Posts by fluffy

Win3.1 didn't have long filenames

You may be confusing it with NT 3.1, which was the first Microsoft OS to have LFN support. Windows 3.1 did not - that feature didn't make it into their consumer operating systems until Windows '95.

Not the first!

Consider all the various worms that worked by spreading links to IE6-exploiting trojans via AIM/MSN/etc., and there is another recent one which spreads via Steam messaging.

Does not compute

"But unlike netbooks and notebooks, ... NetTabs are lighter and cheaper."

vs.

"... consumers will likely “demand big upfront subsidies” because NetTabs will cost more than most smartphones, Deloitte added."

At least in the US, most smartphones cost around $1-200 (subsidized) or $4-600 (unsubsidized), while decent netbooks start at around $100 (subsidized) or $2-300 (unsubsidized). So this seems like there's probably some apples-to-oranges comparison going on here...

How long before Better Keyboard does this too?

Better Keyboard is my Android keyboard of choice, and they're constantly adding new features, other peoples' patents be damned. Considering some of the stuff they've added (such as the Blackberry-esque two-letter-per-key mode) it should be pretty easy for them to tweak the skin to do this too.

I had an N-Gage QD

it was a decent Symbian phone, although its J2ME really sucked for games (ironically), and it worked fine for me up until the day it bricked itself because it ran out of memory and got stuck in a perpetual reboot loop with no way to fix it aside from sending it in to Nokia with a check for $28 to flash the firmware. I opted not to.

@ben ryves

Android actually provides a list of the potentially-hazardous APIs that an app uses before you even install it.

This is NOT the same as modding a console

This is not for the purpose of being able to play pirated games. This is so that people can run their homebrew apps on the calculators they own. What would they bootleg from the TI calculators by cracking them? The same crappy firmware that they want to get AWAY from?

It's also a bit rubbish to just say to "use an HP instead." What makes HPs so supposedly superior? Software that doesn't suck. This is so that people can install whatever software they want.

Mismatched percentages

I think the whole 95% approval/20% rejection thing is a simple case of vague wording. I took it to mean that of the 80% of apps which are approved, that approval comes within 14 days for 95% of them.

@cynic 2

There are actually two different DRM systems on the Kindle (Mobipocket and Topaz), although they're both tied to the same device key which are generated from a single source.

Ubuntu on Mac questions

There's no need for Parallels (or VMWare) to run Ubuntu since, as Galus posted, VirtualBox works quite well for that. However, if you already have VMWare for some reason, Ubuntu runs just dandy under it.

As far as compiling Linux apps to run natively, it depends a lot on the app. Many of them work without a lot of trouble; you can use MacPorts or Fink to manage the UNIX-space libraries that most modern Linux apps rely on, and most terminal-based apps will just compile and work out of the box without any trouble. For GUI apps, however, you're generally better off finding an OSX-native alternative, as X11 is a bit of a mess under OSX (simply because OSX's windowing model is so fundamentally different than X11's).

Some apps like GIMP do have decently-supported ports (which still run under X11 but they hide the fiddlier bits of it - sadly, the various OSX-native GTK ports seem to always be in a perpetually stalled state), but there are so many better things than them on the Mac anyway (such as Pixelmator, which is pretty cheap and while it's no Photoshop it blows GIMP away).

I like how "downloading music" was his defense

Did he just self-incriminate?

Of all the things for them to not start with a K

Traditionally, "Kaizen" is transliterated with the letter K. Why would KDE, who have the maddening habit of shoehorning a K to the beginning of every word whether it fits or not, choose this time to stop?

Really nothing new

As a kid I loved Arthur Clarke's novels, and I recall that many of the older editions would have full-page ads scattered about - not just for other novels, but for things like subscriptions to TIME Magazine.

They'd better watch out

when they discover that people can also get remotely-hosted porn via Safari.

My phone was broken but it got better

I tried upgrading while at work yesterday, and iTunes got as far as installing the new firmware and then indicating there was an "unknown error," which put it in an endless cycle of trying to recover the firmware and continuing to fail.

