Posts by Malcolm 1

Virgin opens kimono, flashes box

Silver? How passé

Black is the new silver. Silver hasn't been the new silver for at least 5 years - do try to keep up.

BlackBerry boss renews disdain for Steve Jobs

Looking forward to this

This looks like a really nice piece of kit. Certainly the first of this type of device that I'd actively consider buying. As long as I don't miss out on features by not having a BES account.

QNX always was a very nicely put together OS - I'm glad it's finally breaking out of the worthy but dull world of embedded systems.

Zuckerberg: the iPad 'is not mobile'

I think I respect him more for that comment

And I thought the whole point of the iPad was that you could use normal websites?

HP whips out iPad challenger Windows 7 fondle-slab

Stylus optional

It's a capacitive touchscreen with a Wacom digitizer, which is probably the best of both worlds if you want to provide the option of using a stylus (for eg for note-taking, sketching).

So if you want to do multitouch use your fingers.

HP unwraps Palm Pre 2

Carriers

They really need to ditch the "exclusive carrier" thing too - I'd have considered a Pre for my last upgrade as the OS looks really nice, but I'm not going to jump ship to O2 to do so.

BlackBerry tablet boots from 'floppy disk OS'

Translation

"aesthetically displeasing"

Swedes brew up 18.5 per cent 'Ace of Spades Porter'

End of History?

18.5% pales in comparison to some of Brewdog's more extreme efforts:

Tactical Nuclear Penguin 32% ABV

Sink The Bismark 41% ABV

and the limited edition, and now sadly sold out The End of History a with 55% ABV (Be sure to check out the packaging: http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article.php?id=341)

Google squirrels into human brains with Scribe experiment

There/They're/Their

If it can correct usage of There/They're/Their Your/You're etc. then the world would be a better place.

And it's not all that different from the auto-suggestion features you find on smartphones really (coming soon to Android do you think?).

IT engineer fights spider with improvised flamethrower

Arachnophobia

Someone's been watching too much Arachnophobia :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aQ6vg3JB2U#t=1m45

Porn and pirates hide Android's money maker

App Stores

Are app stores ever going to be good enough to find new applications? I tend to find sites like AppBrain far more useful in finding and filtering apps.

The Android market is good enough once you've actually downloaded something as it delivers updates in a fairly painless fashion.

IE9's Acid, speed and HTML5 trip to land lost surfers

Speed

Because Javascript speed isn't everything? Certainly I use chrome because it's so quick to launch and is very snappy in use. Every other browser I've tried takes at least twice as long to launch which I find irritating.

Ballmer's 'lost generation' note finds resonance

Processors != Cores

The license may limit you to two processors, but each processor can have as many cores as you like. So, 8-12 cores total is probably quite feasible with current tech.

HMV takes on mighty iTunes with 40p promo

320kbps or 256kbps

As it's the 7digital catalog most of the music is in 320kbps MP3 format, with some (Warner artists I think) in 256kbps. Some you also have AAC as an option but practically none is available in FLAC sadly.

7digital in drag

The HMV brand colours don't really lend themselves to an attractive website do they? Think I'll stick to 7digital for the time being (seeing as they provide the backend to hmvdigital anyway).

But more, reasonably priced, DRM free, retailers are always welcome. Now all we need is better provision of higher quality lossless formats.

Pressure mounts on Apple to recall iPhone 4

Cases

Anecdotally, literally everyone know/have seen with an iPhone uses one of those ugly cases anyway so the reception issues when handling the phone 'bare' are probably a bit of a moot point.

I've always found it a touch ironic that such an "icon of design" is so routinely defaced with invariably tasteless or just plane ugly rubber cases. Probably goes to show that people really don't give a toss about the looks (at least once it's out of the shop).

I foresee a future of such elegantly sculpted, yet paper thin, phones that a sizeable "protective" rubber sleeve is required just to make it large enough to get hold of :)

Ofcom: Mobe numbers to be ported within a working day

Horse bolted. Gate shut.

Why would anyone who's not a telecoms engineer want to change the first 5 digits of their mobile number when they switched networks? If you have to do that then the entire point of keeping your number would be null and void.

I don't think anyone out in the real world associates the first 5 digits of their mobile number with a particular network, and regardless of that I imagine that there has been sufficient churn over the last decade that any significant correlation between the two is rapidly diminishing.

Motorola Flipout

Increasingly popular?

