Posts by andreas koch

iPhone 5 poised to trounce Android, devastate BlackBerry?

@ AC 0542h

But it is marketed as a lifestyle, and people who can't be bothered to develop their own lifestyle are tremendously grateful to be provided with one that comes bundled with the phone.

Badum-tish.

@ Jonathan White

You are right. But a lot of people using iPhones have never done anything else than purchase on iTunes and will use Apple's 'cloud' storage to go from one phone to the other - - - iPhone.

As I keep saying: Apple's customer experience is not merited by the technology, it's the ' don't think* about it, we'll do it for you in the right way' service. And that says: Buy another iPhone (and Apple TV, and iPad and iToaster and iFridge).

I don't personally like it too much that someone 'knows' what i should want; I like to have it my way. I even dislike the way that media players impose a specific file structure to my music collection that may or may not tally with my preferences.

I like tinkering and choice; most people don't: they buy Apple (and besides, it's fashionable!).

This is, of course, not gospel; just my personal opinion. You are very welcome to disagree. ;-)

*Think different, hah, my foot.

Well, seems reasonable.

You own an iPhone, you will stick with it; of course. If you should change to something non-Apple, all your data (music, video, games, apps*) is history. And the peer pressure gets new first timers into this voluntary prison (or walled garden, if you prefer...).

Pity.

*Who the duck coined this abysmal abbreviation? Could we please hang this person by the whatevers to rot? It's bleeping programs. I've heard some Joe Public actually saying that he doesn't like Android phones because 'They have no apps, just programs and such'.

Who coined the term 'App'?

Who coined the term 'App'?

Ok,ok, so language evolves, but nevertheless: was it really necessary to abbreviate 'application'?

It seems that it was a great marketing move, because Joe and Jane Public seem* to think that App's** are better than programs and only available through iTunes.

So, does anyone know who coined the term? I've got the feeling it could have been Mr. Jobs...

*My own experience quite a few times, not a proper survey.

**Deliberate greengrocers apostrophe, fit's better with the target group.

Cockfighting Reg hack cursed with cancer

@ Arthur the cat - Re: pish

You misspelled it.

Oh, wait, what's that? AAAAAAArrrrgghhhhh......

Racketeering suit filed over smut-piracy charges

...find it handy.

I see what you did there...

Paris. Well, because.

Did your iPhone 'just stop working' - or did you drop it in your BEER?

Query: Re: alt-tab functionality

You guys seem to know more about this "application window viewer" issue; my question is: will this be the end of 'live' application and workspace switchers, as for example the ones that compiz provides on Linux?

Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Apple users get pricier hotel options from Orbitz

@ratfox - Re: Now if they did this for browsers...

No, That'd be for Lynx.

@heyrick - Re: Not a big deal

I don't think that Mr Lee would make a good car (or anything else...) salesman, mainly because he fails to see that customers do not hate differentiation. Apple users specially love it and Apple promotes it: "Think Different" has been their motto for ages.

Apple's products are Veblen goods, they are used as status symbols and make the owner feel special.

The Orbitz website does them a favour by showing appropriate places first and the 'hoi polloi bunkers' last.

The only problem might be arising when you get to the hotel with your iPad and your iPhone and everyone there has one and you are not special any more; even worse if you arrive with your Subaru and the car park is full of Bentleys and Ferraris.

I guess

the website showed youth hostels and camping sites to Linux users.

And their own flat to users who visit the site from a BeOs machine, because they're not going anywhere...

Hackers publish payday loan emails after failing to levy 'idiot tax'

Not 'blackmailable'

I don't think you can blackmail those people, it was not their data that was exposed, but their customers. And I don't think that they will give a (whatever) about that.

The people who fall for a loan shark company that charges you up to 1200% interest are usually not the ones that have top rate lawyers on standby to sue someone for breach of privacy, most of them might not even be aware that it happened. So people who have been hit (that's why they're on the database in the first place) will get hit again.

Sad, but true: Business as usual.

Twitter back online (mostly) after unexplained outage

Twitter fail:

<expression of denial to provide sexual intercourse>

So what?

</expression of denial to provide sexual intercourse>

iPhone denies existence of Gibraltar, other bits of British empire

That's part of

Tim Cook's 'really exciting news later in the year': A complete world reorganisation to conform to iStandards. Some of these little alleged islands were approached and told that they couldn't have the 'i' in the front, for obvious reasons. You know how stubborn Brits are, and, after they declined to change names repeatedly, Apple's only defence was erasing them completely.

