Apple = Microsoft

It seems recently that Apple are becoming more and more like Microsoft.

Apple recently announced they are suing HTC for the use of multi-touch on their Android devices. Which resulted in Apple getting sued by the company that actually invented the technology.

This brings me onto this point, Apple, for years, has been the underdog to Microsoft, while they made some pretty good products, their prices were (and still are) completely ridiculous. But they were still doing there thing, and good on them for it. But now, Apple have gone very much mainstream, and for some reason, decided they wanted to play the same games as the big bully that came before.

Microsoft is famous for patent trolling, heck, they even patented the scrollbar (I'm not joking, look http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5973663.html) but it seems Apple have though "That looks like fun, lets do it too!". Here is a tip Apple, don't patent something you didn't invent, and then don't troll people because they're trying to implement technology that has been around since the late 80's.

The patent system is meant to help innovation and protect Intellectual Property, but Apple seems to have forgotten this, their IP's aren't theirs, it really annoys me that because Apple put something on their devices, they seem to think they own it.

Apple, you used to be cool, but now you're just like Microsoft.

It seems i'm becoming a Google fanboy.

But is that such a bad thing?

Recently a big divide has come about between the people who use Google's Android devices, and Apple's iWhatever products. It mainly consists of people like me, developer types, who heavily disagree with Apple's policy on openness and people who use the Apple devices who would rather a device 'just work'.

This all stems from reading an article earlier on Apple's 'locked down' system of doing business, wherein once you buy an Apple product, you're locked in. For example you buy a song on iTunes, that song is not yours, Apple still own it and can prevent you from playing that song any time they like, if they close down the iTunes store, you don't get any refunds, and you don't have any rights.

Where as it seems the opposite is true of Google, where everything is open, free, or if not free at least very cheap, even the songs bought off the built in Amazon store are DRM (I like that the blogger spellchecker doesn't even recognize DRM) free and playable on ANY device.

The same with the Android market, the only thing Google ask when you post an app is that it's not pornographic. Counter to this, Apple force developers to not only give 30% of all profits to Apple, but also 30% of any content that is sold or distributed through the app, leaving the BBC no choice but to cull its selection of apps for the iPhone app store.

This brings me neatly on to the app store EULA, which DEMANDS that developers sign an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) meaning that should they speak to anyone outside the developer network of any of the things they happen to be doing Apple will sue them.

Now I will say that the only reason Google has been able to do all of this so openly and free, is because they have very successfully sold Ads on their website, and embedded in others, which I don't agree with, but compared to Apple's methods, a mere drop in the ocean.

I sincerely hope that Google's methods continue, and they keep distributing high quality OSS, and now I hope they don't let me down doing something stupid...

If that happens I'll be getting one of the new Nokia linux phones next time.

Living with the Nexus One

I recently took purchase of my new Google Nexus One, and i've been getting used to it for a while now.

The first thing I often hear about it is the battery life, and I must be honest I harboured my own fears on this as well, as I did when I got my G1, but i'm glad to say my fears were unfounded, the phone easily lasts 2 days with normal use of apps, phone calls and texts. Depending on what features are turned on/off battery life can increase dramatically.

The display is absolutely amazing, compared to the iPhone (It's oft compared rival) it's superb, 800x480 resolution, massively dwarfing the iPhones 480x320 on a 3.7 inch display means it's got awesome clarity, especially for reading etc. Couple that with the multitouch that HTC has been putting onto their new phones recently, and the usability is epic.

The browsing experience is excellent, as one would expect with Googles deep ties in the internet, the standard browser is no slouch, but with alternate browser options such as Dolphin and Opera Mini, it can be taken to a whole new level of speed, with Opera mini being the fastest by a long way, something the iPhone can only dream of keeping up with at this point in time (Until maybe they accept Opera Mini onto the app store). Couple the speed with the dolphin browsers gestures, and it's really onto a winner.

The Android market is absolutely superb, even if it's a great deal smaller than the iPhone app store, but there are still 25000 apps, compared to the app stores 110000 I think, even so, you're not wanting for applications to increase your productivity. Plus there are some really great apps, I personally endorse Zombie, Run! ;)

I love some of the really great built in stuff, such as the integrated voice commands that are everywhere, just say what you want and the phone can do an incredibly good job of figuring out what you said. It just makes life easier.

