Posts by Eddy Ito

Cheaper, slimmer Google Nexus 7 rumored for Q1 2013

@AC 21:17

"you can still get roughly 60% value on the old one"

That only applies as long as the market isn't saturated. The only way it's sustainable is if new buyers are made at a rate that doesn't exceed the supply of used iPads. Where the saturation point is, I don't know but I imagine if the mini proves more popular than the full size one it won't be long before there is a glut of iPads. At that point, the price will drop precipitously. It's likely another reason Apple seems to have "supply problems", wouldn't want the market falling out from underneath that profit margin after all.

SPUDS ON A PLANE! Boeing boosts in-flight Wi-Fi with tater tech

About right

As far as home wi-fi systems are concerned we're all couch potatoes.

After Sandy Hook, Senator calls for violent video game probe

Re: Hmm...

"It's pretty hard to kill someone with a punch."

Actually it isn't as, according to FBI data, hands and feet accounted for nearly 750 homicides in 2010. I'll also point out that in this case a member of the public would be breaking the law just having the means to shoot or even a weapon to beat the killer. What law abiding person would regularly break the law in case of the extremely rare event when a killer breaks the law? Why risk becoming a criminal given the negligible odds of such an event happening? It is negligible by the way given the number of schools and school days in the US, not that it makes it any less painful when it does happen. Add to that most folks who have a firearm own it for personal protection not crime fighting like a comic book superhero.

People don't generally shoot the police because camera phones are a much better weapon against the police. If you start shooting cops you pretty much sign up for a life of harassment hell even if it is found to be self defense. You are trying to paint with Bizarro brushes and label anyone who disagrees with you as a nut but it isn't honest discourse, it's just more of the too typical knee jerk ad hominem fueled by emotion not reason.

Last point, in some instances a member of the public does get involved when they are able but there isn't anything to say if it stopped something more serious or not.

Re: More retarded nonsense. And CIA under Barack Hussein Obama orders behind it!

"stolen from the idiots who bought them in the first place!"

Quite true and in this case the idiot happened to be his first victim. Perhaps if she could have seen the real beast inside her, undoubtedly, precious little angel then this might not have happened. This is more about poor parenting than it is about games and guns. Yes, I'm blaming the victim because either her rose colored glasses blinded her from the monster in her home or she was just too busy in her own world to pay attention. I find it impossible to believe there were absolutely no warning signs. Of course it's possible she was as much of a nutter as he was.

Canadians nab syrup rustlers after massive maple sap heist

Ahhh, thank goodness

Maple syrup is one of a very few critical ingredients in my maple curry pork tenderloin recipe. If you hate it, you haven't done it right.

Report: US telcos cashing in on data caps and poor competition

One small problem

A fair share of those increasing profits goes to buying "campaign contributions" of various Sinators and Congresscritters.

Judge: There'll be no US Samsung ban, BUT no new trial with Apple either

@AC 16:19

"No there were no 'retina' type screens until Apple did it first."

I hate to break the news to you but Apple released the iPhone 4, its first 'retina' screen, in June 2010. That's a full three years after Toshiba released their Portege G900 with a 3" 800 x 480 display at 313 ppi. Of course you are free to claim that 'retina' only applies to 326 ppi or greater but that kind of kicks the iPad squarely in the nuts as it's only 264 ppi. Apple didn't do it first; the horror, the horror. No, they took the idea of high a pixel density from a phone running Windows Mobile 6 which likely explains why you never heard of it.

Re: Hello fanboy, repeat after me

Not a very good fanboy at that. I mean if he's going to pick nits why not at least be honest and say Apple does 9.7?

GRAIL orbiters make DEATH DIVE into lunar mountain

Ebb and Flow

Nicely done NASA folks, somehow those names actually brought a silly grin to my face. Aside from that it sounds like a good deal of data came from the mission even if it was a bit shorter than desired. Cheers.

Anonymous hacks Westboro Baptists over Sandy Hook protests

Beer and pretzels all 'round. This should be much better than the Apple/Samsung shenanigans.

