Posts by JDX

Wikipedia to shut down Wednesday in SOPA protest

@BristolBachelor

Complaining that a _genuine_ pirate site gets taken down is hardly going to stengthen the anti-SOPA case.

Catch up El Reg

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/01/16/so-is-sopa-dead-not-exactly/

Vote cancelled... stuff continuing.

re:SOPA could be a disaster for 2.0rrific sites like Wikipedia

Why, specifically? What does wikipedia do that would be classified as piracy?

Also - since when is wikipedia a web 2.0 site? NOT doing everything by AJAX is one of its better features.

Same old...

What does SOPA have to do with wikipedia? Or is it just a case of powerful nerds turning off their toys to get attention?

Try turning Facebook off if you actually want to get some traction.

Formula 1 revs engines through Virgin Media

Freeview Addon?

Does anyone know if you can get this channel as a paid extra on compatible Freeview boxes? I was under the impression you can get Sky Sports on Freeview now, could anyone clarify?

I'm hoping the BBC's extended highlights (2hrs IIRC) will be adequate and am not going to get Sky, but a cheaper solution might just tempt me.

Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition Android tablet

@Arctic fox

It's all about the web. Allegedly. So you don't need local storage, you'll be streaming everything. Apparently.

Who bought Motorola again?

Why would putting the camera in portrait mode suggest e-reading? Are they expecting you to video-chat _while_ reading?

HTC Explorer budget smartphone

It's such a shame that you have to find a "bargain" phone to get a much-enhanced battery life.

Apple iPad 3 to sport LTE '4G'

@jai

You're assuming they're doing it because it's better, rather than just so they can claim it's better.

Tiny frog claimed as smallest vertebrate ever

You're so right Mark. 17 and 18 and not even slightly similar.

Amazon welcomes Microsoft files into Kindle cloud

So how is this better than simply emailing the file to your Kindle email in the first place, other than saving you about 10s? Does downloading the data come under the same price policies on 3G?

Microsoft postpones plans for web telly service

re: A shame really

No no no! I don't want my TV controlled by gestures and voice. I just want the bloody XBox to rspond to the same remote control as everything else.

Honda NSX reborn as a hybrid

Hybrid?

In this case isn't it like saying a F1 car is a hybrid because they have an electric motor connected to the KERS?

Google merging more personal data into search results

re:Ive never really understood

It would make more sense if you had friends.

Monopoly?

Isn't using their search engine to promote their social network exactly the kind of thing that gets companies in monopolies investigations?

Netflix goes live in Blighty

re:US selection

It was great when we used it for a month... both series of Stargate Universe for instance. The content varies massively between countries, far more so than between providers.

And I agree their interface is much better than LoveFilm and 4OD. On a par with iPlayer although very different... neat functionality for watching a whole series where it remembers the next one to watch even across different devices, etc (obvious but it's the details which swing it sometimes).

re:Is that it?

In short, no. I don't know why, but you can't (apparently) browse the full selection.

Reg has mentioned several big deals for Netflix UK recently with sources such as BBC.

re:As has already been stated several times

It is just as bad. How would a regular user know this was the case. I haven't been on FB for ages but am evidently still logged in... but never would have though logging out of FB would magically let me register by email.

Major bug IMHO.

re: FACEBOOK

yes it seems you need FB for the free trial at least?! Yuck.

I was surprised to note that signing in with my US Netflix account (closed when we left the US) _seems_ to let me re-join as a UK member, and offers me a free month for coming back.

re:Remember the discussion about Windows Phone

NewFlix uses Silverlight IIRC so maybe it will just work without a special app?

Also remember NF is not a new service, they've had iOS/Android clients a while now rather than building a new service and choosing not to support WP.

I used NF when in the US and it was great, but they also had a great variety of streaming titles... LoveFilm was crap when we tried it.

I also would prefer option to download (even with time-limited DRM) as well as stream.

