Posts by Matthew Barker

Apple: Yes, Safari outperforms embedded iOS web viewer

Blah blah blah

How fast does a freaking web site need to be and when are we at the point where it doesn't matter to anyone other than tech nerds?

Thunderbolt: A new way to hack Macs

The only part we need to read here

"...Graham speculates it is vulnerable..."

"...speculates..."

Apache threatens Oracle with Java exit

Oh good

that means they'll stop whinging. 3 years is a long time to whinge about something without backing it up with action.

Oracle kills low-priced MySQL support

Not Oracle

It Isn't Oracle who sold MySQL and walked away with a cool $1B. They're just getting the blame for exercising their rights over something they bought. The folks responsible for the end of the MySqueal love-fest are the neo-millionaires who sold it.

App Store II: Steve Jobs sucks Mac's soul

Huh?

"...the moment Open Office became usable."

When was that, then? Was a great flock of pigs seen migrating south high, overhead in a v-formation?

Adobe enlists tablet and cake makers to rally Flash

Not looking for a solution

I know how to block flash. I'm not looking for a solution. I'm addressing the arguments that flash is critical and Jobs is the devil just because he doesn't accept that people *must* be able to run flash.

I shudder to think at what would happen to my battery life on any of my portable devices were I to allow Flash on them myself.

Nope

Not suggesting it at all. I was suggesting that Jobs seemed to be aware that Flash is not a critical web technology.

God save us all

[El Reg: Can't you add an Adobe logo with horns? This because all of Adobe's execs are non recognizable]

Maybe the driving force behind SCO's walking death can come work for Adobe's flash division.

[I just love those ads.]

No matter what Adobe say, 99% of the flash content running on my household computers on any given day is adverts. Not games. Not magazines. Not compelling, life-changing, or indispensable web content.

At least Jobs recognizes this. I wish someone would explain this to Martha.

Perhaps Apple can stamp their devices with an Adobe logo with a circle and line to indicate they're flash free?

Google boss: 'Creeped out by Street View? Just move'

An old saying...

The level of a man's humor reflects the level of his thinking.

Phone 7: Another Vista or another XP?

They don't get it, that's all

It appears to be a worrying trend: Microsoft appears to be copying what someone else did rather than having any confidence in themselves and providing any real innovation or design leadership.

The restrictions look like they're a slavish attempt to copy what Apple have done, but not what they're doing now.

Likewise, their retail stores are s'posed to be locating themselves across from Apple's stores, including a renamed genius bar.

The early developer releases of Vista even had Apple icons in them.

This is starting to feel like the lovelorn babysitter who goes mad and dresses in the wife's clothing in a sad attempt to get the husband to notice her.

Cutting her bonus isn't enough, I think we need to check her into a facility and hope they cure her for the baby's (shareholders') sake.

Apple threatens Java with death on the Mac

Get a VM

You only need to run Ubuntu on a VM and you can still get the cool hardware.

IBM Java defection leaves Apache sourcers shellshocked

You mean, of course,

to stick a fork in it and declare it done.

There's always C# or python, or ruby, or perl, or PHP or...a half-billion other languages.

Sun's had control of Java since it was released to the public. Suddenly everyone's pissing and moaning about them retaining control over it.

And what about the TCKs? Haven't people been using Harmony anyway? You mean ASF built Harmony to this point without at least automated regression tests? If they haven't, then it's not worth a bucket of pig snot. If they have, then who gives a shit if Oracle approves of it?

Just use it for your web sites or whatever and find something else to whinge about....or aren't raging wars, corrupt politics, mass starvation, deforestation, etc big enough issues?

If Harmony has been working and has been used, then this is all about trying to force the neighbour – who was good enough to let you use his car on a regular basis to go get the groceries - put your name on the car's title. Don't get all entitled, just go round the pub and have a pint, watch a footy match, visit your missus, go round your mate's, and just generally get on with your life. Your water heater's probably going to break tomorrow, or your transmission, or some relative will get cancer or strike it rich and disinherit you or some other thing. Then I'm sure we'd all REALLY be concerned about whether Sun and now Oracle insisted on keeping the title to the thing they created in the first place. So somebody did repairs on the car or replaced the tires, that helps pay for the right to continue borrowing the car.

Note: the references to cars and keys are merely metaphorical contrivances to get across an idea that there are more important things in life. I am not, in fact, saying that you've been mooching off of your neighbour.

Yes, but

Someone called it JAVAscript and now it's been pulled into the discussion. It doesn't have to make sense, just run with it.

We can call it "Improv trolling"(tm) or some such.

Hmm?

In grade school I'd heard it stood for Ignorant Butthole Menace. But that was many years ago.

I didn't see fit to mention this to anyone when I worked there.

