Posts by Asphy

Happy 40th birthday, Intel 4004!

definitely a trip down memory lane..

I had the pleasure of enjoying this ride from the 8088 (with 10mhz Turbo button!!) All the way up to now. Fantastic article, more like this please :)

Farewell then, Sony Ericsson

I had both the W800 and the K750, they were truly immense phones with incredible battery life. My k750 would drop down to a red bar battery within a couple of days, then stay there for another four at least.

The W800 i thought was lost forever when it fell out of my pocket at the top of stealth in Thorpe Park, I watched in horror as it plummeted all the way down to the gravel and concrete floor below... Until the day after when some kind employee phoned my land line off it to tell me it had been found and still worked!

Both phones sorely missed..

HTC reckons 'WinPho will give Android a run for its money'

fool me once..

.. shame on you, twice? Shame on me..

Windows on a phone?

Never again..

Ever!

Dell Streak causes user fury

Possible help

Someone I know experienced the menubar reset bug too. Solved this by flashing the 1.6 stock recovery image (the actual recovery image, not the rom) then using the stock recovery to flash the 1.6 rom.. then finally trying a clean update to 2.1 with Upgrade.pkg on the sdcard and doing the usual. May be worth a try.

A lot of fixes like this can be found on the modaco forums (android.modaco.com) as well as all the recovery and rom images as well as self cooked roms.

Off topic.. you can also get Froyo on the streak too:

http://www.talkandroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/tumblr_l3z5lz8tQf1qauiczo1_500.jpg

Nice catch!

You're definitely not a lone voice on this one.. the battery issue got me on the leaked builds, but hey, they're leaked and beta at best and wasn't present in the official 8105 build. I've experienced the reversed accelerometer on a couple of things (doodlejump is the most annoying but i play most stuff landscape anyway so no biggie). The volume buttons I count as a fix, 1.6 was annoying as hell.

I think going back to the dark ages would be great, as much as I love computers and all the wonderful things today's tech brings us, I'm more than capable of going back to living off the land and solving stuff myself. Indeed I find the thought somewhat alluring though I'll probably be run off the reg with torches and pitchforks for saying so ;)

As for the whole fridge/room temp argument. As far as I'm aware its not the temperature that really matters, its the change in temperature. If I buy my eggs at room temp (most of the time) I store them at room temp, if they refrigerated then they go in the back of the fridge.

I always wondered that, if its the temperature change that damages eggs, why the hell do they put the egg holders in the fridge door? :-/

Besides, eggs in the fridge takes up valuable beer space anyway...

Okay, I'll bite :)

"Am I the only person who's had the Streak since the first week on O2 and can't fault it?"

Nope, not at all.. I'd count myself in this group too (i've experienced problems sure, but I've been messing around with leaked builds and under the hood stuff, end of the day that's my problem) however don't assume that just because you've experienced no problems that a large proportion of other users haven't either.

I have no idea where you're going with the whole "backup" thing. I don't think i've heard any complaints from people saying "OMGWTFBBQ! The update that told me clearly it was going to wipe my device has wiped all the data off my device!!!1111".

The simple fact of the matter is the following issues have fallen on a lot of people:

1) Bricked devices on official update - there are many people there who've followed the instructions to the LETTER to be left hung on the Dell logo or with flashing LED's. There are also a large proportion of devices that are having restore issues with the 2.1 firmware requiring a lot of work to go back to the 1.6 rom, then clean upgrade to 2.1

2) Reversed accelerometer in portrait mode, this is REALLY annoying if somewhat intermittent.

3) Hideously reduced battery life, I've had this with all the leaked builds. com.android.bluetooth pegs the cpu at 100% and reduces my usual 2day light usage battery capacity to less than three hours. Simple solution sure, kill it off first time and process restarts and never returns. Seriously though, is your average non techie PM, CEO etc expected to know this?

4) Reversed volume buttons - This, I don't think is a bug. On 1.6 the buttons reversed in portrait mode, on 2.1 the buttons dont. Personally I love this, the button with the raised bump always turns the volume up regardless and is probably how it should work.

5) Dells support... It's non existent! Some people have waited WEEKS to have devices repaired or replaced and people are literally FIGHTING to get answers to their problems.

