Posts by Dustin 1

Apple handcuffs 'open' web apps on iPhone home screen

Actually..

If its in the App Store, someone paid money for it to be there...99 a year at least isnt it?

Motorola Devours el cheapo Androidphone market

The Kids will love it

'Nuff said

Bad glass delayed Apple tablet?

More Lock-In coming

This will just be another platform for itunes deployed lock-in content. They will use this to push a proprietary API based content nugget, just like thier new LP feature. Only this time it will be for 'interactive magazines and books' , something that could easily be done using HTML or any number of open standards. This will basically be a highly controlled yet prettier internet that costs 99 cents per page a day or something equally stupid. I hope it fails miserably, but it wont. Apple has more and more iSheep that are compelled to buy every incremental offering.

Generators and UPS fail in London datacentre outage

I wonder

If they moved thier power control systems to thier new 27' iMac ;p

National Security Agency beefed Win 7 defenses

All previous commenters should STFU

The NSA security guides are usefull, look them up. There are also some NSA guide based security scanner tools. They are far beyond a simple port scanner or exploit notification tool. They give you exaustive reports of file system, service and authentication threats. If you can get your hands on one, try it out.

http://www.nsa.gov/ia/guidance/security_configuration_guides/operating_systems.shtml

And by the way, NSA recomends using Apple's own security guide, so I gues that means Apple is in bed with NSA by design? You all need to grow the hell up and use your brain for more than paranoid anti M$ hate.

Time Warner names day for AOL spin-off

@Bilgepipe

No, infact AOL bought TW. I am a former employee of AOL, and still have many friends at AOL. AOL bought TW and then the TW suits bullied themselves into power rather quickly and destroyed AOL. AOL had the right idea, and if they were allowed to pull it off, would be a market leader in digital streaming content. They bought TW for the specific purpose of streaming thier catalogue online. AOL had the people and recources to do this easily. the TW suits wouldn't have that, so they basically took over from the inside, and somehow AOL became a property of TW. If you talk to any long time AOL employee, you will get a story of how TW F'd AOL, and for the 4 years I was there, I saw a little of that. Every year or two TW would replace the CEO of AOL, who would then close departments and lay off people, thus reducing costs, and earning a huge performance bonus. There is allot of talent at AOL still. If someone with some stones would take the helm, and development of ideas and creation of properties started taking place again, AOL could be around for a while. I'm not sure what will happen with PlatformA, which is the advertising arm, basically a different company ripped from AOLs recources.

Win 7 remote kernel crasher code released

@Mike007

Really? TCP/IP is routeable?........ anyway, I was looking at this line from the article: "specifically a NetBIOS (Network Basic Input/Output System) header that specifies an incoming SMB packet "

now see this simple definition of a non routeable protocol:

http://www.yourdictionary.com/computer/non-routable-protocol

In order for NetBIOS to be routeable, NetBEUI has to be running on top.

Now, from the praetorianprefect.com areticle, notice this line: "What is the big deal?

To simulate how an attacker could use this, we hosted a small INTERNAL web page

"

Now, is this technique useable over the interwebs? I can't easily test that theory.

NON-Routeable

Listen to the smart smug guys giggle and point. NetBIOS is NON routeable (without tunneling). So a vulnerable machine would have to be on the same subnet as an attacker or infected machine which was targeting this attack surface. Now, go ahead and try to telnet to a windows box (not in the same workgroup or domain) on port 137 and see what happens. This is FUD and fanbois are eating it up as usual. @Voodoo Trucker, yes, we need better protocols.

Apple iPhone closing in on BlackBerry market share

Inbound flame for Richard 102

Know who else makes easy to use interfaces that the young and old can easily understand? Fisher Price.

