IPad has no camera! It should have two. One for videoconference and one for images and movies.
It has no slot for a flash memory! that's just dumb.
Ah well. Wait for V2 I guess.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
iPad
Well, no big surprise really. I would never have bought a Kindle but the quasi-A4 format of the iPad makes it interesting as a book reader. I find that I use the iPhone a lot for reading books on the Stanza application. It's main drawback in this mode is the uselessness for reading technical books that may have illustrations or code. iPad will be good for that.
I would hope that the screen is more robust than it looks. My iPhone has pixels missing and the chances of flexing an iPhone screen are far less than one of nine inches diagonal.
I guess that, aside from my attraction to all things geek, my main interest will be to develop applications for it. My wife said this morning that it opens up a lot of possibilities for new uses. I think that devices like this would benefit from having other sensors too. Ok, a compass and GPS are cool but imagine it with an infra red camera, ultrasound emitter and detector and a ruggedized version. You're talking tricorder here.
Pity that the thing uses an apple processor. An intel one would have made more sense. It'd be a great platform for Windows 7 multitouch. Ahh well. Maybe the fom factor will become sexy enough for Acer to do a copycat device with a PC architecture. For now I'll have to content myself with MonoTouch on iPad.
I like the idea that th 3G capable model will not be locked. I guess that it breaks the bounds of the mobile phone model enough that they don't have to cowtow to the phone operators or make exclusive contract deals.
I'm sitting on a train right now and I can see many other passengers who have iPhones. I wonder how they will look in a year?
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
In support of Internet Explorer
I have lived and worked in that strange country, the Internet, since, well, since before it was the Internet really. I began my days online during the era of Compuserve in the 1980's so I think I can say I have run the full gamut of experience in the feild.
Today, I have what I see as a particularly balanced view because I have use for, and use almost every day, a number of browsers. On my machines, which include Windows, Mac and Linux boxes I have IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari browsers as well as the browser built in to a couple of little Linux based netbooks I have around the place. They all have strong points and weak points in style and usability but generally, they all do pretty much the same thing. None of them however, have the sheer weight of user numbers that Internet Explorer has.
In recent days I have seen warnings issued by German and now French governments saying that Internet Explorer is dangerous and not reccommended for use and that they urge people to use Firefox or some other browser instead. Seriously. What the heck is a government doing even thinking about this kind of thing? They tout free market compettition to the world and then when product A does well, they slap a monopolies or anti-trust suit on it.
I know why Internet Explorer has a bad reputation in France. It's because the French in general, and I live in France so I know wherof I speak, are obsessed with paperwork and process and are very, very conservative in almost all subjects. Internet Explorer has a bad reputation in France because the large businesses and the government agencies have I.T departments that all like to preserve their working status-quo and who like to justify their existence by producing more barriers to change in the name of security and safety. False barriers I might add.
In the past I worked for one of Europe's largest banks. Their I.T department mandates the use of IE 6 because they say that they haven't had chance to test IE 7 let alone IE 8 yet so these latter two, being unknown quantities, are deemed to be unsafe. They also refuse Microsoft automatic updates.
In computer terms, this is the equivalent of refusing to drive a modern car with antilock brakes and airbags because these are operated by magical means and might voodoo away one's soul so we'll keep on driving our Ford Fairlane thanks very much.
Internet Explorer is the target of more attacks because they have more market share and a bad guy wants to affect as many people as possible. This is why there are no viruses for Apple computers. They are quite simply not a viable payload target. If Firefox had more share than IE, we would see more security warnings for Firefox and the French and Germans would start whining again about them, telling us to use something else.
I use Internet Explorer 8, I use Microsoft Security Essentials and I have zero complaints.
Today, I have what I see as a particularly balanced view because I have use for, and use almost every day, a number of browsers. On my machines, which include Windows, Mac and Linux boxes I have IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari browsers as well as the browser built in to a couple of little Linux based netbooks I have around the place. They all have strong points and weak points in style and usability but generally, they all do pretty much the same thing. None of them however, have the sheer weight of user numbers that Internet Explorer has.
