Posts by Mage 9273 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007
Just change the default settings. Works better on Windows and Linux for me than MS Office. I use now the "native" file formats and only "save as" in an MS Format to send to MS Office users or publishers.
I've had LESS bugs with format of manuscripts for publishers.
I tried Tencent's QQ, it wasn't bad on Windows and Android, but seems to be Chinese only on Linux. I figured how to turn off the adverts (unlike Skype, it's a simple user setting!). It also used much less resource and offers groups and Webcast mode.
I'd still be using it if I could figure how to set up English Linux version. I had to go back to Skype for Text & File transfer (with very occasional voice and extremely occasional video). QQ features and GUI on Windows is far better.
However I've abandoned Windows unless they bring out a Classic version with best aspects of NT3.5, NT4.0 and XP. Now Linux Mint + Mate Desktop + WINE + Redmond theme. More like NT Windows 1996-2003 than Windows 8 or Windows 10. Works well on Acer Netbook with 32G CF card instead of original flash as well as the 8G RAM tower workstation.
Perhaps Word & Excel 1.0 for Mac (Windows got ver 2.0 I think). Visio, PowerPoint, MS SQL, DOS all bought in. MS Basic for CP/M etc based on porting Dartmouth BASIC, a cut down ForTran. NT3.1 was first version of Win10 and seems to have been on the back of MS 1989 OS/2 which started as a joint project with IBM, mostly IBM stuff? GUI on original NT, copied of Win 3.0 shell for DOS, inspired by Xerox, though they may have used bits of OS/2 Presentation Manager as Win2 and Win286 were horrible compared to DR Gem.
Perhaps embedded Win CE? Though it was a sort of cut down NT with a static limit to processes etc.
But you can make similar accusations against Apple, Google, Oracle etc?
Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent to work on data analysis, internet connected vehicles and intelligent public transport.
That's equivalent to Ebay, Twitter and Facebook running Public Transport.
Not one of those are Technology companies. They are companies using the Internet for delivery of Marketing, Social Media and Services.
What are VW/Audi smoking
Game over if an evil entity has physical machine access. I stopped reading after that. I used to have linux OS CD with a program that could change the password on an NT account. It was amazing how often I had to legitimately use it for clients.
Once I was called to "fix" a dead class room. The RAM and HDD had been stolen from every PC!
Also at the end of that you have a string of text. Then a completely different AI problem to parse that and decide what is wanted.
To have really good speech recognition you need context and meaning unless it's very simple list of commands for a car radio or dialling a phone.
Since most people have difficulty using search well with a keyboard, I don't think adding speech on top is going to result in successful queries or searches except for expert users.
Mobile towers (2G, 3G, 4G) only work with backhaul links and a complex back end set of computer systems. The "billing" permits the call to be initiated and could even be outsourced to the so called "cloud". If someone forgets to pay a bill or there is an accounting mistake, no calls. Then a second "computer" system manages handing over between masts/sectors (though calls easily dropped then). Specialist voice switches are gateways to other voice systems, edge routers for data.
It's not designed to be reliable or resilient or suit anything other than commercial non-critical calls, other than as a marketing afterthought.
You can always save money by sacrificing security, resilience, reliability etc.
Using commercial 4G on commercial sSpectrum will certainly save money, but it's not fit for purpose, either day to day or in a disaster scenario.
Handsets and terminals also need a peer to peer mode (walkie talkie mode). You need additional security. Thus the savings will not be as much as claimed. All handsets and vehicle terminals will be x3 to x10 price of regular 4G handsets.
You need low latency push to tall so that "Don't Shoot" doesn't become "Shoot."
It might greatly improve data, but it's a rubbish voice solution. Perhaps data could use 4G and voice the existing system? There wasn't even voice in the original 4G release. It's higher latency than GSM, uses more capacity than 3G and is less robust as it's basically VOIP, rather than a native on air codec.
The only reason at all actually for digital voice codecs on mobile radio is easily encrypt it.
That may or may not be true, however it and node.js are NOTHING to do with Java, a cross platform programming language used in many things nothing to do with Web.
Javascript and similar are scripts for web browsers. The node.js a 3rd party library, used by websites. Whether it's sensible at all for a website to load functions from a 3rd party website at all is a separate issue, but node.js can't at all replace Java, it's a library implemented mostly in Javascript (which is NOT Java)!
"Although Node.js is not a JavaScript framework, many of its basic modules are written in JavaScript, and developers can write new modules in JavaScript."
Node.js isn't a programming language at all, it's a 3rd party function library!
We can have a separate arguement about Javascript and Node.js, I'd expect it to be colourful.
Even with No Script, due to stupidity of web design and services it's now very hard to avoid Google on a regular PC.
What alternatives are there to an Android phone that isn't (A) overpriced, (B) dead, (C) someone you never heard of, or (M,N) a dead zombie platform?
Many cheap "feature phones" are GSM only, which (in Ireland) operators can turn off with no 2 year retail warning implied by SOGA, but only needing to give a 6 month notice to Comreg (the Irish version of Ofcom or FCC).
