Posts by Jim Coleman

HTC Touch Pro2

Keyboards

The reason you want a Keyboard, even if you have a touchscreen, is because on-screen keyboards suck the contents of my rectum through a curly straw.

Palm politely cuts Pre tether

@Mac Phreak

"It's got absolutely NOTHING to do with the OS and EVERYTHING to do with greedy operators. "

I beg to differ. My WinMo phone can be used to tether, for free, on any network, including O2, so we know O2 do support tethering. However, the iPhone CANNOT be used to tether on ANY network except O2, and even then you have to pay a fee. Therefore the fee O2 charges is directly related to the phone OS you are using. The iphone OS must somehow flag to O2 the fact that it is being used to tether, and that's how O2 know to charge you for it. That function is part of the OS.

So.....you're just plain wrong.

WinMo

I don't understand all the fuss over tethering. Windows Mobile phones have had tethering capabilities built in since Queen Victoria died, and nobody's networks have melted yet. I tether my laptop to my HTC Touch Diamond 2 regularly and surf away, never breaking my 1GB limit, so what's the frakking problem eh?

How the hell a telco can charge users of iPhones and Pres for tethering when WinMo users get it for free beats the hell outta me.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that WinMo is the only truly open and unlocked mobile operating system.

Mitsubishi finalises mass-market e-car production plans

Hmmmmm

So. A journey of 200 miles will take 2 hours 50 minutes at motorway speeds in a petrol car, no fuel stop needed.

In this electric car....I think we can assume that at a constant 70mph, that 100 miles range will drop to about 75. So, we get the following...

75 miles (1 hr 4 min)

Fill up to 80% (30 min)

60 miles (50 min)

Fill up to 80% (30 min)

60 miles (50 min)

Fill up to 80% (30 min)

5 miles (4 min)

Total time, 4 hrs 18 mins.

So....an extra hour and a half, and three fill-ups instead of none.

One fill up every 60 miles instead of what....one every 300?

Who wants to make five times as many fuel stops? Not me.

Steve Jobs could return for iPhone speech next week

In the immortal words of Windsor Davies...

Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

Gordon 'to sacky' Wacky Jacqui

Fuck-a-doodle-doo!

Thank [insert deity of choice here] for that! Frakking control freak splorkweasel!

Women coppers eager to drop trousers

Well now.

Personally I think they should wear black stockings and a short skirt. Maybe a bit of a heel too. And that goes for the women as well.

Apple prepping 32GB iPhone 3.0?

Interesting...

...how the Apple fanbois harp on about their GUI when everyone else talks about features. It's a bit like purchasing a crap novel because it has a shiny cover.

And at the end of the day, how shiny is that cover, when all those iphone fanbois who put their own ripped CDs on it are faced with a Coverflow consisting entirely of grey squares with little note symbols on instead of album art? Heck, even my pooey Winmo phone displays cover art for CD rips.

They have to...

Apple have to make these changes - 32GB SDHC Micro cards are just around the corner, so very soon just about any modern phone will have access to 32GB anyway, so the iphone has to up its internal storage in order to keep up.

The processor speed going up to 600MHz is also necessary - Snapdragon will be out shortly and that's 1000MHz, again leaving the iphone to play catchup.

The camera going up to 3.2MHz is required as well - most modern phones such as the Touch Diamond 2 have 5MP cameras so again the iphone is playing catch-up.

Memory was always underspecced at 128MB. The rise to 256MB is much needed as other new phones have 288MB or so already.

So all in all, nothing to get excited about - this is just Apple trying to keep its phone up to the spec of other smartphones already on the market. Considering most top-tier phones now also sport very usable touch-screen GUIs, there's not much to make the iphone attractive any more, so it needs some kind of gimmick.....hmmm, maybe a compass?

Apple releases OS X 10.5.7 update

What!!!!?

What's this you say? Security flaws? Bugs? People having problems installing patches? Workarounds?

All this in an Apple operating system? But but but but......I thought Apple products "just work"?

