Posts by Andrew Ducker

Basic minimum income is a BRILLIANT idea. Small problem: it doesn't work as planned

The Mincome experiment in Canada didn't really show the result you're talking about:

The results showed a modest impact on labor markets, with working hours dropping one percent for men, three percent for married women, and five percent for unmarried women.

...

These decreases in hours worked may be seen as offset by the opportunity cost of more time for family and education. Mothers spent more time rearing newborns, and the educational impacts are regarded as a success. Students in these families showed higher test scores and lower dropout rates. There was also an increase in adults continuing education.

(References from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome)

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So, basically, mothers worked less, and kids who should have been in school worked less (and educated themselves more), and everyone else worked the same amount.

Why Comrade Cameron went all Russell Brand on the UK’s mobile networks

Aaah. I wouldn't let the phone companies pass on extra costs for roaming.

Basically, it's imposing a universal service coverage on all phone companies, but allowing them to delegate the service on to their competitors.

I'm confused. Presumably when I can't get a Three signal and it automatically roams to O2 this will cause O2 to charge Three for the privilege.

This, therefore, will tell Three exactly how much it would save by putting in another transmitter, and give it a good financial reason to do so. (Or to decide that it's not worth it for the £10 it pays per month to O2 for carrying its calls in that area).

That strikes me as giving a _positive_ impetus for investment.

Am I missing something?

Who us, share infrastructure? Networks reject gov proposal

If there was only an O2 transmitter in one area, and when Three customers used it Three had to pay O2 for the privilege, this would quickly provide an incentive for Three to build their own (or to just pay up, if that was cheaper).

This doesn't seem very complicated to me.

5G about the whole network, not just speed, says Alca-Luminary

So, will 5G phones be able to use WiFi as a backbone for phone/SMS?

Because I'm occasionally in a situation where I have a good internet connection, but no mobile signal, and there's no reason why my messages shouldn't get through...

Bendy or barmy: Why your next TV will be curved

And what does one do when one lives with someone else, and you both want to watch TV together? Do they sit on your lap, or just live with sitting outside of the sweet spot and having a horribly distorted image?

Recommendations for private cloud software...

http://www.axway.co.uk/products-solutions/mft/gateways/securetransport is the kind of thing you want to look into.

Pocket

Yes

It does it for me. Not with every site (it's scrapers are good, but not perfect), but it works a lot of the time.

BYOD sync 'n share

An OS feature?

How, then, would I sync from my phone to my desktop, which run two completely different operating systems?

Are they going to all work together to provide me with space out of the goodness of their hearts?

SOPA poked an angry bear and set it loose on the net

So, if people repeatedly say "no" to enforcement without trial then that's bad and wrong?

The article says that we need strong enforcement. I'd like to see suggestions of exactly how we manage that without locking down the internet in such a way that it's basically broken. I don't believe it's possible, to be honest.

Flash stalks Seagate's hybrid drives

The pure SSD options are all still massively more expensive than hybrids. The price game is a perfectly good one to play until memristors come along and make SSDs dirt cheap.

Dead at 13: Napster 1998-2011

The Business model

I wonder why it failed, when Spotify has made a success of a very similar model.

Chromebooks: the flop of 2011?

I can't see the advantage over an Android laptop

Which can do everything the Chrome laptop can, and also run Android apps.

Also, why are the Chromebooks only up to 12". My current laptop is 15", and that's perfect for me. I'm not moving to something smaller.

TfL wheels out digital bus info upgrade

The Edinburgh one is fantastic

I don't bother to check timetables any more - just pick a stop off of the ones bookmarked on my Android app and see what my options are. So handy.

Facebook music dashboard: Revenue at last?

I would happily pay £5/year to never see another advert on Facebook.

Four illegal ways to sort out the Euro finance crisis

Why the Europ is different

@Andy Pellew - the Euro is different because in the UK the SE can funnel money to the NE (and does so, a lot). This cannot happen across different countries because of European law. See Option 2 in the article.

