Posts by Peter D'Hoye

Google finally pulls Gmail contacts tool into line

sync

has been woking great for me, both to my home pc and my n900....

Top Solaris developer flees Oracle

If it's a manager, who cares..

Looks like he was in charge of Solaris for only a short time, and mainly as manager. I doubt his departure will make a difference other than the size of his paycheck.

Neuroscientist: iPhone 4's 'Retina display' not bullsh*t

So what?

So what if the resolution is that high? It's also pretty useless.... On my n900 (800x480), I also can't see the pixels, or can zoom out so that the text becomes so small I can't read it (and no, that isn't because there are not enough pixels to create the small letters).

Same goes for my 19" 1600x1200 desktop screen and 1920x1200 15" laptop LCD (3 years old!).

Did Apple just invent something new? Nope. LCD tech has had enough resolution for years.

I would compare this as to putting a 1000HP engine in a small car. Technical marvel? Probably. Useful? Nope.

Maybe Apple should concentrate on making their screens perfectly readable in sunlight (high-fives to the transflective TFT of the n900!), or antenna design (har har)

Apple marketing speak. Nothing to see, move along...

Apple's iOS 4 beams into unprepared world

Get an n900

Nice to see you get so excited over these features. My n900 has had that *basic* stuff since launch :P

Hands on with Nokia's flagship N8

@The Original Steve

"Although it's not released yet, and my 6 week old HTC Desire (with 1ghz CPU, 576Mb RAM and 3D Acceleration) tops the spec's already..."

Yes, but that runs *java*, so it needs the CPU power to crawl along...

sent from my n900

(not really, but could have)

Fanboi's lament – falling out of love with the iPad

One advice

Get an n900.... screen may be smaller but you see almost the same as on an ipad. And it fits in your pocket. And you can actually do stuff with it. And it does flash well :)

Google misses German regulator Street Car Wi-Fi data grab deadline

Two things

1) above posters assuming Google collected the data on purpose. If they did, why would they come out with this now, and why did they only collect 600GB in 30 countries. That's peanuts, and probably consists only of 1 or 2 IP packets per AP. What would they do with that? Nothing.

Google was trying to map AP names to GPS locations to allow yet another way of getting your position (for google maps et al). If THAT rises privacy concerns to you, please do not visit sites like http://wigle.net - wifi spots have already been recorded by many, why can't Google.

2) If Google hands over the data to Germany without analyzing it themselves, they might hand them data from other countries too. They should indeed just delete the data and get on with it. Any further processing or moving around of this unwanted data is plain stupid.

oh, I actually have a third one. For the paranoid idiots above. Get a life.

Nokia and Intel defensive on MeeGo Linux patents

Nokia already has a Linux initiative going

it is called maemo, and runs fine on my n900

0/10 for doing proper research...

Jobs: One million iPads sold

Not surprised

The success of the iphone already showed there's more than a million iDiots in the world. There are in fact many more, so things are looking bright for Jobs...

Microsoft: 'Prepare for 15 billion more clients'

Starting to happen???

MS is several years behind *again*.... Embedded devices have been around for quite some time now, and so have updates and security concerns for them.

Google Chrome OS to route print jobs around planet

Simpler explanation

Maybe it is to get past firewalls easier? Both parties connect to the server (outgoing, so no problem usually), and the data can then be routed over it.

I'm personally getting fed up by these paranoid google bashers (Cade Metz & co included). They aren't doing this to look at the printing data, they are punting this as a solution to the obvious printing problem in a cloud based system (hint: the source of the print command could in the future come from the cloud (google docs))

MSN, Jabber, IRC... all go through a server. Google is just another company using the same concept...

Adobe man to Apple: 'Go screw yourself'

easy

stop bringing out new versions of all your products for Apple, and give windows and linux users the great new stuff. Then watch all professional users walk away from Apple (and let them keep their low-IQ fanboiz)

Why the Google antitrust complaint is not about Microsoft

MapQuest sucks

"Google Maps' rise at the expense of former market leader MapQuest is well-documented, and the filing argues it would be unwise to say this can be attributed to the superior design of Google's mapping service"

Oh come on... I was a MapQuest fan and regular user, and the day Google Maps came along, I didn't hesitate to switch at once.

MapQuest development was 0 (zero). The interface was old and slow. And the Google Maps showed up: easy to enter addresses, dragable routes,... MapQuest lost because of their own faults.

El Reg insults 'millions of Irish Catholics'

See? Even El Reg is Evil!

How does that feel, El Reg?

World of Google zombies mistake news story for Facebook

I wouldn't call them Google zombies

But it rather shows the average intellectual capacities of people who use facebook ;)

Google will build 1Gbps fiber networks to the home

El Reg making up stories again...

So where does Google say they are going to do deep packet inspection of internet traffic? Nowhere.

On the other hand, there are several big providers that have such systems in place right now, but they can get away with it because they are not called Google. *sigh*

I's about time somebody offers good internet connection speeds at a good price. I'm sure that the offer Google is preparing will cause the other ISPs to change their offerings too. Can only be a good thing....