Recently I also rooted my phone, something which is practically impossible on the iPhone, which for me is a bit of a fail, either way, it was a very simple process, and I will say this, if you own any android phone, root it, it increases the potential of the phone by no small amount. Being able to run google navigation (a GPS app that costs $99 on the iPhone, ouch) outside america, is superb, and that's just the start.

Of course it has its drawbacks, for example on some apps, the phone can be a little bit sluggish, even with the snapdragon processor, but that's very rarely.

Another criticism I have is that the touch buttons on the bottom of the phone don't sometimes detect when they've been pressed.

But those are a couple of small flies in what is otherwise, some very pleasant ointment.

Reasons the iPad is fail (For me)

Well, Apple caved into the fans and developed a tablet, fan service is never good.

For me, the first fail is iTunes. iTunes is the blanket app Apple use to distribute all their stuff, be it apps, music, movies or whatever else they want to cram on, and naturally it's one of the worst apps for that sort of thing, not for distribution, i'm all for digi distribution, but the DRM is draconian and stupid, people don't want to rent their music, they want to own it. Sort of a blanket fail there, all of Apples i products have to use iTunes.

Second, multitasking. The iPad uses the iPhone OS, which is never a good start for a 'computer'. The keynote stated they wanted the iPad to take the place of netbooks. Now, if you want something to take the place of something else, then you have to make sure it's much better, and i'm sorry, but doing one thing at a time is not better, it's a massive step backwards.

Onto the 'best browsing experience ever'. This sentence is so laden with bullshit i'm surprised the words are visible. Here is a clue Apple, the best browser experience means all the features, and as many bells and whistles as you can fit, the lack of flash is a big problem here, if you want 'the best browsing experience ever' you have to be able to see the whole web, and the iPad happily leaves out full third of it. Now, they're trying to push HTML5, which is excellent and I can't fault them for that, but bullshitting in such a way is just a bait and switch.

"Do you want peripherals?" "Yes please! As many as possible!". The iPad, coming with practically nothing, being just a scaled up iPod touch, has already a plethora of add-ons and peripherals to make the device somewhat more useful, addressing camera concerns with an attachment, physical keyboards with an attachment, and other such things. Now, you create this lovely looking piece of hardware, and i'm not going to deny that the simplicity of the design makes it look jolly nice indeed, but there is a point when simplicity impacts usability. With most of their products it's not a massive issue, there are oft workarounds or the solution they provide is adequate, however, with the iPad, they just decided "Screw any form of usability, this looks great".

Another point I have to make is about external displays, the iPad has the ability to output onto a TV or PC (Personal Computer, not Microsoft mac fanboys, Linux exists too) monitor, however, while the iPads display is 1024x768 (Something dire in itself for a device of this size) but the output to anything is even lower than that, so which it can display 720p HD video, not a great feat in itself, it can't actually display the video in the original resolution, instead scaling it down to either 576p or 480p, both of which are standard definition.

Now for the clincher, the price, standard iPad, the bottom of the line is $500, now, what this will be in England we don't know, but it will scale perfectly to £500 no doubt. What do you get for that? Pretty much nothing, 16GB of storage and WiFi connectivity. The full package costs $829, with a 64GB hard drive, WiFi and 3G connectivity. So Apple, please explain why I would spend that much on your product, when I could get an equivalent netbook for £200 - £400 that CAN multitask, CAN output at 720p to anything, and doesn't need hundreds of peripherals to make it usable.

Apple could have done something quite special, instead they shat in a box, and now they're going to sell millions because people will buy anything with an Apple logo

IE9 Gonna suck? Not so much actually.

So it was the news most web web developers have been waiting for, and it's not as bad as most of us were expecting.

When IE9 was announced in mid-2009 everyone got somewhat worried, all the tests showed it was still slower than all competing browsers, and HTML5 support was still non-existent.

But recently MS released the IE9 developer preview, and, I'm actually quite happy to report that all our fears have not been realized. For once MS has listened to the people who have to work with their browsers on a daily basis.

HTML5 support is pretty much complete, as well as CSS3, allowing all you designery folk to really let your hair down, and not have to worry about compatibility.