Sorry, Apple - China's just not that into your iPhone 5

"across a potential customer base of 815 million"

Not quite as population != potential customer base. Certainly just because China has a population of 1.3 billion it can't make sense to think that is the potential number of customers. Even ignoring financial resources there is a lot in the demographics that would rule out many people as ever being a customer. It's a bit like saying the market in Hungary is the same as Somalia as both have a population of ~10 million. It totally ignores factors like per capita GDP, which is about $19k for Hungary vs $600 in Somalia, and median age, over 40 and under 18 respectively. But sure, if your brush is broad enough it's the same thing, right?

Senator threatens FAA with legislation over in-flight fondleslabbing

"Some senator was inconvenienced"

Well, it probably wasn't this Senator as I understand she shares a Pilatus PC-12 with some friends. It must have been another Senator she is friendly with that got busted playing online word games in exclusive¹ first class on the taxpayer's dime.

1 all other first class tickets are purchased for the Senator's entourage not including the Senator's personal prostitute who is forced to fly business class.

FCC: Kids, here's 100MHz of radio spectrum - but you have to share

Re: OFCOM logic?

So if I understand correctly, White Space is a bit like TW Cable internet service. It works a treat until someone else in the neighborhood wants to use it and then it's an intermittent piece of crap that makes a 14.4k dialup modem look like broadband.

NASA reveals secrets of Curiosity’s selfies

Not good enough

The NASA denialistas will just say that "recreating" the photo is easy enough as all NASA had to do is just drive it back from the desert to the lab and take a few more snaps with the rose colored filter removed. Unfortunately they will require first hand proof of actually seeing Curiosity wave at them from Mars through a high powered telescope while they are physically standing on the Moon and I'm not sure that will be good enough.

Polish man mistakes hot iron for mobe

Well that's gonna leave a mark

While he may have taken to sideburns too literally, I do hope he remembered to unplug the iron for that photo shoot.

Beer because it's good for burns or pizza.

Internet Explorer tracks cursor even when minimised

Lovely

So basically anyone using the accessibility on screen keyboard tool and IE is pretty much screwed when entering a password of any sort. I can see I'll be calling my aunt this evening to ask which browser she uses.

Sheryl Sandberg offloads $41.5m in Facebook shares in just 6 weeks

Not that bad

It's likely a tax move. Depending on how the income is classified and how hard Uncle Sam insists on impacting¹ the fiscal cliff, she is looking at saving about $2m in taxes by selling today instead of waiting another month. I'm sure it's a delicate balance since the value of her stock holdings could rise or fall that much in a week. In short I would classify this as making sure she has a bird in hand since most media outlets have everyone in a tizzy over what the bush will look like if the folks in the D.C. don't finish consulting the chicken bones before the end of the Mayan calendar.

1. I know everyone talks of going over the fiscal cliff but that assumes we are on the top but they clearly aren't paying attention and any interaction with a fiscal cliff will surely be a square on impact near the bottom.

This is out of hand now: Apple attempts to trademark the LEAF

Re: Prior Art...

AAARRRGGGHHHH!!! MY EYE! They've stolen my eye. It's ok, I'll just grow another one and set the one they stole to auto-destruct. You folks might want to stay clear of Cupertino for a bit. 120 miles should be far enough.

Report: Apple, Google, Microsoft join forces to buy Kodak patents

Re: patents are for satan worshippers

One minor problem. A poor individual inventor typically doesn't have the resources to actually produce the implementation of the patent and sell the resultant product. That means she must take on investors who effectively buy part of the patent or the inventor simply sells or licenses the patent to some company and goes on to invent something else. The latter is the path often taken by people who like to invent but don't really want to build or run a company. It doesn't make them imaginary enemy who lives in fire worshipers, it makes them inventors who only want to invent.

Tim Cook’s 'One more thing': Apple TV rumor-stoker

Re: @David Barrett

Oh, one last thing AC. I actually do appreciate you pointing out the facts as it got me to dig a bit deeper into the thunderbolt tech and I will say the target display mode on an iMac is pretty sweet and certainly looks like a great candidate to be included into any TV Apple might produce. Although you could have done it without enough smugness to run a Pious for a year.

Re: @David Barrett

"People quote this sort of tripe without knowing the facts - it's bigotry."

Actually it isn't bigotry as I think you'll find that not knowing the facts is more often referred to as ignorance. As for tripe, it's fantastic in many preperations but my favorites are fried and braised.

