* Posts by Paul Shirley

2284 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009

Nokia C5-03 budget touchscreen smartphone

Paul Shirley

At the high end of 'budget'

Let's not forget the extra £10-15 to unlock it, if you want to run a budget phone on a budget PAYG network. Making it nearly twice the price of an unlocked San Francisco (free unlock available).

Unless you really want to pay more in call charges than you did for the phone in a frighteningly short time.

It's unfortunate for Nokia, Android is redefining what 'budget' means.

Microsoft lands big handbag on Google's copy kisser

Paul Shirley

Microsoft name change

So, a stolen search result is OK if it's renamed 'a signal'?

Presumably then I'll be OK selling copies of Win7 as long as I rename them Winblows7?

Changing the name doesn't stop it being theft.

HTC Mozart WinPho 7 smartphone

Paul Shirley

fugly UI + uniformly high price = FAIL

So called fragmentation may well annoy lazier developers, customers love it. Presumably Microsoft are actively seeking lazy developers...

Locking down the UI so tightly means those of us that look at WM7 and thing 'fugly' are never going to buy in. The deluded few that like that look can already make their Android's look boring with WM7 widgets (one of the saddest apps yet). Meanwhile the bulk of the herd will find all the conformity they want on the oh-so pretty iPhone.

I'll carry on being grateful I can by a damn good phone (Orange San Francisco) for £80 safe knowing I can customise all the Orange branding crapware out of it. £300 still in my wallet and a phone I'm free to customise - remind me why fragmentation is supposed to be a problem for *customers*?

Mozilla reaches for almost perfect 10 with latest Firefox 4 beta

Paul Shirley

beta10 still too broken

Left wondering WTF Mozilla are thinking releasing another beta where the forward+back buttons randomly stop working and the address bar stops showing the current page. I expect crashes (though once an hour is taking the piss) but how do you leave basic UI controls unfixed?

Not the slightest chance they'll release just one more beta, too much simple stuff is still broken. I don't care how fast it renders if I can't do the simple things without restarting the browser every 10 minutes!

[The Opera astrotrurfers are entertaining but I've repeatedly tried Opera and just don't like it. Doesn't matter how magic they pack in, speed or feature wise, the UI just annoys me]

'Methanotroph' bacteria feasted on blown BP rig's methane belch

Paul Shirley
Flame

oilfield seepage, even from oilheads isn't the problem

In areas with longstanding oil seepage and presumably a constant trickle of methane along with it, the ecosystem adapts to eat oil and methane. The only surprise is how well they gorged, warm waters should have been a clue.

This tells us bugger all about the real problem areas, where methane is frozen in hydrates or permafrost and likely to outgas far too quickly for bacteria to catch before it hits the atmosphere, in areas too cold for them to work as effectively anyway.

If this affects climate change predictions it's more likely that results in underestimating the effects of catastrophic release. Bad news.

Beastly Android will batter Apple's iOS beauty

Paul Shirley

@Alan Wray:selective quoting at its best, try this one instead

I suggest you track down this quote from Rovio's CEO. Perhaps you might get a clue that the business models are different and paid content doesn't define profit on Android.

"“By end of year, we project earnings of over $1 million per month with the ad-supported version of Angry Birds,” says Peter Vesterbacka, CEO of Rovio."

Disconsolate Spanish smokers driven out into blizzard

Paul Shirley

been tried here and the pub industry took the piss

"What happened to common sense? This blanket ban of smoking is complete madness."

The UK pub/bar industry was given the opportunity to avoid compulsory bans, all they had to do was get a fairly moderate proportion of drinking area smoke free and clearly sign the areas. After 5 years they had managed to put smoking allowed signs up in over 90% of bars but provide bugger all smoke free service.

They played chicken with the government and lost. That's why compulsion is necessary, no-one in the trade wants to jump first and by and large none of them want to jump at all.

So far I've seen vanishingly small genuine complaint from smokers about our ban, because even smokers appreciate not drowning in a fug of smoke. Right at the start we saw a telling incident: builders having a lunchtime drink physically picking up the one just preparing to light up and throwing him out of the bar.

