Happened to be in a major supermarket’s electronics section the other day and was told that the “3” network offers the best mobile broadband.
Although oddly all of the O2 retail hardware boxes were sold out, plenty of “3” boxes to be found.
Unfortunately no reasons were offered by the employee as to this blanket statement.
EDIT:
Except this mobile broadband Group Test at the Register proves him absolutely right:
The clear winner is 3.
So, if you’ve seen SQLEditor recently, you’ll hopefully have seen that there is a new version out: version 1.6. This got released just at the beginning of December 2009
1.6 is something that I’ve been working on now for a long time, it is essentially (the unreleased) version 1.5 with improvements and updates. In particular it contains a SQL parser that was written using ANTLR and a new JNI based system for using JDBC drivers with support for Java 6 JDBC drivers.
It’s also the first release version of SQLEditor that is compatible with Snow Leopard. SQLEditor 1.4.7 and earlier had an unusual architecture. When I originally started writing SQLEditor, it was a Java application with a Swing user interface. After some development it seemed clear that java swing was proving limited in some ways. I rewrote the user interface layer in Cocoa, leaving the model layer in Java and using Cocoa Java to connect the two parts together. The application development continued and new versions were released. Eventually though, Apple decided that Cocoa Java was not the future and decided to deprecate it.
Work began immediately on rewriting the crucial components of SQLEditor, although there were some issues.
The first was the model code. Every object in an SQLEditor document is represented by an object and all of the code for these objects was written in Java. All of the object code was rewritten and tested against the earlier versions to check that it still worked. It was very important that files from previous versions continued to work (and as far as I know all of them so far do). New code was written to read and write the SQLEditor document xml format.
The second major issue was that the database interface used JDBC drivers, which are written in Java. Native code would use ODBC drivers. Although similar this might mean that users wouldn’t be able to use existing arrangements to access databases.
Eventually code was written to bridge between SQLEditor native code and the JDBC drivers using the Java Native Interface (JNI).
The other crucial problem was the SQL parser. This is used if you paste SQL code into SQLEditor or if you import a file. The SQL parser was written using JavaCC, a parser generator that is written in and produces Java code. Several parser generators were looked at to replace JavaCC and eventually ANTLR was chosen.
A new SQL parser was written and tested during 2009 in ANTLR and is included in SQLEditor 1.6. The new parser is completely rewritten compared to the one that existed in SQLEditor 1.4.7 and no code is shared between them.
A major step in developing the new parser was to port all of the SQL test cases from Java (in 1.4.7) to objective C (in 1.6). These automated unit tests are run against the parser to ensure that the new parser behaves correctly compared to both the 1.4.7 parser and the assorted SQL standards.
It is still something of a work in progress though, there are things it doesn’t support and it’s still being actively worked on. One particular thing that makes this somewhat harder than it might otherwise be is that it must accept SQL in several different dialects, not just a single standard.
SQLEditor 1.6 also included user interface improvements and various performance fixes.
Overall it’s an improved program, although I do wish that it had been released sooner.
Thanks to everyone using SQLEditor for your patience and also for trying the beta versions.
We recommend using 1920×1080, 60Hz(Except for 19/22LU40**, 19LU50**, 19/22/26/32/37/42LH20**, 32/37/42LG21**, 32/37/42LG33**, 19/22/26LG31**, 42/50PQ35**, 42PQ65**), 1360×768, 60Hz(Only 19/22LU40**, 19LU50**, 19/22/26/32/37/42LH20**, 32/37/42LG21**, 32/37/42LG33**, 26LG31**, 50PQ35**), 1024×768, 60Hz(Only 42PQ35**, 42PQ65**) , 1440×900, 60Hz(Only 19LG31**) , 1680×1050, 60Hz(Only 22LG31**)for the PC mode, this should provide the best picture quality.
So which was recommended again?
In fairness, the manual is trying to cover about 20 different models, and it actually does a fairly good job in most ways. Except that there are a few passages like the one above …
Newspapers are in trouble, everyone seems to think this. Most newspapers have seen circulation declines of their paper editions and the web doesn’t pay that well for advertising.
What to do? Lots of obvious ideas like charging monthly fees or having per article charges.
Subscriptions overlook the fact that many people don’t subscribe to newspapers, they buy them each day. Sometimes they buy different ones on different days or go a week without buying one at all.
Per article charges are far too expensive, sometimes as much as 1 cent per word for say a 250 word article costing $2.50. If the article is critical to your business it may be affordable (The FT and the Wall Street journal seem to be doing well in this line) but if it’s about a political crisis or the actions of the local council?
So my first idea on this:
Sell the web based newspaper as an digital artifact, not just a bundle of content or a website subscription.
Allow access to single editions of the newspaper on the internet.
Give away a code inside each paper copy of the newspaper which would be good for reading the articles in that edition online forever. Once you’ve got the code (say in the morning), you can enter it into the newspaper website and your account is then authorized to read the articles from that day’s edition on any device you own.
Maybe you could also buy the codes online without having to buy the paper edition, plus if you got a subscription the content would be authorized automatically. Don’t want a particular day? Don’t need to pay.
Sell blocks of days prepaid in advance for a marginal discount. Because it’s buying a bundle of days rather than a monthly access subscription you should be able to get a slightly higher price, especially since it’s more flexible.
Plus you could make more money by allowing people to buy codes to access previous days, even after the event. Want to read the newspapers from the last major election, buy it now for 2.50. (You could charge more for old editions obviously)
Whether this is the idea to save the newspaper industry or not, I think it will take a lot of clever thinking to solve the problems.
This is a brilliant video of Senator Al Franken of Minnesota drawing a map of the United States entirely freehand and including all of the states.
(via NGM)
Fortunately, we were able to re-solder the USB connector back to the PCB and continue testing.
