If you own a samsung phone then using the "Samsung Apps" app you can download Sprinkle for free. I'm also a bit surprised Dead Space (also free on samsung apps) or GTA 3 aren't on this list.
Only downside to Samsung Apps is that the downloaded apps can get into a bit of a conflict with android market.
Mine was bought on contract with three, but it seems to be branded as carphone warehouse. (it was unlocked too, which was nice of them)
Apparently it's dependant on whoever branded it on what firmware you get and when. For example, the csc code on mine: I9100CPWKH1. (Note the CPW for carphone warehouse)
To find out your csc and who the phone is branded to, enter the following as you would dialing a phone number: *#1234#
Unfortunately carphone warehouse have a bit of a bad reputation for updates... (mine is still on android 2.3.4, whilst 2.3.5 has been out for a fair while now)
Frankly, I may just flash my phone using odin when the official samsung ICS update comes out. I'm not going to flash my phone with CM9 because that's still alpha/beta quality. And I don't want my custom flash counter incrementing. (it increments if you use unofficial roms, I like my warranty thanks)
I understand MS wanting to have that whole platform integration thing, but really? Just winphone?
I'm sure the two people who use it are overjoyed. I'm quite surprised MS still have yet to get iplayer integration sorted out, oddly it says "2012 BBC".. not "2012 BBC iPlayer".
20% hike yet hard drive prices have doubled or even nearly tripled on sites like ebuyer. Pretty bad price gouging from either the distributors or resellers. (or both)
I mean, if you're a pirate you can't normally play games on the net because of some version difference or because your console is detected as being modchipped etc.
So, think of it from some young kid who occasionally buys a game new but buys a lot of his games used. All of a sudden he can't play most of his games online. (yes, I know this isn't retroactive to old used games, just spitballing here)
He looks at the pirate option as a lot more enticing, after all if his legally purchased games give him the exact same experience as a pirates then why not just pirate? After all it costs less and he's not going to lose any functionality.
Oh yeah, I'm sure gamers would love playing games with lots of input lag, with questionable picture quality... don't forget the bandwidth, I'm sure ISP's won't hobble the shit out of it...
From a Firefox user, I think the biggest problem with Firefox right now is its single process nature.
Because the engine that renders the webpages also renders the ui when you hit a large number of tabs or a javascript heavy website the entire user interface can slow to a crawl.
Firefox is currently the only browser with this problem, they really need to get electrolysis (multi-process Firefox) sorted out faster. For me the others out there aren't as good web browsers but they do some things better or faster.
I would use Chrome except Firefox has significantly better addons, a better bookmarking system and I don't trust google. (plus, I prefer a search box.. seriously.. all that wasted horizontal space by the silly location bar in Chrome)
I've been steadily losing my respect for Apple in the last couple of years (like my Macbook Pro has died on me four times now and Apple suing over the silly likeness crap with Samsung) but this is the one time when Apple needs to go nuclear and throw everything and the kitchen sink at Lodsys.
If Apple doesn't lay down the law on Lodsys then you can bet there are others waiting in the wings to do the exact same.
Amazon need to either crack down on pricing or the publishers need to wake up and stop pricing their ebooks so high.
Right now it is trivial, absolutely trivial to pirate an ebook. Not only that but it is significantly faster pirating an ebook than a piece of music or a film because of the file sizes involved.
They need to start pricing closer to reality. (There are no printing costs, no storage costs etc) They are not only competing with free ebooks through piracy but also normal second hand books on ebay.
Amazon (i've only used the kindle so I can only comment on that) has an excellent system for previewing and buying books, it's practically flawless. But as I said above, the pricing is horrendously off once they can get that sorted out then the only problem for them for removed is the silly drm.
Giving information that you want and not what you need
There's a great TED talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
That discusses this obsession by online companies delivering you information where it may be stuff that you want but not what you actually need. Jamming social network crap into your search results will limit the information that you need even more as it will have been personalised to such a degree that the information is near on pointlessly skewed to your world-view.
Now that said, I do not trust a convicted monopolist and a company who's main business aim is selling off my personal information. Also, somehow bing manages to fail me not only on delivering information that I want but also information that I need. You've really got to give credit to MS for making a search engine that can fail consistently at searching.
Please do not assume any of the above means I trust Google either, it's merely the lesser evil of on-line companies.
Is pretty meh, you're limited to just the browser.. so any useful programs you want to download and use, you can't. Like a browser other than Chrome? Tough shit, it's Chrome or nothing. ChromeOS is a dead end.
I can however see Android being turned into a hybrid OS that covers desktops as well as its origin on phones and tablets. Android has a future, ChromeOS does not.
I'm sure it'll be a stellar success and provide MS with massive amounts of income far exceeding what they're paying, just like all their great products such as windows phone and.. hmm.
