Posts by Mark Rendle

Silverlight 2 beta 2 - Go Live if you dare

Negative nancies

God, you anti-Microsoft people can be wilfully stupid in your desperation to bitch.

Silverlight is cross-platform: Windows and (Intel) Macs, and Moonlight on Linux.

Silverlight is cross-browser on those platforms.

Silverlight does not require the entire .NET framework; it is a self-contained subset of .NET, and a bloody impressive one at that, considering the size.

Silverlight is source-compatible with much of the standard .NET framework, allowing you to reuse code from projects targeting Windows, ASP.NET, etc.

Silverlight's graphics and text-rendering are WPF, which is *awesome*. Text rendering is especially good, with sub-pixel kerning and anti-aliasing built in.

Silverlight is language-independent; you can create applications in any CLR compliant language, which by the end of this year includes Python and Ruby on top of C#, F#, Javascript, VB.NET (spit)... (but hey, if you love ActionScript, stick with Flash).

I'm not entirely sure why I'm even bothering with this. Fact is, Silverlight is going to enable a whole new level of RIA, and if you want to reject the tools without thinking, or miss out on the end products because you hate Bill /that much/, then that's your perogative. The rest of us won't miss you.

Apple's 3G iPhone to launch 11 July

I am unmoved

Experia X1 FTW!

Linux to outship Windows Mobile by 2013

As if

Top five most wanted smartphones, as shown to the right of this very textbox in what I'm typing: WM6, WM6, WM6, WM6, Palm. Yeah, Linux is taking right off on smartphones.

Asus announces 10in, HDD-equipped Eee PC

Re: EXCELLENT

b,

Almost certainly. The real, non-conspiracy reason why the Linux box costs more is that they've managed to source 40Gb SSDs for only a little more than the cost of a Windows XP licence + 80Gb HDD. If you've got an XP licence lying around you'll be able to install it on the Linux model.

Heaviest Virgin Media downloaders face new daytime go-slow

Fine with me

uTorrent's scheduled only to be active from 11pm to 9am anyway (otherwise the router cries).

Also I've got XL and it runs at advertised speed (unless the download server is throttling, which they usually are these days). From unthrottled servers, like MSDN Subscriber Downloads, I get 2 megabytes per second no problems. Can't wait for 50Mb.

NetBeans extension makes simple work of PHP

Interesting

I seem to have landed on NetBeans as my Ruby IDE of choice (since Ruby In Steel costs megabucks), so if the PHP support works out well that would get me back down to two IDEs.

Brits favour ASBOs for unruly mobile users

Despair

It's just sad that we live in a society where a total lack of consideration for others is so common that this survey exists.

South West Trains have "quiet carriages", where the obsolete "no smoking" stickers have been replaced with "no mobiles phones, radios, or headphones" stickers. A couple of weeks ago I was observing the spirit, rather than the letter, of this rule, watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off on my iPod Touch at a reasonable volume with headphones that are specifically designed not to be audible to those nearby. I know for a fact I wasn't disturbing anybody. The bloke opposite me - possibly to *make a point* - gets his mobile phone out and loudly books a taxi for the following morning to take him to the airport, disturbing everybody in the carriage. I pointed to the sticker. He gloatingly pointed at my iPod and the sticker and made a face that needed punching.

Never mind ASBOs, twats like this should be rounded up and put in camps.

Sun's JavaFX to hoover-up user data

Shurely "$un"? - Ed

It's far too warm for a coat, though.

Microsoft discloses 14,000 pages of coding secrets

Why can't I just stop reading these comments?

Every time there's a vaguely Microsoft-related story on Reg Developer, the same bunch of wankers come out moaning about it, even when the story is about Microsoft mending the ways that the wankers have been bleating about.

Every time there's an OS story on The Register, the same bunch of wankers rag on Vista.

Every time there's any kind of story on Reg Hardware, the same bunch of wankers rag on Vista.

Heads up, wankers: ALL MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS ARE THE SAME. It's just that some are better at it than others. Get over it. Move on.

Asus unwraps media centre mini PC

@alistair millington

Yawn.

