Posts by Si 1

iPhone 4: Perfect for everyone, except humans

Screen protectors are FUD

A screen protector will easily sport scratches and scuffs, it's a piece of plastic/cellophane.

The iPhone (and presumably other smart phones) have toughened glass screens and it's much harder to scratch them. I'm sure if you stick the phone next to your keys the glass will scratch, but in general the glass is very tough and it takes a lot to damage it. My iPhone 3G is nearly 2 years old now and there's not a single scratch on the screen and it's never had a screen protector on it.

The only thing that scratches on an iPhone is the plastic back, which hopefully will no longer be the case now that they've changed it to glass.

Mozilla: Our browser will not run native code

"automatically load updates in the background"

Doesn't it already do this? FF currently downloads updates in the background and then tells me when it's ready to install. Or is this about add on updates? In which case after the TACO debacle I'd rather not have updates silently updated on my system...

Google's Android market needs Jobsian strongman

Does Android phone home?

The biggest barrier to me owning an Android device is that I don't know what it's sending back to Google. Google don't do anything if they can't store it, profile it and use it to sell advertising (or whatever it is they're amassing all this data for). How can I be convinced Android is any different?

Apple accuses HTC of iPhone tech theft (again)

What the hell is that?

A ridiculously vague and obtuse description counts as a patent-able idea now?

Dyson Air Multiplier desktop cooler

I've got one

I bought a brand new one on eBay relatively cheaply last month. Maybe mine is broken but I find it to be unbearably loud even on the lowest setting and in terms of airflow I don't think it's much better than your average £29.99 job from Currys.

It's great to look at and is an interesting talking point, but I certainly wouldn't recommend one to anyone unless you need to make a fashion statement.

Our Dyson vacuum and dustbuster are also incredibly loud. I wouldn't mind Dyson turning his inventive mind towards keeping the performance but cancelling out the noise of his devices.

iPhone 4 vivisected in 'first legal teardown'

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

I had wondered if they would supply the chip at full speed or if they would underclock it to save on battery life. Still 800MHz is not to be sniffed at for such a small device!

Dell Streak Android tablet phone

This is what I was expecting from the iPad

At 10" the iPad is too big IMHO, at 10" it competes directly with netbooks and loses out to them in just about every comparison (no Flash, small storage, no keyboard, high cost, 4:3 screen). The iPad is a very nice device, seeing the entire BBC News page in portrait and entirely readable is really quite impressive. But it just has so many compromises that I can't see myself owning one.

Some of the early iPad rumours were of a 7" device, which I think would have been much better. It's big enough to be used for various multimedia tasks but still portable and clearly in a different class to netbooks.

This Dell certainly sounds more like what I was looking for, if anything it's on the small side but it seems to tick most of the boxes for what I would be looking for.

Microsoft closes door on 64-bit development for Office 2011

"huge amounts of data"

Is that "huge amounts of data" in a poorly structured Access database? I love coming across those.

Dell Alienware M11x 11in gaming notebook

I've got one

I've been fairly pleased with my M11x, it certainly does play plenty of games at high detail settings without any real drawbacks. The facial recognition login is a fun if useless feature too.

My main complaint would be that many units (including mine) are unable to overclock thanks to the BIOS undervolting the CPU when overclocked. Apparently this is to help save battery life but the knock-on effect is that weaker chips are unstable. I should have returned mine but I was expecting Dell to knock out a simple BIOS update, which they haven't bothered with. Now that the i5/i7 model is out they'll likely not even bother now.

Still, even at stock it runs everything very well, with only CPU intensive RTS games being hampered by the low clocked 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo. Games like Mass Effect 2, Arkham Asylum, Mirror's Edge, SFIV, Devil May Cry 4, etc all run perfectly. You can tell from that list I basically use it as a portable Xbox 360, and it excels at that.

The timing of El Reg's review is a little odd considering the i5/i7 model has been out for a couple of days. It would be nice to see what sort of performance difference is to be gained by the new CPUs. Plus from what I understand the new model has Nvidia's Optimus onboard so you don't need to worry about switching GPUs for simple browsing tasks (I never bother with mine).

Steve Jobs unveils iPhone 4

Still only 32GB?

I'm disappointed by the lack of a storage upgrade, I can fill my 160GB iPod Classic, so 32GB will be full in no time at all. I suppose they didn't want to make the iPad look bad by releasing a phone with the same amount of storage as the top-end model.

Still, looking forward to upgrading from my aged iPhone 3G, it's still a great phone but browsing seems to be getting very slow these days...

