Posts by big_D 6775 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Nov 2009
I was lucky, our teacher knew he didn't know anything about programming, so he would ask the 2 of us in the class that had taught ourselves at home when he or a pupil got stuck. Great teacher.
We didn't get RMs, our school had already invested in Commodore PETs. We got a single BBC Model A and a couple of C64s for the Accountancy class (don't ask!).
I taught myself machine code on the PET and when I got to college, they had them there as well. My first lesson was to write a program to calculate the number of coins to give in change for a given sum. I finished that in 10 minutes, so messed around with machine code making it "look pretty", I split the screen into input and output "windows" and displayed the input value using graphics to blow it up to 8 times its normal size and at the bottom it drew little piles of "coins" offset green bars.
The lecturer took one look at that and exclaimed "I never knew you could do that with a computer!" Oh brother!
Not over here, there are nearly as many Windows Phones as there are iPhones, both of which pale into insignificance compared to the Android phones.
Interestingly, at home the following has happened with the kids / partner:
Mac user 1 : Windows Phone 8
Mac user 2 : Android
Windows user : iPhone
The iPhone user is only using it, because it was a free hand-me-down (my old 3GS). She doesn't care what the next phone is, as long as it is cheap (under 100€).
Not seen any problems with mouse, trackpad or keyboard on any of the devices I've upgraded. Even my notebook, which has internal keyboard, external keyboard, internal trackpad, external multi-touch trackpad and mouse (all external are Logitech Unifying devices) has not shown any problems - but I don't play games on them, but for "professional" use I haven't seen any negative changes; in fact the additions under Windows 8/8.1 over 7 are nice.
It has always been quicker to shunt the data in bluk around that it has been to transfer it directly over the 'net.
I used to have to recalculate OLAP databases for a client. Their server was fine for serving the data, but it would take 6 hours to recalculate the 90MB (compressed) cube. It was quicker for me to copy it to a Zip disk, drive home, copy it to my PC, recalculate the data and copy the resulting cube back onto the Zip and drive back to the office (an hour each way).
Hard drive capacity and the speed of cars/trucks has always been more than a match for internet connections. If you ship a NAS full of 6TB drives, you'd need one heck of an internet connection to complete the transfer before the postie turns up with the array... Whether it turns up in one piece is another matter. ;-)
And the leaked radioactive material from 2005? The containers that were giving off 5 times the allowed radiation upon delivery? The flooding that caused Asse II to be closed and material moved? The use of uncertified and unsafe containers?
The problem is nuclear power itself, but the unwillingness to store the waste properly, because it is too expensive. Nuclear energy is cheap and efficient to use, but you have to store the waste for decades, if not centuries. The cost calculations to do that properly are not there, because the companies involved look to the next quarter and not 50 or 100 years into the future, that is an SEP.
go for a good fag afterwards?
This is the problem with Americans reacting before they understand what they are reading.
It works the other way though too. I remember Loretta Swit appearing on Wogan and talking about what a lovely guy Harry S Morgan was and he'd always pat her on her fanny... Wogan went very red, the audience laughed and he had to explain that it doesn't mean arse, sorry ass, in the UK; at which point she went very red.
I've only seen that topped with a very drunk Pink appearing on German talk show TV Total, and talking about the Farts on the motorway - Ausfahrt, with an H; but never mind she thought it was funny, the presenter was looking at his director pleading with him to go to commercial.
DAN, yep, living here in Germany, I idly change those phrased into German in my head and see what comes out, it is often incredibly funny.
One thing I've learnt about Germans, Grammar is one of the most important parts of the language, which means that they speak and write better English than many native speakers I know. The pronunciation may leave a little to be desired and their vocabularly more limited, but at least you can understand them! (And yes, my other half is German and takes the proverbial out of my German, but I only started learning 10 years ago.)
When I was at school in the UK, it wasn't important if things were correctly spelt or if the grammar was correct, other than in English. In chemistry or physics etc. it was only important that you could get your point across, you weren't deducted points for spelling or grammar mistakes. Here in Germany writing in any subject is strictly marked and grammar or spelling mistakes mean points deducted. I think the UK equivalent would be 2 grammatical or spelling mistakes on a side of A4 paper would be enough to drop you from an A to a B+, assuming the actual content of the paper was 100% accurate.
You can hold it in one hand? I can hold the company iPad 2 in one hand as well, or my ATIV SmartPC 500 or a Surface Pro.