Gov gone wild: Mad new pub glasses, bread freedom introduced

Paul Shirley
Pint

1/2 & 1/3 allow variety AND quantity

When faced by 30+ ciders I want to try (a surprisingly common event) the 3'rd pint 'nip' is a lifesaver. The half is a poor substitute. Gives some chance of hitting the pub on the way home...

iPad's biggest rival? Microsoft's dead Courier

Paul Shirley

Apple&Microsoft dont want this market

Frankly I don't understand why either Apple or Microsoft would care about ease of content creation. The iPad is focused on serving up content to users, be it apps or media, with Apple milking profit continuously. It evidently works as a business plan.

Diluting that flow of paid content with useful creation apps or decent input methods doesn't make sense. Even Microsoft aren't yet desperate enough to rely on just app sales, in a market used to paying pennies and with rampant competition keeping prices down.

Google and RIM have a different model and the phones with decent hard keyboards, trackpads/balls and goodies like good cut&paste are Android or Blackberry's.

Microsoft has shifted 1.5 million Windows phones

Paul Shirley

so called fragmentation is an Android strength

ElNumber:"even with its platform fragmentation which most users don't care about"

You understate, users actively want that 'fragmentation' because in reality fragmentation is little more than offering users choices. Lazy developers bitch about having to deal with different devices but frankly its not that hard and the user is king. And yes, I'm skipping over the mess carriers are making with their sodding OS overlays - they will go away when users get smart enough.

If users wanted to all use the same clone they'd already have an iPhone. I like having the option to run a tiny phone that fits comfortably in a pocket or a whopping great slab, with the same OS and mostly the same software (where dev's could be arsed testing it).

What Microsoft have done is removed the fragmentation, removing user choice with it. So they're explicitly fighting for Apples market and ignoring one of the strengths of Android, the variety of devices on offer. Don't see it ending well for Microsoft.

When Microsoft finally cave in and allow more variety in devices dev's will really see how much pain fragmentation can cause if dealing with it isn't built in from day 1.

Assange to be released

Paul Shirley

just need the US grand jury to sink their own case now

Just need that grand jury to authorise snatching him, some nice repeated death sentence threats from US officials and he won't be going anywhere.

Now we just need some serious journalists to investigate the actual charges, might not work out well for the yanks.

Anyone know what happened to that file labeled 'insurance'?

Three punts UNLIMITED smartphone package

Paul Shirley

an ADSL killer?

If this is true its not the other mobile operators that need to worry, this could easily replace ADSL over vast parts of the country. A reasonable price compared to ADSL+line rental at speeds many can only dream of.

Sadly I suspect it's another "3" drone making stuff up and "3"'s network is good but probably not that good. Yet.

Ten... dirt-cheap voice phones

Paul Shirley
Happy

much as I love my manbag...

There's something very appealing about a phone that fits in the 'change' pocket in a pair of jeans, a pocket so damn small actually fishing coins out is near impossible. I'd say it's an essential tick box on any review.

...because some days the smartphone and manbag is just too much to carry

Three cops spanking in mobile user ranking

Paul Shirley

O2 NEED good support more than "3"

Pretty much the same here, only had 1 problem on Three (couldn't disable my voicemail from a G1) and they fixed it instantly. Comparing Three and O2, more of the service just works on Three so there's a lot less need for customer support. The O2 network is horrible buggy and the missing features more annoying and sadly spills over onto my giffgaff service.

Horror AVG update ballsup bricks Windows 7

Paul Shirley

Comodo has different but less severe problems

Yeah, Comodo can be a royal PIA at times and its far from beginner friendly but so far its regular screwups have been localised - mostly forgetting my safe list with every damn update.

Had to give up AVG several years ago, didn't get my system nuked but it regularly had bad updates that left it sucking 100% CPU. Sucking so hard I couldn't even start the taskkiller to escape. Couldn't risk letting that loose on the family's PC's. Completely clueless, they never seemed to learn.

