Posts by David Black

PM writes ISPs' web filter ads for them - and it must say 'default on'

Re: Official! Cameron + fiends = Shit for Brains

Democracy can only work if you have a diversity of opinion. Much as I loathe Cameron and all he stands for, where's my choice? Can you think of any credible politician who would stand against this?

Pure boffinry: We peek inside Nokia's miracle cameraphone

Re: congrats

There are quite a few women in that team too.

STEVE BALLMER KILLS WINDOWS

That old not-really Petronius quote comes to mind

"We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."

'tis the begining of the end :)

Sleek Nokia Lumia details EXPOSED ahead of Thursday's disrobing

Re: 32GB

I think you answered your own question... video! A fairly small number (in my experience, about 12ish) of 3-5 min 1080p HD quality video will fill that memory up nicely when used normally (default vide settings, some apps and music loaded too).

And as for SkyDrive on the go, you are having a laugh. do I really want my phone syncing gigs of data on 3G-ish connections??? I take it you don't use the phone for calls and web browsing much or like the battery to last more than a few hours. And my home wifi might be ok but I don't think I've ever been to a hotel where the wifi wasn't the preverbial whores knickers let alone able to transfer data.

I'm no hater and I can't see why is anyone supporting the absence of removable storage on this device?

REVEALED: Google's GINORMOUS £650m London Choc Factory

FUGLY

Just what Kings Cross needs.

At last: EU slashes mobile roaming fees

Re: Information required

Did a similar-ish journey from Barcelona to Copenhagen and the total data cost for 3 days was only about £60 on an O2's bog standard tarrif two months ago (no idea of specific MBs pulled down for maps as it was pulling in emails too)... I thought it was pricey but didn't have the choice and my company picked up the tab. Still prefer a proper Garmin sat nav for driving but Google maps rocks when you are lost and have only a rough idea of what you are looking for as a bar called "Stripe something" gets matched to the nearest hit but my dear Garmin wouldn't have a clue.

The future of cinema and TV: It’s game over for the hi-res hype

and flicker too

Saying that the 25 fps etc. was nothing to do with vision isn't quite true, the frequency was set based on the preception of flicker in an incandescent bulb, 25 Hz being about the point where most people find the flicker imperceptible (sure there are some that argue that they can see flicker up to 100 Hz, but hey there are audiophiles that get upset with the sound of distant bats aparently!). The 25 Hz obviously went to 50 Hz when we jump to AC and bingo.

A great article, very interesting. I know that there are other coding techniques using models etc. that actually "inerpret" what is being viewed then render that. These have the potential to make the whole framerate/resolution discussion a little redundant. If you're in the mood for a follow-up piece, I'd love to know more.

Nokia Lumia 925: The best Windows Phone yet

Re: Looks good

"And as far as I can see all the apps I need are available."

Really? Wow I wasn't aware there was a shill payments app.

Seriously, Win 8 may be many things but a world of 3rd party support and apps it isn't.

New material enables 1,000-meter super-skyscrapers

Re: So how does this enable super-skyscrapers?

Yeah, good call on the "bull":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOgqSkiEWdU

Forget tax bills, here's how Google is really taking us all for a ride

Re: ATTENTION COMMENTARDS

There is a delicious irony in there... criticising one company for ignoring the "market" rules and rewriting them to suit themselves and then enforcing a comments policy which removes any criticism of yourselves.

Microsoft tweaks WinPhone YouTube app to fix Google gripes

Re: Hmmmm . . .

Tripe? Really, I take it you don't develop applications, the established user base is "slightly" critical as a potential market.

http://www.zdnet.com/android-accounts-for-74-percent-of-smartphones-sold-in-q1-samsung-reigns-7000015335/

Gartner's figures for Q1 still show Win Pho behind RIM though more like a seventh of iOS.