Actually I have data disabled on my Android phone, I've only enabled wIfi to download an ePub reader app and a text editor (which complains on every load that that it can't access internet). I removed Amazon's Kindle eReader App because it would pop up warnings about being unable to connect, even when it wasn't listed as running and hadn't been used (I use Calibre and my real Kindle's serial number to convert DRM'ed Amazon to ePub).
I use the media player, camera, FM Radio, SMS, regular voice.
I transfer eBooks and photos and video via USB storage mode.
Something similar with my tablet.
Google, you stink. There should be a special hell for companies like you and Facebook, destroying people's privacy. So called "Social Media" (Google+, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) etc is worse because they are more exploitive and encourage people to share information that can't be automatically gathered and also OTHER people's information!
Now MS is stupidly destroying their lucrative automatic repeat sale software business by trying to be like Google.
A serial bit stream could be any desired number of bits. So called 1 bit DACs are really 16 bit at least and the 48kHz or 44.1KHz parallel sample rate is unchanged, but the clock frequency becomes much higher.
1 bit on/off with 1:32 variation of mark/space ratio isn't one bit. It's five bits quantisation.
Tape can have a poorer dynamic range than 8 bit quantisation on cheap machines using a magnet to erase rather than AC erasing. Speech recognition was working with cassette tape replay in 1990s.
Depends if it's carrier grade QOS managed VOIP or VOIP over random public Internet.
My own phone service (real geo numbers) is using VOIP on a fixed wireless link, but only as far as my ISP's voice switch. So Fax and analog modems usually work. Your mileage with a 3rd party VOIP supplier over the ordinary public internet will vary with your connection jitter and packet loss. Unlike gaming, or person to person chat, latency isn't an issue.
@JulieM Brilliant.
Actually AM radio is rather better than linear 8bit, and the "goodness" of it depends on the bandwdith and interference. It was MUCH better in the 1930s! Even ordinary AM can be better than ISDN phone quality (8bit u or A law).
Also u-Law or A-Law 8 bit audio is perfectly good for speech recognition, that's the method used to improve on linear 8 bit for the majority of the worlds digital fixed line phones. GSM codecs are lower quality. 3G can use similar or better than GSM, but it's rarely better than 8bit ISDN. Similarly, VOIP connections can rarely support Fax or Analogue Modems, though 8 bit ISDN can.
I suspect that if the sound level is ideal, even 8 bit linear audio will work for speech recognition.
Humans can recognise 5 bit encoded speech, done using 1:32 variable PWM on a PC on/off loudspeaker.
Free delivery is about a week
Premium delivery is about 3 to 4 days
Where do you live to get same day delivery from Amazon?
I think same day delivery for letters in Ireland and UK existed up till Edwardian era. The Victorians had it. Now with "airmail only" even a letter can be 3 days UK to Ireland.
Local shops and Online are complementary. Buying online for China is 1/3rd to 1/10th of cost of same thing in Maplin. Sometimes though getting it from Maplin inside an hour is handy, though increasingly unlikely to be in stock.
I prefer to buy fitted clothes, shoes, boots, very large items and food locally. Obviously Amazon plan to compete with Tesco and Pennys?
I was amazed to discover though that people order books from the local bookshop rather than Amazon, but then about about 1/3rd of people in some areas don't have internet and about 10% can't actually get broadband.
1) One cloud is a single point of failure
2) I don't trust Google with my Apps data
3) Actually I mostly want apps that are just 100% local, never app replacements for web sites.
It's time Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc got a kicking from governments & regulators.
I wonder is it any use at all.
Most of the usually excellent advice here gets ignored.
https://www.nngroup.com
Really the only reason it's hard is because websites are being designed purely for "pretty" or the pointy haired boss wanting one button. Most are worse than 10 years ago.
This is "jargon" speak marketing. It's built by programmers meeting the goals of a marketing department.
This is nonsense.
Really important in the 1990s to 2006... now I copy colour photos / images to USB stick to show on laptops / TVs and "print" B&W text and some other stuff to 9.7" Kindle or 6" kindle or 6.8" Kobo.
Or I make a web page. I replaced the (working) MFP inkjet with a basic colour duplex laser for same price as a set of ink cartridges when we really need paper or card copy.
If you can extract energy from the "perpetual motion machine", and it doesn't radiate or influence environment, well, then it is not breaking laws of thermodynamics? But what use is it?
Reminds me of Entangled "Instant" action at a distance. You can't break the barrier of light speed communications with it, but it is some use (in crypto systems)
It's an interesting idea, but unless you really need x86 and ARM instructions in the same chip what is the point? It would be a very niche market and only of value in a Full Fat SoC with GPU and all I/O shared, maybe on a MS Surface Phone/Tablet able to run real Windows programs and Android Playstore Apps.
Performance, power consumption and cost is going to be poorer than simply a regular x86 SoC with an ARM core added or vice versa and much poorer than either a dedicated ARM or x86.
