Activity for October 19

Review - Go-OO
2.4.1.5 (Jun 16, 2008)

A definite improvement over OO.org. Load times are only slightly faster, so don't get your hopes up too much, but the added format support (particularly .wps, still an all-too-common format) is great and seems to work well. The promised improved form controls seem to be present, but are still not fully compatible with MS Office equivalents (at least not from Office 2000). The look has also been improved with more modern-looking icons. The only downside is that it's based on OO.org 2.4 so you can't easily have it installed alongside standard 2.4 (the current main branch release), nor does it gain the (potentially significant) benefits of the upcoming (and now in beta) OO.org 3.0. I'm very much hoping these guys roll their changes into a 3.0 branch. If so I'd switch over to this version full-time, enterprise-wide.
Review - Kaspersky Rescue Disk
20080611 Test (Jun 16, 2008)

Kaspersky's effective antivirus in a bootable rescue disk? And free to boot? Sounds like a deal!
Comment - Broadcast radio one step closer to paying performers' royalties
20080611 Test (Oct 19, 2009 - 1:51 PM)

If we assume that the current approach is unfair, in that radio stations are playing music without paying for it, and we take the acknowledgment of the promotional value of radio as stated by Sen. Leahy above, then surely it would be no more fair for radio stations to be the only ones paying. Sure, maybe they should pay for playing music, but the music industry should also pay the radio stations to have their music played. Now which is easier: have the radio stations pay to play, and have the industry pay to play, resulting in the money crossing in the air and *maybe* one party coming out a bit ahead OR just ignoring the royalties for performance entirely since they are of a promotional nature? That, as I understood it, was the logic behind the original rules.

But maybe there's room for improvement here. Maybe, since it is of promotional value, the music industry really should directly pay for what it wants played. And if a radio station wants to play something *other* than that, they pay the royalties. Hm....
Comment - Wi-Fi Direct aims to be the 'Bluetooth Killer'
20080611 Test (Oct 14, 2009 - 4:42 PM)

Like SignalFire, or WaveStorm, or AngryAir? "Just connect your headset to any AngryAir compatible device and you're ready to go!" Yep, I think you're right, need a catchier name. ;-)

I'm sure it would end up being abbreviated to just "Wifi" eventually, there's no major reason for a distinction for most people. Or at least "WFD".

My big question here is how does this compare in power usage to Bluetooth. I thought part of the reason for the speed limitations was trying to limit power needs...
Comment - Having purchased its competition, Google joins Flash video group
20080611 Test (Oct 6, 2009 - 6:07 PM)

Or maybe they just wanted to buy them out of the web video race to avoid that particular battle altogether. I'm not a Google hater or alarmist by any means, but with them now joining an Adobe Flash *promoting* group (not just a standards body or something, but a group apparently designed to promote and "push" Flash install), it does look suspicious.
Comment - Flash 10.1 to bring rich Web apps to Palm Pre, WinMo, making iPhone an island
20080611 Test (Oct 5, 2009 - 4:46 PM)

They ought to build an app profiler into Flash that can take a look at the application's resource use and set a minimum system requirement. Then at least users can get a friendly "Your system does not have enough resources to display this content" message instead of attempting to run it and crashing, freezing, or otherwise behaving badly. In the case of video players or other apps where the resource usage depends on the content being viewed through it, they could make the app itself aware of its own resource use and thus the remaining available resources on a given platform and again trigger such a message when a video of larger size/bandwidth/whatever is attempting to be played.
Comment - For AMD, keeping it too simple may be too stupid
20080611 Test (Sep 21, 2009 - 6:25 PM)

There have always been "friendly" names for CPUs and, especially more recently, platforms. There's nothing wrong with this. One might also recall the days when AMD named their processors by "Intel equivalent speed" (e.g. Athlon XP 2000+). This does not seem much different. You could get the specs then and I'm sure you'll be able to get them regardless of what AMD says, though to be honest I'm not even clear their new branding is an attempt to do away with specs *for those who want them*.

Anyway the real problem I see here is AMD is using the same divisive and frankly uninformative monikers that others have used. "Vision" sounds great, but wait, wouldn't I rather be "Vision Premium"? Oh but then there's "Ultimate". I may be just a simple Internet browsing dad, but I bought a 50" LCD TV because it was the biggest on my block, and dammit I want an "Ultimate" vision too!

No, what we need are names that speak to the needs and uses of the systems. I'm not claiming to have the best ideas about this, I haven't given it a lot of thought, but here are some possibilities: "Vision " for the standard home user seems fine, it's an appealing moniker. It doesn't necessarily need to be qualified. "Vision Gamer" might be good for the gaming, higher performance crowd. "Vision Creative" might be good for the content creator. "Vision Business" for the workstation market. It doesn't need to be complicated here, say what the target user will be doing with their machine (mostly). Anything is better than "Premium" and "Ultimate", if the intention is to make the decision easier for people. Speak to what they *do* with the computer. "Vision Freestyle" (for the average user who doesn't fit into any particular higher-end category, this means a mid-level system in current terms).

They should really be branding the whole integrated platform. "Vision Gamer" isn't just a CPU, it's an AMD CPU with an AMD/ATI graphics card, at the least. "Vision Business" is an AMD CPU with onboard AMD graphics. Etc. Really it wouldn't matter if they ended up with a ton of different platform brands, as long as they're united by a common root, "Vision" in this case.

I don't have all the answers, all I know is their current solution seems to be missing something...