Aussie retailer accuses UK shops of HDMI 'scam'

A tenner? Rip off!

Amazon Basics does a 3m HDMI cable for a fiver. Works perfectly.

Ricoh reveals paper-bright colour e-paper

Page speed?

How long do page changes take?

Lasers set to replace spark plugs in car engines

Price/Performance?

Sorry to be a killjoy - but how much energy does it take to ignite with a laser (versus the energy for the electrical spark), and how much does the laser mounting cost (sparkplugs being dirt cheap).

This does sound pretty awesome, but I'd like to know whether it's something that is actually worth doing this year, or whether it's on the distant horizon.

An introduction to Ethernet storage

ATA over Ethernet?

Any sign of ATAoE catching on?

Or is it still extremely niche?

TiVo calls time on ageing set-tops

Depends on the definition of "Lifetime"

Tivo sold "lifetime" subscriptions. While there are boxes still working, are they still liable to provide the subscription? I suspect that the only people who know are the lawyers already rubbing their hands together....

IPv6 uptake still slow despite looming address crunch

My problem is a lack of home technology

Even if my ISP started running IPv6 I wouldn't be able to pass the packets across my router. So unless all of those router manufacturers start offering firmware, or we all buy new routers we're all stuffed anyway.

T-Mobile UK pushes German Froyo to Desire users

Not on Orange

T-Mobile may well have pushed it out to their customers, I've got Desire on Orange, and am still waiting...

Fanboys flabbergasted by 'Apple TV runs iOS' revelation

XBMC

An extra thumbs up for installing XBMC on the old Apple TV. It makes an excellent media centre, for a very reasonable price and form factor.

Orange mobile data chucks punters

Same here

I've been having general problems with Orange for a while, but the last two days have been awful. For some reason 2G and EDGE (or whatever it is I'm using when the 3G+ symbol appears) are working fine, but plain 3G is not.

Is there an Orange Forum somewhere for discussing this kind of thing?

Apple revamps Mac Mini as skinny HDMI box

That's not an Apple TV replacement

I have an Apple TV, and for £200 as a hackable device to get XMBC onto my TV it was great. But this is three tmes the price of that, so it's not competing in the same space.

If I wanted an Apple TV replacement nowadays I'd probably go for an NVidia ION box (like the Acer revo).

BT quotes pensioner £150,000 to get broadband

I'm confused

How can it require a network upgrade when other houses in the village already have broadand?

Anyone care to enlighten me?

Brits blasé about 3D TV 'fad'

Well, absolutely

I'm just not willing to pay £2000 for a TV even if it's bigger than God and makes me breakfast in bed. Asking what factors would make me spend that much is going to get you not much more than a blank stare.

BT fibre upgrades hit full speed

No Scottish exchanges?

Not a single one in Scotland - you'd think that bits of Glasgow or Edinburgh would be sufficiently profitable to make it worthwhile...

MS and Oracle's big dev tools - who needs 'em?

Not sure I agree

"But lighter weight tools offer a more rapid edit/test cycle with less waiting time."

If I'm using Visual Studio then a rebuild is a keypress away. I currently have the Resharper addon installed, which means that running all the unit tests just means pressing ctrl-shift-N. I can't see how a lighter weight tool would make that any faster...

The charge of the alternative gadget chargers

Colour me sceptical

The first one requires you to add water to X, then wait for the water to turn to hydrogen, then plug the hydrogen into something that turns it into electricity. This seems ridiculously convoluted.

The second one is based on picking up electricity passively from the air. It's going to be _incredibly_ slow to charge, and you'd probably be better off just having a backup power supply.

The third allows you to swing your battery around your finger. Have we not seen hand-cranked power supplies before? I really can't see this being popular. Again, if you need emergency power then carry a backup battery...

Yes, the Googlephone works in Blighty

I'll be buying it in the UK

So that when it goes wrong (and everything goes wrong) I can get it fixed quickly, not wait for it to be shipped to the US and back...