Where do I sign in for affordable high speed internet?

Full-body scanner blind to bomb parts

Please learn to understand German...

Some important facts told in the clip:

1. the normal routine would also include a side scan, not just front/back

2. the scan is always done without jacket. The pockets of his jacket were floating in the air, not blocking any body heat.

Also, this is just a thermal measuring system, not really an active scanner that emits radiation to scan through everything.

More MIDs with ARM than Atom by 2013

@ linux posters

The problem with linux is always the same: usability. Linux still isn't where Windows was 5-10 years ago in terms of usability and integration. People need more than stability and security. As long as linux distro's stay a bunch of different tools and apps thrown together on a kernel, The MS and Apple guys will keep smiling...

(yes, I know linux, my main desktop and laptop run it)

Steve Wozniak, your time is up

#define El Reg APPLE_FANBOIS

Another proof that El Reg has become a bunch of sorry Apple fanbois... I already missed some Google bashing in the article, maybe the writer forgot to copy it from the main El Reg share of Google bashing articles?

The only one kicked down by this article as El Reg itself, not Woz. If this continues like this, I'll just stop reading and go to another news site.

You and what Android? The Google iPhone killer that isn't

iPhone game changer?

The iPhone? I mean, this crappy hardware (look at the screen resolution! Comes nowhere near the 800x480 I'm used to) and look at the crappy OS (what, no multitasking? No copy/paste until recently?)

The iPhone is also full of USELESS gimmicks, like that multi-touch pinch and rotate. Why would you want to look at a picture under an angle of 23 degrees on such a low-res screen anyway? There is only one way a photo should be shown on a mobile screen, and that is the way it fits best. Why didn't Apple think of that, huh? Because my WinCE PDA already does it for 6 years (on a better screen too, mind you!)

I really don't get how people (including the El Reg Google Bashers) can talk so good of the iphone and come down so hard on Google. I wonder what the real motives are behind this. I'd guess the El reg journalists all have a free iPhone from Apple....

Google Chrome OS goes native (code)

bull....

ActiveX/Flash/Compuserve/... were/are closed systems, vendor lock-in. Google has the code open, so there can and will be ports to other browsers.

They are just creating an open system, but I see you'd rather use closed systems just because they are more popular at the moment or come from your dear friends at MS/Adobe/...

Google expands plan to run own internet

By having a DNS service they control the internet???

The article mentions three times that this DNS service gives them more control. In what way exactly? You type the name of the site and they return the IP address. They can't really get redirected to another site, right? That's something you'd probably notice ;)

Anything else interesting in this article? Nah...

Imation notebook flash upgrade as easy as pi to 30 places

Uncabling the harddrive?

notebook drives - certainly SATA ones - are just plug and play. Most of them are removed by removing two screws and sliding it out on the side. WOW!

El Reg--; //again

Apple cult leader emails outside world

Actually....

Apple just has a huge problem with their email systems, and this is the second mail of a few thousands that actually managed to reach its recipient.

Google and the myth of the open cloud

Can we stop the Google bashing now?

It looks to me that some people (including this author) will never be satisfied with what Google offers or does. If you look at the vast amounts of services and software this company shares for free, and the amount of money it invests in Open Source, I am not surprised that it equally has the right to hold on to its own secrets in order not to be cloned by another company taking the gems and using them.

I'm quite happy with what Google offers, and what they offer for free is often much better than what other companies sell you. So shut up and enjoy the goodies.

Google gives Voice to 'open standard Skype'

startup?

I've been using Gizmo for years...

Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

Mixed results

Upgraded two systems last weekend. One went smooth, no issues. The other gave me a blank screen. Turned out to be an issue with the AMD/ATI catalyst drivers. Went back to a clean X conf file, and when that gave me back my gui, I re-installed catalyst. Worked fine.

So a minor (but for inexperienced users FATAL) hiccup

I have to say that some of the features in 9.10 feel less than properly tested.

Gmail users howl over Halloween outage

GMail works very well

Didn't see any problems, it is at least as reliable as the services I pay for at my ISP...

Google finds voice to respond to FCC

So how does this continue?

I find it really stupid to push things like that for what is a free service. If they force Google to unblock, what do you think will happen? They'll either start charging money or stop the whole thing. In both cases the consumer is the loser.

It is time the regulator thinks about the consumers....

Nokia N900 delayed

n900 is pretty good, actually

I've been able to play (shortly) with an n900 last weekend at the Google SoC mentor summit. As an n810 owner not really being happy about the firmware and its support, I had told myself never to buy from Nokia again. But the n900 was a positive surprise, and they certainly learned a lot about the mistakes they made in the n8x0.

James Martin apologises for cyclist outrage

I hate them too....

As somebody who uses his bike every day to go to work, I have to say that the guy is 100% right. Most of those cyclist drive as if they own the road, and give us (normal) cyclists a bad reputation.