Loopy Vista pre-SP1 update fixed with pre-pre-SP1 update

Vista Ultimate x64 SP1

I've installed SP1 over my Ultimate x64 installation with no problems at all.

Oddly enough, I've got a Seagate 7200.10 which survived intact. I guess mine might have been the freak occurrence, but maybe there's an outside chance that Stone Fox's misfortune was due to a hardware failure and not Microsoft's fault at all?

Gates teases bankers with Windows 7 dates

I want my beta!

My, but there are a lot of negative Nancies on the Reg today. Personally, I quite like Vista, although I was disappointed that some of the promised features got dropped. Of course, a lot of the Vista features were also made available for XP SP2 and Server 2003 R2 (WPF, WCF, WF), which may have negated the need to upgrade, but they were still part of the Vista development.

Anyway, I'm going to maintain a childlike enthusiasm for 7 until something concrete happens to disappoint me. Weird, I know, but I reckon I'll be happier on average that way.

Things that enthuse me so far: MinWin, a Windows kernel with a basic webserver running in 40 megs; rumours that WinFS will be in this time (cautious optimism there); Hypervisor on the desktop. I've already got my beta hardware picked out...

Naomi Campbell cuffed in Heathrow Terminal 5

Uh-huh.

WTF? I know the Reg has a red top but please.

While I'm here, people who actually care about this sort of thing should remember two things: one, you're a moron; two, assaulting a police officer is remarkably easy, especially when they're trying to drag you somewhere against your will.

Nokia 8800 Arte and Sapphire Arte handsets

Not about features, is it?

This is clearly a phone for someone who hates phones with lots of features but still wants one that costs a lot of money. Me, for example.

</drool>

Official: OOXML approved as international standard

Good grief

To listen to you ODF zealots whining, you'd swear your precious (and lightweight) format wasn't tightly controlled by $un Micro$y$tem$.

Wow, look, FOUR dollar signs! Must be a much worse company!

Comment judiciously, refactor if needed, avoid the 'f' word

RTFA

I realise that reading the article properly before posting comments is a tiresome process, but it's often worth it. If you did, you might notice that Matt is advocating sensible commenting in tandem with good readable code. You might also have noticed that his book is sub-titled "The Case Against XP". You might then look like less of an idiot.

Open AJAX frameworks not fit for 'power users'

Silverlight

My usual pro-MS bias notwithstanding, Silverlight is very cool, and only going to get cooler. They've got a startling amount of .NET 3.5 into the ickle runtime already, including LINQ and WCF. I'd be amazed if they didn't get the DLR into a future version, so people will be able to write apps in various Iron implementations (Python, Ruby, Scheme(!)) as well as C# and VB.NET. Just imagine: you could be writing the client-side and server-side code in the same language!

There are some nice AJAX frameworks out there, granted, but I've yet to see one that comes close to what Silverlight can do. Couldn't comment on AIR or Flex as I've not played with them.

I agree with all the comments about analysts though.

Microsoft rolls out Vista SP1

"Clicking on them doesn't work to well if you're running Firefox with NoScript"

I generally find The Entire Interweb doesn't work too well if you're running Firefox with NoScript these days. Of course, I'm not a paranoid loser, so I don't.

10 ways to improve your code

Maybe you had to be there

I watched this presentation at DevWeek 2008 last week (slightly modified for a .NET audience), and it was worthwhile. Neal talked for an hour and a half, so what you're reading in this article is necessarily a simple précis; he explains and justifies most of his bullet points very well.

Regarding 8 and 9, they're not mutually exclusive: you're going to have a primary programming language for constructing any given system, but it often makes sense to drop into another for certain purposes. I've always used C/C++ for better performance or Win32 API access. I'm going to learn F# because it does functional stuff better than C#, and probably Ruby because it looks right for some of the quick and dirty stuff. A lot of the time, learning other languages gives you some new ways of thinking about your primary language.