Looks like I may as well stick with Windows then. I can get all that crap already.

HTC Touch Diamond 2

Gordon F. Bennett Esq.

The reason the iPhone has a 3.5mm headphone socket is because it doesn't support stereo bluetooth headphones.

Wired headphones are going the same way as Infra-Red communication ports.

The next iteration of the iPhone will finally have bluetooth headphone support (well done to Apple for catching up at last) which makes me wonder if they'll do the decent thing and ditch the superfluous headphone socket. Really. Having to have a wire running from your ears to your phone is ridiculous in this day and age. You might as well have your phone plugged into a wall socket while you're about it.

Bonza!

Just placed my order with play.com. Damn sweet phone, and an upgrade path to 6.5 which is looking even sweeter. At 3.2", the screen should be big enough to type on reasonably, so I can forego a hardware keyboard at last. Apparently the keyboard has haptic feedback too, which helps. I've found Windows Mobile to be the most flexible and hard-working phone OS - I use it as much for running my business as I do for entertainment - using Excel at full zoom-out requires a stylus to select cells as they're way too small for fingertaps, so I'm glad the stylus has remained. Some apps just aren't suited to touch input.

Phorm moves beyond privacy - except when slating rivals

Ahem...

Quite aside from the privacy issue, is the fact that my surfing history is a product of my own fair mind, and as such, should be subject to copyright. If Phorm wish to record and exploit my copyrighted work, especially for financial gain, they should bloody well compensate me for it.

It's MY intellectual property and I should be able to determine how, when and where it gets used. We sorely need a court case and a legal precedent.

I wouldn't be happy if all the details of who I call on my phone and how long I spend chatting to them were used to make profit either. If I made a phone call to my local Thai restaurant to book a meal, and a couple of days later I got a text message from a rival restaurant who had paid for my phonecall log, I'd be furious. So I'm furious about Phorm, too. It's the SAME DAMN THING.

Male chimps strike 'meat for sex' deals

At last

Now we see prostitution in animals. Can we please now legalise it for humans, now that we know it's perfectly natural to pay for sex? Eh?

BBC goes live... over Wi-Fi

So...

...they've put a very desireable service online, and then you're breaking the law if you use it (assuming you don't have a TV licence). Isn't that "Entrapment"?

Haven't managed to get further than the "only works on Wifi" thing 'cos I'm running over 3G at the moment, shame it doesn't support 3G but I guess the beeb doesn't want to ruffle the phone companies' feathers just yet.

I assume it will support Windows Mobile? Sorry, I meant "Windows Phone".

Man gets life for killing game-obsessed partner

I clear cut case of...

...NOT playing violent video games turning you into a killer.

Microsoft Office opening for iPhone

Fantastic!

So the iPhone is to get capabilities that Windows Mobile has had for....ooooh about 136 years. What's that you say? You have to pay $20 for it?

iChuckle.

Good on Microsoft for providing it for free in Windows Mobile then.

Apple to show off iPhone OS 3.0 next week

And another thing....

.....I forgot to mention...

14. it will also need to support tethering to my laptop to give it internet access.

Damn, I knew I'd forgotten something!

I would move over to iphone from Windows Mobile, but...

...there are several things I need iPhone 3.0 to deliver before I part with my HTC Touch Pro. The Touch Pro has all of these already (except 5 which is coming soon)...

1. VGA or better resolution for decent surfing

2. On-phone Word / Excel creation & editing

3. Cut and paste

4. Bluetooth stereo headphone (A2DP) support

5. 32GB capacity (32GB microSD cards will be out soon, so it needs to compete here)

6. An on-phone to-do list

7. Full synchronization of contacts, calendar, notes, to-dos & email with Outlook

8. Full synchronization of internet favourites and files with my PC

9. At least a 3.2MP camera with auto-focus and flash

10. Video recording

11. Single-press speed dialling

12. Flash support

13. Multitasking

If this next iphone has the software and hardware updates to do all of the above, I'll consider saying byebye to the Touch Pro.

