* Posts by Steve J. Rapaport

27 publicly visible posts • joined 24 May 2007

Judge blasts Cisco's 'unmitigated gall' in ex-exec's arrest

Steve J. Rapaport
Thumb Down

So what's the punishment for abusing the system to imprison an innocent man?

If I took some guy and imprisoned him for 28 days, I'd be jailed.

If I bore false witness against him instead and caused the system to imprison him, I'd be jailed.

If a corporation and a prosecutor do it, who goes to jail? Corporations have the "rights" of people in the US, but apparently not the responsibilities. And cannot be punished. Hm.

Sapphire Edge HD

Steve J. Rapaport

This point is for me the value of a vertically-integrated product

When I plug in my new media center/computer/internet access, and something like sound doesn't work, it is worth money to me to be able to call ONE vendor and get help.

When hardware and software and OS come from three different vendors, all you'll get is fingerpointing.

And that's why (sorry), I still happily pay extra for an Apple. If someone else were to compete with them designing hardware, software, and OS with equal effort and testing them together, I'd consider that company too. But life is too short to waste on incompatibility scavenger hunts.

Nokia launches new corporate font

Steve J. Rapaport

ELOP

no you are reading it backwards, it's POLE.

Steve J. Rapaport
Happy

Laughing out loud

Some might see it as a really plain-looking capital S.

Acer locates 'missing' tablet strategy

Steve J. Rapaport
FAIL

Acer's new horseless carriage!

Now with detachable horse for those times when one of those newfangled 'engines' just won't do.

iPad propels Apple into top-three PC vendor placement

Steve J. Rapaport

Market segment, guys, not hardware capability

Maybe it's because this is Reg Hardware and it's full of propeller heads who live and breathe hardware specs. But only such geekery would confuse a smartphone with an iPad in a market survey, just because their hardware and software capabilities are basically the same. The above comment about smart cars just highlights your confusion.

Categories are, in general, blurry things, and depend on the domain you're comparing in. I'm racking my brains for funny analogies and failing, but in a market share survey, marketing is the domain, not hardware or software capability. Hence anything shown to occupy the same market segment should be in the category 'PC', and anything sold to a different market segment, even if it's identical in capability, should not.

Who will rid me of these obsolete PCs?

Steve J. Rapaport

Some good ideas here

But nobody's mentioned Freecycle, sort of a city-wide version of the "leave it outside" idea.

Freecycle.org is pretty active in Canada http://www.freecycle.org/group/CA/ and basically you can put the whole lot of it up on a single posting, and people will come and take it away, gratefully. Not much different from the leaving it outside except that you get a 'face to face' thank you. But somehow that helps.

Also the selling on ebay as a pallet job lot seems like a good idea. Whatever it sells for (use the auction) is obviously correct market value and that can be used as evidence.

Cell phone search needs no warrant, say Cal Supremes

Steve J. Rapaport
Grenade

Unless of course you have email on your phone

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/15/email_fourth_amendment/ says email is not subject to warrantless search.

Of course if you read your email on your mobile phone, it's public property. Of course.

Apple Facetime flings out frightening random calls

Steve J. Rapaport
FAIL

or...

Faceslime?

RedFaceTime?

iOS 4.2: An 'ace' for iPad, a 'meh' for iPhone

Steve J. Rapaport

You're both new here

All the Register's reviews of everything are laden with spite and mockery. Apple no more or less than anyone. And if you're looking for a review that isn't someone else's opinion, you'll need to write your own. What part of "review" did you not understand?

Steve J. Rapaport
Thumb Up

Seems good to me!

It's always easy to whine, but I'm a happy camper now, even though my iPad crashed while updating and had to be wiped and restored over a few hours to work again.

The only real features added that I can use are the "multi" tasking, the folders, and the "Find me" feature. But those are *really damn useful* features. I am now able to do effective webmastering from the ipad (which requires an ftp program and an email program and an editor all up simultaneously). I couldn't before, so it's a big productivity boost.

I have some confidence that if I lose my iPad I can find it again, or at least wipe it.

I have some ability to organize my apps.

