Slashdot Mirror

Javascript's gotten fast/mature enough to be taken seriously as a real programming language. Google in particular have made some truly impressive progress with Chrome.

Although the server-side Java applet seems annoying to have, and indeed hack-y, it's awesome that we're starting to see "real" applications in the browser.

We'll hopefully start seeing lots more of this sort of thing, thanks to Apple's "war on flash."

It will be embedded into the hardware, just like the Intel processor serial number. Remember that? Or the yellow dots that are printed on every color printer to identify the printer by serial number, date and time of printout etc. Try scanning currency with a scanner, just see what happens. Intel Serial Number http://www.geek.com/glossary/P/psn-processor-serial-number/ Yellow Dots http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801663.html Scanning Currency http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2004/01/61877

I'm not "creative" because I see these efforts as the crap they are? Ask 100 people who aren't in marketing how they feel about online advertising. Guess what, 99% of them hate it. It's not because it's not creative. It's because "creative" is somehow intrusive. "They're not clicking on our ad, Bob." "you're right, Jim, make it blink, and scroll along the page as they scroll." I actually worked for 2 years at CNN.com on multimedia projects. I'm all too familiar with Flash and how artists want to use it.

You throw in math with some odd example, but as it turns out I have taken quite a bit of math from a very respected engineering school and probably have a lot more insight into what math is and is not than you seem to think. I'm not sure the relevance of your insult though, since my original comment had nothing to do with math.

And you're right; those idiots who now create worthless content in Flash will be using some other tool to make worthless content in HTML5. The plus side there is that I can block that using AdBlock too.

Yeah, I think advertisers are the real reason why the Mozilla devs are adamantly against making NoScript functionality a core part of Firefox.

However, Google's added the functionality to the recent nightly builds of Chrome, so as soon as it stabilizes I'm just going to switch. Mozilla can pull their heads out of their asses and start serving users rather than advertisers, or lose their market share.

[Opinions mine, not my employer's.]

All of a sudden Newegg's "counterfeit Intel i7" with its plastic "cooler" makes sense!

Geek.com has a somewhat-related article up today about why people pirate DVDs: http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/why-people-pirate-movies-20100219/

Now I've never pirated a DVD* and wouldn't recommend it, but I sympathize with the reasoning. Those preview screens are awful. Especially the unskippable ones on Sesame Street DVDs that tell you how much good money given to Sesame Workshop does. Hello? I bought the DVD and my kid just wants to see Ernie, Grover and crew. He doesn't care that "kids around the world are counting." At least let me hit "Menu" to skip by your commercial and get to the show!

* Full disclosure: I have ripped my own DVDs but don't share them out nor do I download rips others have made.

How in the world did you get +5 Insightful? And while making a claim for rationality at that! Let's break apart your comment, most of which is patently incorrect.

USB stick: You're kinda correct. Apple offers an adapter that provides USB. Source.

Office software: iWork (source) was announced and demonstrated at the keynote speech where they introduced the iPad and will be out on day one. Microsoft has indicated that they are considering the Office Suite for it (source). As others said, Omni Group is developing their software as well (source). The fact that you missed all of this doesn't speak well for your personal knowledge on the subject, since it's been covered quite a bit.

IDE: You're probably correct. Apple doesn't like interpreted code running on the iPhone (and presumably the iPad), so it'd be pretty hard to have an IDE that did anything useful. Then again, it wasn't exactly made for that sort of purpose (it's essentially a media consumption device, not a full-fledged media creation device). Also, IDEs are extremely niche. Not important to about 99% of the people buying it.

Flash and Java: You're right. Java I'm personally iffy on, but good riddance to Flash, I say. With YouTube already serving up h.264 videos with HTML5 and Hulu rumored to be prepping the same (source), I don't see this is an issue. And if you're a Flash application developer who doesn't want to learn Objective-C, Adobe put out a Flash-to-iPhone compiler months ago which should work with the iPad.

