Posts by cloudgazer

LulzSec hacks EVE Online as rampage goes on

There's something kinda poetic

EvE, a game were griefing and scamming are tolerated and large gank blobs are de rigeur, being griefed by a a blob of script kiddies. Maybe not poetic, but definitely meta.

Acer slashes tablet forecast, banks on notebooks

because sometimes that really is the problem

Different markets are different, have different priorities and require a different approach. Apple demonstrated with the iPad that successful tablets are more like big smartphones than they are like crippled notebooks.

There's a reason why a firm like Dell which has been very successful in the notebook market has never made headway in handsets or tablets, while firms like HTC have been successful in handsets but not really in notebooks.

Apple are successful in both but they maintain two different proprietary OSes so they keep the two businesses mostly separate, though they share a design team for the physical devices. But then that design team is itself unique within the CE industry.

Not every corporate reorganization is a success of course, maybe even not most - but it seems clear that the way Acer was going wasn't working, and given how fast the tablet and smartphone markets are growing this is a sector they really really want to break into.

HTC U-turns over Desire Android 2.3 update

Memory isn't storage

It just isn't

It doesn't matter if the storage is NAND flash or battery backed up DRAM, it's still distinct from memory because of the way it's addressed. Data on storage always has to travel via memory before it is accessed by the CPU.

So if the base 512Mb of Flash in the HTC desire is directly addresed over a memory bus then it is memory. If it is accessed over a storage interface then it is storage. If the code in that Flash can be directly run on the CPU without being paged into RAM then it is memory, if it can't then it's storage.

No matter what the M stands for.

AMD promises 10 teraflop notebooks by 2020

unlike 640k memory

CPU raw power isn't fungible. The 640k was 20 times more than the 32k you might have found in similar era micro-computers and this meant that the PC really could scale applications by a factor of 20.

Now the top end i7 cores are around 100 GFlops, so this AMD chip is 6 times better right? Wrong. For starters the i7 is 100 GFlops double precision. For second much less of the i7 performance requires vectorization of your code.

Vectorizing your code takes significant effort and for many applications in science and finance single precision is simply not enough.

Massive single precision vector performance is great but has a very limited number of applications.

Will Ofcom have to stick up its hands on 4G auction?

Erm no

'That sale presents the interesting spectacle of the German and French governments (who still hold shares in Orange and T-Mobile, and thus EE) selling off something that they were given by the UK government for nothing: but we digress.'

The French and German governments both paid cash for that spectrum, from C&W and Hutchinson Whampoa. Now it's true that they never paid a upfront fee for their spectrum, and certainly nobody ever paid anything like the economic value to the state for this spectrum.

No Gingerbread snack for Desire owners, says HTC

your choice is

The original iPhone received OS updated for around 30months, the 3G received OS updates for 3 years, it seems the 3GS will likely have support for 3 years, assuming iOS 6 doesn't hit before late 2012.

The HTC desire was released Feb 2010, and Gingerbread was released in December 2010. So HTC apparently couldn't manage to keep a popular phone model updated even for a solid year.

Given that the average contract is 18 months that actually makes an iPhone start to look like better value for money than an HTC phone - so you should be very happy you bought that iphone 3G.

Nokia and Apple bury patent beef

we do know

That of the 10 patent complaints in the initial Nokia lawsuit, 3 had already been dismissed and 2 had been dismissed but were under appeal.

We don't know why they were dismissed and now that Nokia have settled we may never find out.

As for other handset makers, we know that all the old makers like Sony-Ericcson and Motorola will have existing deals with Nokia, but some of the newer entrants may well not.

IATA: this iPad could BRING DOWN A PLANE

who needs box-cutters

Soon planes will be brought down by suicide web-surfers.

Apple pilfers rips off student's rejected iPhone app

erm actually it's you

who doesn't seem to understand the issue here. For starters there is a difference between Copyright infringement, Patent infringement and Trademark infringement.

