Posts by Gareth Gouldstone

COMET WILL DEFINITELY NOT HIT EARTH – NASA

This one, you mean?

http://9to5mac.com/2011/06/07/steve-jobs-presents-ideas-for-new-apple-super-campus-to-cupertino-city-council/

E.L.E.N.I.N.

Extinction Level Event, Nasty Impact Near

Linus Torvalds dubs GNOME 3 'unholy mess'

That's the attitude that creates this situation

Instead of thinking 'what is the best thing for usability?', the programmers think 'how do I want to implement this?'. In open source thinking, everyone can program and everyone will adapt the source to their taste. No wonder we are still waiting for Linux to take off with the general public!

Open source suffers from "'Cos we can" syndrome

Many open source projects suffer from this attitude. The programmers want to do 'clever' stuff and there is no-one to ask who it benefits (other than the clever programmers).

Just look at Python 3. They spend al the time messing around, adding in or removing clever features, when what we need is a stable, well-supported language which does not require scripts to be updated with each new release of the interpreter. What they should be doing is making sure that all the modules from Python 2 are updated to work with Python 3; but NO, that's not exciting enough, they need to add new niche features to a bloated language, just 'cos they can.

Moderatrix kisses the Reg goodbye

I trust the Cake and wine shop does well!

From an earlier comment:

Sarah Bee

Re: Happy are the days #

Posted Monday 25th January 2010 12:38 GMT

I can't wait for the day when comments are silenced. Then I'll be free to pursue my dream of opening a cake shop in Penrith (one that serves fine wine, obviously).

You'll be much missed!

Future of the cloud is hybrid

Duh!

Like we were EVER going to put everything on the fluff (sorry, Cloud).

As per, use what is appropriate, where it is appropriate, when it is appropriate.

Booze for wrinklies: Good or bad?

These are probably the same researchers

who suggest giving dementia patients Statins, so that they don't die a quick death of heart disease, but linger on for years with no quality of life.

Would you like a (small) glass of wine to wash your pills down, dear?

Does a flash motor make a man more desirable?

The admiration of gay bikers?

But only if you're wearing well-fitting leathers!

Yorks PC maker goes titsup owing £1m+

Confused anatomy

Does one have to be a contortionist to be able to go titsup and faceplant all in the space of the same article?

Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

I know ...

lets burn all the remaining oil, coal and trees to keep warm for the next 70 years.

70 years later as the earth warms up ...

No fuel for air-conditioning(or anything else, for that matter)

Mac OS X Lion to include browser-only boot

I guess ...

that this allows you to access the web to troubleshoot when your system goes wrong. How many times have you seen 'for help go to our support website' when the help you need is how to get connected.

Time to say goodbye to Risc / Itanium Unix?

According to Dennis Ritchie Linux IS UNIX

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix-like#Categories

iCloud: Big step for content management, but not for the cloud

Not about streaming!

The article twice mentions music streaming from the cloud. This is the largest misconception about iCloud.

It is all about SYNCing, nothing to do with STREAMing. All iCloud does is ensure all your iDevices (including Macs and PCs) are transparently synchronised. This may include your music, which does not have to be uploaded to iCloud if iTunes Match has a copy of all your tracks. If not, then only those non-matched tracks are uploaded, but ONLY for the purpose of re-synching back to other devices, not for streaming.

They want you to store data and use apps locally, otherwise you would not buy high-capacity iPhones etc, and would not pay for local apps.

To summarise, iCloud keeps your local off-line world in sync; it is not about the on-line use of data or applications.

Oxfam's 'Grow' world hunger plan: More peasants

Publicly admit

Because they they go on to try and solve a different problem, like global warming as a deflection from the REAL problem.

In Malthus' time ...

... there weren't 7-10 billion people to feed and fuel.

It's the scale of the problem, year after year.

Anyway, growth is the economists answer.

Realistically, how can you keep expanding and 'grow' your way out of over-population?

