Posts by Robert Forsyth

London bike hire scheme suffers pre-launch wobbles

The snag

I don't see the scheme being successful until

London is more cycle friendly to the novice cyclist, and

the traffic lights and one-way streets don't slow down the more expert cyclist.

I suppose the electric motor will mitigate some of the effort needed to get going again after being stopped by the lights.

For the novice, most Black Cab taxi drivers seem aware and drive safely with cycles about. Buses are big, hard to stop and hard to see all around, so can be a bit of a problem and many bus lanes are coated with speed sapping rough tarmac.

There are many roads parallel to the main arterial routes, that are blocked with one-way systems, but contraflow cycle lanes (or perhaps taxi lanes) could may be remove the need to cycle amongst the cars, vans and lorries.

Some subtle education via small rewards (quicker journey, less pollution) of the cyclists could improve their well being.

BBC news apps squeeze onto iPhone, iPad

If users pay for the app

then it might be OK

Gizmodo editor reunited with seized goods

Surely it was theft

Surely, finding a $100 000 prototype and not returning it to its owner, is theft. Then you tell everyone you have received stolen property and are surprised the police come round collecting evidence.

SugarCRM sweet on Microsoft's Azure cloud

Azure is not amazingly new

(not that is a bad thing)

As far as I can tell, it is like a Linux distribution LAMP, but obviously of Microsoft flavoured components (WISN). MS have had an 'appliance' (file/print) server for some while, nicking Novell's business.

Didn't they add PHP to Azure recently.

Apps and app-stores will probably be a fading market, replaced by objects (films/videos) and services (TV, maps, contact storage, etc.).

Steve Jobs denies Judas Phone antenna problems

Designed for right hand use

many people hold it with their left hand against their left ear

iPad 'cannibalised' Q2 netbook sales

Can you still buy netbooks?

You know the less than 1.2 kg, 9" - 10" screens things with SSD instead of HDD.

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

4 is unlucky in some parts of the world

Four is an unlucky number in some parts of the world, so will not sell as well as it might with a different number.

People have bought a phone, so it should be one eventually, even if the hardware is swapped to do so.

I don't have an iPhone ( I have a Nokia 5800), and iTunes IS shite.

Microsoft's modest Bing tinkerers on Google trip

Just add Wolfram|Alpha search add-in to your browser

to get Bing's proposed features

http://www.wolframalpha.com/downloads.html#searchAddons

Also, you can do the image wipes, without Silvelight, in current HTML and JavaScript on a decent browser: avoiding Microsoft lock-in.

We users need competing search services, not competing advert services.

Microsoft goes AC/DC with Instaload battery tech

Many battery compartments have a recessed positive terminal

although it doesn't allow you to insert either way round, it does stop damage of reverse supply

Botnet pierces Microsoft Live through audio captchas

Ironic: Like a virus scanner

Just like a virus scanner, scans for signatures that indicate there may be a virus, this could scan for the signature of the captcha data, if it is a new captcha send it off for decoding and a new signature added to the captchas database.

iPhone and Windows Mobile get the (Gmail) Push

Cannot help feeling this is a waste of time

Most POP3 clients can be set to poll the POP server(s) every x minutes.

Won't you have servers uselessly pushing emails to clients that are not connected in a temporary WiFi shadow/overload?

IBM Linux chief: Chasing desktop Windows a 'dead-end'

The command line with a tiny bit of training is not scary

Not that you have to use the command line for much.

They should turn the Linux package system into a sort of App Store, OpenSuSE are sort of doing this.

Linux will probably infect the desktop via mobile phones.

Cheap DOS/Windows hardware made Linux possible.

Non technical people want the excitement of a fight between Windows and something else, I don't think the Linux people care, they are saddened by people wasting money on Windows and its needed cruft.

Take a laptop - £460 = £300 65% for the hardware £160 35% for Windows

Microsoft Office for the iPhone (without the Microsoft)

Quickoffice on Symbian seems the same or better

It promises to view Excel Charts, which does not seem to work from one created in OpenOffice.org.

Apple gives Palm the boot - again

This way Palm Pre get more publicity

Yes the sensible thing would be to create your own download app, and better than that awful iTunes, but what publicity would that get you?

Some iPods do not appear as storage devices, so you cannot load them from Linux.

Disney sued over Pixar lamp 'copy'

They will probably just slap on a "LAXO" sticker

I have an Anglepoise lamp style lamp from Ikea on my desk, it must be only about the Luxo name.

Boffins render full HD million-point animated hologram

Proper Hologram from LCD

The wave length of red light is around 700nm. A 1920 by 1080 LCD for interference patten would be 1.3mm by 0.76mm.

I would imagine you would have to ray trace the light from a virtual laser illuminating the model to the virtual screen pixel, measuring the length of the trace in wavelengths and adding to all the other traces hitting that pixel.

With such a tiny screen, you would need a magnifying glass to see the hologram.

I would imagine it would be easier to use UV photo-active or electro-active film/glass written with a UV or electron beam and illuminated with a red laser. A 5cm cube would require 71,429 x 71,429 pixels or 5G pixels.