Second, Apple LOST the big look&feel copyright infringement suit against MS, just as Lotus lost against Borland. L&F lawsuits have pretty much fallen by the wayside, which is why Apple are attacking HTC on patent grounds.

This guy doesn't have a TM, doesn't have a Patent and can only claim a vague L&F case on the icon which he would lose given Apple's previously existing icons. He could try to claim TM infringement without a registered trademark but that would be extremely difficult given the generic nature of the name. The failure to register would likely be interpreted as a failure to defend his mark

So from an IP law perspective he's only left with the option of a copyright infringement claim, which would require him to demonstrate Apple was using his source-code.

except

He can't patent wireless syncing as there is humungous amounts of prior art - my nokia 8800 had it iirc.

If he had indeed created the idea of the wireless sync he could perhaps have patented and could now claim license fees from world+dog, but he didn't and he can't.

As for the rejection, there's nothing whimsical about it. Apps which modify the iTunes library break the rules. They do so either by breaking the security sandbox or by using private API functions or both. Any app that modified the iTunes DB on an iOS device, even if it did something entirely banal would be rejected.

the end of the stick you have hold of, would be the wrong one

The guy posting the 'unsolicited stuff' post a while back was a) joking and b) talking about their unsolicited feedback form - not their app submissions policy.

If you send feedback to a firm by say putting a suggestion into their suggestion box, you can't subsequently sue them for implementing your suggestion - so I'd say that they're on fairly secure ground there.

Somewhat disingenuous

In order to modify the iPhone's iTunes library he almost certainly had to use some non-public API calls. As far as I'm aware they only added public functions to access the iTunes library in OS 4 and even then it was only read access. 'iPod library access lets your application play a user’s songs, audio books, and audio podcasts. The API design makes basic playback very simple while also supporting advanced searching and playback control.'. Use of such functions was always going to result in Apple refusing to circulate his app, so there was no point acting all surprised about it. All apps that use non public API calls get rejected.

By the same token, if it came to court, Apple would argue that the reason that they had kept those APIs private was because they were reserved for future iOS level improvements. That essentially his app broke their copyright by utilizing their code without permission. In fact they could probably have sued him over his app on cydia.

If I'm wrong about this by all means somebody post a link to the public API that allows modification of the iTunes library on iOS.

Motorola Atrix dual-core Android smartphone

Not really an option for Motorola

Trackpad perhaps but secondary screen isn't an option because even if they spent the money to extend Android to support it, they wouldn't get any significant support from 3rd party developers. Firms like Apple & RIM which have complete control of their platforms can make bold moves like that, but the Android OEMs are stuck offering whatever Google has given them with only a few bells and whistles around the edges.

Toxic Plankton feeds on Android Market for two months

It's down to the carriers and handset makers

Both have the ability to modify the OS after google have finished with it. Perhaps the Thai carriers added language support for the Thai alphabet? At any rate if they made any substantial changes then they would need to supply the OS updates, and this is why most android handsets can't be upgraded without being jail-broken.

Apple's model is that they supply iOS and carriers have no say in what is on the phone. They still need to produce slightly different versions of iOS for different devices, but they have a relatively small number of models so it's easy for them to issue simultaneous or near simultaneous updates. OEMs.

iCloud: Big step for content management, but not for the cloud

Apple's design is intended for mobile

and mobile devices don't have 100% network connectivity. We catch trains, go through areas of poor reception, or travel to countries where our data roaming is expensive. There's lots of reasons why having a local app that minimizes communication with remote servers makes sense.

Google's web-based model works wonderfully well on the desktop where I have effectively 100% uptime on effectively limitless bandwidth - but I'll take Apple's cloud as data repository for handheld, thanks.

4G auctions - illegal and immoral?