Google readies 'late fall' Chrome OS release

Not interested

I won't touch this unless someone does an analysis of the released binaries to find out what it's leaking back to Google and their ever-expanding big brother database.

ID cards poster girl laments her £30

"damning proof of an ever encroaching nanny state"

No, it's proof of a police state, not a nanny state. What sort of idiot is she to have thought signing up to putting her data into a Labour government database was a good idea?

IBM hands out malware-stuffed USB at security conference

Send it back?

Why would anyone go to the trouble of sending it back? Either bin it or put it in a computer that isn't insecure and reformat it!

Megan Fox exits Transformers 3

Bayformers is utter crap

Whether the next film has the talentless Ms Fox wandering around looking orange and sweaty or not, it's still going to be another pointless film from a director that couldn't direct traffic.

Mobile phone users have fewer brain tumours

That's not what the study said

It actually said that low volume usage showed a reduced likelihood of cancer, but those who had a higher usage (>30 minutes per day) showed an increased risk of brain tumours.

This isn't exactly surprising as there have been a few studies that have shown that exposure to small amounts of radiation is actually somewhat beneficial. With radiation it's about exposure time as well as amount.

A small dose every day is fine, one big dose all at once can be fatal. Everything in moderation and all that...

Pirate Bay resurfaces after German legal depth-charge

Already back up

Amusingly, they already appear to be back up, with a lolcat on the homepage taunting the various organisations for trying to take them down.

Apple building its own Flash, says rogue Tweeter

Adobe's likely comeback

I would be totally amazed if Adobe aren't working on a version of Flash that generates HTML5 and Javascript code as its output. I suspect to begin with the HTML5 target will be an optional output mode, with SWF files being the default, but as HTML5 based browsers proliferate I could easily see the HTML5 mode becoming the default.

This then gives developers with Flash experience the ability to quickly create HTML5 apps, giving them the convenience of Flash without the worry of Jobs deciding not to run their apps. A "backwards-compatible" SWF file to serve to older browsers with the Flash plugin could also be generated.

Apple might be trying to outflank Adobe with its own Flash-like tool, but I suspect Adobe's legion of Flash developers will stick with what they know, and the ability to still create SWF files for older browsers will be compelling.

Apple prices up iPad for UK

Epic Fail

Why bother when you can have a netbook that does so much more for a lot less money. I know the iPad is a nice looking device that's very shiny, but surely there's a limit to people's stupidity?

Although after last night's election 30% still think Labour were worth voting for, so maybe not...

Reader Top 10s: an experiment in crowd pleasing

Daily Fail

While I hate to mention the Daily Fail, but they have their green and red arrows system and clicking one of them adds to a vote without taking you away from the page you're on. Is there any way El Reg could include this? It's a bit of a pain going back and forth all the time, particularly since it doesn't take you back to the part of the page you had previously scrolled to.

Internet Explorer drops below 60% market share

Dubious postulation?

"This would suggest that either Windows isn't puling in the surfers or that the OS sales numbers are not quite what they seem"

Or how about the people buying Windows 7 are just installing Firefox or Chrome?

Hackers crack Ubisoft always-online DRM controls

DRM is a waste of time

I detest the DRM being inserted into PC games these days. Why should it be so restrictive that I can't even play the game when my laptop is away from my wifi router?

I'm a gamer who plays all sorts, and so I still have everything going back to the NES hooked up and ready to go. 25 years on I can still play Super Mario Brothers. Assuming my NES doesn't break, in another 25 years I'll still be able to play Super Mario Brothers. No restrictions, install limits or constant internet connections required.

In 25 years if I put Assassin's Creed II into a PC (assuming I can find one with the right drivers, hardware, operating system, etc) it will likely refuse to play/install because I'm sure by then Ubisoft will have turned their servers off.

I'd also agree with Boyd's statement about the layers of shit^H^H^H DRM being placed into games. Bioshock 2 on Steam has Steam's restrictions, Games for Windows Live's restrictions and SecuROM's restrictions. Is that enough DRM for you 2K? And of course the game was cracked and released before the real thing had even hit the shelves once again proving that the legally paying customers are the ones getting the shitty deal.

PARIS hacked Canon: 108 minutes, 1,298 stills

Paris

Has she had her camera hacked and her naughty photos stolen again?

Astroboffin says 'black holes murder galaxies'

"with nothing left to eat, the black hole itself is doomed"

I'm totally clueless about space stuff, but how is the black hole doomed? Surely it will just sit there and suck in whatever random bits might float close enough for the rest of eternity?

