Posts by Jonathan 27

Google, Amazon 'n' pals fork out for AdBlock Plus 'unblock' – report

The "opt out" they're paying for takes 10 seconds to disable in AbBlock Plus' settings so they're really paying for nothing. They have to put that there or everyone would immediately abandon AdBlock Plus for a new product, remember what happened to the first AdBlock extension?

The option you're looking for is "Allow some non-intrusive advertising", you want that off 100% of the time if you have AdBlock Plus. The last time I installed AdBlock Plus I discovered this option because it wasn't working. It's nice to see that now it will work even worse on default settings which will convince more people to either switch to AdBlock Edge or disable the incorrectly named "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" option.

Notebooks drag PC sales out the toilet, fondleslabs still falling

Silly

The idea that tablets were cannibalizing PC sales in a major way was always fallacious. Tablets are an add-in device, good for surfing the web and reading your email from the couch. Now that tablets have hit saturation, they're not going to be the huge seller that the shortsighted idiots in the industry thought they were.

I personally don't plan on replacing my tablet until I break my current one, could be 10 years. And I figure that if a techie like me feels like that then most people are probably less likely to replace their tablets.

Linux clockpocalypse in 2038 is looming and there's no 'serious plan'

Better they ignore it

You know, it's in my best interest that no one does anything about this. If it's a big rush at the end they'll be willing to pay all us developers much more to get it done in time. I'll be 56 in 2038 so I'll still be in the workforce by then, I'm sure a bunch of you are in the same situation.

BYOD is NOT the Next Biggest Thing™: Bring me Ye Olde Lappetoppe

BYOD is a lot of work.

BYOD is why I have to publish a list of supported web browsers for the web application I work on. The list literally contains all the major we browsers, on all the major platforms. But to protect against people complaining that their 10 year old Blackberry running BB6, or Windows XP running IE 6 (Company systems are running Windows 7 with IE 10) can't access the application I need to keep a list of supported web browsers.

I'm not sure who thought this was a good idea, it's a huge waste of company resources and it costs the employees too.

'Super-secure' BlackPhone pwned by super-silly txt msg bug

Yeah...

The BlackPhone is mostly about the idea of security than actual security. The company that makes it doesn't really have the resources to test their products to the level necessary to certify anything so they're really just slapping stuff together and guessing. The whole project relies on a small team making a product that more secure than what multi-billion dollar companies are putting out and it's just not feasible.

Facebook is MORE IMPORTANT to humanity than PORTUGAL

Re: How many of those 4.5 million jobs were within Deloittes?

Your cat sounds lazy, mine has been in my employ for years and never shirks his duties (although most of them are playing, cuddling and purring).

Samsung BlackBerry gobble DENIED: We're not for sale to Sammy – execs

Why sell out when you can continue to run the company in the ground? $7.5bn is more than it's worth.

BlackBerry Enterprise chief: Yes, we did leave users behind

Not Out of Business Yet?

BlackBerry still isn't out of business yet and they still haven't changed their "winning" strategy? These guys are a bunch of clowns.

Reg man confesses: I took my wife out to choose a laptop for Xmas. NOOOO

Overwhelmed

If I'm buying a laptop for someone I ask them, what they want to do with it, what size/form factor they want (not using those words) and if they like a particular colour or colours. That way you can try to get a machine that will fit all their needs. Taking someone who doesn't know anything about computers out shopping for computers isn't normally a good idea because it's very overwhelming and can mean that they fall in love with the wrong machine. It's possible that Chromebook was a good idea, but probably not.

Also, always get a gift receipt, that way if they don't like the choice you made they can make their own (and be responsible for it themselves). And this is not a male vs female thing, it's a techie vs non-techie thing guys. It's a lot easier to decided based on factors you understand so if you don't know what any of the specs mean picking my appearance is really your only option.

What's Jimmy Wales going to do with $500k from the UAE?