Perhaps Intel can find something useful in the IP. I doubt the staff will be employed long, though some may find suitable positions in Intel. Certainly I can't see the value of anyone other than Intel buying them. Not even AMD or the Chinese, it's too niche.
"Machine babble often sounds emotionally flat and robotic because it’s difficult to capture the natural nuances of human speech."
Absolute Nonsense. The issue is parsing and then understanding the text so as to decide how to nuance the speech, punctuation is a weak clue as to speed, pauses, pitch.
We have been able to create natural speech for maybe more than 40 years, IF there is a special marked up text with meta tags for pitch, loudness, speed, pauses. Ordinary text has to be parsed and understood.
Even actors etc, read text better if they are familiar with it and understand it. Otherwise even humans reading unfamiliar text can sound rubbish.
Google Translate is very "successful" in some respects, but it killed computer speech/language/translation development because it's not "intelligent" at all, it's a brute force "Rosetta Stone" / "Code breaker" approach rather than translation by parsing an entire section, understanding it and paraphrasing.
No, it's not.
It's a pit of garbage and exploited ordinary people.
It's not fit for purpose for many things people doing, like the guy making a virtual museum. He should have a website of his own.
We don't want an Internet that consists of only six or seven sites!
Media organisations need to boycott it. They all have their own web sites. Why are they giving Zuckerberg free promotion?
People need an email address to sign up to Facebook. Anything for their friends should be sent Bcc by email.
Unlike specialist forums for specific interests there is no value to Facebook at all. It's simply an exploitive parasite.
"it was not the rocket engine’s fault in a tweet today.
Important to note that this happened during a routine filling operation. Engines were not on and there was no apparent heat source."
That is not logic. It wasn't the fault of a RUNNING rocket engine. That doesn't rule out the rocket engine.
So really more a very small x86 Tablet than a phone.
Nokia changed from x86 to ARM on their "Communicator" smartphone in what, 2001 or 2002?
I guess if you REALLY need x86 compatibility in your pocket? But really is ANY x86 Windows application going to be usable on a small screen, like Adobe Photoshop, Sage, Market leading UK Payroll, SAP, or... (I struggle to think of anything else important on Windows that doesn't have a Linux or ARM or MacOS equivalent).
No, it's not. It's x3 more expensive than a domain name, and my multiple domains already cost more than my hosting. It would make my total annual cost about 2.5x higher, just for the certificates. However I'd also need a far more expensive hosting package, something to do with issues of HTTPS and shared IPs? At any rate even if you have a cert, my hosting company charges a lot more.
No-one (other than me for updates) logs into my sites. They all are backed up. The SQL server access is only possible on the site, not remotely.
I use SFTP.
HTTPS is way too expensive unless you are making money from the site, or eCommerce. Even for selling, it's possible to use 3rd party payment such as PayPal where you get the customer details from PayPal later (using their HTTPS) and the customer never logs on to your own site, nor ever gives you card details.
This is to suit Gooogle.
"The national court will have to decide whether, when a consumer has been informed before the sale "that the model of computer is not marketed without pre-installed software and that he is therefore free to choose another model of computer, of another brand, with similar technical specifications and sold without software, the ability of that consumer to make an informed transactional decision was appreciably impaired," the CJEU said."
Laptops without pre-installed/supplied with operating systems are almost like Unicorns. From time to time Dell and a few others offer alternatives to Windows, not nothing. Generally speaking the ONLY retail alternative to Windows is overpriced hardware from Apple.
I hope there is some later appeal or clarification. While we are at it, the retailers and boxes have stopped listing the screen resolution, only giving screen diagonal.
Also no-one seems to supply media now to re-install the OS if the HDD fails or is replaced.
"Will audio quality get better? By abolishing analogue there’s now a clearer digital path to your ear, and the phones get smaller."
Is that ironic, because BT or other digital connection adds re-encoding of the original digital content, which has to be unpacked. The "digital" earphones can easily have a lower quality decoder, DAC and audio amp than is possible on the phone motherboard. Re-encoding from one digital format to another ALWAYS reduces the quality unless it's a totally lossless format. You simply can't have the same quality and power level of analogue signal inside a wireless ear bud as 50 cents worth of electronics inside the phone. What part of the fact that Earphones and Loudspeakers need analogue* do people not understand?
YOU STILL HAVE TO HAVE ANALOGUE TO DRIVE THE EARPHONE COILS!
This is daft. The only advantage whatsoever of ditching an analogue jack is to Apple. You'd be lucky to have as as good quality and will have poor choice of earphones / headsets and have to spend money to connect it to a HiFi as an MP3 player.
The Apple justification of this is simply lies. It's a disgrace and a huge backward step. I'd bet if they could prevent 3rd party earphones working, they would. It's immoral.
[*A nasty trick of low power electronics is to use Pulse Width Modulation, variations of Class D, on/off to drive the moving coil of an earphone or speaker. Apart from the risk of radio interference, it's hard to get the distortion and resolution as good as decent DAC followed by filter and linear audio amp.]
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