The Caymans and Bermuda are an exception: The latter are nice for conferences (coughcough), and the former need to be kept because that's where the money goes.

So. all in all, completely understandable. Except Gibraltar, it seems, but no: The Rocks original name was iabal tāriq (جبل طارق), and neither Steve nor Tim ever liked that.

Tim Cook reveals 'great' update for Mac Pro

iLife integration

The really great update will be that it gets fully integrated into iLife: It will be depending on sharing processor load with your iPhone and your iPad and with the iTunes iCloud through an AirPort supported by IOS6i and MacOS11.

This will make sure that you will purchase only the right iDevices to be able to use it at all. Your (coming soon...) iBankAccount will be debited accordingly.

Apple knows what's good for you!

Skype launches in-call ads

That will get them a lot more users

- - - not.

ICO could smack Google Street View with fine after all

@ toadwarrior - Re: I don't quite understand

<quote>You aren't forced to get a clubcard or nectar card and cctv isn't publically available. Where as what google is doing is done without permission on a massive scale and publically assessible.</quote>

You have a point there, although the questioned Wifi data is, as far as I know, not available.

Nevertheless, I think that the general public does not realise how much data is gathered through their 'rewards' card, just as they don't realise how much Google gleaned from their drive-by; which is, I would bet, on average much less.

Google did it without consent, Nectar does it by exploiting that most people do not see past the 'rewards' bit and willingly supply the companies with consumer data that would otherwise be expensive to gather.

Do you think that the same amount of people would sign up if Nectar's adverts would state that:

'We record your shopping behaviour on behalf of over 500 companies and sell the results to them so they can design their advertising campaigns easier and cheaper and present their goods in a way that reduces the risk of losing money by having to lower the prices of stuff you otherwise won't buy. In return we grant you a discount of up to 2%*' ?

I'm not sure...

Anyway, I don't need to get a card, as you said, and I'm fine with that. Let's drink to that.

*I just checked: You can pay a return flight from London to Barcelona on easyjet with Nectar points. To gain these, you have to spend around £23.000 at Sainsbury's. Wow.

@EvilGav 1 - Re: I don't quite understand

As far as I know, Nectar does not send out consent forms if a new company joins the scheme. You will, in that case, have your data going to a place that you don't know of.

I know, I constructed something like a worst-case-scenario there and that it isn't really all that bad. But it would only take a very few agreements that you have no control over, and we would have a situation where data mining could show more than you want to be shown.

And even that would not be so bad, if there wouldn't be the problem of data being misinterpreted.

Your health insurance suddenly goes up, because your brother thought that he'd do you a favour buying his paragliding equipment through your rewards card. Or worse, a claim gets turned down, because of the technicality that you didn't tell the truth about your activities (these weren't your activities, but the insurance lawyers might want you to prove that, and that might be a bother if you're desperate for a bone marrow transplant...)

The aggregation of data is not the bad thing. It's coming to the wrong conclusion after sifting through it. I think.

That scares me.

@turtle - Re: I don't quite understand

Tesco is a big supermarket chain here in the UK which runs their own 'reward scheme' points card. Nectar is a reward scheme that is spanning over scores of companies from retail (all kinds of, ebay and amazon e-retailers), services (including iTunes...), fuel, holidays even to health insurance and credit card services. Collected data is, as far as I know, shared between participants, so if a new company joins the scheme, they have access to your data, even if you not gave your permission to them specifically.

I don't quite understand

why people worry about Google's Street View so much when the same people use their iPhone or pad (in the near future with IOS6 inter-device-networking and pay-by-phone capabilities) and their Tesco/ Nectar cards. The data aggregated through those is much more comprehensive than anything that could be gleaned through a peep over the fence. You don't have any control over where the data from these goes; and it is a lot of data indeed. The stores can data-mine where you went, at what time and what you did there. Together with CCTV footage (which doesn't have to be blanked out), a participating company can tell that you left the house before 0900h [filled up at Shell at 0907h] in your second car [automatic number plate recognition at the fuel station, correlated to the Nectar card and your credit card], drove along the M4 [bought a coffee at the Motorway services at 0946h, including CCTV], went over the Severn bridge [paid toll by bump] and then met your 'Miss Secret' in Cardiff [Two Latte at Costa]. She has recently stopped buying Tampax and answered to a Mothercare leaflet. You were both on CCTV looking at cots and prams in Toys-R-Us. You bought a bracelet from H.Samuel online, and downloaded 'Relaxing songs for the mum to be' from itunes.