But seriously AC, I went to the online Apple store figuring if anyone would have one it would be Apple. So I started here but there isn't a mini display port to HDMI listed so I checked the first one and there was no mention in the description that it worked with thunderbolt. One might think if it was compatible that Apple would actually tout that fact by adding a few letters to the description of the product, then again they said it would take weeks to update another page so maybe it's possible Apple is just bad at html.

Not finding anything specifically mentioning thunderbolt under "adapters" I tried "cables" and limited it to "Apple" products since I really didn't want to be bothered digging through Belkin's line of RCA audio cables and such. What I found was a straight thunderbolt cable for $49, a thunderbolt to ethernet adapter for $29 and a thunderbolt to firewire adapter also $29.

What I did not see was anything called a thunderbolt to HDMI adapter and frankly I found that odd since the first mini display port adapter I checked, which was to VGA, made absolutely no mention of thunderbolt compatibility and it also isn't mentioned on the this Air page and to top it off the MacBook Pro includes two thunderbolt ports and one HDMI port instead of three thunderbolt ports and an included adapter in the box.

It isn't like I didn't try to find out but they could make it easier to discover and yes that means putting a little note on every mini display port adapter¹ and thunderbolt² page as it isn't hard and I'd be happy, for a small fee, to write them a quick bash script to take care of it. Oh and before you go thinking I didn't dig deep enough just remember that neither will most people especially if they are just looking for a gift. Granted, as always, if I want to find out about Apple products I should have gone to Google first_{last tweak, I promise}.

1 - thunderbolt compatible

2 - mini display port compatible

@David Barrett

They already have ditched HDMI on some models, notably the Air. All it has is Thunderbolt(R) digital display output and yes, the cable is $50 which only goes to another Thunderbolt device so it wouldn't surprise me if one to HDMI wasn't $100. It looks like Apple thinks we're all just Scarmouche lining up to do the Fandango.

"Thunderbolt and lightning - very very frightening me - Galileo..."

So I guess the next question is what would Apple do in TV? A main TV 40+ inches? 3D? How smart would it be, OS X, iOS or not even that smart? Is 4K resolution safe to assume so it can virtualize an iPad in the corner PIP style? Heck given the recent articles the biggest game changer for TV would be if it were completely wireless like AT&T's uverse but with their new wireless iPower thingy. Oh, let's not forget iChat so grandma can interact with the little 'uns and various miscreants can watch you watch Spooks reruns in your skivvies.

Business sues for $750,000 over bad Yelp review

Did anyone follow the links?

If you dig far enough you'll find out that this seems to be the second time he is suing her. The first time seems to have been a collection action to be paid but they disagree on whether the work was performed/agreed upon but that seems to have been dismissed on technical grounds. Also they knew each other beforehand so it isn't like she picked him out of the phone book so that makes me think they didn't have a clear and well written contract for the price and work to be performed. In short it all strikes me as a perfect example of why all business transactions should be kept at arms length.

Telcos and hosters add US jobs in November, semi manufacturers cut them

Call for volunteers

"the White House and the US Congress seem determined to drive over the fiscal cliff"

We can only hope they all fit into the bus, they are going fast enough and that the cliff is plenty high. Can I get a list of volunteers to help me push them the last bit if they don't make it over and wind up teetering on the edge?

Intel prepping Atom bombs to drop on ARM microservers

A bit late

"caught the microserver bug back in 2006"

So that means he wasn't paying attention for two years since in 2004 IBM put Blue Gene/L together from a bunch of embedded 440 PowerPC cores running 64 cores and 17 watts per node according to wikipedia. Heck it even piqued my interest back in '05 but hey, welcome to the party.

Nokia uncloaks Lumia 620: A 'budget' $249 Windows 8 mobe

Re: Why one anyone want a shit expensive phone?

Just so I'm clear on the Xperia U comparison. The "shit expensive phone" is the one with equal or better hardware specs overall and the better phone for "this sorta money" is the Sony which is missing a card slot, glonass, and 5GHz wifi? Ok, if the extra 54 pixels of horizontal resolution and 20 mAh of battery capacity blows your hair back, who am I to judge?

Re: Meh ...

