10 Types Of People

So, you may have noticed that the Nexus Q, Google’s answer to Airplay, has been announced and, in America at least, it costs $299. Compared to Apple TV, that looks like a ridiculous price. Over 3 times more. What makes it so special? Well, in general…nothing. It has a death star look, and has a bunch of leds, but apart from that, nothing.

The main problem appears to be that it is made almost entirely in the US. This obviously meaning that labour costs are a lot higher than if it had been made in China and this appears to have rocketed the cost sky-high.

Now we are approached with a problem. I highly commend Google for doing this and holding their standards above everything else. Or, maybe it’s just that they have had issues with China, who knows. Either way, it still comes down to 1 problem for normal users.

Cheap, or fair?

$99 for something made by Chinese workers who have almost no rights and get very little pay, or $299 for something made by a company in another country who pay a “decent” wage, or at least have higher standards of working conditions.

I honestly do not thing the capitalist system we are living in is going to give room for something 3x as much just so we can feel good about where it comes from. I mean, look at fair trade chocolate. Pay 20p more on a chocolate bar? No way! I don’t care that it means the farmer gets more money, I can’t afford that.

Especially with the fact that we have spent the last 20/30 years with technology getting cheaper and cheaper. Now we pay more?

I just don’t think it’s going to happen. What do you think?

So, you may have noticed that the Nexus Q, Google’s answer to Airplay, has been announced and, in America at least, it costs $299. Compared to Apple TV, that looks...

I recently found this out thanks to Alan Pope on google plus. He simply said “I love this video. All of it. Every time I watch it.” – so I had to watch it. And ya know what, I do too. The video is so awesome, so intricate, the dancing is great but the actual video editing and the time and effort put into this is the most awesome bit about it. The song as well, is just fascinating. Madeon managed to mix this completely live, with clips from 39 different songs. See how many you can tell, and then go onto his youtube page and see if you were right, and what ones you missed. (I got 4…)

Anyways, enough prefab…lets get on with the awesome video.

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I recently found this out thanks to Alan Pope on google plus. He simply said “I love this video. All of it. Every time I watch it.” – so I...

We have recently heard of a bunch of new patents from Apple. Now, don’t get this as being an Apple bashing post, this is a stupid patent bashing post. Lets have a look at, first of all, what patents were designed for in the first place.

If you have been reading tech blogs over the last few months, or listening to pretty much any TwiT or Sixgun (yeah, that’s right, I put them in the same category now ) podcast, you will have heard the opinion that patents were origionally invented to encourage openness.

Now, there is many an opinion that patents are there to protect people from their ideas being stolen. But, it appears that patents were, infact, designed to encourage people to tell the world how they did this, and in return they got a temporary monopoly on this particular technology. Now, however, patents seem to be a way to get as many obvious things as possibly patented so you can make lots of money…

Lets take some of the new patents from Apple as an example:

• Solar powered charging for iDevices

Now, maybe its just me…but where on earth does taking a widespread technology, and putting it on another widespread technology make it unique and patentable? Now, I’m not an expert in legalese, but from reading the patent document, it seems like they are just saying “We will stick a solar charger on our devices…”.

An apparatus for operating a portable electronic device, comprising: a voltage converter having an input and an output, wherein the input is capable of being coupled to a solar power source and the output is capable of being coupled to a portable electronic device, and wherein the voltage converter is configured to convert solar power received from the solar power source to power the portable electronic device

I have a solar battery charger. If you consider a portable battery charger as a “portable electronic device”, then this describes my battery charger almost exactly. What on earth is unique about this patent? Connecting a solar panel to an electronic device is not new, innovative or clever…

• “Rotating the display orientation of a captured image.”

Do I need to say anything about this one? Digital cameras have done this for about 10 years…I’m sorry but this one is ridiculous.

• “Automatic configuration of peripherals”

Erm…I don’t really understand this one, I’ll be honest. Are they just saying making a peripheral do soemthing automatically when you plug it in? This seems extremely vague and the complete opposite of revolutionary.

• Cover flow for videos

Right, finally we are actually at something that is more possibly patentable. However, lets think about this. Apple technically already have a patent for cover flow in general. Not getting into whether or not this is a decent patent, it shouldn’t be patentable a second time. Using video instead of pictures is not a hugely revolutionary step, and if it is, its already been done.

You could argue quite easily that cover flow is now an “obvious” thing because its been around for such a long time. Heck, I have a coverflow style window switcher on my Linux desktop. Google has it in their new music app. Etc etc, and Apple isn’t pursuing anyone around these patents, so clearly it agrees with me that it is obvious. Therefore, using video in this way (which the netflix app on google tv uses) is not really revolutionary.

