I'm betting Microsoft paid them some money, it's not like they did that with Rock Band or GTAIV. Admittedly I'm a PS3 fan but Microsofts buying off of Publishers is getting really annoying. Upside of this is an OpenGL port should make a PS3 port a lot easier.
What I don't understand is why the PS3 isn't tier 1 in the first place.
I match your unknowing incompetence and raise you rudeness. Try Sky Broadband, Over the Christmas holidays my parent's internet was simply cut. After phoning them I discovered it was because one of the PC's was apparently spewing spam. As it happened I'd been cleaning up my families PC and discovered one had been infected with something or other (leaving me to take a bigger interest in the rest and to implement a local user policy for each family member, amongst other things).
While I was on the phone the Sky representative didn't understand the reason for the block and was completely unable to explain it. What made it worse is he continuing condescending attitude she gave while giving conflicting and misleading statements. After twenty minutes of calmly holding my temper and turning shades of red, I worked out what she was going on about. I informed her I'd taken care of the matter the day before. She was having none of that and stated unless we took our PC's to PC World (words can't describe how inept they are) and got PC World to contact them after they reformatted them she wouldn't remove the block. After asking to speak to their tech department/boss and another five minutes of, "look I understand thats your policy and you can't do anything I would like you to move me to someone who might be able to..." and her refusing to I eventually gave up informed the woman she was incompetent, I would be making a compliant and hung up the phone.
After calling a second time and getting the same response and the exact same unhelpful attitude I called a third time stated I was from PC World and I'd resolved the issue. Ten minutes after that call we had broadband.
When it came to making a compliant I asked Sky what they thought they were doing by simply disconnecting people. I was informed my Dad had been informed by email, apparently the email was sent at 9am the day they disconnected (they disconnected at 10am). They informed me the email was sent to the account holders sky email account. I then pointed out my Dad hadn't created one and so where had they sent it? She couldn't answer. I then read their Fair and Acceptable Usage to them and asked where they thought in that they could demand that users should reformat their PC's. She basically responded that Sky needed to do these things. I pointed out they were in breach of their terms of service and I would be reporting them to OfCom. At no point did myself or my Dad receive an apology, this is from the UK Broadband supplier The Gadget Show stated had the best service in the UK.
I'm not saying Thatcher was good I used her because she's an easy and well known example. I'm saying she believed something and worked towards achieving it and then took the flak. My issue is can anybody actually name a single current MP who would stand by their principles and take the blame if/when it all goes up in flames.
Look at the Labour party, Tony Blair was nicknamed "Teflon Tony" for a reason. Gordon Brown was quite willing to have the praise for managing Britain in the good times, but in the bad it's because of the world economy. David Camaron's actions concerning the MP expenses scandal speak more of PR than principle (he's a great one for image). Look at the Iraq war none of the major parties were against it but since opinion has changed rather than MP's apologising all we hear is excuses and people blaming Tony Blair. Blair's been given an easy job so he will act as a lightening rod and even he still tries to pass the buck onto the intelligence agencies.
If I look into our political past I can see all sorts of principled MP's and MP's who have been held accountable for their actions. Modern day government spends a lot of it's time creating bad law to give the appearance of doing something and moving minister's around to ensure everyone's political ass is covered, it's never their mistake but the mistakes of the previous minister that they have had to mop up.
Same thing is happening in the UK. Labour, Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are largely the same party with the same policies. The differences tend to be in area's where there's a lot of press for example the conservative's way of defining themselves is saying they will keep the NHS funded, while labour have decided to support Education. At the end of the day both have had massive amounts of money injected into them that's had little affect. They need the jobsworth* people removed from them not more money. When you actually look at their policies anything that doesn't make major headlines is the same.
I honestly believe modern day politican's are purely interested in power. They seem more interested in covering themselves from blame than doing something in principle. Margaret Thatcher is probably the most hated PM of all time but atleast she had principles and applied them, I can't think of any current MP who would stand for their principles. It's why at the next election I'll be voting for any independent that stands (excluding the BNP) and since I'm in a marginal constituency my vote should matter.
