Posts by Ian Ferguson 1368 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Sep 2006
Was this a press release from the BSA by any chance? Those are such canned quotes, they're painful.
Ah yes, here we go: http://www.bsa.org/country/News%20and%20Events/News%20Archives/enGB/2008/enGB-12162008-scottish-enforcement.aspx
I've got nothing against reporters using press releases - but at least argue both sides, don't just quote verbatim!
This is exactly what I need - I know the experience will be crappy, but when I need to log on to the work server remotely to click on one button or something equally simple, this is absolute perfection.
And for everyone whining that there's already remote desktop services - that's no good for me as our remote access is all via Citrix. This won't have mass appeal, but for those of us that use Citrix it looks truly wonderful.
If I was walking to/from work past one of these broadcasters and received the message, I would freak out. Bluetooth messaging is usually used to send message anonymously. I would read this as a threat; as in "I'm going to send you home in a bodybag".
I know it's a good cause and all, but I suspect the number of people offended by this message will outweigh the number educated by it.
Not all of us are selfish enough to ONLY think of the financial cost or advantage to ourselves. If the appliances I can buy in the future help reduce the country's power consumption, at no noticable cost to myself, I'd be happy to choose those appliances.
I think this is a great idea, and don't see any particular reason for knocking it. No, it's not going to solve global warming (debatable I know) or our dependancy on fossil fuels (no debatable), but as you well know, there isn't a golden solution to it all - it's many little savings and improvements in efficiency around the place that will matter.
And as for most consumption being industrial - in that case, apply this technology to industrial machines as well as consumer machines. Be positive for a change!
This looks to me just like a bit of Apple arse-covering. It's a footnote of advice, nothing more.
I gave up on Windows virus-scanners about six years ago, when I realised backups, firewalls, restricted access and careful browsing and downloading practices are far more effective.
Frankly, the anti-virus industry is a leech. Although I usually hate to side with Microsoft, I despise the whining anti-virus manufacturers who complain about the built-in protection in new versions of Windows destroying their industry. Their industry only exists because of bugs and holes - and like with any problem, eliminating the source is much cleaner than wiping up the mess.
Even if the advertising is pretty heavy, at least there's no banner-ads like on the old confusing interface.
It's much simpler to use - purely because they've removed all the redundant options.
I bought an XBox 360 Arcade a few weeks back (for £129 - the same as I paid for a Wii) which comes with a 256mb memory stick and no hard drive, which didn't bother me as I didn't want to download tonnes of crap. However, I underestimated the size of save games (20mb for a Portal save game!!) and now wanted the new front end, so it was upgrade time.
Not many people seem to know, but Microsoft offer dirt-cheap (£12.99 inc postage) 20gb hard drives for those who bought the drive-less version. Search for Xbox 360 Memory Upgrade Program. They do it in the US as well.
With the number of apps submitted, there can't be one single person checking them all against one strict ruleset. There must be many moderators, all with slightly different interpretations of the rules.
I'd go as far as to suggest that if something has been turned down for borderline reasons, just submit it again and it'll probably be checked by someone different.
Is it just me, or is Google Earth rapidly becoming much better, interesting and most importantly USEFUL than Second Life?
I downloaded Second Life once because I hoped somebody had taken the time to convert historical building data, but all I saw was naff futuristic skyscrapers and flying penises.
If Google take the time to do this for other historical sites, it would be a truly wonderful educational resource. Ancient Egypt maybe? Various historical versions of London? This is made of WIN.
Cool, get the marines all excited over how simple it is to machine-gun geeks on Call of Duty, and it'll make their jobs so much easier in real life! Next time they come across a village of suspected terrorist families, they'll know EXACTLY how to machine gun them down and flame-gun their houses, without hesitation. Followed, of course, by the traditional 'WE 0WNED UR ARAB ASSES'
Surely he's also assuming that aliens DO exist, and that's something we cannot calculate the odds on (like a god existing - it's either true or not, but as we have no evidence pointing to truth, it is pointless to postulate about the likelihood of finding any)
Also, an incredible number of coincidences have to happen for the SETI project to detect alien life even if it does exist.
A waste of money and power.
Don't propagate this nonsense, or next time I go to the doctor's clinic I'll see a notice saying 'PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR I-POD TO PROTECT VISITORS WITH PACEMAKERS', accompanied with a suitably naff clip art picture of a 1960's tape recorder and headphones.
It's just like mobile phones at petrol stations all over again.