Windows Mobile 6.5 ships today

Opera mobile....mmmmmmmmm

Opera mobile IS sweet, tabbed browser on the phone................soooo nice. Otherwise, WM6.5 is an improved experiece overall. Definitely more fingerfriendly and merits a capacitive screen, if only you could have capacitive AND a stylus (this is coming though). I am on my second WM phone XV6700->Omnia and my 3rd iteration of windows mobile, and this is the best so far. It still fails to meet the standards set by Apple and Google, but I knew this would be the case. Oh, and even though IE6 for mobile IS different than Desktop IE6, some sites seem to think that it is desktop IE6, try youtube on IE and you will see a funny message. If only MS would make a slightly larger version of the Zune HD, slap the phone on it and merge the Mobile Marketplace with the Zune. I'd rather have a Zune with a phone tacked on, then what I'm hearing will be implemented, which is a Zune App tacked on Windows Mobile.

iPhone taught to edit Office 2007 docs, sheets

Huh...

Then wouldnt they be in violation of the patent the MS just got sued for?

Microsoft names the day for iPhone come-back punch

Response

@Stuart Duel

My use of the term Mactards does not apply to all users of apple products, only those that live and breath the hype without question. Most users of Apple products that I know are intelligent and are highly proficient users of many platforms, great programers and musicians. On many a forum you hear the chorus of Apple fanatics crying foul any time a product of similar capabilities or functionality steps up to the plate to get some market share. Always with cries of rippoff and stealing. Therefore one can construe from that type of 'vocalization' online that noone has the right to deploy similar capabilities and compete. Apple did not invent the GUI, who ripped off what now? I do not admire any company and how you gathered that is beyond me. Also, who are you calling a dinosaur? Apple has been around since the 70s. If Apple didnt buy NeXT, where would it be today? But thats right. Only Apple is allowed to purchase and rebrand existing products, put an animated and shiny theme on it......and have it called innovation...

As far as the number of useless apps out there, I guarantee that they outnumber the useful and non redundant apps. I was eluding to app count as a selling point over functionality. I have a few WiMo apps for time wasting at all times, but counting them as a selling point is pretty weak.

For the market share bit, yes it has been some time since MS has taken CONTROLLING levels of market share. But it does still gain market share here and there across many different markets. MS has many products in the enterprise for the backend. Great Plains for accounting, Sharepoint and Groove for collaboration. Xbox, despite its faults enjoys a healthy market share as well.

@Goat Jam

I do not entertain fantasys that MS is invincible. Any company can fail, for a number of reasons obviously. MS appears to have relized that they have been slow to react on customer concerns (specifically the home consumer based concerns), wants and needs. Thier primary focus has always been to the majority of thier install base...Corperate IT. Time will tell if they have made the process and focus changes needed to remain profitable and relavent.

@AC The days of being limited to using a stylus for keyboard funtions is long past. You can use any number of different touchscreen keyboards if you wanted to do so and most recent WinMo devices do include them. There is no doubt that the iPhone has both a better touchscreen and an interface to match. As much as those features give you, using your finger to write notes as opposed to a stylus is like the difference between using a GIANT novelty pencil as opposed to a regular pencil. Much less accurate or efficient. A stylus gives me better functionality for my personal needs. I am also far from dependant on the stylus though. I only use it for scrawling notes (which I can do much faster than I can type, reguardless of physical or virtual keyboard) and playing certain games which would be less fun without the speed granted by the accuracy of a stylus, Atomic cannon being such a game.

Any impression I gave of the iPhone being a BAD product was inaccurate, I just don't have an appreciation of it in use. I always grab my girlfriends iPhone and play around with it....... and i can tell you AC, it does work well, but it does lack some features which I do appreciate more. One being that I can do whatever the hell I want with my Omnia, not what someone tells me I can.

One thing missing from the iSheep communicator

Is a stylus. And 50K stupid, timewasting apps dont make up for it. WinMo 6.5 is not the iPhone competitor OS some would think. Its a framework that a phone manufacturer should build on, and only HTC has really done so. WinMo 7 will be the competitor, and we wont see that until next year sometime. And for the fools that say too little too late. How many markets has microsoft forced its way into and taken over market share? There were WiMo phones before iPhones, and apple jumped in...... Why do Mactards say that no one should bother to compete with the Holy Apple Divinity? Its retarded, only through competition do consumers see benifits. Grow up, stop worshiping a hardware designer who ripped off styles from an appliance manufacturer.