*A silly but accurate description of someone in the civil service who adds nothing to the front line service and cost alot. Everything is more than their "jobsworth", I used to think this was something daily mail/sun readers moaned about but I've actually met several who work in the NHS.
Temporary variables are a good idea if your looking at slow processes. I've been working in Java with XMLBeans and pulling XML data out of an object is a painfully slow process. I've also worked on several JNI interfaces and while pure C++ code is fast and pure java code is fast translating between the two is very slow.
Storing frequently used objects in temporary variables can make sense, just as temporary wrappers can make sense. Both can lead to a drastic improvement in performance.
Question, considering that it's so difficult to develop and distribute enterprise applications for the iPhone why are you bothering? Windows Mobile and Blackberry were designed primarily to support such an environment and Symbian and Android are clever enough to support it too (have used various Nokia's with MS Outlook for years).
Small correction its not just used book stores. My expearence in the UK is hard backs are £17.99, these migrate to paper backs which cost between £4.99 - £7.99 dependent on publisher and not author. Often once a trilogy is completed a different publisher will wrap them up into a large paper back and charge you between £10.99 and £15.99.
I'm a huge book fan, my book library is close to 300 books I see no issue with shelling out £17.99 for a hardback and have spent even more when I'm trying to buy a hardback form of a series I own in paperback.
My issue is ebooks that at $15 (£7-£12) ebooks are more expensive than paperbacks. What's the point in buying a £200 device and then spending even more than I normally would for a book? eBooks have anouther problem, I can buy a CD and convert it to MP3 format, I can't buy a book and do the same thing. At the price point their talking about I'd have to pay double for every book which is insane.
I'm staying well away from the eBook scene until they are less than paperbacks, just like I'm avoiding MP3's until MP3 albums are cheaper than CD's.
S40 is Nokia's way of saying Series 40 and S60 their way of saying Series 60. The series 40 phones aren't based on Symbian.
Series 60 started with the Nokia 7650 as there first smartphone (way ahead of it's time), at that time you had two types of Symbian phone the Sony Erricson P900 which was touch screen and was denoted with UIQ and the Nokia 7650 which was Series 60. I'm not sure what the differences were but UIQ died fairly quickly.
I know Nokia Maps 3.0 on the Nokia 5800 charges £1.29 a month for Traffic Updates, but then I'm currently paying £5.49 a month for Car/Pedestrian navigation as well. If this means I don't have to pay £5.49, I'll be over the moon.
Its simpler than that, the PS3 is £250 and will do pretty much every type of audio and video you can think off. Considering the PS3 will no output to multiple devices (through component, HDMI and TOS) why would you buy any other Blu-ray player?
Save the money and buy a better Amp and speaker set.
This law isn't that clever, there's a reason all those annoying pampers nappies adverts have stopped. It's like the recent government policy on CRB's which basically covered anyone who spoke to a child.
Don't attack the guardian, the media/government have been abusing the fear of terrorists and paedophiles in order to invade the privacy of everyone. Now either the government has to admit the law is daft or they have to admit that body scanners won't be used on minors. The first would likely amend an insane law to work like you've suggested (although I've no doubt CPS would still prosecute people over nothing) or they have to admit the expensive technology they want to implement won't be used on minors which leaves a massive attack vector and people like me asking what the point is.
I think both are bad, but the importance and money we spend on the issues far outstrips the reality and social cost of either.
Judging by your link the data is supplied through google maps I couldn't see a way to get at the raw data. As for what to do with it, I'd suggest providing it free in a commonly used format like SHP or BIL. Accurate terrain data is insanely expensive so any freely available data is good.
Actually the Data Protection Act in the UK/Europe would probably make this sort of thing illegal. If I remember the act correctly Police have to get a search warrant in order to obtain this information otherwise it's no different from releasing the information to some bloke off the street. Blizzard would be liable here and probably fined up to £250k.
America's complete lack of such a directive is the reason I'll never travel there, you demand personnel information to ensure we aren't terrorists and then allow any and every government department uncontrolled access to that information.
There are ARM netbooks, if I go into Maplins in the UK I have a choice of three for less than £150. The problem is they either run some highly neutered version of linux (Pocket Surf II for example) or Windows CE that's been skinned to look like XP. Both aren't much better than a PDA/Smartphone in specifications so they haven't really taken off.
