Posts by Fihart 1150 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008
Have to like the Chinese for their cheek. This thoroughly awful E71 nok-off.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/27/keepin-it-real-fake-part-cxciii-nckla-e71-ls-tcc-gccd-tc-b3-t/
Even comes with a battery that exactly matches Nokia's BP-4L graphics and connector. £2 in flea market, I'm using it now in my genuine E71.
Management seem positively understanding of Yahoo staffers' reluctance to move to New Yahoo Mail.
We mere customers were forced off Yahoo Classic, which we liked despite its folksy looks and the odd restriction, and made to use the New Yahoo. I find New Yahoo Mail slow, doubtless not helped by waiting for the pointless ads to be served up.
If that doesn't improve, Yahoo staffers may be the last people using Yahoo Mail.
Of course, you have a point.
My bloody Blackberry takes 3 minutes from reinserting the battery. But its normal mode is standby which doesn't seem to use much power and starts it instantly.
You could leave a desktop PC sitting in sleep mode but my experience of exploding PC power supplies forces me to turn off at the wall.
Reading something unrelated, the penny finally dropped.
The reason Windows is finished is speed. They've stuffed it so full of lazy code and pointless bells and whistles that it takes an age to start compared to phone or a tablet.
So which do you turn to when you want a quick email or browse -- what most of us (mostly) use computers and other devices for these days ?
In the past I've bleated about slimming down Windows, but MS will never do that because they are stuck in Detroit mode, bringing out a bigger model each time (and we know how well that ended for Detroit). As for moving it to tablets and phones, well, I think that ship sailed with Apple and Android.
.....that it says except where it reads to make a profit "off of you" .
Forgive my pedantry but "from you" surely.
Bigger picture -- hope the current MS campaign scares enough punters that it eventually scares Google.
Meanwhile I'll use DuckDuckGo for my searches because it produces less paid-for junk.
Kind of get revenge on the cellphone operators by the following.
Friend wants to visit. Calls on landline first to check you're in. On arrival, instead of pressing doorbell, calls on cellphone and only lets it ring twice. Caller id show they have arrived.
I see people visiting my neighbours doing this the whole time, so it's not just my friends.
Why ?
As a lawyer once told me, in court you never ask a question unless you already know the answer, at home never answer the door unless you already know who's there.
I'm puzzled that any user would buy into a system where the recipient has to pay for calls.
The Royal Mail (in England) was able to create the first national postal service when it realised that charging the sender was the only viable model. Previously, recipients had simply refused to accept letters.
The success of the sender-pays model led to economies of scale that made possible the Penny Post which, in turn, made the service more popular.
Of course, it's not just US carriers who have un-learned the Royal Mail example. As the cellphone market matures, those in Europe who now charge senders silly money (T Mobile 12p, Orange 14p for texts) will lose out to those offering offering prices (3Network texts at 2p or so) which better reflect the tiny cost involved to providers.
Don't take it personally, it's just meaningless corporate-speak learned by rote in PR coaching.
Listen to politicians and more senior business types being interviewd on radio and they always start by thanking the interviewer for having them on the programme and then constantly refer to the interviewer by their first name.
Insulting, but they don't think we know any better.
"............do people really fill out warranty cards?"
Probably not usually, though on a major purchase I guess many might. There's no need to register the warranty with the manufacturer because the warranty makes no difference to rights under Sale Of Goods Act which long outlast 12 months. The obligation falls on the retailer not the manufacturer.
Most retailers will happily repair or replace within warranty period on production of the sales receipt because the manufacturer will foot the bill. Outside the 12 months the branch staff are likely to deny liability but a call to the shop's head office and mention of Small Claims usually sorts that out.
Snooping is annoying but what really ended Google as having any utility was sponsored search results. How can a search engine be accurate if the results can be fiddled ?
The outcome is that my bro needed a hotel to stay in near me and any attempt to search on Google was rendered slower by pointless scads of ads from the likes of Trivago.
I've dumped Google as default and replaced it with DuckDuckGo.