Smoking iMac caught on camera

New commercial

Hi...Im a Mac..................*FWOOSH* AIIEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!! (running around, still screeming)

LOLZ

Apple to offer own-brand HDTV, claims analyst

It wouldnt be hard.

Many >$1000 TVs and >$200 Stereo head units these days include some basic digital convergence stuff. My TV has USB and will display slideshows of pics. I was oogling a new Pioneer head unit that has an ethernet port on it.... The only way a HD DVR concept would work for such an imagined Apple TV would be if they had cable card functionality. Including the equivilant of an eye phone for the guts with a new tegra processing bundle (ala Zune HD), a large Hard Drive, maybe 2 cablecards, large OLED display would mean a huge premium over other devices, but some people would snap it up, but quick. I personally want they display to be limited. It should show images that I feed it and thats it......

Microsoft at a loss in Word patent case?

VI too

Anything that does anything with XML should be included in such a context as this 'Lawsuit" depicts. Programers text editiors, Admin web portals, web browsers with editing facilities like netscape maybe?

Microsoft kills Zune phone talk

I must be doing it wrong

I'm on my second Windows Mobile phone in 3 years......never had a crash and battery life has been very good, my current phone can go uncharged for much longer than my girl's iPhone. Windows mobile never should have been used for a phone in the first place, it's a PPC, PDA OS. Before the iPhone, a windows mobile device was about the best (opinion) Pocket PC option as they started adding phone and GPS capabilities. It's also designed for use with a stylus not fingers. A stylus makes a huge difference in usage. I guess MS is trying to focus on thier PPC roots and not finger friendly phone interfaces, as one could infer by looking at WiMo 6.5 and 7. HTC has proved that a HW dev team can build a unique touch interface without MS intervention. Unfortunately, they are they only team that has come up with an interface that is worth a damn.

Speaking of worth a damn, my GF showed me an iphone app, a small onscreen KB that makes fart noises. I tried to play it musically, but the touch performance was nearly useless. I hear from iPhone worshippers about the number and veriety of apps available. How many of them are this useless?

Tiny typo blamed for massive IE security fail

Was this an outsourcing error?

Can we find out? I supect it is. One thing I have noticed in the past at a large company was that Dev was always roughshod and QA was mearly functionality testing. There was rarely any code review. Me thinks MS should hire more qualified well paid developers and spend more time reviewing code. More eyes the better. I mean every line of code should be reviewed by a peer. Expensive yes, just dont pay the execs so much and you can afford it.

iTablet suppliers named

also @ Seanie Ryan

And, remember, in your analogy, the Ferraris in question would still be Honda Civics under the hood. Apple products use the same componants as PCs you idjut, just in shiny wrappers.

Network Solutions breach exposed 500k card accounts

Its time for a change FFS

All credit cards should be re-issued with a "secure id" built in. that way, even if numbers are taken, you wont be able to use it. The secure id changes every 60 seconds or so, its just one more layer but it is very effective. I used to use these at work and its pretty fool proof. An added pain, but one worth the effort.

Apple tablet unveiling brought forward

It could be successful

If its built similar to an air and can run medical apps (web based, or ported) it could take over a small but growing niche in the medical sector. In my consulting days, I saw many a hospital and small office with convertable notebooks or mobile stand mounted PCs.

Apple nabs 90% of all 'premium PC' dollars

I dont hate Macs, I just prefer rolling my own

A Mac Pro doesn't have enough PCIe slots without spending $1300 for an external chasis.

Abdul Omar....your a duchebag. Who are you calling sheeple? Pot meet Kettle. "Creative Director" In my experience, that means you do little to no actual work. How long do you spend away at lunch? How long are you in the gym when you should be working? How many inane, useless meetings do you create and attend? How much product do you output for how much you are paid?

