Posts by Brainman

Multiple fondling on the MIGHTY 12-INCH iOS 9 SLAB — so, so close now

Re: Side-by-side Windows on 12" Pro tablet with stylus like a Samsung Android tablet?

... and of course the Samsung tablets have the true multi user capability built in Android.

Side-by-side Windows on 12" Pro tablet with stylus like a Samsung Android tablet?

I am currently typing on one side of my Samsung Tab S with YouTube in the other with 2 variable halves.

I can do the same with my 2 year old Samsung Note 3 Phablet and can overlay a mini calculator, phone, clock etc. Phablets that since 2011 Apple fanbois mocked until the 6 plus blatantly copied it with a fudged version of 1080p while Samsung had already moved on to 1440p & soon 2160p.

Oh yes the 12" Samsung Tab Pro and Note Pro (with stylus) you can have 4 quarters.

Glad to see Apple is 'inventing' a 12" Pro Tablet with stylus and multiwindow 18 months after Samsung did it.

I await the derision of the Apple fanbois.

My TIGHT PANTS made my HUGE iPHONE go all BENDY!

It doesn't happen on the Samsung Galaxy Notes

I've had the Note 1 and Note 3 (and will get a Note 5 next year) on the day of release.

I have constantly had the phone in suit & jeans pockets will no ill effects.

Making a phone rigid with a brittle screen larger (to copy other manufactors) and even more expensive to repair & insure will just mean the already significant number of folk with cracked screens will be joined by an increasing number of bent phones.

What with the raised camera-nipple it was never going to sit flat anyway.

Would Apple godhead Steve Jobs have HATED the Watch?

Re: Extra, Extra, The Daily Sermon from Rev Jasper is here

It's not a Casio clone. Casio's battery lifes are measured in months, if not years, and certainly not hours, it was visible in sunlight and was waterproof. It also didn't need a charger (albeit a beautifully engineered one) to be carried too.

It also didn't need a phone or to be replaced annually.

It also brings with it a new first-world problem of will my watch last the day.

The apple watch is beautiful, functional and will be loved by many the world over but doesn't do well on many of the critical success factors of a watch.

Apple orders huge MOUNTAIN of 80 MILLION 'Air' iPhone 6s

As a Galaxy Note User...

As a Galaxy Note user since 2011 I have been much derided by iPhone fanbois for the size of my phone. It was functional and never a substitute for anything.

I expect an apology. In writing. To my mom for upsetting her little boy.

Also why I here long term Android features like a functional notification bar, exchangeable keyboards and proper sharing between apps are also about to be blatently reimagined by our friends in Cupertino and will then be considered by fanbois as Apple's idea in the first place. Who remembers that late additions to iOS such as MMS, Multitasking and Cut & Paste. iOS7 & 8 innovations are simply reengineering of Android and trying to do things better but in a locked down way.

The stylus will be Apple's next invention...

JJ Abrams and Star Wars: I've got a bad feeling about this

I wanted the Thrawn trilogy

We had 3 great canonical sequels sitting ready to be made in the Thrawn trilogy (Heir to the empire, dark storm rising, the last command).

They contain many old characters (the CG makeovers would have been on overtime) and many new ones including a couple of great villains (Grand Admiral Thrawn and Jorus C'baoth) along with good plot lines that complete an arc across the books with some fantastic imaginative set pieces. Thoroughly recommended reads, something that can't be said for most of the Star Wars universe fiction.

The move to Disney and Abrams is devastating.

Google forges a Silver bullet for Android, aims it at Samsung's heart

Get S-Pen etc into native Android

I want to see current propriety hardware such as the Samsung S-Pen stylus and some of the more esoteric sensors included into canonical Android so we can get better software support.

Star Wars movie to start shooting in UK this summer

Still disappointed they just didn't make Timothy Zahn's much loved canonic Thrawn trilogy (Heir To The Empire, Dark Storm Rising, The Last Command) into movies. I think major plastic surgery, computer graphics or a chronology rewrite may be needed to handle actors that have aged 30+ years since Jedi only look like they have aged 5 years.

Grand Admiral Thrawn, Joruus C'Baoth, Mara Jade, Talon Karrde are all fanastic characters with great plot lines, certainly better than the prequels.

If you haven't read them, why not? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrawn_trilogy

AIR TIME! Our expert cosies up with the new top-end iPad

Re: An upgrade?????? You're joking right?

I have a 32GB Samsung Galaxy Note 3 . I decided I needed more storage so I just added 64GB of storage via an SD card. I won't ever remove it and leave it on my desk. £43 from Amazon. Didn't have to buy it, many won't, but it is good to have the choice.

Peak Apple: Has ANYONE at all ordered a new iPhone 5c?