RIM boss joins queue to kick Jobs

Ooooooooooooooh

Balsille is getting a might tetchy!

I was rather hoping for a larger-than-ten-inch tablet. It would save me from getting reading glasses.

Google Glamour girl joins Schmidt Privy Council

downward spiral

Now that she's gone, goog will probably do something really awful and complicated like putting CPU-sucking animated and colourful balls on their search page. Oh....wait....

Jobsian fondle-slab in SEXY FILTHGRAM CRACKDOWN

Seriously?

If you think Apple are in control, you should dig deep into General Electric, Halliburton, and Monsanto, just to begin with.

Foxconn warns phones prices will rise

Localization

Perhaps we could all then just buy stuff closer to home, and not so much stuff at that.

HP accuses Hurd of repeated lying

Effigy battles

So, they're saying that it's OK to hire one person with an ethically questionable record, because he's better than the person he replaces? Am I understanding this correctly?

And to demonstrate how the new guy is ethically good-enough, they're still beating the previous one, who they hired and who they paid off when it was time to leave.

And the board, along with the last two CEOs they hired, was involved with fraudulently obtaining phone records belonging to other board members, employees, and the press.

They seem to be becoming worse rather than better.

I don't think I want to give them any more business.

[El Reg - Can you come up with an icon to symbolize HP's board of directors? Perhaps a bottle of sauce?]

Sony Ericsson Zylo

Meh

Given that 4 of the last 5 Sony Ericsson handsets my family members have had have failed in less than a year, I think I'll give it a miss.

Formerly good quality. Now down the toilet, as far as I'm concerned.

OpenOffice files Oracle divorce papers

You haven't lived...

until you've had to watch 100s of presentations created on Open/Star Office, all converted to PDFs –with no transitions or animations because they didn't work very well. Or because they didn't work the same across the "supported" platforms.

Thanks, but no thanks.

The name is...*sigh*...a bit uninspired. Sounds like maybe a committee came up with it after deliberating for 5 minutes with names in a hat.

Ranting Ohio Republican scares interwebs

Hmmm...

Looks like he has a novel way of overcoming his nervousness in public speaking.

Rackspace claims credit for shushing Koran-burning 'pastor'

Ah, that's right...

Stalin, Hitler, Manson, they were all avid churchgoers. I hadn't recalled that.

VMware boss: we rise as Windows falls

Ummm...

Yes they can run on the bare metal. It's been called ESX and is running in a lot of data centres.

Apple sued over hot iPad shutdowns

Hmmm?

Who the hell wants to sit in the sun in 95 degree weather and read. And electronic gadgets always have a limitation. I can dip a book in water and, as long as I fan out the pages, I can still read it when it's dry.

My daughter's iPod shuffle went through the wash twice (at 800 rpm) and still works. Maybe I should sue Apple for a product that violates its environmental limitations.

Probably the reg should start a US-only column modeled on "flame of the week", called "stupid class action lawsuit of the day". Make sure you put pictures and addresses of the folks bringing the lawsuit so we don't accidentally hire them.

Apple's iPhone 4 denial: insulting or ignorant?

lawsuits?

Apple's letter points out one thing that nobody seems to notice: you have 30 days to return it if you don't like the product.

So, yellow journalism aside, there isn't really much of a story...except Jobs-hating has turned into a sport which is lucrative for "media outlets" who get money by adverts.

Love or hate, it's all attention.

Apple lifts iPhone code ban (for chosen few)

I don't think that word means what you think it means...

"This stinks of a monoply, but that's why I bought an android device."

Monopoly: " a company or group having exclusive control over a commodity or service : areas where cable companies operate as monopolies."

I have 3 sony-ericsson phones, a nokia and a motorola phone and most of my co-workers have android phones. At my previous company it was blackberrys. Maybe 1 out of 10 or more had iPhones.

Google has stitched up most of the search market. Aren't you supporting a monopoly when you support Google's platform?

Steam author seems to agree

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/05/mac-lags-windows-in-gaming-performance-excels-at-stability.ars

While Windows has better gfx performance than the Mac, according to Valve, they said the following about stability:

"Also, said Newell, 'what's sort of surprising is how much more stable our games are on the Mac.' Looking at the early data available from the Steam client, 'the Mac is five times more stable than Windows' when using the metric of minutes played versus number of crashes."

Facebook gives users' names to advertisers

The problem is...

that we're, once again, being offered some "free" "service" that costs quite a lot to render. And those offering the service are employed in a "start-up" company, which is the silicon valley equivalent of a Las Vegas casino. They want to get rich. Thus it's quite naive to expect the business that's trying to grow a new crop of billionaires not to try to make money off of its users in any way possible.

