* Posts by Lasse Saikkonen

7 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Dec 2007

Minister deploys 'dodgy' DNA case study

Lasse Saikkonen

Planting evidence

What I am wondering is, how long before someone makes a glove that collects DNA samples just by shaking someone else's hand and then leaving the trace DNA on a crime scene? Or maybe leaving the DNA of dozens of people at the crime scene? Surely that would be basis for reasonable doubt in a trial?

Eggheads solve England penalty-shootout crapness riddle

Lasse Saikkonen
Joke

Re. Sunglasses?

Of course you can wear sunglasses if your name is Edgar Davids, or a funny hat if your name is Peter Czech. In my case I better wear a cup...

Netbooks: A bit popular

Lasse Saikkonen

Netbooks underpowered? Not.

I wonder why people still claim netbooks are not powerful enough to run serious applications. I have an Asus eeePC901 as my school computer and I'm perfectly able to run applications like AutoCad, Revit Architecture, MathCad etc. on it. Granted, it isn't as smooth an experience as on a "proper" laptop and you really have to use an external display to do any serious work, but it is small enough to comfortably fit on the narrow desks and able to do smaller tasks in the classroom. There's also enough horsepower to do the necessary school excercises on it, if you refrain from editing huge 3D models on it.

China sacks officials over faked big cat snaps

Lasse Saikkonen
Thumb Up

@dave: Verily

LOL dave. I mean... wow, you made my day.

Man uses mobe as modem, rings up £27k phone bill

Lasse Saikkonen

I pity the fool

Every time I read about the excesses of UK telco's I cringe with sympathy. Fortunately I live in Finland and I have a 384kbps unlimited data UMTS connection on my phone which costs me a grand total of 10 euros/month no matter how much I use it.

The funny thing is that the data connection only uses the free bandwidth of the base station that otherwise would be completely extraneous. If the base station gets congested during "rush hours" the data connections are the first to be throttled or cut altogether if it gets too bad. Then they dare to charge the customers like it was a premium service when in fact it is the exact opposite.

It's free money as far as the telco's are concerned, since they have already allocated the cost of the infrastructure to the regular call and SMS prices. In their projections they probably had an allowance for a certain amount of idling in the infrastructure which is also reflected in the call prices. Now that there is more traffic and less idling, they actually get more that they originally projected from the same investment. That should naturally be reflected in the prices like they do in Finland.

Since most of the telco's are also ISP's, the barely discernible increase in net traffic due to mobile internet is probably insignificant in their total net traffic, they really shouldn't be able to justify those prices in any shape or form. The public's ignorance is probably the only reason this kind of practice is allowed to go on.

It's quite amazing that 5 million people spread in a very sparsely populated country with long distances have prices MUCH lower than in a supposedly technologically advanced one.

Lasse Saikkonen

I pity the fool

Every time I read about the excesses of UK telco's I cringe with sympathy. Fortunately I live in Finland and I have a 384kbps unlimited data UMTS connection on my phone which costs me a grand total of 10 euros/month no matter how much I use it.

The funny thing is that the data connection only uses the free bandwidth of the base station that otherwise would be completely extraneous. If the base station gets congested during "rush hours" the data connections are the first to be throttled or cut altogether if it gets too bad. Then they dare to charge the customers like it was a premium service when in fact it is the exact opposite.

It's free money as far as the telco's are concerned, since they have already allocated the cost of the infrastructure to the regular call and SMS prices. In their projections they probably had an allowance for a certain amount of idling in the infrastructure which is also reflected in the call prices. Now that there is more traffic and less idling, they actually get more that they originally projected from the same investment. That should naturally be reflected in the prices like they do in Finland.

Since most of the telco's are also ISP's, the barely discernible increase in net traffic due to mobile internet is probably insignificant in their total net traffic, they really shouldn't be able to justify those prices in any shape or form. The public's ignorance is probably the only reason this kind of practice is allowed to go on.

It's quite amazing that 5 million people spread in a very sparsely populated country with long distances have prices MUCH lower than in a supposedly technologically advanced one.

Tekken set to kick big screen ass

Lasse Saikkonen

Re: MAKE THEM STOP

"Man one day someone will make a film with an origonal story as opposed to a rip off of a book, game, other film."

Yeah! I for one would go see it. I love mathematics and I have already seen The Cube, A Beautiful Mind, Pi, Proof and Primer. Unfortunately none of them had an origonal story. Does anyone know of any films about geometry? I for one would like to see it.