No it's not just tax

Suppose the government didn't charge for the frequency just held a 'beauty contest'. That would amount to a multi-billion pound incentive to bribe officials. Are you really so confident that no such thing would be attempted? Then would come the inevitable 'illegal state aid' lawsuits, the entire thing would be a shambles.

The frequency is a very valuable publicly owned resource. The only way to allocate it fairly and openly is via an auction. However don't expect the 4G auctions to raise nearly as much as the 3G auctions. Later 3G auctions didn't raise nearly as much as the UK one because carriers had adjusted their expectations of future revenue streams.

The UK consumer didn't end up bearing the cost of those crazy license fees, because networks aren't allowed to raise their prices freely - this is a regulated industry. Instead it was mostly carried by the shareholders who saw a massive loss of equity around that time.

Reg hack cast adrift as Illuminati Online goes off-line

illuminati online gone?

disappeared into a bermuda triangle? I blame the gnomes of zurich.

Cloud iTunes DESTROYS music business FOREVER!

cutting the tether

Well I'm sure you won't be able to upload 700 Gigs of lossless music to your cloud, but assume that you can get your entire library onto the cloud as 256 AAC - it would still be too big for your iPhone of course.

However you would be able to change your music selection on your phone or ipod anywhere you had data access, eventually you'd be able to stream music from the cloud anywhere you had data access.

The real purpose here is to allow the phone to be tether free. They want it to be possible to buy an iDevice, then buy as much content as you like from iTunes and never have to own a computer. When you buy your next iDevice it suddenly gains access to your complete library, and that library is fully backed up.

BioWare blows brains with intro cinematics for Star Wars MMO

very cool looking

I don't think there's any doubt that this will have better cinematic sequences than WoW, or a more compelling backstory, or a more interesting world. But I those things aren't really what makes for a compelling and long lived MMO.

What WoW got right and what pretty much every other western MMO has failed to was to continuously provide stuff to do in PVE. First you level, then you gear, then you raid, work on gear some more, hard modes, more gear - oh look a content patch - more raids, more gear, more hard modes - oh look an expansion, and back to levelling.

LOTRO for example never rivalled that even though it's set in a far richer world.

World IPv6 Day fails to kill the internet

not really a problem

many, perhaps most UK ISPs already NAT their users, so switching to IPv6 won't be terribly hard for them, and likewise the shortage of IPv4 addresses won't affect them.

Peeping Tom Mac spyware suspect cuffed

hmm - this all seems very demonseed

I'm concerned that we may end up with a generation of horny macbooks out there impregnating californians.

Apple: First cult to lead world in semiconductor spending

A man walked into a mexican restaurant

and got seated by a host wielding an iPad-2. No it's not bad joke (well ok it is), it's what happened to me today in Wahaca a popular London Mexican-food chain. Seems they've switched to fondleslabs for their queueing system (generally about an hour wait much after 7pm).

I dunno, maybe the owners are fanbois, or maybe this bizarre little device has hit an ergonomic sweet spot the way the original palm pilot did. This is the first time I've seen one used 'in the wild' for commercial purposes anyway.

Dear Ubuntu: The netbook is toast

I'm an old fuddy duddy

I think it's been downhill for linux since Gnome & KDE first arrived. Back in olden days when kernels were small and window managers fast it was easy to setup a reliable LINUX system. KDE, Gnome and friends all need to get off my lawn.

Apple worth more than Microsoft and Intel combined

major funds?

like Fidelity perhaps? (biggest investor 18billion stake)

State Street? (12billion)

or maybe Vanguard? (12 billion)

71% of Apple shares are held by institutional investors, compared to 63% of Intel, 64% MS, 62% oracle etc.

What about CALPERS, biggest single pension fund in the USA?

They own 860mil$ of APPL, 624mil$ of MSFT, 330mil$ of Intel.

I could probably get more hard data proving the point but I've wasted 5 minutes already

l2google!