Windfarm Britain means (very) expensive electricity

My only question is...

Why arent those wind towers coverd in solar cells as well? Seems a waste of space.

Apple's panties in bunch over Microsoft ads

@ B 9

Whats to get, I can run any OS I feel like on hardware of my choosing at a cheaper cost for very similar internals. I can even run your precious OSX.......muahhhh hahahahahahahahha..... And what indicats that my purchase is a bargain basement machine? Considering Foxconn makes Apple's hardware, I would rethink your assumption.

@Simon Banyard

Let me clarify my statement.

First, there are always differences in prices for the same exact products “across the pond”. Generally the UK tends to pay more from what I understand. How exactly the different vendors modify their prices I cannot begin to speculate about. I also cannot comment on profit margins.

Second, I was attempting to highlight the price differences at the hardware level only. Let me start by describing how it was that I came to the prices and specs for the two machines. I will address your software complaint afterwards. I also have to question your method of configuration for the Mac you specified, did you change the HD to the 500GB 7200 RPM option and add the 3 year support contract? I think not.

The exact Dell system that I configured could not be done so through the Dell sales web portal. My main concern was that I required a 7200 rpm hard disk. I therefore contacted a sales representative via phone to determine if I could get such an option. I could and was offered a discount for talking to a sales rep, plus I was offered a further discount if I chose to purchase by opening a Dell Financial Services account. I made the purchase after I was approved for said account, intending to make payment in full as soon as possible (Which I did). The price that I listed is the total cost to me after making the one and only payment after delivery.

Now, the MacBook Pro 15” model which I configured on the Apple store portal is the 2.66 Ghz CPU model which has a base price of $1,999.00 listed as including free shipping and no indication of applicable taxes. I added the 7200 RPM 500GB drive option and the 3 year apple care option. These two options are what I decided best matched the machine to what I purchased, which brings the portal quoted cost to $2,498.00.

While I am uncertain of the options for purchase through Apple, I’d wager that the discounts that I received would not be mirrored. I’d have to say that your attempt at the comparison was flawed at best.

As for the free software bundle would you like to compare what comes bundled with the Dell systems. Or what I can download for free that far outperforms iLife for MY needs. I personally use drag and drop for photos and video as I like to keep all of my item organized on disk how I like it, not the software vendor. I then would download and use Gimp to manipulate photos. For a quick and dirty video editor, I would probably use the free software from Pinnacle/Avid called Video Spin. But for My needs, I would use Premier or Vegas.

So, no apology for you cousin. ;)

Arguement Over!

I just bought my first personal laptop (used company stock before) a Dell Studio XPS 16. I got most of the part upgrades minus a BlueRay drive or 9 cell battery. This machine is the closest you can get to a Macbook in styling and features (minus battery life). I spoke with a sales person and got a better config and deal by using Dell Financing (paid off immediately, I don't work for Dell)

My Systems specs:

XPS 1640, Intel Core 2 Duo T9550(2.66GHz/1066Mhz FSB/6M L2 Cache)

4GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz 2 Dimm

500GB 7200RPM Free Fall SensorSeagate Hard Drive

ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3670 - 512MB

8X DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive

16.0 inch Wide Screen 16:9 1080p FullHD RGBLED LCD

3 year warrenty

$1,585.84 (including taxes and shipping)

Similarly speced (slightly smaller display, added 3 year warrenty, Macs have better batteries, weaker video card) Macbook Pro 15

$2,498.00 (free shipping, not sure about taxes)

So, Apple fanboys....STFU

Microsoft stores to get in Apple's face this autumn

I can't wait to see

They could have specific hardware for different performance/pricepoints say 3 or 4 laptops and 3 or 4 desktops. They would support only thosein stores and release new models the next year but support the older ones for up to 3 years or what ever the support contract is for. Just like Apple does with thier hardware and easy enough to do. They could also source out repair work to local consulancies. Who knows, well see.