Apple iTablet snaps emerge

You won't actually touch the screen

I was under the impression that with Apples next tech, you wouldn't touch the screen, but wave your hands in front of it, like Minority Reports, or type on the table top near the device. And with voice command to save typing.

Why not just have a large iPod Touch - a Mega or Giga version. These fakes are not world changing enough, they are the work of a dull mind.

The photo seems too ugly for Apple, the iPhone button is in the way. The machine may have been photoed switched off and the screen image Photoshopped in to make it more interesting.

The video, where is the web-cam? The related video that appeared, although an obvious fake, is more what you would expect

Microsoft banks on Windows 7 double holiday hit

Windows comes with the PC, hardly anyone buys it

I would say the 'sales' of Linux are far higher than Windows: hardly anyone buys Windows, it just comes already installed on the PC they buy. To 'buy' Linux you have to go to the effort acquiring and installing it: you mainly have to download it or find a cover disk and INSTALL it.

Linux installation is about as painful as Windows installation, but in different ways. Once installed each is easy to use, but have different strengths. Windows has the advantage in that more people have learnt the nonsense things you have to do to get it to work and that knowledge is easier to share (with friends and relations).

The desktop market share from agent strings on Wikipedia: 67% WinXP, 22% Vista, 5% Mac OS X, 1% Linux. It is estimated there were 600 million PCs in use in 2003. All those device manufacturers missing Linux support are ignoring a market of 6,000,000 personal computer users, yet Linux doesn't have critical mass to attract the free support that Windows enjoys.

Ref:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer

Collar the lot of us! The biometric delusion

It must work, I've seen it on films

along with faster than light travel, teleport, ...

Some of this is bluff, like TV detector vans to 'encourage' people to get TV licences. The fingerprint to get your school dinner, it doesn't really matter if it works, so long as it appears to work.

All these biometric testing devices seem like they can be bypassed, say a mask for face recognition, false fingerprints covers, whatever. What you need is a secret (like your PIN), shared between you and the ID office, and something like a credit card to hold your ID and the shared secret verifies it. Trying to use biometrics for the shared secret, has the problem that it is not secret (or not fixed and not unique ).

Will Google regret the mega data center?

The state wants fuller employment

These States give these tax breaks to encourage local full employment, after the data centre is built, it requires few staff to keep it running, but consumes resources (power, land, investment-money and local amenity).

Microsoft are trying to 'blackmail' Washington into a tax break, not realising that Washington sees their employment purse is empty.

Obviously, Microsoft have damaged their own brand value, which might have been another reason to have their data-centre in your state.

Apple blueprints warranty Big Brother

Just stick it in the microwave

That does not seem to be covered by the patent.

KDE 4.3 promises polish, polish, polish

Not Just Linux and Unix, MacOS X and Windows too

It is not just limited to Linux.

It can be really slow while the indexing is indexing, disable Desktop Search in Configure Desktop, Advanced.

Qnap TS-219P Turbo Nas

Can you compare it to FSG-3

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/03/13/review_freecom_fsg-3/

Microsoft ditches Windows 7 E plans

Why do you have to pick only one?

Why not have all of them?

Why not just stick the install package for each alternate browser on the hard-disk image a long with Windows.

I have Mozilla Firefox, Konqueror (with two flavors of rendering engine), and Opera on my desktop PC

Shouldn't Europe be using an European OS, not this United States rubbish? We invented digital computers.

SpinVox: The Inside Story

12 year old tech

Intervoice's IVR could recognise continuous (without gaps) spoken digits, numbers, dates, cities, whatever vocabulary set you gave it, etc. It trained as it was used, it supported different accents and languages (based on caller ID).

Clever attack exploits fully-patched Linux kernel

It is not really a problem anymore.

Until all the instances of dereferencing the pointer before testing for NULL have been fixed, you just set a compiler flag and the problem goes away.

AFAIK, this kernel has not been released yet.

Because it is open source, you can go and look at the source code and see the extent of the problem. And the kernel coders are 'embarrassed' into fixing it. Contrast that with closed source projects.

Vulture Central plans Brit-Yank dictionary

Router Tooter

The route from A to B is pronounced like root, the network thingy does routing (data packets) and is a router. Then there is the thing for cutting slots, which is routing rhyming with outing.

Toot: a short bottom burp.

Bum bag - F.A.N.Y. pack (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) carried a first-aid kit on their belts.

Microsoft's Azure cloud price pipped by Amazon's Linux

Doesn't seem very economic

Twelve cents per hour is over $1000 per year, assuming some process polls your server/service every 30 minutes.

Surely a hosting service is only $100 to $300 per year?

KIlling ID cards and the NIR - the Tory and LibDem plans

Gattaca comes to mind

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

Rogue CA update bricks Win XP systems

Re: One small problem

Boot the system off a Linux live CD (or USB drive).

Copy all your important data files/documents to a USB drive or network share.

Remove the anti-virus software.

Rename back the affected system files.

Reboot.

Discover your hard-drive is encrypted and you cannot do steps 2, 3 and 4.