Gates didn't bail Apple out

They made peace. Apple had been at war with MS since the Windows look and feel lawsuit which MS won in 1994. The bad blood between the two was extreme, with MS subsequently letting the Mac version of office go to seed and Apple joining Netscape and friends in complaining about MS' behaviour to the DoJ.

By 1997 this was a serious problem for MS, the DoJ was getting heavier and heavier, a full prosecution under the auspices of the Sherman act was only months away, and MS realized that the one thing that they couldn't afford was for Apple to be bleeding all over the court with Bill Gates' fingerprints on the knife. Jobs had returned a few months earlier and was looking for some big splashy PR, and so the two firms negotiated a peace.

As part of a deal where Apple would drop all lingering legal complaints against MS and they would cross license patents, MS promised to properly support the platform, and to invest 150mil. If anything saved Apple it was the application support rather than the 150mil.

round about when Jobs returned

MS desperately needed cover in the ongoing Anti-trust lawsuit and so they invested in Apple and promised to provide ports of the latest version of Office (which had been allowed to fall far behind)

Jobs returned in early 1997, and the MS investment (of 150mil in preferred equity) was in Aug 1997. Ironically MS had sold that stake by 2001, which is yet another bad financial decision for them.

except

Microsoft didn't just stay in the desktop OS/Office tools market either. They branched out, first into peripherals where they've been quite successful, then they attempted to crack set top boxes, mobile phone handsets, MP3 players etc. Other than routers I can't think of a product that Apple has made that MS hasn't attempted to compete with in some fashion. Oh and in the last few decades we've seen MS effectively break into the datacentre business, which was still miniscule back in the days of NT4.

Both firms have been attempting to compete across the entire technology space, wherever they could see opportunity.

Now a better argument for why this is not news is that Apple's market cap is artificially bloated by their 66 billion $ cash pile. If you actually compare enterprise values then Wintel would still be ahead, though MS alone is still definitely behind.

Apple embraces 'n' extends messaging

Hmm

'The one good thing about SMS is it's interoperable amongst any mobile device. ' - Wrong in so many ways. For starters it's not even close to interoperable with non celluar mobile devices - ie WiFI based tablets, music players etc. Second it isn't even reliably interoperable between all cellular carriers, especially in the US. GSM networks mostly play nice with each other, but the CDMA operators historically haven't.

'a 16 year old son of a friend of mine actually was given a choice of what phone to get, including an iPhone and he chose a BlackBerry purely due to BBM.' - You're actually arguing against yourself here. The 16 year old market doesn't care about security, and they do care about cool. BBM is the only selling point RIM have for them, and iMessage may very well negate that. Remember it's not just expensive iPhones, it's also relatively cheap iPod Touches.

'Apple will eventually get done for antitrust - this a given and a matter of time' - possibly, but it won't be for iMessage. There is no issue with private IM networks, they've existed for years. There's also no issue with 'intra-system' messages being priced differently from 'inter-system' - in fact this has been a staple of mobile carriers in many jurisdictions. So long as Apple support SMS there's no issue from the point of view of telecom regulators. Apple might conceivably end up in anti-trust soup over their control of the app-store, but only if iPhones totally dominate over Android. If that happens Apple has won so big that they really won't care.

watch the keynote

They explicity say that the starting motivation for iMessage was to get an SMS like experience onto non-cellular devices such as iPod touch and iPad. Whatsapp and Ping don't support them do they?

Of course there's no reason that you can't have all three if you want - though I expect that iMessage will integrate more seamlessly with the SMS system, at least eventually.

take the email example further

'in no case does the choice of protocol affect the ability of a court or government to demand that the data on the server be handed over.'

Sure it does. If my protocol is routed over servers in a high-privacy country that makes a difference (Finland springs to mind). If my system keeps intra-corporate messages within the corporate network it makes a difference If my system doesn't hold old messages once receipt is confirmed then that makes a difference. If my system supports end to end encryption then that makes a difference, especially if corporate clients hold their own keys.