More than half of the bill concerns giving powers to the secretary of state over ISP's. I think the sith lords argument is "future proofing" however everything the secretary wants the ISP's to do they have to do and if they don't they get a £250,000 fine from ofcom. Ofcom's roll in the bill seems to be ensuring the secretaries decrees are followed.
There are no checks or balances in the bill and is only concerned with internet piracy rather than the "digital economy".
I tried setting up an e-petition on prime ministers petition site and that's disappeared down a black hole, I've also contacted my MP who's failed to respond after more than three weeks and repeated emails.
I can believe his insane GPS fix time, there was an issue with the first firmware release which I think has since been fixed (or appears to be for me). Basically the phone used the network location (through A-GPS) to work out a rough fix, and then to use that information to quickly figure out where the GPS said it was.
I know of this issue because O2 configures the A-GPS on their Nokia 5800's A-GPS incorrectly, with the old server address it can take upto 20 minutes for a fix, with it you get one in seconds (v2.1 firmware). The latest firmware doesn't seem anywhere nearly as reliant on the A-GPS.
I'd like to big-up Nokia at this point, my Nokia 5800 has had 4 firmware updates since I bought it a year ago. Each one has added new features and speed certain things up (Nokia Maps 3.0 is massivily superior to Maps 1.0). In the same time things have gone from Nokia PC Suite, to Nokia Ovi and Nokia Music (Nokia Music was horrific) to now Nokia Ovi 2.0 and Nokia Ovi Player (Musics replacement is actually good).
While carriers have slowed the progress of updates down (O2 took 4/5 months to role out the last one) Nokia has consistantly moved to keeping their phones updated and providing better integration with the PC side and mobile (even down to little things like icons).
The one downside I can see is I used to go through a different Windows mobile every 12-18 months, I'm almost at the end of my current 12 month contract and I can't see the point of changing the phone. Unless I can get double/tripple the battery life, since the current GPS setup drains the battery something chronic (4/5 hours continious GPS Navigation use and the batteries toast).
Mirrors Edge has a lot of potential and is generally really good, however it really suffers from level design in the later chapters. Chapter 6 (of 8) ending took me around 10 hours of constant dieing to get through when the area shouldn't have needed more than 2 minutes.It's a shame really because the game has some fantastic bits. I wouldn't pay more than a tenner for it.
To give an idea where I'm coming from, I like Far Cry 2 but having to go right across that map and deal with five/ten checkpoints for every mission, then battling through the same checkpoints to get back is starting to get on my nerves. I don't mind the traveling its just the checkpoints are an annoying grind.
I'd advise against reading reviews most of the ones at launch at pretty much bought and paid for in my experience.
My habit is to wait at least six months after launch, the games are cheaper, the bugs will be well known and most importantly if a Publisher hasn't released a patch by then they never will.
I recently bought Mirrors Edge and Far Cry 2 for the PS3 brand new for £5 each the Internet told me neither was particularly great but at £5.....
One of my old lecturers put it best. A Washing Machine Technician can take apart your washing machine and replace a faulty part. A Washing Machine Engineer can design, build and test a washing machine.
The difference between an engineer and a tradesman/craftsman, is a tradesman can use the tools in front of him. An engineer can first build the tools and then use them. So in your example an engineer could create his/her own language from assembly and then write their application. Not many would because it doesn't make sense to, but they could.
Your issue is you seem to think tradesmen are something dirty. My Dad spent five years as a apprentice fitter and turner, he can fix pretty much anything mechanical put in front of him. His skill with metal and wood astounds me. Despite him trying to impart some of his knowledge I know I will never match him. Then again my knowledge of electronics maths and software far outstrips his. I am quite happy to develop interface standards and design software systems.
The skill set is quite different, both can be creative, both deserve a different name because they are different. If you want a software application you want a engineer to lead it who runs a team of coders. You wouldn't ask a coder to suddenly start creating requirements, development schedules, test schedules, interface design, etc.... Likewise you wouldn't want a team who solely consist of engineers since it will cost a lot more and they probably won't be as quick as your coders.