There's been a few very small form factor android handsets appearing recently (X10 mini/mini pro, HTC Wildfire) - so maybe some of the more enterprising developers will add support for lower resolutions.

BBC chief acknowledges DAB flop & internet radio

Squeezebox

Yes, the Logitech Squeezeboxes do iPlayer radio very well indeed (and much more besides). Highly recommended

'Industry giant' fragged UK games developer tax break

Eh?

EA have significant development resources in the UK, so what possible reason would they have to object to some free money?

Jobs woos devs with iPhone OS iOS 4

Trademark?

I wonder if they asked Cisco before using their trademark this time?

Apple's HTML5 'standards' hype debunked

Try the demos here

The really stupid thing is that the same demos are available from the safari developer website without the browser check: http://developer.apple.com/safaridemos/

All work find on Chrome for instance (apart from the video one that needs a quicktime codec - why not the much lauded h264?). Apparently Firefox also works quite well.

Someone should explain the meaning of the word standards to whatever marketing wonk thought this was a good idea.

Steve Jobs – Apple's not business, it's personal

Why would Wall St care?

Apple are currently making money hand over fist. Apart from the reluctance to hand out a dividend from their massive pile of cash, what cause for criticism of Steve Jobs do Apple shareholders currently have?

I'm not a huge fan of Apple, but I respect what they do, and frankly more companies should have true characters at the helm - it makes things far more entertaining for the rest of us.

Patching is a pain...

Someone should enlighten them to the task scheduler

I quite agree. Particularly as a suitable scheduled task would do the job just as effectively, after running the updater program could then terminate entirely.

But what would you expect from a company which invented the Acrobat speed launcher thing that ran perpetually just to increase acrobat reader launch time by some fraction of a second.

Nice feature

It is a particularly nice solution to the problem of installing an update without interrupting what you launched the application to do. Kudos to the developer which came up with that one.

Sam Mendes to helm new Jesus Phone ads

Does anyone actually use those?

I had a front facing camera on my two previous phones, used it once to see what it was like (to a mate on the other side of the table at the pub - hey, 3G was new). Utterly pointless as far as I can tell.

HP exec confirms WebOS tablet

Cannibalised netbook sales?

Surely with low-margin devices, owning your own OS has got to to the advantage of your bottom line over paying a third party (ie Microsoft).

And to those above making derogatory comments about WebOS - have you actually used it? it's quite possibly the finest of the current crop of smartphone UIs from a design and usability perspective, and it runs on a sufficiently vanilla build of linux that you can run desktop linux apps with a bit of tweaking ( http://www.geekword.net/openoffice-on-palm-pre/ ).

Google programming Frankenstein is a Go

Dynamic typing fail

Call me old fashioned, but I'd rather have my compiler warning me about type incompatibility than waiting until someone else finds it at runtime.

Steam rushes from Valve onto Macs

It's for your own good

Case insensitive file systems are the devil's own work. Particularly if you want to change your system locale.

Apple building its own Flash, says rogue Tweeter

H.264 patent pool

"Like Microsoft, Apple is one of the patent licensors behind the H.264 codec, which means the company gets money when it's used."

Certainly in Microsoft's case this a disingenuous statement - they have previously stated:

"Microsoft receives back from MPEG-LA less than half the amount for the patent rights that it contributes because there are many other companies that provide the licensed functionality..."

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx

NASA tests amazing bailout rocket which will never be used

Holy crap that was fast!

But for those worrying about the G-Force, have you heard of John Stapp? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stapp

Microsoft drops second IE9 preview

I think you can

My understanding is you can do just that. Penultimate paragraph here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx

This whole thing seems a bit of a storm in a teacup (ah, must be the internet). As I understand it the patent situation around advanced video codecs is, at best, muddy. So platform providers have a choice of supporting something where the licensing situation is well known (ie H.624) or something that you may get sued for later (and is arguably inferior anyway).

This article on the subject is quite good: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/04/know-your-rights-h-264-patent-licensing-and-you/

Cops raid Gizmodo editor in pursuit of iPhone 4G 'felony'

Already returned

I think Gizmodo already returned the 4G iPhone to Apple after they'd finished analysing it. Allegedly the finder had previously attempted to return it to Apple but was rebuffed by Apple support who refused to believe it was a legitimate prototype device, instead assuming that it was merely a cheap rip-off.

I believe the issue here is that it is illegal in California to buy something if you know that it is not the property of the seller.