Conclusion: You are cheating on your wife, and a spli-up is imminent.

Consequence: You get divorce lawyer's advertising in your mail.

Compared to that, being on StreetView laying in your garden wanking naked is somewhat less compromising, I think.

An early iPad adopter? You smut-ogling filth-gobbling perv!

@Khaptain - Re: Porn and the Pad

<

...

The problem lay within the fact that it requires 2 hands to hold the damned thing...

>

After a week's use in the hands of a practising pr0nophile that's probably not a problem any more.

It should be bluetack-like enough to just stick to any surface; et voila, handsfree!

Best viewed at a Paris Hilton-angle...

Now TalkTalk cuts Brits' access to The Pirate Bay

Re: @ Andreas

<

...

BT is required to block TBP however has been given time to do some jiggery-pokery and doesnt have to comply until much later.

>

So someone in the courts is making allowances for the UK's flagship communications company? With what reasoning? Are they a bit of a 'special needs' child?

Now seriously: Every company except VirginMedia and a few really minor networks only resells BT's service.

This is like the drug squad knowing where the meth lab is and who runs it, and then pulling a couple of little second tier dealers in.

Ha. Hahahaha. Splurt. Laughable.

All big ISPs, well nearly...

Do I get this right, that BT wasn't sentenced to block TPB? What kind of market-skewing thing is going on there? Brown envelopes?

Smart meters are 'massive surveillance' tech - privacy supremo

My cupboard under the stairs

is clad with grounded, cold rolled electrical steel. How does that meter transmit it's information?

Students face off in Hamburg home-cooked cluster clash

@ukaudiophile - omission?

No, sorry, no UK team for Europe, the mains plug didn't fit.

Pint-size gizmo shoots X-RAY LASER for first time

Re: @ GSV Slightly Perturbed - Obviously

[broadcast Eclear, sent 1518200135.9]

xAndreasKoch, aboard dROU 'Dinner Is Ready'

oGSV Slightly Perturbed; oWombling_Free c/o GSV Takes One To Know One

I'll sent a message when they manage to build a lazy gun; you might as well suspend (or hibernate in the case of Takes One To Know One's organic passenger) for a couple of millennia...

∞

@ GSV Slightly Perturbed - Re: Obviously

[broadcast Eclear, sent 1516790779.5]

xAndreasKoch, aboard d*ROU 'Dinner Is Ready'

oGSV Slightly Perturbed c/o The Register

Stop sounding off, Mind, would you? They'll catch on otherwise.

∞

*sort of....

Apple iPad sales drop by DOUBLE DIGITS in Europe

@Kevin7 - Is there really...

Yes, there is.

Just like there is a likewise unsaturable market for similarly priced handbags. We're not talking about power tools here, not about fridges or roof tiles; I think we are talking fashion and jewellery: goods that the vast majority of the population doesn't really need and only buys because "that's what you gotta have nowadays" and "the Jones's have that and I got to keep up".

It's a combination, I think, of a not completely useless gizmo, peer pressure and the Veblen-Effect.

Respect to Apple for making their goods so well-selling in a market that was, in former times, almost impervious to this kind of sales pitch.

Will I buy one? No.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 'a harmful drug', says Apple in ban bid fail

@ hplasm - Re: Wow.

Greed and lawyers.

Highly addictive stuff, that. The only working detox known is a stock crash.

Milky Way DOOMED to high-speed smash with Andromeda galaxy

Darn. The Milky Way is going to crash into Andromeda.

No point buying a new tablet then...

People-powered Olympic shopping mall: A sign of utter tech illiteracy

Are Americans that much more energetic than Brits?

I followed the link in the Article to the MIT 'crowd farm' thing (which I somehow missed at that time). There they state that 1 (one) step would generate 120Ws, The Stratford Mall Pedestrian Generator is believed capable of 7W per step. That would then mean that British pedestrians have to walk at a rate of ~900 steps per second to catch up with the left-lake-siders @60 steps per minute.

Or am I understanding something wrong here?

Dole Office staff snooped into private data 992 times in 10 months

Re: All for the public good...