If your still don't see the difference the IET as well as other professional organizations have been discussing how the term engineer has been heavily misused over the past ten/twenty years. While I can't find any of their articles online the few I have read make it very clear why someone who can place a Rover V8 engine in a Ford Cortina isn't a professional.
As someone whose grown up in multi-cultural Britain I believe focusing on the differences seems far more racist than treating people the same. It certainly doesn't help integration of different cultures.
When your looking to treat people differently your focusing on the differences between people. You can't do/say xyz because of the sex/colour/race of someone. In effect a persons sex/race is always one someone's mind when their dealing with that person.
If you treat everyone as the same the colour, race or sex of someone doesn't matter. You don't stop to think "wait this person a Muslim, or their black so..."
The GP and myself are asking whats the difference between drawing a white or black person as an ape, I can't see any. We both see a person drawn as an ape. The counter argument seems to be Black people look like monkeys so it's racist. To me that sounds racist.
I should note I agree that we should treat people different when there is a difference (medical reasons, etc..) but for stuff like this?
Cue all the replies from people who think they should have the right to install software from a company onto any piece of hardware they want.
Out of interest where does, Microsoft Windows, Dos, Ubuntu, Photoshop, Autocad, Proteus, MS Office, Skype, All Games and just about any software I can think of come into this picture?
Has Microsoft tried to sue WINE for allowing and encouraging Linux users to run MS Office under linux? Does Ubisoft care if I get Tomb Raider Underworld working on my copy of Windows ME? You can install Windows XP onto a machine with 32MB's of ram, MS won't try to stop you selling machines in that configuration.
Apple is the only company I know that attempts to restrict where it's software will run. All other companies will just refuse to support a platform and they state plainly what platform the software has been tested on (and will be supported on) and what they believe are the minimum requirements.
So why are Apple special? If people aren't expecting Apple to provide any support and there are no technical reasons for the software not running, why can't people do what they want? Every single other company works that way.
The problem comparing "real engineers" against software engineering that Software is completely different from Electronics/Mechanics/Civil/etc....
The first issue is implementation, my final year project with a mass storage Bluetooth device, designing and building the 8052 micro-controller board took weeks and it took days to fabricate. Minor changes delayed me by weeks. Taking the time to design and test the system before implementation was a must because early mistakes cost a lot. In comparison I recently added functionality to an application, I set a series of requirements from our system level ones and built the feature up. By the time I had finished adding the feature our customers and management saw the potential of it and rapidly expanded the requirements. It took 1 day to make the modification required for the change in requirements. Software is seen as inherently flexible and it is. The problem is because of its flexibility it's hard to maintain proper design methodology. Why do you need to spend hours making a UML design for something that will take you a quarter the time to code and will most likely change before your finished?
Safety critical near perfect code can be produced but it costs an insane amount of money and isn't necessarily appropriate for every task (e.g. Windows Calculator does not need to be anywhere near to that level). But what level and standard does the code need to be at? Pick any of the two: Fast, Good and Cheap.
Software Engineering also has 1 other major difference to traditional engineering in that the majority of the cost is linked to people and not materials. Using a bridge as an example if the bridge is overrunning cheaper materials can be found, but cheaper people in Software are often less productive. In traditional engineering if a project is late you can throw more money and people and construction etc.. will increase. Software projects don't work that way, increasing staff will cause a temporary decrease in productivity while new staff learn the system and not all problems can be shared.
It's easy to mock software engineering (I know I felt that way when I finished by EEE based course), but Software Engineering a quite a different beast to traditional engineering. I'd also like to see groups like the IET or BCS qualify people to be Software Engineers but I doubt that will happen I did a IET approved degree course but as far as I can tell I might as well completed one of the easier non approved courses (One uni was proud it had no exams for instance)and it would mean exactly the same to the IET and when I was a member the only difference I noticed was a monthly magazine. As long as that sort of attitude/response exists I can't see professional membership really being taken up.
As for the engineers responsible seeing no consequence for this failure? That seems unlikely to me, I wouldn't be surprised if someone lost their job as a result of this.
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I'm betting Microsoft paid them some money, it's not like they did that with Rock Band or GTAIV. Admittedly I'm a PS3 fan but Microsofts buying off of Publishers is getting really annoying. Upside of this is an OpenGL port should make a PS3 port a lot easier.