In terms of money spent on development etc apart from Windows and Office has MS ever actually made an actual net profit on anything? Granted in the last year or two MS has been making money on the xbox division, but no way have they made back the amount they invested in both Xbox's.
It doesn't make sense to run Mac OS X on ARM, there are not only cost issues but performance ones as well as compatibility.
* Cost, they'd have to get someone to fab a larger higher performing ARM laptop/desktop processor to get the same kind of performance as current Intel/AMD processors. If they're doing that just for Apple that is a monumental cost, whereas currently Apple gets a very nice cost deal with Intel.
If they're doing it just for a single type of OSX laptop, then that is absolutely insane. The costs to fab the Apple specific ARM processor just for a single line of laptops would be astronomical.
* Performance, ARM processors are designed with power efficiency in mind. Look, I'm a Brit so "rah rah ARM". But they are not designed for performance and will be absolutely hammered by Intel/AMD in this regard for laptop processors.
* Compatibility, Apple would have to create an x86 emulator for ARM. That will be a massive hit on the speed and likely battery life as it runs the processor at 100% to try and eke out some semblance of speed emulating an x86 for all those current x86 applications.
Overall, it doesn't make any sense.
(I know historically Apple has gone this route before with 68k > PPC > x86, but it really doesn't make sense, as they went that route every time for performance and cost reasons)
"patent-infringment" should be "patent-infringement".
"When asked about patent-trolling, Wozniak had two personal stoies to tell:" should be "When asked about patent-trolling, Wozniak had two personal stories to tell:"
"As his keynote audience appladed, Woznik said:" should be "As his keynote audience applauded, Woznik said:"
""It's not really special what they come up with,." he said, referring to patent-seeking teams of engineeers." should be ""It's not really special what they come up with.." he said, referring to patent-seeking teams of engineers."
So, it'll just be the crappy star wars prequels with the horribly redone originals?
You know fine, please clean up the image to correct for things like faded colour and damage to the film itself.
But, please.. don't re-edit the film or add bits. It's worst in the first film, where Lucas changed Han Solo's character by shooting after Greedo (yes I went there), adding a horribly done Jabba scene and the horrible, horrible cg bits or where the random droids move perfectly horizontally across the screen filling it as Luke and Obi Wan arrive at Mos Eisley.
Who am I joking, he'll just release the shitty versions. But, honestly I bought them once on VHS and that's enough. If they aren't the original versions, why bother?
There's a lot of cruft in tablets, I don't mean crappy tablets (which there are plenty of) I mean in feature cruft.
For example, I don't need 3G, don't need GPS, don't need a camera (front facing or back facing) or vast amounts of storage. I simply want a sub £200 wifi capable honeycomb tablet that I can choose to expand the storage capacity with an sd card.
Look at the motorola xoom as a prime example of overpriced and stuffed with pointless hardware features (which increase its cost).
Make a sub £200 honeycomb tablet that is 1. 9 or 10 inch capacitive touch screen 2. 1GHz or better ARMv7 processor 3. Around 1GB of RAM 4. If necessary for running apps 1GB of storage capacity 5. An SD card slot for storage expansion 6. Wifi capable. 7. Half decent graphics chip, doesn't have to be a powerhouse tegra or anything. There, push that for £200 or less and it's a sale.
This reminds me of wipeout hd on the ps3, when bought through psn you got just a racing game. However, Sony made an update that retroactively added video ads (that also significantly increased loading time) whenever you wanted to play a game.
Of course, if you wanted to play online you have to accept the playing of the video ads because otherwise it'd mean being stuck on an old version that Sony won't let you play multiplayer with.
I wonder if Amazon are pondering something similar with a future kindle update, start putting text/image ads in purchased books etc. That'd be a sure fire way to increase ebook piracy.
To my knowledge you cannot do a general search on youtube, the only kind of search you can do on youtube is for videos.
People choose Google, whereas with Windows they have no choice if they want to use the software they want. Come on MS admit it, you're bitter that people like Google and they choose Google rather than Google forcing the users to use it. Using bing, yahoo etc is just a click away and yet the majority choose Google.
And as much as MS try to force bing on people through windows and IE they still switch the default search to Google.
IE is being gradually squeezed out of the market. It'll take a fair few more years yet and it will always hold some minor market share due to MS pushing it through their OS, but any kind of real "I want to download a browser" market share has been lost to Firefox and Chrome.
At work whenever a colleague brings in a laptop from home it isn't IE they're using, it's either Firefox or Chrome. Whereas before it was almost always IE.
MS simply are not trustworthy as a browser maker, the moment they ever get into a commanding position they'll sit on their hands and do nothing. Better they have a tiny market share or none at all and leave it to the people who know how to advance the web.
I don't mean in the faster JS engine or anything like that, I mean in the UI department.
