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User: DrXym

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  1. Re:Might as well as call it WebOS/2 on Android User Spends 60 Days In WebOS Land · · Score: 1

    OS/2 is still in use today among many many companies.

    And I expect it does so in a legacy role, used strictly in places where there is too much risk / expense involved in moving to something else more modern. It's fate was sealed a long time ago through a pincer head attack of MS anti-competitiveness and IBM incompetence.

  2. Re:Tit for tat on Today's Lighter TVs Mean Much Less E-Waste · · Score: 1

    This would be the first device built in the last decade that lasts longer than ones built 30 years ago.

    Rose tinted glasses. I doubt there is anyone above a certain age who hasn't had a CRT TV or monitor go on the blink in one way or another, either losing sync, becoming magnetized, burned in, or otherwise becoming kaput. I can certainly recall whacking a few TVs which went on the blink.

    Perhaps there are examples still going which survived these long years but I don't believe for a second that a 1980's TV was any more reliable than a modern LCD, or that it lasted longer thereafter either. It may be fair to say they were simpler to service which is just as well given how flakey TVs could be, but that doesn't mean it would be cheap to service so the net effect is the same - a broken set which needs to be junked. And even if it did survive, that doesn't mean much as standards evolve. Chances are even if you have a CRT set you need a digital STB to actually watch something on it and the picture quality is inferior too by virtue of downscaling, cropping etc. and being pushed over analogue.

  3. Re:Language on Oracle Ordered To Lower Damages Claim On Google · · Score: 1
    Android is just a modified Linux kernel and BSD user land. Assuming Google supplied the APIs, developers could write in C, C++, Ruby, Python, Go, Forth, Brainfuck, Java or anything else. They already can of course via the NDK which is gcc + libc + opengl + audio and other foundation libs. You could stick anything on top.

    It just so happens at the moment that Java is the development language of choice and most of the layout APIs are tailored to that environment. Despite some cruft Java is an excellent language so using that is a sound choice and also allows devs to benefit from wealth of tools.

    While I doubt Sun / Oracle would care to admit it, it is obvious that J2ME is an antique better suited for programming dimmer switches these days. Its no wonder that developers were deserting it in droves, technology moved on while the J2ME environment stood still. This lawsuit is little more than a cash grab and if Oracle end up with some paltry pay off (and $100m would be) for their efforts then it will serve them right.

    It would be interesting to see C++ / Go or something become something more of a peer to Dalvik though. QT is being ported to Android, so it's entirely possible that Dalvik will end up being just one way of many to write apps.

  4. Re:I like my Turbo Diesel on CEO Confirms Chevy To Sell Diesel Cruze In US · · Score: 1

    Many euro countries encourage diesel and structure their motor / fuel taxes accordingly. I reckon I save €800 a year on fuel with diesel, and enjoy another €400 off my motor tax. A diesel pays for itself in 2 years and the rest is saving.

  5. No diesel cars at all? on CEO Confirms Chevy To Sell Diesel Cruze In US · · Score: 1
    That's frankly insane. They're very popular in Europe and function perfectly well.

    I have a large diesel estate and I get 47 mpg imperial / 40 mpg US out of it. That's not theoretical but from the trip computer. It's 25-30% better mileage over the equivalent petrol model for virtually no difference in performance.

  6. Re:Why a police caution ? on Geocaching Shuts Down British Town · · Score: 1

    Don't be ridiculous. Just because some nerds know of the game doesn't mean that reasonable members of the public would know of it. All they see is someone acting in a highly suspicious manner and are obviously alarmed enough to ring the police. The police in turn are obviously alarmed enough to cordon off the town centre. Yes it was reckless and if so minded yes the cops could have charged him with a breach of the peace. He was lucky to escape with a caution.

  7. Re:Why a police caution ? on Geocaching Shuts Down British Town · · Score: 2

    They could have charged him for breach of the peace on the basis that his actions were reckless and could have caused fear and alarm.

  8. Re:Honestly... on Geocaching Shuts Down British Town · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sleepy English towns and villages can be like this, more so in Scotland and Wales

    The UK is no stranger to bombing campaigns from the IRA, muslim extremists and even the odd loony. It is highly predictable that if you bury a suspicious package in a high street someone is going to ring the police. Not everyone is aware of some esoteric nerd pasttime that involves such acts.