What I don't understand is why the PS3 isn't tier 1 in the first place.
I match your unknowing incompetence and raise you rudeness. Try Sky Broadband, Over the Christmas holidays my parent's internet was simply cut. After phoning them I discovered it was because one of the PC's was apparently spewing spam. As it happened I'd been cleaning up my families PC and discovered one had been infected with something or other (leaving me to take a bigger interest in the rest and to implement a local user policy for each family member, amongst other things).
While I was on the phone the Sky representative didn't understand the reason for the block and was completely unable to explain it. What made it worse is he continuing condescending attitude she gave while giving conflicting and misleading statements. After twenty minutes of calmly holding my temper and turning shades of red, I worked out what she was going on about. I informed her I'd taken care of the matter the day before. She was having none of that and stated unless we took our PC's to PC World (words can't describe how inept they are) and got PC World to contact them after they reformatted them she wouldn't remove the block. After asking to speak to their tech department/boss and another five minutes of, "look I understand thats your policy and you can't do anything I would like you to move me to someone who might be able to..." and her refusing to I eventually gave up informed the woman she was incompetent, I would be making a compliant and hung up the phone.
After calling a second time and getting the same response and the exact same unhelpful attitude I called a third time stated I was from PC World and I'd resolved the issue. Ten minutes after that call we had broadband.
When it came to making a compliant I asked Sky what they thought they were doing by simply disconnecting people. I was informed my Dad had been informed by email, apparently the email was sent at 9am the day they disconnected (they disconnected at 10am). They informed me the email was sent to the account holders sky email account. I then pointed out my Dad hadn't created one and so where had they sent it? She couldn't answer. I then read their Fair and Acceptable Usage to them and asked where they thought in that they could demand that users should reformat their PC's. She basically responded that Sky needed to do these things. I pointed out they were in breach of their terms of service and I would be reporting them to OfCom. At no point did myself or my Dad receive an apology, this is from the UK Broadband supplier The Gadget Show stated had the best service in the UK.
I'm not saying Thatcher was good I used her because she's an easy and well known example. I'm saying she believed something and worked towards achieving it and then took the flak. My issue is can anybody actually name a single current MP who would stand by their principles and take the blame if/when it all goes up in flames.
Look at the Labour party, Tony Blair was nicknamed "Teflon Tony" for a reason. Gordon Brown was quite willing to have the praise for managing Britain in the good times, but in the bad it's because of the world economy. David Camaron's actions concerning the MP expenses scandal speak more of PR than principle (he's a great one for image). Look at the Iraq war none of the major parties were against it but since opinion has changed rather than MP's apologising all we hear is excuses and people blaming Tony Blair. Blair's been given an easy job so he will act as a lightening rod and even he still tries to pass the buck onto the intelligence agencies.
If I look into our political past I can see all sorts of principled MP's and MP's who have been held accountable for their actions. Modern day government spends a lot of it's time creating bad law to give the appearance of doing something and moving minister's around to ensure everyone's political ass is covered, it's never their mistake but the mistakes of the previous minister that they have had to mop up.
Same thing is happening in the UK. Labour, Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are largely the same party with the same policies. The differences tend to be in area's where there's a lot of press for example the conservative's way of defining themselves is saying they will keep the NHS funded, while labour have decided to support Education. At the end of the day both have had massive amounts of money injected into them that's had little affect. They need the jobsworth* people removed from them not more money. When you actually look at their policies anything that doesn't make major headlines is the same.
I honestly believe modern day politican's are purely interested in power. They seem more interested in covering themselves from blame than doing something in principle. Margaret Thatcher is probably the most hated PM of all time but atleast she had principles and applied them, I can't think of any current MP who would stand for their principles. It's why at the next election I'll be voting for any independent that stands (excluding the BNP) and since I'm in a marginal constituency my vote should matter.
*A silly but accurate description of someone in the civil service who adds nothing to the front line service and cost alot. Everything is more than their "jobsworth", I used to think this was something daily mail/sun readers moaned about but I've actually met several who work in the NHS.