By not donating it immediately to the Wikimedia foundation Whales looks like a hypocrit. Ask us all for money but don't donate your own.

Untangling .NET Core: Open source for Windows, Mac, Linux

Re: Removing support is the same as killing it.

What platform supported automatically porting desktop apps to the web? You can't really complain about Microsoft not offering something that no one else offers.

Sounds Good

The whole .NET Core thing sounds good for .NET development, but it remains to be seen how it's going to work out. I'm cautiously optimistic, Microsoft has screwed up a lot recently but I'm using .NET MVC which has been pretty good for us so far.

Pitch Black: New BlackBerry Classic is aimed at the old-school

Grampa Phone

It looks like it could and should have been released 3 years ago. Oh wait, it literally could have with those specs. It's almost as if BlackBerry died 5 years ago and now just shambles along as a rotting corpse slowly collapsing under its own weight. How do you release a new phone with a 3 year old processor? HOW!

As a added note, I bout a Nexus 5 more than a year ago. It cost me $400, this is $465 and worse in every single conceivable way. Slower processor, less storage, worse screen, smaller battery, less apps, it looks like a phone released 5 years ago. BlackBerry, just surrender. No one even wants to buy you anymore.

Microsoft: Hey, don’t forget Visual Basic! Open source and new features coming

Re: Performance?

Depends on what you're writing, I write line of business software the whole thing is entirely IO bound if my code took 10 times as long as it does to run it still wouldn't be noticeable so it's not really an issue.

Sometimes the lower cost of development massively outweighs the performance advantage of native code (and there isn't a huge gap between C# and C++ anyway). C and C++ are still slower than writing in assembly anyway.

Microsoft .NET released from its Windows chains... but what ABOUT MONO?

Re: The last throw of the dice?

Really? It seems more like a slow evolution. More and more code is managed now. The last bastions of the C era are Windows and the Linux kernel, how long will they hold out against the more productive and increasingly high-performance AOT-compiled managed code? It's happened before.

Switches->Punch Cards->Assembly->Fortran/Cobol->C/C++->Java/C#->Future Magic.

Note: We're just talking about compiled languages here, not scripting.

Google Chrome on Windows 'completely unusable', gripe users

How Widespread?

Hmm... I use a wide variety of computers and I haven't had any problems with Chrome recently. Maybe it only affects systems with really esoteric hardware or running unsupported versions of Windows like XP.

Pity the poor Windows developer: The tools for desktop development are in disarray

Re: WPF = Pain!

They publish programming reference books now? I thought all that stuff was just on the internet. Hold on for a second while I go pay big publisher money for an already-outdated version of something I could get off the internet for free.

Bond villains lament as Wicked Lasers withdraw death ray

meh

I recommend getting a few clay targets and heading down to the local gun range. Sure, you might get some strange looks but it's fun to explode clay targets by superheating them and at the gun range no one is going to care.

Entity Framework goes 'code first' as Microsoft pulls visual design tool

"Sigh"

It wasn't long ago that Microsoft was telling us to use the diagram-approach. I've got a large project that uses it and I doubt we're going to move to code first. Perhaps when entity framework 8 is released and they've worked out the rough edges.

UNIX greybeards threaten Debian fork over systemd plan

Actually with the Greybeards for Once

I always thought the point of Debian was to build a Linux distro for greybeards and the reason Ubuntu exists at all is that Mark Shuttleworth wanted to take that and make something for the masses. Debian doesn't need to be user friendly, that's what Ubuntu is for. Forking is not really a good idea.

Microsoft promises Windows 10 will mean two-factor auth for all

Re: More security, or more Big Brother?

No, because I would never, ever give a "mere mortal" user admin rights. That's a recipe for trojans and malware.

Mars needs women, claims NASA pseudo 'naut: They eat less

I can see the point, but if we're doing this we need to go whole-hog and limit it to women who are under 100lbs and under 5' tall. Maybe only take women with slow metabolisms too. I'm sure they can find some qualified applicants... maybe. If the cost difference is really high they're going to have to cut costs sometime.