I am happy. All the other features were not important anyway. All hail the Mind of Steve.

Samsung plans to smash Android rivals..what about the iPad?

Steve J. Rapaport
Jobs Halo

Less is sometimes more

Not a total apple fanboi but I just have to point out that it may not be "arrogance" for Apple to have done research on user size preferences and picked the one that seemed to work best.

Similarly it may not be profitable to just shotgun the market with every possible screen size and hope that the extra sales makes up for the added support and developer load, and the market fragmentation. Sometimes you do better by offering fewer models, especially when each one requires separate development and support, and often a different market target.

Jobsian Vendetta - Flash stabbed by Mac the Knife

Steve J. Rapaport
Jobs Halo

Get a life, Mr. Metz

I thought Jobs' letter was straightforward. I can't see any of the hypocrisy you gleefully point out, honest.

Jobs has demonstrated for decades now that he has two chief concerns in life: Providing an excellent user experience, and making lots of money. All of his reasons come down to one of those or the other.

If opening up his platform to lowest-common-denominator cross-platform toolkits threatens both these goals, he is well within his rights (and integrity) to put a stop to it if he can. Simple.

Nokia confirms 'iPhone killer' handset in pipeline

Steve J. Rapaport
Jobs Halo

Bjarne Stroustrup on telephone UI

"I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone."

Until this is no longer funny, the iPhone will have a market.

A little more Conversation, to get in on the action

Steve J. Rapaport

Not so sure about the "speed of development"

I'm not sure if this was a feature added quickly after raves from iPhone users, as you say, or added slowly after raves from Treo and Blackberry users, 4 years or more ago.

In which case it's glacially slow, and not a credit to the Nokia developer's community at all.

And if, as the N95 user above mentions, it's not handled well in terms of memory and speed, it may yet be an unfinished feature.

Malware spectre haunts Adobe Reader

Steve J. Rapaport

Is anyone still using Adobe Reader?

Adobe Reader is so huge and slow, so cumbersome and awful to start up, so painful with its constant demands to be endlessly updated, that everyone in my company stopped using it ages ago.

If you want to read PDF documents (with or without your web browser), you can use lightweight free alternatives such as Foxit Reader http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php and say goodbye to Adobe Bleeder forever.

Then this little vuln announcement won't bother you.

Samsung iPhone rival to hit UK in November

Steve J. Rapaport

The kindest comment I could make

...is that it's not destined for the same market as the iPhone.

It's ugly, has a user interface that's strictly 2002, lacks wifi, and has a keyboard that seems to be too small and clunky for two-hand touchtype, yet too large for thumbs.

It may compete with the TREO or the Windows Mobile or Symbian smartphone market, but it doesn't have the cool of an iPhone. Not even 20% of that cool. It's warm and clammy by comparison.

Canadian police detain Nigerian in alleged 419 scam

Steve J. Rapaport

Those wily Canadians

Can't fool them... at least not into paying retail.

Even when being defrauded, they always insist on 15% off...

Orange network throws a wobbler

Steve J. Rapaport

I'd hold Orange to a higher standard than Skype

...I think Orange and Vodafone charge much more and offer a real telephony service, and must be held to a much higher standard.

Which is a shame since they don't seem to go down any less often than Skype.

Apple slashes iPhone prices

Steve J. Rapaport

Anti-Apple? Well, sort of.

Someone writes:

"To The reg - get rid of that anti apple chip on your shoulder.... It does not do you any favours to be so biased but I guess if you were real journalists you would realise that."

To be fair, I think The Reg is pretty uniformly anti-everyone. I haven't seen them being kind to Linux, or Wikipedia. or Microsoft, or anyone for that matter. They're equal-opportunity anti-everyone, and that's pretty fair.

Monster.com attack hits federal job search site

Steve J. Rapaport

You must be using some definition of the word "losers" I'm not familiar with

I have news for you, "Monster teaching".

Most companies with web sites don't know how to protect the databases they make accessible from the internet. Companies are started by businessmen, not security experts. Businessmen tend to believe what their security consultants tell them.