The users are largely freetards walking a fine line with giving up personal details - in a time of rampant ID theft - in trying to get as much as they can for free and the businesses are trying to make as much money as they can off the users, walking a fine line with legalities and word play in their "privacy" policies.

So we have greedy bastards on either side of the line.

Jobsian Vendetta - Flash stabbed by Mac the Knife

Ahhh, there it is!

The old Register is back, still smarting from being excluded.

Stiletto Cade meets Stiletto Steve.

Gizmodo faces visit from cops over 'found' iPhone

Take it to their front door...

WHAT a bunch of plonkers.

I find the phone in a bar, I know where Apple lives and could take it to them. Instead, I contact some ethically warped trade web site and offer it to them.

If someone on the other side of the country wants to pay me $5k for something that we both know doesn't belong to me and I ship it to the other party, then that's a bit like fencing stolen goods.

If I, the ethically challenged gadget-freak group, then brag about the act on my website, then I might be classifiable as a felon – and the worst kind of wanker.

Would probably do them some good to get dinged for it.

MySQL fork duo tear down Oracle's Iron Man fantasy

Give them a refund, Monty

Monty sold the company. Apparently, he thought he could keep control.

Buzzed Gmail outs Googly ties of Obama's deputy CTO

But...but...but...

their motto is "do no evil"! Surely their definition of evil is the same as every other person under the sun...oh, wait.

A character in Ray Bradbury's book, "Something Wicked This Way Comes", pointed out that evil would naturally view something that was good as evil.

Anyway, I think we should have a personal statement from each Google employee for how that person defines "evil", updated daily, and then put a word cloud on the Google front page which shows the things Google will mostly be trying not to do on that day. That should help set our expectations.

Perhaps they could update their definition more frequently over an IRC channel that feeds the word cloud. That way I can determine with each search whether I want to trust Google or not and will have fair warning when I need to start clearing my Google cookies and using an anonymizer.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 embraces - yes - HTML5

Standards?

' In her view, it is now Apple, Adobe and Google who are less committed to web standards -

Microsoft, Opera and Mozilla are fully onboard. '

Hmmm. I find this an interesting comment. Of all of the browsers I've used (including Firefox), Safari was the first to pass Acid3 with 100%.

Carly Fiorina downs sinister Democrat hot air balloon

Huh?

So because Hurd was worse than Carly, they should be grateful for what she did to the company?

They're cut from the same cloth.

The ads are completely irrelevant hatchet jobs. She's making unsupported and questionable statements about someone else in preference to details about what she would do better. It's one of the most preposterous ways I've ever seen to get a job - and, yes, I realize she's not alone in it – she's completely unoriginal in the stupidity she's displaying.

Based on these ads alone, I would sure as hell vote against Carly.

Oracle should cannibalize JavaFX Frankenstein

Suffers from same problem all Sun projects suffered from

Serious understaffing, overanalysis, too many meetings, too many metrics, too many conflicting priorities, too much multitasking.

It's a wonder they were ever able to release anything. But what they released has potential beyond a Swing replacement.

Look at timelines as a way to craft a simulator, for instance.

Look at other potential applications of variable binding.

When it stabilizes, I intend to use it.

Swing is too painfully complicated.

When Maya Angelou was going to read Clinton's inaugural poem, she apologized for the length, saying she didn't have time to write a shorter one.

Maybe Sun employees will have a chance to focus more on fewer priorities so they can deliver simpler, more well thought out products now.

Apple ambushed in Barcelona

App store vendors

Let's do some math. 140,000 apps on Apple's app store (by their count, not mine), maybe 50 (at most) whining vendor stories (or actual and unreasonable miscarriages of the process) which have made the news. And we then have to endure an endless supply of stupid lines like this:

"...which has a less than transparent process for approving apps. If developers don't fit Apple's

unspoken laws, they can forget tapping into the lucrative iPhone (and iPad?) market, except for

those customers foolhardy enough to jailbreak their handsets."

Calculate the percentages. It's this kind of stuff that makes me think El Reg will soon contract the services of Glen Beck or some other Fox News talking head to do their analysis for them...unless this is another example of El Reg taking the piss. One can only hope.

So, in the vernacular, BFD. Who cares if Apple controls the content. My daughter, friends and co-workers who have iPhones have pretty much trouble-free experiences with them. Some people want that. Some people don't want to jailbreak their phones and they want a vendor who screens all of the apps. More power to them. I think they should be allowed to have it if that's what they want. You could also remind folks in the same breath that the Google uncapped app marketplace model doesn't work either, since we've already heard about malware there.

For the record, I don't own an iPhone, but a Sony Ericsson phone.

It's also pretty stupid to require vendors to do software that can be run on every handset. Normally, it's hard to find software that will run on Linux, Windows, Mac, etc., so why with the handsets.

