Posts by Giles Jones 2536 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Dec 2006
It sounds like it will be good, but the BBC should really make another classic sci-fi novel into a mini-series. The Midwich Cuckoos would be one I'd like to see.
I've watched the 1981 version about 3-4 times now and think they got it spot on back then. John Duttine was brilliant as Bill Masen.
All the remake can really offer is updated HD visuals.
Sure, there are some people who want OSX on generic hardware. But to say that Apple locks it's OS to its hardware for monopolistic reasons is debatable.
If you know exactly what hardware your OS runs on then you only need to write enough drivers for that set of hardware. If you don't know what hardware your OS runs on then you have a lot of uncertainty.
Apple would spend a lot more time testing the OS, writing drivers etc.. Of course third parties would write drivers, but fairly badly as they usually do. Then you would have OSX falling over and users blaming the OS (not the crummy hardware and drivers they're installing).
Increased development costs, increased testing costs, increased support costs, decreased reputation, decreased profits.
The best situation is for Apple to licence OSX to specific hardware vendors, they could then ensure that the generic PCs were built to a known specification (ie. so existing drivers could be used).
The iPhone's success is due to its software not the form factor. This is something that the makers of "iPhone killers" don't seem to understand.
No matter how good the hardware or form factor, if the OS blows then it won't be much use. WM at present is a 90s take on what a UI should be. No amount of welcome screen replacements will change that.
Many of these netbooks are mis-sold or given away with mobile broadband contracts. This is the main problem, clueless customers given something they won't understand.
If you had a clue you probably wouldn't sign up for a mobile broadband contract, the modems are cheap and the 3 PAYG options are good enough. A contract offers you nothing other than a bribe of a free netbook.
There's no real purpose or place for flash on a mobile. There's not enough screen real estate or resolution to have it embedded in a web page.
Much of the flash I miss out on will be animated adverts.
YouTube is the main useful purpose for it but there's a dedicated app for that.
Most phones that do have it have a flash lite player.
Funny how long Microsoft spent slagging off open source and the GPL, yet these days it is where they get all their best product ideas from.
Probably wouldn't have been an IE8 or IE7 without Firefox. The gap between IE6 and IE7 was *five* (count them) FIVE years! Yet the gap between IE7 and IE8 could be a mere year or two.
Open source such as Firefox, Apache and Linux keeps Microsoft on its toes. You have to wonder why they hate competition so much (and why they try their best to eliminate it) when competition is shown to improve innovation, something that Microsoft seems to boast about having all the time.
Music, videos, internet, apps, games etc..etc...
Why buy an ugly Zune that offers you less?
How can you buy a Zune anyway, they're only available as grey imports.
Microsoft should have put Zune resource into Windows Mobile, updated the WM OS and made it more modern. Then used that as a base for Zune.
This is pretty much what Apple did, developed one OS used in the iPhone and iPod touch.
My 12 month contract with BT (new line install) will be up then and I can then consider using a phone provider that actually charges based on service provided.
I never call anyone on my BT line, it is only connected for ADSL.
UK comms would be a better place without BT. We'd probably have fibre everywhere.
Not the first time Belkin have been in the press for doing 'bad' things.
Who remembers the router that hijacked a HTTP connection to plug some service they were offering?
You would open a browser and go to a website and the router would send you their stupid advert instead.
Having bought one of their routers I can't say I was impressed, took it back the next day.
The test for these patent troll cases should be quite simple. If you are a company with patents and you have no product either in development or on the market using such a patent then you can't defend the patent.
This prevents technology patent trolls acting as parasites and gambling their money buying patents to then earn income by enforcing them.
Patents are out of hand, they were originally introduced to prevent the smaller company getting their ideas ripped off by the big companies.
I'd wait for the next release of WM where they've redesigned the interface completely.
There's some capable hardware for WM phones, they're just sadly let down by the UI which has been around largely unchanged for a good 8 or 9 years now.
All these launchers and front ends do try to lessen the futility, but once you have to leave it you can forget trying to use your fingers.