Until then, it can go take a running jump. (Yes I do use all of the above functions, ta very much)

PC World cuts off Capita call centre contract

If you want something doing...

...do it yourself.

HP begins selling pay cut plan to European workers

Do the maths

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that running a household costs you about, oooh £1000 per month including mortgage, food & bills. That's £12,000 per year.

The average wage is £25,000. Less tax, that's about £18,000. Taking off our living costs, we get £6,000 to spend, or about £500 per month.

So if an average wage earner takes a 20% reduction in salary, that takes him down to £20,000, after tax that's about £15,000. Less our £12,000 expenses give £3,000, or £250 per month.

Basically, you have just halved our average person's disposable income.

If you earn £1,000,000 a year, you have about £650,000 after tax, less expenses gives £53,000 per month to spend. Taking a 20% pay cut gives £42,000 per month, a reduction of, well, more or less 20%

My point? A 20% pay cut to a normal worker is a kick in the crotch compared to a slight finger-wagging for an exec.

And I wonder if the workers' pay will bounce back to pre-crunch levels once the battle is over?

HTC launches updated Touch Diamond and Pro

OK...

I have a Touch Pro and I've considered upgrading to the TP2 (I'm on SIM only, so no contract to wait out!) but I think I will wait until it's offered with WinMob 6.5 pre-installed. I know HTC are offering a free upgrade to 6.5 when it comes out but I'd rather see it actually running on the phone first, ta very much.

Winmob is my OS of choice, primarily because of all the cheap, high-quality applications available for it. It's so good, my Touch Pro has become my default PC - my desktop at home gets used for not much more than synching my phone and hosting my media.

Missed flight woman goes absolutely mental

@ Monty Cantsin

"...most of these "mobiles" contain a camera with video recording functionality"

Unless it's an iphone.

Virgin Media trials longer bandwidth throttling

Hmmm..

So on a 2Mbps line, I'm limited to 1250MB (10 Gigbits) of data over 10 hours before I get throttled.

That's an average of 1 Gigabit/hour or 0.28 Mbps, or just 14% of the advertised throughput.

To put it another way, I will run up against throttling after just 1.4 hours of full usage. The remaining 8.6 hours would be throttled.

Another way still......I can only download the equivalent of one tenth of a DVD or just two uncompressed CDs before I get throttled.

NICE.

SkyBox cracks open as Microsoft Mobile timetable leaks

Looks like...

...6.5 will be a glossy UI overlay in a similar vein to HTC's TouchFlo 3D or Sony-Ericsson's Panels.

Hopefully though there'll be a modicum of integration with the underlying OS that'll help eliminate the stylus though. Maybe HTC will make it available as a download for my Touch Pro, that would be groovy.

Capgemini tells contractors to bite 15 per cent cut

Evidence please!

Hmmm, I'd be asking Capgemini to come up with some convincing evidence of this drop in contractor rates before I accepted it.

Flab-fighting EV powered by pizza

Well yeah

I've long thought that the electric power of an EV should be topped up by solar power, regenerative breaking, wind power via a type of sail or scoop, and pedals. Every passenger should have their own set of pedals, which could wind up a coil spring which would store the energy, which would be more efficient than transforming it to electricity to store in the battery. It'd be a bit like those toy cars that you pull backwards to wind them up and then let go :O)

But then in all honesty, what could be more environmentally friendly than a horse-drawn carriage?

Wisemen bring Jesus Phone (free) cut-and-paste

HahahahahHAHAHAAAAAAHAHahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa!

*coughcough* excuse me while I laugh my arse off, whoops there it goes.

Windows Mobile has had cut and paste in all apps since 1471, where it was used at the Battle of Tewkesbury on a handset made of burnished walnut. No not really, but you know what I'm sayin'.

Apple can't be serious in producing a phone without such a basic feature, surely? That's like missing out, I dunno, a Task list or something. What?

Flunkmonkeys!

