Muse's Manson Guitars
Not really a new idea... Manson do similar guitars following a specification of none other than Mat Bellamy of Muse.
Posts by Ocular Sinister
141 posts • joined Friday 29th August 2008 13:03 GMT
Part of the deal...
> As part of the deal, Microsoft has wiped away its patent disputes with the bookseller
Ergo, they won't get tested in court. The only winner here is Microsoft.
Re: Woa is me
I disagree - at least at first. I expect Microsoft to be heavily subsidizing tablets to get some presence in the market. It has lots of cash, so it can afford to do this. What it can't afford to do is let Android/iPhone take the market as their own. Microsoft has done this before, allegedly paying people substantial sums to switch from Netware to the vastly inferior (at the time) Windows Networking (aka Windows for Workgroups).
Microsoft isn't going to give up on the tablet market lying down, so Google, Apple et al had better get their hands to the pump!
I thought the communications network was privatised already
Does this mean my hard earned cash is being handed over to BT? Why are we subsidising private businesses like this?
Judging by past performance, the cost of Windows 8, at least initially, will be negative - and potentially substantially negative: "We will give you £200 per tablet you sell with Windows 8, plus 500K towards development costs".
Re: Need Start Menu back. Not much reason to upgrade
If it is anything like the things to 'fix' the ribbon bar back to a normal menu, it won't be free. So I can pay $$$$ for Windows $ for a thing to fix the ribbon bar, $ to fix the start menu, $ to fix whatever else is broken/weird/shit ...and then the whole thing will be wobbly as fuck 'cos of the all the low level hacks.
Or I could just not bother.
Posted in Windows 7 squeezed into Android tablets
Re: Wow VNC
Calligra, perhaps? http://blogs.kde.org/node/4521
Note that Nokia already ship Calligra on some devices. I haven't tested it myself, but they claim to have better compatibility with MS Office than {Open|Libre}Office.
Re: I guess common grounds would be Lazarus
Christian, I think you are kidding yourself. If you are a programmer capable of shooting yourself in the foot with C++ you will quite likely achieve the same in other, higher level languages. Maybe not buffer over/under runs but there are a myriad other ways to write crap, insecure software - SQL Injections, lack of input validation, XSS, ... the list is endless. A crap programmer will shoot themselves in the foot regardless.
With all this shooting at feet, its a miracle there isn't some kind of explosion...
KDE...
All I can say is thank god for KDE, sticking to the recognisable paradigm... I note that Plasma Desktop runs after a fashion on XP. I've not tried 6, 7 or 8 but with a bit of effort it could be made to work...
You installed the trial version...
...and you didn't use a VM? Brave... very brave.
On Nationwide's 2-factory system, you have to enter the sum into the calculator thing. If the criminal changed the sum, the generated code would not be valid. They could change the target account - but they may be encapsulated in the code that you have to supply to the calculator.
The KDE Weather widget with the BBC source
If find it works very well, and I'm fairly sure Auntie gets her info from the Met Office. Problem solved.
Posted in Dumb salesmen are hurting us – Nokia CEO
Unbelievable
I could *just* about believe alexh20 when he claimed he bought five phones in four years, but £1,500/year on phones plus an unspecified amount on a 'gaming rig' and car... AND he has a 'misses'? Pull the other one, Alex.
Joke alert because this guy clearly is yanking our collective chains.
Posted in Dumb salesmen are hurting us – Nokia CEO
Let me get this straight
"from someone who has owned an HTC Hero, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and a Samsung GS2 over many years."
As far as I can tell, the iPhone 3G was the earliest of those. Assuming you got the 3G the day it came out in 2008, you have had *five* phones - if we include your current Lumia too - in four years!? Maybe I'm a cheapskate, but I try to keep my phone for at least a year! Are there even any contracts for such high end phones that run < 12 months?
Posted in Dumb salesmen are hurting us – Nokia CEO
No applications
I keep seeing adverts for various smart phone applications on the tube - Kabbee, Hail-o, various dating sites, you know the usual nonsense. They all have iOS and Android logos. None have a Windows logo. I'm sure that Microsoft is pushing these businesses to make a WinPho version, but the attempts seem half hearted. Even when there are WinPho versions, they are not promoted in any way - after all, what's the point when no one has a WinPhone?
This alone would be enough to make me discard it as a 'burning platform'. Or maybe two burning platforms colliding in the middle of the night, long after the proverbial boat has sailed.
@fajensen
Two words: Pirate Party
That's what I'm wondering - if you want to run Linux, why would you be looking at Azure anyway when there are plenty of more 'natural' options such as Amazon's offerings.
N-Rays?