The bookmarks manager hasn't changed to any real degree since IE4 when they switched from a HTML file containing the bookmarks to a file/folder hierachy. And anything beneath the front end of the gui is still the same as before, still the same awful "internet options" and the mess that is trying to change/find the settings.
I visited his site and I own a PS3. I haven't jailbroken my PS3 yet because I haven't felt the need to, but I might just do it to spite Sony. The way they're going after the hackers who have done nothing wrong apart from figuring how to jailbreak their own legally owned hardware is outrageous.
I've usually been pretty pro-Sony, sure during the rootkit fiasco I viewed it as don't ever buy anything from Sony that will go in my pc but I was ok with their console.
So, I own a 360 and a PS3. I have two choices neither of which I like. Either pay to play online (which I absolutely detest and don't pay for out of principle) or use a console from a company that is making me hate them.
The annoying thing is the majority of my console games are on the PS3 and there isn't really a choice, I can go with the artificially hobbled unless I pay functionality of the 360 or I can go with a company that is doing everything in their power to make me hate them.
PS. I owned a Wii, great first party games. Too many crappy third party waggle games.
I guess at some point I may just sell my PS3. There are some good games coming out on the pc soon like Portal 2 and Mass Effect 3 will be on the pc when it's released. (I made the mistake of buying the 360 version of Mass Effect 2.. planet scanning... urgh)
I'd been meaning to setup a home vpn for a while but never got around to it, so I configured my media center pc (it's left powered on) for a PPTP VPN last night.
If I was on O2 for my personal phone I would have switched immediately to another mobile provider, I guess I'll just have to change all our company phones from O2 when the business contract comes to an end. (around 20 iphones on O2)
We've been having occasional problems with O2 anyway, like getting them to get off their arses to fix the local cell which would send and receive calls but not data. (took them a couple of months to fix, lazy, lazy, lazy)
On the plus side, I've also configured a proxy that I'm going to get some adblock rules sorted out. So it'll mean speedier browsing. Oh, by the way.. plus side to a vpn is that the bbc iplayer works over it. I discovered this when I configured works vpn a while ago. The beeb does ip address checking and since it appears to them you're on a non-mobile IP address you must be viewing it over wifi.
If you knew anything about pc's you'd know they've been able to output video at 1080p for years, which is essentially what the mobile phone makers are claiming.
A mobile phone does NOT have the processing capacity to decode for example a full 1080p blu-ray h264 video. A mobile phone however can decode a very low bitrate 1080p video that doesn't use some of the more processor intensive features of h264.
An AMD 4350 graphics card (a low profile passively cooled GPU) can fully decode a bluray h264 bluray video without breaking into a sweat. As can my current 4550 which is in my media center, which by the way can simultaneously decode two bluray 1080p video streams. (certain blurays have special features like picture in picture etc)
Modern GPU's and CPU's are designed to do more than display relatively simple graphics and light processor usage, unlike mobile phones. (the idea that somehow the graphics chipset in my iphone is even anywhere near on the same level as for example an AMD 4350 is laughable as is the idea that an ARM mobile processor could perform anywhere near the level of say an AMD 240e which is the cpu in my media center)
Anonymous Coward doesn't know his arse from his elbow.
This is going to be a major headache for both MS and the customers who run Windows on ARM. There will be lots and lots of programs that will never run on ARM unless MS also includes an x86 processor emulator ala when Macs switched from m68k to PPC and again when they switched from PPC to x86.
Emulating an x86 processor on an ARM (likely mobile) device will destroy battery life plus the fact that ARM processors aren't designed with the best possible speed in mind but low electricity use, so if they do add an x86 processor emulation layer for the programs that aren't compiled for ARM they'll likely run dog slow.
And there will be lots and lots of programs that won't be ported over to ARM. (OSS won't be a problem but commercial software will be very problematic)
If they've finally bothered implementing dragging and dropping of files between the host desktop and the guest vm desktop? A feature that's been requested for years now in virtualbox.
Copying files between the host and guest is otherwise a pita as you have to mess about with shared folder crap. The only way they could make it less intuitive is if you literally had to write a file to a cd on the host and then mount that cd in a separate cd drive accessible from the host.
Actually, that'd be more intuitive than the shared folder approach come to think of it. Huh, guess they can't be less intuitive then.
I own both a 360 and PS3. I refuse to pay for XBL out of principle, ultimately I get no real value. I don't get dedicated servers to play on for the most part it's p2p. Why should I be paying for something that is free everywhere else?
Any cross platform games that have multiplayer are bought on the PS3 and frankly, the last time I even powered up the 360 was to play Mass Effect 2. (buying ME3 on the pc next time, planet scanning can die in a fire.. at least pc users can use a trainer to give themselves the minerals etc rather than the monotony of repeatedly slowly moving a cursor around a rotating ball)
I think Sony's strategy of free online play (at least for me) is resulting in more sales on Sonys platform.