Panasonic pitches portable Skype screen

So it's a cheap tablet with a $2 plastic stand glued on? Or did I miss something? Maybe the idea is it's super-cheap since it can be very low-power and not need a fancy screen?

But a laptop can do all that they mention, surely?

Samsung shows 55in OLED über-TV

sigh

So motion detection and voice control are this year's useless waste of time gimmicks?

How are you supposed to watch Babestation on a TV with motion-sensing, it'll keep switching channel.

CES headman: 'Microsoft not gone, just on pause'

Kinect and some nice input devices. But mice and keyboards are hardly keynote material ;)

Ford unwraps '2013 Mondeo'

MPGe?!

Can't we just have a proper unit like KmPkWh ;)

Facebook VERY SLOWLY rolls out Timeline

re:both examples are dead wrong

You can't use "people _like_ one of those" as a counter-argument. That's just subjective and irrelevant. Companies HAVE to make decisions that might displease users in the short-term in order to avoid becoming stalled.

Exactly how governments sometimes have to do tough things for longer-term growth.

Whether timeline is a _good_ feature is something we can only tell once people use it for a sufficient period and understand it; you can't try it once and switch back and say that is relevant because most people hate change of any sort.

re:anyone actually like timeline?

Now FB isn't new, they face the same problem any site/app does when it changes... people don't like change, and people are more vocal to complain than compliment.

So FB need to make their own judgement if it is better or not. It's very similar to MS and the Ribbon, or Nintendo going for motion controllers on the Wii.

SEVENTY-FIVE wirelessly charged devices will demo at CES

Maybe they could fit a similar hole in a phone so you can charge it on the toothbrush charger :)

Turning on/off...

Um, you could just put a switch on the plate itself.

One less hole in your device is one less point of failure due to dirt or water getting in, IMHO.

It's only a minor benefit but still in an idea world it would be nice... apart from the fact that a wired charger lets you plug the charger in behind the sofa, with wireless you need the plate somewhere in easy reach.

Cupertino lawyers mull 'driPhone' name ban

If it's the _sound_ they are worried about

Then even changing it to "dryPhone" would not be enough? Madness. I can see _some_ logic in being annoyed by all these iXXX gadgets which are clearly trading on apple's name and could hurt their reputation, but a clever-sounding product rather than a derivative copy is different. More a parody.

Black hole radiation could provide insight into quantum gravity

@Filippo

Then can only make micro-holes in the LHC (if they could at all) so we still need to send a probe to find a real one!

Microsoft's master stroke: Pay store staff per WinPhone sold

re:money to pay the bribe comes from the Windows desktop monopoly

No it doesn't. It comes from the patent fees they get for every Android phone sold. As long as Android outsell WP, they can give $15 per unit and STILL BE UP ON THE DEAL.

re:so remember that folks

Sales clerks having an agenda is not new news. They have internal quotas or special bonuses on specific models/providers already. A salesman is NEVER unbiased.

re:WP7 is still not going to sell because

Hmm, once upon a time iOS and Anroid were in single-digits too, and Nokia ruled the world. Once upon a time MySPace ruled the social network scene.

About blinking time

They can afford it... isn't $10-15 what MS get for each Android handset? So Google are paying shops to sell MS phones ;)

2012: The year when smartphones become smart?

re:Those things are all perfectly possible with existing technology.

But as SIRI shows, it's less about the technology _existing_ as it is about integrating it smoothly and polishing it up to be user-friendly.

Xbox 720 to double-up as a DVR

question

Will this PVR actually mean it connects to normal TV inputs,,, or that it'll be purely TV over internet like BT's service? I had assumed the former, if the latter than I'm out!

I Like it

My PS3 is already my DVD/BR player so a console with a decent DVR sounds like serious sale point for those struggling to choose between MS/Sony.

How it would integrate with FreeView and FreeSat though, is my question. I've no idea how fiddly that is, but it would be nice if it worked.

Google tablet to tackle Kindle Fire not iPad

You can see the advert now....