The speed tests even put it in front of Mozilla 3.6, and even the Acid3 score is 55/100, and before you say anything, IE8 crashes on the Acid3 test, so it's a gargantuan improvement.

The amount of effort that has gone in is incredible, for example, all rendering is now offloaded onto the GPU, meaning the processor can chill out, even when you're running some dapper flash animations.

Now all they need to do is incorporate webkit and it will be unstoppable.

Traditional Games, The last bastion.

There are few things I love in this world, and /tg/ on 4chan is one of them.

/tg/ Is the Traditional Games board on the image sharing site 4chan, and truly, 'tis the last bastion of hope in this world. Many things I love have gone or be stripped away, but /tg/ remains steadfast and my knowledge that hope remains in this world.

If you've never been, I suggest you take a look, if you're not a nerd, you'll hate it, if you're a furfag, you'll hate it (and rightly so, you don't deserve happiness), but if you understand what's going on in there, you'll have friends for life.

For /tg/
For the Imperium
Death to the Furfags
and Long live the emperor.

Where is your god now?

Oh jeez, another god rant, here we go...

Recently some Jehovas witnesses came to the door, and I asked what compelling evidence they had for the existence of their particular brand of god, the man merely waved his arms and said "Look around you", weaksauce evidence my friend, most of our things are man-made, apart from the grass and the trees, everything else he gestured at was made by human hands.

But this is an important point that must be rebutted, religious types love to point to the lovely and beautiful stuff in the world and say "Look what god has created!", ignoring that in fact, the reality of nature is that it is brutal, and vicious, and violent, but they don't want to admit such things, because that would be an affront to their perfect view of God and his creations.

Only a short one, see, wasn't too bad was it?

You're going against Stephen Fry here, you're gonna lose...

The main cusp of this rant/writing is about homosexuality, hence the Stephen Fry, but this is also about the bigger picture and how it fits in with many religious beliefs.

Anyone who reads this blog often will know I have a tendancy to write about religious matters, and this shall be no different really. This stems from something I recently read on the news site reddit.com, where a user explained that no homosexual has ever tried to recruit, convert, accost or evangelise them, which one would expect from a 'morally corrupt', and that this was true of many other things, many other things that is, apart from religion.

Religions can't seem to realise that by demonizing these groups they merely show how intolerant and how hateful their 'loving' religions actually are? What religions don't seem to realise, and by religion I mean the three abrahamic faiths, a lot of others are far more tolerant, is that by saying that homosexuality is wrong, and that people who don't believe in their god or gods will be punished for eternity, are merely pushing people away from their religion, a religion I might add which demonizes homosexuality, but says nothing of child molestation and condones slavery.

Perhaps it's because i'm a raging liberal and very open minded, but it seems that religion just has no place in the modern world, and the more time goes on, the less relevant it seems to get. Especially in the times we live in, when the world is becoming much more open and liberal to the ways of lesbians and gays and other such 'modern' views. Religion is a relic, it's time we consigned it to the history books.

Besides, when your competition is the greatest living Englishman, you don't stand a chance.

Racism, is it ever fine?

No.

I could just leave it like that really, but I shall elaborate. The muse for this outburst is a recent event in the news here in the UK, where a Muslim group called muslim4uk or something wants to stage a march through a town called Wooton Bassett, this has angered many, as it's where British soldiers are given a precession on the way to R.A.F. Lyneham (I think, i'm not clear on the details and my passion for research wanes at this hour) before they go off to their respective barracks.

Now a million and one groups have been set up on Facebook, in order for uninformed racists to spout their hate and spell incorrectly, pretty much constantly (I saw a woman who had written... It's gone from my mind, but trust me, it was bad, a ck instead of a tt, just no).

The usual fayre was all there "They come 'ere, take our jobs and benefits", which is a contradiction in itself, they either have a job or are on benefits, make your minds up, but then you get the serious idiots, who use the serious racist terms, which I shant recant here because I like to think that you, the reader are a better class of human being, and i'm not going to furnish and sully your mind with such words and phrases, you probably know them anyway.