Debian rejects open-source .NET threat claim

@Matthew Evans

Linux may not be in your desktop, but it is probably in your boardband router, your TV or set-top-box, etc.

MS-DOS and Windows were influenced by Unix (and CP/M and MacOS), OK it has flipped a bit, from the MS-DOS/Windows version of an Unix program/utility to the Linux version of an application.

Marie Curie voted top female boffin

Heather Couper

Heather Couper?

Anna Ford

and the other Tommorow's World presenters, such as, Judith Hann

I don't think you can view science 'heroes' like sporting heroes, anyway, it's not as if men or boys want to be like Einstein.

Speculation mounts over AVG plans for OS X client

AV bolt the door after the horse has bolted

Most anti-virus software seems to act too late - trying to fix after an infection as their primary strategy.

Monitoring for infection would seem useful.

Surely securing the system to stop infection, would be a more useful strategy.

Also, how is a user suppose to answer a question like "Program XYZ wants to access the internet, allow, block, always allow, always block, allow this one time?" And if you always allow, and then it gets infected, what now?

Not just Windows popularity over MacOS X

It is not just Windows popularity over MacOS X that causes it to have more malware. Windows was easier to infect, since the main account runs with admin rights. Until Vista (or XP SP2) MS did not design Windows with security in mind, it was added after the embarrassment of several RPC route infections keeping corporate IT departments busy - it wasn't long ago, have you forgotten?

My daughter has a game that will not save its progress on her limited account - obviously this is not a major problem for the maker of the game or they would have fixed it by now.

That is not to say Apple have not done some stupid things, that encourage users to download and run/install dodgy software.

Google boasts of melting data center antidote

Clock slowdown with temperature rise

A few years back, didn't we have CPUs with clocks that slow as temperature rises.

If used, these processors would process tasks more slowly, and the load balancing would direct jobs away from them.

You just need global load balancing, or so you? Perhaps the load balancing would add a distance cost/weighting and redirect to a neighbour.

With a restartable process like building an index to dynamic web-pages, the requirements are less strict. For applications/services storing user data, then that is a different set of requirements.

Vodafone said to be mulling T-Mobile UK bid

Virgin Mobile would seem logical

a company with a cable network.

Blue chip FTP logins found on cybercrime server

FTP password use

Upload poison web pages to phish anyone or download Windows/ActiveX nasties.

Rogue knob could ground space shuttle Atlantis

Use acid or something to dissolve the stem of the knob

Assuming the knob is metal, dissolve the stem/screw part, perhaps use an electric current to encourage a kind of reverse electroplating effect.

ISPs vs BBC iPlayer: Missing the point?

Isn't lots of individual streams a stupid way to broadcast?

It would seem logically flawed to try and transmit the same programme down hundreds of streams all fighting for the same backbone pipe from a group of servers in one location, to a tree of clients.

What you need is a P2P file sharing network where one stream in and one out potentially fills the whole network, and your client streams from a close by host.

Ginetta gunning for electric Goodwood

"Petrol Heads"?

Electron Heads, Ion Heads?

Microsoft forbids changes to Windows 7 netbook wallpaper

It is the OEMs that cannot remove the wallpaper, surely

Surely this just applies to the OEMs, to stop them removing MS's luvly wallpapers and adding their own ugly versions.

Or if OEMs are going to remove the MS/Windows adverts and replace them with an OEM's own advert, you have to pay extra.

MS failed with XP, everyone seems to call "Bliss", "Teletubby land", so invoking a preschool feeling.

Microsoft bribes Oz to ditch Firefox

Good Publicity, Bad Publicity

it's all Publicity.

As someone pointed out, it is incredibly cheap advertising.

Also pointed out, if GNU/Linux doesn't 'sell', because it is free*, people will be removing IE8 like mad.

*free - they are giving it away, it must be a turkey.

It annoys me when the Goliath does this, but we seem to be lacking Davids - it is like a Hollywood movie in negative: the big, evil, anti-American corporation, doesn't get blown to bits at the end.

Viviane Reding sees talking yoghurt pots

Wouldn't a bar-code be better?

Cheaper and more environmentally friendlier.

W3C launches appeal to scupper Apple patent

From computer science lecture mid 80s

Plan 9 or Unix did some of this - you could carry on running a program in memory while the version on disk was updated.

Make (with SCCS) would get the latest version (by date-time) of the source when you made a program.

Turn the program into data

and you are free - a terminal screen replaces a form/page on show with a new one when it is updated on the server/mainframe

Opera to 'reinvent the web' in four days

I was mainly right

Tra-la

The Zeitgeist says...

this will be a sort of information server running on the machine you are currently using, and cache-ed by a number of servers in the communication path between you and your friends. The information will tell your friends where your are and what you are doing. You will be able to see information about close by friends, what the weather is like, what events and sites to see where your friend is.

It will NOT be a number of apps you buy, download and use independently, like last generation smartphones and iPhones. It will be a number of REST and semantic web like services, which your one browser (and editor) will display (and update), you may have to pay a small subscription to use some services.

Tube Deluxe 3.1

Could you review all mobile apps?

S60 Symbian, Windoms wobile, not just the minorities.