4G, 3G and so on aren't anything more than a dumbed down way of expressing when something was released.
3G in the UK and Europe is actually UTMS. But 3G in the US can be many other things, CDMA 2000 or UTMS.
Games consoles are often said to be part of a certain generation, 4th generation console and so on. That doesn't mean you can take a game from one and put it in another console.
The biggest selling feature of Windows has always been backward compatibility. They tend support the old junk for as long as possible.
With Win8 there's too much in the way of radical changes instead of incremental changes. Windows 8 may be quantum leap, but a quantum leap off a cliff.
I'm waiting for them to say it's a "feature" that Canon don't have :)
Who can forget the Nikon fanboys going on about not needing full frame sensors like Canon had, then going on about it being the best thing since sliced bread once they did get them.
Anyone with any creativity and sense jumped from Microsoft to Google and other organisations.
Microsoft are just bashing out desperate clones of Apple. Windows 8's UI smacks of desperation, trying to emulate the iPad but grafting it onto their cash cow of Windows.
They need to stop using the Windows brand for everything, XBox 360 is successful and you can argue that it would be less successful if it was called Microsoft Windows Games System NT XP RT or some other lame branding.
Well they've gone for all the fairly obvious choices :)
Jeff Minter did some rather wacky classics. Hover Bovver being one of them, borrowing the flymo from your neighbour to cut the grass? most people hate cutting the lawn yet someone make a game out of it.
They'd be better getting rid of the iMac and creating a nice dock for their laptops to quickly dock into a setup with monitor and mouse. Currently you can just connect two cables, power and thunderbolt, but connecting none would be better.
Of course the ugly dock connectors are obviously why they've never done it before.
It's probably one reason why Sinclair failed, they were just a little too cheap when compared to the competition. It made the next generation of 16-bit machines seem much better quality and by then he'd sold the company to Amstrad after wasting so much on the C5. I suppose being in MENSA is no substitute for common sense.
While you look back with happy memories at your first ownership of any gadget, you tend to move on. How many people are sitting there with Nokia phones in their hands? very few I expect.
Adrian Newey still uses paper when drawing his F1 car designs, he's probably one of the most successful designers too.
There's no computer screen that lets you look at a drawing as a whole in such high contrast and resolution as paper. With CAD you're zooming in and out all the time.
The "smart" part is not about UI design or any other interface design. Smart basically referred to the ability to install extra native software or extend the functionality of the device through software.
Dumbphones have a limited feature set that can't be improved through third party software.
Window Mobile came out of PocketPC which was providing a pocketable version of Windows in the mid 1990s. All Microsoft did was add a phone at a later date.
Even when they were replaced with a better model the older one tended to live for some time. People were running their C64s and speccies into the 1990s when even my Amiga A500 was getting long in the tooth.
These "possibly good product coming soon" articles are getting tiresome. Can't they at least wait for the Apple event to be scheduled before rumouring?
The point is that people who will go on to be a genius in something may not know about their gift or their interest in something until they are told about it.
Many gifted athletes are discovered at school doing sports. Not all children like sports or are good at them, but by ensuring everyone does it the gifted are found.
What is lost at the moment is the curiosity to see how things work and then alter things or repair them. Instead we buy a gadget and then throw it away when it doesn't work. We're discouraged from opening them with messages like "No user serviceable parts inside".
Some kids will self learn, but they can get up to speed faster with pointers. If I had been guided a bit more back in the C64 days I may have gone on to write some assembly language software. But school IT was not at that level, they were teaching LOGO and Pascal.
They're still a bit of a follower when it comes to products.
Google was not the first search engine, Android was not the first smartphone OS, Google+ is a response to Facebook , Gmail arrived after Hotmail. See the pattern?
While they have developed lots of interesting technology behind the scenes, the most ground breaking work they have done is on Google Maps with Street View.
Google has taken over the role of Microsoft, which is to wait for innovators to release new products that fail, find out all the flaws and why it failed and release their own take on it with the flaws fixed (often at a lower price). But of course, web based and advert supported.