Blu-ray barely better than DVD

Paul Shirley

on what planet?

...in your world what we should see is much more important than what we actually see. A bad encoding is a bad encoding, whatever stats you throw at me. An upscaled SD remains upscaled SD whatever HD format you code it into. And a shitty quality master print stays shitty in SD or HD. The quality isn't there in the majority of HD material because the owners couldn't be arsed doing the job well, they know so few will even notice, they don't need to.

Let's face it though, the sort of idiots Which? uses typically couldn't spot quality if it poked them in the eyes. Like a depressing proportion of the general public they actually prefer the material overfiltered into softness, an astonishing number actually prefer upscaled SD over real HD versions. Most of the time I can see no difference at all, they both look identically bad.

Virgin demands ISPs end broadband speed 'con'

Paul Shirley

its your router screwing up

torrents can indeed bring many domestic *ROUTERS* to their knees, I literally fried one (it died of heatstroke) and Nvidias woeful chipset network interfaces curl up and die at the slightest hint of torrents. Never seen the modem break sweat, it's not doing any packet processing, just forwarding them. It doesn't even notice that your torrents hitting a few hundred different IPs.

Personally I've seen a consistent 10Mbit on my 10Mbit connection since it was installed. On the rare times I suck 3+Gbyte of data in the afternoon and get throttled, the torrent slows down but iPlayer carries on working perfectly.

Giffgaff says some subscribers yakked for 9 days a month

Paul Shirley
FAIL

termination charges are supposed to balance

In theory the outgoing termination costs should roughly be balanced by incoming termination charges and close to zero cash should transfer. Works well when everyone's actually paying some notional price for their minutes.

Breaks down badly with unlimited deals but even on a 5000min user there should be some incoming calls and it shouldn't cost giffgaff £200.

giffgaff giving into the user demand for unlimited minutes caused the problem, after 12 months glacial user growth they're desperate to buy new customers and this was one attempt. As usual no one at hq thought about the consequences. Its a company run by marketing people and they're piss poor at planning or implementation.

The immediate problem is giffgaff choosing to lie about the problem. They didn't need to say any more than the package was unprofitable, with a nod towards excess use. No need to give away figures or enough to really help the competition. It wasn't exactly news to many of us that it would be unprofitable, all the clues were there in forum postings from the flock of freeloaders it attracted. But giffgaff just decided their loyal cult members wouldn't notice a lie, they've fallen for their own community fairy tale.

Still, this shitstorm is doing well at covering up the technical faults many users are currently suffering from. I at least got my credit card unblocked in only 10min after giffgaff's broken payment system triggered fraud protection. They've not yet bothered telling other affected users to call their card providers, still telling them to carry on retrying, the action that gets the card blocked.

Paul Shirley

must be business use?

Business use isn't actually barred by giffgaff T&C's. Reselling is, running a business using it isn't.

Paul Shirley

he was kicked off with good reason.

Recently dickheads have been kicked off for a couple of reasons:

One cretin decided to ignore the difference between paying for unlimited data on a bundle and using the very explicitly capped (100Mb/day) free data. Strangely he get kicked off. Maybe the idiot should learn to read.

Some have persistently ignored the absolute ban on tethering of any kind, hammered the service and not surprisingly been given the heave ho. Some of these halfwits have openly admitted it on the forums or even attempted long self serving justification for their actions.

Google: Oracle doctored that 'copied Java code'

Paul Shirley

what Oracle doctored

"Google's infringement and fragmentation of Java code not only damages Oracle..."

That's certainly true but doesn't make it something Oracle can successfully sue over. Even in the US where you can sue over anything, companies can't sue just because their business model has been made irrelevant, they have to find deliberate interference and leap through a lot of hoops.

And that code Oracle doctored? There's a strong indication they removed the copyright attribution on *their* version - because leaving the GPL copyright notice on it completely invalidates their case. Yes, Sun released that version under GPL, Google have fulfilled all their GPL obligations over the 3 months time slot the code was actually in the project and Oracle are screwed.