Apple updates MacBook Pro notebooks

Only the GT330M?

Apple should have used the 335M, it's much better for games (and since it can fit in the 11" Alienware M11x it doesn't run too hot or consume loads of power).

Jesus Phone in shock Opera browser benediction

Runs the JS serverside

I just tried a site with JS and it basically repaints the screen every time Javascript does something. It's very quick, but still slightly annoying.

After the slick demonstration Opera made, I think the final product falls short of Safari for three reasons:

1) It tries to reformat columns of text to the iPhone's screen width, which often means you get pages where the text only fills half the width of the area it's in.

2) The Opera "zoomed out" view of a page contains no readable text. In Safari most pages are readable when zoomed out, especially headlines on news websites. Seems like this is a bandwidth saving feature, but it means you have to zoom in and drag around to read any headlines.

3) There is only one zoom level. With Safari you can zoom to whatever level you like, which is great because every site uses different sized fonts and different zoom levels mean you can choose how much of the screen you want to see. With Opera it's either all the screen or a single zoom level. There's no ability to zoom closer to images to see more detail or zoom out a bit to get more vertical text on the screen.

Overall it's great to see some competition on the iPhone, and Opera really does load pages much, much faster than Safari (which is dog slow on my 3G) and it has a nice "find in page" feature, but I think it needs some more polishing before it can really compete.

A multitasking iPad? Let's bin the netbook

Still not a netbook competitor

Multitasking won't go anywhere towards making the iPad a proper netbook rival. There's far too many points against it. For starters at 10" it's roughly the same footprint as a netbook, even if it's thinner. However a netbook has a keyboard, can run a browser with Flash, has loads more storage, has the freedom to run any app you want, has a built-in webcam, and isn't restricted to the audio and video codes Apple approve.

Then there's the non-16:9 ratio screen on the iPad which means HD content gets squashed down to sub-HD resolutions or the sides get cut off if you want to keep the vertical resolution. All new netbooks have 1366x768 screens that will run 720p content perfectly.

Why pay more for an iPad when you can get a netbook for less and do much more with it?

I love my iPhone, but I think the iPad is a very shiny, very pretty chocolate teapot.

Flash isn't going anywhere

As much as I'd like to be rid of Flash, let's be realistic. None of IE6, IE7 and IE8 support HTML5, and even if they did, which codec would they support?

Until the entire Internet Explorer ecosystem has been decimated and replaced with something that can run HTML5, Flash will continue to be the default choice for any developer looking to maintain platform compatibility. Considering Flash is on 99% of computers and HTML5 is charitably on about 50% and of that 50% there is no consensus on codecs. Why would anyone dump Flash any time soon (no matter how much I wish they would)?

iPhone 4.0: iAds, multitasking, and 98 tweaks

As I predicted

I was attacked as an Apple-hater by some AC the last time iPhone multi-tasking was discussed because I dared to suggest the 3G and other older models wouldn't have the horse power or RAM to run multiple apps. It's not surprising to me at all that iPhone OS 4.0 will only work on newer models.

I just hope there's a new model announced in the summer as I'm due for an upgrade from my 3G!

Panasonic Viera TX-P46G20 46in plasma TV

Gaming?

What's the 600Hz motion interpolation like on games? It would be interesting to know if it's any good at smoothing out games with a juddery frame rate (which is probably most of the games from this generation).

Apple drops HTML from iPhone and iPad

I'm on the Apple Developer Program and...

... iHTML is absolutely amazing. It's like nothing you have ever seen before. I'm breaking the NDA you agree to when joining the Apple Developer Program telling you this but you will not believe what they've done. They've got tags that you put around text that makes them bold! You can also make them italic! And if you use both tags at the same time, your text is bold and italic!

I'm sure you're all as blown away by this as I am. Apple are being very strict with iHTML, so far the only iHTML page I've had approved said "Steve Jobs is God". I tried to get "Apple OSX is pretty good" approved on a page, but Apple said I needed to remove the word "pretty" before I could get approval. It's a really hard process!

Tories to cut IT to keep National Insurance down

What's that, Darling?

"George Osborne's savings are so flaky, he's admitted he doesn't even know which department is going to pay what,"

How is Osbourne supposed to know specifics when he's not allowed to look at any of the actual data? Talk about a stacked deck...

Besides, I thought Labour were busy rushing through all their IT contracts and adding obscene cancellation penalties to prevent the Conservatives from cancelling all their IT projects when they get into power.

Don't blame Willy the Mailboy for software security flaws

It's been a while since I used Java...