Firefox 4 is so far pretty outstanding, I usually make the switch from current to the next version when it hits the RC stage. (to use as my main browser)
There are still little niggles, like a webpage which hits the cpu hard with some bad js slows/freezes up the UI so closing the tab is a pain (a problem Chrome does not suffer from).
Hopefully when they finally get Electrolysis up and running everything will be hunky dory in that regard.
I have an iphone, i've played with an android phone and a palm pre both of which interested me.
As a tech head WP7 is totally uninteresting, i've yet to see anything peek my interest. I have not heard a single person mention being interested in any WP7 phones. MS WP7 is doomed.
Apple got away with things like no copy & paste from the start because everyone had significant interest in the iPhone. MS are not in the same position, MS is about the most uninteresting company out there. Not only that but they're not entering a market which already has what i'd consider nice touch based phones, the iphone practically invented that market (nice touch screen phones) and android phones are really starting to ride high.
And the final thing, IE mobile. It is junk, there's no two ways about it. IE mobile is lightyears behind the webkit browsers and Opera. Let alone Firefox mobile when Mozilla starts focusing on reducing its memory usage and improving its speed. (ok, that may be a while)
Not only that but IE now has a popular stigma which will affect WP7. The days of it just being stigmatised for viruses, bugs etc by techies has now bled into normal culture from the tech world.
"In the meantime, there are no mitigations users can take other than to exercise due care in opening PDF documents. It may also make sense to use an alternate PDF viewer such as FoxIT, but it's not yet been confirmed that that other programs aren't vulnerable."
Not even disabling Javascript works? I work at a printers so adobe reader is a requirement here.
By the way, as slim in comparison foxit is in memory usage it has two glaring problems.. 1. it comes with spyware/adware 2. about 5% of pdf's opened using foxit have problems.. (remember, I work at a printers so we receive LOTS of PDFs) adobe reader renders them all 100% fine but that 5% problem of foxit is a pain in the arse for support.. I actually tried rolling out foxit a while back in replacement of adobe reader but the damn near constant support because somebody opened another pdf that wasn't displaying correctly in foxit was too much. We're back on adobe reader with javascript disabled. (thankfully we very, very rarely get a PDF that needs js)
Seems like Adobe don't know the meaning of the word security. It's every other bloody day with their software that another security hole gets discovered. If there was another PDF viewer out there that could render all PDF's correctly then i'd be all over it for work. As insecure, slow and bloated a piece of crap adobe reader is, it renders PDFs correctly.
As to home, I use Sumatra on windows and OSX's native PDF display for viewing PDF's.
It's been ported to the Palm Pre and Nokia N900 (with the backup to hard drive stuff re-enabled). It is currently in the process of being ported to the iPhone, Android and TI-84. (I kid you not)
So, all you'd need to do is hook up for example your iPhone to the PS3 via usb and bam.. no modchip required.
I wonder if Sony will take Apple, Google, Nokia etc to court? Somehow, I doubt it.
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75 posts • joined Tuesday 21st July 2009 17:01 GMT
Page:
I wonder...
How much money MS sent Bethesdas way.
Soo...
Google is wanting to alienate the remaining Google+ users and get them to migrate to Facebook?
That's Kevin Roses speciality.
Sprinkle is free if you own a Samsung phone
If you own a samsung phone then using the "Samsung Apps" app you can download Sprinkle for free. I'm also a bit surprised Dead Space (also free on samsung apps) or GTA 3 aren't on this list.
Only downside to Samsung Apps is that the downloaded apps can get into a bit of a conflict with android market.
@ratfox
If your phone is rooted then you can install something like "LBE Privacy Guard" and selectively enable/disable permissions for apps.
Bought mine at carphone warehouse
Mine was bought on contract with three, but it seems to be branded as carphone warehouse. (it was unlocked too, which was nice of them)
Apparently it's dependant on whoever branded it on what firmware you get and when. For example, the csc code on mine: I9100CPWKH1. (Note the CPW for carphone warehouse)
To find out your csc and who the phone is branded to, enter the following as you would dialing a phone number: *#1234#
Unfortunately carphone warehouse have a bit of a bad reputation for updates... (mine is still on android 2.3.4, whilst 2.3.5 has been out for a fair while now)
Frankly, I may just flash my phone using odin when the official samsung ICS update comes out. I'm not going to flash my phone with CM9 because that's still alpha/beta quality. And I don't want my custom flash counter incrementing. (it increments if you use unofficial roms, I like my warranty thanks)
No iphone or android?
I understand MS wanting to have that whole platform integration thing, but really? Just winphone?
I'm sure the two people who use it are overjoyed. I'm quite surprised MS still have yet to get iplayer integration sorted out, oddly it says "2012 BBC".. not "2012 BBC iPlayer".
Huh
All that really did is remind me why I like my work provided iphone so much and why I'll buy an android phone for personal use.