Re: Google could release their own app

"WinPhone doesn't need a Google Maps app. The Nokia one is free and better"

While I'm a big fan of offline map use, it really is about getting you to your destination (and preferably the actual destination you were intending). Much as I dislike feeding the spymasters, there's nothing that comes close to Google Maps for getting you where you want to be.

Wouldn't you at least like the choice on your Win Phone? Or maybe you know where to find the good astroturf shops.

Re: Hmmmm . . .

"Bigger than Blackberry now. A tenth of iPhone and growing."

Source? Including established user bases? Bollocks - just sayin'.

Cameron's Tech City: Desks? Yes. Cash? Yes. Coders? Nope

Live with parents

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't a big driver of the start-up culture of California in the 60s through 00s the garage? Said garage wasn't in their tiny appartments in over-priced cities but generally fairly well to-do suburbs of the burgeoning middle-class parents. No over-40 with kids and much sense would stay in London so surely Shoreditch is the worst possible location. Silicon Surrey might have been a better bet. I seem to remember the pharma companies liked Surrey cause they could pay below London rates and generally pick-up highly qualified female (typically) 2nd wage earners who valued other aspects of work more than the salary. Those folks should have pretty grown and qualified kids now...

But good luck to anyon planning an IT park stretching into the world of NIMBYs that rings the M25 :)

Google 'DOES DO EVIL', thunders British politician

Tax on business is fair

I'm not sure why so many people are so keen on defending Google here. I guess our society has lost its sense of right and wrong and redefined it based on "what you can get away with". Shame really.

But as to the appropriateness of taxing business... it is simply a way of they contributing to the society and paying for the resources of that society that they consume. Health, education, transport, military, police etc. are all provided by centralized government (whether you think that right or wrong, it is the way it is) and must be paid for. Do Google make business profits from the safe, socially stable UK with it's healthy and educated people? If yes then they have a liablility to contribute to the UK public finances at a fair level. Not really that questionable to me, maybe I'm missing something.

I take it all those defending Google's actions here are willing to pay a higher proportion of their earnings in tax to enable Google's behaviour as someone has to pay for our country.

Australian Gartner chap slams gov-funded IT education boost

Taxes

Good point well made. I think many more taxpayers will have doubts about supporting an IT industry that has so many promoinent leaders that seem to have issues contributing taxes back into the very society that fueled their growth. We already see a cynacism towards anyone in "banking" that seems to extend to the lowliest branch worker upwards based on the strategies of a few of those at the top of that industry.

Full metal jacket: Nokia launches new Lumia 925

Re: round objects

Sorry, I just assumed that most reg readers might understand the concept of an ecosystem around an OS.

You can't and won't find the apps and support for your device that other owners of other OSes will. Things are slow to get to the device and the experience will not be great for a £500 phone and you may regret your choice due to such factors beyond the specifics of the device.

Hope this helps. And I don't work in Marketing but was an Senior Engineering Manager at Nokia until recently.

Re: round objects

Actually, I was just drawing attention to the fact that the world around the device is crappy. It should merit a mention, particularly when it really is the thing that makes a £500 smartphone really worthwhile.

And yes, Linux is a "nearly" OS. I have no bad feelings toward Win Phone or other "nearly" OSes, just giving some feedback that many people may be disappointed with the experience, regardless of the device.

Sure... I just hate the fact the there's no real support in the wider app world for the devices. Just looking at the 20-30ish apps I have on my iphone then I only get 2 in the windows store and about 3 where I get the functionality online. None of my banking stuff, no BBC or Sky to watch the footie when I'm out, no ski tracker, no guitar tuner... just a snapshot of the things I can do with my iphone that I can't do with my Win Phone. There's just so much around the iOS and Android worlds and so much choice that removing it feels like reverting to a featurephone.

I'm not disputing that the OS is "slick", "lasts for hours" or is "funky" but without all the other "stuff" and an engaged world, it just feels like you're always on the outside and missing out.

