Posts by Karl

Site news: Unique commenter handles coming

Caps?

Is paris == Paris? Worth making clear, IMO.

German police boot down doors of Wikileaks offices

Illegal pointers

"merely informing other people of where it is accessible."

That's what the Pirate Bay trial is all about.

Penguin goes electronic

Paperbook is greener

If you want to save the planet, build a library with wooden bookshelves, as that's a good carbon sink. Around 2/5 of the weight of a book is carbon, after all, and by buying and keeping books you sequester a considerable amount.

Triple play puts iPhone ahead of Android

Same SDK as Apple's developers?

No. There are two major limitations - no running in the background, and no access to telephony. In other words, no background caching of RSS/video, and no spiffy and usable SMS application, to take just two examples.

Of course, people seem to forget that this SDK is for both iPhone and iPod Touch, and given that the latter lacks telephony, this could arguably be a case of keeping the platform coherent.

The requirement that development takes place on a Mac is another hurdle, and one they're unlikely to remove, as it helps drive sales of Macs.

And, as others have pointed out, the article is both USA-centric, and seems to be more based on marketing boilerplate rather than any original research.

However, the SDK and tools look attractive, and the AppStore is a huge help for any small-time developer. If I give in and get myself a Mac, I'll definitely get the iPhone SDK as well.

Microsoft bares all - play by play

OOXML

The vote is coming up in ISO again, now, isn't it?

I wonder if this announcement's tree-hugging hippie crap goodwill feeling will last long enough for that, without them having to actually put any documentation up (because "it takes some time to organise and review everything for public consumption") before the vote?

Reg Dev wants you!

@Evil Graham

The thing is, the Reg offers that magic word - exposure. You'll get your name there, so prospective employers will not just see flamewars over Lohan/Hilton, but that you actually seem to know what you're talking about.

And if you've got a job, you could put it on your annual review targets, because the byline will say "Evil Graham works for Fsck.Com, the worldleading supplier of SnaFu(tm)" which will impress your boss. The (unpaid) articles I've written for CVu I wrote at work, in a brief lull between projects, and my employer were happy to see me do it, as it gave them exposure in the developer community. And it earned me a couple of free beers at the ACCU conference.

Of course, if you have something interesting to share, you could try for a paying magazine (good luck!), or bung it on CodeProject or your private blog, both of which are just as unpaid, and both of which are without editorial control.

But if you submit them to RegDev, and get them accepted, you get much greater exposure. You don't get paid, true, but you do get a visible proof that you can write, which will make it much easier to sell articles to WSJ or, indeed, RegDev, or book proposals to 2.O'Reilly.

In the end, it's up to you. The offer's there, the terms are clear. If you don't think it'll give you any benefits, well, nobody's forcing you to write anything.

I guess you never participate in usenet or webforum discussions either, as that would mean you gave advice for free?

Given that a fair few employers I know actually look at such things, and prefer people who've proven that they know what they claim they know, and know both how to solve problems and how to communicate, that might be a bit short-sighted, but it's your career.

And much as I'd love to help you with your bugs, I doubt you can offer me Paris-grade exposure, so I'll respectfully decline your kind offer.

@ David

The most important thing for any budding writer is an ability to write. It doesn't matter if you've got twenty years experience and considered an expert in your field if you can't write.

So here Vulture Central is offering a free service to provide you with proof that you can write to a professional standard. If you submit an article that is accepted, you can point to that, saying "Yes, of course I can write, I've had an article published by RegDev."

Track record is very important in any communications business - just look at the number of photo shoot offers Abi Titmuss and Paris Hilton got once they had proved they could perform.

No money, but...

Unlike Web 2.0, there'll be editorial oversight. It's a nice CV line, especially for companies that have the "knowledge sharing" line of position fluff, and I imagine that having a few articles on El Reg under your belt can add a couple of pounds to the hourly contractor rate.

Think of it not as writing for Byte or Exe (and we know from those examples what happens to developer publications that actually pay - they go bust), but rather the ACCU mags Overload and CVu - by developers for developers to both share knowledge and increase your own visibility and status.

Of course, writing for El Reg is likely to prevent you from ever getting a job at Apple, but that's just an unexpected bonus.

Jordan mulls mamtastic epitaph

Epitath? Epiteth? Epitit?

"Here lies Katie 'Jordan' Price, who went titsup on..."

"At rest, after a bumpy ride."

"She was a titbit."

"Here be flagons."

First Airbus seats to be auctioned for charity

So who is going to be the first .......

To buy one of these tickets and try to sell it on Ebay for profit?

The IBM ThinkPad: 15 years old today

Butterfly effect

I'm disappointed that you didn't mention the butterfly keyboard introduced in 1994 (or was it 1995?). A marvel of engineering ingenuity, which actually worked.