It's not just Microsoft with this problem, Symbian needs a good deal of updating too. S60 touch seemed a step forward but they still kept support for the stylus!
Personally I'd rather see Symbian die out and leave us with WM, iPhone and Android.
I wouldn't mind them creating this organisation if we had dealt with the serious crimes on the streets. But the streets aren't safe and people are dying everyday by being stabbed, run over by drunk drivers etc...
But no, the government has to help big media giant bosses keep their expensive flash offices and luxury sports cars.
I think the money would be better spend elsewhere! Nobody dies when a CD is copied!
>Yet more evidence that Apple (and IMHO MS) does not produce better tech under the >hood with new releases. It just polishes the shiny eye candy.
So optimising the OS for speed and size, adding new APIs like GrandCentral (multicore API) and the new graphics libraries OpenCL is just a GUI tweak?
I don't see that Microsoft made multicore programming any easier in Vista.
The embarrassment is the fact that Microsoft haven't even launched the Zune in the UK yet. Yes you can get grey imports, but why bother?
Apple's iPod appeared in the earlier part of this decade and it has taken Microsoft how long to produce a competing product? and it's still not launched in the UK despite it being a very profitable market for music players (people buy them to pass the time while waiting for our really bad trains to finally arrive).
Another win for Apple is that their music players now run the same software as their phones. Why didn't Microsoft do this? they could have put the developer resources of Windows Mobile and Zune together and produced a common platform for both. But they didn't as Microsoft doesn't have a clue.
Simple reasons why many people don't have a computer. Linux, OSS and Windows are too complex for the elderly absolute beginners who aren't technical, engineers etc..
Some of these simple OS desktop platforms (like the one that comes with Asus Eeepc for example) are much better suited to beginners. Plus the low cost of these netbooks makes them more attractive.
Even £100 is a lot to some people.
"Where users of MS on Mac get the more shoddy versions than those using Windows get."
I've used Office 2004 and it's better than any Windows version I've used. It looks nice, there's useful templates for documents.
Obviously there's features lacking and you don't get Access (only really a problem for small businesses).
Sony Ericsson were pretty much the only customer you could name, there's no new UIQ SE phone and so it's bye bye UIQ.
What I saw of it the death of it is fairly well deserved. Comparing the iPhone, Android phone or a modernish dumbphone to UIQ makes UIQ look like it was written in 15 years ago.
They're not pirates they're counterfeiters! pirates just copy software illegally and make no pretence that it is genuine when passing it on, counterfeiters copy the software, the packaging and try to pass it off as genuine.
It's doubtful that in China the full retail price would have ever been received by Microsoft anyway.
Expensive, bulky and pointless megapixel count. If you send mms it gets scaled to vga. If you show people on screen then you're using a screen with less than 1mp typically. If you show on a PC then thats still not enough for 8mp.
The only time you need 8mp and will see the benefit is cropping a section of a pic or when printing. Who prints pictures of drunken mates and then cares about the quality?
At first, but remember that in those days PCs had 128MB to 256MB of RAM and clock speeds of about 1GHz.
Finally PCs are running smoothly with 1GB and multicore CPUs and Microsoft has to go and ruin it by releasing yet another sluggish OS.
Contrast this with Apple and OSX, that runs well on their lowest hardware platforms and guess what Apple are doing next? their next OSX release is focussed on cutting bloat, improving performance and adding multicore programming APIs to further speed up applications running on the OS.
What is weird is Apple are a hardware vendor and you would think they would be the ones slowing down the OS to get new hardware sales!
You're so right!
If I go out and buy a Sony laptop from PC World the evil Apple software called Windows is supplied with the laptop even if I don't want to run it.
errrr hold on it's Microsoft who are shafting everyone, supplying Windows with a laptop even if you don't want it!!!!!!
It all goes to show that years ago web designers should have stuck to their guns and followed web standards and then told Microsoft to fix their browser.
