* Posts by JonHendry

141 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2010

Mac OS X Lion debuts in July as $29.99 upgrade

JonHendry

Uh, iTunes movie downloads?

You forget that Apple's already serving apps, music, and movies every day to who knows how many people. Plus they've been ramping up their infrastructure for iCloud.

Dear Dell and Microsoft: You're not Apple

JonHendry

Eh what?

" My laptop has a much higher pixel density than either of the Apple's product lines."

I suspect that's a design decision, not a technological one. All the companies get their LCD panels from the same group of manufacturers. If Apple thought such high dpi in laptops was something they wanted to order, they could just order the panels. For whatever reason, Apple thinks 1920x1080 is too small for a 15" laptop. (If they can get 3200x2100 panels, they'd probably use them, with text and UI widgets scaled to the same size as on the 1600x1050 panels, but with better rendering. They're laying the groundwork for this already and the OS has support for very large UI widget image files, and automatic selection of the appropriate file depending on the screen resolution.)

JonHendry
Flame

Check your facts

>>>Gates was preaching the tablet before anyone actually wanted one

>>But only because he had seen the Newton that Apple was trying to sell, which only failed because it was a little too far ahead of its time."

>Yawn. Invented by Xerox, copied by Steve Jobs during one of the tours he was given of the facility.

The Newton wasn't a Steve Jobs project, it was John Sculley, and didn't happen until after Jobs had left Apple and was busy with NeXT and Pixar.

Being a Sculley project, I doubt it had anything to do with Xerox at all. Sculley wasn't at Apple during the famous/infamous PARC tours.

iPhones secretly track 'scary amount' of your movements

JonHendry

Eh. Low resolution

I checked my recorded locations stored during a recent weekend in Philadelphia.

The resolution is in terms of blocks. You can tell I was in Center City Philadelphia, and popped over the river to the University of Pennsylvania campus. But the towers recorded are farther south than I actually went, and one is farther west. (I stopped at 33rd street, but apparently my phone pinged a tower at 38th street.)

JonHendry

But it's still just the masts

Even if it's down to the second, it's still just the cell tower locations, which doesn't give much resolution. It's not going to be enough for someone to be able to tell you left the office, walked down the street a block or two, and popped into a hotel to meet your mistress or into a massage parlor for a happy ending or to meet your dealer to score some smack.

New double-barrelled Taser unveiled

JonHendry
Terminator

Depends on the circumstances

People have been tased for the "crime" of experiencing seizures. They weren't following orders, see, to stop spazzing out. So the idiot cop tased the poor bastard. This has happened more than once.

Even if the head honchos at taser have let themselves be tased in the past, they might feel differently about getting it during a medical emergency.

Also, it's likely a bit different, getting tased by your coworker/employee, and getting tased by someone who isn't friendly, isn't on your side, doesn't mind hurting you, and wouldn't get in trouble even if you *died*.

Icelandic todger museum acquires human hampton

JonHendry

I notice their website

has a long list of 'honorary members'.

Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA

JonHendry

Funny

The Register gives more skeptical scrutiny to a meaningless minor discrepancy between performance of Mobile Safari and 3rd party web apps, than it gives to what the nuclear industry says. Apparently butthurt 3rd party developers are more of a problem than future cases of leukemia and birth defects.

Actually, that's not funny. It's sad.

JonHendry

Lewis knows all about nuclear power

After all, he's ex-Royal Navy.

He's a master of Rubber Dinghy Rapids. That makes him an expert on nukes. Somehow.

JonHendry

Um.

"I couldn't believe my ears last night when no less an august body than the BBC in a Newsnight report described one of the reactors as a potential "dirty bomb". "

I don't see the problem. If a terrorist blew up a truck containing a few tons of spent fuel rods, that would qualify as a rather large dirty bomb. There'd be a huge mess of contamination to clean up.

If a load of fuel rods burns on its own, because it isn't being cooled, the result is effectively the same, and probably worse.

JonHendry

Well...

"Strontium weighs 2.6kg/litre, and cæsium about 1.8. I can't see either doing much floating..."

I hope you don't like sushi. Or fish. Because it's going in the ocean, where it'll likely be taken up by the bottom of the food chain and work its way up.

Fukushima situation as of Wednesday

JonHendry

Why is Lewis writing about nuclear power?

As far as I can tell, Lewis' Royal Navy career didn't involve service on a nuclear powered vessel, so it's not like he has a relevant background.

JonHendry

About that MIT paper

Andydaws wrote: "in fact, the paper you complain about has been picked up by the MIT nuclear engineering department, and is now being recommended on thier blog site"

No. They rewrote it dramatically, without noting their changes, and even state that the disagreed with the original author's title.

They basically reused the structure and supportable basic facts, but discarded many of the original author's claims and conclusions.

