Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:My main complaint about the Pro 2 (Score 1) 101

The high DPI manifest entry and APIs only turned up with Windows 8. It's hardly surprising that legacy applications don't support it or make declarations in their manifest to that effect. Even applications which are in active development might be using legacy APIs or DLLs that make it a non-trivial problem to solve.

It's not confined to Windows either, Linux and OS X suffer from similar problems.

Comment Re:I have a Lenovo Miix 2 (Score 1) 101

It weighs more, you can't leave the keyboard behind making it very heavy and large for a table.

Yes you can. You just lift the tablet out of the stand and walk off with it. The stand itself does a little heft to it because it has to counteract the high centre of gravity of the tablet. Microsoft's solution is kickstand which significantly increases the footprint the thing needs to stand on. Oh and no keyboard for you unless you fork out a small fortune to buy it as an accessory.

And it completely lacks a digitiser: so no handwritten note taking, drawing etc etc.

I doubt that holding a 12" tablet to take notes is an ideal use though I concede it doesn't have an active stylus. You could of course just buy a "dumb" stylus for a dollar and install one note all the same. Or use the keyboard. The one you get included with it.

But yeah, apart from all of that it's exactly the same ^^

Who said it was exactly the same?

Comment Re:My main complaint about the Pro 2 (Score 1) 101

I find it annoying too. Windows (and OS X and Linux) has long been used with low dpi screens so software can look really awful with a high DPI. All the menus, buttons, and toolbars are teeny tiny. So there is now a high DPI aware flag that software is supposed to use to declare it's conformance with new APIs.

Problem is some software proclaims itself high DPI aware but still doesn't look right - Google Chrome in particular has fiddly little buttons. If software doesn't say it's aware then by default Windows will scale the window but then you get a somewhat blurry upscaled window. It's possible to change the scaling and to disable it entirely from shortcut properties but it's clear that desktop operating systems still have some way to go to get things right.

Comment Re:I decided against this phone AFTER pre-ordering (Score 1) 69

I preordered a OnePlus during the 1-hour, no 2-hour, no 8-hour sale where their systems collapsed under the load. I wasn't even sure if my preorder had been successful or not because I didn't get an acknowledgement until the day after. The whole thing was a clusterfuck of epic proportions. I was also told ETA 6 weeks but this dropped to 2 and suddenly the package was with me with no dispatch notification. So their IT and general customer interaction are seriously bad.

But the phone itself is excellent. It's easily comparable to a Galaxy Note and I have to remind myself it only cost half the price. I got a 64GB phone for £279. Build quality is excellent, the screen is bright and high DPI, the battery life is very good and it has a very good software experience thanks to Cyanogenmod. My biggest gripe is the charging cable (which looks very spiffy) is too short and the connector is upside down compared to other phones. Firefox also doesn't appear to be able to play hardware accelerated h264 properly for some reason which I assume is a fault in the software since no other app has the problem. Otherwise it's a great device.

Comment Re:It has nothing to do with the part counts (Score 1) 293

That's marvellous if you are along the corridor of chargers. Not so marvellous for the vast number of people who aren't. Or who can't afford a Tesla.

It's not hard to envisage every gas station having chargers some day (or diners / supermarkets / convenience stores who want to attract business while vehicles charge). That day is still some way off.

Comment Re:Root Your Device? (Score 3, Funny) 54

I guess someone would have to tell us how to detect it, or something else equally helpful to actually PREVENT this threat. Warnings are pointless without a plan.

Just google for "free antivirus and sexy girl screensaver APK". Lots of Chinese warez sites have it. The app asks for a lot of permissions but only to see if there are viruses hiding in your text messages or contacts.

Comment Re:Ba Da ... (Score 1) 400

It's one thing to not default search to Google, but it would be another entirely to remove it from the list. As I don't run Mint, I'm assuming you mean the latter by "actively prevent". Even Mint can't use the standard Firefox branding or search plugin (perhaps it has an affiliate id in out), there are other ones which would work.

Comment Fix the problem properly (Score 1) 212

Let sites create their own keys and sign them (or not) by anyone they feel like. This could include CAs but equally it could include other sites they do business with to build a web of trust. And the browser should use SSL observatory to compare and cache these keys and present a simple checklist of what protection the site has against attack, its level of trust etc.

The existing model is broken by the fact that CAs are not always trustworthy, the certs they issue to most sites are worthless as tokens of trust and the whole mechanism is a tax on security. It needs all browser makers to knock heads and make CAs for security an optional thing. Yes some sites like banks or whatever might want to pay some CA to audit their security procedures for storing a cert. For most sites it's complete overkill.

Comment Re:Buyer Beware (Score 1) 473

This Kickstarter stuff isn't very well regulated...

A fool and their money are soon parted. I've yet to see a single kickstarter that would justify me giving a single penny to it. Most of them are glorified preorders - "give us money now and in a year or two we might deliver a product you can have for a small discount off its eventual retail price". No thanks.

Comment Re:The wait was unnessesary (Score 3, Interesting) 133

Typescript is similar to Actionscript and compiles down to Javascript. You can do stuff like interfaces, classes, inheritance, compile time typechecking etc. My experience of Typescript is the language is okay but developing it is painful because the tools are awful, particularly for someone coming from a place like Java where IDEs will give instant feedback on errors, code completion, formatting etc. Even stuff like ordering of classes can break the JS even when the TS compiles perfectly.

I would agree with the sentiment that people who think JS (or HTML5) is some panacea for Flash are idiots. Flash was hated primarily because it was TOO popular - sites abused the fuck out of it and multi tabbed browsers sagged under the weight of so many running instances. If JS is abused the same way the performance would be just as bad.

JS is often considered the problem, not the solution to web development. This is why coffeescript, typescript et al exit. Plus a raft of JS libraries like jquery, backbone, underscore, phantom, handlebars etc. to hide the differences or provide basic niceties that JS lacks. Plus the likes of dart, emscripten, GWT and so on which bury JS completely and spit out compiled JS. Plus the recognition from browsers that JS performance sucks and the optimization paths they've implemented (e.g. asm.js). That said, we're almost in a place where 95% of the use cases for Flash are probably achievable in JS. Personally I wish browsers would adopt PNaCl or something similar so code can be compiled and run at near native speeds - skip JS as an intermediate format when it doesn't make sense and just let sites ship bitcode.

Comment Don't preorder (Score 1) 474

A lot of money is riding on a game release. They cost millions to produce and market and delaying could cost millions more. A game would have to be seriously broken to be delayed.

So it's unsurprising that Ubisoft pushed it out the way it was. If they announced a delay, they'd lose out on seasonal sales, their preorders would be decimated and it would affect their quarterly figures. So they pushed out something with some serious bugs and performance issues and used an embargo to prevent bad press until after all those preorders were fulfilled. I'm sure they'll get around to fixing the worst of the bugs, but people have been sold a lemon.

As consumers, there is a clear lesson to be learned here - do not preorder. Do not reward companies who use hype and lies to promote a game that may not live up to expectations. If a game is THAT AMAZING, then it'll still be so in a week or two after release when consensus is formed. And if it isn't... well that's €60+ you've saved for a better game.

Comment Re:Same thing in the US (Score 1) 356

I don't believe that to be true beyond what you might get from shifting from one food source to another - some temporary effects to your gut. And besides if she affected her health by not eating then it is in her interest to start again even if that means gradual reintroduction and abstinence again when circumstances allowed for it.

Slashdot Top Deals

The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.

Working...