Finally there is a great difference in terms of response to subpoena. Google is relatively good here, generally forcing governments to jump through every hoop before handing over user data - Carriers more vulnerable to political pressure, so they tend to cave immediately.

and another one

Lotus notes is a whole suburb of walled gardens, IM, email, intranet, funky creaky ancient databases.

Mac OS X Lion debuts in July as $29.99 upgrade

they did say it was download only

Watch the keynote address, at around 35:20 the guy says regarding optical disks:

'No more, Lion will be available only from the Mac App Store'

They may change their mind, but as it stands right now they have indeed said it's download only

Actually it just got easier to manage Macs in the enterprise

Between this and the new system whereby a local server can supply all software updates to your site's macs things got much simpler. As for needing a DVD in order to allow reinstalls, repairs etc - that's not a big deal for enterprises. Most big firms these days completely lock out the DVD drive - they don't want the average desktop user to be able to install stuff that easily. Any serious fault on a desktop machine means your old machine gets wheeled away and rebuilt, and a new machine dropped in - all your stuff is on network storage anyway.

And as everybody is pointing out, just because Apple aren't supplying the OS on physical media doesn't mean you can't burn/copy the OS to physical media. I literally can't remember the last time I saw original install disks in a multinational. I think I was using NT4 though so probably last millenium.

Apple releases iTunes 10.3 with beta iCloud

alas not quite as advertised

So far we can't download all purchases, it's limited to Apps, Books & Music within the USA - and only Apps and Books outside the USA.

I'm really hoping they extend it to video, and outside the US soon - but I guess it will depend on the media firms.

Apple iOS 5 and iCloud examined

candy for carriers too

imessage will screw carriers a bit, but a lot of the other changes should result in increased data traffic, and the carriers REALLY want that.

updates over 3g, automatic downloading of newspapers/magazines, playing music over cloud etc

iphone users already use more data than other smart phone users (on average). Carriers are much more freaked about VOIP integration and wi-fi I would say.

Desktop virtualisation: Yes, it's cheaper

Erm no

There's no problem continuing to use gear that is depreciated all the way down to zero. The problem is when you scrap gear that still has a book value.

Apple hit by new competition complaint as iCloud launches

It's a complex issue

On the one hand Apple has demonstrated that tight editorial control over iPhone apps provides benefits to consumers, and given the cost of providing those services they are entitled to require people monetizing their marketplace to pay them for the privilege.

On the other, as Apple's position in mobile computing becomes more dominant they will have to start acting like a responsible monopolist, which will be a huge cultural shift for them and probably won't happen without litigation.

We're not there yet though, iphone is far from a monopoly in the phone market and it's too soon to tell how much of the tablet market they'll take. Anything less than 60% and it will be hard to paint Apple as a monopolist, instead consumers will have two clear choices - a controlled Apple world of tightly integrated devices and apps, and a looser android world.

'Dodgy Android apps are breaking our phones' - Motorola

bad comparison

The multi user systems of the 70s and 80s had low CPU and memory it's true, but they also had EXTREMELY efficient applications. Most applications back then were written by hand in native assembler or in a compiled language. Modern software is written using much more bloated development tools.

Also did you see a lot of full motion video with on the fly decompression back in the 80s? Many multitasking GUI systems in the 70s? No, you didn't.

Motorola has genuine problems

They dropped from 16.5 to 15.6% US market share in handsets in the last quarter. Samsung dropped .4%, LG managed to gain .1%.

So the top 3 android OEMs are losing market share or at best staying static. This is the weakness that the growth in Android as a platform is concealing. Unfortunately the data from comscore doesn't include the smaller OEMs like HTC, well not unless you pay for their full research package - we do know that Apple gained about as much as Motorala and Samsung lost combined.

you're misreading it

They don't have a 70% return rate - 70% of the returns they have are due to Apps not hardware.