I think your wrist might need a bit more excercise. Have you tried pulling the one out of your pocket and seeing if that one can hold a bit more weight? ;-)
Except that each new version of Windows has included more security features than the previous one.
DEP, memory randomisation etc. came with Vista and 7, UAC came with Vista etc.
Compared to the newer versions XP is less secure. Go back to when XP was the current OS, it was more secure (after SP2) than Windows 2000 or 9x, because they had worked hard on security.
Security is a moving goal. By the time Windows 10 is around, it will have better built-in security than Windows 7 and 7 will look like the proverbial sieve. It just helps the PR people get their point across.
The same goes for Linux, look at the Kernel logs to see how many flaws are patched with each new release. If you compare a Linux box from the time of XP's release to a current one, you'll find a lot of open flaws that make the box easily exploitable, which have been patched over the years and the new box will be more secure "out of the box".
Yes, the 5c is Apple's mid-range phone, priced about 150€ above premium Android and Windows Phone models. At 599€ it is little wonder it isn't making much headway against sub 150€ Android and WP smartphones.
I wish I was on journalist wages, if they consider 599€ cheap!
I've obviously been outside the UK too long, I know who Accrington Stanley are, but I never had any SMS spam and I don't know what Payday loan is...
The only SMS spam I get, here in Germany, is from the telco itself, offering special offers. I rang their helpdesk at 4 in the morning, after receiving an SMS about being able to upgrade my contract! They seem to use the "quiet" times to send out their promotional spam, which is great if you turn off the mobile at night, not so good if you are using it as an alarm clock or are on call.
I told them I was on call and leapt out of bed, because I thought it was an emergency and if they EVER did anything like that again, I'd cancel my employers contract with them and look for another provider for our mobile coverage. They put me on their no-spam list and I never got another promotional spam from them.
Point 0 is acceptable, in fact I often jot down notes in a meeting. But I make it a point to say that I am taking notes on my tablet - using a pen to take notes on the tablet, whilst keeping eye contact with the presenter helps as well - although I still often take notes on paper instead of on the tablet, because it is less distracting for those around me.
Even company email and SMS aren't that important, or the person would ring up. You are in a meeting for a reason, it should be requiring your full attention - otherwise, what the hell are you doing at the meeting!
If it is really important, they will call, get your mailbox and will then call the central number and if it really is important, somebody will pull you out of the meeting.
In such a situation, it shows the customer that you are not distracted and you are taking them seriously. And if you are pulled out of the meeting, then they should appreciate that if there really is an emergency, then it takes top priority. That is reassuring; on the one hand they feel a little snubbed, because you had to leave, on the other hand, they feel more secure, because they know, that if it was them that had a big problem, that you would also drop everything to ensure that their needs are met.
Exactly. Back then we were fighting a specific enemy, we had declared war on them and we were spying on them. Three green lights in a row.
Now we have no specific enemy, just the nebulous term "terrorists", the USA hasn't declared war on any specific country and they are spying on them. Red, red, murky grey!
That is the problem and that is why we are getting more whistleblowers.
Last time I looked, the US Government and the NSA had not declared war on Germany, Brazil, the UK and they are not involved in being hostile against the USA, well, they weren't until Snowden told them they were being spied upon...
Fighting against terrorists is all well and good (although when the US declared war on terrorists, I was expecting them to turn up in Northern Ireland and the Basque region, but I guess they meant "terrorists operating out of areas with oil interests, you can deal with your own poor terrorists"), but the NSA is basically treating the whole world and all its citizens as terrorists until proven irrevocably guilty and eliminated by a drone strike.
I use a PS/2 -> USB adapter from Lindy for my original MS Natural keyboard. Works fine on my iMac.
I love theold Model M, although my alltime favourite is the original DEC VT100 keyboard.
I don't think I've bought a mouse or a keyboard for under 50 quid, ever. At work we have Cherry XStream with the cr*ppy laptop style keys, they cost us about 5 Euros as a reseller, but I find the quality awful. I much prefer the G81, but it still isn't a real keyboard.
I tend to swap back and forth between the Natural, when I get sore arms, and a normal keyboard. I'd love to get an M for work, but I don't think I could swing the 130€ they are asking for.
Over here, we don't have an Apple Store. If there is a problem with an iPhone, they pick it up and leave you hanging for 2 weeks, when hopefully it will come back repaired. My iPhone spent 6 of the first 8 weeks of ownership at the warranty centre, where they totally failed to find a fault with it. Only after I got loud in the T-Mobile shop after the third time did they replace it - after another 2 weeks at the repair centre, where they miraculously found the problem and replaced it with a new one!