It does have some rather nice features that set it apart from other budget phones such as 802.11a and of Nokia's current offerings this would be the one I would choose because it is smaller and more discreet in the pocket. Mind you I know that I'm in a small minority who finds most "smart"phones akin to a hammer with tits? They might be fun to watch and play with but they don't make it a more useful hammer. Pity any version coming to the US will undoubtedly be heavily customized by a network giant and therefore of questionable utility when traveling abroad.

Tim Cook: Apple to manufacture Macs in US in 2013

Re: So how's it going to work?

It's not just labour. It's also logistics and process. In addition to using fewer hands and more robots, the cost to ship a unit from South Carolina to Cupertino is lower than shipping a unit from Shenzhen. I'm sure one of the reasons to build iMacs and not iPhones in the US is you can put more iPhones into a 40' container than you can iMacs and that means the per unit shipping cost of iPhones is lower.

Also a side benefit of local manufacturing is not having to deal with time zones. Flaws can be found faster and problems can be resolved quicker when HQ and the factory floor aren't a half day apart. Even shipping samples by air for approval means waiting at least a day with the factory either on hold or potentially stamping out bad product the whole time and that doesn't happen when it's only across town.

I'm sure Apple has run the numbers and decided they won't be worse off and they'll probably get a nice tax break on any investment they make.

Being responsible, creative and motivated means you aren’t

I'll venture afar on an offshoot

Next year's list will pique a global artistic flair among the LinkedIn logs and will include the following:

• Imaginative
• Aroused
• Intercontinental
• Answerable
• Empirical
• Efficacious
• Punctilious
• Ratiocinative

Schmidt: Microsoft will never be as cool as the Gang of Four

Re: Odd "Gang of Four" there.

I suppose one could argue that he is referring to a cultural revolution of sorts. Still it is indeed odd when you consider what happened to the original sìrén bāng shortly after Mao's death. Schmidt had better hope that Jobs wasn't this gang's Mao.

Record €1.47 BEELLION EC fine for price-fixing display cartels

Re: Woefully Inadequate Fines

I think an easier way would be to apply the fines directly to the executives instead of the company. Saves having to jail them and if the CEO knows those millions will come out of his own pocket I'd wager it wouldn't happen too often in the future. Personal accountability, it's a great motivator.

Microsoft’s so.cl network now open to all

Huh

So a quick look strikes me that it's a more tiled version of pinterest. How exciting I'll have to investigate further or not.

Court slaps down Verizon, upholds FCC data roaming rule

Classic

"Verizon may choose not to provide mobile-Internet service,"

Don't like the rules, don't play the game. He could have gone a step further by being explicit and say .gov would be happy to reallocate Verizon's current spectrum licenses to those who would like to play.

Pioneering spidernaut snuffs it after short Smithsonian stay

I wonder if they kept track of the food intake of the two spiders and could determine if the longer lived one was able to gather more food.

On a related note, it looks from the video like the flies didn't cope quite as well as the spider did and to me that is actually more interesting. The butterfly in space video shows the butterfly very awkward but it really doesn't have the room to figure it out before crashing into something. Pity they don't have the room available for something to try a proper flight. Perhaps they could focus on the little flies next time and run a few generations to see if the flies can 'evolve' enough to get it right. I would think in space it would only take a wing beat or two for propulsion and then it's just directional control.

Apple plants flag on wireless power-supply map

Re: Isn't this how RFID works anyway?

That's how I read it. Essentially it sounds like an air core transformer with some sort of RFID tacked on and an inductance optimization circuit.

Archaeologists uncover 'Unicorn's lair'

Re: For the headline,

So does that mean if I get the words "this is the last unicorn penis" tattooed with 1000 year old charcoal in the appropriate place... It won't be all in a single line mind, but...

LOHAN's mighty orb launch live NOW

As they say

Shit happens. It's a setback but only temporary and nothing the SPB can't overcome. Now then, to the pub to discuss the next steps and cheers for a valiant effort.

Intel insists Mac Mini HDMI fix inbound

Re: nope

"If your Nvidia drivers are acting up do you blame Microsoft?"

It depends on who provides what. If your iPhone 4S touchscreen is acting up do you blame TI? nope.