It's like suggesting that to deal with the pensions time-bomb we need to produce more babies to support the ageing population.

Admittedly, one day population growth will slow, but we will have long-ago exhausted the carrying capacity of the Earth, or more likely, been wiped out by disease or famine.

Or been demolished to make way for a by-pass ...

People have been suggesting a peak of 10 billion for a long time ...

if anything it was revised down to between 7.5 and 9 billion, which was plainly unrealistic.

@AC 13:36

Thanks.

Those articles look very interesting; certainly along the lines that I have been thinking since I was at school in the seventies (when the population was a mere 4 billion!). I shall enjoy reading them this eveving.

Cheers

Yet more deflection from the real problem

The real problem, that no-one is publicly prepared to admit, is over-population.

Global population is due to pass 7 billion later this year, and headed for 10 billion by 2050. Consider that after WW2, the population was only 2.5 billion, and we can see that shortages of everything are going to occur much sooner than we like to think.

Most of the world is not capable of sustaining the current large population, never mind producing more food, which will allow more reproduction which ....

Large areas of the world (including Europe) are, or will soon be, suffering water stress. Not enough fresh water for living, never mind for more intensive agriculture.

Current intensive farming using fertilisers is just stripping the existing land of nutrients. Once this land is exhausted, then a famine like nothing we have seen in history will occur.

So maybe it will all balance out in the end, and the population will return to a more sustainable level.

Windows 8: Microsoft’s high-stakes .NET tablet gamble

Windows 8 Tiled mode?

Oh, yes, i remember the Windows 1.x interface. Funny how, if you wait long enough, history repeats.

I wonder if we'll get Program Manager and File Mangler included?

Apple worth more than Microsoft and Intel combined

Remember this?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/23/iphone_will_fail/page2.html

Perhaps Apple do know what CONSUMERS want. That's why they make money.

Maybe we should all stop chucking vitriol and just use what suits our personal taste.

4G interference will knock out Freeview

Thank God (or the council) for conservation areas

Otherwise whole areas start looking like a Large Array Radio Telescope

I don't want a nasty satellite dish on my house ...

already got a digital-capable aerial, thanks!

MS announces Windows Phone 7.1

Dissuage

Most dictionaries don't define it. It sounds like a portmanteau of dissuade and assuage; to reduce the pain of discouragement, perhaps?

Reg ed rattles the Red-Headed League

As a gay man ...

I've often found ginger men attractive. I like big noses and sticky-out ears too.

Microsoft claims Windows Azure appliances exist

Names, names, names

Didn't we used to call the cloud 'mainframes'? Didn't we used to call cloud appliances 'terminals'?

"Get down from that cloud, someone needs the fluff!"

Train firm offers phone-based ticketing across UK

Product vs OS

People can actually buy an iPhone product. Where do I buy this mythical 'Android' product?

Oh, that's right, you mean one of the many products running Android OS.

For actual customers (as opposed to techies), that is an important distinction.

Broadband leads to drug abuse, say US boffins

Just think ...

if they spent half the money used to fight illegal drugs on producing a safe, legal high then they could tax it and watch the money roll in.

When will they learn the lessons of Prohibition? Human nature is such that people will always find some way of getting out of their nuts; much better that it is legal and known rather than illegal and unknown substances.

We could then have sensible conversations with our kids about how to safely use drugs, instead of letting them find out by trial and error.

Analyst says white iPhone 4 out next month

Everyone is so indifferent ...

that they feel the need to comment on their indifference!

Cure for BALDNESS causes IMPOTENCE, says new study

As a long-time baldy ...

I've always said keeping it clippered short is MUCH sexier than a delusional, whispy comb-over. Now we have the proof!

Fujitsu relieves Ballmer's iPad pressure

Nice that the wife has a say then...

That is all.

Denon Ceol with Apple AirPlay

Multi-room capabilities...