And for the record, I've never used Instagram in my life and I hate the iphone but love the world that revolves around it.

round objects

I've spent more than enough time (6m+) with it and the lack of an ecosystem is totally shit. Yes it makes a change, like taking a shit in your bed makes a change. It's a "nearly" OS and I'm sure it has its fans like the amstrad machines did back in the speccy vs c64 days.

Can we please have an end to the drivel about "if you'd only tried it..." and "those who use it love it". I did, and I didn't. I own both an iphone and a few android devices and I can say that I don't feel any inclination to return to WP8 ever.

Nice looking device, shame about the ecosystem.

Review: Nokia Lumia 720

Re: So much fud in the comments

Actually I was thinking that there was a lot of MS astroturf bullshit in the comments. Most people seem to have givien up slating Windows Phone, rather like Windows 8... it's just become part of the landscape. I really had hoped Nokia would do so much more and be let off the leash with Microsoft to make something awesome. But stock Windows Phone with a great nav app just doesn't do it.

The niggles with Wndows Phone are what'll get you in the end... that and an app store that looks like it was supplied by teenage boys who don't get out much. As an overall experience you get used to it, but when you leave and go to Android or iOS, you just feel like you're not a freak anymore and it all just generally feels better. Sorry.

Ten Windows 8 Ultrabooks

Asus S200 does have 64-bit Win 8 and will do just short of 4h-ish of video viewing on VLC.

Picked it up in the US for $449 from Best Buy and was stunned at the value for money... I was looking for a cheap machine for my daughter but have hung onto it myself and am recomending it to everyone and their dog... consequently the price has been creaping up... was £379 in the UK for the 1.8G i3 model and now it is £420ish... in the space of the last month!

WTF is... Weightless?

Cyclists

Best use case that I ever heard for this technology was for fitting it to bikes, particularly in urban environments. Get's around the whole numberplate identity issue. Then the small number of cyclists who ride like idots in heavilly populated areas can be held to account.

The same guys also explained how it could make rural/single-carriageway roads MUCH safer as apparently a horrendous amount of the serious accidents are due to dirvers being unaware of other vehicles (oncomming, stopped at junctions, tractors etc.) but they also mentioned it being wearable by rural pedestrians and sheep too... not sure about the sheep bit though, but I think that's cause they'd be wearing the tags anyway to make them traceable.

Just how good is Nokia's PureView 41Mp camera tech?

2009

I see a lot of comments about using Symbian being like going back to 2009 in smartphone terms but I'd just like to understand what exactly is so different about the typical iPhone 5 experience and say the 3GS experience in 2009? Maybe a lift in performance and the improvement in screen (and the wonderful maps) but still it pretty much looks and feels very 2009 on both devices. Maybe I'm missing something.

Nokia hails hacks for New York Lumia WinPho gig

Re: Err...

Phonebox in Espoo?

Really, who cares. Windows Phone is the Video 2000 of the smartphone race.

Nokia CEO: No shift from Windows Phone

Re: Tried... bag-o-shite

Yawn, fecking hilarious... but jokes on you spud, you own a Windows Phone.

Your mum loves you, special boy.

Re: "...lies with Windows Phone and no other OS."

Old habits die hard? No surprise they still don't know their arse from their elbow.

Nokia always had internal OS competition, it was mostly a strength but when it came time to fight, the internal squabbles and divisions prevented them rallying the most powerful force of mobile developers on the planet and seeing off the challenge of iOS and Android.

The war is over Mr Elop, Nokia lost, now time for you to retreat into your bunker and do the right thing :(

Re: Don't fracture your base

Take out redundancy insurance mate, you're going to need it.

Tried... bag-o-shite

I gave it 6 months of use and just couldn't stand it's consistent crappyness (from WP7.0 then 7.1 and then 7.5). There's really no compelling reason to use Windows Phone and a great number of reasons not to. So please don't assume that everyone is ignorant and they just need to "try", some of us have and frankly I'd rather "try" being fisted a la 50 Shades of Grey than pick up a Windows Phone for the rest of my life.