Regarding 4, the odds against you actually successfully predicting what you're going to need in 6 months are, as a rule, astronomically high. Obviously nobody would advocate writing code that you know you're going to have to completely rewrite in the next cycle, but it's perfectly sensible to write code that does only exactly what is currently needed, but in such a way that suspected requirements can be added easily by deriving, decorating or altering implementation.

WaSP gives browsers 'fail' grade

@Eric - IE8 passes Acid2

I'm running the beta on Windows XP SP3 and it renders the Acid 2 page perfectly.

Nice to see Opera choking on something too. Hakum's soapbox seems strangely empty today...

Microsoft's LAMP answer arrives in pieces

"M$ always want you to only use M$ products."

Shocking: a publicly traded company that wants you to buy as many of their products as possible. It's like the very definition of evil.

Designs displayed for iPhone clip-on speakers

More info

"it’s not known where it'll will land first or how much it'll will cost."

It will land in shopping malls where chav teenagers congregate, and it won't cost enough to stop them buying it and inflicting their godawful R&B rubbish on everyone in a 50ft radius.

Microsoft turns to Zune for mobile game edge

Re: Microbabble

Interesting set of arguments. 1 is an opinion at best, an completely unsubstantiated assertion at worst. And I fail to see how anybody could claim 3, given that:

A. Microsoft have pioneered the online console revolution since Xbox Live was launched several years ago and Sony are desperately playing catch-up, and hoping to steal a lead with the gimmicky Second Life clone "Home";

and

B. Microsoft have released and fully support a development environment which allows anybody to create content for the 360 for free, while Sony continue to actively fight homebrew on their platforms.

Microsoft preps Yahoo! proxy attack

"The best thing for Yahoo! ... is to decline the takeover."?

I'm intrigued: in what way? In that they can crash and burn with their principles intact?

DVD Jon aims to smash digital Tower of Babel

Shome mishtake shurely?

"It said its technology doesn't encourage file-sharing."

"The beta release allows punters to share media with their Facebook friends..."

Is it just me?

Opera screeches at Mozilla over security disclosure

Bored now

First Microsoft are mean, now Mozilla are mean... am I the only one wishing the fat lady would sing?

HMRC blows £1.4m on two-word slogan

Drop in the ocean

Maybe they figure since they're gambling £100 billion of our money on bailing out Northern Wreck we won't bat an eyelid at spending £1.4 million to only get 50 pages into a dictionary.

Enraged vegan spitroasts Reg hack

Re: Doesn't pass FOTW Eligbility Rules

It bloody does. There's at least one spelling, grammatical or syntactic error in every sentence.

Price, not format war fears, holds back Blu-ray, says survey

I'm waiting for the moon on a stick

Well, I'm waiting until I can watch HD movies on demand for a reasonable monthly subscription in the same timeframe as the DVD release.

Microhoo! or YahSoft!? The! people! must! decide!

Other

Microsoft!

Because the bang is the best thing about Yahoo!.

IGMC

Hannspree glams up the desktop monitor

I want one^H^H^Htwo of those

Wonder if I can convince the missus to spend £350 on Valentine's Day...

EU investigates Microsoft's OOXML campaign

OOXML FTW

Maybe if ODF wasn't entirely controlled by $un Micro$y$tem$, Microsoft would have considered using it. Except even if it was entirely open, it's still a lightweight format that doesn't even come close to handling everything Office 2007 needs to store. (See the Burton Group report for more info. Then come back and shout about how it's wrong and biased...)

For years people have been bitching about MS Office's proprietary, closed document format. Microsoft spend a fortune designing an open, interoperable format, submit it to the independent standards groups for ratification, and what do those same people do? They carry right on bitching.

Sony shrinks its Bravia TVs

Correction

Sony slaps Bravia logo on Watchman.

The cynical marketing ploy makes Paris cry...

Ruby project yields to Microsoft

@Lance E Sloan

You mean *IronPython*.

16GB iPhone to launch today

Getting there

Now all they need to do is get the iPhone up to 32GB and give it away free with an 18-month contract and they'll have me.

Microsoft! bids! $44.6bn! for! Yahoo!

"Today this market is increasingly dominated by one player"

And we're very cross because it's not us.