How many websites would bother doing this, and more to the point how many websites have reviewers who could do this?
The SQLEditor 1.6 public beta has been available now for about 3 weeks and I’m getting more hopeful about a final candidate release.
SQLEditor 1.6 is required for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard support, but because major sections needed rewriting to get this compatibility, there are also improvements to the core of the application.
There is a brand new SQL parser which is based on ANTLR and a new, more extendible, export system. Plus there are lots of other improvements in both user interface and functionality.
Best of all, it’s going to be a free upgrade for existing SQLEditor customers.
The beta is currently at version 1.6b7 but 1.6b8 will probably be out very soon.
I hope that you like it.
🙂
Download
SQLEditor 1.6b7
(DMG file | 4.2MB)
I just saw this comment while reading an article about David Letterman:
This article is poorly done. It uses sweeping generalizations, it is factually incorrect in several areas, and shows a general misunderstanding of television. …
IÂ enjoyed reading the article anyway, but should I have done?
I’m puzzled that this doesn’t seem to have a uk release date (or even a distributor as far as I can see)
The trailer looks great:
SQLEditor 1.4.4 was just released on Tuesday, the main feature improvement is the support for compound foreign keys. I posted a bit about this before and the final version is pretty much the same as I described.
Unfortunately there were a couple of bugs that slipped through relating to clicking objects. 🙁
These are going to be fixed in a point release that should appear soon.
The new version is available from the automatic update system or download here:
| 3.9MB dmg File Change Log Product Notes Expires 21st January 2009 |
I picked up a copy of Wired UK yesterday and I started reading it this morning while I was eating my breakfast.
So far I’m impressed, it feels solid, there’s plenty of interesting looking stuff and I liked the infographics (which I spent some time interpreting). The pictorial on the 3d printer that uses regular paper was really clever too.
I hope to offer more thoughts on this once I’ve read more, but my first instinct is to subscribe for the year.
Which is good; because I was really hoping that it would be good, and it is.
The newest version of SQLEditor (1.4.4b1) now has support for compound foreign keys. This is something that people have been asking about for a while now, so I’m pleased that it got included.
There are some things that may need to be improved, but I’m fairly happy with the first revision of this.
Diagram showing compound foreign key
The compound foreign key object is a new table level object that you can add from the Object menu just like a field or index. Then you drag from the foreign key to the target table. Finally you use the inspector to create pairs of columns to link together.
When importing from a database SQLEditor will try to create field-to-field links on foreign keys with only 1 pair of columns unless you tell it otherwise. (There is a new preference to do this)
Support is fairly complete, SQL parsing, database import, database export and SQL export are all available so it should work fairly well. I think the only thing it doesn’t do is auto-create indexes, so you may need to do this by hand on referenced columns (for those databases that need this)
There is naturally a new inspector palette to go with the table object.
Compound foreign key inspector
This allows you to add pairs of columns using the + button at the bottom. Choose your columns using the little popup menus.
The whole thing is completely new, so please send in your thoughts to the usual address.
(or enable the “Check for beta versions” preference and then use the check for updates feature)
DRM is stealing stories from the eyes of children.
Spotted recently while reading a forum
(which sadly doesn’t allow direct linking as far as I can see)
Interesting early signs of improvement in Detroit. People are buying and renovating the unoccupied and abandoned houses:
Mitch and Gina have already been approached by some Germans who want to build a giant two-story-tall beehive.
I ran into a problem in the last few days with YouTube. I would visit the site, but every video I tried to watch displayed the message “we’re sorry the video is no longer available”.
Other people seem to have noticed something like this too.
The answer, as found in the last message in the thread, is to update to the newest version of Flash player, which appears to fix the problem.
However it makes me ponder something: what changed in the latest version of Flash and why does YouTube not recommend this upgrade to users? (Ideally with a large and obvious message)
I was in the supermarket the other day looking for juice, only to find that the regular own brand wasn’t available! A disaster that was only averted when I realized that they were carrying a new branded juice instead. But why?
I had no idea until I came across this article which describes the financial difficulties of SunJuice, which unfortunately now seems to be in Administration.
SunJuice apparently provided 50% of all uk own-label juice.
I guess the costs were rising, prices weren’t and they got pushed a bit too hard by the buyers.
🙁
SamKnows has an article on some limitations that exist for 3g mobile internet access. (using usb dongles).
The killer is the limit for total bandwidth, as low as sharing 6.75 Mbits/s between everyone connecting to a single base station.
I knew the situation couldn’t be the same as land line, but this is much less than I expected.
I happened to attend a lecture today at the RSSA given by Roger Lockwood who the head of the Northern Lighthouse Board. The board manages and maintains lighthouses and other navigational aids around Scotland (and for various reasons the Isle or Man)
It was a brilliant lecture, the speaker was great and the topic was very interesting. It started with a discussion of existing lighthouses; then the switch to automation and the story of the last manned light house at Fair Isle South Lighthouse (only automated in 1998).
Interesting was the fact that they can run lighthouses on solar panels in Scotland with good reliability (although batteries were mentioned too of course for storing the power). Wind power has proved to be less effective, with the windmills tending to get damaged by bad weather. The panels also have no moving parts and require less maintenance.
Moving on to the importance of not relying solely on GPS and the importance of the lights and aids. This included some cautionary tales of vessels that have got into difficulty by assuming that the GPS was right and the beacons, buoys and light houses were wrong.
Then a discussion of the e-loran system which will give much better positioning information for vessels at sea, the progress made and the work still to do. (Apparently more base station beacons needed to improve coverage).
Some very interesting questions at the end including a discussion on jamming of GPS interfering with navigation (which is apparently seen as a real and serious problem), plus several cautionary tales about the importance of checking your navigation systems.
