Posts by George Oommen

BlackBerry update bursting with spyware

huh?

I lived in the UAE from 81 to '05....etisalat are the freakin stasi..crippling spyware on everything, they charged extortionate rates for calls, while blocking ALL voip including skype to keep thier revenue. It's a monopoly. You think BT was bad? These guys *banned* WiFi in the country. it was illegal till 2001, because it let you 'share' internet connections which reduced thier revenue...They basically banned ethernet by only allowing a firmware-crippled USB modem to run thier broadband, so people wouldn't share net connections. They blocked all extra ports, put the entire country behind a proxy blocking any 'un-islamic' websites, or those that critisize etisilat. they're as bad, or worse than china/iranian proxies....counless blogs are censored....

It's no secret that all emails to etisalat are monitored and you have about as much privacy as posting your emails in a blog....

/com/ss8/interceptor/app

Three brothers jailed for credit card factory

lol

Sorry I'm Asian and I read the title "credit card fraud" and thought they *must* be asians....clicked through and they are! ahahaaaa! like, who else does that these days that's saaayyyyyy 1998....

Enertia e-bike wheeled into shops

I'll bid £250

$11k means at least £14k here...way to much for a toy...so is £7k ( which buys you a brand new Toyota 4x4 in India [see Innova]), or even £700, which buys you a decent 100mph Jap motorbike in India...so wait till the ebikes can do 100mph and cost £250

People just not that into Blu-ray

hmmm....

for the idiots who compare bluray to upscaled dvd:

http://fwd.five.tv/videos/news-bluray-vs-dvd-upscale

3 has no place Like Home

three

ok I'm just a poor student....well i have mates on Vodafone paying £40/month on an 18 month contract for 1GB data and a few mins....

On my 3 PAY AS YOU GO phone, I have Skype (routed like a normal call rather than as data, quality must be heard to be believed), unlimited MSN messenger, push email, Youtube and mobile TV...I'm using an SIP client (freecall.com) and get free calls to all of jew-rope....plus I can tether via bluetooth and have upto 3GB of internet on my laptop, in fact I'm typing this through that connection now...for the privelege I pay £5 a month, the months that I feel like it....

Beat that and I'll by jew a drink...

Samsung B2700 Bound rugged mobile phone

wtf?

Where's the innovation? A rubber grip does not give you balls, contrary to popular belief. This is just polishing a dessicated turd.....solar/hand crank charging? barometer/depth gauge/thermometer anyone? they could have made this a real all in one navigation device for about a tenner more of electronics.....

Sony DSLR-A900 Alpha 900 digital SLR

blind reviewer?

Hmmm...My 10 year old niece can take infinitely better pictures....is this some kind of joke?? Seriously, but wtf el reg? Paris, coz even she knows how to handle a black 4-pounder....

VoIP is coming to the iPod Touch

wtf?

Hmmm...ok I have a nokia 6220c I bought ages ago for 50 quid on ebay....on pay as you go i get:

unlimited skype

unlimited (well 3GB data)

unlimited push email

a 5MP camera

GPS

TomTom 6 with maps upto Russia and the US (thanks Piratebay!)

and I have SKype, MSN messenger Truphone etc running simultaneously, PLUS push email over HSDPA....

bluetooth keyboard cost a bit but ligter an more battery than a netbook....

costs me a fiver a month on 3!

Down the Digital River, into the heart of download darkness

Refreshing honesty

Loved the swearing! Keep it up...far less stuffy here!

Nokia rings warning bell

Nokia come on!

Hmmm...I'll second the 6120 comment, I'm typing this from my 6120 with 3mail(push email), Fring, Skype(on 3), Adobe Acrobat and MSN Messenger and TomTom all running flawlessly in the background...so i have 2 skype accounts signed into which i cant even do on my PC!!

Plus a 16gb sdhc filled with music....Far less buggy than the N95 which I had and chucked after a month....if only this baby had gps and a better camera....thats the 6220, but they screwed up the finis and it feels plasticky and bits fall off...... seems like the n96 is thier flagship which is a piece of crap....i remember nokias like the 8800 and first communicators.... they were objects of desire and looked like something out of star trek....made of titanium alloys and now their using plastic... so to anyone at nokia who wants to make up for sales figures, make a 6220 with the 6120's quality, chuck in a touchscreen and slide out qwerty and it will kill iphones...........but just to be sure give punters the option of a clean format/dual boot with linux....