PS3 capacity boost claims are claptrap, says Sony UK

@Alex

I paid £700 for my PC, less than double the price of a PS3 at the time, and it runs Crysis on full eye-candy settings. Games cost half what they do on the next-gen consoles. Plus I can run all this other software on it too...

Re: For what??

Storing music and video files, obviously. Welcome to the 21st century.

Noone to blame but themselves

Obviously Sony are going to deny the impending introduction of an improved product or package, because they don't want people to hold off buying.

It's a problem entirely of their own making. If they'd created one console with one specification and stuck to it, the only thing people would worry about would be price drops. But we've had 20Gb, 40Gb, 60Gb and 80Gb, two version with hardware PS2 compatibility, two with software compatibility and one with none at all, 2 USB ports, 4 USB ports, WiFi, no WiFi, and f**k knows what else. And it's impossible to believe they won't end up sticking DualShock 3s in the box. Is it any wonder people are waiting to see what next month will bring before they part with their £300?

If there'd been this many options and changes in the first year of the PS2, I'd still be holding off buying one.

Xbox 360's only a bit better, what with Core, Premium/Pro, Arcade and Elite. Developers can't even count on a hard-disk.

All these different configurations, one might as well game on a PC. Oh, wait, that's what I am doing these days. And FPSs are still better with a mouse.

Michael Bay to relive A Nightmare on Elm Street

Up with this kind of thing!

I wish they would remake American Pie. I watched it on ITV2 the other night, and seeing Tara Reid all innocent and virginal made me strangely sad.

Ahem. JJ Abrams to direct, obviously.

Visual Studio beats SQL Server in 2008 stakes

Me too

LINQ is awesome. Take that, Java!

The 'blem wit' error messages

Unhelpful in all languages

I suspect the reason that the messages such as "Cannot find DLL" are not more informative is that the string comes from a localized resource file. I'm working on a framework at the moment, and I'm trying to put in variable substitution markers in the string resources where appropriate, so the exception messages can have useful data included, but it's a PITA and I can see why people don't bother.

Microsoft preempts Hyper-V release with virtualization vision

@Colin Wilson

Colin,

There's a story about Microsoft at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/21/microsoft_seeks_dismissal_wordperfect_lawsuit/comments/ and you haven't posted a non sequitur about how much you hate Vista in the comments thread. Quick now! The Register® will surely fail without more of your insightful adjuncts!

Academics slam Java

Damned for popularity

They're attacking Java because it's what all the universities teach; if they taught C#, VB or Python I'm sure those would be under fire. And rightly so: CS students should learn the basics and the basics start with console applications written on *nix in C, using the standard libraries.

'Fat PSP' owners won't get Skype

@Mark Broadhurst

"TBH I think people are learning and next time they have a launch it will flop."

As opposed to the raging success of PS3?

Sony ships 11in OLED TV in the US

Dipshits

How does a story about a Sony TV incite an Apple-vs-Vista argument?

Microsoft opens Server 2008 licensing a smidge

RE: WIBBLE

So you'll approve of the Server Core Installation feature of Windows 2008 then, Mr Shubin?

Nintendo Wii hack opens door to homebrew games

RE: When is the first "open" platform going to appear?

You mean Microsoft XNA Game Studio, a completely free package with which you can create games that run on both PC and Xbox 360.

Oh look, it's a marketplace where MS aren't the bad guys.

Celeb spills beans on new Apple notebook

iTablet

Hopefully it'll be the rumoured UMPC that looks like an outsized iPod Touch. And hopefully it'll be possible to use Boot Camp to get Windows Tablet Edition running on it. And hopefully my missus will have some kind of breakdown and let me buy one instead of flooring the loft.

Microsoft spits out final XP service pack, beta version

@Almost everybody

Haven't you "me too!" idiots got an AOL chatroom to lower the collective IQ of? Not liking Vista is fine, not using Vista is fine, but repeatedly posting about how you don't like it and won't use it every time it gets mentioned on The Reg is pathetic. Haven't you got anything better to do?