Ok, there are 3 problems with all of these patents. None of them are revolutionary, none of them actually are in a working product from Apple, and they are all generic “ideas”. For a patent to be patentable, they should be new and revolutionary, they should have at least a working prototype not a vague wishy washy “we might do this in this sort of way…”, and they should be specific implementations, not vague ideas. This is just getting ridiculous and the system needs an overhaul, if not a complete scrap. But at least an overhaul…

We have recently heard of a bunch of new patents from Apple. Now, don’t get this as being an Apple bashing post, this is a stupid patent bashing post. Lets...

We are in an interesting, yet confusing time, of transition. We have various types of people in the world currently:

• People who primarily use paper, for books, for writing things on, etc etc
• People who use a combination. They might own a kindle, yet have lots of paper books. They might use email yet still send letters. They might use google docs yet still print out to read or send to people.
• People who primarily don’t use paper (someone like me) who hardly have any paper books, doesn’t own a printer, and its a once a year time that he actually recieves a letter…

This leads us into a fascinating time of variety and choice. Yet it leads to annoyance in many people’s eyes.

For example, if I am handing in a uni paper to someone, how do I do it? Well, it depends on the lecturer. Some lecturers like us to email them the papers, or put them online in our VLE. However, some like us to print it out and hand it physically into the office. This leads to the constant weekly thing of “how are we handing this one in?”, and, frankly, I spend far too much time doing that.

Let me take another example…books. If I were to want to buy a book, generally I would have to get it in paper, as most of the books that I would want are not in any electronic format. If I want a uni textbook…I must buy it physically. Which is an annoyance for me as I don’t want that. Sure, I may be able to get it in an illegal form on my computer (there was an example where one of the textbooks that we used last year was circulating through the class in a pdf) but we can’t get them, in general, legally.

This leads us to the question, “Will paper be with us for a long time, or will it just go away please?”. I think that it depends on what paper is used for. In general, paper will be with us for a long time, but for some things it just makes sense not to have paper at all.

Back to the example of books, do I want a bookshelf full of 100 books, or a nice little e-reader that fits in my bag with everything on it? I know the answer to that one. Same with textbooks. I just got rid of 25 Chemistry and Chemical Engineering textbooks, and they were taking up so much space in my room, which I really can’t be bothered with. So, actually in my Computer Science course I have only ever bought 1 textbook, because I just can’t be bothered with the space. In this way, I believe that paper will dissapear. Or at least books will become a rarity. Much like vinyl, tape and many other technologies, it will become a niche thing. Sure, it’ll still exist, but the majority of people will love the convenience over anything else.

I have at least 2 women in my life who both love books, and they will continue to argue with me about this. They think that paper books will continue to be important in everyone’s lives, but they are the exact type of people who will keep buying books. They are the book enthusiasts. Much like vinyl, film and tape enthusiasts, they will continue to say that their way of doing it is better while the rest of the world starts to ignore them.

There is nothing wrong with this, I am going to have to live with books because 1 of these women is my girlfriend, and I accept this. But generally the rest of the world doesn’t care about it. They want convenience over anything else. They always do.

We are in an interesting, yet confusing time, of transition. We have various types of people in the world currently: People who primarily use paper, for books, for writing things...

This is just a quick post to officially launch my new blog, http://www.alistotle.co.uk – it will focus on more theological, philosophical and ethical issues, which occasionally will involve technology. If you only want to know about the computery posts, then don’t follow the new blog as I will cross post those to my current blog, http://www.10people.co.uk.

So, say hello to my new blog, and that’s all

**UPDATE** – Turns out my cross posting doesn’t currently work, but the blog is still published…will update when this is fixed. Not just now though, I’m going to bed….

**UPDATE 2** – I managed to fix the issue only 4 months after initially posting this. Now this should be posted on 10people.co.uk as well

This is just a quick post to officially launch my new blog, http://www.alistotle.co.uk – it will focus on more theological, philosophical and ethical issues, which occasionally will involve technology. If...

Before you start ranting and raving about how we can’t possibly make the internet a human right, please read through the entire post to understand what I am trying to tell you

Firstly, I have not blogged in quite a while due to university being very busy, but as we are coming into the Easter holidays, and the year is slowly drawing to a close, I should get a number of posts written up in the coming weeks (hopefully). Ok, now on with the topic:

A while ago, a number of countries made access to the internet a human right. As far as I know, Estonia, Finland, France and Greece all have decided that the internet is so important that it is essential to all humans and therefore can be called a human right. It has also been proposed in the UN to become officially a human right under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I find this very interesting, and in some ways agree. I want to explore a few of my thoughts.

• Equality

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”, and “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” (Article 1 and 2 respectively)

Both of these articles say that humans are to be equal, and not discriminated on anything. The internet does this really well in the common saying that no one knows if you are a dog on the internet. If you can type, and you access the internet, theoretically you are equal to everyone else on it. Now, sure there is a certain level of status on the internet but that is gained by what you do rather than who you are. People like Tim Berners-Lee and Jimmy Wales are very respected on the internet and have huge influence, but that is not because the background they come from, but rather the fact that 1 created the WWW, and one created Wikipedia.