Re: I've ordered a 5C

I have an iPhone 3GS (retired), an iPad 2 (used virtually exclusively for looking at A4 education books), a Nexus 7 (used frequently) & a work Nokia Lumia 820 under WP but my main much used phone is an original Note from December 2011 (soon to be replaced by a Note 3).

Why do you stick with the keyboard on the Note 2 as delivered as you can switch for free to an alternative?

Typing is a dream using swipe on Swiftkey, so good I detest now the clunky unchangeable oh-so-slow iPad keyboard.

I really really want to like Apple but iOS is so inflexible in so many areas.

The keyboard is the keyboard, great I can split it or use it portrait or landscape but that is about it. I don't care about the colour of a keyboard or whether lower case letters are visible etc, but I do like swiping and intelligent predictions as they make typing quicker and more accurate, others may not like this, but in the droid universe you have the choice.

Explicit shots: China's gorgeous flop-tastic Tianhe-2 supercomputer

How long after switch on before it becomes sentient?

Or alternatively as I have watched the Colossus: The Forbin Project; will it "have a chat" with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum that I have in my loft that I have long thought had aspirations of world domination.

Google loses Latitude in Maps app shake-up

I for one am going to miss the private location sharing of latitude ("Has my daughter or at least her phone got home from school yet?") and the location history service ("What day did I drive to Manchester? / where was I on the 25th").

Galaxy S4 way faster than iPhone 5: Which?

In our house we have 3 Samsungs (2*S4 + a note) & 2 iPhones (4 & 5) all with a history of earlier versions. I can honestly say that the plastic & glass samsungs are far more resilant to daily wear than the metal & glass iPhones.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8: Proof the pen is mightier?

A stylus is a gimic if you consider a pen a gimic when finger paint works just as well.

Because of a stylus I can be pretty much paperless at work as I use a Galaxy Note phone with Lecture Notes software at (many many) meetings and then export to Evernote which does the handwriting recognition. Soft copy documents can be emailed straight into evernote. Hard copy as PDFs via CamScanner. Using the stylus I can easily annotate any PDF being reviewed via exPDFReader. I have never bothered with any of Samung's on-phone handwriting recognition or any of their apps for that matter.

This method works for me and may not work for anyone else but the precision delivered by a stylus cannot be matched by anything else and so enables workflows where a real pen can be mimicked, supplemented or even replaced.

Who is Samsung trying to kid? There will NEVER be a 5G network

There will almost certainly never be a "5G" mobile broadband network?

Despite your grammatical ass-covering, "almost certainly never", it has to be done:

There will almost certainly never be a "5G" mobile broadband network - The Register, 2013

Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput - Sir Alan Sugar, 2005

Spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time - Bill Gates, 2004

We will never make a 32-bit operating system - Bill Gates, 1989

I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time - Bill Gates, 1987

640K ought to be enough for anybody - no-one, certainly not Bill Gates, 1981

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home - DEC founder Ken Olsen, 1977

Data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year - Editor of Prentice Hall business books, 1957

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons - Popular Mechanics, 1949

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers - someone but not IBM Chairman, Thomas Watson, 1943

Apple's next OS X said to be targeted at 'power users'

Don't confuse skeuomorphisms with realisms

skeuomorphisms behalf like a real world object

realisms build on that to also look like a real world object

See this excellent flat pixels article

http://sachagreif.com/flat-pixels/

Samsung's new Galaxy S 4: iPhone assassin or Android also-ran?

Great phone but roll-on the Note III

I have been using the 5.3" Samsung Galaxy Note since December 2011, and fitting it in my pockets perfectly. I skipped the Note II as it dropped from 800 pixels wide to 720, hopefully everything on the S4 plus a 6" 1080p and further updated pen will make it into the Note III. I would go for the S4 in April but I would miss the Pen - not used with Samsung Apps but with a LectureNotes & Evernote combo that works well for me. It'll be interesting to see if the Samsung apps on the S4 are up to the mark as everything I use on the Note other than TouchWiz is Google or 3rd party from the market this is after trying but having found the Samsung apps disappointing.

Uni profs: Kids today could do with a bit of 'mind-crippling' COBOL

COBOL, oh how fondly I remember you

I have been programming for 33 years and haven't touched COBOL since the mid-90s having started to use it in the mid-80s in order to get dosh as I couldn't get basic and assember (68000, z80 & 6502) to pay.

I still remember it fondly and do think that it made you think about your code structure far more than you "have to" these days and allowed you a lot of controls over data structures.

While there are still companies still using COBOL there is a market for people to learn it but I am not sure if the world of academia is the place.

Security audit finds dev outsourced his job to China to goof off at work

Read "The Four Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferris

Full of this kind of suggestion, trouble is you need to wade through a lot of grandstanding of the world of Tim