JonHendry

Concern about nuclear power isn't about immediate death

"A single death on it's own is a disaster. A single death when you've got 10,000 corpses on your hands already is hardly even going to raise an eyebrow."

The concern with nuclear power isn't about immediate deaths. It's about the long-term, lingering deaths of radiation poisoning, cancer (survived or not), sick or malformed children, etc. potentially for years.

That ex-KGB agent who was poisoned with an isotope of Polonium certainly died, but it took weeks.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if most immediate deaths that occur during nuclear accidents are not due to radiation but rather due to more mundane causes, such as burns, or like the guys in the SL-1 incident, two of whom were killed by a steam explosion, and the third who was nailed to the ceiling by a control rod launched by the explosion.

Talking about how many have died so far misses the point, and misses so badly that it suggests the whole matter hasn't been seriously considered at all.

Mac App Store: Developer godsend or Evil Empire?

JonHendry

VMWare and Parallels

VMWare and Parallels aren't in the App Store because they require kernel extensions, which the App Store rules don't allow.

The Girl with the NSObject Class Reference tattoo

JonHendry

Swedish movie has lots of Macs

Lots of attention paid to Salander's Mac. Lots of translucent Terminal.app windows, Remote Desktop screen sharing, and Expose.

I noticed that in an early scene, the wealthy industrialist who hires Blomkvist has a Lenovo box on his desk. He doesn't turn out to be a villain.

Runaway hydroponic fungus attacks real-world Starship Voyager

JonHendry

BRILLIANT

"Voyager is actually owned by his ex-wife, who's given up trying to flog the peculiar property."

So basically his wife owns the flat, but HE lives there, and she can't get anyone else to take it. So he's got a place to live, and she needs him to stay there.

That's brilliant.

Ion readies book scanner for e-book buffs

JonHendry

Better way to go.

Buy a second, dirt-cheap, poor-condition, used copy of the book. Doesn't matter if it's ugly looking or stinks of cigars, vomit, and cat pee. Cut the spine off, and scan it using a flatbed scanner with a sheet feeder. Then recycle it.

The main problem is that you get the front side of each page, and then the other side of each page, and you need to collate them, combine the files, OCR them, etc.

Apple unwraps app store for proper computers

JonHendry

Nope

"Apps go to apple as source,"

Apps go to Apple as binaries.

It'd be easy enough for Apple to enable cross-compilation, so vendors could recompile their App Store apps for ARM and Intel.

JonHendry

Contact with users

" This, in my opinion, is EXTREMELY bad for the mac platform. The app store is likely to become the main place to get software, meaning people don't search much outside, meaning few people will find all the great apps that are banned, and those apps will fade away."

An app in the App Store can have menu items that open the developer's website in a browser. Once there, the user can be exposed to other apps you have that aren't in the App Store, asked to subscribe to email updates, etc.

JonHendry

Why bother with the app store at any price?

Just throw it up on github or google code or sourceforge.

I don't see the point behind this flounce of yours.

JonHendry

I thought Apple was going to nix bad ui apps

A gallery of horrid Mac App Store apps: http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/

JonHendry

What's big about it

is that developers can make money. So there's a gold rush effect, like with the iPhone app store.

That's what's missing from Linux package managers.

JonHendry

Apps can be free

Mac App Store apps don't have to cost money. And the developer can simply opt not to write the code to check the "receipt" for their app, so the DRM pretty much goes away.

Amazon: 'iPad LCD tablets no threat to Kindle'

JonHendry

Backlighting

Can't backlight e-ink. All the black particles are in the screen, they're just held to the rear of the screen where there's a white spot. Where there's a black spot, the white particles are held to the rear.

Which means the screen is full of opaque particles that won't let light through.

Try a case with a light. I don't happen to like those, because the illumination isn't even. If you're the same, you could try something like the dorky flashlight glasses Orbital wears in concert, or something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Twist-Hands-Flexible-Light-Green/dp/B003QSIIAC/ref=pd_cp_hi_1

It's a bendable tube with three LEDs in each end. The idea being you wear it around your neck, and bend it so the ends point at, and illuminate, your book.

Amazon wraps up Kindle crashes

JonHendry

Scratches

I think he's talking about scratches on the metal tabs on the cover that fit into the kindle, to hold the cover on.

On the cover with a light, power for the light is carried by those tabs from the kindle to the LED. On the cover without a light, the metal tabs can still contact the parts inside the kindle providing the power. This can result in short-circuits or otherwise causing problems.

It was suggested that the tabs be coated with nail polish to provide a layer of insulation, preventing short circuits. The scratches Liam refers to are scratches in the nail polish, caused by normal use, removing the insulating effect, so the problem would reoccur. He's not talking about scratches on the kindle itself.