Smacks a bit of sour grapes on Apple's part to me.

Scammers plunder gullible iPad owners' backdoors

Ready to go malware

Probably because if you already have some handy Windows malware it's really easy to knock up a new spammy email message to trap a few early adopters, but writing a new piece of malware to target OSX + iPad users is too much effort for fewer than 1m users.

Virgin Media fires up movie streaming service

Convenience

Pricing is comparable to their existing cable-delivered movies on demand (although maybe 50p per movie more expensive) so I'm guessing they have the data to suggest that this will sell. While blockbuster and LOVEFiLM are undoubtedly cheaper - you have to traipse to the video store to save your quid in the case of the former, and with LOVEFiLM you don't get to specify precisely which movie you want at any one time (and you have to wait for delivery).

People will pay for convenience, especially if VM follow the US Netflix model and also get player software on XBox, PS3, built into televisions etc.

Microsoft coughs to Visual Studio 2010 upgrade delay

Already using it

There's no loss using the trial in the interim as you can just type your product key in to convert to the full version (there's no functional difference apart from the time limitation AFAIK)

Microsoft slams coffin lid on Vista

Election

The UK election is definitely very boring - I started to despair the moment I saw the BBC's twatterific website go live on April 6th: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/liveevent/

MS sees Windows 7 leap, but XP workhorse refuses to die

I'm a PC

What was so bad about the "I'm a PC" adverts? - they seemed like a fairly inventive response to the Apple adverts (although as I discovered recently, not many people in the UK were aware of the Apple ads as they didn't really take off here).

Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Mini

Not pointless

For a start there's this thing called lossless compression (Apple lossless supports up to 24bits per sample at 192kbps - which is DVD Audio quality).

Regardless, in the general scheme of things £300 isn't all that much for an amp and speakers - a high quality MP3 (256kbps or greater) is plenty good enough to sound excellent in most listening conditions.

Play.com touts Nexus One with added price

Blaming play.com?

Play.com don't set the price for their marketplace sellers, so implicating them in this scam seems a bit disingenuous. The seller on the other hand clearly deserves disapprobation.

MS hits Office 2010 upgrade program button prematurely

@AC

Dunno what you're talking about to be honest - you can easily insert multiple pictures into word 2007 and 2010. Insert -> Picture -> Multi-select some pictures and off you go. Or drag and drop from explorer.

Spider-Man 4 washed down plughole

A small mercy...

Spiderman 3 was one of the worst movies I have ever seen - particularly all that gothed up 'evil' Peter Parker nonsense in the middle. 1 and 2 were pretty good though.

Nokia E72 smartphone

Multimedia

Just add a copy of Kinoma Play and you're sorted for multimedia:

http://blog.kinoma.com/2009/11/see-kinoma-play-on-nokias-just-launched-e72/

Twitter meltdown raises questions about site stability

Scaling

I wonder if they've fixed their scaling problems yet?

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000838.html

Scareware package mimics Windows Blue Screen of Death

BSOD Screensaver

One of the ironies of Microsoft's purchase of sysinternals a few years back is that you can now obtain the BSOD screensaver directly from the MS website:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897558.aspx

It's entirely benign and entirely unrelated to this story, but it did remind me.

Sony Ericsson Xperia drops Windows for Android

Dropping?

Thus far it appears that the X3 lacks a keyboard and will be Android Powered. The X2 will maintain a keyboard and be WinMo 6.5 powered:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://www.mobilebulgaria.com/news/view.php%3Fid%3D13078&sl=auto&tl=en&history_state0=

So not really dropping Windows at all then.

Microsoft hosts Feynman lecture series

Research?

"This being Microsoft, you have to install its Silverlight plug-in for Internet Explorer to view the lectures."

You have to install Silverlight, granted. But the Silverlight plugin is available for IE, Firefox and Safari on Windows and OSX. It even works on Google chrome (albeit unsupported). And you can get the moonlight plugin for firefox on SUSE, openSUSE, Ubuntu and Fedora.

Panasonic patches cameras to block rivals' batteries

Hmmm..

I was looking around for a second battery for my Olympus SLR recently, and the official option was £40! While there were many no-name generic replacement batteries available for well under £10, I went for a replacement from what I considered a reputable battery brand (Uniross) for £15 - but presumably if Olympus were to follow Panasonic's lead I would have no choice but to pay through the nose for the "official" product :(