Chinese buyers falling out of love with iPhones

Well, did you actually spell it Xioami? It's xiaomi so it looks like you swapped the 'ao' for 'oa'. Literally it's "little rice". One of their phones is actually quite impressive with a quad core Qualcomm Krait at 1.5 GHz, 4.3" 1280 x 720 display and Miui Android 4.1 going for around $320 or £200. Oh the standard battery is 2000 mAh with an available 3100 mAh battery. I'm actually thinking of ordering one if it's unlocked and will work in the US if Santa doesn't deliver.

It's a combination of things

Nokia's problem is that they pretty much dropped the ball and shuffled their feet for a year as Elop burned the bridges behind them and it will take a fair amount to get back in the game but I have a feeling they are pricing themselves out of the mass market in China. It's Nokia not Apple.

"The research says Apple is struggling in China due to a combination of price and the fact its handsets won’t work with dominant local carriers."

Sure, Apple has mostly shot themselves in the foot by not ponying up a few quid for whatever is needed to ship a compatible TD-SCDMA or some such radio in the Chinese market. As a result word is getting out that even after several revisions it's still only a half hearted attempt and I imagine sentiment is that Apple doesn't see China as a growth area, perhaps because the average punter isn't wealthy enough.

They could get a short term boost by making the 5S, 6 or whatever the next model is compatible in the same way as they got a boost by ending the exclusive agreement with @&T in the US but it would only be short term as competitors aren't standing still and delivering equal or currently better utility. End game, iPhone is rapidly approaching maximum saturation globally and they have to seriously up their game, change direction and force the market to pivot in response.

That said, they can certainly milk their current market for quite a while before they really need a big break so perhaps a mid-2014 iFantastic that breaks the mold is in the works. But, dozens of others already have geared up plenty of Apple peeler skunkwork projects as well.

Prisoner found with phone + charger in anal cavity

Clearly

The poor chap got a phone with a bum wrap. So did he also lift the audio off a fart app for the ring tone or did he leave it on vibrate?

What!? A body cavity search! Mind holding my coat?

Apple manufacturers: ARRGH, pesky iThings are impossible to make

How do the new ones compare to the older ones when they were launched? If it's considerably more difficult now given current manufacturing state of the art than it was previously then I would assume that Apple is putting too much effort into making things less there. Minimalism has a limit when folks start talking about someone's new clothes. If those folks are investors, it ain't gunna be perty.

Re: @Destroy All Monsters

I don't know, Oompa tears and Loompa song sounds almost right somehow.

VPN ban makes for nervy times behind Great Firewall

Re: SSL VPN through Port 443

"And any attempt to stego would probably stick out like a sore thumb in the age of raw binary transmissions"

I think considering how much constant traffic there is in gaming and video streaming, like PPS or QQLive, that it wouldn't be too hard to establish a hidden vpn amongst the "peers" including machines across the wall. Transferring multiple concurrent streams would even allow one time pads for a tweaked video codec that plays fine otherwise and the poor net watchers would probably vomit after watching a few hundred hours of kittens playing and stupid pet/human tricks.

Apple granted patent for microphone silhouette

Re: What are you people on about?

I thought it was a giant turd and symbolic of Siri shitting in our wine.

Don't touch Sony, Panasonic's junk, says credit agency

Re: Double B, triple B minus...

I guess that's where the whole nobody fails crap started. Coming soon to a schoolhouse near you. This way nobody needs to ever get an "F" again. Just imagine how proud little Jonny will be when he goes up to his parents and says, "My report was soo good, I got two Bs! But I don't think the teacher was fair, that girl Jessica got three whole Cs and nobody liked her report."

Dogs would say: size is important, shape - not so much

Re: My dog's very clever

"... has yet to dispatch anything avian."

We had a pair of siberian husky 'twins', the only obvious difference being their eye color. They were pros at catching birds and fiendishly clever. Their best trick was to carry the food dish a bit inside the doghouse entrance and "sleep" outside while waiting for a hapless bird to make a go for the dog food. Once the bird was far enough inside the pair would rush the entry with one going in after the bird and the other blocking its escape. After seeing them do this successfully several times in one weekend I stopped wondering where all the starling and grackle feathers were coming from.