In general, business people don't spend money on avoiding risks unless they've seen the bad things happen once already, to themselves, someone they know, or someone in the newspapers.

So the "losers" are those who trustingly put their personal details on a website with a silly name, expecting that some businessman just out to make money would also spend it trying to protect the information of millions of strangers.

Now that the disaster has happened, things may get a little tighter in future. But don't bet your life on it.

Telecel Zimbabwe to lose its licence

Steve J. Rapaport

@conan

Actually, Conan, history has shown that even the rich African countries are incredibly corrupt and drive their citizens into poverty.

Nigeria's a great example -- it has as much oil as your average middle-eastern sheikdom, but so much corruption that the country remains painfully poor while the elected officials and their families get disgustingly rich.

Knowing this, I feel Jeremy may indeed be correct in blaming the populace. Those who cannot be troubled to find and promote, and eventually elect, honest good leaders, are bound to live in dungholes.

Not that I'm being smug about any of the luckier western nations. As people in, for example, the USA, become more contemptuous of book-larnin' and politishuns, they too will end up with what they deserve.

Learn political discourse, or end up like Nigeria. The choice is clear, worldwide.

SCO 'disappointed' as shares plunge 70 per cent

Steve J. Rapaport

It's not "Not dead yet", it's "Just a flesh wound!"

Wrong Python reference, guys. Here's the one that applies:

Arthur: You are indeed brave, Sir Knight, but I won.

Black Knight: Oh, had enough, have you?

Arthur: Look, you stupid offensive man, you've got no arms left.

Black Knight: Yes I have.

Arthur: Look!

Black Knight: Just a flesh wound.

Arthur: Look, stop that.

Black Knight: Coward! Coward!

Arthur: Look, I'll have your leg. Right!

Arthur cuts off the Black Knight's leg.

Black Knight: Right, I'll do something bad to you for that!

Arthur: You'll what?

Black Knight: Come here!

Arthur: What are you going to do, bleed on me?

Black Knight: I can't be beaten!

Court denies stay of internet radio execution

Steve J. Rapaport

Re: Only in America

Pandora http://www.pandora.com/ is a brilliant, innovative service that lets you define what ISN'T rubbish and hear just that, while continually introducing you to new music you like.

And by the way, it's American. And in a lovely gesture to us non-Americans, Pandora has neglected to include IP filtering to prevent non-Americans from using this excellent service.

But there's no way Pandora can pay the increased royalties either. So there goes innovation and individualized, non-rubbish radio. Not just this one experiment, but future ones that might be even better are about to be aborted.

I think it's about a lot more than one country.

Microsoft tells Ultimate Extras fans to 'hang on'

Steve J. Rapaport

How do these extras differ from typical Tucows shareware?

Cool -- I can pay 50 dollars extra and get $20 worth of shareware I could have downloaded from Tucows. And maybe in another few months, another $20 worth will arrive, free of charge!

Even better, it's Microsoft-branded shareware, guaranteed to be incompatible with at least one major driver or application, and guaranteed to eat memory and require "critical updates" every week.

Somebody please stop me hyperventilating.

The Mirror website cracked

Steve J. Rapaport

Lady of Shallott unavailable for comment

Those round the web were forced to bide;

The Mirror crack'd from side to side;

"The curse is come upon me," cried

The Lady of Shalott.

Apologies to Tennyson

Apple's Jobs urges Gore to run for President

Steve J. Rapaport

Apple's Gore urges Jobs to run for President

Apple director Al Gore has been trying to push former Apple and Pixar wunderkind Steve Jobs to take a crack at the presidential race.

Gore revealed his fruitless desires for his fellow Apple board member to don the cap of Commander in Chief in response to yesterday's similar announcement from Jobs that Gore should throw his hat in the ring.

"America is ready for a visionary like Steve Jobs, one who can generate his own reality-distortion field", said Gore enthusiastically. "I will reluctantly pick up Steve's role at Apple instead, as Steve goes on to spend his personal fortune running against rigged Diebold voting machines and incumbent-initiated illegal disenfranchisement schemes. I wish him the best of luck!"