Apple's ONE LESS THING: the iPod Classic disappears

Meh

I still have a 30GB 4th gen iPod that works perfectly well. The battery life is even still usable (about 1/2 original) so I suspect the iPod classics that are currently out there will last a good long time. By the time most classic users (are there a lot of these?) have an issue I suspect the iPod Touch will be at 256GB or more and the iPhone double that. I do however, suspect that most iPods with hard drives will die from battery death long before their hard drives die (unless you're in the habit of dropping yours).

Pop-up ad man: SORRY we made such a 'hated tool', netizens

Re: Karma remains balanced

I've yet to find an Adblock detector that actually works properly. Even if they do you can selectively unblock the URL from the Adblock detector making it worthless.

As a webmaster most of the "Adblock detectors" produce more false positives than anything and drive users crazy.

Farmville maker Zynga delays new games after losing 57 million users

Good

Good, this just shows you can't keep making money with poor products. You quickly burn all your customers and they never come back. I hope Zinga burns out entirely and King.com is next unless they learn from this.

Native Americans KILLED AND ATE DUMBO, say archaeologists

Free Meat!

Enough Meat to feed a tribe for a week? I'd eat that! Might be a bit tough but the calorie/effort ratio is very good.

Chrome Remote Desktop adds Linux to supported OS list

Re: Win rdp server support

I think you'll find that most cases that require a lot of remote access, all the systems are running Pro versions of Windows because after you get past a certain number of machines domain support is pretty much a requirement. If you're just talking about your toy computers at home...

BlackBerry claims ugly duckling Passport mobe is a swan in the offing

Re: It could be their best chance for a solid return...

The problem with that is that Android (recent versions only) and iOS are also quick and slick. App support is missing and overall user opinion is negative. Also the hardware specs on the phones aren't great and the prices are higher than Android equivalents.

BlackBerry doesn't have to put out a product that's "as good as" the competition at this point. Unless their OS is mind-blowingly fantastic they're not going to get past the app gap and even then they still have to deal with the negative associations BlackBerry has picked up over the years. It would take a miracle for BlackBerry to pull out of this.

As an example, there are only two reasons Windows Phone is still competing and they are:

1. Microsoft is willing to throw billions of dollars at it.

2. Windows Phone's UI is genuinely quite different from Android/iOS and very good for the simple/integrated organizer tasks.

I've used BB10 and it has a few novel ideas but it doesn't feel like anything that couldn't be done in an Android skin. I personally believe that BlackBerry should have released the interface as an Android skin instead of a full OS. That would at least solve half their problems, but they seem to be locked into the mindset that it's still 1999.

Insecure AVG search tool shoved down users' throats, says US CERT

Re: paint.net

Those misleading advertisement download buttons are exactly why I now run AdBlock all the time. I've decided I'd rather feel mildly guilty about not supporting the web sites I visit than be constantly bombarded by crap that wastes my time and serves no purpose (because I'm not going to download their fake crap anyway). That and the talking ads, those should be illegal and if your site has them you'd better believe that 90%+ of your readers are running adblock right now.

Overclocking to 5GHz? We put Intel Devil’s Canyon CPU to the test

Colour me sad, 3 years after Sandy Bridge and max overclock hasn't really moved anywhere. The 4790K overclocks like a 2600K. Sure the IPC is a bit better, but nothing compelling. You need to at least add a few more cores to make a compelling product Intel.

#YO_NO! Messaging app 'Yo' gets hit by hackers

Re: Something smells rotten here...

Any money at all is wasted on an app that doesn't have any new functionality and is basically just a reduced-functionality clone of a popular app (any IM app).

P.S. writing an app to send other people "Yo" and the infrastructure behind that does not require 10 people.