Dell Studio 15

@ Jonathan White - About portability

I use a laptop and an esata drive for recording bands from a digital mixer on location. In these mobile recording situations, Id rather not have to lug a full pc, expecially as space is also a concern. Due to the length of sessions and the fact that my esata drive requires external power via a wall wart, I have to plug them in. So, there is an example contrary to your thinking.

-D

Jobs is the Devil for thinking he knows what I want.

iPhone 3GS turns yellower shade of white

QA is non existant

I would not immediately blame Apple directly, as there probably are no real apple manufacturing plants, its all built overseas i believe. Blame cheap labor and low cost manufacturing. Who knows, the manufacturer may have swapped out some speced parts to get more profit. I dont own anything Apple.

The best memory config for a Core i7 CPU

@Ian

You are wrong, Windows Server has had PAE since the Server 2000 days, and I can be enabled on the desktop variety of Windows as well. Bing it next time before you open your ignorant yap.

Apple MacBook Pro firmware fritzes third-party HDDs

This is....

Why I dont buy into thier game, f them and thier marketing.

Microsoft forbids changes to Windows 7 netbook wallpaper

Is this for users, or just the OEMs

I could understand telling OEMs to keep thier crap off of the os, but changing of the background by end users, thats a stupid move.

Apple wilts under iPhone upgrade strain

Update bricked my GF's 2nd gen

It was plugged in and she is always gental as a lamb with it. It's now bricked, will not turn on at all. We are both at work so I can't get my hands on it yet, but she's no fool. Shes a Unix/Linux SA.

Behind Microsoft's IE-free, Windows-for-Europe ploy

Or better yet

Why not have them remove TCP/IP so that they OS is further degraded. If the EU cares so much about choice, then why cant I order a Mac Pro with Windows ONLY pre installed, no bootcamp shite, or an iPhone with Windows mobile. And for the UNINFORMED yet so opinionated MS haters, Windows 7 has an option to uninstall IE. The current windows installer is basically dumping an image to your drive, no customization at install, so without changing that method you have to wait.

iPhone owners are superior beings, says survey

This survey.....

just goes to suppport my theory, Apple products are the Calvin Clien or Guess $80 Tshirt of the PC industry. More readily, wealthy people will buy what you make them think is a product of greater worth, yet is not. More cost conscience people will look towards desired function at a good price point. Buying these items and feeling that ones status is changed one way or another is a false reality. Oh, and college education is no indication of intelligence or common sense, look at George Bush.

iBet Paris has an iPhone, at least one somewhere.

Palm to out-iPod Apple with CEO pick

WinMo is not really for smartphones

It was designed for a Pocket PC experience, not touch screen (only) interaction and phone calls. Version 6.1 is better with some OEM skins on top. Palm Pre and iPhones are smartphones running dedicated smartphone OSs. You can make your WinMo PPC/phone ape like an iPhone, or anything else really......can you do the same customization with an iPhone? Nope. I only mention this because someone brought up WinMo in the context of smartphones. Another quality design from Apple, and a great addition to the Palm line, but they are nothing really special. My omnia takes way better pictures, has voice command and years upon years of Win CE and WinMo apps available. It cost me exactly $0.00 dollars to get one :) (2 year plan).

P.S. The Omnia has a Kick Ass flashlight (actual bright led) ! Compared it to my girl's iphone flashlight app......no competition.

Indian outsourcers prepare for US trade war

India can Bite me

I have no problem with the Indians I work for or with domestically. The folks abroad.... they can start talking smack when they help close the GIGANTIC trade deficits the US has. The US economy is no longer a production economy, but one of consumption. If consumption goes down, all secters are affected. But STILL with that, we have the worlds largest trade deficits. Most Asian economies are wholey dependant on US consumerism for thier success, just as the US was successful in the 1900s as the world was buying from us. What the Indian government doesn't realise or care about is that if we dont work, we cant spend. Besides, the quality of most outsourced work....is lacking to say the least.