"Fresh on the heels of our pointless Google PC and Google OS... a pointless Google tablet"

They seem more interested in doing as many things as possible, than doing them well. Add Chome Tablet to the list of flops in the near future?

Amazon Kindle Fire browser hacked for your Android pleasure

Although

I don't really care if Amazon knows my history. Privacy advocates seem to complain about this for the principle involved, without actually explaining why it's worse than Hitler and Stalin combined.

Tesco know all the things I buy in their store and my credit card company knows _everything_ I buy, should I be worried by those things too? Damn you Tesco, reminding me I forgot to buy milk!

@Ralph 5

Read the damn article.

WHSmith Kobo Vox e-reader

7 hours

Come on, you're describing that as reasonable? In my book (!) that's atrocious. Don't bother taking it on holiday, it'll be flat by the time you get on the plane after hanging around the airport for half the day!

I was expecting this to be a colour e-ink device, rather than a cheap tablet... correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that all this is... not an e-reader at all but a low-spec tablet? Are we ever going to _get_ colour e-ink?

HTC Sensation XL

Question about HD recording

Does 1080 recording really offer an improvement when recorded from a mobile phone with a (relatively) crappy camera... I never tried it so serious answers please. Do the extra pixels help?

Dagenham council: Only language our tenants understand is SMS

re:Even chavs have smart phones these days

Only the young ones. Older ones are totally web-illiterate just as they are regular illiterate.

Lumia sales fail to set world alight

Question about WP's wasted space

We (my wife and I) recently tried the new Lumias in the flesh for the first time. She immediately pointed out that on the homescreen, you lose an entire column of valuable screen space beneath the "->" button. I've not seen anyone else complain about this but it does seem a waste of maybe 10% of the screen... what does anyone else thing about this?

Year of the Penguin - el Reg's 2011 Linux-land roundup

re:The desktop barely matters...

That supposes everything is going to end up moving to a web-server based paradigm. While at the moment it's going that way, we have to be aware that this is very fashionable so while in many cases it's a great idea, many people are _only_ doing this because it's cool... porting desktop apps that work great, to web-versions which are not as rich and require constant web connectivity.

I wonder if things will end up balanced a bit further towards the desktop in a few years... instead of everything being forced onto the browser simply because the browser is now capable of doing so.

What do Linux want?

It seems to me the Linux crowd need to decide if they want a desktop THEY can use, or one which will make Linux popular to regular PC users.

Linux users are often quite strong evangelists of Linux but they seem to fail to realise regular folk NEED an easy interface, along the lines of Win/Mac. However if they make an 'open source Windows/Mac' shell that _would_ actually attract those they evengelise to, they could end up with something they don't themselves like.

So do they want Linux to go mass-market, or do they want to keep it for those who understand computers? The former seems an obvious answer, but if they're not in it for the money then perhaps the latter is better.

The secret to getting rich in 2012: Open APIs

This isn't even ABOUT APIs

An API is nothing new, Windows has had it for decades. What is specifically being talked about are open _services_, not APIs.

Also @Brah, yes you may have been working this way but this way of working has been possible for the last 10 years using servlets/PHP/ASP, the _motivation_ to do so is all that's changed and I'm not sure how much of this is hype/fashion.

I've nothing against modularity, it's very cool... but doing it (using web-based service protocols) by default is not ideal IMHO.

All very well and good, but the article seems to imply the only thing worth creating is a web-based service these days. The reality is, the majority of us are still writing regular software or web-apps which aren't designed for use by millions.

It might be cool and 'in', but it's still better to find a problem that needs a solution than to try and find a problem that _needs_ Hadoop and an open API.

The Best of El Reg 2011 now on Kindle

re:It's clear it's not free in the title

"The title says Kindle. It costs money to buy things from the Kindle store."

Kindle books can be free: http://www.amazon.co.uk/free-kindle-books-uk/lm/RFE5KI1NEVRAK