Have you seen the film Crazy People with Dudley Moore? he plays an advertising executive who does just that, creates adverts with the honest truth in them, they ended up working really well too.
I'm guessing BT's honestly approach would lose them business though.
Kids make mistakes, so it's pretty foolish to link your credit card to their iTunes account. Just like you probably wouldn't give your child a mobile phone on a contract.
Anyone responsible would use iTunes vouchers. They would get through it so fast that alarm bells would ring.
Java is different from C, C++ and other languages. It is a combination of syntax, an API and a virtual machine.
C and C++ do not typically provide set API (they often have standard libraries and these are sometimes copyrighted), the OS provides the runtime and the API.
So in this case it is quite right for patents and copyrights on this to be defended. Sun only tolerated Google's use of Java derived technology due to Google's overall contribution to the Java community. Oracle are obviously less tolerant.
Unless schools do things using the GPIO on the PI board then I don't see the whole idea of the board since the video I've seen of the unit in use just shows it running Debian Linux and some educational software.
But have you noticed Apple tends to sue based on design and UI patents but Samsung and others sue Apple relating to low level hardware patents?
Doesn't that say a lot? when has Samsung claimed that the iOS UI has infringed their work? never as far as I know.
Patents on the chips under the hood is pretty irrelevant for the most part. The most important part is the CPU core and that's a licenced design from ARM. The software is what make all that otherwise useless chippery do something interesting.
Re: The data fetishists are still *very* much in place.
Not to mention the fun they will have gathering information on celebrities and other high profile people. Such personal information will be very useful for blackmailing opposition politicians or union bosses into backing down.
Why not the iPad? Have you not noticed the fact that Apple kit tends to attract a lot of interesting accessories?
The iPad for the same reason a serious guitarist buys a nice instrument and doesn't use some cheap plank from Argos.
They want something that looks nice, built well, good support and that many others will have.
If they use some Archos or other Android thing it will require a redesign every 6 months for different ports and layouts. Zillions of Android fan boys will complain that that model isn't supported or won't fit. Someone will hack it to work and then the company gets bombarded with problems.
In the end it's just simpler to support one hugely popular brand (there's more iPads in musicians hands than Archos tablets?), especially on a device that already has loads of music tools already available for it.
Quite negative postings on here. Who says IT workers in India are less proficient? my experience is quite the opposite. Microsoft has lots of developers from India.
Also, bear in mind the time zone differences in having outsourcing which can be advantageous for testing. When the working day in the UK is ending people based in another country can still be working for a few hours. So the next day developers can come in and have test results.
It is surely advantageous to make use of the whole 24 hours in a day?
...and there's me thinking a that transformer is a device for raising or lowering AC voltage. A use of the name that has been around for quite some time.
But maybe the games will be fun? enjoyment is supposedly part of the fun. For instance, no amount of graphic realism will make driving a racing car on a console like the real thing, there's no wind, dust, g-force or sense of imminent death if you get things wrong.
How do you know that it wasn't damaged in transit?
As for the yellow-ness, there were streaks on the iPhone 4 at first, it was the glue setting. They had shipped so fast from the factory that it hadn't had time to cure fully.
Placebo is the only way. It is why that test is done, in many cases people get symptoms when you suggest the idea.
Just like telling people they are looking at an original oil painting makes them say they like it even though its not. The human mind is pretty suggestible, probably why blind taste tests are required too.
Satellite TV and GPS are beamed to earth along with other communications. The frequency is very high to get through the ionosphere of the planet. You don't hear many people complaining about that?
WIFI, mobile data and smartmeters must use much lower transmit power than GPS or Satellite TV.
It's quite a different use case to use Linux as a development workstation deploying to Linux servers than a office desktop for purely running software.
There are still quite a lot of Windows only tools in the office arena.
They seem like the sort of thing that augmented reality would be handy for. A QR placed somewhere on a static poster could then trigger a 3D advert when viewed through an AR app. The video would replace the poster.