In recent days I have seen warnings issued by German and now French governments saying that Internet Explorer is dangerous and not reccommended for use and that they urge people to use Firefox or some other browser instead. Seriously. What the heck is a government doing even thinking about this kind of thing? They tout free market compettition to the world and then when product A does well, they slap a monopolies or anti-trust suit on it.
I know why Internet Explorer has a bad reputation in France. It's because the French in general, and I live in France so I know wherof I speak, are obsessed with paperwork and process and are very, very conservative in almost all subjects. Internet Explorer has a bad reputation in France because the large businesses and the government agencies have I.T departments that all like to preserve their working status-quo and who like to justify their existence by producing more barriers to change in the name of security and safety. False barriers I might add.
In the past I worked for one of Europe's largest banks. Their I.T department mandates the use of IE 6 because they say that they haven't had chance to test IE 7 let alone IE 8 yet so these latter two, being unknown quantities, are deemed to be unsafe. They also refuse Microsoft automatic updates.
In computer terms, this is the equivalent of refusing to drive a modern car with antilock brakes and airbags because these are operated by magical means and might voodoo away one's soul so we'll keep on driving our Ford Fairlane thanks very much.
Internet Explorer is the target of more attacks because they have more market share and a bad guy wants to affect as many people as possible. This is why there are no viruses for Apple computers. They are quite simply not a viable payload target. If Firefox had more share than IE, we would see more security warnings for Firefox and the French and Germans would start whining again about them, telling us to use something else.
I use Internet Explorer 8, I use Microsoft Security Essentials and I have zero complaints.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
France Telecom are the worst ISP in the world
This is what I get on a 30 euro per month contract with "speeds up to 18 megabits"
I'm not sure but this used to be called extortion or fraud or something like that.
Monday, January 11, 2010
The patent process is fundamentally flawed
A patent is a way of telling the world that you had a great idea first. They work just fine in most cases but the big problem with ideas is that the patent grant must be made by an examiner who is expert in the field of the problem domain. And, as patents are often new ideas, there may be no experts other than the person who defines the patent itself.
Patents have to be non-obvious. We cannot patent the process of breathing for example, although I'm sure a healthcare company in the US is probably working on that right now. This leads me to the i4i patent which describes a method for storing word processing documents in an XML (or, if you read the patent, SGML) format.
Today, Microsoft have been forced to stop selling Word that saves in docx format because it supposedly violates the patent of i4i's document storage method but in reality, the patent should have never been granted in the first place because it does nothing more than describe a possible algorithm for storing data in an open and freely usable format. XML by definition is useful for storing absolutely any data so patents based on specific uses of the XML format are obvious and so should never have been granted in the first place.
This ruling, like so many rulings or grants on algorithmic processes, have obviously been made by persons with no domain knowledge and are completely arbitrary.
I believe that patents should be restricted to physical and tangible objects or manufacturing processes and that patents on algorithms and data codes, especially genetic ones, should be banned, relying instead on copyright law for the former and ownership of the original material for the latter.
Patents have to be non-obvious. We cannot patent the process of breathing for example, although I'm sure a healthcare company in the US is probably working on that right now. This leads me to the i4i patent which describes a method for storing word processing documents in an XML (or, if you read the patent, SGML) format.
Today, Microsoft have been forced to stop selling Word that saves in docx format because it supposedly violates the patent of i4i's document storage method but in reality, the patent should have never been granted in the first place because it does nothing more than describe a possible algorithm for storing data in an open and freely usable format. XML by definition is useful for storing absolutely any data so patents based on specific uses of the XML format are obvious and so should never have been granted in the first place.
This ruling, like so many rulings or grants on algorithmic processes, have obviously been made by persons with no domain knowledge and are completely arbitrary.
I believe that patents should be restricted to physical and tangible objects or manufacturing processes and that patents on algorithms and data codes, especially genetic ones, should be banned, relying instead on copyright law for the former and ownership of the original material for the latter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)