Posts by Giles Jones

HMV offers 80-quid colour e-book reader

Boring...

It's a big dumbphone without the phone part. A big dumb.

If it had an e-paper display I might have bought one tomorrow.

Royal Wedding: Prince Charles is a ZX81, Wills is an iPad

iPad

Swappable battery in an iPad? why?

I think anyone who wants to use a touch screen computer for more than 7 or so hours in a day needs to get a life or just plug it into the mains since it's unlikely they are on the move.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Android tablet

"It'll do"

Drop the price £200 and they might sell some. But reading about the flaws it looks as if the product management thought "that will do".

Finger prints showing? "oh well, never mind it will do".

Lock ups when browsing? "it will do".

This lack of quality control or standards is quite common in consumer electronics.

Ballmer, Gates won't slice up Microsoft

Time to change

I don't think it's helpful for them to split up. However they need a massive shake up in the whole strategy department. If they appointed a new CEO it might help. It's not good enough to just bring in masses of cash from your cash cows, they can falter. Every product needs to succeed and earn profit!

Traditionally for new products Microsoft has waited for someone to create a radical new product that fails, found out why it failed and then produced their own version.

But when a new product has succeeded Microsoft's response can be hit n miss. They appear to have done okay in responding to the Wii, but quite a few years after the party.

If Microsoft themselves released the radical product it just has lacked commitment, been poorly implemented. Tablet PCs are a good example.

It seems there are too many morons in charge who love to see the other teams fail. Internal competition is one thing, but it appears to be internal war at Microsoft.

Giffgaff says some subscribers yakked for 9 days a month

Wrong

Without a goodybag you can do 100MB a day data. The unlimited data requires a goodybag with unlimited data.

Those getting warnings are doing on average more than 100MB a day without a goodybag.

Name

Giffgaff is a gaelic term that means mutual giving.

BlackBerry boss renews disdain for Steve Jobs

LOL

Sounds like Jim is peeved because nobody is writing decent apps for his platform.

If there's one thing the masses (ie. non-geeks) want it is a pretty simple life. To pick up a device and use it. They don't want their phone to be radically different to their tablet, so why do Google, RIM and Microsoft not see that?

Linux netbooks were returned by many people confused or disappointed by them, why is a tablet with ChromeOS or the RIM QNX based system going to be any different?

At least with the iPad you know you're getting the OS the iPhone and iPod uses.

Prof to drill camera into own skull

Disappointed

I thought this would be another crazy cyborg idea from Kevin Warwick, Dr Cyborg who seems absent from The Reg in recent times.

Steve Jobs no longer Eggman as Beatles hits iTunes

Yawn.

I think if you had spent the last 4 or so years negotiating a contract with someone you would want to tell the world once you had won it.

Ringo Starr even said he was glad as he was getting tired of being asked about when the music would be on iTunes.

One snag

You can't buy just a few tracks with CD. You have to buy the entire album when you might only want a few tracks from each.

Downloads let you pick n mix, much to the annoyance of people like Pink Floyd.

World's most advanced rootkit penetrates 64-bit Windows

Why the surprise?

If someone wants to break into something they will. Windows and Linux servers are priority one as there's a lot at stake, fraud, stealing data and so on.

The news is good and bad, good because people can patch up. Bad because there's a window of opportunity for the hackers. Many vulnerabilities are usually exposed by security researchers, not the hackers, as soon as the security researchers blab about the bug it will get exploited.

Cyber cops crush plod-snapper site following Millbank riot

Guilty

Anyone who assists offenders to avoid arrest is breaking the law, no matter how they do it.

http://www.wikicrimeline.co.uk/index.php?title=Assisting_an_offender

Kinect hacked for OS X

Not quite

Why do people always forget to factor in the development costs?

Sure, the parts cost £35, but do you think people work for free?

Y'know the people who created the design, designed the hardware, PCB, casing, packaging, software, advertising, programming API and so on. They all get paid, some more than others.