... but does it seriously compile the variable names into its byte code? That sounds unlikely to me, it might be a virtual machine but it's still a form of machine code. Plus, why would it keep variable names but not function names?

Seems more likely you'd want to do something about SOAP calls or SQL that might be embedded in your code (although you probably shouldn't be doing that anyway). If you really are worried about hackers reading the data in the String table, why not overwrite it with jibberish after you've finished with it?

Does this mean going back to the bad old days of naming all your variables A, B or C and creating unmaintainable code that no-one save the author can read?

Sure Signal not so sure

Vodafone's vag?

Vodafone Access Gateway certainly doesn't abbreviate well....

One in four UK schoolkids admits hacking

1 in 4 UK schoolkids don't know what hacking is

Reminds me of the time I idly typed "tits" into a friend's laptop while he was tying a shoelace and was surprised to discover I'd guessed his password. I was obviously a 1337 ha><0r back in the sixth form.

Apple bins iPhone covers

The iPhone screens are pretty tough

I've had a 3G since near launch and so far there's not a single mark on the screen. It smudges like buggery but even from the occasional drop it's completely unscathed. I think the screens are pretty tough overall, although if you do keep your phone in the same pocket as your keys/flick knife/bag of nails you've only got yourself to blame if you damage it.

My boss actually sent his iPhone careening along the motorway when it fell out the window as he rolled his car. The plastic on the back was a bit scraped but other than that it survived completely unharmed, including the screen!

Hidden Windows 7 costs worry upgraders

Compatibility fail?

Microsoft's biggest selling point with Windows is supposed to be its backwards compatibility. If stuff as recent as XP doesn't work, that seems to be a bit of a fail to me. Half the bloat of Windows is supposedly there to retain compatibility with old apps. Microsoft should either work hard to be fully compatible or drop it altogether, this halfway house just seems messy to me.

Flat-pack plug designer wins top award

Congratulations

I'm really pleased this design has been recognised, I saw this about a year ago and I've been waiting for it to find its way to my favourite gadgets. I'm really tired of having chargers that fold up nicely but have a bloody great UK plug on the end that makes packing them in carry cases a real problem.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 embraces - yes - HTML5

Even if IE9 is the best browser at supporting standards it's still a huge pain

Why is it a huge pain you ask? Because there's still tons of IE6, IE7 and IE8 installs out there. Sure some of those will become IE9 installs, but that's the problem. With IE9 that means I've now got 4 Microsoft browsers to test and likely all of them will need some sort of hack or another. The more browsers MS release the worse things get.

You could make the argument that the same is true for old versions of Firefox, Opera or Chrome, but I would suggest that if you're savvy enough to install one of those browsers, you know how to keep it updated (and I know Firefox at least has a decent auto-update system). But with all those corporate IE installs out there, I have no choice but to make sure every bloody version works.

The first thing Google have done in years that isn't borderline evil is dropping support for IE6. In fact I had a customer today wondering why his Google Docs don't work any more...

Mozilla gives passive-aggressive missive to pre-Firefox 3.6 hold-outs

I just turn compatibility checking off

I've only ever had 1 add-on with problems in a newer version of Firefox and that was an old version of eBay's sidebar add-on. I refuse to use the newer versions because it buggers the minimum width of the bookmarks toolbar, so I've just uninstalled it altogether.

Jesus Phone to exhibit holy gift of bilocation

Will only be for newer models

I can't image Apple would enable multi-tasking on older models. The iPhone does currently allow one type of multi-tasking- you can run an app while it's installing another in the background. The performance of this is terrible so I can't see checking your mail while a song plays in the background on YouTube working being any better.

At best I could see the next iPhone model having some sort of dual core CPU that should give enough horse power to run two things at once.

Google flips switch on mobile YouTube banner ads

How do Google make money with the iPhone's custom YouTube app?

The YouTube app on the iPhone is a custom one so there are no context sensitive adverts anywhere. How do Google make money from that, do Apple pay some sort of fee for it? Makes me wonder if they will want to make some amendments in the future...

LibDems score copyright coup

VPNs

What a pointless idea. All someone needs to do is pay for one of the burgeoning VPN services out there and they'll be able to circumvent any blocks entirely. So this will cost money for ISPs to implement and will make no real headway in stopping piracy at all.

Is it ta-ta for Flash?

Flash in the early days

If I remember correctly, Flash in the early days was meant to be a simple tool for artists to use to make animations. There was only the barest minimum of support for programming, and it was that small amount that got perverted into making Flash the de-facto standard for everything you can't easily do with HTML + JS (and plenty of things you can do too).