Muwahahaha!
I bought a couple of 1TB external hard drives for £40.. oh, to hold back a bit longer before selling them or to sell now. Decisions, decisions...
20% yet...
20% hike yet hard drive prices have doubled or even nearly tripled on sites like ebuyer. Pretty bad price gouging from either the distributors or resellers. (or both)
Irony, thy name is Microsoft
Whilst the phone buying public disses windows phone as shit.
Doesn't this just promote piracy?
I mean, if you're a pirate you can't normally play games on the net because of some version difference or because your console is detected as being modchipped etc.
So, think of it from some young kid who occasionally buys a game new but buys a lot of his games used. All of a sudden he can't play most of his games online. (yes, I know this isn't retroactive to old used games, just spitballing here)
He looks at the pirate option as a lot more enticing, after all if his legally purchased games give him the exact same experience as a pirates then why not just pirate? After all it costs less and he's not going to lose any functionality.
Onlive...
Oh yeah, I'm sure gamers would love playing games with lots of input lag, with questionable picture quality... don't forget the bandwidth, I'm sure ISP's won't hobble the shit out of it...
Umm, price of £300? Nope.
The cheapest version of the tablet s is £400 and the only version of the tablet p is £500 (direct from Sony's UK site)
Don't get me wrong, it looks interesting and all. But until the pricing gets to realistic levels these are going to be relegated to niche.
Memories
I remember playing this and after completing it cheating my way to high heaven with my Action Replay mk3 on the Amiga.
Sabre Team was also a good turn based strategy game.
The current issue
From a Firefox user, I think the biggest problem with Firefox right now is its single process nature.
Because the engine that renders the webpages also renders the ui when you hit a large number of tabs or a javascript heavy website the entire user interface can slow to a crawl.
Firefox is currently the only browser with this problem, they really need to get electrolysis (multi-process Firefox) sorted out faster. For me the others out there aren't as good web browsers but they do some things better or faster.
I would use Chrome except Firefox has significantly better addons, a better bookmarking system and I don't trust google. (plus, I prefer a search box.. seriously.. all that wasted horizontal space by the silly location bar in Chrome)
A new Halo game you say?
How exciting.
Not a fan
I've been steadily losing my respect for Apple in the last couple of years (like my Macbook Pro has died on me four times now and Apple suing over the silly likeness crap with Samsung) but this is the one time when Apple needs to go nuclear and throw everything and the kitchen sink at Lodsys.
If Apple doesn't lay down the law on Lodsys then you can bet there are others waiting in the wings to do the exact same.
Pricing
Amazon need to either crack down on pricing or the publishers need to wake up and stop pricing their ebooks so high.
Right now it is trivial, absolutely trivial to pirate an ebook. Not only that but it is significantly faster pirating an ebook than a piece of music or a film because of the file sizes involved.
They need to start pricing closer to reality. (There are no printing costs, no storage costs etc) They are not only competing with free ebooks through piracy but also normal second hand books on ebay.
Amazon (i've only used the kindle so I can only comment on that) has an excellent system for previewing and buying books, it's practically flawless. But as I said above, the pricing is horrendously off once they can get that sorted out then the only problem for them for removed is the silly drm.
Giving information that you want and not what you need
There's a great TED talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
That discusses this obsession by online companies delivering you information where it may be stuff that you want but not what you actually need. Jamming social network crap into your search results will limit the information that you need even more as it will have been personalised to such a degree that the information is near on pointlessly skewed to your world-view.
Now that said, I do not trust a convicted monopolist and a company who's main business aim is selling off my personal information. Also, somehow bing manages to fail me not only on delivering information that I want but also information that I need. You've really got to give credit to MS for making a search engine that can fail consistently at searching.
Please do not assume any of the above means I trust Google either, it's merely the lesser evil of on-line companies.
ChromeOS...
Is pretty meh, you're limited to just the browser.. so any useful programs you want to download and use, you can't. Like a browser other than Chrome? Tough shit, it's Chrome or nothing. ChromeOS is a dead end.
I can however see Android being turned into a hybrid OS that covers desktops as well as its origin on phones and tablets. Android has a future, ChromeOS does not.
Success...
I'm sure it'll be a stellar success and provide MS with massive amounts of income far exceeding what they're paying, just like all their great products such as windows phone and.. hmm.
In terms of money spent on development etc apart from Windows and Office has MS ever actually made an actual net profit on anything? Granted in the last year or two MS has been making money on the xbox division, but no way have they made back the amount they invested in both Xbox's.
I don't buy it
It doesn't make sense to run Mac OS X on ARM, there are not only cost issues but performance ones as well as compatibility.
* Cost, they'd have to get someone to fab a larger higher performing ARM laptop/desktop processor to get the same kind of performance as current Intel/AMD processors. If they're doing that just for Apple that is a monumental cost, whereas currently Apple gets a very nice cost deal with Intel.