Worked for Nokia. Still bitter.

Finnish PM rules out Nokia rescue package

We did

But sadly where 'your' company loses its mind there's only so much you can do. Investors tend to have confidence in anything that smacks of 'leadership' and dissenting voices are only causing trouble. I knew what was in store for and I left on Feb 10 2011... no, no coincidence that it was the day bfeore the MS deal was announced.

Re: Flops mission is complete.

Well you would want to weaken Nokia to make it a takeover target. There is no way in hell that the European regulators (possibly even the Americans either) would have approved the takeover by MS of Nokia in Feb 2011 (when Elop killed Symbian). It would've taken years to clear. Nokia just had too large a market share in too many spaces to let anyone merge with it, it was simply too big to swallow. The Nokia takeover of Symbian was previously defeated by regulators and only just scraped through in 2008/9 buy lots of assurances that the OS would be open sourced.

Elop set about changing that. I suspect that he was more sucessful than he imagined. He had to take Nokia off number one slot for smartphones, done; number one mobile OS, done; and number one all phone vendor, done (just). Now anyone looking to enquire about purchsing Nokia will be seen as a saviour and with the backing of the Finnish government, positively encouraged into a buy-out. To those of us on the inside, this was and still is entirely predictable.

CIOs should fear the IP police ... have your get-out-of-jail files ready

Re: Sir

So true, in my youth I was involved with a group not disimilar to Irving Welsh's train spotters. Always a good upstanding kid, my eyes were opened wide to a world where the law and social norms were ignored and jesus when I actually saw how thin our veneer of lawfulness was, it was scary. And worse still, there's not really a path back into legality once you punch through.

Criminalising routine activity without the active support of the citizens and pro-actively acting against their interests will not end well for our legal and political representatives.

Maybe one simple solution is to never have copyright transfer into the hands of a "rights holder"... the original creator is the only one who can determine what happens with their creation. Preserves the rights of the creator but disempowers the shambolic media monoliths.

Surface: Because Microsoft does so well making hardware?

Re: Nokia

When MS completes the Nokia takeover, I'm pretty sure you'll see these tablets wearing a "Microsoft by Nokia" brand. The design and colours are straight out the Nokia design book. Also Nokia does have superb supply chain and production capabilities that would be ideal if you were a software maker looking to get into hardware.

Not that I personally like the joint branded products (such as the awful Sony Ericsson) but Nokia has fantastic brand reputation and still comes many notches ahead of Apple in almost every country. However that brand is depreciating fast (cheers Mr Eflop) and in the US was never particularly strong, hence retaining the coupling with the Microsoft brand.

Paris cause all branding is just pointless fluffy shit :)

Apple extends Liquidmetal sole rights until 2014

Re: R&D and payback

The Vertu Ascent was a liquidmetal device back in about 2007 so prior art may be an issue for our fruity friends.

Liquidmetal was easier to work with than your typical alloy frame and the mechnics guys turned things round fast.

Nokia after the purge: It's so unfair

Sad

Shame, feel sorry for the thousands of very talented people losing their jobs due to totally useless management.

Anyone holding shares now is nuts.

Microsoft 'mulled Nokia buyout, ran away screaming'

Re: Elop has already halved the time it takes for Nokia to make a smartphone

I know why it grates you... it's because you know the failure was so avoidable. It grates all of us who watched the parent smother the life out of the child :(

Eflop

Couple of significant points being bundled together there incorrectly:

"The shareholders thank Elop for his important work for stablising Nokia (the demand for Symbian in the past 12 months speaks for itself)"

Err, Elop was the massive ahole that sank Nokia's most profitable division overnight... expecting the shareholders to be thankful is like expecting my missus to be thankful cause I've stopped shagging the next door neighbour.