Temporary variables are a good idea if your looking at slow processes. I've been working in Java with XMLBeans and pulling XML data out of an object is a painfully slow process. I've also worked on several JNI interfaces and while pure C++ code is fast and pure java code is fast translating between the two is very slow.
Storing frequently used objects in temporary variables can make sense, just as temporary wrappers can make sense. Both can lead to a drastic improvement in performance.
Question, considering that it's so difficult to develop and distribute enterprise applications for the iPhone why are you bothering? Windows Mobile and Blackberry were designed primarily to support such an environment and Symbian and Android are clever enough to support it too (have used various Nokia's with MS Outlook for years).
I'm asking out of curiosity.
Small correction its not just used book stores. My expearence in the UK is hard backs are £17.99, these migrate to paper backs which cost between £4.99 - £7.99 dependent on publisher and not author. Often once a trilogy is completed a different publisher will wrap them up into a large paper back and charge you between £10.99 and £15.99.
I'm a huge book fan, my book library is close to 300 books I see no issue with shelling out £17.99 for a hardback and have spent even more when I'm trying to buy a hardback form of a series I own in paperback.
My issue is ebooks that at $15 (£7-£12) ebooks are more expensive than paperbacks. What's the point in buying a £200 device and then spending even more than I normally would for a book? eBooks have anouther problem, I can buy a CD and convert it to MP3 format, I can't buy a book and do the same thing. At the price point their talking about I'd have to pay double for every book which is insane.
I'm staying well away from the eBook scene until they are less than paperbacks, just like I'm avoiding MP3's until MP3 albums are cheaper than CD's.
S40 is Nokia's way of saying Series 40 and S60 their way of saying Series 60. The series 40 phones aren't based on Symbian.
Series 60 started with the Nokia 7650 as there first smartphone (way ahead of it's time), at that time you had two types of Symbian phone the Sony Erricson P900 which was touch screen and was denoted with UIQ and the Nokia 7650 which was Series 60. I'm not sure what the differences were but UIQ died fairly quickly.
I know Nokia Maps 3.0 on the Nokia 5800 charges £1.29 a month for Traffic Updates, but then I'm currently paying £5.49 a month for Car/Pedestrian navigation as well. If this means I don't have to pay £5.49, I'll be over the moon.
Its simpler than that, the PS3 is £250 and will do pretty much every type of audio and video you can think off. Considering the PS3 will no output to multiple devices (through component, HDMI and TOS) why would you buy any other Blu-ray player?
Save the money and buy a better Amp and speaker set.
This law isn't that clever, there's a reason all those annoying pampers nappies adverts have stopped. It's like the recent government policy on CRB's which basically covered anyone who spoke to a child.
Don't attack the guardian, the media/government have been abusing the fear of terrorists and paedophiles in order to invade the privacy of everyone. Now either the government has to admit the law is daft or they have to admit that body scanners won't be used on minors. The first would likely amend an insane law to work like you've suggested (although I've no doubt CPS would still prosecute people over nothing) or they have to admit the expensive technology they want to implement won't be used on minors which leaves a massive attack vector and people like me asking what the point is.
I think both are bad, but the importance and money we spend on the issues far outstrips the reality and social cost of either.
Judging by your link the data is supplied through google maps I couldn't see a way to get at the raw data. As for what to do with it, I'd suggest providing it free in a commonly used format like SHP or BIL. Accurate terrain data is insanely expensive so any freely available data is good.
You could then also import it into things like OpenLayers or things like Open Street View.
Half the billboards in Plymouth had that big Google Chrome logo on them, as of yesterday only two in the city centre were still advertising it though.
Actually the Data Protection Act in the UK/Europe would probably make this sort of thing illegal. If I remember the act correctly Police have to get a search warrant in order to obtain this information otherwise it's no different from releasing the information to some bloke off the street. Blizzard would be liable here and probably fined up to £250k.
America's complete lack of such a directive is the reason I'll never travel there, you demand personnel information to ensure we aren't terrorists and then allow any and every government department uncontrolled access to that information.
There are ARM netbooks, if I go into Maplins in the UK I have a choice of three for less than £150. The problem is they either run some highly neutered version of linux (Pocket Surf II for example) or Windows CE that's been skinned to look like XP. Both aren't much better than a PDA/Smartphone in specifications so they haven't really taken off.