If they're doing it just for a single type of OSX laptop, then that is absolutely insane. The costs to fab the Apple specific ARM processor just for a single line of laptops would be astronomical.
* Performance, ARM processors are designed with power efficiency in mind. Look, I'm a Brit so "rah rah ARM". But they are not designed for performance and will be absolutely hammered by Intel/AMD in this regard for laptop processors.
* Compatibility, Apple would have to create an x86 emulator for ARM. That will be a massive hit on the speed and likely battery life as it runs the processor at 100% to try and eke out some semblance of speed emulating an x86 for all those current x86 applications.
Overall, it doesn't make any sense.
(I know historically Apple has gone this route before with 68k > PPC > x86, but it really doesn't make sense, as they went that route every time for performance and cost reasons)
Hotmail better than gmail?
Sure, if you love spam... And hate IMAP.
Corrections
Corrections:
"patent-infringment" should be "patent-infringement".
"When asked about patent-trolling, Wozniak had two personal stoies to tell:" should be "When asked about patent-trolling, Wozniak had two personal stories to tell:"
"As his keynote audience appladed, Woznik said:" should be "As his keynote audience applauded, Woznik said:"
""It's not really special what they come up with,." he said, referring to patent-seeking teams of engineeers." should be ""It's not really special what they come up with.." he said, referring to patent-seeking teams of engineers."
Must try harder.
Meh
So, it'll just be the crappy star wars prequels with the horribly redone originals?
You know fine, please clean up the image to correct for things like faded colour and damage to the film itself.
But, please.. don't re-edit the film or add bits. It's worst in the first film, where Lucas changed Han Solo's character by shooting after Greedo (yes I went there), adding a horribly done Jabba scene and the horrible, horrible cg bits or where the random droids move perfectly horizontally across the screen filling it as Luke and Obi Wan arrive at Mos Eisley.
Who am I joking, he'll just release the shitty versions. But, honestly I bought them once on VHS and that's enough. If they aren't the original versions, why bother?
Lot of cruft tablets
There's a lot of cruft in tablets, I don't mean crappy tablets (which there are plenty of) I mean in feature cruft.
For example, I don't need 3G, don't need GPS, don't need a camera (front facing or back facing) or vast amounts of storage. I simply want a sub £200 wifi capable honeycomb tablet that I can choose to expand the storage capacity with an sd card.
Look at the motorola xoom as a prime example of overpriced and stuffed with pointless hardware features (which increase its cost).
Make a sub £200 honeycomb tablet that is 1. 9 or 10 inch capacitive touch screen 2. 1GHz or better ARMv7 processor 3. Around 1GB of RAM 4. If necessary for running apps 1GB of storage capacity 5. An SD card slot for storage expansion 6. Wifi capable. 7. Half decent graphics chip, doesn't have to be a powerhouse tegra or anything. There, push that for £200 or less and it's a sale.
Still massively behind
Still needs loads of work and frankly the marketing that MS is pushing is so damn dodgy that you'd think it'd fallen off the back of a lorry.
No commitment to webm, webgl etc and the new features they show off other browsers have had for quite a while now..
This reminds me of wipeout hd
This reminds me of wipeout hd on the ps3, when bought through psn you got just a racing game. However, Sony made an update that retroactively added video ads (that also significantly increased loading time) whenever you wanted to play a game.
Of course, if you wanted to play online you have to accept the playing of the video ads because otherwise it'd mean being stuck on an old version that Sony won't let you play multiplayer with.
I wonder if Amazon are pondering something similar with a future kindle update, start putting text/image ads in purchased books etc. That'd be a sure fire way to increase ebook piracy.
Gasland
Gasland is a good watch on the whole fracking thing, gets a bit overly artsy at times though.
Hurray
I usually use custom install on programs to avoid the install of toolbars but normal users don't, hopefully the way it'll work in Firefox is:
1. Firefox starts up and detects a toolbar install
2. Firefox prompts the user whether they want it installed with the default option being no
3. Happy times for everyone
Plus, no more MS pushing their crap through windowsupdate into Firefox. (I'm looking at you .net framework)
Pfft, no Mastersystem?
Meaningless without Wonderboy 3.
So...
So, you could say...
*puts on sunglasses*
The worm has turned.
YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH
Searching
To my knowledge you cannot do a general search on youtube, the only kind of search you can do on youtube is for videos.
People choose Google, whereas with Windows they have no choice if they want to use the software they want. Come on MS admit it, you're bitter that people like Google and they choose Google rather than Google forcing the users to use it. Using bing, yahoo etc is just a click away and yet the majority choose Google.
And as much as MS try to force bing on people through windows and IE they still switch the default search to Google.
It's sour grapes with MS.
(Huh, I typed Google a lot there.. Matt Damon!)