JonHendry

My case

I use one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/KRAFT-BUBBLE-MAILERS-PADDED-ENVELOPE/dp/B000GHXWI4/ref=sr_1_1?s=office-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1293063040&sr=1-1

inside something like these: http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Park-64014-Extra-Rigid-Fiberboard/dp/B0006VPH60/ref=sr_1_20?s=office-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1293062973&sr=1-20

Protects my kindle when it's in my backpack. I don't close the envelopes, so the kindle slides in and out easily. I've stapled the two envelopes together at an edge, so that the inner bubblewrap envelope doesn't come out with the kindle.

My Droid EXPLODED mid phone call, says Texan

JonHendry

I think I know

He was probably blabbing on his phone, and some buddy of his threw a (US) football at his head, which hit the phone, etc etc.

Apple Mac Mini with Snow Leopard Server

JonHendry

But you also need to buy the rack

If you have a rack around, great. If not, you've got a big, probably loud, 1U slab sitting around the office.

Brits blow millions on over-priced ink

JonHendry

4.85?

Seriously? 4.85 a year on average? That seems high. Unless that's counting C, Y, M, and K cartridges separately.

I bought a new HP OfficeJet last XMas, and only got to the end of the bundled cartridges in the last month or so.

Apple accused of iPhone ban on 'all single-station radio apps'

JonHendry

The don't buy a poorly-designed app

The obvious solution, and one that's already offered by existing internet radio apps, is to store your favorite stations. Then you don't have to search every time you want to listen. You get a list of your favorites.

Google 'sacked Apple pioneer over leaked Schmidt memo'

JonHendry

Not a tax dodge.

I suppose the idea is for the employees to spend it.

It would be taxed, but I think Google was also going to pay the tax. (Which I suppose would also be taxed... und so weite, so I don't know quite how that ends.)

Fox News outs Beatles as 'Manchester's favorite mopheads'

JonHendry

Not so curiously

" in a news article curiously carrying a Wall Street Journal byline"

News Corp owns both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

This is just another piece of evidence for the decline of the Journal since Murdoch bought it.

Apple, Oracle air-kiss their way to OpenJDK deal for Mac OS X

JonHendry

You're kidding, right?

The Java Store is stillborn.

JonHendry

Nothing to do with the app store

App Store apps can't depend on any optional or 3rd party installs. That means Java, going forward.

The forgotten, fat generation of Mac Portables

JonHendry

fx was the bomb

I lusted after those.

Until I got a 68040 NeXT Cube that Cornell University was selling when they dumped the machines from an all-NeXT computer lab. Drove all the way from Philadelphia to Ithaca, NY (about 4 hours each way) to pick it up. I think I paid about $1500, in I think it was summer of 1992.

I stripped the RAM from my SE/30 to bring the Cube up to 16MB, and didn't go back to the Mac until 2001.

JonHendry

Or jumper it out of the way

If the problem is that the battery is dead, and is wired up in series with the power supply, so that it can't run now, why not just take out the battery and make the appropriate connections?

You'd lose the ability to run it on the go, but it's not like you're really going to do that, but you'd gain a fair savings in weight.

USB fanboys teased with 16-port hub

JonHendry

Monitors...

LCD monitors often have USB ports. The Apple ones (and perhaps others) also have a webcam, making them both USB devices and powered hubs.

Apple signs Xserve death warrant

JonHendry

Different rules for Apple

I wouldn't be surprised if they were running OS X Server for some things on hardware from other companies. It's not like they need to follow the license restrictions placed on everyone outside Apple.

Or, I suppose they could even go the Google route, and have custom-made servers built in quantity, that have technical advantages but hideous aesthetics. I kinda doubt Jobs would want Apple to make ugly servers, even for purely internal use.

For things like database servers and whatnot, they probably use other operating systems.

Apple MacBook Pro 17in Core i7 BTO notebook

JonHendry

Haven't bothered yet

I'll get to it eventually. It's annoying but not a killer.

JonHendry

Oh, and another MBP gripe

My 2010 15" MBP barfs if I use the Intel graphics. The screen goes to fat white and black bars across the screen, although the mouse cursor is visible. I have to keep it set to always use the NVidia GPU.

JonHendry
Jobs Halo

Partitions, and Ports

If you need to adjust the partition size, you'll probably want to use either the BootCamp tool, or I think you can boot from the OS X DVD and run Disk Utility from one of the menus. That'll let you resize partitions, but I don't recall if it handles BootCamp partitions correctly. At this point it probably does.

Now as far as ports go, my annoyance with my 15" 2010 MBP is that when I have Firewire and USB cables plugged into it, it's hard to get the little mini-displayport connector in or out.

Netbooks: notebook evolved - or stunted throwback?

