* Posts by MineHandle

29 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jun 2010

Microsoft offers Azure virgins 'small' VM concession

MineHandle
FAIL

MS's Azure is a big FAIL for individual devs

The problem with Azure is not the hourly compute rates. It's the fact that you get charged per hour of uptime, not per hour of usage. This means for an always on application you end up paying a minimum of $35/month - which is rediculous for small apps. OK, you get built-in scaling, but the hobbyist developer this is targeting isn't interested in that in the first instance.

Better go with Google App Engine which is free up to a point.

Google and Facebook named as Twitter suitors

MineHandle
Boffin

It's all about $/user

Well, if you can monetize 200m users at say $1 a month = $2.4bn / year. Twitter is now so engrained in certain branches that I would bet many would be willing to pay $10/year just to keep the thing ads free. Maybe not 200m of them, but many millions, for sure. Likewise Facebook. Infact if Facebook buy Twitter and then charge $10/year for access to both, I am sure there's a healthy profit to be had there. I just can't figure out why they are not charging for this yet. $10/year is nothing. Your ISP could bundle this sort of stuff into your broadband account.

I don't really know, but I guess the valuations are based on how much money you can squeeze out of each user. And when you have 200m or 500m users, it doesn't take much per user to make a tidy profit.

Android's on top – will Nokia and RIM let it in?

MineHandle

re: Corporate match

or perhaps the NHS?

Mac daddy predicts all-knowing, all-seeing UI

MineHandle
WTF?

What about memories which aren't yours?

"He envisions a day when "every conversation you've had, and every place you've visited, and every memory that you want to keep could be stored on the cloud. It's recorded by your little earpiece that's got a video camera."

That's hardly recording your memory. It's just recording whatever happens to be in the direction that the earpiece is looking, which might well not be what your eyes are looking at - assuming they are open! For a moment I thought this guy was seriously envisaging a cross between Total Recall and Strange Days...

Rescue mission begins for Hitchhiker's Real Guide

MineHandle
Heart

new lease of life

I thought the BBC simply took ownership of it based on the H2G2 copyright and then promptly ruined it by making it safe for work, kids and what have you. I remember reading and contributing to this site in the 90s before the BBC took it over. Another great site, ruined by a big souless corporation which completey fails to understand why the site is so successfull...

I might even return to it if they manage to put it back out there amongst the community. Maybe Google could take it over and rank it up there with Wikipedia. That might even make for meaningful search results!

Creepy as hell: Facebook developers get to know you better

MineHandle
Coat

re: Typical luddite response

"But personally if my mate called me up especially to tell me his son had just said his first word, or had just managed to go potty all by himself, then I'd think he was a bit odd"

It says something about the world we live in that people feel the need to tweet or facebook about their sons first word "as it happens". Rather than enjoy the moment, quickly grab your smartphone and tweet those words, because yes, the rest of the world obviously also thinks YOUR kid is god's gift to the world.

MineHandle
Boffin

Same reason Facebook wanted it...

... in case you loose you password? No other reason, of course.

Beastly Android will batter Apple's iOS beauty

MineHandle
Stop

Consumer Quality vs Market Share

Disclaimer: I am not a mobile apps developer nor do I own a smartphone. That might diminish the value of my opinion, on the otherhand maybe that makes me truly impartial?

Lots of talk here about Android winning market share due to price. But I am wondering what this means to app developers.

If I was an apps developer would I:

a) develop for the smaller market with wealthier consumers

b) the larger market with lots of cheapskate consumers

After all if Android is winning mainly on price, are these cost conscious consumers willing pay again to download a useful app? This is not something they will previously have been used to.

I suppose it all depends whether you intend to profit though mobile apps as a service (eg Red Hat) or a commodity (eg Windows).

Apple patent endangers unbiased product reviews

MineHandle

re: but what to do about it??

"I'll just remember to continue not buying anything from Apple!"

And that is a problem because....???

Android out-runs Windows Phone 7 on price comparison site

MineHandle

Yes, so Bing on that

Well, actually, yes, it might be.

Bing is actually quite good. Not far behind Google and in many ways brings back more useful results.

And for sure, if they rebranded Windows 7 as something entirely different they might have more success. Problem is they are always running after enterprise customers and therefore insist on calling everything Windows. Not that Blackberry had issues with that.

Fanboi primer: How to move your iTunes from PC to Mac

MineHandle
Thumb Up

Wish it was available here...

Even though we there is supposed to be an "open market" in the EU, spotify is not available here.. boo!

Europe's broadband bird goes up tonight

MineHandle
Boffin

I'm no expert, but...

This 250ms is simply the travelling time. Add few ms at the satellite and the ground station. Lets say that brings it up to 500ms (I've no idea, it's just an example). Well, that's an extra 500ms just to _reach_ the internet. This is not getting you any data. It's simply 500ms from your PC to the internet. Whereas on ground based systems you are probably talking about 10-20ms. OK, that's the less than 2s but this is just for illustration...