It would also make a "They Live" augmented application possible, just need to replace the faces of random people with alien faces :)
Well, it was actually the 4000T that was probably the last design.
68060 was pretty good, but they did have to remove some features from the silicon that had to be done in software. It wasn't a mass market chip either, no other desktops were using it that I know of. Everyone else was moving on to PPC.
Register
2264 posts • joined Wednesday 13th December 2006 15:36 GMT
Page:
4G, 3G and so on aren't anything more than a dumbed down way of expressing when something was released.
3G in the UK and Europe is actually UTMS. But 3G in the US can be many other things, CDMA 2000 or UTMS.
Games consoles are often said to be part of a certain generation, 4th generation console and so on. That doesn't mean you can take a game from one and put it in another console.
Re: On this occasion I am willing to accept the iPhanboi argument that.......
People always moan about tax avoidance but when pressed about it they would not:
1. Offer to pay more tax themselves on their income (unless they have too much money to possibly spend of course).
2. Offer to pay more for a product so the company can pay more taxes.
The biggest selling feature of Windows has always been backward compatibility. They tend support the old junk for as long as possible.
With Win8 there's too much in the way of radical changes instead of incremental changes. Windows 8 may be quantum leap, but a quantum leap off a cliff.
I'm waiting for them to say it's a "feature" that Canon don't have :)
Who can forget the Nikon fanboys going on about not needing full frame sensors like Canon had, then going on about it being the best thing since sliced bread once they did get them.
Re: Ouch, that must sting Microsoft
Anyone with any creativity and sense jumped from Microsoft to Google and other organisations.
Microsoft are just bashing out desperate clones of Apple. Windows 8's UI smacks of desperation, trying to emulate the iPad but grafting it onto their cash cow of Windows.
They need to stop using the Windows brand for everything, XBox 360 is successful and you can argue that it would be less successful if it was called Microsoft Windows Games System NT XP RT or some other lame branding.
Re: Jeff Minter
Well they've gone for all the fairly obvious choices :)
Jeff Minter did some rather wacky classics. Hover Bovver being one of them, borrowing the flymo from your neighbour to cut the grass? most people hate cutting the lawn yet someone make a game out of it.
Re: Can I...
He notified them how? by sending them an email or writing a letter?
How many letters like that do you think a big company gets? it's one of thousands from all sorts of crackpots.
If you want something to happen you sue.
They'd be better getting rid of the iMac and creating a nice dock for their laptops to quickly dock into a setup with monitor and mouse. Currently you can just connect two cables, power and thunderbolt, but connecting none would be better.
Of course the ugly dock connectors are obviously why they've never done it before.
Re: Not very reliable though...
It's probably one reason why Sinclair failed, they were just a little too cheap when compared to the competition. It made the next generation of 16-bit machines seem much better quality and by then he'd sold the company to Amstrad after wasting so much on the C5. I suppose being in MENSA is no substitute for common sense.
While you look back with happy memories at your first ownership of any gadget, you tend to move on. How many people are sitting there with Nokia phones in their hands? very few I expect.
Re: Love the design sketches
Adrian Newey still uses paper when drawing his F1 car designs, he's probably one of the most successful designers too.
There's no computer screen that lets you look at a drawing as a whole in such high contrast and resolution as paper. With CAD you're zooming in and out all the time.
Psion 3 arrived a little too late for the 80s. But is probably what you were looking for?
Re: @zax
The "smart" part is not about UI design or any other interface design. Smart basically referred to the ability to install extra native software or extend the functionality of the device through software.
Dumbphones have a limited feature set that can't be improved through third party software.
Window Mobile came out of PocketPC which was providing a pocketable version of Windows in the mid 1990s. All Microsoft did was add a phone at a later date.
There are few tools worth paying money for and so many free alternatives. It's only really games that make money. Nothing changes :)
Re: Speed of Progress
Even when they were replaced with a better model the older one tended to live for some time. People were running their C64s and speccies into the 1990s when even my Amiga A500 was getting long in the tooth.