The next, and perhaps most ridiculous part, is that they say "We should plant IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices) along the route, like they do to our troops and blow them up, see how they like it", now, the extremists you claim to be trying to stop use such tactics to kill British troops, and these british people, for some reason seem to think they're 'better', but correct me if i'm wrong, but does performing the actions they are so fervant to decry, merely lower them to the standards of the people they think they are better than?

Hipocrytes, all of them, there are many things I will abide, racism is not one of them, but many people seem to want to find any excuse to use it, and it truly saddens me, they profess to live in a 'great' country, but from the actions and words of what appears to be a large number of the populace, makes it look anything but.

Bono, shut up.

Censoring the internet is a good way to stop filesharing you say?

We live in an age where getting music is easier than any other time before, with music distribution services like spotify and iTunes, access to music has never been broader, and so with this comes the much maligned file sharing.

How does Bono come into this? Well, the other day he was quoted as saying "We should look to China and their censorship system, it works" apart from the fact it doesn't, and that they're 'losing' the war on internet censorship (Source: http://techdirt.com/articles/20100104/0351017578.shtml) but nevermind that! Artists and Music labels that are monstrously rich need to get paid!

Irregardless that they're making record profits, so is the movie industry, despite all their belly aching too. It's the smaller artists that should be making all this noise, that are losing out, but have we heard from them? Not many, or at least if they are outspoken their voices aren't being heard. The problem for the major record labels, is that file sharing helps the small and independent musicians, who have trouble getting recognised without the money of the label for advertisement.

But that would mean the labels would get less money, and no money at all from these unsigned bands, but hey ho, corporations exist to make money, so screw the small fry...

I'm using English, learn it!

Why do people consider me 'posh' when I use 'big words'? ...

The other day I got an 'ooOOooh' when I used the word 'Etymology', since when did using vocabulary become a 'posh' thing to do? It's a sorry state of affairs when the accepted term is waylaid in favour of laymen's terms and the like.

It saddens me when I see people saying "People who come over here should learn english!" when the general populace have great trouble speaking it themselves, and a Czech delivery driver I once knew speaks english better than a lot of english people I know.

That's the end of my short rant, there are 250,000 words out there, approximately, make it a small part of your life just to learn 1 new word a day.

The iPhone aint all that...

I've seen more and more people recently saying "I want an iPhone!" and it's getting a little silly...

Basically, as a smartphone, the iPhone isn't that hot, let me explain some. For one, it can't run concurrent apps, so say you're listening to the music player, but you always want to browse the internet, you have to quit your music app to browse, or check e-mails, or read sms'ses etc. This counts for any application you're running on it.

The on screen keyboard, while very intuitive, is also very slow when you want to put symbols in, you have to press a button to show the symbols, and then press it again to show alpha-numeracy.

The price options are terrible, in order to get the phone with all the features, you have to spend tonnes of money, around £100 for the phone if you get the medium level contract, which is still £30 odd a month for a small amount of texts and minutes.

Finally, and probably the final nail in the coffin is the app store, loaded with shovelware that has brought down the price of the good apps so that the developers barely get anything anymore, plus their review system is making developers flee the platform for other, more open ones such as WebOS or Android, where apps go up until they're flagged, at which point they're moderated.

I could say more but my brain no worky...

Mac vs. PC, SHUT UP!

Nobody will listen to this, and the debate shall still rage, but maybe I can help halt the progress, if only for a few moments.

I feel an impartial voice is needed in this debate, someone who uses both on a regular basis, that person in this instance shall be moi.

To get one thing straight in this to begin with, by saying PC, i'm not necessarily referring to just Windows, remember Mac/Windows users, Linux exists too.

For a kickoff, both have their own strengths and weaknesses, often cancelling each other out on many points, Macs for example are generally more expensive (Unless you find some rip-off PC merchant), and what annoys me about most Mac users, not all, but most, is that they will always recommend one over the PC even if the person asking for an opinion only wants to browse the web, perhaps write a few documents and send e-mails, you don't want a £1000 machine to do that.

Conversely you get the same people doing the same thing for PC, when someone wants to do some hardcore video editing, 3D work etc, people will often say "Yeah you can get a PC for like £200 that will do all that", when in reality it won't, at least not without a fight, but it is true that you can get equivalent PC's for a fraction of the price of a Mac.