Any clouds in your sky?

So......

So I move all my data onto a cloud server and select a number of apps to use - Office, Photoshop etc. I start paying, I dunno, £20 a month or so to use all the space, the apps and the CPU/memory grunt, all done over a (hopefully) very secure and (probably) very slow connection over the net.

And then when my ISP's network goes down, I can't do any work. When the Cloud Service Provider's servers go titsup, I can't do any work. When their own ISP goes down, I can't do any work. When their SAN goes haywire and it turns out their backups weren't working, I lose all my data. When I finally decide I'm fed up with paying £20 a month, I lose all my data.

Yeah, I can go for that. No, really.

Google removes Chrome beta wrapping

@ Anonymous Coward

"Until i can sync bookmarks between computers, its of no interest to me"

You mean you don't put your bookmarks into an iGoogle gadget and then make iGoogle your home page? Blimey. I do, and now all my bookmarks are right there on-screen on my home PC, my laptop, my work PC, my mobile phone and any other PC or device I use. No synching required. You can use any browser you like as well.

Works a treat!

Reg readers in the dark over extreme porn

Well now

In front of me I have a picture of a well-formed man, stripped completely naked except for a nappy. He has had body piercings performed on his hands and feet, which have been nailed to planks of wood and there's blood everywhere. Not only that but the whole image has been made to look like a religious scene! How offensive! Clearly the situation he's in is endangering his life, and the nakedness and the nappy......words fail me! It's disgusting!

Oh wait, it's in an illustrated Bible.

Better ban that then.

Microsoft preps IE 8 for the web-challenged

So....

So what we're saying is that sites are compatible specifically with IE7 because IE7 was incompatible with standards. They'll not be compatible with IE8 because IE8 is compatible with standards. Placing IE8 in compatibility mode makes it incompatible with standards, which makes it compatible with sites that are compatible with IE8's incompatibilities in compatibility mode. Taking IE8 out of compatibility mode makes it incompatible with sites that are compatible with IE8's incompatible compatibility mode.

Have I got that right? Or am I not savvy enough?

Down the Digital River, into the heart of download darkness

Oh for fuck's sake

Why is everyone so fucking hung up about swearing? It's just a word! Jesus* won't send you to hell** for writing a few expletives, you know. Jesus H fucking Christ onna bike, grow a pair of hairy nuts and take off that blouse!

*Or indeed any other conceived-by-a-virgin*** deital offspring, for that matter

**Which only exists in the fevered imagination of the indoctrinated, and in Peckham

***At least, that's what she told Joseph.

NYT scribe: No bailout for Tesla-buying 'centimillionaires*'

Ahem

"Whoops. You probably mean hecamillionaire, Mr Stross. A centimillionaire would, of course, be unable to afford a $100k Roadster."

Does that mean a centipede only has one hundredth of a leg? Should it be called a hecapede?

If you believe "centi" to mean "one hundredth of", as in centimetre being a hundredth of a metre, then you must also believe "milli" means "one thousandth of", as in millimetre. In which case, a "millionaire" must own one thousandth of a pound, ergo a hecamillionaire must own, by your logic, a hundred one-thousandths of a pound, or 10 pence.

Or something.

Boss frogmarches bound employee to cop shop

Eh?

Since when is a citizen's arrest false imprisonment, exactly?

This is another case of the robbers getting away with it while the victims end up in court.

Feck this damn country.

Prosecutors gather evidence on secret BT-Phorm trials

Well...

I'd quite like to see a senior BT exec do some porridge over this.

Luke Skywalker's lightsabre goes on sale

Lord Vader Says...

That's really my son's own lightsaber?

I find your lack of fakes disturbing.

Asus Eee PC S101 luxury netbook

SEC?

Small Expensive Computer?

Texas cop tasers himself

Regarding FAIL

Language changes. Today's colloquiallisms become tomorrow's dictionary entries. Life goes on. Deal. Or, indeed, FAIL.

T-Mobile G1

So...