I can't help but be reminded of this little incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray
X Server still requires root privileges
I'm as much a fan of linux as the next guy, but X still runs as root. They are edging towards fixing this, but there is still some way to go. And even then, the DRM (no, not that sort!) components will be running in kernel space. Oh, and for legacy cards you will probably always have to run X as root.
The thing is, modern graphics cards need some fancy memory management to work well, and that sort of management can only be done efficiently (or at all) when the code is running with kernel level privileges.
Crash the machine is the first step
If they can crash your machine there is a very good chance that with carefully constructed code, they can gain elevated permissions - without blue screening the computer.
Clove website doesn't inspire confidence
I mean, not only have they written shite ASP.Net code, they've not even configured IIS to hide the errors from users. No way are *they* getting my credit card details, even if I had £550 to blow on a fondleslab!
"[ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: input]
System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.IsMatch(String input) +7043206
touch.touchAPI.mobileRedirect() in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.clove.co.uk\touchAPI.aspx.vb:86
ASP.viewproduct_aspx.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.clove.co.uk\viewproduct.aspx:23
System.Web.Util.CalliHelper.EventArgFunctionCaller(IntPtr fp, Object o, Object t, EventArgs e) +25
System.Web.Util.CalliEventHandlerDelegateProxy.Callback(Object sender, EventArgs e) +42
System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +132
System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +66
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +2428"
No, it doesn't
On the contrary, it makes the point that developers are pretty pissed that their investments in .NET and Silverlight are looking bad right now because everything is moving to WinRT and an updated COM. Speaking as one such, why should I trust that WinRT will survive as a long term platform?
Posted in NEWSFLASH: Chips cheaper than disks
Depends how much you want to spend...
http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&q=SSD+512G&hl=en&tbm=shop
You are subsribed to the beta channel
If you have a beta version, you are probably subscribed to the beta channel. You can check in Help | About. If you are, then you will always have the current beta version. You used to be able to switch channels, but in version 7 (or was it 6? They fly by so fast these days!) they disabled that option. Instead, you have to download the release package. The nice thing is, you can install release and beta in different directories so you always have the current release and beta versions available for testing.
Posted in Apple iOS 5's hidden 3D revealed
Checks NoScript...
Yup, its already got an option to block WebGL. Bring it on, if you think I'll notice the difference!
Ummm....NoScript?
Posted in RIM stands, staggers, falls again
Call me paranoid...
...but BBM goes on the blink six weeks after large scale riots are organised with the help of BBM. Having trouble with that government monitory software patch, are you RIM?
Actually, hardware vendors do mostly want to get out of beige box business - high volumes, but very low margins: IBM got, HP want to. Only the very cheap far eastern manufacturers seem interested these days.
A little history...
> my (great-)grandparents generation had nothing, were given nothing, fought a war for little gratitude and still didn't go rioting through the streets about it.
What, apart from the Tonypandy Riots, the Battle of Bow Street, the Battle of Cable Street and Notting Hill Race Riots to name a few? I'll stop in the 50's given your (great-)grandparents modifier, but there certainly were riots in the early 20th century. None in the 40s... we must have been busy with something else...
@nematoad
> If that includes icons then why should they be denied them?
Indeed, and KDE allows them to do just that and has done since 4.1. The absence of desktop icons in 4.0 lies somewhere between bug and missing feature - it was always expected that support would be there in the form of the "folder desktop view", but for whatever reason it didn't make it in to 4.0. In hindsight maybe that should have been a priority and a blocking bug/feature.
The current releases of KDE4 can work much like KDE3. Since you like KDE 3.5, I can assume that you don't want all the animations, transparency, desktop searching, indexing and general glitz. That's fine, neither do I for the most part. And that's why there are options to disable those features.
Configurability really is KDEs strong point...
Change for the sake of change?
I don't know enough about Gnome to comment, but in the case of KDE it was badly needed change. Many things weren't possible with the 3.x frameworks and the whole thing was beginning to strain under the pressures of a modern, composited desktop. The first four or five iterations of KDE 4 were unquestionably painful, but the changes to the underlying frameworks are beginning to pay dividends as demonstrated by the exciting new form factors supported by KDE - all without screwing up the desktop form factor.
Maybe the Gnome people are aiming for similar flexibility with all that java (or is it java script?) on the desktop.
KDE 4.6 is a good, stable platform now despite the bumpy start and I'm looking forward to trying 4.7 sometime soon. These early releases are much like Vista - they need to happen, but are necessarily painful as the underlying technologies shift from mid 1990s to early 2010s.
That said: I don't like what I've seen of the Gnome (or Unity) desktops and doubt I would be comfortable there. I am too conservative and need my Windows style task bar, menu and window decorations. At least with KDE 4 (even the early versions) you could get something very close to that familiar environment. That doesn't seem possible the Gnome 3.