Most coders have sleep problems, need 'hygiene and care'

MineHandle
Grenade

Cause and effect

To all those saying they work best in the evenings or late at night, I have a few questions.

- Maybe you're younger, but don't you have family and kids to be with in the evenings?

- How do you manage your clients if your sleeping when they're working and vice versa?

- No client facing work? How do you manage your boss? No boss? No idea how you make ends meet but I want a bit of that: no boss and no clients!

However I also wonder if this is all being looked at backwards. Why do coders like working late at night? Because they don't like being interrupted in their work. Lets say you start coding in your teens. When are you going to get least interruptions? That's right, when Mum and Dad are asleep - late at night. So whilst people do have different body clocks I also wonder how much of this is conditioning from an early age? I also find I can work more concentrated at night. But that's not how business works. Nor is it conducive to a happy family life or to life in our world in general. Most living in the world happens during the day. Why, because that's what nature wanted, otherwise we wouldn't have eyes that work best in the "daylight" portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Google accused of hard-coding own links in search

MineHandle
Grenade

But they're not all the size of Google

Just like all OSs default to a certain browser (usually their own). But only MS has been forced to make you choose which browser you use. Why? because of their market share.

MineHandle
Thumb Down

Google = Microsoft 15 years ago

What rubbish.

Google does VERY WELL control who visits their website. It PAYS several browsers to have Google as the default search engine in the browser. This is no different to MS paying computer manufacturers to install Windows as the operating system. No one is forcing anybody to buy a Windows PC. They could all go with Linux or a Mac. But choose not to. Just like most web users choose not to change their browsers default search engine.

What then happened is that MS became so big that you effectively HAD to have Windows PC if you wanted interact with most other businesses. MS Office being the main reason, but there are others. Then MS started pushing it's own software/services preinstalled onto it's Operating System which I personally thought was great. No need for crap like RealPlayer. Just use the inbuilt Media Player. Or if you want, you can install something better (VLC perhaps). I don't think RealPlayer thought that. Are they still around? MS paid a small fine for that, but they didn't care, it just meant Bill G's estate was a few acres smaller.

Well, it's IDENTICAL with Google now. So everyone now uses Google because it is the default search engine. It is also the best, probably. But we'll never know because, well, anybody trying to compete with Google on search is either a fool or Micorsoft. Now Google start pushing their services through their OS, sorry search engine. Want to compete with Google Maps on Google's search engine? Bad luck. You could try competing with Bing's Map (or even Google Maps) on Bing, but nobody goes there anyway so not much point. This is no different to trying to compete with Media Player on Windows. Bad luck. You could try competing with iTunes on a Mac - if you're a masochist. In the end your left with competing for market share on the Linux platform. Except those guys don't like paying for stuff.

I for the life of me can't see why educated IT professionals can't see that Google is doing exactly what Microsoft did 15 years ago. Google IS the OS of the web. What do most people do when they turn on a PC? They go to the browser and do a search. Which takes them to Google.

Now, I am not saying Google are evil. No more than any other coporation for sure. Nor are they infallible (in fact I see them being a lot less important in about 15 years time - they've missed the boat on social networking for a start), but they ARE a monopoly in the same way the MS were 15 years ago.

Android bugs let attackers install malware without warning

MineHandle

True, but not iOS

That's about MacOS not iOS. Still it does prove the point that there are no 100% systems.

First official HTML5 tests topped by...Microsoft

MineHandle
WTF?

HDD and memory footprint

@mafoo, @JaitcH

Who cares about memory footprint and HDD space in the days of TB hard drives and GBs of memory? I downloaded IE9 beta. It's a 35MB file. Larger than FF for sure, but not much of an issue for 1TB hard disk. But it runs quicker than IE8 and not much different to FF. I am not talking about benchmarks here. I am talking about my perception - ie what a user actually sees.

But anyway, your clutching at straws. MS have finally release a solid, standards compliant browser comparable to all the other browsers and now you want to mark them down on memory footprint? Does my granny care about that or even what it is?

Apple to buy Sony? Good one!

MineHandle

Hedge funds

Sounds more like a rumour started by some hedge funds to try and make another billion or two over the weekend...

European Parliament: If you don't pay, you will pay

MineHandle
Alert

What about employee remuneration?

Does this also cover companies paying their employees? Where I live, Bulgaria, it is not uncommon for employees not to be paid their full contractual wage for months. This is especially trrue for state employees.

The other thing to ask is: how do I, as an SME, get this law enforced without having to resort to lawyers costs way in excess of what I am owed?

eBay's non-Skype profits climb 16%

MineHandle
Black Helicopters

eBay?

Does anybody still use eBay? Or is it just me who thinks it's over priced and lacks quality. Far easier, safer, often cheaper and defininitely less time consuming to shop on Amazon or other more dedicated shopping sites.