Macromedia's Director was the more fully featured system with a "proper" programming interface and language, and it was pretty good for its time if I remember correctly. Unfortunately the simplicity of Flash meant any designer could use it, whereas Director required a bit more programming nous and so faded into obscurity. The time since then has been spent bending and twisting Flash's Actionscript into something that resembles Director but is infinitely more annoying to use thanks to the timeline metaphor (at least until Flex arrived, I've not had a chance to play with that).

Rare NES title takes $43,000 at auction

Rarity

The PAL version of the game isn't actually rare, so there are often plenty of copies of that on eBay. The US version wasn't on the shelves for very long because Nintendo bought the rights to the game from Bandai and released their own version of it, along with the Nintendo Power Pad (the original DDR pad).

The actual rarity of this game is disputed, some claim it was only on sale in one shop for a limited amount of time, but generally the ones claiming this are the people who own the game and want to protect their investment! There have been quite a few reports of people buying this game from all over the US, so the claims of only one shop selling it seem to be false. After this auction, I would expect to see quite a few copies make their way onto eBay and we will start to get a better idea of just how rare the game really is.

Since it was taken off the market prematurely there could even be a pallet full of copies of this game sat in a warehouse somewhere. It has happened before with other Nintendo games previously considered rare.

Apple strips top shelf, leaves corporate smut in place

Unfair

That's a really unfair thing to do, more so because they're clearly picking on the devs who don't have the money to sue. It's one thing to say up front that you don't allow Flash or emulators or interpreted code and then stick to that. It's another to allow these apps and then arbitrarily remove them later.

Why not just ban any future apps but leave the existing ones on there, rather than taking everything away? Apple could have at least given them some notice. This is the problem with Apple's closed platform approach, and the iPad is edging that method of delivery closer to the mainstream and the desktop. I have to confess I never really saw a problem with the walled garden on the iPhone, but as soon as the idea of it moving to other platforms comes up I realise that this is not the future I want to see in computing.

Twitter bomb threat joke man faces possible jail sentence

What a waste of tax payers money

Hey let's prosecute someone for making a joke, even though the prisons are all full and there are plenty of real criminals who should be behind bars. It seems the police are so incapable of catching real crooks these days they're willing to go after people who make bad jokes. How many real terrorists have they actually caught anyway?

O2 claims win in UK mobile broadband speed test

Bullshit

I've been on O2 for a little over 18 months now and their network is stupidly slow and 3G coverage is pathetic. If they are the best (and I severely doubt that), then I can't imagine what the worst must be like.

Considering other networks are happy for people to use the iPlayer over 3G yet O2 still block it I have to wonder what they've been smoking to make this claim. Maybe all the other networks are slow because they do allow the iPlayer? ;)

'McDonalds' burger-lers making millions

I have to ask...

Have the police questioned Hamburgler yet?

Surprise Adobe update grapples with critical flaws

Security flaws in Adobe software? Well I never...

I suppose this is actually quite a good excuse for not putting Flash on the iPhone or iPad...

Microsoft made a phone, and I hate it already

The UI update is long overdue

I haven't fully read up on Windows Phone 7, but does it not support all the old Windows Mobile apps? If not then Microsoft have probably been a bit stupid there.

That said, the pokey old Windows Mobile interface was badly outdated and needed to be reworked. No-one wants styluses any more so it needed to be more finger friendly and while the multi-tasking is nice, it eats memory and slows performance to a crawl. Most handset manufacturers exacerbate the situation with weak CPUs incapable of offering decent performance, resulting in sluggish, unresponsive handsets.

All the phone manufacturers have tried to fix this by hacking custom front ends onto the phones, but that's just messy and doesn't hide the underlying failings of Windows Mobile, nor does it remove the occasional need to pick your way through those old menu screens. The strict restrictions Microsoft are deploying for WinPho7 should do away with all these hacks and sluggish interfaces. Hopefully they'll mandate a minimum CPU to maintain performance too.

Besides, who is to say WinPho7 can't be a decent pocket computer? I've got SSH, RDP and an office suite on my iPhone (there's an app for that...), I'm sure similar apps will be released for Windows Phone 7, it might not even be a big job for developers to port from Windows Mobile.

When it comes to small portable devices I think restrictions like this are key in ensuring a workable UI and decent level of performance. Windows Mobile tried to do everything a desktop could and failed, the iPhone OS by comparison is cut down to basics and is better for it.