On the other hand, my htc and Samsung phones were swapped out at my place of work for new ones, no questions asked - well, they asked whether the screen was broken due to it being dropped or whether it had become wet (they still replace them, but you have to part of the refurbishing costs).
In the end, we paid for AppleCare for one iPhone, because it had been replaced 4 times in 2 years, that gave us the same level of service that we got from htc and Samsung, through the carrier, for free.
You cannot force a company to install wireless... And if you are visiting, they won't want you on their network - and guest networks are still a rarity over here due to the legal position - if you provide a guest network, you are an ISP and if you don't log each MAC address and keep a protocol of what exactly they do online, then any illegal activity is automatically the responsibility of the company providing the connection, so it is little wonder that wireless is rare.
I agree, I want one device. I use a Windows 8 tablet, because, FOR ME, it is the most convinient. I can plug it into a desktop dock and use an external monitor, keyboard and mouse plus Ethernet to do my normal work on multiple screens.
Then on the road I have a tablet with 10+ hour battery life, tablet friendly apps, access to all my data and also access to my desktop applications, if I need to change something "business" related on the fly. If only it had an LTE slot and I could make phone calls with it, I could dump my smartphone as well... I'd just then need a simple media player for podcasts/audio books when walking the dog.
My last laptop is still going strong, it is a 2004 Acer... My current laptop is a 4 year old Sony and isn't anywhere near needing being replaced.
In fact, the only one that is struggling is my 2007 iMac that creaks along (minutes to boot and 45 seconds to load Firefox. Playing a DVD alongside Firefox and the DVD player drops frames!
@JDX the Atom tablets offer the same weight and battery life and performance was better than ARM tablets, but I will give you price, the previous generation were on average a tonne more expensive than the ARM tablets, but you generally also got double the storage.
The new Baytrail are supposed to be twice as fast as the last generation, so I'm looking forward to seeing some in the flesh.
The RT tablets are great if you don't need any legacy applications, but I never saw the appeal, compared to a Windows 8 tablet with Atom.
That is great news. I have a mini on SL and an iMac on Lion, because Apple dumped them both with Lion and Mountain Lion respectively, so I was unable to upgrade. It is nice to see that they are now back in the upgrade game... Oh, wait, that probably isn't what he meant.
I'll see if I can upgrade my Lion iMac to Mavericks when I get home...
to ruin your fun, but Mundt doesn't mention "instrucments of torture" anywhere in the press release. It sounds like somebody had some fun with Google Translate...
He talks from a "glasklare Verfügung erlassen", a crystal clear mandate or regulation.
Isn't this behaviour exactly what they accused Apple and the publishers of doing? Potz, kettle, black.
Amazon are also struggling against the unions over here due to "slave labour" being flown in from Spain or the Eastern Block countries with promises of high wages, only to be forced onto low wage contracts and forced to live in barrack like conditions or find their own way back home - well, the sub-contractors employed by Amazon to run the Amazon warehouses, not Amazon itself...
Exactly. My Windows tablet works nicely as a tablet, but I also have all my desktop applications installed on the device and can use it as such in an emergency on the move or as a desktop replacement when I'm at my desk and can use it with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse... I don't see Apple offering this flexibility in the iPad any time soon.
A hybrid iPad/MacBook that is a full MacBook when docked, but becomes a crippled version with just iPad functionality when the screen is unplugged from the dock, has been rumoured. They are catching up, but no cigar for Apple yet.
Sorry, my bad, I meant Vendor Agnostic.
I agree with you up to a point, but in a lot of categories the FOSS alternatives are feature light. I certainly use a lot of FOSS tools every day, but in some areas I still use closed source products vendor specific products, because I have tried the free alternatives and due to a lack of features or hassles in using them, it is actually more cost efficient to use a paid for product.
How about we throw out text books and just use Wikipedia? It wouldn't work. it is free and not costing the tax payers money, but it is full of inaccuracies and is lacking in information in many areas. It is a great additional source, but it can't replace text books. FOSS can, in some circumstances, replace vendor specific software, but not in all cases.
And in my day-to-day experience, LibreOffice can't replace MS Office in a business environment. I know, I've tried a couple of times and actually used OO.o as my main tool for a few years, but at the end of the day, I keep having to go back to MS Office because of missing features.
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