It really is another SCO, lie about the evidence, lie about the license, lie about the law. And lose.

Microsoft looks to KIN for support

Paul Shirley

Kin @ 1c

Let's no forget the Kin was already remaindered by Amazon @US$0.01

Microsoft are going to have trouble convincing anyone to actually stock this turd again.

Pure One Mi portable DAB/FM radio

Paul Shirley

in situ charging not needed

Why would you want to charge AA/AAAs in situ? Much faster in a dedicated charger, easy enough to carry spares and away from a power point you need to swap out anyway.

Unfortunately the hideous power draw on DAB would mean buying a whole new set of Lithium AA/AAA and dedicated charger for a half decent life. Not much different from buying 2 overprices Pure battery pack.

Still, nice to see a less boxy DAB radio, still looks fugly but in a cheap, throwaway FM radio way for a change. Think I'll stick to the FM tuner in my £5 throwaway mobile and my MP3 player contains music I actually listen to instead of the crap on everything but Radio6.

Not an epic fail. Just a fail.

Pure Oasis Flow weatherproof DAB and Internet radio

Paul Shirley

another box DAB

Is it compulsory for all DAB devices to be hideous boxy?

Still, they skipped the faux wood panel look 99% of them use. So slightly less hideous than normal.

Orange bulks up SIM-only deals for people who text like a canary

Paul Shirley

Orange - always playing confuse-a-punter

Another example of the industry addiction to confusing pricing. Make the maze hard enough to navigate and no-one can find the correct tariff. Tempt them into a 12+month contract and no-one can get out when they do choose badly.

Think I'll stick to giffgaff, Orange only beat their prices on a 12month lock in and only if I don't want any data. I like not having any lock in. Could be useful though, might actually get giffgaff off their arses enough to unbundle data for the users that don't want it, a demand they've been ignoring for nearly a year.

Nice try but Orange have a long way to go to even catch up with the best prices out there.

Times celebrates disappearing readers

Paul Shirley
FAIL

going to have to stop buying readers sometime

Given the substantial amount of advertising I'm seeing, all of it pushing the £1/month deal it's pretty hard to take 105k users as good ROI. When the advertising push stops I fully expect all their paid users to melt away and just leave the paper subscribers with their free accounts.

Far as I can see Murdoch's still on course for total failure, the point was to make money, not spend it buying short term market share.

iPhone alarm bug: now it's the UK's turn

Paul Shirley
Pint

not just Apple

Same thing happened with my Gigaset VOIP cordless phones, alarm set for 10am went off at 11.

Still, I needed the extra hour after beer festivaling all day Saturday ;)

Oracle goes in hard on Google Java suit

Paul Shirley

this could end software patents

Believe it or not, that could be a good thing. It leaves G with little option but to attack the patents and the patent system that allowed them. So far no-one big enough to seriously challenge the US patent office has had a compelling incentive to do it, hopefully that just changed.

Samsung Omnia 7

Paul Shirley

Zune is the payload/problem

SD card is a minor irritation, I haven't removed the one in my phone for nearly a year. Haven't come near running out of space either. No, the killer is not allowing USB mounting, which is how most people transfer stuff.

Having neither option is an Applesque attempt to lockin their shitty Zune platform. Not something I'd want or be able to install on a borrowed PC away from home, probably not something I can install on most of my house PC's either unless Microsoft have developed a much better attitude to Linux.

It's bad enough Microsoft have imposed this DRM friendly gateway for uploads, having to use to download your own photo's is taking the piss.

Java guru quits over Oracle 'disregard'

Paul Shirley

android

Google avoiding the Java licensing mire is beginning to look prescient...

Two-year wait for Windows 8, MS blurts

Paul Shirley
Jobs Horns

riskiest ever release

Sure it will be. For the users.

Phone 7: Another Vista or another XP?

Paul Shirley
Grenade

It's so last year...

Amazing. They copied all the bad bits from Apple but failed to notice Apple having to free up IOS4 a little to keep up with Android. Gotta love that lockin. So that's all the dozen or so Zune users sorted.