    If you really must bury something somewhere like that, go get a policeman you doing it, preferably with a sheet of paper that explains its legalities. Better yet, don't do it in the middle of a high street and find somewhere more rural to do it.

  9. Re:Amazon Appstore's biggest sin on Developer Calls Amazon Appstore a 'Disaster' · · Score: 1

    That's great and will you continue to use it when they stop doing that? Or more pointedly, will developers stop submitting their apps when they realise that Amazon is discounting their apps by up to 80% yet they are obliged to submit the same list price on Amazon as they do on Google Marketplace?

  10. Re:Piker Syndrome on Developer Calls Amazon Appstore a 'Disaster' · · Score: 1
    The HUGE user base of Amazon's app store is comparatively small. Spending $100 for a half a million users tops is dead money, especially when the standard marketplace app costs $25 (ever) and reaches hundreds of millions of users in multiple countries. Even if Kindle Android appeared at some point it's still going to be the smaller market by a large margin. As for advertising, some apps don't have any at all and those that do may not exceed $100 if they only have 5000 users. Furthermore, even if they did top $100, that doesn't mean they want it disappearing it into Amazon's pockets. Even pay apps should be concerned about the T&Cs on the Amazon site given than Amazon could slash the list price by up to 80% if they wanted cannibalizing sales on the standard marketplace.

    It's simply a bad deal for every developer except the biggest to even bother with the site. Maybe Angry Birds and it's ilk can recoup their costs, small developers will not.

  11. Re:For Live Burial There Is Sourceforge on Developer Calls Amazon Appstore a 'Disaster' · · Score: 1

    People can find your product on Android marketplace. It costs $25 to register for lifetime access to Android Marketplace as opposed to $99 per annum. That's a far easier sum to swallow especially for people releasing apps for free or ad supported. I think it's supremely arrogant of Amazon to charge 4x annually for a smaller market and the obvious conclusion is they don't want free apps there at all.

  12. Re:HTTP vs HTTPS on Developer Calls Amazon Appstore a 'Disaster' · · Score: 1

    Signing the content also means you can verify the contents are correct and untampered with so even if someone broke into your server it wouldn't necessarily do them any good.

  13. Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does on Retailer Calls Rivals' Bluff On "HDMI Scam" · · Score: 1

    Most people plug their HDMI cable into the back of the TV and leave it there forever. I doubt it would make a damned bit of difference in most cases even if you had to unplug from time to time. I've used cables purchased from LIDL and Euroland (2m for 2 euros!) and they work exactly as intended.

  14. Re:Amazon Appstore's biggest sin on Developer Calls Amazon Appstore a 'Disaster' · · Score: 1

    $100 wouldn't stop me uploading my game or utility app but it might put someone off creating yet another soundboard or fart app.

    It would for me. Pay $100 to get listed, only get 25% of application sale proceeds? You can keep your store.

    The most annoying part is realising that the normal marketplace costs $25 ever and some other marketplaces like appslib & B&Ns are free. I think Amazon did this simply to filter out undesirable (i.e. free) apps by raising the bar.

    I'd also have a severe mistrust of the legal agreement. Biggest red flag for me would be that developers get 70% of sale price or 20% of list price, whichever is greater. This implies to me that Amazon intends to discount apps any amount they like all the way down to 20% of their list price if they wanted. But another clause says you're not allowed to sell your app on another app store for less than the list price on Amazon. If your app was listed for $10 on marketplace and $10 on Amazon, Amazon could sell it for $2.50 massively undercutting your own price on Marketplace. So they basically get to fuck you over at their convenience.

  15. Re:HTTP vs HTTPS on Developer Calls Amazon Appstore a 'Disaster' · · Score: 1

    Levels could be signed and / or encrypted. If the data is invalid then the level is rejected. There are lots of ways to encrypt in Java / Dalvik, e.g. Bouncy Castle + OpenPGP. Obviously by not using https a developer puts themselves at higher risk of not implementing a solution properly but it's perfectly doable. Moreso, it means they don't have to pay a tax on security which is essentially what SSL & CAs are. Why the hell should someone pay a 3rd party to bestow trust on communications if they were responsible for writing the consumer and producer of the data going over the wire?