I've received from HM Revenue & Customs (who would not send out random emails)
And Fedex (I am not expecting any deliveries nor have ever used Fedex)
Might it be useful if other readers listed any suspect emails they have received and these were collated into an editorial piece ?
Magazines still have a role -- if I think back to the 80s I devoured PC mags to learn about computers. If there was a source of Linux info which embraced beginners, it might widen the audience. I suspect that this goal would be easier to achieve via existing mainstream publications.
But good luck to this new venture.
Surprised that Ballmer has owned up to being a git.
He always reminded me of Henry Ford and his grandson Henry Ford II.
Old Henry was known for firing someone by discharging a revolver into the ceiling of an office below.
Young Henry came up with "Don't Complain, Don't Explain" which must have made working for him a nerve wracking experience. His greatest piece of ebullience (perhaps glorious folly) was to try to buy Ferrari and, when spurned, build the glorious GT40 models that ultimately trounced Enzo at Le Mans.
Makes Ballmer and his silly software seem pretty small beer.
I suspect that by Upscale, the author meant (at least) something with a better looking finish.
Thankfully, Acer's days of laptops painted in silver where that wore, exposing black plastic visible, are behind them. In fact, the Packard Bell (a.k.a Acer) I have presently seems as solid as a similar Sony model. The Sony looks considerably cooler, though, and I'm sure a other brands will achieve a similar upscale on their Chromebooks.
Must say, tempted by the price and the option to convert it to Linux as the Google walled garden is no more inviting than Apple's.
I remember having to buy my own computer for word processing at work because the management thought they were just for accounting. My colleagues used to refer to my desktop PC as Scalextric for the office -- perhaps because I actually enjoyed using it and it freed me from the angry and illiterate vixens in the typing pool.
All this changed when companies started buying computers and networking them. From then on they were less fun, more ball and chain. You were not allowed to add your own software and there was a sneaking feeling that they were monitoring use so that a long lunch was easier to detect.
In our street there are little metal tabs outside each premises that access cable -- but Virgin refuses to recognise that they exist so we have copper instead.
BT too seem to have a blind spot for our particular stretch of this (major) outer london highway. Though the pavements are blighted by BT's enormous green cabinets within yards of our address -- can't get BT's FTC offering (Infinity ?) either.
"............advertisers need to learn some manners."
Too right.
I look at sites like Daily Telegraph and Guardian daily on my phone and have no problem with their ads.
But a recent dip into Daily Mirror site was marred by a stupid ad that followed one down the page blocking stories. Same process, different ad next day. Maddening and self defeating because I will probably delete if from my bookmarks.
Incidentally The Reg's Cookie warning banner does something similar so I don't look at the Reg on my phone.
At least they tell you something is happening -- better than progress bar which stays static for 5 minutes then suddenly leaps to the end. I have to single out Blackberry as my latest gripe -- about 20 minutes to download and install an app with virtually no interaction, leaving one with a growing suspicion that the process had frozen.
I'm reminded of my favourite instruction manual (for a Taiwanese video card) obviously written by the only person in the firm who had any semblance of English (probably a secretary who had no technical knowledge).
Aside from the usual lingual weirdness it contained a fabulously helpful suggestion to the effect that "if nothing appears, make sure that the monitor screen is not dirty".
Anyone with the humour bypass needed to agree to work for a company like Microsoft is the wrong person to run it.
It would be more creative and have a lighter touch with customers if it had a Richard Branson or Stelios Haji-Ioannou* type figure at the helm.
*For US readers: both are genuine entrepreneurs, founders of innovative airline and other businesses.
Typically, the Russians ban the import of allegedly inferior products from countries they are trying to lean on.
Presumably the Chinese iron and kettle manufacturer ran foul of someone in the Russian import chain.
The chances are the device shown, if not planted by the accusers, is simply a part of the iron's control circuitry.
If you think about it, an iron or kettle is not the ideal place to hide components affected by heat, humidity and physical shock. And it's an awful lot of trouble to go to to distribute spam compared with using the internet.
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