The dynamic data in 'tiles' is hardly a new idea, my Android phone is quite happily showing all sorts of fun stuff on its home screens - from the 1x1 icon battery status widget to the nearly full screen Jorte calendar widget with a months calendar on display, passing through my Rugby RSS feed and SMS displays. So at least they stole one good bit from Android, but didn't do it very well.

And is that a fugly interface or what?

Google Android chief smacks Steve Jobs with Linux speak

Paul Shirley

it's not about users

Certain amount of misjudging the audience here on the openness issue.

End users don't really care about how open anything is.

But end users don't develop apps, dev's do.

Dev's do care about openness and this whole spat is aimed at dev's not end users.

No dev's -> no successful app store -> no point choosing that phone.

And we can see through the BS coming from Apple without help. Especially the desperate attempt to portray an extremely limited Apple product range as an advantage compared to the vast array of different sized and featured Android devices end users can choose from.

WTF is... DLNA?

Paul Shirley
Thumb Down

DNLA not even a good start

The only device I've ever managed to get acceptable DLNA playback on is my PC. Completely pointless since the same PC will play the same files across a share and do it better - I can find the files faster, trick play actually works and the underpowered CPU in the NAS server doesn't melt down in the process.

DNLA. Not even a good start.

Humax HDR-Fox T2 Freeview HD DVR

Paul Shirley
Jobs Horns

Humax, the Microsoft of the home electronics world

Nigel Whitfield:"'I've had it here for some time now; couple of months, and a fair bit of recording. Long enough to see some problems appear, then get fixed by later firmware betas."

My experience with Humax suggests waiting 18-24 months from launch. By then they'll have gone through the stages of denying bugs, ignoring bug reports, falsely claiming to fix them and finally get to a usable (but far from bug free) box.

Then they'll stop support and leave you tearing your hair out when you hit something bizarre the clowns building the firmware couldn't be arsed to get right.

The company that ignored 4 months of fault reports, until I went over their heads to the Korean CEO.

Humax. Not with a long bargepole.

Ofcom imposes new rules on silent callers

Paul Shirley

Ofcom a waste of space

It's surprising Ofcom get any complaints, given how deep in the site the report page is hidden and a page that effectively says 'we'll count them but do nothing'.

They don't seem interested in fighting for consumers, just writing toothless reports and hoping scumbag companies don't take the piss enough to make Ofcom look really bad.

Virgin Media introduces P2P throttling

Paul Shirley

fsck all to do with piracy

@Tigra 07:"It's ridiculous they can assume all p2p traffic is sharing copyrighted material"

P2P hammers networks whatever you're sharing, doubles the traffic (if you aim for a 1.0 ratio) and avoids any attempt to cache that traffic. P2P is almost a DDOS on network infrastructure.

Copyright infringement is a totally different issue.

SwiftKey offers alternative for Android typists

Paul Shirley
Heart

its a google hack

The 'read phone state' permission is most often the result of an evil compatibility hack Google added to apps targeting Android 1.5. This permission wasn't present earlier so they jam it into all apps declaring 1.5 support just in case. Microsoft quality thinking.

Mozilla puts brakes on auto Firefox updates

Paul Shirley
FAIL

stable but broken

No obvious stability issues so far but I really want my mousewheel back. Mozilla manage to lose wheel support so often it's getting annoying.

Adobe Reader 0day under active attack

Paul Shirley
Flame

sandbox the damn thing externally

Now would be a good time to experiment with your anti-malware package's sandbox support.

Because these Adobe exploits aren't likely to stop in my lifetime... ;)

Acer Stream Android smartphone

Paul Shirley

look at the pictures

It already has dedicated volume controls (those buttons on the left edge), though I find them a little to easy to accidentally hit on my G1 (same vol button position).

Viewsonic intros £350 7in Android tablet

Paul Shirley
Flame

Apple implemented 25+ year old ideas

Have to agree about the originality. After all PCW magazine mocked up what future PC's might look like in the early 1980's, a glass touchscreen slab about 7" big, roughly the same form factor as an iPhone, with an icon grid interface in the artists impression...