"Elop has already halved the time it takes for Nokia to make a smartphone, simply by shifting to Windows."

And I can halve my bodywieght by chopping my legs off... not quiet the same as a diet. Nokia now produce non-differentiated, run-of-the-mill devices that clone everyone elses, even the HW production has been shifted out of the proven centres into clone-land.

Nokia has failed, the only mystery is why the remaining shareholders are still in the game at $3 a share. They'd be much better advised getting out now, there is no "climb-back". And the idea that a "crack" Windows Phone team exists in Nokia implies that someone is smoking crack. The value in Nokia is as a global trusted brand and a market share of 50+% in emerging nations, mostly on great featurephones. Just cause Nokia never figured out how to make this into a massive business doesn't mean someone else won't.

Ultrabooks: objects of desire but just too darn expensive

Shame, but even £800 won't get you much Ultrabook

I love ultralight laptops and have an Lenovo X301 for my more powerful PC chores (thanks to redundancy) and an old 1st gen macbook air for around the house surfing and mailing (my daughter pinched my tablet) and completely agree that the lightness, good battery life and form factor make a compelling offering.

When the ultrabooks launched, I was really, really excited, finally a laptop with some serious grunt that won't give me a hernia and lasts more than 30mins between charges. Then I tried buying one... all the entry level £800ish machines have some significant shortcoming, crappy screen size/quality, crappy drive spec, poor design etc. You really are ponying up in the £1,100 region for a proper bells and whistles machine that really does tick all the boxes. That's way too much and will never break that market. They are lovely machines but compromise a little on some of the ultrabook elements and you can get a "traditional" laptop that is a 90% ultrabook-like for £500.

Whomever thought of the price point for the ultrabooks should be taken out and educated on market economics.

Road deaths spark crackdown on jaywalking texter menace

Re: Is it me?

Having struck pedestrians in my 20 years on the road, I can assure you that every legal instrument under the sun is against the driver. In one case, the drunk girl actually jumped onto the bonnet of my car then fell on the ground (I had stopped by this time) and though she was totally uninjured, I got to pay for the ambulance that someone else called. Another time, a young girl ran across the road (with headphones and not looking) and actually struck the side of my car and broke her legs under my back wheel. There was no way it was my fault or anything and yet I got to pick up her £12,000 bill and had my car insurance hiked by 50% for 5 years! Because motorists are insured, you'll alwys be found partially liable :(

I only wish there was a compulsory insurance for cyclists and pedestrians, might level things a little.

Official: Britain staggers into double-dip recession doom

Cameron is just doing a Ratner

Now I know the Tories want to keep the political machine running and ensure that no one forgets that "We are in an economic mess" unusally followed by "left by the last Labour government". Now without taking on the factual substance of the statement, can nobody see that if you have an entire government just constantly restating what a mess we're in, we'll never get out. Just stop saying it. We've heard it now. Well done, you're not Labour, they were bad, thanks. Just say something positive and provide a direction for moving our country forward and stop talking it down.

Smartphones finally outsell featurephones ... in Japan

Technicallity really

I suspect that a lot of this is just down to the definition of featurephone and smartphone. The crucial difference is in the ability to load your own apps which the operators largely prohibited until recently. Almost of of their "featurephones" are based on smartphone OSes (Symbian, Linux/Andriod etc.) with the app loading turned off. These featurephones are outstanding, particularly for data connectivity and I'd suspect that if there was a similar offering available in the rest of the world over the past 5 years, our "smartphone" market would be tiny.

HTC to produce exclusive Facebook smartphone, bitch

Windows Phone?

As a former HTC Windows Phone user, I can honestly say that the only REALLY well done part was it's Facebook integration. Great for a personal phone but on my business device, it wasn't really great during meetings getting updates telling me that "Scott has just had his scrotum pierced".

Nokia's fontastic Pure wins 'design Oscar'

How much?