Price: $499 for the base iPad model, vs. $489 for the Kindle DX, which was about half the price the analysts were predicting, yet it does much more than the DX. Besides the obvious and numerous software advantages, the hardware is better (3.3GB vs. ~15.5GB usable space, better CPU, 3G only vs. 802.11a/b/g/n and 3G), with the DX's only redeeming factor being its eInk display (which is only useful for B&W text display). I fail to see how the iPad compares unfavorably in terms of price. I'd say it lands somewhere between "great bargain" and "perfectly reasonable".

Battery Life: The iPad gets 10 hours of actual use when watching video, which is the worst-case. It also gets "140-something" hours when just listening to music (source), and it can be in standby for about a month. That compares very well against a laptop, and decently against the DX, given the DX's different needs.

Connectivity: Seriously? It's got better connectivity than the Kindle and better than most laptops out there. 802.11a/b/g/n, EDGE, and 3G for the iPad. You're talking out of your ass if you say it lacks connectivity.

Usability: I don't know what you mean by "test editor", but if you mean a simulator for use on a dev machine, there is one, and it's already out for developers. As for usability in general, you're kidding, right? Even though there are always some that disagree, general consensus is that the iPhone is extremely usable (You've actually held one at some point, right? As a geek, it's worth handling and studying simply because of what it accomplishes).

Multitasking: You're kinda correct. The iPhone and iPad do multitasking, but it isn't available to third-parties, just first-party software (e.g. my mail gets checked and text messages get received while I'm playing games). Regardless, it's basically a straw man since push notifications meet the needs for most third party apps, while improved speed on

Seriously, if you have a couple of people in an office and no full time admin Macs save you a small fortune.

So, fit for business? Yes.

Ready for the enterprise?

No where near ready for enterprise. At least not one that needs to be online. It would be a security nightmare to have to handle and deal with in consideration with it's patching history.

http://www.techspot.com/news/35108-apple-fixes-sixmonthsold-critical-java-bug.html 6 months to fix a critical Java bug.

http://www.computerworlduk.com/technology/security-products/prevention/news/index.cfm?newsid=18393&tsb=share This time a a Flash bug (and flash is shipped with every Apple. And both of these are just in the last few months.

If I was the IT person and had to have this talk with my managers, it would be fun to say the least.

"So our Macs are vulnerable to a critical XYZ bug, and I see these were already fixed 3 weeks ago on all the Windows, Linux and Unix platforms. So that just means only the Macs need this fix. How long with it take for you to fix this problem?"

"I can't.... Apple hasn't fixed it yet and typically takes 6+ weeks to fix these issues or pass on the fixes for them."

"So, our top of the line systems, that we paid a premium for so we could supposedly be protected from many security issues, are just sitting online exposed to the world and can't be fixed. Even though every other OS on the planet has been fixed for weeks?"

"iYes."

Thinking about that, it would be a fun conversation to watch play out. But, seriously, this is why they aren't a good idea for a big business.

And lets not mention bugs like the one in Snow Leopard that wipes your whole home directory that Apple again took weeks to fix. http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/the-second-snow-leopard-update-reportedly-fixes-the-user-data-deletion-bug-20091019/ Another fun one to explain how everything done since the last backup (what? Typically 24 hours?) just disappeared. This would be bad on a business level and a moral level. Explaining that what at least the one person did will have to be re-done since for once the dog more or less really did eat the homework.

I'm not saying that only Mac's have these issues, but when they are major ones like these other company's make it a top priority to address and patch them, where Apple seems to take a back seat.

Duplicating the existing software means making another phone app, browser, etc. It has no bearing on media services (ie. Netflix) as suggested by the author of the article. I gave you a couple of already existent examples. A content provider can push their own content to their iPhone OS apps all they want, there's no restriction there (aside from occasional restrictions imposed by AT&T about streaming things over the 3G connection, but I think those have all been lifted). I mean, half the damned purpose of this iPad is to consume content from other media providers, as shown in the original demo!

When I came into the video game industry in 1997, the Nintendo 64 was one the way out. Duck Dodgers was the last game I worked on for that platform.

I think Sony has a bigger problem with their consoles. Playstation 1 was still kicking long after Playstation 2 came out. Playstation 2 was still kicking long after Playstation 3 came out. That might change if Sony comes out with a Playstation 4 sooner.

