* Posts by barth

30 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2009

US woman cuffed for 'booking strippers for 16th birthday bash'

barth

Come on ?

This is certainly in bad taste, especially if there were younger kids and the parents were not advised. But criminal ?

Google: 'We did not follow Apple into phone market'

barth

do you really think

it took only 18 months to create Android from scratch ?

Android spanks Apple’s iOS 4 in JavaScript race

barth

does anyone care

is there any indication of what %of time phone user spend running javascript stuff ? in my case, about 0.05...

What does HP want with Palm?

barth

HP needs an ARM OS ?

I'm not sure. Wintel seems to be having major issue in the Tablet market, mainly battery life. With WinCE in the doldrums, HP needs something to run on ARM, and may be one of the few companies to have the resources to actually build something nice instead of using Android. Here's to hoping.

A multitasking iPad? Let's bin the netbook

barth

deal breakers

1- file transfer. From what I've been reading, it's a major pain to transfer files to/from the iPad. From what I gathered, no removable cards, no USB, no LAN access over wifi nor bluetooth... Basically the iPad doesn't do any kind of LAN ?

2- BT keyboard and mouse indeed. If i'm doing semi-serious typing, I want a mouse/trackpad/trackpoint/trackball, not touch.

Normal Human Being™ reviews the iPad

barth

good review

I think this is the best review I've read yet. Could LW have a look at some iApps, next ? they seem like the iPad's main advantage ?

Windows Phone 7: Microsoft's exercise in self restraint

barth

There's no point

in speaking of partners. If MS is going to ape Apple to that degree (and aping it is, WinMob 7 is iPhone OS 1.0, 4 years late), with so many restrictions on the hardware that "partners" cannot really choose anything (screen, CPU- whole SOC actually, ram expansion, buttons... are all dictated by MS), MS might as well drop the pretense and sell their own phone. Which they would surely be doing already if they were not in such a big rush to have a product out , since they obsoleted their available offering while still NOT having its successor.

WinMob7 is Zune-ish, and the Zune is branded MS.

So, enjoy you last hurrah, MS "partners". Next stop, the dung heap.

Steve Jobs says 'No' to iPhone-to-iPad tether

barth

doesn't the iphone do wifi -> 3g routing ?

I think all winmob and droid phones do... don't iphones ?

Dell flogs its 'zero client'

barth

plug computer

also, plug computers running full Linux are beginning to become available. 124 euros, 512 Megs, single HDMI (up to 1920x1200), LAN, 3xUSB, Ubuntu/Debian/whatever...

http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/c-4-guruplugs.aspx

Forgot your ThinkPad password? Get new hardware

barth

Lenovo is right

to run into the problem you have to:

1- activate the password feature

2- not backup your password anywhere

3- forget your password

It's a trifecta of stupidity, you get what's coming to you.

Plus, I really object to 3rd parties unlocking the stuff I choose to lock.

All the whiners don't seem to realize that security comes at a cost, mainly in convenience. If you don't want to be bothered when forgetting your pwd... then don't use one.

Microsoft fluffs Feds with secure cloud

barth

For the rest of us

It's the regular service, which by deduction must be

- unsecured facility

- shared premises

- free-for-all access

- no compliance with whatever

strangely, nothing said about backups nor availability in either cases.

methinks that cloud think is made of a stinky gas

Dell Inspiron Zino HD

barth

it DOES do 5.1 (7.1 with 4770) over HDMI

Indeed, it's missing optical I/O, and maybe infrared, but that thing is a lot cheaper than even a homemade mini-itx box.

Full-body scanner blind to bomb parts

barth

if she's a bomb

i'm sure not everyone will be blind to her parts

Steve Ballmer defaces fanboi MacBook

barth

it's funny, actually

and ... can you imagine His Steviness doing something like that ?

How the cloud could conquer the world in 2010

barth

Available, Safe and Secure ?

I have too many concerns about my Apps and Data not always being available (ie google/gmail outages), correctly backed up (Sidekick debacle), nor secure (banks get hacked... I doubt clouds will be better). I'm not sure most of what we see about the cloud gives me enough ASS.

Somehow, I'm not convince the acronym will stick either, which is a pity because we certainly need to focus on that !

T-Mobile raises Sidekick from the dead

barth

It's 1 AM

do you know where your data is ?

HTC says no to Android HD2 to aid Windows Mobile

barth

Too bad for HTC

My current phone is my first, and last, windows mobile phone.

The HD2's hardware seems nice, but there's no way i'm masochistic enough too submit myself to that piece of junk OS again. Anything else can only be better... I'm actually wondering if my next cell phone will not be S40 so that I can at least be sure that the "phone" part will work... which it doesn't with WinMob 6.1, which crashes 1+ times / day.

WTF is this country called America?

barth

Are you really an idiot ?

or just pretending to be one?

America is a CONTINENT.

The US of A is a COUNTRY.

As much a you don't say London, Europe, you don't say Illinois, America.

And America is not the big lump of land south of Canada. It is Canada PLUS the big lump of land south of it, and the one west of it too.

One should try to attend, and remember, primary school.

Microsoft names the day for iPhone come-back punch

barth

My WinMob phone crashes once a day

and is generally a pain to use.

count me out.