>

...but you'd need a lot more evidence to satisfy a court that you had just cause to go prying...

<

I'm not even afraid that someone publishes that I've done wrong. If I've done it, I'll have to live with the consequences.

What my concern is, is that some over-eager writer* gets the details not quite right and you end up making the front page for child abuse AND IT WASN'T YOU. Then a correction and apology gets published on page 17 three days later. No one will read it and your reputation is wrecked for ever.

*And yes, they are about; if they don't publish fast and waste too much time checking the facts, then someone else might beat them to the printing deadline. And northing's worse than being the second paper that publishes a gory story.

@ The BigYin - Re: Only disciplined?

>

...as numerous news stories inform us...

<

Those are written by journalists whose informers demanded too much money.

@ Crisp - Re: Disciplined

Unlikely. It will probably boil down to a 'verbal warning', valid for 6 months.

Whispering: ' Is that the Super Universal News? Put me through to Mr. Medium Cheese. - - - Hi, Meddy, listen mate, I got to lay low for a while - yea, about 'till September - look, if you can find anything to make my supervisor get into this as well, I can of course help sooner - of course, I'll mail that to you - cheers, buddy'

Coughcoughcough...

@ JustaKOS - Re: All for the public good...

Yet it might well be decided that it was in the interest of the public to either convict the person in question or clear him of suspicions and thereby aid the investigation in a potential child abuse case. It could all be interpreted to: 'do wrong first, justify later'.

I agree that common sense would be of service here, unfortunately lawyers will also involved; that is what makes me worry.

Oh, and have an extra '*' that I forgot as a footnote marker in my earlier post.

All for the public good...

>

... controller'. A person is not guilty of an offence if they can show that unlawfully obtaining, disclosing or procuring of the personal data was justified as being in the public interest.

<

Does that sound like the easiest excuse ever?

So, as a private eye or journalist, what do I need?

Somewhere where there's a primary school. A guy in a long coat. Someone* who thinks he might look a bit like the prime minister. Someone else* hears someone calling him 'Dave'.

Public interest acquired, all doors open?

Please someone tell me that that is not the case.

Can we have a shit-scared-icon?

These people only get paid in full if there's a story later.

Review: Raspberry Pi

Re: Additionally, despite no software support as yet...

>...the less software support the better.<

That *would* be true, if the target audience could be bothered.

I personally am afraid that the Rπ will not spark the same interest as its predecessors. In the early days your computer came practically useless unless you yourself typed something up. You couldn't just google for a ready made solution to your needs and find it. The most you could hope for was a magazine with some paper code that you had to type off. That made you look at the actual code and debug your own typo's if, or more likely when, they occurred.

Kids nowadays are much more interested in a running system that does everything 'out-of-the-box'; and the price won't be bait either. They usually have a mobile phone that cost 10 to 20 times as much already.

If children want to learn programming, they can learn on every computer. Even if it is starting on MS-Office's VBA on an old PC snapped up for £30 off ebay.

Don't get me wrong, guys. I love the Rπ idea, it's great! I will also definitely be tinkering around with one.

But as a revival of the PET/ ZX80/C64 era, when you couldn't wait to get home and try that new line that you thought up in school (during French, most likely...)? No, I don't think it will work.

Pity.

LOHAN ideas..

Re: LOHAN On Top?

Apart from it being a bad idea for LOHAN, you can perfectly well mould a large diameter hosepipe and connect the ends...

ALL NHS patient records online by 2015

Re: ALL NHS patient records online by 2015

or faxed somewhere at random.

Another NHS trust coughs up £90k fine for lax fax acts

That really, REALLY helps,

slapping a fine on the always-short-on-money NHS.

The only outcome is, that there's 90 grand less to go around for the patients.

And the nitwit who did it...

Enter The Beautiful South: 'carry on regardless'

Vulture 2 trigger triggers serious head-scratching

@ Poor Coco - Re: @ Vordicae - Manual Launch ?

Beg differ:

They're not staying there for ages, the temperature does not drop to –60°C immediately after launch, they don't need a lot of transmitting power (2x 0.5s answer-beeps at 3W per minute would nicely do, which will roughly give you a consumption of less than 2Wh* even if your transmitter is not all that efficient), a bit of insulation might do some good, non-rechargeable alkaline batteries don't suffer from low temperatures as much as rechargeable Lithium cells, if you feel too cold, you can include a chemical handwarmer...