Actually it would have cost you $20 and 20 minutes to keep all your Windows settings while upgrading to Windows 7, 32 or 64 bit. I used it a couple of times when Windows 7 first came out for clients going from XP to Windows 7 (The Vista clients just want to forget Vista ever existed, thanks) and it was fast and easy. Oh and it will let you upgrade from as far back as Win2K to Windows 7.

Which, as you should know if you have used Windows for any length of time, is par for the course. You pretty much need third party tools for most tasks, because the default tools suck.

For those who missed the changes Lenovo has made to Esc and Del keys, this article has a nice picture.

Even better is the Pixel Qi displays, which have a backlight switch. When off, the display is reflective and at least as easy to read as an e-ink display. With backlight on, it displays color video with usable refresh rates. I'm super-excited about ARM-based color multi-touch net-tablets with multi-day battery life when in E-book mode. Pop it into it's charging stand, and you have a netbook with wireless keyboard. Our family may need one for each of us.

OMG you're right.

DIE QUICKTIME DIE! (and take RealPlayer with you!)

I've yet to see a good Linux/Unix distribution that offers centralized patch management in an easily administered manner to compare with WSUS.
Kernel issues still require a reboot.

Kernel issues do not always require a reboot.
Most of the time you can have a run-time patching within a separate LKM (Loadable Kernel Module).

Check this out for some more info about run-time patching

Once you find an app that interests you, it just takes one click to acquire it and have it installed on your iPhone.

One click. Oh, and then enter your password. Which better be secure, since it's linked to your credit card number. And a good secure password includes upper case, lower case, numbers, and symbols randomly interspersed, making it a pain in the ass to enter into the iPhone. The app is free? Apple doesn't care, they damn well want your password.

As far as the customers are concerned, the iTunes App Store is a smashing success.

My first generation iPhone is perfectly capable of recording low frame-rate video. Apps have been developed to do exactly that. Where exactly do I download them? Oops. I don't get to, Apple refused to let them ship.

iTunes for Windows is festering crap, and the ITMS on the iPhone itself sucks for following a podcast. I need a dedicated podcast tracking and downloading system. Hey, there's an app for that! Oops, denied. But Apple kindly changed their mind, and simply required the developer to remove all of the useful functionality and turning it into a crippled streaming solution..

I'm a big fan of text adventure games, and I loved that iPhone Frotz could download games from the IFArchive. Oops, Apple disagreed and the functionality had to be removed..

I'd dig an e-book reader that gave be easy access to everything in Project Gutenberg. Apple's okay with that, so long as "everything" means minus historically important books about sex.

I sure would love an app to give me a better interface to Google Voice! Rejected. Remote control of a bittorrent client (not bittorrent on the phone itself, mind you). Rejected. I'm an adult, maybe I'd like some immature but "adult" apps. Rejected.

I'm a customer, and as far as I'm concerned the iTunes App Store a bland mush, not a smashing success. I'm coming up on the end of my contract with AT&T, and I'll be getting something different, something that serves me, not Apple and AT&T. I'm looking at the Android options and the Pre. I was hearing good things about the Pre, but this makes me very wary.

You haven't heard about any genuine software innovations from IBM lately?
How about the System S? Real-time stream processing for assertive data analysis, a sort of artificial intelligence system that you just feed streams of data and it identifies nifty nuggets of info it came up with via correlation. It's pretty bad ass, and I wish I could get my hands on it.

Does it have USB 2.0?

http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/usb-graphic-adapter-makes-adding-multiple-monitors-a-breeze-2008064/

I4I said they would have sued sooner but were having financial problems.

I checked out the i4i web site. My impression is that i4i had financial problems because they were a dinky little company with almost no significant products. I suspect they had no more than one software developer, and were probably lucky to stay in business all this time. I doubt MS even bothered to ever meet with them. Their business, so far as I can tell, doesn't even significantly benefit from the patented idea, and in no way competes with Microsoft. I don't see how Microsoft's patent infringement hurt them in the least.

In other words, i4i is simply patent-trolling. A lot of tiny companies do this when they have hard times.

Would it be MS who said "well, we had a business meeting with them, lets implement their plan without them and run them out of business"?