  16. Amazon Appstore's biggest sin on Developer Calls Amazon Appstore a 'Disaster' · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Amazon wants developers to cough up $100 for the privilege of being listed on their site. Of course they're graciously waive the fee the first year but to me this seems like a deliberate barrier to stop all those scumbags with their free apps and open source ports from bothering listing on the service at all.

    Anyway I think the appstore will succeed when Amazon unleash whatever tablet devices they're cooking up. Doubtless these devices will be locked down so that Amazon's services will be the only thing users can use. The store makes zero sense in any other context than that since I doubt even 0.01% of non Amazon devices would be bothered to manually install another marketplace app when the one they have installed by default does the job.

  17. Re:goal to make things suck? on Pdf.js Reaches First Milestone · · Score: 1
    No. Java is higher level, garbage collected, has its own system libraries which run indepedently of the browser, and is a very large environment in its own right.

    I'm suggesting that there should be provision for LLVM bitcode to be compiled and executed natively in the browser. It's only interaction with the outside world is via exposed DOM apis which are already security hardened. A canvas would be its "display", it sockets would map to websockets, it's file io to web storage and so on. The display could be a console or graphical via WebGL. It's memory would be addressable and fixed so it could not leak more memory than it had physical access to. The C runtime would resemble other C runtimes so that many libs and apps could be easily ported. Since most higher level languages are implemented in C, they would be portable too to some level. The biggest issue is likely to be threading and how to address calls out to the DOM.

    We've already seen with emscripten that LLVM can be turned to Javascript and use the DOM for a lot of stuff, so what I'm suggesting is only taking it one stage further.

  18. Re:ironically it's not far from the truth... on Hijacked Fox News Twitter Account Falsely Claims Obama Shot Dead · · Score: 1

    Till government got involved charity did a much better job at "Social Programs" than the government ever has.

    Ah yes the good old Dickensian days.

  19. Re:Really bad idea. on Roundabout Revolution Sweeping US · · Score: 2

    Roundabouts (or rotaries, or traffic circles, as they're known in parts of the U.S.) induce confusion and fear in many drivers, although they can be useful at times. This article [liveinsurancenews.com] from an insurance periodical suggests that it's aggressive drivers who are making rotaries more dangerous.

    The fear is induced because people are clueless how to navigate them. If they become a regular fact of life, and of driving exams I would expect the fear would be the same as it is in other countries. Wait until you get your first magic roundabout and then we'll talk about fear.

  20. Re:goal to make things suck? on Pdf.js Reaches First Milestone · · Score: 2

    What's with this trend recently to build everything on fundamentally sucky technologies?

    I think it's becoming increasingly obvious that browsers need something that allows native client functionality without the burden of shoe horning everything through Javascript's loosely typed, garbage collectioned, non addressable world. LLVM is gaining a lot of steam so perhaps it should be that with each app seeing a limited API that maps out onto the DOM. Perhaps that can even be created from JS, e.g. an vmEval(url, canvas) function that loads bitcode from some url, turns it into an invokable object which is associated with a drawing region.

  21. Re:Only banned during last hours before polls on Facebook/Twitter Banned In Thailand For Election · · Score: 1

    Having been proved wrong on your claim that it was only banana-republics that do this, you'r'e now trying to put the cart before the horse that say that any country that does this is thus heading towards a banana republic. Even though such rules are long standing.

    Yup poor old IgnoramusMaximus has just demonstrated a live example of "no true Scotsman" logical fallacy. Apparently other democracies are "banana republics" because their definition of free and fair elections does not fit his own. They can't be true democracies, oh no.

  22. Re:Only banned during last hours before polls on Facebook/Twitter Banned In Thailand For Election · · Score: 1

    If the king doesn't want the law to exist he should pardon EVERYONE who violates it, encourage all citizens and free press to do it and implore the government to strike the law. At some point the Thai parliament would actually follow his wishes. That he does none of the above would suggest he wants to maintain the status quo and is perhaps fearful of the kind of stuff that might be revealed about him and his family if he did.