Hands on with Sony's slimline Vaio TT

Rip off Britan

Ok prices are insane. Three YEARS ago I bought basically the same thing (Vaio TX-650) which is almost the same shell, carbon fibre, 2gb ram, 100gb dvd-rw etc etc and has about 8 hours of reall world battery life... the uk price was over 2 grand, but bought it in the states for $1200 (about 700 squid)....best buy i ever made....

paris, coz even she knows not to buy tech in the UK...

Vodafone prices up HSDPA-bundled Dell netbook

George

Hmmm... I have unlimited skype, msn messenger, push email from 3 separate accounts, and for a fiver a month, 3 gigabytes a month (separate from skype!) over hsdpa via bluetooth... I can even log in to two gmail, skype and msn messenger accounts simultaneously usng fring...try doing that on a PC or mac!! plus tomtom on an 8GB microsd on my nokia 6120, turn by turn to Moscow and back.... nearest petrol station in the Ukraine please, and it calls direct from my phone!!! or kodi.cz for the oxford english dictionary to czech or ukranian...incredible....don't mean to sound like a plug but x series on 3 is insane....

Vehicle spy-cam data to be held for five years

Mr

brilliant. $200 for a full tank of diesel....i was in the states a couple of years ago and was paying about $20 a tank...and drove back from the ukraine, through slovakia, czech republic, poland, germany, netherlands, belgium and france..then dover and to west london.... in the 2200km prior to london, i counted 2 speed cameras, in the 80km across it there were about 40....that's almost one for every mile....

and not including the joys of congestion charging cameras (i've been prosecuted!), parking cameras, yellow box cameras(120 pound fine, I got one!), and bus lane cameras.....now add the dna database(highest percentage of populace in the world), tv licensing harrament(50% discount for the blind, seriously? this is 2008), talking cameras (google it)....i've always wondered why brits bend over and take all this shite from their own government, coz if this happened back home, people would riot and protest next to the guvenor's office...so why don't you do that? oh sorry i forgot that's illegal :o)

Dixons stores offer own-brand HSDPA mini-laptop

Mr

350? back in 1998 I flew to Boston, stayed at a 4-star hotel and lived like a king, bought a laptop, touchscreen pda, webcam, the biggest hard disc you could buy...the cost of everything together was still cheaper than buying in the UK! Next in 2003 I did the same thing, same cost ratio....

350 quid...$700 buys you a decent laptop in the states, even at the Dixons equivalent! I just bought a Gateway Dual core t5550 320GB/4GB with bluetooth, webcam and in RED!! For $700 from Bestbuy...try and get that in the UK...I could have got it even cheaper online....

Google News farce triggers Wall Street sell-off

George Oommen

funny...for so many centuries our financial system was based on gold...now the price of gold is based on our financial system.... so it's all based on nothing! if you have a free hour check out bbc 'the trap', about game theory, lack of the invisible hand and inevitability of our current system crumbling....

some yank recently asked me if I voted for Gordon Brown and was suprised to learn that no-one did! He asked 'how can he be the prime minister is no one voted for him' but I didn't exactly have an answer....I know more about US politics than uk pol-ticks...apathy is endemic because we see no way out...

by the way, disconnected but bus lane cameras, speed cameras, automated yellow box cameras, congestion charge cameras, south london now has more cameras than doctors......go labour.

Nokia unveils N79 and N85 smartphones

George

Ok 5 years on the reg and my first comment... I've had a nokia 2110 in 1994, and have since used pretty much every nokia out there....nokia screwed up with the n7* and n95, i had both for a few days before returning them....i had an iphone for a few days and returned it, and someone reccomended the nokia 6120 classic...tiny little phone with a tiny screen....but incredible...for a 20 quid phone with a 400mhz processor, it beats the hell out of the iphone....3gb a month for a fiver on pay as you go on 3....i run flash and java over hsdpa with gmail, skype, fring, and msn messenger running in the background...i can even play 3d flight simulator simultaneously and it doesn't slow down...plus i have an 'archived' copy of tomtom 6, and navigated to moscow with it! im now at oxford researching how to turn it into a 3d ultrasound machine with a usb transducer (trust me this is possible with symbian and C! im halfway there!).... i'm just waiting for nokia's next 'communicator' with wifi qwerty and touchscreen and that will be the holy grail....