Yes, this is the traditional Microsoft business strategy. There are lots of cases where they did this:

- These guys were the disk-compression company MS drove under. They won $120M in a lawsuit considered one of the best examples ever of how software patents can protect innovation.
- Casualties include WordPerfect, and QuattroPro

There are also a lot of patent trolls sucking the life out of Microsoft:

- They were ordered to pay $521M to the "inventor" of browser plug-ins
- They were ordered to pay $367M to Alcatel/Lucent in some sort of user interface patent nonsense.
- They were ordered to pay $388M to Uniloc, for a patent about registering software during installation.
- Korea is one of the few other countries to jump on the patent-troll suck-life-out-of-MS bandwagon.

All I can say is Microsoft made their bed, and now they have to sleep in it. No other company did more to force software patents through congress. D'oh!

This isn't Intel's first outlandish prediction. In 2000, they predicted they would make a 11Ghz processor by 2011. Instead, they ran into problems reaching beyond 4Ghz, and instead went towards multi-core processors. I have a feeling the same people who made that prediction are behind this one. Whether or not they can accomplish this is to be seen, but it seems quite unlikely.

Analysts keep suggesting that the mouse is nearing obsolescence, and that in less than five years, it'll look about as natural in your hand as a buggy whip. However, I remain unconvinced.

That said, if and when Toyota or anybody else figures out how to port their brain-controlled wheelchair tech to the PC, the mouse may indeed become one of those things your future grandkids will see in photos and ask, "Did you really ever use one of those things?! It's so weird looking!!!"

Until then, a laser mouse that can be used on transparent glass surfaces still has a certain wow factor.

...does it run RISC OS?

Now that's funny.

Seriously, an ARM based netBook would be a radically advanced idea.

We live in EPOC times.

Poor Psion, ten years too soon, all over again.

And I hate adverts with a vengeance. Given the choice between watching Bones or House or something on Sky with adverts or watching it on a DVD I bought/rented (so no adverts) I'd go for paying for it every time (as long as I had the money). If people can freely copy digital versions, what's going to encourage people to make the DVDs?

Dude, we both have sky. Why don't you set your sky box to series link your favourite shows, then watch them all at your convenience, fast forwarding through the adverts? This method is so convenient I would never even consider torrenting shows that are being shown currently on sky. This is a really good example of exactly what companies should be doing, rather than legislating the hell out of everything. Sky is making a crap load of money off this very idea.

And if they stop making the DVDs, what's to encourage them to make the show in the first place? The advert revenue on TV goes to the station, not to the show.

No you are misinterpreting the process I think. TV companies pay all the upfront costs of production and all the actors fees etc, as well as a lump sum to the creators *before* they make a single penny from ad revenue. It's a huge gamble for them. If the show isn't popular, the TV company loses money. If it is popular the station get full revenue for that showing, but the creators are in a good situation to negotiate royalties on the IP, including but not limited to all kinds of rebroadcast (so DVDs, repeats and other TV channels).

And everyone is going to act in the same way as you to a sufficient degree that it'll be able to fund all of the creative media we have at the moment?

Yes they really will. pirates are the music industry's largest source of legitimate customers. People are desperate to spend money on their favourite media, and they are doing exactly that when you provide them with good, value-for-money products.

The reason why piracy and P2P has taken off is because people can get it for free with almost no chance of repercussions.

I don't disagree... but that's exactly the point isn't it? You can't turn back time and make bittorrent not exist, so it's pointless trying to legislate against it's users, and many believe it's not even necessary in order for companies to keep making money.

Or a news article where a gps unit tries to kill people?

I'll probably get modded down for this, but the latest versions of Norton aren't slow anymore. I used to be dead set against Norton, but 2009 came with my laptop and it is easily the least intrusive AV I've ever come across. It's never picked up a virus, so I can't comment on detection, but I've never gotten viruses in the past anyway.

I suggest you use it before regurgitating the old Norton issues.