A DVD costs pence to make, but the content costs millions to film, edit and so on.

Facebook set to unveil 'Gmail killer'

Oh please

Does the world need yet another webmail provider?

Do something different, create something new and exciting.

3D printers, one-dimensional enemies

Won't catch on

In reality the printer will cost £50 and the ink/liquid about £500 a litre.

It will probably work out cheaper to buy what you're printing rather than make your own.

'Superb' Apple 1 on the block for £100k-£150K

Not a computer as we know it

Colossus had a fixed program. To be classed as a general purpose computer you need the ability to load new software or instructions. Colossus had to be rewired to do that.

Retro

Google 'Steampunk computer', you'll find what you're looking for. Albeit in an old fashioned way.

Falklands hero Marine: Save the Harrier, scrap the Tornado

Subsonic vs supersonic

The Tornado is supersonic, max speed of about 1,500 MPH.

The Harrier is not supersonic, it's max speed is around 735MPH.

Not a big deal if you're not fighting other planes, but it's a big deal in air combat.

As far as vertical take-off planes are concerned, the US have much better options in development. We're actually contributing to the funding as well, see below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35_Lightning_II

Nokia slips out Designed By Community handset

Right and wrong

If you design a product by consulting what people want then you deliver the phone that people want about 18 months after they want it.

All big tech companies are doing research into what is the next big thing, what the future holds.

The public aren't largely technology experts, they're not privy to the information on future unreleased hardware like the industry is.

Nothing would change if you just asked customers all the time. You end up with non-risky designs from current technology, not new and fresh approaches to thing.

So did Windows Phone 7 'bomb in US'?

WP7 UI

I think it could do with a little more polish, especially given Windows 7 is pretty slick. But it is at least clear. You can glance at the phone and see what's going on. I'm sure people with visual impairment will love it, the fonts are already pretty big.

Wii effect

It's easy to sell out when you don't buy in many units. Given it is a new OS and Android, RIM, Nokia and Apple are popular I would imagine retailers were pretty cautious with their stock levels.

It's similar to the Nintendo Wii, it wasn't expected to be a big seller and stocks were limited for quite a long time. This added to the hysteria as a product you can't get which is also is seen to be selling fast gets people curious.

Mac OS X haunted by ghost of Jailbreakme bug

Low count for a few reasons

One thing is for sure, if Apple did what many want them to do (release OSX for generic x86 PCs) the virus rate would shoot up as many more people would have access to the OS and the user base would be bigger.

Sure, you can run a hackintosh build, but it requires effort to build a PC which has similar components to a real Mac.

The high bar of entry to the Mac world (the price) does keep out a lot of riff raff. Not to mention a virus author would need a while to get the hang of the different programming APIs.

Android bugs let attackers install malware without warning

LOL

How many years is enough?

Just shows that the combination of a closed development cycle and a kernel tree separate from the main Linux tree results in holes. Its a development process that has none of the advantages of open source. No peer review until it is too late (you want bugs to be found prior to release) and development under control of one group who may rush it to get it out of the door.

Motorola lands 16-patent countersuit on Microsoft

I blame...

Nokia. They seemed to start all this nonsense by suing Apple.

Honestly, children. The ideas you think you have patents to are generally pretty dull. You haven't invented anything life changing. It's just stuff for telephones and touch screens.

Apple ships Mac OS X 10.6.5 update

Largely 3rd party issues

Did you not read the summary? updates to MySQL, Apache and Adobe Flash. Apple is hardly responsible for the faults in other peoples code.

Tweakers

Never had issues with an upgrade.

There are people who like to tweak things under the hood which they probably shouldn't and no software firm can promise that things will work if you deviate from a standard configuration.

MS freebie anti-virus scanner auto-downloads provoke more anger

Damned if they do, damned if they don't

You can argue that the best person to know how their product works and is best repaired is Microsoft. They have all the hidden technical details and designs.

