Posts by Steve John

Educating Rory: Are BBC reporters unteachable?

Real coders getting sniffy...

I think RCJ would get a bit sniffy if I called myself a journalist after writing a blog.

HTC Ice Cream Sandwich updates slip to late March

Hardware won't update...

Downloading ICS won't magically add the hardware required for NFC. If you want that functionality, it's time for a new phone.

The best sci-fi film never made: Also-rans take a bow

Neal Asher

Just finishing the last but one of his Polity novels (The Technician) and the last one is in the post from Amazon (Hilldiggers). All have been stonking good reads. Prador Moon, Shadow of the Scorpion and The Skinner stand out for me.

Apple frees iOS 4.3 two days before iPad 2 Arrival™

Rotation lock switch

is what I'm most pleased about. Using it as mute was pointless given there is a volume rocker right next to it.

Our PARIS becomes GLOBAL MEDIA SENSATION

Well done chaps...

Just saw you on the BBC 6 o'clock news. Good work!

Duracell MyGrid cable-free gadget charger

Pointless

Given that you have to put the devices *on* the mat & encase your gadget with something that increases its bulk, I really don't see the point in these. I just got one of those iDapt things you guys reviewed recently, and I think it's great. Tidied away all our chargers and just use the iDapt - don't have to put a stupid case around the gadget either.

Femtocells outnumber proper mobe towers in US

UMA

Orange offer UMA which routes calls over your home WiFi. They don't seem to shout about it though - I found out from a friend. I'd love to use it, have a dreadful signal at home but my Android handset doesn't support it.

Java surpasses Adobe kit as most attacked software

Um...

So, your server side Java doesn't require a JRE then?

Papers laud publication of DIY Dalek plans

Hmm

Why is The Doctor running towards a giant wheetabix?

App steers cyclists away from traffic, upward inclines

@AC & cyclestreets

Nice one. I'll check it out. :-)

Sounds great...

... when's the Android version coming though? :-(

Limbo

Looks brilliant...

... hope it comes to PC or PS3. Don't have an XBox.

iPhone 4 developers get software update, but will it fix death grip?

Umm

"So, for most people in most situations, it's much better than their old phone"

What if their previous phone wasn't an iPhone - then surely it could be worse!

Captions

Couldn't be arsed to plug in my headphones, so watched the vid with the automatically transcribed captions. I prsume the following captions were supposed to be iPhone 4:

- I found four.

- Night phone.

- Knife on.

- Knife and fork.

Brilliant.

Student's brilliant idea: A peer-to-peer social network

4OD

It's been available on 4OD for the past week.

Microsoft cuts 'Series' lump from Windows Phone 7

7 Series

Or BMW.

iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare

Flash video re-coding...

... to what - Quicktime absolutely stinks. As buggy and resource hungry as Flash!

Avatar attracts nine Oscar nods

D9

District 9 and Moon were the best sci-fi films I've seen for a long (long) time.

Don't recall...

... Ms Weaver getting her wabs out in Aliens.

Michelle Rodriguez's do look good in 3D though.

Samsung SH-BO83L

Does it work with MCE?

So, does this allow playback of blu-ray movies through Windows Media Center (Win 7).

Why Microsoft's IE 9 will frustrate standards fans

Evolution

Bringing the rendering engine up to standards compliance is to be applauded and will make a lot of developers lives *slightly* easier.

The rendering engine isn't the only factor, especially with more complex or security oriented web apps.

The main thing they need to address is their security model. I can see the logic behind some of it, but it can be terribly hard to deal with. I've had cookies that were intended to make the site more secure blocked by the browser, and the countermeasures to deal with that make a mockery of the intended purpose of the cookie blocking anyway.

Conversely, we wouldn't have AJAX, the beloved "Web 2.0" technology without the MS Outlook team getting XmlHttpRequest built in to IE.

So,

Hey ho. Dealing with this stuff keeps us employed!

Google open sources flash-happy Chrome OS

Oracle

Isn't this essentially what Oracle were trying to do 10 or so years ago?

I personally like having local data and local processing power, but I would - being a software engineer.

I can actually see this possibly taking off with the MySpace generation though. As long as they can access the websites they like on the device - it'll do.

Reckon it'd have to run on cheaper hardware than a "full fat" PC/Netbook though, otherwise you'd (read: I'd) buy the general purpose one that could also access the internet.

MS patent looks just like Unix command, critics howl

Sudo

http://xkcd.com/149/

Heh.

Kingston SSD Now V 40GB boot drive

These things are great...

I stuck a Corsair x64 SSD in my media centre as the boot drive. It used to take 1 min 50 from cold until I could watch live TV, it is now 40 seconds.

Also, it just feels much snappier. Once the desktop appears, I can click the firefox icon and firefox will appear - it used to fanny about for ages after showing the desktop.

Just waiting for the 256 GB ones to become cheap enough to stuff one in my laptop.

iPhone apps top 100,000

Windows CE/Mobile

How many apps are available for the Windows mobile (CE or whatever) platform?