The bill is evil, read it.
More than half of the bill concerns giving powers to the secretary of state over ISP's. I think the sith lords argument is "future proofing" however everything the secretary wants the ISP's to do they have to do and if they don't they get a £250,000 fine from ofcom. Ofcom's roll in the bill seems to be ensuring the secretaries decrees are followed.
There are no checks or balances in the bill and is only concerned with internet piracy rather than the "digital economy".
I tried setting up an e-petition on prime ministers petition site and that's disappeared down a black hole, I've also contacted my MP who's failed to respond after more than three weeks and repeated emails.
I tried creating a petition a week ago nothings appeared yet and I can't find one to take its place.
I can believe his insane GPS fix time, there was an issue with the first firmware release which I think has since been fixed (or appears to be for me). Basically the phone used the network location (through A-GPS) to work out a rough fix, and then to use that information to quickly figure out where the GPS said it was.
I know of this issue because O2 configures the A-GPS on their Nokia 5800's A-GPS incorrectly, with the old server address it can take upto 20 minutes for a fix, with it you get one in seconds (v2.1 firmware). The latest firmware doesn't seem anywhere nearly as reliant on the A-GPS.
I'd like to big-up Nokia at this point, my Nokia 5800 has had 4 firmware updates since I bought it a year ago. Each one has added new features and speed certain things up (Nokia Maps 3.0 is massivily superior to Maps 1.0). In the same time things have gone from Nokia PC Suite, to Nokia Ovi and Nokia Music (Nokia Music was horrific) to now Nokia Ovi 2.0 and Nokia Ovi Player (Musics replacement is actually good).
While carriers have slowed the progress of updates down (O2 took 4/5 months to role out the last one) Nokia has consistantly moved to keeping their phones updated and providing better integration with the PC side and mobile (even down to little things like icons).
The one downside I can see is I used to go through a different Windows mobile every 12-18 months, I'm almost at the end of my current 12 month contract and I can't see the point of changing the phone. Unless I can get double/tripple the battery life, since the current GPS setup drains the battery something chronic (4/5 hours continious GPS Navigation use and the batteries toast).
Mirrors Edge has a lot of potential and is generally really good, however it really suffers from level design in the later chapters. Chapter 6 (of 8) ending took me around 10 hours of constant dieing to get through when the area shouldn't have needed more than 2 minutes.It's a shame really because the game has some fantastic bits. I wouldn't pay more than a tenner for it.
To give an idea where I'm coming from, I like Far Cry 2 but having to go right across that map and deal with five/ten checkpoints for every mission, then battling through the same checkpoints to get back is starting to get on my nerves. I don't mind the traveling its just the checkpoints are an annoying grind.
I'd advise against reading reviews most of the ones at launch at pretty much bought and paid for in my experience.
My habit is to wait at least six months after launch, the games are cheaper, the bugs will be well known and most importantly if a Publisher hasn't released a patch by then they never will.
I recently bought Mirrors Edge and Far Cry 2 for the PS3 brand new for £5 each the Internet told me neither was particularly great but at £5.....
One of my old lecturers put it best. A Washing Machine Technician can take apart your washing machine and replace a faulty part. A Washing Machine Engineer can design, build and test a washing machine.
The difference between an engineer and a tradesman/craftsman, is a tradesman can use the tools in front of him. An engineer can first build the tools and then use them. So in your example an engineer could create his/her own language from assembly and then write their application. Not many would because it doesn't make sense to, but they could.
Your issue is you seem to think tradesmen are something dirty. My Dad spent five years as a apprentice fitter and turner, he can fix pretty much anything mechanical put in front of him. His skill with metal and wood astounds me. Despite him trying to impart some of his knowledge I know I will never match him. Then again my knowledge of electronics maths and software far outstrips his. I am quite happy to develop interface standards and design software systems.
The skill set is quite different, both can be creative, both deserve a different name because they are different. If you want a software application you want a engineer to lead it who runs a team of coders. You wouldn't ask a coder to suddenly start creating requirements, development schedules, test schedules, interface design, etc.... Likewise you wouldn't want a team who solely consist of engineers since it will cost a lot more and they probably won't be as quick as your coders.