Let 'em run Java if they're so concerned about run-anywhere (and, no, I don't like java either.).

OpenOffice is the new David Hasselhoff

Agreed

While at Sun, I opened a 40MB Writer document in OOo. It took 1GB of virtual memory and 512MB of system memory for that document. Larger documents were taking more space.

It was the last of many straws; I started avoiding the tool whenever possible.

Avatar renders this earthly life meaningless

Sounds like...

we need to have mandatory community service for everyone after high school so they can build roads, parks, spend time outside and see that they can act rather than be the pathetic passive gits they've made themselves into.

Sounds like it's time for a new 12-step group for the internet-affected.

Monty's 'Save MySQL' mudsling gets 15,000 backers

"Putz"

That's the only word that comes to mind when I read the blog and petition. I dunno why.

Intel staff 'fired' in ring piece stunt

Intel

Obviously those working for Intel are so cerebral that they only care for completely mental pursuits.

Google chief: Only miscreants worry about net privacy

An obvious one...

You could reply with something like this:

Why don't you (Eric Schmidt) plumb your toilet into the middle of your front lawn. Or perhaps your marital bed. Or perhaps use only a speaker phone attached to a PA system on your house, on your car, and on the outside of the Google building where you work.

And what about your doctor doing a physical. It should also be done on in the front lawn...etc.

iPhone upgrades - a one-way control-freak street

Strange

Strange how this is so noteworthy. All of my non-apple phones (Sony-E, Nokia & Motorola) are the same.

Sounds like an attempt to stir up apple hater/lover war to drive readership to the Reg, no?

Apple cult leader emails outside world

Apple had to do the same...

Remember Rendezvous, which is now Bonjour.

I recall there were a couple of other instances where Apple had to change names on shipping products.

So, the response seems to come from past experience.

MySQL's ex-boss demands Europe OK Oracle's Sun buy

Creators and their creations

People are almost always attached to seeing their creations survive. It's an ego thing.

RIM syncs Macs with BlackBerries

Why not?

"Why Palm hasn't gone the RIM route and developed their own iTunes-syncing utility remains a mystery."

No mystery. They were out to save software development costs with the stupidity of a Las Vegas-style gamble. May've been some freetardian impulses running through Palm. Utopia is always just around the corner, but it always involves leaving the other guys behind at the entrance to your gated community.

Let the commentard jousting between Fanbois and the Palm-Wanks begin!

iPhone 3.1 code goes beta

Suggestion for a slight change...

" - an odd addition that will do little more than reduce battery life, in our opinion."

It doesn't seem to make sense to offer such a directed opinion on this without seeing how it's implemented. If there's a slight feedback when the switch to "wiggly icon" mode happens, then I doubt you'd ever be able to tell the difference in battery life. It wouldn't make an awful lot of sense to have it vibrating constantly as it would be an awful distraction and fairly "un-Apple" like.

In other words, this particular piece of text could be removed from your article and would only strengthen your writing.

Safari 4: Apple's crash-happy shipper

Some things you can do...

I've installed it on 4 computers, 2 intel, 2 PPC – 1 tiger & 3 leopards.

My standard operating procedure, when I hear about everyone else having trouble, is to clean all my system caches, rotate logs, scan prefs, etc. before doing the installs.

To do this, I use maintenance.app (from titanium.free.fr) and applejack (applejack.sourceforge.net),

which overlap a bit in function.

No trouble.

Is your cameraphone an oxymoron?

Pre not just color shift

When fully blown up, the Pre pics appeared to be oversharpened by quite a lot.

All of the phone cams seemed to show sharpening artifacts, but the ones from the Pre bug me the most as they're strongest. They all suffer from crap lenses.

Opera Software reinvents complete irrelevance

Failure to perceive

Nice troll-work. Also known as a Devil's Advocate, which is just fine. But many reading the column are apparently not sophisticated enough away from technical matters to digest this bit of nuance.

I read over the Opera Unite collateral, watched a video, looked at the developer stuff and closed the browser window. More fluff built on top of the internet utopian credo.

I shuddered at the idea of learning yet another API for yet another developer's fantasy, driven by over-marketing. This is not a new thing; there has been one tiresome wave after another for the last 15 years. The internet and new glitzy technology will save the world, coincidentally employing engineers, marketing folks and CEOs who know how to sell a business plan for unsustainably-high salaries.

The marketing hype was the set-up for disappointment.

I'm sure this will work for someone, but I'm too weary of the glittery wrapping that's been put around the whole Opera Unite thing.

And the anti-american rants are just as tiresome as the pro-american rants. Both sides really should put an effort into "getting over themselves." It's not too far from racism, except we're basing it on imaginary national boundaries, accents and the like. Really, it's the most pathetic statement in this whole discussion.