Posts by chr0m4t1c

HTC HD7

Yeah

I'm getting fed up of reading about all of those millionaire Kin developers...

TBH, I'm more interested in how OS upgrades are delivered, are they more the Android/iOS flavour where you can get your shiny new OS from the manufacturer or are they the sucky "wait for carrier/hardware manufacturer to port it" variety of WM/Symbian?

HTC don't have a particularly shining track record on the latter type, so you even if V2 of WM7 is kicked out the door by MS next April, you'll almost certainly wait until next October before you can install it - assuming they even bother.

Seagate-Steve trash for Apple-Steve flash pash

Err

(Checks Apple store.)

160Gb Classic still available to buy, based on HDD storage.

Vodafone moves 360 goalposts

Not consumers

Sadly, I suspect that most of Vodafone's customers are in fact businesses.

I've never worked for a company that isn't using Vodafone as it's mobile provider and I rarely encounter people from other companies who aren't in the same boat.

British bank cuts 4,500 IT jobs

@Or

Problem is that sporting boards are dealing with teams that are supposed to be representing UK places, but many of these businesses are global.

My company, for example, employs 120,000 people worldwide in 60+ countries, but only around 11,000 of them in the UK. How would you fairly limit the percentage?

I should point out that for the work outside of the UK almost none of it was *ever* done in the UK and in many cases it would be impractical to move it to the UK (e.g. customer engineers).

'Big Four' lose filesharing case against Irish ISP

@CD prices

Ah, you're making the mistake I made recently of comparing mail-order with bricks & mortar.

I found that BluRay I wanted was ~£15 on HMV's online store (about the same price as others), but when I popped into my local branch it was £25 so I didn't bother with it.

I didn't pay too much attention to the music, but I did see a stand full of "only 12.99!" CDs, which suggests to me that the same thing happens on the music side.

Doctor Who touches down in US of A

Interesting...

Which counting system makes Peri the 5th assistant?

Did you mean the 5th Doctor's assistant?

I wonder what Tegan's leather mini-skirt is doing these days?

Verizon: we like Microsoft, but not Windows Phone 7

Re:Huh?

Yes, it did hand the big players their bums. iPhone is a *device*, Android is a *platform*; you're not comparing like with like. One device with 14% of the market is significant, especially given the number of devices on the market.

That kind of thing is very unusual in any mature market and even more so in the mobile market.

Probably best not to kid yourself that Apple are the only company who may or may not have infringed on other companies IP along the way or that the courts will make your hated handset vanish for you. RIM fell foul of that particular issue a few years ago and there are still plenty of BlackBerries around.

Android rebellion: How to tame your stupid smartphone

Naa

"Here's hoping that someone at Google will actually notice this."

The guys at Google don't go on the internet much.

Which is ironic, really.

Motorola sues Apple over - what else? - patents

Good one!

Oh wait, you're serious.

You do realise that a good chunk of these patents are for ideas *not* developed products, don't you?

And on top of that many of them are also for fairly obvious ideas such as painting something a different colour.

Add to that the often vague language (e.g. "Method for entering information into a computer or computer system") and you end up with the unbelievable mess we have today..

I'm not saying the patent system is bad per se, but the bar for entry appears to be set so low that you would need to lift up the floorboards to even know it was there.

RIM opens its PlayBook – tablets clearly set for dominance

I thought

That they died in the 90's because the technology wasn't ready. All the tablet PCs I encountered were heavy, unresponsive things that you were lucky to get a couple of hours battery life out of.

This new stream strike me as being much better targeted.

Apple sold something like 330,000 iPads on the first day and 3,000,000 in the first three months; I'd be quite surprised if the total sales for Tablet PCs in the 90's were even 100,000.

I dunno, these things are doing quite well considering what a flop they were predicted to be. Supposedly they will become the fourth largest consumer electronics category in the US very soon, just behind TVs, smart phones and Notebook PCs - ahead of DVD players, cameras and Desktop PCs.

Yep, they're a major flop alright.

Ofcom imposes new rules on silent callers

@Confidence trick

Are you absolutely sure about that?

When I moved into my current house we had 10+ cold calls a week which dropped to almost nothing within a week of my registration with TPS and has now settled at around 4-5 a year.

I wouldn't call that a con trick.

Virgin Media introduces P2P throttling

Or

Downloading them to catch up because you missed the start of a series.

Technically illegal, but I can't see how any real damage is done.

I think the best you can say is "It's complicated".

Still, it would be nice if VM gave us some tools to tell us how much data we were actually using, I have no idea if any of these changes are going to have any effect on me whatsoever.

(Although I will now try to make sure any iPlayer Desktop downloads I make to my laptop to travel with are now done after 9pm.)

Jaguar celebrates 75th year with e-supercar concept

I think the point is

That this is a supercar that does >40mpg. At least it might if they get the technology up and running.

It's not brilliant in the real world, but it does compare very well with other cars of this ilk which manage low 20's at best.

2 out of 3 Android apps use private data 'suspiciously'

It would be

"Surely the story should be that other smartphones don't provide any access controls at all."

Yes, that would be the story. Apart from being completely wrong of course.

Android tells you when the app is installed, others tell you when you run it for the first time or whenever you run it.

If I run the sat nav on my phone, I don't think it unreasonable for it to ask me to use my location. If I turn on the feature that tracks my journey to alert me of traffic problems I don't think it's unreasonable to allow it to connect to the server every 5 minutes or whatever.

I do not, however, expect the sat nav to upload the address I have tagged as "Home" along with my phone numbers, for example, or to keep tracking me when I leave the app.

Android doesn't prevent this kind of thing happening and neither do any of the other smart-phone systems in all likelihood.

This type of program is usually referred to as a Trojan and generally frowned upon when it's a supposedly legitimate piece of paid for software..

Car wrecks rise after texting bans imposed

That reminds me a bit

Of something that Rita Rudner once said (at least I think it was her):

"They should ban eating and driving instead of drinking and driving. At least people who drink and drive are /trying/ to drive."

Star Wars set for 3D rehash

Simples

If the worst movie drags people to the box office the other ones will be sure-fire winners for them. Lucas is probably bank-rolling this one himself, but if it works he'll be beating investors off with the proverbial sh*tty stick for the others.

Next excuse for a rehash will probably be the digital download version, but that will have to wait until the current format wars settle down first, at the moment each service and format is pretty much tied to one supplier.

The Star Wars franchise is to video what the Beatles franchise is to audio - you can be fairly sure you'll see it on any new format once the format is sufficiently established.

iPhone fanbois run off road in CoolBrand race

"Real" bikers

I live ~100 yards from an Angels pub and almost all of them ride Harleys.

I don't know about cool, but I wouldn't tell them that they weren't real bikers.

OTOH I know plenty of bikers who would agree with you, so I think this is more of a horses for courses argument.

I know that Kelly Hoppen mostly does designs for interior furnishings, so I expect the others are in similar fields, which makes this a list for the shallow nouveau riche (e.g. footballers) and Heat Magazine reading wannabes so they know what stuff to buy in order to avoid being bullied in the playground by others in their social group.

Of course that means that if you buy one of these brands for genuine reasons there will be a section of society who automatically assume that you're actually trying to be cool and are, by extension, shallow and probably stupid.

Christian group declares jct 9 on M25 cursed

Really?

When did Leatherhead move to the other side of London?

Are you thinking of Luton by any chance?

Virgin Media launches 3D movie rentals

According to Sky

They do 1080i and 720p, with "each channel choosing the most appropriate resolution for their content".

In practice, I think that means that the movie channels are in 720p from what I've read in other forums.

I don't have Sky myself, so I can't confirm. But you're right, it's probably going to be a bit of a waste of bandwidth.

(Especially since, as noted elsewhere, it'll be for about three people on the network.)

Segway philanthropist found dead

Ironic

A man who makes protective barriers accidentally rides over a (presumably) unprotected cliff.

Certainly sounds a little bit ironic.

Not good, just ironic.

Sussex police try new tactic to relieve snappers of pics

Also

A lot of pro SLRs can also take two cards and write an image to both cards at the same time, so only one card would need to be given up in any case.

Google's Schmidt satirised as privacy pervert

Question

Have you checked that?

When I had a major problem a few years ago the technician I talked to said that because of the way their DHCP servers were configured (and the fact that most people just leave their router on) that you would tend to get the same one or two addresses repeatedly unless you happened to be offline when they connected a whole bunch of new people in your area.

Having a quick look at my router logs suggest that he's not wrong.

Is US prudishness ruining the internet?

Yes, won't someone think of the children.

That'll be the children who aren't supposed to be on these social networks (some of them at any rate) because the T&Cs explicitly say they're not allowed on there.

I don't mind protecting "the kids", but if you start down that path you end up with the Care Bears Movie being the most challenging thing you can see at the cinema and Sesame Street the most violent thing you can watch on TV "just in case".

What he's complaining about is inappropriate censorship; if you bought a copy of a magazine from the Playbeing franchise then found all the pictures inside were of fully clothed people and all the letters and articles were about having a nice cup of tea, wouldn't you be a bit miffed?

Boris bikes for tourists delayed till year end

Hmmm

"The only downside I could see when watching folk use the scheme is exactly as addressed by Bob Fish (above) - a huge number of riders had no helmet and no idea of how to indicate before swerving in their desired direction."

Sounds like they've managed to replicate the system in Paris quite well, then.

Apple states tax take on UK iPod pricing

Just a thought...

Could this be linked to European free trade laws (i.e. if you offer something for sale in an EU country, you have to sell it to anyone in any member state).

That leads manufacturers to adjust base pricing in the various states so that prices come out broadly equal, otherwise everyone would just buy from the state with the lowest VAT (Switzerland, 7.6%). And why do that when you can make extra money?

If you take the ex. VAT price and then add the highest VAT rate in the EU (25%), you end up with a selling price of ~£188, which is suspiciously close to the actual retail price.

Jobs takes swing at Google over Android activations

Me too

And it's...

None of them.

They're all trying to sell us something and they all have something to hide. I bet there isn't a single one of them that is giving out the full picture.

Punters still puzzled by broadband ads

Suggestions?

I'm not sure what you're after here, you've already said you think you are in the minority, so you're not a "typical" customer.

If (say) in a sample nine people are getting 10Mbps and one is getting 5Mbps, that still makes the average 9.5Mbps. Even if you switch those figures to 7@10 and 3@5, you still only drop the average to 8.5 with most of them getting more than that and you still don't have a figure that really represents what the lower speeds are.

So, if you were looking for a BB connection would you prefer the advertising to say "10Mpbs", "Up to 10Mbps, typically 8.5Mbps", "10Mbps, two thirds of customers get at least 8.5Mps" or "10Mbps, a third of customers will get half that".

I think I can spot which one won't sell them very many connections.

What might be of more use would be somewhere you could find out what the typical (or average) speeds in your area are before you sign up, then you would have known that although most people get >8.5Mpbs, you would be more likely to get <5 because of your location.

.

Nokia blows Ovi Files out of the sky

Definitely hit the old nail on the head there.

"When we got our email saying that Ovi Files was to be suspended our chief reaction was surprise. We'd apparently set up an account last year and completely forgotten about it. This probably applies to many Ovi Files users"

Me too.

I have both OVI files and Dropbox set up on my machines. I use Dropbox because it works and I've stopped using OVI because it doesn't.

Come on Nokia, you're still having some good ideas, but your execution is freaking terrible.

Cyber-jihadists deface home of teddy bears' picnic

Well, according to reports last week

They're planning to hate the aid workers who have gone to help the victims of the recent floods.

I mean, seriously, WTF?

Hopefully it's the usual load of media made-up stuff.

Archos announces five Android tablets

Seconded

I expect anyone who bought the Archos 7 Android to be a bit miffed at the arrival of these.

And then very miffed when Archos don't release any more firmware for their device and they find themselves stuck with Android 1.6.

Forget about these devices getting Android 3 when it comes out too, Archos will just release minor upgrades for the best selling models.

Archos produce some nice kit, but they provide slightly less support than HTC. Yes, it turns out that is possible.

New iPod crew: 'Phoney, futuristic, retro, doomed'

Nope

I think you'll find that portability is the primary purpose of portable music devices.

Whilst most people will probably say that sound quality is the next important factor for them, they'll most likely make a buying decision based on other factors such as price, storage and brand image and may not actually listen to any music through the device before buying.

I wanted something I could use in the car and the built-in unit has an iPod connector and full integration that allows the iPod to be controlled from the nice big touch-screen in the dash (as well as the controls on the steering wheel).

As I mostly listen to spoken word stuff like old comedy programmes and audiobooks ultimate sound quality wasn't a factor in my choice of device as the source material is often very poor quality anyway. And as that kind of stuff takes up a lot of space, storage became my second consideration, meaning I ended up with a 160Gb Classic (which is now almost full).

Horses for courses.

Symbian users Swype Samsung's tricks

Coming to Symbian^3

According to other sites Swype is coming to Symbian^3 on the N8 when *that* finally launches.

I think there's a demo on YouTube somewhere.

Apple QuickTime backdoor creates code-execution peril

@gollux

I think you'll find that all of your users are undermining your security. That's what users do.

As for Quicktime, I don't think it's required to sync an iPhone, I think you only need iTunes. It's just a bit tricky to get hold of iTunes without also lumbering yourself with Quicktime.

Samsung gives sneak peak of iPad basher

Alternatively...

It might not stream media from your home network, but it may be a server - allowing you to stream media from the pad to your (Samsung) TV.

It's also possible it will do both, of course.

Mind you, one of the myriad of servers I have set up on my home network will happily stream stuff out to pretty much anything with a web browser including my N97, my wife's iPhone, PSP, laptop, etc., etc. It picks up the device type from the browser string and re-codes stuff on the fly for the device as necessary.

I'm sure an iPad wouldn't have any trouble either, but it's not exactly "out of the box" functionality like it might be on this.

Danes work up head of steam over manga exhibition

It's not that simple

IIRC, The Simpsons first appeared in 1987 and Lisa was 8.

That makes her about 31 now.

OK, so she's a freak of nature, but not a child anymore.

Wait...Which bit matters? Is it the subject being a child or looking like a child? And where does that leave the fashion industry where a lot of the models look like 12 year old boys?

No, I can't get my head around this stuff either.

Microsoft ID guru slams 'duplicitous' Apple

Careful

I'll probably get down voted for this, but...

This sort of argument is starting to look a lot like the arguments for Macs being more secure than Windows.

Just because Google isn't collecting the information, it doesn't mean that third party apps or the ad services they use aren't.

And just because Android is *meant* to ask you for permission to send that data, it doesn't mean that the third-party apps aren't circumventing that request mechanism in some way and just sending it anyway. Look at the recent stories about apps that use a data connection when roaming, even if that option is turned off in the phone settings.

I'm not defending Apple here, I'm just pointing out that Google, MS, et al are not paragons of virtue either.

There are many good reasons to get an Android phone, but this isn't one of them.

Microsoft's Apple revenge: the pleasure and the pain

Er

"I'd rather have Windows 7, especially on one of those laptops where you can swivel the screen round and turn it into a pad. I don't think it's that much of a niche market."

They've been on the market for ages already and as far as I can see they aren't selling in any great numbers.

Which kind of makes them a niche market....

Mind you, they are still pretty expensive and as "Touch Screen" appears to be the computer manufacturers' "3D" it's likely the influx of tablets will bring the price of the technology down - or increase the demand in a year or so when people decide they like the experience but want something more powerful.

Of course by that time iPad2 - The Second Coming will be along to steal all of the headlines again.

Microsoft Windows glider crashes

They often do that

Normal product development cycle for MS:

Version 1 - Build completely from scratch without knowledge or training. Usually makes a completely useless product.

Version 2 - Buy up a competitor with a working product which needs a relatively small amount of investment to turn it into a brilliant product as it's not really complete or stable. Replace all of competitor's logos on the product with MS equivalents and ship with some weird installation requirements that are irrelevant to the product (e.g. require installation of IE in order to run a route mapping program).

Version 3 - Re-write V2 from the ground up in order to produce a more MS-like experience for the end user. Remove any particularly useful or popular features, reproduce the bugs from V2 and introduce a couple of new ones that cripple vital features in subtle ways.

Version 3.1 - Fix any bugs that are driving customers to competitor's products. Create "Pro" version that includes all of the useful and popular functions that were removed at V3, but charge 5-10 times as much.

So....

Expect next year's glider to be purchased from someone who's glider worked this year, expect 2012's glider to have no wings and 2013's to work but also come with a version that has engines.

Also expect MS to loudly talk up how much innovation they have brought to the glider market.

Bitter? Me? No, of course not. Well, not much.

Accenture denies British Gas 'millions of errors' billing system claim

Those were my first thoughts

And then I read the bit about Accenture claiming to have delivered a system to specification on time and on budget.

For some reason that doesn't pass the bull-poo detector.

Ballmer's 'lost generation' note finds resonance

@Monty Burns

"Horses for corses.... Why must we all use the same O/S?"

Because this is The Register and we value freedom of expression and action above all else. But only in a conformist way.

You are only welcome here if all of your tech runs a Linux kernel, including your watch and your bedside lamp. All in the name of freedom, you understand.

All others will be absorbed.

Amazon opens UK Kindle store doors to teeming hordes

Not a bad start

I went through my wish-list and looked for Kindle versions of everything on it & found three books under a pound, saving around £8-9 on the cover price or £4-5 off the normal Amazon price.

I'm tempted by a couple of others that are ~50% of the price of the dead-tree version.

It's a bit of a shame that this is only likely to be an introductory thing, those prices are much more sensible for eBooks.

UAE to cut off BlackBerry users

At a guess

I don't know any technical details of the BB service, but presumably they could block the SSL port for "other" services, leaving you with a choice of using the un-encryped port or abandoning e-mail.

It's possible that BB mail only has an encrypted channel, which they are now planning to block.

Apple as a religion: How the iPhone became divine

Some of the geeks aren't any better

"Most non-geek people I know absolutely do believe that Apple invented the MP3 player (except they are all called iPods regardless of manufacturer, didn't you know?)"

You can sort of understand that thinking since it was probably the player that launched the mainstream take-up.

But geeks can be guilty of that too, I've see people in these very forums claiming that Apple stole the idea of virtual desktops from Linux and that MS stole the idea of the GUI OS from Apple.

In a similar vein, whisky not Scottish, ice cream not Italian and motor car not invented by Ford.

I'm not sure it matters that much in the real world, though.

So...

As the OP bought an iPhone and doesn't agree 100% with your view he's a cultist?

I dunno... That sounds fairly irrational to me.

I own Macs and PCs, which pigeon-hole do you think I am in?

Android's UK phone sales quadruple

I think I'd be happy

"If HTC only offered one phone would that make you happier?"

I'd be happy if they offered one name for each model.

They don't half make it difficult to find reviews and comparisons.

I used to own a Touch Cruise. Or a P3650. Or a Polaris. Or a Dopod T4288.

Not that it really mattered, once the next new model came out it was like they had never made the one I had bought a couple of months earlier.

I don't think they ever released the fixed video drivers, either.

Do they still do that stuff? I've kind of ignored them since then, which is a shame since they're the only manufacturer throwing any serious weight behind Android at the moment.

UK.gov sticks to IE 6 cos it's more 'cost effective', innit

They already have it

Like most big corporations they don't just use whatever OS is on a machine when it's delivered, they have an OS image that they load.

And they don't just buy any old machine from PC World, they test the image with specific hardware from specific vendor(s) and have a contract for that vendor to supply that configuration (perhaps with minor changes to disk space and memory) for a period of time.

This means that you have 100,000 desktop machines that are essentially identical, which makes support a little bit easier because it allows you to utilise central software management tools to deploy patches, upgrades and application installations.

Someone needs (say) Project? They call a central number, who sort out a license, add it to the user's profile and next time they log in the software is downloaded and installed.

Yeah, that's overkill if you're in the same building, but if the support guys are 200 miles away it's much more cost effective.

Result?

50-60 technical staff can support 100,000 desktops on 3,000 sites.

Armed with exploits, ATM hacker hits the jackpot

Correct me if I'm wrong

But wasn't NT 4 only certified as secure when not connected to a network?

Or was that NT 3.5?

I always thought that was a bit of a disadvantage for a network OS.

Smart meters pose hacker kill-switch risk, warn boffins

You missed one

4) Add a cause of cancer.

IMMIGRANT SMART METER HACKERS CAUSE FALL IN HOUSE PRICES AND CANCER - OFFICIAL!

Watchdog rules on Hull Daily Mail 'porncoder' exposé

I think you'll find

That it's newspapers with "The" in the title that are quite often guilty of this.

O2 dithers over Apple iPhone 4 refund pledge

But surely

If your iPhone exhibits the now widely publicised problem, then it's not fit for purpose and you're covered under the Sale of Goods Act anyway?