I use Fring - yes, it's in the iTunes Applications store, and it's free. It gives me Skype-compatible VOIP. No hacking required.
I love my iPhone but wouldn't call it a gaming device any more than other mobile phones are. The processor is too slow and the battery too lame to cope with anything other than simple puzzle games.
What is much more frustrating than moany users is trying to create nice pretty HTML formatted emails which will show correctly in Hotmail and Outlook 2007, as well as sensible email clients. Both reject basic, common W3C standards that even IE5 could cope with - stuff like CSS in the header, the 'padding' spacing variable, background images... basically we're back to designing pages with tables, and even then having to play around with them constantly to get round Outlook's foibles.
For some reason, Microsoft have decided to use the dunderheaded Word rendering engine rather than IE - this means Outlook 2007 can't even display emails that Outlook 2000 could.
The new Hotmail engine is almost as bad - bizarre really, as you'd think it would rely on the user's browser to do basic rendering. But no, Microsoft see fit to randomly remove useful HTML and CSS :(
Interesting article but I have to disagree with your aside: "That means a return to the days when travel, other than to go to war or to migrate, was strictly for the rich"
Why, exactly? In theory, ground-based travel should be cheaper than air travel. Air travel is only cheap because of bulk usage.
I think you mean, long-distance travel would only be accessible to those who have lots of time to spare; that is not the same as rich. Personally, I think it would improve our world, trade, culture and individual life experiences enormously if air travel (for customers and goods) was stopped.
I think you're missing the point a bit. If we can generate cheap, renewable electricity, then people will notice that it's cheaper to use electric cookers, water heaters and radiators.
It seems unlikely that anyone will come up with renewable gas or oil supplies, so renewable electricity production is the best we can hope for.
Mind you, the funniest thing I've seen for a while was the British Gas adverts promising that if you switched to them, they'd send you some low-energy light bulbs to kit out your house. I can't see them doing the same if they were providing the electricity too.
Apple's successes have been on anticipating what the market wants, that other manufacturers are not offering.
The market is being flooded with 3G netbooks at the moment - if Apple brought one out too, it would just be a more expensive version of what is already on offer. I can't see them going head to head with things like the Eee PC; for Apple, it's small fish.
I think Apple are more likely to keep punting the iPhone; it's in their interest to convince consumers that the web on a small screen is acceptable, and they don't need a keyboard.
How do they balance saving the earth with blowing stuff up?
The greenest thing they could do is disband the Army, Navy and Air Force, except for a small quota of soldiers and finance directed to the UN.
Funnily enough, a move like that would also reduce casualties, make sure conflicts we partake in are morally justifiable and not just political puppetry, vastly reduce our country's costs and debts, and convince other powers and populations of our peaceful intentions; possibly even eradicate us as a terrorist target.
But that would be common sense, and we know how far that gets. Not to mention the possibility of 'losing jobs'.
I'm actually pretty impressed - particularly as it's in Google's interest to hope that the iPhone fades into obscurity. I'm guessing that this is one of the fun projects that Google programmers have dedicated their 'free' time to. Kudos to Google for allowing it to go public. (that would also explain why it's free).
Mind you, maybe Google have a kick-ass Android version of Google Earth that will show up the iPhone for the lumbering beast it is...
That is just hilarious. I wonder if the ads the guinea pigs found 'compelling' involved naked women?
Or maybe they just got angry at the irritating ads popping up in front of the video they were trying to watch? I imagine anger produces very similar same skin, pulse, breathing and brain activity results that excitement does.
This smacks of desperation. It would have been a hell of a lot simpler to just do a trial run of in-video ads and see what the actual, real results were; but I'm guessing they've already done this and the results were extremely negative and didn't produce any significant clickthroughs or purchases, and so Google have had to resort to snake oil science to convince advertisers that the system works!
Good insight, but I think you've overlooked a major reason for Apple discarding the NDA - PR. Look how much coverage they've got for something that's no skin off their back; and they get to look like the good guys too.
It's just like when Steve Jobs stated that he 'hates DRM' - of course he doesn't hate it really, he makes fuckloads of money out of it. But because he's said that, all the freetard fanboys are slathering over him, because he's one of the good guys.
Personally, I'm glad they've discarded the NDA and it is to my benefit - I'm trying to learn to write iPhone apps in my spare time, and it is unrelated to my main work, so any documentation will be useful. (I'm not buying books though - what do the authors think it is, 1998?). However, I know for sure that people like me are not why Apple got rid of the NDA - they couldn't give a flying shit out of independent programmers, and Google won't do either; their potential revenue out of me will probably be nothing more than 50p a program for a couple of thousand sales. Quick bucks for me; a drop in the ocean for them.