'Hashtag' added to the OED – but # isn't a hash, pound, nor number sign

Ah, you see. This story displays a misunderstanding of how language works. Since the term "hashtag" is so popular more people call that symbol "hash" than anything else. This means that in a few years the dictionary will list the official name as "hash". "octothorp" would never catch on, that's why not one ever says that. It's a goofy name and it will eventually be relegated to a footnote on the bottom of an encyclopedia that no one will read.

Mt Gox staff tried to warn CEO of Bitcoin loss risks – reports

Discontinued

The Civic was discontinued in Japan recently, they weren't selling. Everyone there wanted a smaller Fit or more practical Honda Stream (which is a station wagon/van hybrid thing). They build Civics in at least two places that I know of, the hatchback version is built in Swindon in the the UK and the sedan is built in Alliston Canada. I think they also build them in Ohio and Brazil.

But, if you're in Japan you'd definitely want the UK version. They're both right-hand drive countries.

Japanese pussies slurp 'meow meow' sex wine

Yeah...

Nyan-nyan is also baby-talk for cat (and several other things), I really don't think the makers of this product are going for the sex angle so half your story doesn't make any sense.

P.S. Nyan is one syllable, N as in the consonant N followed by yan like the chinese surname Yan. All in one syllable and yes this is a stupid product.

Google rolls its eyes, gives Windows Phones five more months to sync

Annoyed WP7er

As one of those "idiots who bought a Windows Phone 7" this is the last straw. No Google services after December? Ok then, I'm going to buy an Android phone. Maybe an HTC One or Nexus 4. Microsoft has really screwed early adopters on this.

Combined with the whole Xbox One and Windows 8 (No third party anything, no apps at all really) things I'm fed up with Microsoft. Sure, I'm a .NET developer but I'm sick and tired of their consumer devices teams screwing me over.

What do you mean WHY is Sony PS4 so pricey in Oz?

Canada

They would do this to us Canadians too if they could. The only reason they don't is if they did we would just all drive down to America, but a PS4 and then drive back. Most of us live so close to the US that it wouldn't take more than a few hours.

Ready for the car 2.0? Nvidia preps UPGRADABLE car system

Re: A real driver's car...

A lot of cars don't have a rev counter , oil pressure, temp and fuel guages.

For example, the Mazda 3 I drive only has a rev counter, speedo and fuel guage. I've also driven several vehicles that don't have rev counters, mostly American models that only come in automatic.

I'm fairly certain I could make do with only the speedo and fuel gauge. You can make due with an idiot light for the rest.

App reads The Indie's dead-tree pages - so you don't have to

"Last October a Tokyo newspaper, Shimbun,"

Just as a heads up, every Japanese newspaper name contains the word "Shimbun" which just means newspaper. The publication in question is called "Tokyo Shimbun".

Six things a text editor must do - or it's a one-way trip to the trash

Out of Date

Your impression of Visual Studio's launch time seems out of date. A modern computer (even without an SSD) only takes a few seconds to launch Visual Studio 2012. With an SSD, it's a fraction of that. Not that I use it to modify batch files, I switched to PowerShell a few years ago.

P.S. Eclipse is still slow. If I'm on Linux I just use VIM or gedit.

Google's JavaScript assassin: Web languages are harder than VMs

Meh

Dart's problem is that there really is no advantage to using it over Javascript and it's not supported by ANY current browsers. Google can't just force everyone else to support a new programming system, this should have all gone through a standards body. That way we could be seeing support in all major browsers.

As is, I'm not going to use it in any production projects. It's just a toy at this point unless it gets picked up by other browser vendors.

P.S. Python whitespace is it's biggest issue, but not it's only. I've seen it used for everything from web apps to full graphical client apps and I think it's biggest issue is that people use it for things it was never designed for. If you're doing a web app, a system designed for web apps is the way to go and for complex client apps python's performance is just too poor.