6) O2's support... They have no clue, most answers from their support department didn't even know there WAS a 2.1 update, one service agent didn't even know what the Streak was.

Anyway after all that.. I also agree with a few of your points, so it's not all negative:

1) we are building a world of non problem solving retards and it bugs me too...

2) Everyone hates the 1.6 numeric keypad, except apparently the both of us, I loved it and miss it dearly. Entering passwords was never so easy.

3) Like you, I love my Streak! In the right hands it's an incredible device and I don't regret launching my iPhone for this one bit. It's the best phone (term used loosely ;) I've ever had.

In closing, Dell really botched this update for a LOT of people, and we're not even up to our promised dessert based version yet.

Oh, and boiled eggs... two and a half minutes from boiling, perfect runny yoke egg every time, no problem =p

Responsibility of this farce...

Would land perfectly in the lap of Dell. I actually feel sorry for O2, having promised a 2.2 upgrade on launch only to be left to deal with Dells complete and utter failure to deliver even a barely working 2.1 rom.

Having had the streak since a day after launch here in the UK, and with the help and support of a ton of people on the Android Modaco forums, I've been running both official (1.6 and 2.1) builds as well as all three leaked 2.1 versions between. If Dell had been somewhat more open with their testing every single one of these issues would have been reported and fixed before release, we've been screaming about them enough!

Dell, I know you probably have to screen the kernel sources for any proprietary code before releasing, but for the love of god release it already. You've got all these people who love this device, determined to make the Streak just about as great as it can be, yet continue go it alone and f**k it up at every possible opportunity.

Facebook death lists spook Colombian town

Personally I blame..

Compuserve! We were all happy on BBS's until compuserve came along.. then, choke, AOL and all its "OMGWTFBBQ!"'s.. the day those services opened up the gates to the intertubes was the day the sewage started flowing...

Attack reads smudges to retrieve Android password patterns

It's a good point really.

I do like androids way of drawing an unlock pattern on the screen, once you get the hang of it its certainly quicker than having to tap in a four digit code. You just fall into a habit of scribbling on the screen a bit like everyone used to pick up a nokia phone and instinctively hit menu + *. The pattern does seem more easily readable though, I've had several friends who are able to pick up my phone and unlock it without issues thanks to the smear on the screen, it stands out like a sore thumb against the smears left by general usage, especially when you've only unlocked your phone to say peek at a widget before turning it off again.

The Reg guide to Linux, part 3

I have to agree with some of these points.

Whilst I'm all for getting new people into the Linux swing, and completely agree that it's good to know how to do things the command line way, dropping the poor buggers to a terminal shortly after install probably wont win them over. That's only made worse by the fact that there are purpose built and user friendly graphical tools there for just this moment.

Good job on the "Linux doesn't work like Windows" part though, trying to get a windows user's head around the concept of package management can be half the struggle sometimes.

Hybrid CD vinyl unites warring tribes

Erm, how does that work then?

Glancing over at my pair of 1210's in the corner, I see that the hole in the middle of this is far too large to fit over the spindle, and far to small to fit over the 45 adaptor.

Awesome idea though, I play music on both formats and if I could buy singles like this that would be great!

iPhone upgrades - a one-way control-freak street

It's irritating

I remember thinking just this when the update from 2.2 to 2.2.1 completely borked my iPhone. Whilst all appeared to be running just fine when I left for a family visit that morning the inability to send texts, immediately dropped calls and no access to Internet soon became apparent when I reached my destination. Being in the middle of absolute nowhere with no way or contacting anyone certainly didn't help. I tried for the full 3hrs of laptop battery to revert the damn thing back to 2.2 before giving up, getting back on the train and heading to the nearest populated town to find a phone box. Annoying as hell!

Does the Linux desktop need to be popular?

Why would I want that final 20%?

Why on earth would I want that final 20% present? All that pathetic ease of use getting in the way, clicking "Ok" every time I want to remove a file, restore points, wizards, patronising paperclips and cute little animated doggies to fetch my files..

Screw the last 20%, I don't want the polished corners, it attracts the undesirable idiots. Leave them to languish in their pathetic "Windows for Retards" pool of misery and malware..

I for one don't want them here proclaiming "ease of use!" and they idiot proof yet another decent operating system to prevent accidentally deleting their precious lolcat collection because they "didn't understand what that button did".