Netizens now Facebook more than they Google

MineHandle

@Imagus

Hmm, I thought Facebook already partners with Microsoft? So we're talking about a great alliance of Google, Facebook and Microsoft? Sort of Lord of the Rings style?

Google eats pseudo Swedish social startup

MineHandle

re: business model

So what's new?

Hasn't that been the business model of startups since Google was born? Many of Google's non-search apps have their foundations in startups they acquired.

Opera: Firefox tab sets? We've had 'em for years

MineHandle
Boffin

re AC Eh?

1) Google docs (spreadsheet) don't quite work right in Opera. That is they do work, but there are couple of minor but annoying issues (such as the cell highlighting not actually highlighting the correct cell all the time).

I do use Opera from time to time (mainly for cross browser testing purposes) and find it quite a nice experience actually. But after 6-7 years of solid FF use (for development as well surfing) it will take something quite radically better to get me to use something else. Or FF to REALLY screw up. And no, I don't care about memory leaks, footprints, hogs, startup times and JS speed. All browsers are just fine for me in that respect.

Google Slides away from Wave FAIL with social network buy

MineHandle

Facebook is Google

It's interesting how Google can't see themselves in the mirror. Facebook is the Google of the social networking world. Nothing is going to rid the world of Facebook - not even Google. Just like Microsoft, try as it might, can't rid the world of Google.

Facebook is massive. It's turned into the defacto standard social networking system. Just like MS Office is the standard for Office software. I know people on Facebook who a few years ago would never have dreamed of joining ANY social network site (and that includes me!).

It's also telling that MS spotted the opportunities of Facebook before Google and bought a minority stake in return for search and advertising hook ups. Google and social networking reminds me very much Microsoft and in the internet (especially search) in the noughties.

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

MineHandle
WTF?

Javascript speed

"496ms in IE9 versus 335 in Chrome 6.0 while Safari 4.0 lagged at 718ms. More to the point, IE8 scores 5,010ms, ten times worse."

Does it really matter that IE9 is 150ms slower than Chrome and 250ms faster than Safari??? I realise that JS is the bread and butter of web apps nowadays, but those speed difference: do they matter? The key is 10-fold improvement over IE8.

I don't understand this obsession with speed - what's the benefit of 150ms to the end user? My dad isn't going to switch to Chrome because it's JS is 150ms quicker. This is just an example of how some techies completely miss the point as to why someone chooses (or fails to choose) a browser. Browser start up time? Does it matter? My browser is open 95% of the time anyway.

I am not saying speed isn't important. These comparisons are good for pushing the limits (eg opening a tab in IE8 sucks for speed - so I hope that improves) but they have little influence on why 95% of browser users are using a particular browser when all browsers are within say 100% of each other in terms of speed.

Ballmer's 'lost generation' note finds resonance

MineHandle
Boffin

Many SME's will let you do this

Where I work you can choose. For sure in the enterprise everything is locked down (to Windows presumably), but in smaller companies it's not so hard to offer employees a choice. Usually the network is windows and you can have Mac, but then you are on your own with respect to support and you need to make sure you can read the required document formats etc. Not a problem usually.

Firefox market share drops as IE makes slender gain

MineHandle

Firefox too successful for its own good?

I wonder if FF is too successfull for its own good.

FF became popular 5 years ago because of three things: IE6 security issues, better standards support and great developer tools.

If you look at the browser market now the first two are largely non-issues now. IE8 is as secure as FF and its standards support is reasonable (still lacking but getting there). Likewise Opera, Safari and Chrome are all much the same to the non-technical user. So it boils down to things like branding, personal preferences and so on. 5 years ago I installed FF on all my relatives computers. Now I don't bother anymore. They are happy using IE8 and I have no real reason to tell them to use something else. FF gave MS a good kick up the arse and we are all the better for it, but there's no need to evangelise about it so much at this point.

I am also wondering whether, due to increased standards support, browsers are actually becoming irrelevant. Don't we all access the internet through smart phone apps and so on?

Government plans 'NHS information revolution'

MineHandle
Thumb Down

Another few billions wasted...

... sorry paid out to shareholders. I imagine that if they do do with this they will go with an existing large IT services provider who will screw them over until there's no cash left and the project is aborted.

Why can't they hand these projects out to SME's using well defined interfaces. No idea it that would be better but can't be worse than all the other failed IT projects.

England beat Germany - what are the odds?

MineHandle
Megaphone

Let's be fair

We got further than the Italians or the French....

As most people say, the problem is the number of foreigners in the respective leagues. It's not just the Premier League which is devoid of good local talent - although it is top of the list probably.

And, once again, the Germans have got it all right:

- a profitable league

- reasonbale local to foreign players ratio

- terraces where supporters can still stand

- Cheap tickets

- clubs run for the community (and still at a profit - no sugar daddies there)

- an outside chance of becoming world champions for the 4th time and the 3rd since 1966!

And, once again, the UK has sold its soul to the highest foreign bidder who cares little for the country but much for his bottom line...