Microsoft craves iPhone developers for Windows Mobile

barth

If I were MS, I'd be worried of loosing customers

I've bought a Windows Mobile 6 phone, and I plain hate it. How a company with the ressources of MS could come up with such awful ergonomics, or rather absence of ergonomics, is beyond me. They ported Windows, complete with screenfulls of data-entry screens, little red boxes at the top right corners, and config options used daily but 3-4 levels down menus... Everytime I take my phone out, I feel I should put it in a desktop stand, connect a keyboard and mouse, and then, I could maybe use it.

Also, my phone freezes down to a hard reset several times a week.

Me not happy.

Opera chief: history will silence Unite doubters

barth

I fully agree that Unite is revolutionary

It's putting back your data where it belongs: on your PC.

No more Facebook selling your photos to who knows whom. No more school superintendant or recruiter demanding you give them your login info. No more outage for millions when one server goes down.

I'm sure Unite still needs a fair bit of tweaking and develoment. But having your own social website, with widgets, custom apps... is worth it.

And remermber, Opera is not MS: their security is better. I wouldn't trust MS to do that, and Apple wouldn't do it anyway, since it doesn't help them sell any content. Unite is a true, old-school, user-driven thing.

Apple nabs 90% of all 'premium PC' dollars

barth

re: Hud Dunlap

1- FYI, Acer is one of the top-5 PC makers. Worldwide, and in the US.

2- Yep, with PCs you can actually change the screen.. or the PC... without having to dump the other part, too.

3- If you do insist on that, you have options, though:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2032280010&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&Subcategory=10&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=all-in-one

barth

Congrats Apple

a few comments though:

- that figure must not take into account home-build PCs, which is how enthusiasts do it, and enthusiasts are the ones who spend more than $1.000 on a PC. I just shelled out $2.000 for various parts to build mine...

- honestly, I find XP pretty much bulletproof too nowadays. My PC runs weeks on end, crashes less than once a month... Viruses are still a problem I guess... except it's more of a user problem: I get one per year, when a friend brings me a contaminated media and I forget to scan it. I never got a virus through the net, and don't have an AV on my main PC.

- how are peripherals accounted for ? iMacs are sucky computers, screen included. does that make them premium vs sucky PCs + screen on the side, which are not ?

- to me, the benefit of Windows is that I know how to use it. My brother's mac keep getting in my face, bringing up a weird screen whenever I push the mouse to an out-of-the way corner, keeping apps open even though I closed them and the poor thing is clearly working at capacity, wasting oodles of screen space on an idiot task bar...

Opera Software reinvents complete irrelevance

barth

... and you fail

It may be the English tabloid culture, trying to make scandals out of anything, but I'm growing tired of your very one-sided coverage of several issues. I'm way past adolescent nihilism, and you need to grow up.

Opera has been doing an excellent browser for a long while, and pionereed many ideas (tabs, gestures...). Sometimes, success is not simply a matter of market share, especially when you also have to contend with idiot journalists looking for a snappy headline and no research skills.

They do have a tendency to try and do to much, and too differently, as their very weird mail client, and their very superfluous Torrent client show. I don't think Unite falls into that category.

I personally find the Unite idea intriguing, basically trying to move all those social sites back to my own PC. Given how crappy/full of ads/... most social sites are, I'm thinking having an easy way to setup my own social site would be nice. It's not harder to access (one url per person), it will probably be as full featured as several sites put together (after a while: tweeter+facebook+...), and , above all, I get to keep control of my "content".

Integrating that with the browser is a strange idea, but probably the right one to gently push a wider public into the "I have my own web server" age. I know I personally never got around to setting one up for me, and Unite might just entice me to try.

I'd be interested in reading your self-review of your own oh-so-original and interesting website...

VMware VMs cost how much?

barth

let's not be naive

You should at least state who paid for that study.

eSATA: A doomed stopgap?

barth

Doesn't USB still suck ?

USB's theoretical speed is well and good but:

1- I've never reached it. Not even close

2- When doing file transfers over USB 2.0, my PC suffers from mini-freezes

3- Some of my USB 2.0 periperals won't work, or will even hang my PC, when connected at 2.0 speeds, I have to force 1.0 to get them to work.

On the other hand, I never had a problem (neither speed nor compatibility nor sluggishness) with FireWire.

My take on it is that early USB was designed for slow periperals: kb, mouse, printer... and specifically not HD. There must be something in the way USB 1.0 and 2.0 were done that made them unreliable ressources hogs for high speeds/big transfers.

Do you know if USB 3.0 fixes that, or is it just a faster release of them same very touchy s**t ?

Hitachi cops to Dell LCD pricing conspiracy

barth

Appropriate quote

which is not from Civ4, but actually from Adam Smith:

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is im-possible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and jus-tice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary."

Opera lances 'extremely severe' jpg bug

barth

Thanks

Thanks for the heads up, Mr TheReg. And thanks to Opera for a quick and frank fix.

Asus cracks out of its shell with Air-esque Eee PC

barth

Too many eees

Actually, I think they're creating some confusion, with too many models, especially with very different eeePCs differentiated by just 1 letter, ie 1000HE vs 1000HA

Windows goes Mobile 6.5

barth

Does it work , at last ?

I have a WinMob 6.0 phone, and it sucks. It's not usable one-handed, with just a finger. The whole concept of a start button, small windows with an even smaller X on the top right corner to close them, is just ridiculous when there's no keyboard nor mouse. Plus the thing is slow as hell.