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/review-norton-internet-security-2009-not-ready-2008101/
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2330018,00.asp
http://reviews.cnet.com/internet-security-and-firewall/norton-internet-security-2009/4505-3667_7-33246586.html?tag=api&subj=re

Even Newegg customer reviews are overwhelmingly fives. Yes, I know there aren't a ton of reviews, but it's interesting nonetheless.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16832108387

I can't comment on Microsoft's offering, but I am a bit skeptical. If it's free, I'll probably try it at some point.

UK Gang Caught After $750K Online Music Fraud Scam

Let's see, at $150K per song, that comes out to 5 songs.

Hehe, a bit funny considering the background. This is because the EU now noticed that ISP's are actually now not wanting to do any retention in Sweden, in turn due to the new IPRED law. This is a way for them to partially dodge that law by getting less chances of being able to report users sharing copyright infringing work. The idea is that as their users are reported, they have hopefully already deleted the log entries. Why they are wanting to do that is in turn out of competition reasons. No ISP in Sweden want to be "the ISP where you can more easily get caught for copyright infringement when sharing files". You can read more about the case for one of those ISP's, Bahnhof, here.

OK, I went off on a tangent there. What I think is funny is that the EU is only now paying attention and noticing Sweden didn't adopt that law. :-p It's so apparent that this is in response to all the more ISP's not caring for it, not because they have a check on what Sweden is doing. Or maybe they just don't care until certain laws are dodged in practice out of minimizing bureaucracy. It's hard to tell if it's due to incompetence or bureaucracy, but it's either of them.

http://gizmodo.com/5197156/obamas-ipod-gift-to-queen-elizabeth-ii-is-tainted

http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/president-obama-gives-queen-ipod-full-of-mp3s-but-will-the-riaa-sue-2009043/

When pkv74 said "leaner", he said not only "watts", but "price and size".

At release, the cheapest IA64 processor was over $1000, going to over $4000 for a high-end one. Less than a year later, the exact same processors (speed and cache) had *increased* in price by thousands of dollars. (I don't know what x86 CPUs were going for in 2001, but I do remember we were buying complete Dell systems for a little over $1000. They weren't very good machines, but they did what we needed, and they were pretty cheap.)

I don't know much about Itanium, but I do know that tripling the price of a CPU model over the course of a year is not the way to compete on price.

Another way to look at it: buying Itaniums (and then not using them) in May 2001 would have been an *investment*. If the Underpants Gnomes had switched to stealing Itaniums, step 2 would have been "let them age for a year". Can you think of any other CPU in history for which this was true? :-)

Why bother upgrading to Vista at all. Just wait another two years or so until Windows 7 comes out

You don't have to wait two years until Windows 7 comes out. If the RC will be available in May, then we should definitely see the release by the end of this year one way or another - and probably sooner rather than later.

Not only that, but people who own both consoles might prefer to buy multiplatform games for PS3, since that platform has less problems and might be expected to have a longer future (Sony supports its old consoles, Microsoft drops them like hot potatoes).

I think that's a little bit unfair to MS. They acknowledged that they dropped support for the original Xbox far too rapidly but that was due to several factors, the most notable being Nvidia wanting more money for the gfx part. That was one of the main reasons that they made sure that they did all the design for the 360 in house: so that they wouldn't have a similar licensing nightmare at some point in the future.

Still, I buy multiplatform games on PC first or if they're console only, PS3. I like playing games without having to put up with what sounds like an airfield in my room (NXE is an improvement, no horrible whirring drive noise at least) and the PS3 controller just feels nicer.

I'd guesstimate that the number of broken 360s is about equal in the difference in sales between 360 and PS3, which is currently 6 million. Even if that number is a little high then I think it takes into account the number of hacked 360s that just play pirated games.

Sony needs to cut the price of the PS3, then they'll start taking a sales lead over MS and this generation will start to look a lot more interesting in the console wars department!

I'm not sure if I'm playing into a woosh moment, but paypal has a free "secure card" service that generates such one-time-use credit card numbers..