Microsoft tells US retailers Linux is rubbish

Time for Linux to wake up

As much as I hate the tactics used by MS, their facts are not far from the truth. I moved to 100% linux (ubuntu 9.04) some time ago, and there is *a lot* of work on usability in Linux. A LOT.

Also, my printer is 'supported' but the quality is crap, so I have XP in a VM whenever I need to print pictures.

Video chat indeed doesn't work well, or try to find *any* open client that combines IM and VOIP well. Only one is available (empathy) and they are STILL busy fixing their bugs to get VOIP to work well.

NONE of the email clients comes close to what outlook offers. Can you imagine that the thunderbird addressbook doesn't have a field for birthdays? This is 2009, you stone-aged idiots. It will be supported in a few months. Wow.

Sometimes I think of handing MS the money and install windows. Just to get my work done instead of fiddling with linux for hours to get it working the way it should.

'External force' fractured French iPhones, says Apple

Independent research???

Why aren't these phones examined by an independent org? It's easy for Apple to get away with it like that, just blame the users... And the ones they have now can be manipulated now to be like they say they are...

Pillar first past 2TB post

reliability?

QNAP just removed those 2TB drives from their compatibility list following a series of reports by users about data corruption or unusable drives...

I'd wait a bit before trusting my data to those beasts

Nokia announces Linux-based smartphone

@Pete 2

Actually, if there's one thing I am positive about, it's the screen. 800x480 is usable for a lot of things, and the n810 has a hardware button on the site to ALT-TAB the open programs.

It almost has the resolution of a netbook, but this one goes into you pocket!

So please only comment if you have actually *ever* used such a device please

not a phone at all

Ever come near an N8x0 tablet (previous generations)? It looks more like a pc than a smartphone, and it lacks the usability of one too.

I seriously hope Nokia gets its act together on this N900, because the SW of the previous models sucked BIG time. I' still waiting on Mer/UbuntuMID to mature to finally take advantage of this expensive toy after more than a year.

And the new version that comes with the N900 isn't even compatible with the previous models. Thank you Nokia, why should I upgrade hardware after being treated like that?

Nokia launches laptop

@Ian Michael Gumby

The n810 could have been a winner if it had some usable software, like good PIM apps, and a browser that doesn't run out of memory on every second site.....

MS and Sophos incompatible over Win 7 XP Mode

It still is an ugly kludge

And Sophos has a point....

Qnap TS-219P Turbo Nas

Reasons I went for a QNAP NAS and not a PC as server

Sure you can put together a small pc cheaper and use it as server, but in the end I bought a QNAP NAS and am happy with it:

- small footprint

- reasonably fast

- reasonably silent

- low power (and this ARM version needs much less power than the atom one!)

- hackable out of the box, but already very complete

Ten of the best... Core i7 CPU coolers

Worthless list since the best cooler is missing!

0/10 for doing your research properly.... here are some extra links you really should have checked:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_Heatsinks

http://www.prolimatech.com/products/megahalems.html#

http://www.silentpcreview.com/prolima-megahelams

NASA fires up the 'interplanetary internet'

@AC

Actually, why not launch a satellite with a big server in it and let that serve files ;)

Could be used on earth as well

Quite a number of ADSL users with crappy lines could use this too ;)

Mozilla's servers wobble as Firefox 3.5 hits interwebs

Little lie down?

As I read this article, I tried to download and it came in at about 450KB/s, not bad for a little lie down

Is Ocarina missing a trick?

Ocarina?

Am I the only one who read this as 'Octarine'?

Panasonic patches cameras to block rivals' batteries

EU sanctions

in 3...2...1... :)

Nokia's next-gen tablet OS uncovered?

Fake...

Looks pretty fake to me. And the weird screenshot size is another clue. http://www.internettablettalk.com/ has more info on the next gen and is probably much more correct.

LaCie's xbig products get bigger

So....?

What's so new about this? QNAP for example has had this for almost a year, and at this moment already offers a 6-bay and 8-bay model supporting 12 and 16 TB respectively.

I thought the article would have read that LACIE *finally* introduces 10TB model....

And I don't think that you'll get any RAID protection if you want 10TB, since that is just 5x2TB in JBOD configuration (linear volume).

Microsoft to spin out more non-update Windows 7 updates

Firefox 3.5beta has had the same

This is not uncommon, at some point, I saw my my Firefox 3.5beta tell me it had a test update that contained no functional changes.

UK spectrum map uncovers mysterious emissions in Cumbria

@spectrum map requesters

At least you can use this for wifi:

http://www.wigle.net/

Virgin Media pilots 200Mbit service

And upstream speeds?

Upstream speeds are never mentioned, and always turn out to be crap. My ISP (telenet), for example, claims to be the fastest ISP here, yet offers a silly 512kbps uplink speed (1mbit available if you really have too much money). Try sending a couple of pictures from your DSLR to a local photoshop with that speed....