They have been up there before and shot video; I can't remember any battery-powered battery heaters from PARIS and they surely didn't use any magic then.

*~ the capacity of a single AA cell.

The 'radio altimeter'

I've just come across a potential error with the radio altimeter idea from earlier. If the balloon does not go up straight, the distance will, of course, be incorrect. Triangulation with two or three ground stations could solve this (like in David D. Hagood's telescope idea [clouds? loosing track?] above) if it gets out of control.

BTW; Sorry to Vordicae for misspelling the name...

@ Vorficae - Re: Manual Launch ?

I like that idea; after all it's less than 50km and total line of sight, too.

And then I thought of this:

You (that means the SPB Team) could use the signal travel time of a radio repeater beacon on board to determine the height.

Have a 'peep-repeater'. Send a signal to the balloon that just gets returned. Measure the time.

Electromagnetic waves travel at ~300,000 km/s. That would make about 6 microseconds for a 1km ( 3300 feet) answer signal (3µs up and 3µs down). At your targeted height of 100,000 feet that will grow to 180 µs turnaround time. If the returning signal takes longer than that, send the trigger signal.

You could actually sit there with a Big Red Button and watch the numbers growing and then press it at the desired height! Come on, isn't that epic?

Only global poverty can save the planet, insists WWF - and the ESA!

I don't think so, Lars. But it seems that every single one of them landed head-first...

Wouldn't the WWFians waste energy and resources by writing and publishing this rubbish? They should go to Ethiopia or Somalia as a good example and spread their fertiliser there; it might do the fields some good.

Dell puts Sputnik open-source laptop on launch pad

@Wile E. Veteran -- Re: Why play with penguins...

>

Not interested in doing any additional diagnostics

<

I know, but it bugs me... ;-) I would wildly guess that that was a graphics issue:

Boot up holding Shift, press F6 for boot options, choose 'nomodeset' as a boot option.

hth.

#####################

Apart from that: I just like it if you can put your fingers into the OS; I'm not a great fan of the walled gardens.

Of course Nintendo games run very reliable on Nintendo consoles, but nothing else either way.

Re: Why play with penguins...

Afaik there's Wacom modules out there: hunt, make, kldload?

Canada failing to sufficiently protect IP rights – US report

How can it be

that cases of copyright infringement, which is between two personal or corporate identities, can lead to 'sanctions' between states? If my neighbours Ferrari is parked in front of my garage, can Britain go to war with Italy?

The solution to the American problem is easy: cut all internet connections to and from the outside of the US. And the phones. Stop all flights and shippings in or out. Stops all their trouble with terrorists, pirates, chinamen, illegal immigrants and all the money going abroad.

And it saves us reading this bullsh*t.

Intel bakes palm-sized Core i5 NUC to rival Raspberry Pi

@ James Hughes1--Re: @ Pete2 --Biscuits or Pi?

Well, I thought that a $25 Huawei phone could never be outsold by a $400 Apple one. And yes, I know that the Apple one has higher specs - so has the Intel board.

About the delivery, your very reasoning in your post is putting customers off. 'Huge backlog', 'expected',' should' and 'good bet' are not confidence-inducing terms.

As much as I love the RaspberryPi (don't get me wrong, I really do!), I think it's suffering from marketing and production failure. Sadly more vapour than ware.

Britain prepares for government by iPad

Claiming on expenses, saving print

For some reason I can just see that most Westminsterians will, after receiving their documents* in a rainforest-friendly way on their new iPads, print these very documents for filing purposes on their new (expenses claimed back) home printer (ink and paper claimed back)**.

Effload of good that does.

But it's good to know that they'll be save from pr0n Apps.

* formerly printed in the cabinet's outsourced printroom on recycling paper on a Xerox Nuvera 144 at 0.7p a page.

**now printed on HP AirPrint inkjet MFD , Staples HP paper and cartridges for 18.3p a page.

Wayward footballer turns to iPod cure

Of course

there's an App for that.

Biennial boner blights Beemer biker

@ Sir Wiggum: Re: @ Sir Wiggum is not a yank

In which case I should have suggested a Chelsea Tractor. ;-P

Ok, joke aside, apart from some Porsche, AMG-Mercs, M-Beemers and such, German cars aren't any harder than any other makes.

French: I think the last truly different experience (fro Jack Average) was the Citroen GS.