Can you imagine the embarrassment if a site didn't render in IE but did in Netscape? that would have got Microsoft on the case!
Of course in reality Netscape was clunky and slow and IE was leaner and meaner. Also IE was being bundled with Windows and you know the rest....
Online banking is safe because if anything happens as the result of misuse of your online account you are refunded the money.
But if you are irresponsible with your cheque book, credit card etc you are liable for the loss.
These online payment systems are not banks and aren't covered by banking law, yet another reason to try to use normal banking systems as much as possible.
I think they're trying to separate the businesses that were going under anyway from those that are just affected by the downturn.
Of course, it may be hard to do so and what is the use of pumping companies full of money to stop them laying off employees when the people retained will be sitting about doing nothing (as there's no work)?
>And the winner was
>Android.
In a speed test yes. So what? It's obvious a hardware keyboard is going to be better. But that means carrying a brick around with you.
Once companies other than HTC start making Android phones and offer things like multitouch then it will take off.
I've nothing against the software, it will get better and better and hopefully kill off the dismal clunky rubbish that is Symbian S60.
iPhone OS and Android will certainly concentrate the minds of Microsoft and Symbian, they've been doing nothing to advance the mobile experience for years.
I don't go in there much as when you do its either:
1. A 30 minute wait to get served as the solitary salesman is midway through selling a mobile broadband contract to hapless victim.
2. Two sales people who both work their brains into overdrive to work out how to sell me something I saw in their catalogue!
WM7 will make everything so much better, I may even try it (depends on hardware really, HTC's design has never appealed even though I've had 4 of their phones).
WM8 was going to be the big redesign of the interface, but it seems Microsoft have scrapped that idea and WM7 will have a proper touch screen interface instead of one that tries to act like a desktop computer (close buttons and start menus?).
Oh no he must be stopped, he may improve the iPod to compete with IBM's very successful IBMPod :)
I think what they're really worried about is his involvement in the chip company Apple purchased. But then the PPC market has been plundered by the Intel world for years, lots of people left Motorola for Intel.
Except they have been giving these laptops away with mobile broadband contracts. Pushing the deal when it's probably not the ideal device for most people. Most people will want familiarity or a mass market OS, Linux would be ok if there wasn't so many distributions.
I've thought about how to stop card fraud online and I think one solution would be for the card issuers to provide online authorisation for transactions on your card. The system would work as follows.
1. You buy something online.
2. The shop processes your purchase and informs you this has been initiated.
3. You logon to your credit card online banking system, enter a password and click "Authorise" on the payment request.
4. Transaction proceeds as normal.
While this doesn't work for non-online purchases, it would eliminate a lot of "cardholder not present" fraud. Just so long as the fraudsters don't get access to your online banking system.
>Why complain about something you get for nothing. If you don't like it switch to another, or if email >is critical for you, get a proper paid for email service.
Because it's Microsoft and they're so serious about having great online services but time and time again they prove they don't have a clue as to what end users want.
>Jobs is as monopolisitic in his atttude as Microsoft is. They should also be investigated under >antitrust legislation ! And they will go to any lengths to protect it.
Why?
It's exactly the same sort of protection methods used by the Wii, XBox 360, PS3, PSP etc.... and yet you aren't calling for those 'consoles' to be unlocked as well?
Is it not an advantage to have vetted applications on a platform? or do you want a zillion applications which use undocumented APIs and lots of hacks to achieve their aims instead of sticking to the documented APIs? (See some of the Windows Mobile applications for examples of that).
There's enough health problems with drink and smoking, not to mention all the other drugs. So why on earth would anyone want to add to the problem by legalising yet another narcotic?
If you smoke resin then there's more tar in it than in the worst cigarette.
With people being denied treatment on the NHS due to the cost of drugs, how is legalising cannabis going to help matters?
This is what is wrong with this country, people abusing their bodies to extremes and then expecting the NHS to fix all the damage.
If you want to feel good, get some fresh air and exercise, become fit and you feel good all the time and don't need a little pill or a line to lift your spirits.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