I gave up...
...and switched to the Exchange web interface. Quite nice if you run it in Google Chrome. I don't have much use for office apps appart from Outlook so it made life a lot easier. For a small company (and ours is a small company) it makes me wonder if the next step is to drop our internal mail server and use a hosted solution.
Over a decade?
I have the Enterprise version of XP at work and there is no sign of multi-language. Perhaps you mean Vista/7 - I don't know, I only used it for 10 minutes. But Vista was released at the end of 2006 - hardly a decade.
I'm interested though - does this allow my French Girlfriend and Austrian mother to log in to my PC (usually English) and get a fully localized desktop and all applications in their native languages? Or do I need to do a new install as I recall doing repeatedly in my dark distant past as a localization engineer :-|
Nokia, take note
> ...Google is looking to be at the centre of connecting people...
Oh Nokia, how you have failed us.
If that is the case...
You have to ask why one earth are the vendors still using vfat? Can the phone not itself not include suitable ext3/4 Windows drivers that get installed when you first connect the phone? Or do the vendors just like getting punched in the face by the school bully?
More likely the rest of the world will change
The U.S. can and will threaten all and sundry with economic sanctions unless they 'normalize' their patent law to match theirs. The UK patent law is already (more or less) back in line and I'm sure there is plenty of pressure on the other EU countries to follow suit.
>remember that most of this IP is *still* only technically valid in the US.
No, its valid here in the U.K. too.
Unfortunately...
..because the data is not relational, they will accidentally send the pensioners cheese rolling and primary school kids on a drinking binge. The morris dancers will, thankfully, turn up too late to perform and the bad poetry will be poorly attended because everyone thinks it will be morris dancing.
More to the point...
There is a lot of pressure on the EU to adopt US style patent laws that would allow software patents. Software patents are already granted in the UK, though there was a brief spell from 2006-208 when they were not permissible. US style patent law is in the UK already, pressure on Europe to 'normalise' is intense.
A patent on collecting payments
Fuck me, how the hell did they come up with that one?
Posted in Ten... DAB kitchen radios
Another DRM!?
So now we have at least three different DRMs, all in related fields. Couldn't they have chosen another acronym! *confused*
Sort of...
Except my understanding is that those license fees to Microsoft are for patents and would have to be paid irrespective of what the OS platform was.
Administrator?
Are you joking? You log in as an administrator by default on a OS X? What? Have they learned nothing?
I have very little experience of smart phones...
...but having seen friends fumble and struggle with both an iPhone and an HTC Android I can honestly say that these devices have a long way to go before I would want one. In that sense the market is wide open - if someone comes up with a platform that is stable, reliable, fast and intuitive (none of the current platforms achieve all of these) then the incumbents will be in for a hard time.
Whether WinPhone is that platform, I can not say - I've not had any experience of it at all. It is clear to me, though, that Google and Apple need to step up several gears if they are to stay ahead. Microsoft has some 40 billion and it is not beyond them to literally start buying customers - whether that is phone networks, manufacturers or end users - to get their product to the No.1 slot. I say this as someone who is not a great fan of MS as a warning: Do not underestimate Microsoft.
Posted in Otellini: 'Intel won't build ARM chips'
AMD
You've got to wonder why AMD don't get in on this trick - they have a great mobile graphics core, but lack a decent mobile processor. Put their GPU together with an ARM CPU and they are on to a sure fire winner. And best of all - the open source drivers for both already exist.
Why do they need to bother buying it?
Patents. You may not have noticed but the last year has been all out patent war in the mobile space. If WP7 is to stand any chance at all, it needs an arsenal of mobile patents.
Still, this story seems like nothing more than a dodgy rumour.
Do. Not. Want.
Seriously, are there any OpenSource apps built on Mono? I can't imagine what reasoning would lead someone to deploy an ASP.Net web app on Linux using Mono. I recall there used to be an app included with Gnome that was based on Mono, but it was replaced amid a chorus of disapproval. So who exactly is using Mono? And who of these would pay to keep this new company viable?
Patents
My guess is they are buying up patents. It still seems a hefty price to me, but if they can wield them against Google, Apple and the Open Source community to block anyone else completing in the VOIP market then they my be on to something.
It depends....
On how well written the program is. I've worked on legacy apps in the past that will never get ported to ARM simply because they make too many assumptions about byte order/size. Heck, I don't think it would be practical to port one of those apps to 64bit, yet alone an architecture that swaps the endienness!
Opinion
David McLeman
My 25 years of comical IT buzzwords
Tim Worstall
Time to take a sniff at the coffee, perhaps
Chris Mellor
Will they have to drag him back like last time?
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