Paypal introduces secure cards

1989 - First known use of the word 'netbook' (registered trademark by Asymetrix corp)
1991 - Trademark abandoned by Asymetrix
1996 - Psion applies to the USPTO for the trademark for netbook
1999 - First reference I can find to a Psion netbook
2003 - Netbook Pro is released (doesn't seem to be for sale anymore, it was a 'clamshell PDA')
2008 - Claimed genericization of the term netbook by Asus and others.
December 2008 - Psion sends cease and desist letters to a bunch of companies
Now - Dell retaliates, files court papers claiming that Psion is not planning on producing a product called a netbook (which is probably true, it's not really their target market, but they seem to like expanding so who knows).

The fact that the term in and of itself is generic may not be enough, after all we have apple computer, and apples are pretty common. It does look like it could be an expensive fight, and I would be surprised if Psion decides to fight it out to the end. IANAL

I agree.

Microsoft shuts down Xbox mod-chipper

I think part of the issue is if you think games are important, you tend to overlook this issue when it comes to consoles, and if you think phone calls are important, you tend to overlook this issue when it comes to cell phones.

The issue is the same--the move to closed single purpose toasters--that somehow evolve into closed toasters that try to do everything a general purpose computer can do.

We will fight this battle to the end of time.

My guess is they'll start handing hardware out for free... What was it that Bill gates said a few years ago? Oh yeah hardware should be almost-free. Let's see he said 10 years out in 1995, I guess he missed it by few years, eh?

Funny thing is that it is almost free, if you don't have to pay for windows ;)

First link does not work. It should be: zero-watt displays

Ah,

http://www.geek.com/articles/xyzcomputing/the-worlds-tiniest-power-supply-20060110/

But I didn't for one minute think Psion was making these things. I was quite aware that Asus, Elonex, HP, Toshiba, Acer etc were making them.

Yep, Psion made one and called it the NetBook. Here's a review of one of them from March 2000.

doesn't Hitachi's watercooled laptop from a few years ago count as "prior art"?

I would think so. Then there's Compaq's 1996 Liquid cooled computer apparatus and associated methods and Electronic apparatus having a circulation path of liquid coolant to cool a heat-generating component issued to Toshiba in 2005.

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/hitachis-water-cooled-p4-notebook-20020719/

doesn't Hitachi's watercooled laptop from a few years ago count as "prior art"?

Also Several Pentium-2 era Compaq laptops had liquid cooling. It was wonderful, entirely quiet and worked well. Most of the time. I saw couple people having leaks, effectively destroying the laptop. :)

Yup.

Possibly. The article doesn't mention where the heat exchange takes place, but one of the diagrams seems to suggest that it's behind the display. Maybe somebody who reads Japanese could translate.

doesn't Hitachi's watercooled laptop from a few years ago count as "prior art"?

I thought of this as apparently in December 2005, Sony had shipped over 1.87 billion games and surely they can't have been outdone by AOL...

The French Senate has already passed the law banning people from the Internet if they are caught sharing files with each other. It now just one final vote in the National Assembly before it becomes law.

Phillip.

The best speech recognition application I've come across for creating my own speech commands to open programs, files, and even websites without touching my PC is Tazti Speech Recognition by Voice Tech Group. It's a free download and works 100% of the time with custom commands I create. It does require a some training for the XP version, but less for the Vista. I've used them both.

I found out about tazti through a Popular Science Online article. It's also mentioned in a Geek.com blog and also a blog post on the Intel Software website that talks about creating custom commands.

It works on XP and Vista and a friend of mine installed it on a Mac but had to use Parallels and Windows on top of Parallels and then installed tazti.

Other Features: I can control the iTunes player, log into and Navigate Facebook and Myspace, and perform Voice Searches of Google, yahoo, MSN, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia... all by talking to my PC. There are about 15 search engines or websites with search built in. It has other features too, but you can check it out yourself. There's a demo video on YouTube.

Best of all... this is a free download. I don't know how they can afford to do it????

Well, I thought that at first, but a google search for interruptible power supply shows TONS of them for sale!

Like this model:
http://www.geek.com/ultra-products-interruptible-power-supply/

Too weird.

You can send SMS messages from a web site instead (I'm not affiliated with this site, just googled it):
http://www.geek.com/send-sms-messages-via-the-web/

with this move Best Buy has just managed to penetrate a market segment that is otherwise totally oblivious to its existence.

Oblivious? I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has been "penetrated" by Best Buy in the past.