Naturally any malware will try to kill the task, but I'm sure there are tricks that could prevent that.

iPhone 4: the best built smartphone...

Moisture indicators

If you're talking about the moisture indicators then you're deluded, all phones have them and it was probably Nokia that invented the damn things.

They're used to prevent fraudulent returns after people have done stupid things like going swimming with their phones. It keeps return costs low and ensures the companies don't have to past on the cost of fraudulent warranty claims to the customer.

Apache threatens Oracle with Java exit

Java

Java's proprietary nature kept the dream of "write once, run anywhere" alive. There was one person controlling it and stopping people subverting it for their own aims (eg. Microsoft).

If it had gone open source then Java would have become a fragmented incompatible mess and eventually someone would have hacked out the interpreter stage and made Java compile to native code.

Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect

What if

What happens if someone walks behind you or stands behind you and waves their arms around, is it clever enough to ignore that?

AMD ships first Fusion processors

Late to the party

It might be a first for the desktop/laptop market but for handhelds there are chips that do pretty much everything in one chip.

It's amazing the desktop market is so slow to catch up, it's obviously going to work better if you can cut out a lot of slow external buses.

The forgotten, fat generation of Mac Portables

Amiga portable

Someone built one out of an A600 once.

But the problem with the Amiga was the custom chips would have had to be redesigned to get lower power usage. There simply wasn't the market to do so, few people were buying x86 laptops, so even fewer would buy an Amiga version.

The Amiga was portable in the sense that you could plug it into a TV somewhere. Few people owned portables back in those days. Most laptops had very sluggish mono screens in the late 80s, early 90s. Not much use for an Amiga which was primarily a games or multimedia machine.

Colour LCDs were a bit blurry too, hence Game Gear and Atari Lynx never really took off.

Coldfire

The Coldfire embedded CPUs are cut down 68000. They lack some of the more advanced features.

Not quite

The 68060 had dual pipelining and similar features to the Pentium. It just unfortunately had a pretty rubbish FPU with no pipelining.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68060

It never made its way into a Mac, they had gone PPC by then. It was used in a few very expensive Amiga expansion boards though.

NHS website stops whingers clogging up the surgeries

Anti-biotics are not for viral infections

Antibiotics are for bacterial infections such as when you cut yourself or when you have surgery. They are not for viral infections like colds, flu and so on!!!

The reason why MRSA and other super-bugs are so prevalent is the widespread misuse of antibiotics. They are given to livestock which also doesn't help.

What happens is that (courtesy of evolution) the antibiotics cause the bacteria to adapt to become resistant. There are so few really effective antibiotics available now due to misuse.

If you have a cold or flu then don't take antibiotics, they don't work and they further regress the medical world back to the pre-penicillin days.

Hacker unshackles Kinect from Xbox

Oh come on

We know the protocol is likely to be USB based. A proprietary connector won't cause any problems, cut it off and solder a standard USB connector on.

This isn't DRM circumvention, this is someone using some hard he purchased. If you're a company selling hardware at cost or a loss but subsidising through games prices then tweak your model to include the hardware hackers.

Losses

They effectively lose more money if you don't buy it.

If they build lots of hardware and nobody buys it then their bank balance shows $0 sales. If you buy it (even at a loss) then they have some cash in the bank.

Licence agreements

Licence agreements are for software not hardware.

Hardware would be covered by a loan agreement or lease if you weren't actually the full owner of the unit.

Poacher turned gamekeeper

With electronics, it's one thing to know how it works or reverse engineer it, another to design it.

Just like someone who can repair or modify cars isn't automatically a car designer.

Nexus One to get Gingerbread OS?

Sensible if it does happen

The hardware is still pretty good and the phone is now only available to buy as a developer handset. Developers need hardware to test things, they also don't want to have to keep changing the hardware just for some real world testing.

Researcher outs Android exploit code

OEMs

Isn't that the point of Android? to shift the burden of maintenance and support onto the OEM.