These "possibly good product coming soon" articles are getting tiresome. Can't they at least wait for the Apple event to be scheduled before rumouring?
Re: Maybe?
The point is that people who will go on to be a genius in something may not know about their gift or their interest in something until they are told about it.
Many gifted athletes are discovered at school doing sports. Not all children like sports or are good at them, but by ensuring everyone does it the gifted are found.
What is lost at the moment is the curiosity to see how things work and then alter things or repair them. Instead we buy a gadget and then throw it away when it doesn't work. We're discouraged from opening them with messages like "No user serviceable parts inside".
Some kids will self learn, but they can get up to speed faster with pointers. If I had been guided a bit more back in the C64 days I may have gone on to write some assembly language software. But school IT was not at that level, they were teaching LOGO and Pascal.
Re: Why does the Govt keep employing the same firms for massive projects....
Maybe they are the cheapest?
Re: More bandwidth
There was teletext on Freeview using the latest technology. Is it no longer there?
It wasn't brilliant though.
Re: Google...
They're still a bit of a follower when it comes to products.
Google was not the first search engine, Android was not the first smartphone OS, Google+ is a response to Facebook , Gmail arrived after Hotmail. See the pattern?
While they have developed lots of interesting technology behind the scenes, the most ground breaking work they have done is on Google Maps with Street View.
Google has taken over the role of Microsoft, which is to wait for innovators to release new products that fail, find out all the flaws and why it failed and release their own take on it with the flaws fixed (often at a lower price). But of course, web based and advert supported.
Re: You've got to laugh.
When the owners of Instagram heard it was Zucker calling them up they doubled their price.
It's quite telling that the picture showing the Windows 8 tablet is on a stand on a table with a cable (presumably power) plugged into it.
It shows that the battery life must suck and that it isn't easy to use while being hand held.
Just use the website?
http://www.teletext.co.uk/
Re: Truth in Advertising
Have you seen the film Crazy People with Dudley Moore? he plays an advertising executive who does just that, creates adverts with the honest truth in them, they ended up working really well too.
I'm guessing BT's honestly approach would lose them business though.
We're the 51st state, so we buy from the US and in return they give us nothing.
Re: When will parents learn
Kids make mistakes, so it's pretty foolish to link your credit card to their iTunes account. Just like you probably wouldn't give your child a mobile phone on a contract.
Anyone responsible would use iTunes vouchers. They would get through it so fast that alarm bells would ring.
Java is different from C, C++ and other languages. It is a combination of syntax, an API and a virtual machine.
C and C++ do not typically provide set API (they often have standard libraries and these are sometimes copyrighted), the OS provides the runtime and the API.
So in this case it is quite right for patents and copyrights on this to be defended. Sun only tolerated Google's use of Java derived technology due to Google's overall contribution to the Java community. Oracle are obviously less tolerant.
Re: Recycled Technology?
Please quantify, you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard to iOS and run stuffy office apps if you really want to (yawn).
There's tons of tools for musicians. That is "productive" surely?
Re: "Apple is a liberator, not an oppressor"
Nobody is going to publish their works to a store where it can be easily copied. DRM is mandated by the media creators.
Unless schools do things using the GPIO on the PI board then I don't see the whole idea of the board since the video I've seen of the unit in use just shows it running Debian Linux and some educational software.
Re: Very sick of it
But have you noticed Apple tends to sue based on design and UI patents but Samsung and others sue Apple relating to low level hardware patents?
Doesn't that say a lot? when has Samsung claimed that the iOS UI has infringed their work? never as far as I know.
Patents on the chips under the hood is pretty irrelevant for the most part. The most important part is the CPU core and that's a licenced design from ARM. The software is what make all that otherwise useless chippery do something interesting.
Re: That RIM
BBM = Broken Bottle Messenger?
Re: The data fetishists are still *very* much in place.
Not to mention the fun they will have gathering information on celebrities and other high profile people. Such personal information will be very useful for blackmailing opposition politicians or union bosses into backing down.