You can be whoever you want on the internet, and therefore you are theoretically equal.

• It facilitates many of the existing rights

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. (article 19)

Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (Article 26)

These 2 rights (to opinion and to education) are both made easier with the internet. The internet is a huge source of information allowing for easy education on any matter, as well as being a place where you can give your opinion on anything, obviously dependant on where you put that opinion.

• Internet only services

Many services are becoming internet only. For example, to submit an assignment in University or to get information about my course, I have to have the internet. There is no other way I can easily get this information. Also, many banks give better rates if you have an internet-only account, meaning that if you don’t have the internet, you lose out as you don’t get the best deals you can.

There are many things that the internet is becoming the only way for, as this makes it easier to do these things. However, this then leads us to the conclusion that the internet is an essential part of life.

• Gets rid of the 3 strikes law

If the internet becomes a human right, suddenly the 3 strikes law (which is extremely wrong, and if you want my opinion on it, I wrote about it to my MP, and ranted about it a lot) becomes a non-issue. It then becomes a law which is illegal, and therefore can’t exist.

As a side note, the internet being a human right would force countries to make it available in some form to anyone who wants it. This doesn’t mean wiring up every single house in the country, as things like internet cafes in acceptable distances from homes would suffice as giving them access, and obviously technologies like 3G, LTE and WiMax would be great additions in areas that it is not viable to wire up houses. It also doesn’t mean that it would be forced upon anyone, as anyone who didn’t want the internet (shock horror…) wouldn’t need to have it.

Now, your opinions please internet: human right?

Before you start ranting and raving about how we can’t possibly make the internet a human right, please read through the entire post to understand what I am trying to...

I’ve spent a wee bit finding my favourite adverts from last nights superbowl, in ascending order.

Darth Vadar Volkswagen advert. Very funny, love it.

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Doritos advert.

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Best buy, buyback advert. Very funny and clever. Like the idea of the actual thing as well…

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Sony Ericsson Xperia Play ad. Very creepy, but very clever as well.

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Finally, my favourite, the Motorola Xoom ad, a very clever take on Apple’s 1984 superbowl ad. Like the whole play on it there, however their tagline “A tablet to create a better world” is a little bit…odd…

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Anyway, hope you enjoyed these as well, if you find any that you like, send them in the comments. They would be def appreciated.

I’ve spent a wee bit finding my favourite adverts from last nights superbowl, in ascending order. Darth Vadar Volkswagen advert. Very funny, love it. embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Doritos advert....

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the actual subject and what it all means technologically and everything. If you want to know about that, there are plenty of places to look, and if you don’t know about it at all then please go read something about it before you read this, otherwise it won’t make much sense.

Essentially, Chrome will no longer support h.264 within html5 video tag, out of the box.

I was listening to This Week in Google, episode 77, and listening to what they were saying about this. Something that Kevin Marks said made me think. He said “If you want to make a device cheaper, you reduce the number of things you have to pay for.”, and then my mind floated back to Chrome OS, the operating system built on a linux, and offering only a web browser. Many people think that Google will over very cheap, possibly free, netbooks and laptops with Chrome OS on it.

I’m sure you can see where I’m going. What would be their biggest expensive with developing that (apart from the hardware and the man-power)? Any licenses they have to pay for – h.264.

I think this might be part of their long term plan, as well as trying to force the internet towards the webm format, they are planning on making very cheap netbooks with chromeos on it. So, they make sure people try chrome, people end up liking it, then they take out h.264, as people still like Chrome, and the internet eventually switches away from it, as the only browsers that use h.264 are  Opera IE and Safari just now, which have pathetic amounts of market share.

**EDIT** Thanks to kabniel for noticing that Opera, infact, does not support h.264 **EDIT**

On the other hand, I frankly think its a stupid move. Openness includes being allowed to use non-open format, in my opinion. If you make people use open source stuff, that is not an open environment. It is as bad as Apple’s App Store terms…

Thats everything. Not a very long blog post, but just something that popped to mind and I thought I would share with the world

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the actual subject and what it all means technologically and everything. If you want to know about that, there are...

You may have heard that Sony’s lawsuit against GeoHot and failoverflow was made official today (although, we knew it was coming when they took out that restraining order, lets be honest). If you don’t know whats happened, let me explain in layman’s terms. Essentially, to run any game or program on a PS3, it must be “signed” with a private key, which is essentially a long string of characters that encrypts the game or program. Then, each console has its own key, which is similar, and can be used to decrypt the game, therefore proving it is an official game. The reason that no one has managed to run anything on a PS3 before last week is because no one had this key, as it was kept in a secure Sony facility.