People go with what they know
IE is being gradually squeezed out of the market. It'll take a fair few more years yet and it will always hold some minor market share due to MS pushing it through their OS, but any kind of real "I want to download a browser" market share has been lost to Firefox and Chrome.
At work whenever a colleague brings in a laptop from home it isn't IE they're using, it's either Firefox or Chrome. Whereas before it was almost always IE.
MS simply are not trustworthy as a browser maker, the moment they ever get into a commanding position they'll sit on their hands and do nothing. Better they have a tiny market share or none at all and leave it to the people who know how to advance the web.
Funny how little MS has changed IE
I don't mean in the faster JS engine or anything like that, I mean in the UI department.
The bookmarks manager hasn't changed to any real degree since IE4 when they switched from a HTML file containing the bookmarks to a file/folder hierachy. And anything beneath the front end of the gui is still the same as before, still the same awful "internet options" and the mess that is trying to change/find the settings.
Sony are stupid
I visited his site and I own a PS3. I haven't jailbroken my PS3 yet because I haven't felt the need to, but I might just do it to spite Sony. The way they're going after the hackers who have done nothing wrong apart from figuring how to jailbreak their own legally owned hardware is outrageous.
I've usually been pretty pro-Sony, sure during the rootkit fiasco I viewed it as don't ever buy anything from Sony that will go in my pc but I was ok with their console.
So, I own a 360 and a PS3. I have two choices neither of which I like. Either pay to play online (which I absolutely detest and don't pay for out of principle) or use a console from a company that is making me hate them.
The annoying thing is the majority of my console games are on the PS3 and there isn't really a choice, I can go with the artificially hobbled unless I pay functionality of the 360 or I can go with a company that is doing everything in their power to make me hate them.
PS. I owned a Wii, great first party games. Too many crappy third party waggle games.
I guess at some point I may just sell my PS3. There are some good games coming out on the pc soon like Portal 2 and Mass Effect 3 will be on the pc when it's released. (I made the mistake of buying the 360 version of Mass Effect 2.. planet scanning... urgh)
On a business iphone here
I'd been meaning to setup a home vpn for a while but never got around to it, so I configured my media center pc (it's left powered on) for a PPTP VPN last night.
If I was on O2 for my personal phone I would have switched immediately to another mobile provider, I guess I'll just have to change all our company phones from O2 when the business contract comes to an end. (around 20 iphones on O2)
We've been having occasional problems with O2 anyway, like getting them to get off their arses to fix the local cell which would send and receive calls but not data. (took them a couple of months to fix, lazy, lazy, lazy)
On the plus side, I've also configured a proxy that I'm going to get some adblock rules sorted out. So it'll mean speedier browsing. Oh, by the way.. plus side to a vpn is that the bbc iplayer works over it. I discovered this when I configured works vpn a while ago. The beeb does ip address checking and since it appears to them you're on a non-mobile IP address you must be viewing it over wifi.
@Dibbley
That or George Lucas grew up and became an unimaginative film maker.
Snap!
Anonymoron
If you knew anything about pc's you'd know they've been able to output video at 1080p for years, which is essentially what the mobile phone makers are claiming.
A mobile phone does NOT have the processing capacity to decode for example a full 1080p blu-ray h264 video. A mobile phone however can decode a very low bitrate 1080p video that doesn't use some of the more processor intensive features of h264.
An AMD 4350 graphics card (a low profile passively cooled GPU) can fully decode a bluray h264 bluray video without breaking into a sweat. As can my current 4550 which is in my media center, which by the way can simultaneously decode two bluray 1080p video streams. (certain blurays have special features like picture in picture etc)
Modern GPU's and CPU's are designed to do more than display relatively simple graphics and light processor usage, unlike mobile phones. (the idea that somehow the graphics chipset in my iphone is even anywhere near on the same level as for example an AMD 4350 is laughable as is the idea that an ARM mobile processor could perform anywhere near the level of say an AMD 240e which is the cpu in my media center)
Anonymous Coward doesn't know his arse from his elbow.
Problematic running programs on ARM
This is going to be a major headache for both MS and the customers who run Windows on ARM. There will be lots and lots of programs that will never run on ARM unless MS also includes an x86 processor emulator ala when Macs switched from m68k to PPC and again when they switched from PPC to x86.
Emulating an x86 processor on an ARM (likely mobile) device will destroy battery life plus the fact that ARM processors aren't designed with the best possible speed in mind but low electricity use, so if they do add an x86 processor emulation layer for the programs that aren't compiled for ARM they'll likely run dog slow.
And there will be lots and lots of programs that won't be ported over to ARM. (OSS won't be a problem but commercial software will be very problematic)
I wonder..
If they've finally bothered implementing dragging and dropping of files between the host desktop and the guest vm desktop? A feature that's been requested for years now in virtualbox.