Re: Oh God help me! I was going to ask if anyone can get me off this planet.........
Perhaps they wanted to do a more relaxed bird game? Except that the name mellow birds is already used.
Re: Why the iPad?
Why not the iPad? Have you not noticed the fact that Apple kit tends to attract a lot of interesting accessories?
The iPad for the same reason a serious guitarist buys a nice instrument and doesn't use some cheap plank from Argos.
They want something that looks nice, built well, good support and that many others will have.
If they use some Archos or other Android thing it will require a redesign every 6 months for different ports and layouts. Zillions of Android fan boys will complain that that model isn't supported or won't fit. Someone will hack it to work and then the company gets bombarded with problems.
In the end it's just simpler to support one hugely popular brand (there's more iPads in musicians hands than Archos tablets?), especially on a device that already has loads of music tools already available for it.
Quite negative postings on here. Who says IT workers in India are less proficient? my experience is quite the opposite. Microsoft has lots of developers from India.
Also, bear in mind the time zone differences in having outsourcing which can be advantageous for testing. When the working day in the UK is ending people based in another country can still be working for a few hours. So the next day developers can come in and have test results.
It is surely advantageous to make use of the whole 24 hours in a day?
...and there's me thinking a that transformer is a device for raising or lowering AC voltage. A use of the name that has been around for quite some time.
But maybe the games will be fun? enjoyment is supposedly part of the fun. For instance, no amount of graphic realism will make driving a racing car on a console like the real thing, there's no wind, dust, g-force or sense of imminent death if you get things wrong.
Re: Lovely screen
How do you know that it wasn't damaged in transit?
As for the yellow-ness, there were streaks on the iPhone 4 at first, it was the glue setting. They had shipped so fast from the factory that it hadn't had time to cure fully.
Nice of him to leave it so late. I thought the captain was supposed to go down with his ship?
So in reality he's jumped off-ship in the life-raft while everyone else drowns in the sinking ship.
Re: Not writting it off....
Placebo is the only way. It is why that test is done, in many cases people get symptoms when you suggest the idea.
Just like telling people they are looking at an original oil painting makes them say they like it even though its not. The human mind is pretty suggestible, probably why blind taste tests are required too.
Re: Not writting it off....
Satellite TV and GPS are beamed to earth along with other communications. The frequency is very high to get through the ionosphere of the planet. You don't hear many people complaining about that?
WIFI, mobile data and smartmeters must use much lower transmit power than GPS or Satellite TV.
If they hadn't been told it was using radio signals they wouldn't have even noticed.
Re: Free stuff
It's quite a different use case to use Linux as a development workstation deploying to Linux servers than a office desktop for purely running software.
There are still quite a lot of Windows only tools in the office arena.
Re: So do people actually scan these things?
They seem like the sort of thing that augmented reality would be handy for. A QR placed somewhere on a static poster could then trigger a 3D advert when viewed through an AR app. The video would replace the poster.
It would also make a "They Live" augmented application possible, just need to replace the faces of random people with alien faces :)
Re: Colour QR
Microsoft proposed their own colour QR using triangles. But it's not took off, colour costs more.
As Amiga users used to say years ago when PC gamers mentioned there were no Amiga games: "If you want to play games, get a playstation".
Of course, things have moved on since then but I would imagine WP7 gamers would be better getting a Vita :)
Even read only USB sticks would be better than optical media. You probably wouldn't need to install to the hard disc either.
Re: LibreOffice for Android
Except that Android is effectively owned and controlled by Google who are a giant just like Microsoft and Apple.
So there's not total freedom.
It's all about viewing distances and the like. Such a big screen isn't much good if you are a foot away from it.
Re: Gave up reading at
Well, it was actually the 4000T that was probably the last design.
68060 was pretty good, but they did have to remove some features from the silicon that had to be done in software. It wasn't a mass market chip either, no other desktops were using it that I know of. Everyone else was moving on to PPC.
Page: