Posts by David Perry 2

China ready to slap down US in smartphone wars

Re: Just about no phone company makes "dumb" phones any more

When my faithful T630 died suddenly a couple of years ago, just as I was about to do 48hrs of heavy travel, I spent £25 on a K330 - brilliant phone, built in camera for reference shots and £10 of that went on £10 voda credit! Not that I used it, bought it from Carphone Warehouse and as the phones come unlocked shoved my o2 contract sim in. It's been leant out a few times to people when their smartphones (mainly sony ericsson units) have been in for repair. And if my iPhone blew up it would become a usable temporary phone. Shame there's no support for syncML (o2 bluebook gets my numbers backed up to it via that) on it but maybe a java app would fix that.

Cameron denies personal Trident missile firing iPad app

Re: Time to play angry birds

If Hugh Grant's portrayal is anything to go by, there's so much time to constantly think about then go carol singing all the way down a straight so you get to, grab Martine McCutcheon. She is quite nice though :D

1,600 pubs and bars to get free Wi-Fi

VPN passthrough?

I won't go on public wifi now until I setup a VPN server. So will they let VPN connections through?

Google to app devs: Use our pay system ... OR ELSE

@Irongut.. and the telco thing

Application signing? Extra attributes on a certificate of some kind?

Also if everyone moved off the forced inhouse payment processor (MAJOR backlash style) maybe they'd sit and say hey we'd rather we're on your app store and payments go through someone else than you all leave our app store so no-one will be our devices? Though at least android apps don't NEED an online store to go through - afaik only enterprises have a way of mass-uploading their own apps to iOS device.

Netflix lets Apple TV owners subscribe on screen

ATV2 can't handle 1080p content

Why don't they detect which device they're streaming to, and have an alternative stream which the ATV2 CAN play? Heck, the video server I run at work does HTML5 video dishing up and that's open source not apple-or-greedy-DRMy-american software/system. Backwards compatibility should help their market sharet. Especially with all the lovefilm promo I'm seeing (OK in the UK there are Netflix prizes being given away on a nation-wide commercial station but with amazon backing it could still be hard for them).

GitHub reinstates Russian who hacked site to expose flaw

Differences of opinion

Their statement says they worked with him to fix it BEFORE he proved their was a flaw. Your story says he was ignored (or received no human response), and felt compelled to prove he shouldn't have been ignored. Which version is correct?

Apple: We never said Siri would actually work in the UK

Apple - pay attention

Let us have that UK-friendly app they've said has to change to stay in the app store. If you won't do it properly.

Apple tells Siri rival Evi: Get a facelift and you can stay

Re: Easy fix

BUT if it does British stuff better, I as a soon to be 4S owner would want that. Question is how it performs for me as a driver (that's main attraction, as my bluetooth headset has an update that'll make it talk properly to Siri so I don't have to shout at the phone in its cradle at the wheel).

Sony Xperia converts flash motors into fancy remotes

Jaguar Land Rover involvement

I hope it was British expertise involved, given the brand is owned by foreigners (I have nothing against foreigners owning british brands and running them well / sensitively, but would obviously be nicer if British minds were the brains behind the nuts and bolts of this).

Boy died after satnav fault delays ambulance

Non IT points here

Whilst I sympathise with her loss, I agree the blame game is being played here. On a non-IT note, how much gear to ambulance responders have? A friend of mine who had a heart attack at home was successfully treated and stablised by a responder car, they serve their purpose well.

<footnote:personal>

I also get annoyed at these women who have large numbers of kids. If she (when not in an unfit state to) and her partner are working to support their family, fine, but as a taxpayer I object to supporting any that are being supported by the state. Some religions believe offspring are a gift, I consider a large family to be something you earn and only have if you can support them all properly.

</footnote:personal>

Oracle inhales Taleo for $1.9bn

Larry and Oracle are minted cos...

Of clever / good business with a compelling argument. Not compassion. Finding both in a company's atittude and ethics is rare. Sounds a bit like Apple, but people convert TO their format not FROM it from what I've seen...

Tech! Tech! Teeeeech! Women want gadgets for Valentine's

What a woman says = reverse pyschology

But my gf loved the pink dvd player I bought her for Christmas (my idea completely, partly helped by the fact hers needed taking to the tip). And is getting a pink iPhone cover when she gets my 3GS (4S for me in a month or two).

Picture cos it's cool.

That is all.

NHS hands out 3G slabs and phones to roving nurses

Even nicer idea would be

If the offline mode allowed the nurses to have a list of their patients for that day on screen and download data for the next appointment (if this is necessary) when they are in a 3G area so when offline they don't have to wait ages for the information to download. I'm guessing these devices have remote lockdown and wipe that can be done via something like (secure in some way?) text message in case it gets lost in a patchy 3G area? On the whole, nice to see some an NHS technology project being done throughtfully but with easily measurable benefits / satisfaction.

O2 quietly cans gratis Cloud Wi-Fi connectivity

I concurr

I had definitely one, maybe two, texts telling me about this change. Personally until I have a VPN setup I won't trust open access wifi anyway.

Schools IT supplier RM swings to full year loss after sales dive

BSF fail

I went to an academy that was one of the few projects to actually go ahead in my area as part of BSF. And was told by a deputy head they screwed up enough to get £20k back - which was going to go on 40 iPads or something

Snake slides back onto Nokia smartphones

Grammar

"an homage"? Atrocious

Apple Italy throws up ruling on its store site

Pennies to them

That fine is nothing to them figures wise, it would be on principle they'd contest it.

I'd have thought it's the patents cases they're harder on as that's long term / on going revenue / licensing income that is more valuable / likely to affect growth.

Sherlock cos a) it's hypothesising, b) Benedict C's sherlock is the coolest thing on tv

Apple CEO: 'Amazon Fire didn't dent our sales'

Macs in education

An Academy that was completed in past 6 months here (Hull) only use PC for backoffice functions. They have about 600 macs (running off one server apparently), and the project was spec'd and managed by RM (shudder). Academy teaching staff (one is my ex) all got macbooks. They bought a fair few iPads as part of this too (for students, mainly 6th formers), and are buying another 50 when RM cocked up the implementation to the tune of £20k (this info came from one of the deputy heads when I went to their launch as an Apple RTC).

Iranian coder faces execution 'for building smut websites'

Time for another invasionary mission by the US on those grounds?

Or MIGHT they then show us their nuclear power?

Sir Howard's days as Sony prez said to be numbered

If I read this right

The guy who was in charge of launching PS Network is taking his job supposedly. Isn't the response to the PSN hacking ultimately his responsbility if he's still at the top of it?! If so, that's a VERY strange reward that shareholders should ask big questions about.

Sites knocked offline by OpenDNS freeze on Google

More detail?

i.e. did google properly bugger it's certificates or is openDNS in need of some work? If Kaspersky is having issues as well I'd be more inclined to blame google

Logica axes 1,300 jobs as profits set to be just £240m

This is why I prefer limited, NON PLC companies

They put the people first. Whilst no-one is ignoring you need to make a profit, a 2% drop doesn't sound that bad given these figures. Whilst times are hard, a profit in the hundreds of millions on the surface doesn't sound so bad! Am expecting some angry responses to this from higher up people, but hey. Unless there are 1300 timewasters you can find...

British athlete puts self on eBay

Don't forget

The percentage commission on that kind of sale :S

Blighty promised £43m prang-predicting supercomputer

Amazon?

For projects which don't require government level security, would Amazon cloud farms billed on actual usage not be cheaper and quicker to deploy? Heck if Google will create secure sandboxes for the Google Apps for not much then surely Amazon would at least look at it if they don't do so already?

Mozilla denies OS X Leopard 2012 kill

Firefox support stats

Would Mozilla be willing to publish (regularly) their 'how many % of users use / request support for version X of Firefox using OS X version y'? As two separate sets of stats. Personally I'm happy on 10.6 and have no plans to go to Lion from everything I'm hearing. The software I use on that platform does everything I need it to, with nice stable VMware Fusion hosting a sturdy XP for when I need it (still support Windows users in all bar a handful of cases, and certain things like Citrix web access certificates are a pain in the not-making-a-statement Ass to get setup).

Speaker for the stats bit, the rest is just personal rant.

Tor launches DIY relays in Amazon cloud

If they find you as a user

They might just take any pcs in your property anyway if things got dirty

Jim Westwood, home micro revolutionary

The text and font of the headline on that PDF (page 4)

"Now you can watch a little TV everywhere" very similar font and text to Apple's current advertising. Wonder where they got that idea from - imitation is the biggest form of flattery. And wonder if apple's marketing veep ever knew/will know this - what was I reading here earlier about apple and innovation/lack of it hmmm...

Britain's Harrier jump-jets reprieved to fly and fight again

The money

How much will it raise? What are we gonna do with it? Pay off some debts or save some services which would otherwise be cut (I'd vote for some of it to go the NHS who have looked after me well frequently the past year or so - the attitude of the NHS nurses when I was somewhat scared about what was gonna be done to me was angelic compared to private ones I've dealt with)

iPhone 4 prototype duo get a year’s probation

Apple employees illegally searching a private house

Is there any update on what happened to them? That sounded illegal enough to me I'd have got lawyers involved had I been in the (so far uncharged) person's case and had them after Apple!

'Buggy' Facebook iPad app finally emerges

Facebook Mobile

Saw the new web version this morning, I miss an obvious 'Home' button on it (i.e. the logo). iPad app a good step, saw it the other day and an iPhone app on a big screen looked awful!

Firefox devs mull dumping Java to stop BEAST attacks

Citrix and Firefox

Our IT department will install Firefox on request. And you can make it work with citrix - sadly you have to login using IE first to it, but after running an app through the citrix client once that seems to sort out the cerftificate on Firefox too. To my mind web stuff should run on any browser without faffing or ballache.