Second of all is software, Macs tend to lean towards only being paid-for software, when a lot of software on PC's, and pretty much all software for the Linux operating system, is free and open source. My main gripe about the Mac dev community, is that nobody compiles this software for the general Mac user, as a result only software by Sun or the Mozilla foundation is generally compiled for the Mac.

Third of all is games, now, i'm gonna debunk a commonly held myth, MACS CAN PLAY GAMES, but obviously not on the scale of PC's, and not with the performance that you can get from a high end gaming 'rig', but they can do it, more and more commonly now that macs have proper graphics chipsets, although they still don't have the driver hooks sorted out for a lot of things (3D acceleration being the main issue).

Fouth and probably the final argument, hardware. Now hardware is very important to a lot of people, it is to me, and a lot of people like to have control of their hardware, and that's where the Mac falls down in my eyes, yes you can upgrade your RAM and switch out some of the components, but if you truly want to upgrade you have to shell out for a brand new Mac, which might not have all the specs you want. Conversely on the PC side you have control over everything, motherboard, cpu, gpu, ram, hard drives and CMOS, everything is under your control. Although that isn't necessarily a plus point for a lot of people, it's very daunting if you have never even heard of a BIOS, so Macs can gain a point there for being much simpler to use.

Overall then it really just comes to what you want out of your system, just consider what you really need, and then make a decision on that, don't ask others because they're probably biased.

Why so much violence?

Why is it today that all problems seem to have to be sold with violence?

Maybe because it's more prevalent on the news now than it ever has been before, but it seems it's what more people are resorting to than ever before, and it just isn't necessary.

For example on the news today, 15 years ago a woman was burned alive for no reason, and you're just left thinking, "Why?". Mahatma Ghandi said it best, An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.

So i'm posing the simple question of what are your views on the subject?

Gods cannot be proven, neither can hells fire...

Another religious post here i'm afraid, but no questions this time.

Recently I got asked to prove the non-existance of a god, I was left with this answer. It is impossible to prove/disprove the existance of that which does not exist on our plane of reality, or place in time and space, they cited a mathematical theorum that stated the numbers required to complete the equasion simply didn't exist, but we know that numbers exist because we can quantify them, here, look, 4, there is a quantified number, gods however, that is a different story.

So, why did I say hells fire too, well, anything that exists outside our physical realm is non-physical, which means that a god is non-physical, and so is his punishment, hence the fire in hell cannot be proven, as well as being non-physical. So in the afterlife, if there is one, in the eternal anguish for us Atheists, won't actually be anguish at all, your carporeal form will be wreathed in flame, but you will feel nothing, one cannot feel that which is not physical, the same can be said of a god.

Constantly i'm reminded by people that they 'felt' god, this left me with another question, how do you know you've felt god if you've never felt that before, you may have been feeling true love, or simple lust, who can say, but this begs the question, how do we know we're not feeling god, how do we know we're not, it may not be physical but some higher being could surely do something to alter the mind processes, which somewhat renders their argument invalid.

What are your thoughts on the subject?

The truth is far more fascinating than any book...

Recently I have returned to one of my loves, science and it's applications within our universe.

One thing has become abundantly clear, the reality of our universe, is far more impressive and fascinating than any Science Fiction book, or holy text describing the creation of the universe.

If you take just 2 seconds to look outside into the stars, you will be gazing into billions of years of history, not just lights in the sky, but history, living history, of stars that may have gone supernova many billions of years past.

When you actually start to take an interest in the vast machine that is the universe, you realise how insignificant, and yet significant you really are, one of untold billions of planets, and yet, within the few lightyears away from our planet, the only known life.

This spawned the most poetic phrase in physics "Humans are made from stardust", and it's true, not science fiction, we're the remnants of huge stars that exploded, sending their atoms billions upon billions of lightyears into space, to create the planets, and ultimately, life.

How can you look at the universe and not be fascinated, or think "My religion explains it better" or anything like that. That's mind boggling to me.

If you think that you being here doesn't matter, if just being here isn't enough for you, then you really need to look at this video to know how amazing it is that you exist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlP6znMKnr8

Narrated by the great Morgan Freeman

You preach peace and love, but the opposite is true.

This is mainly a question posed to people of the 3 Abrahamic faiths.