Copying files between the host and guest is otherwise a pita as you have to mess about with shared folder crap. The only way they could make it less intuitive is if you literally had to write a file to a cd on the host and then mount that cd in a separate cd drive accessible from the host.
Actually, that'd be more intuitive than the shared folder approach come to think of it. Huh, guess they can't be less intuitive then.
Let the flames commence!
I own both a 360 and PS3. I refuse to pay for XBL out of principle, ultimately I get no real value. I don't get dedicated servers to play on for the most part it's p2p. Why should I be paying for something that is free everywhere else?
Any cross platform games that have multiplayer are bought on the PS3 and frankly, the last time I even powered up the 360 was to play Mass Effect 2. (buying ME3 on the pc next time, planet scanning can die in a fire.. at least pc users can use a trainer to give themselves the minerals etc rather than the monotony of repeatedly slowly moving a cursor around a rotating ball)
I think Sony's strategy of free online play (at least for me) is resulting in more sales on Sonys platform.
July 28 201 for JDK 7?
Oh man, talk about time overruns but over eighteen hundred years behind schedule. That's a sign that Java is in bad shape.
That said, running Java on the abacus was always slow so it's probably better that it's so behind schedule so computing technology could capture up.
RE: I'm confused.
http://mobilesyrup.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/whosuingwho.jpg
I think it's a bit out of date, but it gives a good idea of the patent balls up the US patent system is in right now.
Gotta say..
Firefox 4 is so far pretty outstanding, I usually make the switch from current to the next version when it hits the RC stage. (to use as my main browser)
There are still little niggles, like a webpage which hits the cpu hard with some bad js slows/freezes up the UI so closing the tab is a pain (a problem Chrome does not suffer from).
Hopefully when they finally get Electrolysis up and running everything will be hunky dory in that regard.
Digg gaming digg
Supposedly digg is now gaming itself too...
http://ltgenpanda.tumblr.com/post/1403230157/did-digg-game-its-own-system-to-benefit-publisher
Sverix...
Getting a bit confrontational there, nobody has even mentioned the iPad.. it's almost as if you were paid to post that...
As Anonymous said, £529.. no way.
Uninteresting
I have an iphone, i've played with an android phone and a palm pre both of which interested me.
As a tech head WP7 is totally uninteresting, i've yet to see anything peek my interest. I have not heard a single person mention being interested in any WP7 phones. MS WP7 is doomed.
Apple got away with things like no copy & paste from the start because everyone had significant interest in the iPhone. MS are not in the same position, MS is about the most uninteresting company out there. Not only that but they're not entering a market which already has what i'd consider nice touch based phones, the iphone practically invented that market (nice touch screen phones) and android phones are really starting to ride high.
And the final thing, IE mobile. It is junk, there's no two ways about it. IE mobile is lightyears behind the webkit browsers and Opera. Let alone Firefox mobile when Mozilla starts focusing on reducing its memory usage and improving its speed. (ok, that may be a while)
Not only that but IE now has a popular stigma which will affect WP7. The days of it just being stigmatised for viruses, bugs etc by techies has now bled into normal culture from the tech world.
Disable javascript?
"In the meantime, there are no mitigations users can take other than to exercise due care in opening PDF documents. It may also make sense to use an alternate PDF viewer such as FoxIT, but it's not yet been confirmed that that other programs aren't vulnerable."
Not even disabling Javascript works? I work at a printers so adobe reader is a requirement here.
By the way, as slim in comparison foxit is in memory usage it has two glaring problems.. 1. it comes with spyware/adware 2. about 5% of pdf's opened using foxit have problems.. (remember, I work at a printers so we receive LOTS of PDFs) adobe reader renders them all 100% fine but that 5% problem of foxit is a pain in the arse for support.. I actually tried rolling out foxit a while back in replacement of adobe reader but the damn near constant support because somebody opened another pdf that wasn't displaying correctly in foxit was too much. We're back on adobe reader with javascript disabled. (thankfully we very, very rarely get a PDF that needs js)
Seems like Adobe don't know the meaning of the word security. It's every other bloody day with their software that another security hole gets discovered. If there was another PDF viewer out there that could render all PDF's correctly then i'd be all over it for work. As insecure, slow and bloated a piece of crap adobe reader is, it renders PDFs correctly.
As to home, I use Sumatra on windows and OSX's native PDF display for viewing PDF's.
Gone beyond that now
See: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/05/ps3-jailbreak-adapted-to-nokia-n900-palm-pre-in-wake-of-austral/
It's been ported to the Palm Pre and Nokia N900 (with the backup to hard drive stuff re-enabled). It is currently in the process of being ported to the iPhone, Android and TI-84. (I kid you not)
So, all you'd need to do is hook up for example your iPhone to the PS3 via usb and bam.. no modchip required.
I wonder if Sony will take Apple, Google, Nokia etc to court? Somehow, I doubt it.
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