Sorry, I should have kept in the spirit of the article; a drop in the ocean OF PISS... :)
Interesting... although now I'm not surprised that Apple won't invite you to launch events.
I think the AC above has a good point - making a PC from scratch with an Intel chip and equivalent hardware to a Mac probably makes the whole prospect easier and much more likely to work. I'm considering buying a Mac Pro at the moment, but now I'm tempted to match like-for-like and build a Mac Pro hackintosh for around £1000 rather than £2-3000.
This also seems like a better solution than the hardware widget that you reviewed before - I forget what it was called.
Surely the 'Band-It' counts as a torture device? If you have put someone in handcuffs, they are effectively detained. Shocking them then has little actual purpose beyond torture - and will probably prove quite tempting to interrogators, as it'll be perceived as 'safe' (unlike whacking them round the chops with a baton)... not to mention not leaving marks.
Several people have pointed out that fraud is a cost that merchants have to bear, and thus it is expected and Paypal cannot be expected to bear the cost.
I kind of agree, when it comes to what I think of as a 'merchant' - a business or person that sells on eBay/Paypal to make a profit, and is therefore subject to tax on the goods they sell.
However, I don't think of myself as a 'merchant', just somebody who wants to sell the occasional bit of tat. It's semantics, I suppose - but if as soon as I sell an item on eBay I become a merchant, and should expect a certain level of loss, I feel it's only fair that eBay/Paypal should warn me of this, rather than bragging about a safe and secure way of selling goods.
To be honest, eBay seems to be increasingly focusing on bulk merchants rather than individuals - it's actually quite hard to find an item on there which is just being sold as nobody wants it any more, rather than being sold by somebody making a living. It's no longer a bring-and-buy sale, and it's becoming more like the duff end of a flea market every day. In other words, poorer quality goods, nothing unique any more, inflated prices, and no real bargains.
Er, yes, I did use recorded delivery. It didn't make the slightest iota of difference. It would if it happened again, as PayPal have changed their policy and take proof of delivery as evidence, but a couple of years ago it was hard cheese. The whole point is that I *did* take the basic precautions.
And you *would* get a full refund if you were scammed as a customer - it's as a seller that you'd be screwed.
It was a Walkman W300i, when they first came out. The price in the shop (without contract) was nearer £400. I was selling it for less than it was worth.
I have now updated my blog after getting a couple of very apologetic, slightly panicky calls from PayPal:
http://ianferguson.blogspot.com/2008/10/paypal-were-terribly-sorry-and-we-no.html
Funnily enough, within hours of me posting that blog, Google indexed it, the marketing team found it, and the I received an email from PayPal asking if someone from their Customer Experience Team could phone me. I've just spoken to them and will write a little follow up blog in a minute. Naturally, they were as nice as pie and couldn't do more to help...!
Martin Lyne: She's called Shiva, and she's a lovely, lovely little fluffy ball of terror.
Greg: You're welcome to buy the doormat off me, but don't expect to pay me by PayPal...
I'll wait for an actual Sega press release before believing that they're launching a major handheld games platform. As far as I can see, you've taken a photo of a gambling machine that has as a prize a basic media player, that happens to be Sega branded, and happens to play basic games; and read into this that Sega is going to launch a major new strategy, going head-on against Sony, despite the fact that they have recently stated that they're concentrating on making games for other platforms, not making another console.
I'd like to know what you're on.
Oh, sorry, it's Friday afternoon - I understand ;-)
Sheer, unadulterated genius.
I'm very sorry to potentially ruin a good story, but I do have to ask, though... if they lost track of him, how do they know he escaped down the river in an inner tube?
It's a bit like the story of the guy who died of fright in his sleep after dreaming of a lion.
Come on, seriously, who uses Ubuntu as their operating system and Hotmail as their email provider? That's got to be a crossover group smaller than vegetarian huntsmen.
I have a Hotmail question for anyone else who manages large email lists, though; is everyone else getting out of office replies from hacked Hotmail accounts, advertising 'Business918' or similar? They don't appear to be bot-generated hotmail addresses, as they belong to customers who have recently purchased items; my guess is that they've been hacked by a bot somehow and the auto-response set to spam everyone who emails them.
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