It's Lego's 80th birthday party, but only the boys are invited

Meh

I don't see why they think girls don't play with Lego, and need pretty pastel sets. My sister used to love the medieval Lego sets that they used to make and we used to create all manner of different things out of Lego (which we kept organized by type, not set). Then again, I've been told that my youth was unusual I used to have some of those littlest pet shop things which apparently are for girls. I honestly think it may have been my parents just not typecasting this stuff.

Ultrabook sales 'falling short of targets'

Price without reason

None of these ultrabooks have discrete graphics, the current Intel graphics are worthless, ergo high-end buyers will avoid them. Then you only have lower-end buyers who will be scared off by the price. I have no idea who they thought would buy these, they've priced themselves out of the market.

The Macbook Air is a niece product, not a category of notebook. Not everyone can be Apple because if they were, no one would be.

Why Android houses should give Google the 'fork you'

Terrible Plan

Forking Android is exactly what the industry doesn't need. The Android ecosystem is already fragmented enough, the last think App developers need is 3 new Android derivatives to support. We already have iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Android, Bada, Symbian (for now) and about 5 smaller players. I'm hoping this all boils down to 3 competing operating systems and the others die out.

Nvidia boss: Windows 8 will run Windows Phone 7 apps

Not Surprising.

Windows Phone Apps run on Silverlight so it's not a big thing to run them on the desktop. As it stands you need to do practically nothing to your Win 7 code and recompile to get a WPF windows app out of it.

The WinPhone silverlight is a true subset of WPF/.NET. I'm quite surprised that anyone would be surprised by this.

P.S. I am a Windows Phone 7 developer... The reason there aren't more apps is that people are too cheap, it takes a lot of work to develop apps and I'm not making any money. My next project is cross-platform

Google does a mean spring clean

Good Riddance Google Desktop

I'm sick of removing Google Desktop from idiot's Windows terminal servers. Running the entire engine per user is horrible programming and kills terminal servers. And it does nothing but duplicating internal Windows features (gadgets, search indexing).

Trust me, you haven't seen slow until you use a terminal server with 20 users where each is running Google desktop and each copy is updating it's indexes constantly. It feels like you installed Windows server on a DVD player.

Apple resellers squeezed out of volume licensing model

3rd Parties are Mistaken

"Apple clearly believes that the channel adds no value [where software is concerned] but we provide a single point of purchase for Macs, servers, software, we install and support,"

No, you're describing the Apple store. 3rd parties are now Apple's abandoned stepchildren. Apple is very much about controlling the whole experience, from hardware purchase to support to app sales. Apple has built their own ecosystem and the channel doesn't fit into it.

Frankly they don't need anyone else so why would they cut into their profit margin?

WinPho 7.5 captured in action

Wrong

Have you ever used a Windows Phone 7? The OS is substantially different from Windows Mobile, sharing only a (very modified) kernel. Not only that it runs much smoother on similar hardware (I have used the Samsung Galaxy S and the Samsung Focus)

Google Chrome extension busts Murdoch paywall

Classically Stupid

All these "pay walls" do is reduce readership of your publication. If you want to make it on the web you can't be doing things like that. It's a vestige of an obsolete system that's being perpetrated by the very dinosaurs that held up the old system for so long. They need to learn that media has moved on or they're going to die out.

Firefox, uTorrent, and PowerPoint hit by Windows DLL bug

Not Actually a Bug

This is an exploit that works because of the design of the OS. It's not really a flaw per say and doesn't just affect Windows but Linux, Unix, Mac OS and nearly every other OS out there.

I suppose they could mitigate this issue by not allowing code outside the program files folder to execute and not allowing non-administrators from installing programs into Program Files.

I suppose the other thing they could do is run all native applications inside a sandbox, which would be a more complete solution. I expect Microsoft to do that at some point in the future, maybe the version of Windows after 8 or the one after. I'm sure they'll be forcing us to switch everything to .NET (which doesn't suffer this issue itself) eventually.