The iPhone isn't quite as pretty - it's originality is that round the display instead of a edge to edge glass surface. The iPad is obviously much bigger. How original ;)

Of course Apple do seem to believe they have an exclusive license to implement other peoples ideas.

Mobile 3D planned for MeeGo Linux

Paul Shirley
Flame

what's the point?

I'm struggling to see the point or even WTF the article title has to do with this white elephant. How does bringing a knock off of Second Life do anything more than bring a knock off of Second Life to more devices? What's the point? Where's the story?

Oracle sues Google over Java in Android

Paul Shirley

patent wars just fizzle out

It was speculated that Google did this 'not Java' thing to prevent Sun having any contractual rights to assert against Android - its not Java, not licensed, not contracted -> not actionable. Given Sun's shitty attitude to licensing they had to do something in any case.

And guess what: Oracle have had to fall back on patent claims. I'd love to see fireworks here but if that's all they've got this ends with a patent cross license deal, or if Oracle plays hardball, with Oracle bled to dead by decades in litigation.

[BTW: if you want real Java on Android, there's an app for that. It worked but I couldn't really see the point using crappy Java apps on the phone]

Taxman warns on phone fraud

Paul Shirley
Gates Horns

honey pots needed

What we need is an officially sanctioned supply of honey pot bank and credit card account details. Accounts that if accessed trigger a automatic visit from local law enforcement. Poisoning their haul with fake account details is a moments fun but doesn't get the bastards locked up.

iPhone 4 on Pay as You Go: UK networks compared

Paul Shirley
Grenade

because giffgaff dont do microSIMs?

1: they don't supply microSIMs, you'll have to cut your own or get one of the other users to supply one. So that's 95% of iPhone users frightened away. And you need to manually configure the phone because they can't get it automated - like most other networks seem to manage, that's most of the other Apple fans gone then...

2: PAYG data is no more or less unlimited than any of the others, use as much as you like, pay 20p/Mb for it. Yes, that's a better price than any most of the listed offers. Since no-one in their right mind would pay PAYG rates from any of them its not much of a consideration.

If one of their goodybags (AKA bundles) works for you giffgaff are *usually* the best deal without going to contract. Not exactly PAYG any longer though, more like a 30 day rolling contract with slightly less hassle switching product each month.

Deviant Google Android probes Linux kernel re-entry

Paul Shirley

the Linux kernel does not belong to the kernel maintainers

DZ-Jay: "it's their kernel, their project"

No. It's their *fork*. The beauty of open source and the GPL is, when someone decides not to cooperate you can bypass the obstacle by forking. And no-one has rights to whine about it after the event.

I prefer a few hours more battery life than worrying about bruised ego's and developers notoriously difficult to work with.

First SMS Trojan for Android is in the wild

Paul Shirley
Flame

mobile carriers need to stop profiting from malware

I currently have premium SMS blocked on my giffgaff account but the block has to be on SMS+International calls. Not one or the other, it has to be both. Even where carriers allow premium SMS blocking it's obvious they really don't want you doing it.

The whole mobile industry is corrupt to the core, they've not seen a scam they don't like, there's a slice of the action for them whatever happens. Or seen any need to protect customers.

Brian Blessed lends his tongue to TomTom

Paul Shirley
Thumb Up

Google TTS

Next campaign: a Blessed option for Google Text To Speech on my phone!

OOXML and open clouds: Microsoft's lessons learned

Paul Shirley
Unhappy

sounds as deluded as Jobs

Paoli said. "People did not understand what we were trying to do [on OOXML]."

No, the problem was people understood all too well what they were trying to do and didn't like it.

Doesn't really help that Microsoft still don't understand the difference between a standard and some barely readable source code commentary. They did it with VC1 and got savaged, did it again with OOXML and got savaged, doubt they'll ever learn.

Sadly Google are repeating the same mistakes with VP8.