There is one big gripe I have had with faith for quite some time, and that is one of the main tenets and building blocks of religion, love to all your fellow man. Except, when religion is observed, the exact opposite is true. More wars have been fought over religion than over land or oil.

For the bastions of morals, you certainly do seem to have a lack of them, Christopher Hitchens said, "If morals were only given to us by religion, the jews would never have made it to Mt Sinai" and he was right, we choose not to kill each other because it's mutually beneficial that we don't, not because of some book handed down from some shiny object in the sky.

So I put it to you, religious folk of the world, explain your position, when you explain that others who do not believe in your religion should be slaughtered, what tolerance is there in that? What peace is there in that?

My First Flash Forét

So today I had my introduction to flash, granted, it was not smooth as silk, but still relatively enjoyable.

It all began with a simple request "Could you do some R & D on how to get flash to write XML to a database?", and so it began, perhaps the shortest day (Or so it felt, you know what they say, time flies and all that) i've experienced at this job, it was very programming-centric, which I love, i'm not too keen on the days that involve image editing and stuff, but programming is definitely my bag.

I have to say that coding the action script side of things is really cool, everyone I know hates it, stating it's slow, but all the scripts i've been working with are blistering fast, like, even calling an external PHP file took less than 0.5 seconds, which is hella quick, although it was all locally hosted, execution times could probably be 0.7 seconds on the server, which is still pretty hecking quick.

I don't know what my point is in this post really, other than to say, flash is darn neat, and it's fun to code, so give it a whirl sometime, even if you're not a programmer, you can still use the front-end functions to do the same stuff.

So, yay flash

Graphics do Not a Game make

So I read earlier, someone commented about a game I am, very much looking forward to called Dragon Age Origins, making the comment: The graphics are cringeworthy, the mouths barely move when they are talking.

The video they were commenting on was old, and the graphics have improved since then, however, this is not the point. If they had actually been watching the trailer, they would have noticed the frankly, stellar voice acting (Which is across the board, even minor characters have exsquisite voice acting work done on them). They would also have noticed that animations are incredibly smooth, with transition animations making everything completely seamless, the mocap department really earned their keep with this one, everything is so fantastically animated, couple that with the voicework and the believability of the characters goes up immensely.

Then there is the story, which, from the trailers and video walkthroughs, is simply amazing, there are multiple stories that take place, depending on race, origin and choices through the game, simply in the intro video they showed, there is masses of story, so it really is packed in, and unlike many choice based games, the changes are gradual, so you can't just quicksave before the time comes and then reload if you don't like the result.

Then there is the gameplay, which is good old sword and sorcery, but it also takes a lot from Baldurs Gate (The same people developed it after all). You have your party of 4, which is pretty standard fare, but whats not, is that spells can interact with each other, and from the look of the videos it's a very polished system. Battles look and feel very real, with the grime sticking to your character, and being persistent, and from what i've personally seen, some of the fights are monstrously hard, requiring micro-management of every character to bring them down, not to mention, freakin sweet takedown animations.

So, to go back over quickly, graphics don't make this game, although it's looking very polished now, the story, acting, animation and graphics all work together to make, what looks like an incredibly awesome game, and one which I am looking forward to intently.

Requirement Creep...

This title sort of sounds like a person who stalks for a requirement, rather than for sport, either way, some of you will realise i'm on about a job and contract jobs in general.

Why is it that, no matter what you've already done, it's never quite enough? Take this current company i'm working with, their name shall not be mentioned, but it's not my actual employer, more a sub-contractor, either way, I digress, no matter what i've already done, there is already more to do, and is this charged more? No, there should be limits on this stuff, but there isn't, they just come to me and say those dreaded words "Just one more thing...".

I realise requirement creep is a hazard of the profession, but still, this much work is ridiculous, especially when I don't have time to work on other projects. For example, today they come to me and say "Oh by the way, all these need to have this item on at this cost" without realising that i'm either going to have to go through them one by one, or write a script to go through the few hundered promotions to add what needs to be added, both will be time consuming.

Oh well, I have a couple of other projects, one is looking very nice now, even though it needs a lot of work, and one I haven't started, which will have to take priority eventually, god damn you unnamed company, I have more to be doing than sorting out your crap.