However (and this is where my knowledge of what exactly happened gets a bit sketchy), a group called failoverflow managed to figure out how to do something with the PS3′s key system, and then the next week, GeoHot (a famous iOS and PS3 hacker) managed to use the same method to figure out the master private key. This would theoretically allow anyone to install whatever they want on their PS3, therefore leading to the inevitable end of people finally getting Linux back on their PS3s (which, btw, we paid for in the first place). This is fantastic news for people like me (hackers and computer scientists) because it means we can use our consoles to the full potential. The cell processor can do a lot more than people are doing just now with games and stuff, and this is great. Geohot actually posted a video showing him running a homebrew program on his PS3.

However, today, Sony filed a lawsuit against Geohot and the members of failoverflow, basically suing the living daylights out of them. Apart from my anger towards Sony, there are a few things we can take from this:

1. This is a permanent hack – if Sony could fix this with a software update, they would. They didn’t bother trying to sue GeoHot when they could fix what he did with a software update, therefore they are screwed with this. There is nothing they can do, so they decide to sue.
2. They are obviously not releasing the PS4 anytime soon. This lawsuit will cost them time and money, and if they were going to be announcing the PS4 in June at E3, then they wouldn’t go to all this expense and bother.

Now, before you start harping on about software piracy, this is nothing to do with that. Yes, sure, some people will use it to clone games, but you can’t get away from that fact, and I don’t care, because thats not what I, and most people, want to do with this software. I want to install linux, I want to write small programs for my PS3, and I want to be able to play indie games, and have random little Open Source programs that people make for it. This is what I want, not to rip games and play them without buying them. Most of us aren’t like that. The people involved with this hack want openness and want to be able to use their consoles to the full potential that they can. Nothing more.

Do you stop something because someone might use it for bad? No. Unless the majority uses it for bad, then you just deal with individual people. You don’t ban cars because occasionally people use them to run people down deliberately. And this isn’t even killing anyone if people do it.

I am not for piracy, I am for openness and being able to use my console to its full potential, and in 1 case actually being able to use 1 of the features I bought with it (linux support) which Sony took away. Ironically, to stop this happening

1 last point…I just hope that Apple’s jailbreaking case loss is enough within case law to warrant this being legal as well. If you look at the list of laws that are supposodly broken with this, it seems to be a load of rubbish. I’m obviously not a lawyer, but I’m sure using my PS3 for what I want does not count as “accessing computers without authorization”. Erm, its my computer…

The worry for me, is that if Sony wins, then suddenly we have Apple, and many other companies, trying to stop us using our computers and phones fully. I hacked the bootloader on my phone so I could run modified software on it. I’m not breaking any laws, so why shouldn’t I be able to do that? Its pretty much the same issue.

P.s – The PS3 logo is a registered trademark of Sony…blah blah blah…you know the drill, right?

You may have heard that Sony’s lawsuit against GeoHot and failoverflow was made official today (although, we knew it was coming when they took out that restraining order, lets be...

Very sensationalist title, don’t ya think? Well, I think it needs to be.

I am not going to say that there are many things that are leading to fragmentation, and the inevitable downturn of the free and open web, because thats not true. What is a worry, however, is some apps in the Chrome Web App store.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to say that the Chrome Web App store is bad, I don’t think it is. I think it is a great thing, that allows normal non-technical people a really easy way to find great web apps, and long may it continue.

The problem I think we have, is when some of these apps are integrated too tightly into Chrome. Lets take Tweetdeck web for an example. This is a fantastic HTML5 app that I have been using for the past week, it is fantastic, feels just like the desktop app, but uses a fraction of the system resources. However, it is ONLY a Chrome Web App. There is no way to get to this in any other browser. I don’t use chrome. I don’t like chrome, it doesn’t work how I would want it to work. Thats not going to change. So I can’t use it in what I want to use it in. What I would like, is to use Tweetdeck in a prism instance (which is a very low-powered and basically chromeless browser interface for this exact purpose)…but I can’t. I have to use it in Chrome.

This is the bad thing. This is getting back to the IE debacle. Where you made a website for IE, or for everything else. The web is, by definition, meant to be open, holding to standards set out by the W3C, and open to whoever wants to view it, on whatever they want to view it, when and where they want to. This is a feature that is killing this idea, because you can only view this in Chrome.

This needs to be fixed, but I don’t know how. Is Tweetdeck tightly integrated into Chrome? If so, what is it doing that other browsers can’t do? And if so, why aren’t they doing it?

I love the tweetdeck web app, and I am using it as we speak, but I want to use it in what I want, and there are a few other apps that are the same. I hope this trend doesn’t continue, but rather it reverses.

Very sensationalist title, don’t ya think? Well, I think it needs to be. I am not going to say that there are many things that are leading to fragmentation, and...