2009's Top Set-top Media Players

Definitely agree about the Apple TV

I hacked mine and stuck XBMC on it. Plays absolutely any file I throw at it, and connects to both SMB (windows file shares) and UPNP on my network. It was definitely worthwhile.

Tivo to return to UK in 2010

Dammit!

I've been intending to dump Virgin, but I loved my Tivo to bits, and if it's coming back then I _need_ one...

Combat games disrespect war laws, report claims

Oh for goodness sake

Next up: James Bond acting outside of international law. Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't follow proscribed "First Contact" protocols.

It's a _game_. Just because I enjoy shooting my friends repeatedly in the face in a game that does not mean I'm about to wander the streets of Kosovo with an assault rifle picking off innocent locals.

Wii HD coming in 2010, claims mole

What's the HD stand for?

I've heard the HD in Wii used to refer to both the resolution and to it having a Hard Drive. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

In any case, having an HDMI output would be nice - it's the last thing in my living room that has an analogue connection.

How to run Mac OS X on a generic PC

I agree

For £170 you can pay the Mac Premium and get your machine from them.

Spotify: iPhone sideloads for £120 a year, unlimited

I'd do this

£120 a year for access to whatever music I fancy is a good-enough deal for me. I already use Spotify for most of my music listening at home - being able to transfer the songs to my mobile would be well worth paying for.

I use a S60 phone though, so I'll have to wait for that version of the app to arrive...

HTML5's Flash and Silverlight 'killer' potential chopped

Canvas?

Surely a large part of the HTML5 spec is the canvas attribute, which will allow for arbitrary 2D interfaces - i.e. what Flash/Silverlight do.

Sur, the video bit is important - but being able to produce shiny applications on a web page in a standard way is a big part of what Flash is used for...

Palm politely cuts Pre tether

They do use more

Because a lot of websites have a version for smartphones. My N85 has a bookmark for the mobile version of facebook, BBC News, etc because they read better on its screen. I suspect these are much less intensive than the fully fledged versions.

Too much sunshine makes you commit suicide

Theory

It's quite commonly known that people are at the highest risk of suicide when they have their first-upswing. They pull out of the slump where they can't do anything, and have the energy to do something. Sadly, this leads a chunk of them to make "never feel depressed again" that something...

Google will tell your mates where you are

How cool!

A couple of my friends travel a lot, and we've now got it set up so that we can automatically tell which cities we're all in.

I've also given access to my girlfriend - but I'm sure a bunch of you wouldn't be comfortable with that :->

Gaps blight JavaFX early promise

Still not a Flash competitor

Using Firefox here - and apps don't launch inside the web page. That PacMan example required me to click on a link, wait for a java web start file to download, wait for that to launch and download more code, and then I ended up with a separate window to play PacMan in.

Hardly seamless...

Windows 7, June 2009 and the technologies of antitrust

Transcript?

I can read something in about 1/10 the time it takes to listen to it...

Nokia N96 16GB smartphone

Looking for something with a longer battery life...

Any chance of a review of the N85?

Govt ponders proof-of-ID law for future phone purchases

And foreign phones?

What's going to happen with SIM cards bought in other countries? Are they going to stop tourists from using their phones in the UK? And international businessmen?

Asus Eee Box Atom-based desktop mini PC

I have to pay for Windows?

Surely they could have knocked £50 off and released it with Linux on it?

COBOL thwarts California's Governator

Easier said than done

It's easy to say "get rid of it", harder to get rid of millions of lines of code dating back up to 30 years, which _work_. Who pays to rewrite those systems? And why would they, when they work?

Acer punts £199 Linux laptop

Now this looks worthwhile!

Does everything the Eee701 did, but with a larger screen and better battery life. Oh, and cheaper.

Asus to release desktop Eee PC as Ebox

Cheap

If they can keep it cheap (and let's face it, it's an Eee without a display, it bleeding well should be cheap) then I'll certainly be buying one. If it has HDMI then I'll be a very happy boy (as it'll be going under the TV).