It's the OEM that builds your Android ROM, licences the Google apps and market place. Google don't have anything to do with your phone (unless you have a Nexus).

Putting the OEMs in charge is good for Google but bad for the phone user. The OEMs spend time building the ROMs, designing the hardware and so on. They get their profit when you buy the phone, after then they get nothing else. So it is not in their interest to prolong your use of the device for any longer than they need to (and certainly not any more than their direct competition).

The difference with the competition is they build the ROMs. Apple build the ROMs for iPhone and Microsoft build the ROMs for Windows Phone 7. So with WP7 your updates are not at the mercy of the OEM. With Apple you get around 2 years of updates based upon the lifespan of the iPhone 2G.

Therefore the two platforms that seem to have a pretty clear update policy are WP7 and iOS. It is only Android which needs to get its act together.

The 99p mobile phone: What's the catch?

No camera

I'm sure people will moan that it has no camera, no MMS etc.

Apple’s iPad lead will face pressure from Google and Nokia

Competition on price only

You really think Meego and ChromeOS are serious competition?

Familiarity is important. There are many Windows users who bought netbooks with Linux only to return them as they didn't like it.

There's quite a few people with iPhones or the iPod touch who will be able to operate the iPad with little or no reference to instructions. But Meego or ChromeOS? completely alien interfaces to most people.

The competition will largely be on price and Apple never lowers their prices much anyway.

Toshiba AC100 Android smartbook

Not the fault of the OS

I think Android is suited to tablets. But sticking a touch screen driven OS on a non-touch screen device is just asking for failure.

It's almost as bad as sticking Windows 7 on a touch screen device with no keyboard or mouse.

Oracle cooks up free and premium JDKs

Here we go

Capitalising on Java already. How long before they start removing features from the free version or start demanding support contracts after 90 days?

Windows 7 'I'm a PC' man quits Microsoft

Possibly..

Possibly because the future of computing isn't a big box PC stuck on a desk plugged into the wall. Laptops have already taken the place of big boxes on desks.

Consumer electronics and mobile is where it's at.

Dell dumps RIM, saves fortune

Typing

It does look like a massive phone. Largely due to the keyboard not taking up screen space like on the Blackberry phones which have keys.

The keyboard action and feel is make or break. It should be pretty high up the list of priorities when designing a phone like this. If the keyboard is rubbish then you may as well not include one and drop the price a bit. You can always use one of those new funky touch screen typing techniques.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. After all, Microsoft still considers WinM0 6.5 to be their business phone. The WP7 platform is consumer orientated.

HP pockets half of all Scottish development cash

Don't government ever learn?

Paying companies to create jobs in a country doesn't work long term and it also sets a precedent.

It might tip the balance so that a company decides to set up a business in the UK. But as soon as they need to cut costs they will go back to the government with an ultimatum of "more cash or we close up shop".

It's crazy as governments need to believe in market forces. If the UK is too expensive compared to another country then change the tax regime or model such that it is more attractive.

But ultimately you can't compete with countries where pay is so much lower.

Apple signs Xserve death warrant

Visual voicemail

Well given Apple doesn't really do business computers it does seem curious that they made servers.

I do wonder though what they will do about their visual voicemail feature as I'm sure this feature required Apple servers to be provided to mobile operators.

It really would be nice if they standardised the feature and let everyone use it. Existing menu driven voicemail is a really stupid thing, although it is needed as a fall back option for some dumb phones.

I'm a bit confused about the Mac Mini as a server option. It will do for light duties, but it's essentially a laptop without a screen but with two hard disks, so you'll be burning the thing out if you give it any heavy work to do.

Mac pro would be better, but it's a tower machine and companies like racks.

Apple MacBook Pro 17in Core i7 BTO notebook

Do it then

If you can then do it. Why tell us that? Some of us like to run OSX and software only available for it. Just like some people are totally fixated with Excel and all the VBA rubbish.

But then 8 times as fast? I doubt it. The Core I7 is the fastest Intel mobile CPU at present.