Surely everything in Nokia has a price tag on it now before the firesale begins, how much for a font? Couple of grand? Maybe they could just go back to making really tight nearly indestructable phones, I'm sure there's money in that?

Nokia's older mobes infringe IPCom patent – court

Profiting from victims

Yeah cause someone should profit from the ability to make an emergency call when you've just been beaten to within an inch of your life. Trolls and scum in one.

Nokia on 'brink of failure', warns analyst

Re: Infighting killed the beast

True, the picture is always fairly complicated. But I wouldn't say that it wasn't foreseeable to have to plan a different path on the UI & app dev direction. Actually "Hitchcock" and "Orbit" were projects leading that way that got killed.

I loved Qt and enjoyed my time in Oslo with some great folks though I did warn them of their fate once they got absorbed into the beast. Actually some of the mistakes that Nokia made with the Qt acquisition are what made them f$%k up the Symbian takeover so royally. They hated the independence of Qt and their small company ethos which they alllowed to persist and felt that Qt didn't really care about delivering value for Nokia. So those lessons meant that when they acquired Symbian, they came in with fists of iron and asimilate everyone to Nokia immediately. Actually if they'd preserved Symbian's independence and let the strengths of the comapny come through, they would naturally have aligned with Qt and fixed Nokia anyway.

Re: Infighting killed the beast

LOL, always suspected the Maemo/Meego folks really did smoke crack but thanks for proving the point about the pathetic infighting. Porting Qt to Symbian as a serious effort in 2008/9 would've yielded results by early 2010 and just because it would've been hard to do, doesn't mean that wasn't the right thing to do. As you are no doubt aware, most of the trash in "Symbian" was the result of S60 UI, taking the UI and App layers off and building from scratch would've worked but the compatibility hit was the killer. Oh yeah, thanks for the N97 horror relived... that was truly dire.

Bonuses when business isn't doing well... er, Symbian kept Noka afloat and making profit. As Symbian declined where did Nokia's profit go? The platform was dying but remember that a dying platform can have a VERY long slow death (anyone know how Series 40 is doing when it was described by a former CEO as end-of-life in 2005?) Symbian at least would've given Nokia options for producing other form factors than touch-slab for the mid/low-end. Why did Elop need to shoot anything? Nature takes care of the weak.

Not bitter, I did very well out of the disaster, just sad to have lost a great European (more so British) OS once again.

Nokia loses $1.7bn in Q1, sales chief falls overboard

Farewell faithful hound

Nokia actually had a strategy for surviving the "turnaround" and it basically involved pitching Symbian to the low/mid-range (and bringing competitive features and an ecosystem with it), cannibalizing the featurephone market of S40 and then bringing through Meego on the high-end. They could have maintained this approach and inserted Win Phone, purely targeted at their non-existant US market, possibly offering limited variants in other limited territories until Win Phone matured and could oust Symbian from the mid-range then laterly the low-end. This could all have happened without much pain or sorrow over a 2-3 year timescale.

Nope, Stephen burned the platform that was generating 93% of the company profit. That was his decision alone. It was primarilly motivated by overwhelming negativity to Nokia and Symbian in particular in North America who had just woken to the age of the smartphone about 10 years after everyone else. As the management of Nokia became physically more North American, their viewpoint directed everything. No one seemed capable of noticing that North America was (unfortunately) miniscule for Nokia (0.7% of revenue) and that really they needed to manage a European company that was storming Asia... even if it was losing ground.

Short, sharp shock better than managed transition... well only if it doesn't kill the patient. Revenues and profits would've declined savagely in the managed transition but Nokia would still be alive in 2 years time. At this rate, the brand will be alive but nothing that is "Nokia" will survive til Christmas this year.

Gemini outs trio of budget Android 4 tablets

bezels

Er, so you can hold them without touching/obscuring the screen area. On a phone you can rest it in the palm of one hand but a tablet needs gripped.