Microsoft milks Casio for using Linux

@ Careful there...

Maybe that's why no mac keyboard I've seen explicitly says page up / down. Or any software done it for that matter

Keyboard cos it's a keyboard thing...

Go Daddy mass hack points surfers towards malware

First time I've read in a while...

...that the hack didn't quickly show poor security at the hacked service. Further down the line there maybe recommendations that's not unreasonable.

Claimed DigiNotar hacker: I have access to four more CAs

As a precaution

Shouldn't all CAs be resetting their admin passwords?

DNS hijack hits The Register: All well

It did show me about 10am last night though

That you're on apache 2.2.17 using various boltons incl openssl (which I've struggled to turn off on servers I have anything to do with admittedly) thanks to your error page footer.

Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO

@MooseNC

She doesn't have the balls (or guts, if you want to be PC) to come up with new ideas that'll change the world in even a vaguely good way. Wonder which one of her puppets thought that iQuit could be useful.

And as for which camp I'm in, "I'm a PC" (at work) but mac user at home / on the road / in my pocet (iPhone).

Fail cos of the first paragraph obviously...

Ubisoft insists DRM 'a success'

Suggetions

If you'll insist on DRM, here is a simple suggestion:

Make it an occasional random online check - and give you 7 days after a failed check date to get the product back online if your net is broken that day or similar genuine reason for connection being down.

Like how we used to do email in the days of dialup, connect to send/receive.

I'd also HOPE the verification process uses as little data as possible for the parts of the country/world that have iffy connections even when on. I'm a duke nukem 3d (the ORIGINAL game), doom man so none of this online-DRM malarky is relevant personally, but can see the annoyance value for others.

Murdoch muscles BBC out of Formula One driving seat

Didn't the Director General himself say that...

...it was possible a channel could be axed? I don't have freeview yet (switchover next week will force me to sort an aerial out) but BBC3 is good for some random and repeated stuff I gather, whereas noone has any praise or dislike for 4. So it can go.

UK data watchdog 'looking into' Google+ mission creep

Private profiles NOT deleted?

Didn't I read in the last week or two that certain high profile tech folk (mr Facebook, mr Schmidt etc) had 'private' profiles? Hypocrits.

A peek inside Apple's iCloud data center

Where I work...

We put a department full of macs onto AD. Cos the novell support is too unreliable. Novell = expensive LDAP = what OS X server runs hmmm. And I'm a mac user at home!

Hacker wrists slapped for stealing Lady Gaga songs

If it was her usual tripe

I can't see why anyone would pay anything for it anyway.

The stuff she did before she turned into a freakshow was so much better and I actually give her credit for

IT grad claims £5m for crap degree

It's not just the degree that gets you the job...

Mine is a 3rd class Honours degree (BSc Computer Science). It was everything else I did at uni in my non-class time - societies (radio station, theatre company), working with different people/units, holding down a job most of the time I was there and fitting that in around everything else. I'd like to know what his extra curricular portfolio looks like, cos mine got my jobs (including current one). The degree was a lookin, not the deciding factor.

M&S signs up to O2 location grab

It worked...

..we're talking about a fancy food and clothing/undies shop on a tech newspiece!

Apple touts top iTunes tunes of 2010

I dislike....

...lady gaga, kesha and most of katy perry's stuff. Kesha talks anyway, she doesn't sing so shouldn't be included in any chart.

Isilon may stay on Seattle scene

Deliberate leak?

Or just some careless exec who shouldn't be trusted with digital data if he treats (possibly intended as confidential) paper data like this! Paris for the potential dumbness of the exec in question.

@Kerry are EMC destructive meddlers?

O2 hits button on location-based ads

Location based vouchers

Are they going to dish out vouchers maybe, e.g. get fiver off bill at this restaurant that's within walking distance of your current location by waving this text at the waiter/waitress when you ask for the bill? That would encourage me to sign up, if it was at minimum a clean hygeinic place to eat.

Internet tethering spotted in iPad iOS beta

Tomorrow

"Tomorrow never comes. What kind of a fool do they take me for?"

(Tomorrow, from Bugsy Malone)

Twitter facelifts its homepage

Looks like...

a) a nice video (I think)

b) the web page gui will look like the iPad app does now in every web browser (bar mobile presumably) - I like that, but hope they've tweaked how the right hand pane works on this redesign as I found it hard to get used to how the right hand pane content is ditched/changed on the iPad app

Sussex police try new tactic to relieve snappers of pics

Assuming they return it...

I took a photo of an incident about 5 years ago that I was witness to, and deleted the photo cos I couldn't see anything in it. The police, on hearing this, asked if they could have memory card to do an undelete - and sent someone round to do the formal handover. They never returned it though...

Facebook's critics 'unrealistic', says US privacy law expert

Pay attention google?

If advertisers are only analysing data a month or less old, I'd be interested to see google themselves justify keeping it for much longer than that period. Sure I'm missing something here, but surely a point to think about.