"You can play back through up to six sets of speakers simultaneously, though it won’t let you assign different tracks to different speaker sets at the same time, so it stops short of being a genuine Sonos-bothering multi-room system."

You can play different iP*d/PC/Mac sources through different Airport express-connected speakers, though, and use an iP*d as a remote control for the PC or Mac iTunes. I do this to 6 sets of speakers from 8 possible sources, all controlled from a single MacBook running Apple Remote Desktop.

All for MUCH less than a multi-room Sonos.

Apple seeks touchscreen display mouse patent

"Can I assume that those buttons will be present on a Mac laptop .. ?"

It's called a 'two-fingered tap' - these days abscence ... etc

Err ...

Apple have made multi-button mice since at least 2005. If you click on the left side, it does a left click; on the right side ... you get the idea.

These days absence of physical buttons does not indicate absence of functionality.

Just a wild guess, but ...

this would double as a remote control for Apple TV/iTunes/Media and also act as remote gesture mouse for sofa-surfing TV connected Macs.

LG uncloaks six-foot 3D TV

Is anyone dumb enough to buy this?

I have observed that intellect is inversely proportional to the size of installed TV, but there must be limits!

Hackers get to work with Apple's AirPlay

'Ello 'Ello

is this AirFlick ...

of the Gestapo?

Apple iPhone 4 vs... the rest

Re: Objective Testing Please

Not all of us want to be attractive to the **opposite** sex!

How about "which phone makes you most sexually attractive" ?

Windows hits 25

Simple Times

"At the time Windows was not intended to be networked - the only nod to connectivity was a simple terminal application - so it seemed unimportant."

Connectivity WAS unimportant - PC networking was barely heard of. Remember IBM PC LAN Program? Torus Tapestry? They were just being released, and took so much memory that you couldn't have loaded Windows at the same time, anyway!

Dial up modems? Acoustic couplers for your landline handset were the order of the day.

Security? That would be the lock on the office door, then,

Apple to lead fanbois 'Back to the Mac'

Shurely ...

... that would be OS XI ?

Baby Boomers committing suicide at unprecedented rates

Socially responsible adults, I say

This is simply the realisation that living to a 'ripe old age' is likely to mean dribbling and shitting your way off of this mortal coil at the expense of future generations and irreplaceable resources (oil for heating and washing). I would hope to choose a more dignified exit at a time of my own choosing, too.

Novell breakup and sale imminent, says report

One word - Xenix

They used to (co)own Xenix but they dropped it in favour of NT, so they'd never admit their mistake by adopting a Linux at this late stage in the game.

So who then owns the Unix IP?

As has (largely) been established, Novell still own Unix IP, so which bit of the company will take them (and the eternal litigation with SCO), I wonder? Who would want it?

Sony Bravia KDL-32NX503 32in LCD TV

Size Queenery

32" is more than adequate for the average living room!

Ballmer and Softies sacrifice sleep to catch iPad

MS's bad decisions are not new ...

... their first operating system was Xenix - and they sold it to (old)SCO.

iPads for hospitals: is this a good idea?

US -> UK

We don't have handball mittens, nor Emergency Rooms in the UK.

More likely to have cricket bats and Accident and Emergency.

Apple releases multi-touch 'magic' trackpad

GUI ... slows me down?

Any GUI will slow you down, that's why command line interfaces still exist (and why Macs work well with keyboard shortcuts - look them up).

Just learn the UI; it may be different from Windows/KDE/Gnome, but certainly no slower.

... indistinguishable from ..

As Arthur C Clarke said 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. For non-technical users, trackpads etc probably seem magical. Certainly the iP*d seems to fall into that category.

Vista-hating Microsoft throws poo at Apple's iPhone 4

Re: Dont upset ...

... as opposed to the Gatesian fan-bois, who love being upset!

Video calling impresses Brits, if it's Apple video calling

Individuality?

By that I take it you mean choosing to use Nokia or Wintel-based products?