When I got home and did the phone recovery from my usual sync point, though, it went through just fine. I did end up losing all my notes, though, and I haven't bothered to check my various games' saved data just yet.

In the end, the one feature I actually cared about (stereo bluetooth music) turns out to not even be available on the first-gen iPhone anyway, which means either I can keep on putting up with crappy "iPhone-compatible" headphones, or I can upgrade to a 3G just for that one feature (and the ability to use my normal damn headphones) which isn't worth the extra $15/month for data service.

The update bricked my EDGE iPhone

After it installed OS 3.0, it gave me an "unknown error" error, and had to go into recovery mode. Recovery would only try reinstalling OS 3.0, which of course failed with the same error.

So now I'm without my shiny JesusPhone. Good thing I have some spare GSM phones rattling around, which frankly were better at a lot of things anyway. I might just switch back for a while.

@Daniel 2

That was exactly the thought that first came to mind when I started reading this article as well. That would actually be pretty neat.

@peter simpson

The issue they're fixing is multiple people using the same handle, not a single person using multiple handles. The first one is easy to fix, while the second one is basically impossible. Fortunately they're not trying to fix the second one.

Sadly, it's gone now

Twitter does have an anti-impersonation stance, and has been known to nuke impostors before. Sadly, that included the original @TinaFey. The (supposedly) real @tina_fey isn't nearly as funny or insightful.

Regarding Yahoo,

In their years of relevancy, their server components were all written in C++ (most of the site) and LISP (their horrible storefront service); since then they have apparently migrated to PHP and C++, respectively.

A better CRT emulation

One of the screen savers in the xscreensaver collection (which sadly I can't seem to find ever since updating to Ubuntu 9.04) does a VERY convincing job of looking like an older dysfunctional CRT. When I first saw it running on my laptop I had to do a major double-take, because it was absolutely spot-on.

And you know what they say...

"All toasters toast toast."

- Mario

My tool of choice

The first time I opened my G4 Mini (to upgrade the RAM) I used a putty knife as recommended, and found it to be difficult and fiddly. The second time (to replace a head hard drive) I found that simply using a nice stiff bench knife (also known as a dough knife, pastry scraper, and a bunch of other things - basically that large flat kitchen utensil used to lift up chopped ingredients) works exceptionally well.

I also found that standing it on the front of the case instead of the top helped immensely - that way I could use gravity to my advantage instead of having to fight against it.

@ "how many fingers"

The picture is a little confusing to the eye but her middle finger happens to be lined up with her index finger in just such a way to make her hand look malformed. You can barely make out her middle finger's nail just in front of her index finger's second knuckle.

I see it more as a step forward

Okay, so RAM is slightly more difficult to replace, but how often do you do that? More importantly, swapping out the hard drive is now VASTLY easier.

What? It works just fine for me

At least here in the US, iGoogle and all its related things (iReader in particular) are still working fine in all their iPhone-optimized glory.

Javascript has improved since iPhone 1.0

Now there are several excellent Javascript interpreters which support JIT, which means that it's actually quite possible to get quite good performance from it nowadays. Sure, it's not going to be as fast as C++ (or probably even as fast as JIT Java) but it'll still be pretty competitive.

Also, for network-bandwidth-heavy things like Jaiku (as mentioned in the article), it's not like the JS app has to individually process every byte of data - if they do something like implement a Socks server (like NetShare on the iPhone) there's very little heavy lifting that has to happen in the app itself. It'd just be passing large byte arrays around, for the most part.

Sleep-based behavior can be wacky

I had a friend in college who was an avid MUDder. He decided to give it up when one morning he awoke to find that his computer was on, and when he connected to his favorite MUD he had a bunch of messages from people complimenting him on his excellent gaming the previous night (which he had no memory of).

@John Gamble

I believe the newest wheel iPods (meaning Classic and Nano) have a VoiceOver-like interface in them, where it reads out the current selected item, which helps both blind users and people who don't want to take their eyes off the road while they fiddle with their song selections. And of course the physical interface itself is extremely touch-friendly.

@Andy

Uh, you realize that Flash is an Adobe product too, right?

A few

mobe

freetard

EPIC FAIL

lulz