Also, don't start a sentence with "And". :-)

Can Darwin help us find little green men?

Life on Earth is mostly ugly?

Come on, that's not fair.

I'm no hippie, or mental anti-g8 activist that thinks Humans or capitalism are the scum of the Earth, but the diversity of species and the difference in how they look and how they all go about their business is facinating and beautiful.

New Doctor Who is 'simply the best'

It's pretty shit really...

... think I've seen most of the *new* ones, and must admit that if it wasn't for fond childhood memories I'd have stopped watching a very long time ago.

That said, I was a bit disappointed when Chrstopher Ecclescake was announced to be leaving, but thought David Tenant turned out to be excellent.

So we should give the new boy a chance. And if Russel T Davies is writing less episodes, it can only be a good thing.

Apple confirms Windows 7 support for Mac OS X boot camp

Double Standards

Isn't this a case of double standards, what with not allowing OSX to run on non-Apple hardware?

If Apple made cars, they would only allow you to drive them on roads built by Apple.

Fedora 12 beta code is go

Great...

I like Fedora, did some development on it a couple of years ago, and found it OK.

By OK, it mean a mean of the following:

- Great: More responsive than XP on the other partition. Loved the multiple desktops.

- OK: Can't just poke around the UI for settings - have to look stuff up and open terminals (not a problem as such - I grew up with command line interfaces, just, well, aren't we past that now?).

- Poor: For all of these improvements mentioned in the article, will they make it "just work" with my laptop's inbuild wireless. Tried to install it at home, and everything went smoothly apart from the bloody wireless. After working at a PC all day, I just couldn't be bothered to put in the time to figure it out in the evening.

Facebook 'fesses to bad hair day

The irony...

Attempting to view downrightnow.com, I a met with a connection timeout message!

IBM punts free enterprise language tools

Developers?

"The goal is to shield developers from complexities typically associated with Web 2.0 application development,"

HTML & JavaScript is about as simple as development gets. If a developer wants to be shielded from this, I would suggest that they should not call themself a developer and maybe get a McJob.

UK media: 'Met Office computer will destroy the world'

As usual...

... a well written and well reasoned article from Lewis Page.

If more of society read articles like this rather than the sensationalist/unresearched/skewed toss in the newspapers, I think we'd be in a much better state.

Keep up the good work.

Blears sackee nothing to do with TheyWorkForYou

@AC 7th July 2009 10:52 GMT

So you call me lazy for not following the link, then say that the link takes you to a page where there is, in fact, a simple mailto: link. Confirming my guess, nice work feller.

My point wasn't in defence of the situation, I was simply saying that the situation probably wasn't discovered as a result of snooping as the black helicopter brigade would assume.

No interception...

... I suspect the "contact me" button was a simple mailto: link which would have opened a new message with her default email client.

Fedora 11 beta bares chest to all-comers

Have they sorted out wireless setup yet...

... last tried to get wireless working with Fedora 8 on my laptop and failed.

LametopsLaptops Direct offers free funerals

April 1st

See title.

Microsoft loudly disses secret 'Cloud Manifesto'

Role revesal?

Hmm. "Here's hoping that when this consortium reveals itself...".

Methinks that other companies may be the ones to scrutinize since for a long time all eyes have been turned towards Microsoft.

I'm looking in Google's direction.

Also, this "Cloud Computing" thing - yep, has its place, but how many of the readership of this site would be happy with a low powered, "dumb" terminal in front of them?

Beeb borrows copyrighted Flickr image

...considering the BBC's response..

"Mike says he's considering the BBC's response and its offer, although he notes he's not entirely satisfied with the explanation"...

Reather, wondering whether he can take them for any more cash no doubt. I'm not saying they're blameless, but they won't use it again, he's £75 better off and no-one was hurt. Job done, move on.

Gates looses mosquitoes on tech conference bloodsuckers

@Simon Painter

That word replacer is genius.

The following link contains swears!

http://www.wordreplacer.com/cache/g090206171612101983

Yes! It's the cardboard PC!

Yeah, that'll help.

Replacing what is probably the most recyclable part of the PC anyway.

Doing something about being able to recycle the myriad different substances within would be properly useful.

Man robs convenience store with Klingon sword

Didn't think...

... that 7-Elevens sold Gagh and Blood Wine

US couple leg it with 'gift from God' bank error

An excellent case of

nominative determinism!

Microsoft halts construction plans, won't renew leases

@AC 15:44

Very good, would rate the comment if I could.

Snipers - Cowardly assassins, or surgical soldiers?

Good article

As always, a well written and well reasoned article from Lewis Page. Looking at the comments so far, I wish people would read the entire article before venting.

Keep up the good work.

Boy band sings praises of Windows 7

Yeah, an attempt at viral marketing, but...

...anyone notice the "respond to my touch" line early on and think about an allusion to iPhone type UI things going on?