  23. Re:Only banned during last hours before polls on Facebook/Twitter Banned In Thailand For Election · · Score: 1

    How!? I keep asking this question and you keep replying "yea, they will!". Any broadcast from foreign soil is out of jurisdiction. By definition. Even more so if the idiotic law in question is not applicable in the country of origin. So unless they plan to invade, there is no way they can determine if the broadcast was by the party that is supposedly "set-up", in a false-flag operation, or by the actual opponents. None whatsoever. And the Internet introduces a whole new level of impossibilities.

    I haven't said "yes they will" in all circumstances. I apologise for making statements that any reasonable and sane person would have no trouble following. It appears that you think that since not all crime can be prosecuted (in this instance interference with an election) that laws should not exist to describe said crimes and their punishment. It's a bizarre and wilfully stupid assertion.

    You keep using this word, "fair", and I don't think you have any clue what it means. Fair is when small parties, with tiny budgets, can run ads right before the election because their impact diminishes rapidly over time and when there is a 2 week "cooling period" it greatly advantages the few top "establishment" parties. So it is yet another reason in a myriad of why laws like that are unfair. Always. Fair is when speech of any non-establishment opponent is not muzzled during elections. Unfair is when laws are made to muzzle it in the name of "fairness" (to the establishment). Fair is when laws are not made to be used as a witch hunt tool when some false-flag operator releases "smears" against a major incumbent party candidate on the Internet and which then causes the opposition to be accused of breaking this "holly law".

    I'm starting to see now. You're paranoid AND stupid. False flag operation... for fuck's sake. Embargoes around certain activities close or during polling are to stop people interfering with the result of a free and fair election. It's not some conspiracy no matter how much you wish it were.

    Thus I accept your inability to provide any reasonable counter-argument. I posted outrageous time frames for a reason: an idiotic premise has idiotic implications, and which implications the proponents of said idiotic premise usually refuse to face. You are no exception in this.

    Your counter arguments are not reasonable, they're insane.

  24. Re:Only banned during last hours before polls on Facebook/Twitter Banned In Thailand For Election · · Score: 1

    Right. And then the judge, by use of powers arcane and divine, and upon consultation of tarot cards and Ouija board, will determine which of the many factions did that.

    No dummy, the police will and the cps will prosecute.

    Except of course what you describe has nothing whatsoever to do with "fairness". The laws of this kind are meant to give advantage to the whomever is tightening his grip on power. They are positively Orwellian in that they do precisely the opposite of what they claim to. While everyone is effectively muzzled, the "protectors" get to "be sadly forced by the perfidy of the opposition" to "make a one time exception" to "refute" "outrageous claims" on the, usually national, TV. While the "upstart rabble" does not, of course.

    Yes it's absolutely to do with fairness. Perhaps in some paranoid other reality you think it's a-ok for politicians to be standing outside polling stations, tweeting, leafleting on polling day telling people their opponent is a kiddie fiddler or some other scare tactic. Back in reality most modern democracies recognize that elections require extra legislation to ensure everything is as fair as possible.

    Yes, right. Preferably 10 years before. Or is that too short? If not, why? An arbitrary ban is arbitrary. The "logic" applicable to a 1 day ban is exactly the same that applies to a 1 week ban, 1 month and so on.

    Now you're just being stupid. Willfully stupid.

  25. Re:Only banned during last hours before polls on Facebook/Twitter Banned In Thailand For Election · · Score: 1

    And this will not work if you use anonymous posters put up at night by masked provocateurs on every street corner or if you broadcast this from a foreign radio station across the border because? And the effect will be different if you do it at 11:59pm of the day before the ban how exactly?

    Well tell you what go read the UK's Representation of the People Act and see how these offences would be dealt with. I expect a judge would reasonably consider the time that people first receive & read the message than the actual time it was posted.

    All of which countries have highly ... err ... colorful history surrounding elections, such as missing ballot boxes and bodies of candidates found in the river. Face it, the only places that have such laws are banana "republics" and fake "democracies" run by military juntas and God-appointed "kings". Like, say, Thailand.

    Nonsense. Every democracy in existence puts laws in place to protect and ensure that elections are free and fair. And in most countries that includes restrictions on what people may say or do while the vote is in progress or some period before. It's laughable that Thailand should be criticized for this measure given its recent history.