When are we going to find out about the G1's ability to...

Tether to a laptop to provide an Internet connection

A full Tasks app that only shows current tasks

Synchronization with Outlook and/or Evolution

Compatibility of Synching with Windows / Linux

How do we get Office docs onto it?

Is there a decent Personal Finance app in the Marketplace?

Can Tomtom run on it yet?

What about using Access databases on it?

Are open-source software developers likely to code for it? I use the open source KeePass password storage program and would like to see this appear on the Marketplace

There you go, a few things to cover in Review Part Deux.

Oz pub dishes up really crap ice cream

Apparently

That quality establishment also has on the menu;

Turd in the Hole

Fish 'n' Shits

Shrimp & Crap Sandwiches

Fresh Chocolate Log

Arse Biscuits

Roast Backside of Beef

...and mine's the one with the pooper scooper in the pocket

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 Windows Mobile smartphone

OK...

Look like I made the right decision to go for an HTC Touch Pro when it came out a couple of months back.

Nice try, but could do better.

A Blu-ray Christmas? Don't bank on it

No shit, Sherlock

With DVDs at 5 for £30 in retail shops and a single Blu-Ray at around the £25-£27 mark, is it any wonder at all that people like myself, despite having a 1080p 46" screen and a PS3, still snap up those bargain DVDs?

I for one find it really hard to justify spending an extra £20 for a slightly sharper picture.

Blu-Rays really need to drop below the £10-a-pop mark before I buy them with any kind of regularity.

Not just that but the majority of stuff I want isn't even available on Blu-Ray anyway.

They've got to do better than that.

Dawkins' atheist ad campaign hits fundraising target

The problem is...

...it's not whether there's a god or not, but how you define "God".

Big beardy bloke going around planting trees in people's gardens and then telling them not to eat the fruit, flooding entire planets and killing everyone and everything except some old hippy and his wife, telling people "thou shalt not kill" and then asking his mate Moses to kill his son, then going "hey I was only joking"?

Perhaps not.

An intangible spirit that infuses all living things, yet has no sentience of its own?

Certainly.

The world isn't black and white folks, it's a delicate shade of grey.

Mine's the one with "Think outside the Box" written across the back and a wet haddock in the pocket.

Ann Summers yanks chocolate willy spread

I wonder...

...if they sell Knob Cheese as well as Willy Spread? And do they do Leg Spread and Chocolate Starfish?

CPS to consider private prosecution over stealth Phorm trials

OK.....

How can it NOT be in the public interest if 10,000 people were affected? That's pretty bloody public if you ask me, not to mention rather interesting.

If the CPS drop this, I hope the EU pick it up and give it a thorough rogering.

If the CPS go ahead with a prosecution, that calls into question the Police's refusal to bring charges.

Venturi shows eight-motor electric sportster

Holy Flarkbunkles!

That's one desirable mothercar!

Not since I kissed goodbye to my Lamborghini Countach 5000QV for bitchfucking my wallet one time too many at the petrol pumps have I had such wibblylust for a car. 200 miles on a charge? 0-60 in under five seconds? Looks like a carbon-fibre incarnation of Venus on crack?

I'll have one of those.

What's that you say? HOW MUCH????!!!!!

Catholic priests cane YouTube over blasphemous vids

Really...

...does anyone really still believe in Jehovah any more?

I've started praying to the LHC instead.

Bloody irrelevant deity-bothering blarkboons!

Mine's the one with "God is dead and no-one cares" written on the back.

UK minister looks for delete key on user generated content

Arse!

What this desperate limelight-hungry flunkmonkey fails to appreciate with that pea-rattle head of his is that it is the responsibility of parents to control their offspring's access to the net, not the governbent. So he can splork right off and go munch a swisher.

Phorm mulls incentives for ad targeting wiretaps

If only...

...Phorm had offered incentives to start with, there wouldn't have been so much outrage about the whole thing.

A decent cut of that £85 Million would do me nicely, then you can track my surfing all you like.