If your still don't see the difference the IET as well as other professional organizations have been discussing how the term engineer has been heavily misused over the past ten/twenty years. While I can't find any of their articles online the few I have read make it very clear why someone who can place a Rover V8 engine in a Ford Cortina isn't a professional.
As someone whose grown up in multi-cultural Britain I believe focusing on the differences seems far more racist than treating people the same. It certainly doesn't help integration of different cultures.
When your looking to treat people differently your focusing on the differences between people. You can't do/say xyz because of the sex/colour/race of someone. In effect a persons sex/race is always one someone's mind when their dealing with that person.
If you treat everyone as the same the colour, race or sex of someone doesn't matter. You don't stop to think "wait this person a Muslim, or their black so..."
The GP and myself are asking whats the difference between drawing a white or black person as an ape, I can't see any. We both see a person drawn as an ape. The counter argument seems to be Black people look like monkeys so it's racist. To me that sounds racist.
I should note I agree that we should treat people different when there is a difference (medical reasons, etc..) but for stuff like this?
Cue all the replies from people who think they should have the right to install software from a company onto any piece of hardware they want.
Out of interest where does, Microsoft Windows, Dos, Ubuntu, Photoshop, Autocad, Proteus, MS Office, Skype, All Games and just about any software I can think of come into this picture?
Has Microsoft tried to sue WINE for allowing and encouraging Linux users to run MS Office under linux? Does Ubisoft care if I get Tomb Raider Underworld working on my copy of Windows ME? You can install Windows XP onto a machine with 32MB's of ram, MS won't try to stop you selling machines in that configuration.
Apple is the only company I know that attempts to restrict where it's software will run. All other companies will just refuse to support a platform and they state plainly what platform the software has been tested on (and will be supported on) and what they believe are the minimum requirements.
So why are Apple special? If people aren't expecting Apple to provide any support and there are no technical reasons for the software not running, why can't people do what they want? Every single other company works that way.
The problem comparing "real engineers" against software engineering that Software is completely different from Electronics/Mechanics/Civil/etc....
The first issue is implementation, my final year project with a mass storage Bluetooth device, designing and building the 8052 micro-controller board took weeks and it took days to fabricate. Minor changes delayed me by weeks. Taking the time to design and test the system before implementation was a must because early mistakes cost a lot.
In comparison I recently added functionality to an application, I set a series of requirements from our system level ones and built the feature up. By the time I had finished adding the feature our customers and management saw the potential of it and rapidly expanded the requirements. It took 1 day to make the modification required for the change in requirements. Software is seen as inherently flexible and it is. The problem is because of its flexibility it's hard to maintain proper design methodology. Why do you need to spend hours making a UML design for something that will take you a quarter the time to code and will most likely change before your finished?
Safety critical near perfect code can be produced but it costs an insane amount of money and isn't necessarily appropriate for every task (e.g. Windows Calculator does not need to be anywhere near to that level). But what level and standard does the code need to be at? Pick any of the two: Fast, Good and Cheap.
Software Engineering also has 1 other major difference to traditional engineering in that the majority of the cost is linked to people and not materials. Using a bridge as an example if the bridge is overrunning cheaper materials can be found, but cheaper people in Software are often less productive. In traditional engineering if a project is late you can throw more money and people and construction etc.. will increase. Software projects don't work that way, increasing staff will cause a temporary decrease in productivity while new staff learn the system and not all problems can be shared.
It's easy to mock software engineering (I know I felt that way when I finished by EEE based course), but Software Engineering a quite a different beast to traditional engineering. I'd also like to see groups like the IET or BCS qualify people to be Software Engineers but I doubt that will happen I did a IET approved degree course but as far as I can tell I might as well completed one of the easier non approved courses (One uni was proud it had no exams for instance)and it would mean exactly the same to the IET and when I was a member the only difference I noticed was a monthly magazine. As long as that sort of attitude/response exists I can't see professional membership really being taken up.
As for the engineers responsible seeing no consequence for this failure? That seems unlikely to me, I wouldn't be surprised if someone lost their job as a result of this.