JonHendry

more expensive

"Now, the question is ... will tablets get bigger and more powerful and ... more expensive"

I suspect general-purpose devices will. Companies will always want to keep up with the latest tech, so they'll keep putting out new models with new stuff, which will keep the price from falling too much, and might even raise the prices.

I'd hope a single-purpose device like the kindle will largely avoid that. Not as much pressure to improve the specs. Don't need much CPU. Don't really need any more storage than 4GB. Monochrome e-ink screens need whiter backgrounds, and somewhat faster or finer-grained refreshes, maybe an increase to 32 or 64 grays, but higher resolution isn't really necessary for black and white text, so in a few years it'll hit the point where there's no real point improving it, and it can get really cheap.

Color e-ink would provide a reason for another few years of upgrades as the tech improves, and the CPUs and storage would likely need to improve to accommodate color media, but I doubt the screens will ever be usable for video or action games, so pressure to upgrade will eventually taper off, and again, the devices can get cheap.

JonHendry

and cheap

I think it got to the point that when people hear "netbook" they think "really cheap" as well as small.

Apple's Mac App Store opens doors to devs

JonHendry

Dark side

... is that the apps won't be allowed to poop icons all over your Dock and Desktop?

App Store II: Steve Jobs sucks Mac's soul

JonHendry

title...

"3. While certainly not all, a lot of the decent Mac software has a number of kexts, control panels or wraps open source software within it. Think Growl (Control Panel), Viscosity (OpenVPN), or Airfoil (Audio HiJack kext), so it's a pretty ridiculous exercise to deny such apps the distribution they deserve."

Those will be available the usual way. I can't blame Apple for leaving those out, kexts especially. They require administrative access to install, and increase the complexity of testing.

"4. The biggest problem though is that the Mac is used for serious apps, not the average level of crap that's available on the iOS store. I can't quite see myself buying Photoshop at full RRP on the Mac store, but I can see myself hunting around retailers to find the best price."

Apple touted AutoCAD's return to Mac at the Lion event. AutoCAD for Mac costs $3000+. AutoDesk aren't going to give up 30% of that to Apple, nor are they going to replace their licensing system with iTunes' DRM that is the same as is used by free joke apps. The app store doesn't provide anything to companies with big apps for professionals.

Little App Store apps will probably outnumber the Matlabs and Mathematicas and AutoCADs and Photoshops 10000 to 1, but the pro apps are *important*.

JonHendry
Jobs Horns

Oooh, good point.

In addition to IE, consider how games never took off on Windows. Everyone had Minesweeper and Freecell, so they never bothered buying anything else. Whatever happened to John Carmack, anyway?

And graphics programs... there was no market for graphics apps on Windows. MS Paint killed the competition.

Gosling blows lid off Jobs Java nonsense

JonHendry
Unhappy

Mainly Matlab

The only 'big' app I can think of is Matlab. Very expensive, and widely used by scientists and engineers. Then again, the UI also relies on X, which launches first, so I'm not sure how it'll be affected. If necessary they could probably fall back on an X-based JVM.

I think their installers are also Java-based, without involving X.

The only other application I have that is Java-based is the Encyclopedia Britannica app, which would be a shame to lose, but is arguably a dinosaur in this day and age when they have their web version, and there's always Wikipedia also.

JonHendry

Gosling isn't quite right about Windows

"In the beginning, Microsoft provided Java for Windows"

Nope. JDK 1.0 was available on Windows. It was released even before Microsoft licensed it. (Kim Polese's press release says Microsoft "intends to license Java".) Microsoft was never the sole provider of Java on Windows. Sun's JDK, including their JVM, was always available.

If Sun hadn't put it on Windows themselves, I doubt anyone would have cared about it. It would have been seen as some Solaris thingy. It would have swept the world like NeWS did.

Microsoft certainly wouldn't have cared. But because Sun was providing support, Microsoft knew they had to co-opt it, confuse the issue, and pee in Sun's soup.

Polese's JDK 1.0 press release: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java/browse_frm/thread/22284d73c66a543c/9295a58e480761d0?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=kim+polese+group:comp.lang.java.*&pli=1

Or search google groups for message id: <9601232342.AA02818@849-news.portofino.Eng.Sun.COM>

Apple threatens Java with death on the Mac

JonHendry

No installed Flash, no unpatched Flash security holes

"It's not pre-installed on the latest MacBook Air (although it can be installed by the user) and it probably won't be installed on future Macs."

Then the customer won't get a new computer that has an old version of Flash installed that might have a security hole that has been recently patched.

Everybody wins. Apple doesn't have to deal with it. The user isn't exposed to that source of security flaws. Adobe gets a visitor to their website who will be exposed to whatever marketing Adobe wants to present to them.