impression on me back then and I keep following up on their products, even though I am still waiting for my next purchase.

MIT boffins crack fusion plasma snag

500 years later...

Boffin1: "Great, the oceans are almost dry. What are we going to do now?"

Boffin2: "If those fools in the 21st century had actually thought about that we wouldn't be in this situation."

Boffin3:"Look on the bright side, now I can DRIVE to Australia"

Seriously though our energy problems will only truly be solved once we can extract energy from a resource that has either (a) an "infinite" supply, (b) a detrimental effect on society (i.e. waste), (c) can be recreated from something else, or (d) something that the later generations will have to worry about :)

In any case this will make it much easier for my generation and my children's generation so I'm all for it!

Microsoft preps IE 8 for the web-challenged

Javascript?

So they've made it W3C compliant on the CSS and HTML standards, bravo, but what about Javascript? Did they finally kill 'document.all' etc.?

New .tel domains bid to be world's phone book

@Marty

Tarry a little; there is something else.

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood;

The words expressly are 'a pound of flesh:'

Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;

But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed

One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods

Are, by the laws of El Reg, confiscate

Unto the state of El Reg.

£280?? You must be joking

That's a completely ridiculous price! Even the annual 15 quid is outrageous when a .co.uk domain is only £2.

Why can't there just be a standardized XSD to define contact details with a pre-agreed filename like 'contacts.xml', keep it in the root directory of your site, and the search engines/people follow that (along the lines of something like sitemap.xml)

Their argument is if you change your .com or .co.uk domain you should update it in the .tel? Bah! Pure nonsense! Pure overkill! Pure outrage!

M42 closed by marshmallows and beer

There was also a massive collision between a berry truck and a sugar truck down the road

It caused a real traffic jam.

Bittorrent declares war on VoIP, gamers

Highway Patrol

We will learn from history. I think what is happening to the internet now is similar to what happened when cars were invented. All of a sudden it became necessary to have highway patrol to make sure people were not speeding or driving like lunatics. The same may happen to the way people use the internet and it will be the death of net neutrality, in the same way that morons who drive drunk at 150mph ruin it for the rest of us.

I use a bit of torrent now and again, and I don't mind if my ISP realizes that and throttles me during torrent use...and if it deciphers my packets to see if I am using VoIP instead, and lets that through a little smoother, then hooray for them and everyone wins.

Jerks that feel they have the right to suck up bandwidth by constantly downloading everything under the sun at full capacity need a speeding ticket, or maybe even a revoked license.

SanDisk flash holds secret flash sauce till after Christmas

Performance

"but customers aren't going to buy the SSDs unless performance is overall way better than hard drives"

Not me! If I get a significant battery life boost from using flash with the same cost as HDD, even with worse performance, then I will gladly pony up for it.

For now I wouldn't be using this in a desktop/server but in a notebook it would be perfect. Hopefully though one day the performance will be up to par and it can replace HDD to make us more "green".

The Tzu Chi Foundation – the world’s largest Buddhist charity

More articles like this please!

See title.

The Apple Armada - Still worthy of the Jolly Roger?

@Nuno

As everyone knows, the less Pirates there are...the worse Global Warming gets.

http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/001857.php

Not sure about the charities though :)

...the one with pasta in the pockets.

Dassault to build aerospace-factory Sims

Also

If their kit gets Hijacked by Somali pirates the simulation can be turned into a FPS for a reclaiming mission.

The madness of 'king cores

You are correct, for now.

Firstly, the current software industry needs the proper tools. There are a bunch out there already and more are coming into play and improving every year, but for now most programmers are still thinking top-down and OOP.

Speaking as a coder trying to break into parallel and multithreaded design, it is fucking hard to switch. You find yourself going into old habits and trying to cut corners because thats what you know. Its like trying to learn how to ride two bikes at the same time where your only experience is racing F1. The change needs to start from the beginning. Don't teach BASIC to the kids anymore, teach parallel C.

Once the tools are in place and a new generation of coders comes along who were nurtured with those tools and styles from the get-go, you will see the change. Don't hold your breath though, give it at least another 15-20 years for it to be ubiquitous.

I don't think Intel and the like should stop increasing cores. Absolutely not. Because once the software industry finally catches up, the structure will be in place and all of a sudden everything will be running millions of times faster.

Teen hacker confesses three-year crime spree

Never let this person touch a computer again.

See title.

El Reg seeks top net neologism

Cewebrity

I, Max, am claiming credit to forming this word 2 years ago.

CEWEBRITY: Any person who becomes famous only on the web yet their existence goes unnoticed in normal society.

IBM employee poaching suit hypes Apple

If his employment is ultimately blocked...

I'll hire him :)

Google shares plummet past $300, reach three year low

Christmas

They actually think ad revenue will be going down during craze-mas holiday spending?

'Jaguar' Cray hypercomputer beats 1.3 petaflops

HOORAY!

I have always been rooting for Cray and I hope this gives them the boost they need.

Captain Cyborg to chew the fat with Ultra Hal

Easy...

Just give both the Voight-Kampff test and see which one goes mad :)

Attention developers: Your SESSIONIDs are showing

My very simple method:

Generate a GUID, store the GUID in the session cookie. Store the GUID coupled with the requesting IP address on the server.

Get the IP and the GUID from the cookie for each request, compare it to what is stored on the server, and give/deny access based on that.