Posts by big_D

Whoah! How many Google Play apps want to read your texts?

I would say it is "not just Google's fault." They are the ones who decided to make permissions all or nothing, with no way for the user to decide and fine tune access.

Waiting

One of the games I had suddenly changed its requirements. It went from need next to no permissions to wanting contacts and network access. I put off upgrading for a while - it was to enable finding friends and playing in tournaments with them, which I didn't need.

Microsoft not good enough for you, eh? 'Next Steve Ballmer' drives to Google

I thought

In a canned statement, Mulally said he was “honored” to serve on the board of a “global iconic company that is dedicated to enhancing our lives”

I thought he said he was going to Google?

Nokia emits Windows Phone 8.1 'Cyan' upgrade for Lumia gear

Re: Cyan

I'll swap you CyanogenMod on Lumias for Windows Phone on my company Samsung Galaxy (I'm not allowed a Nokia at work).

Re: Bluetooth woes?

@LDS yep, I tried that. Bluetooth handsfree stopped working altogether!

Re: Bluetooth woes?

The Toyota doesn't have A2DP, only Aux-In. Also no USB.

The BT handsfree worked flawlessly with the Toyota, as long as I wasn't using the phone for navigation or podcasts / audio books through the headphone jack.

The Citroen has A2DP and that works flawlessly. Likewise incoming calls work fine, as do calls started over the radio. Calls started from the phone won't switch to BT handsfree (or the phone doesn't accurately tell the Citroen to switch on BT handsfree). With the automatic SMS reading on the Lumia, it reads me the SMS, then turns off the microphone, making impossible to reply.

My company Galaxy works fine with both cars, although it doesn't read SMS to me. But I have all my apps and media on my private phone.

Bluetooth woes?

I'm hoping Cyan may also bring some Bluetooth respite.

With one car (2010 Toyota Verso) the handsfree kicks in, but because I use Aux to play podcasts over the headphone jack, I get no audio - the handsfree kicks in BT and cuts normal audio, as it should, but the Lumia keeps on using the headphone jack for audio out, instead of switching to BT.

In the other car (2012 Citroen C3), it works fine A2DP for audio and BT handsfree for incoming calls and SMS. But I can't reply to SMS, it cuts out the BT microphone before I can answer. And if I make a call over the phone it won't activate BT, even though it says BT is active - if I dial using the phonebook in the radio, it works fine.

Those are my only quibbles with the Lumia and luckily I have to make a call about once a month from the car and probably get 2 SMS a month where I would want to reply. It is annoying, not a deal breaker.

But for a heavy duty handsfree user, I can see it being a major problem.

On top of... That is the key here.

Cyan is a combination of firmware updates, and once they have been installed access to updated apps that need Cyan.

Windows 8.1 update is a separate update.

Microsoft takes on Chromebook with low-cost Windows laptops

Re: a netbook by any other name would stink as much

Having Windows 8.1 on a previous generation Atom tablet (Clovertrail) running at 1.6Ghz, with 64GB storage and 2GB RAM, I have to say it runs very nicely.

That said, I don't have any of the crudware that Toshiba normally pre-installs and cripples even high end hardware.

It certainly runs MS Office very smoothly. It is certainly more efficient than Windows 7 on low-end hardware. The tablet boots to the desktop faster than my Core i5 desktop at work, which has Windows 7 Pro on it.

Which they're obviously not or the number would be a very great deal higher than 42,000.

Yep, Office365 was celebrated with "millions" of sales in the first year and the fastest growing sector, so 42,000 isn't including Office365.

I would think many businesses would be very pleased with 42,000 new business customers.

That is customer aka new accounts, that isn't users.

Re: but now PCs aren't big

Don't you mean shrinking market? I thought iPad sales had slumped 22% year-on-year at the last report.

YES: Scotland declares independence ... from the dot co dot uk empire

Re: Eh?

Memories!

My father used to go up to Harrogate every year for a trade show, when I was a kid (70s). He'd come back with tins full of Farrah's Harrogate Toffee!

I remember using the tins to carry my school lunch money in.

Re: how long before...

Using the word Socialist is enough to drive most Americans into a frothing frenzy these days. ;-)

May: UK data slurp law is fine, but I still need EMERGENCY powers

Re: "wanted to put the UK's position "beyond doubt."

The EU says the data retention is overly broad and breaches human rights, so the law is invalid...

So what are you going to do? Make another piece of law that does exactly the aame thing that has just been declared illegal? Yeah, because that will work...

Well, it will work for another couple of years, until it is heard by the ECHR and invalidated again, whereupon the circus will start again.

July 14, 2015. Tuesday. No more support for Windows Server 2003. Good luck

Re: What's the real danger ?

@Khaptain if the shop is that big, I assume they also have ISO9001 or equivalent. Couldn't that be slipped under the radar as compliance?

Or tell them, in order to keep compliance and certification status either the servers need to be upgraded in the next 12 months or they will be automatically decomissioned next July...

Threats to the businesses compliance and certification often work wonders on suddenly finding budget.

Re: What's the real danger ?

No connection to the web? And the client PCs that access it? Do they have access to the web?

Also are you in an industry that has any form of compliance or ISO 9001? If so then it will cause audit problems.

Do your customers require you to be compliant with any form of compliance or certification or are they certified? If so, you may have problems delivering to them, if they find out during a compliance request that you are using unsupported software.

Is there any personally identifiable data on the machine (emails, email addresses, CRM database, personnel records etc.), if so you might have a DPA violation on your hands - I'm not up on UK data protection, in Germany it would cause headaches.

If you are only selling to consumers and the systems are running well and there is no compliance or certification in your industry, then you should be able to carry on using them, as long as you ensure they are kept secure and clean from infection - and that means good permieter protection and ensuring any network devices which can see the server are also kept clean.

Amazon France routes around free shipping ban with €0.01 charge

Re: Booksellers do deserve protection

Online != just Amazon

I've bought a few books that would never have been written, if it wasn't for crowd funded publishing. Unbound is very good in this respect.

Re: Booksellers do deserve protection

In Germany the larger chains all seem to use Adobe DRMed readers and their own stores (again Thalia and Hugenbubel).

Re: Booksellers do deserve protection

@Nigel W our local book store will order for you and get it delivered directly to your home, if you want, usually within 48 hours.

Re: Booksellers do deserve protection

Maybe internet-only businesses should sponsor local stores to be "try-before-you-buy" locations. You wander in, try out a device, try on clothing, read a chapter or two of a book, then go and order through the cheapest online portal. The shop-front gets a cut of the transaction.

Re: King Canute

Yes, Amazon's return policy is relatively good. But if you have a leak in the coolant of your new fridge (something we had with the last one), you don't necessarily want to wait a couple of weeks for it to be repaired and returned.

The electronics store sent out a repairman the next day to check and seal the unit and re-gas it.

Re: King Canute

I still buy locally when and where it makes sense.

I much prefer to buy locally and I'm willing to pay a little extra to do so. But in many cases local businesses just can't compete.

We bought a new bed (frame local, base and matresses from Amazon), a new TV (local) and a new washing machine (Amazon) recently. The bed and TV were almost as cheap as Amazon, even when bought locally and we could try them out for size. The matresses and base were dramatically cheaper (saved around 200€ on a 400€ order), whilst the washing machine was 70€ cheaper.

If the washing machine had been within 20€, we would have bought it locally.

One of the advantages to buying locally is that if it goes wrong, you can go and talk to somebody, no overseas telesupport and no waiting for email to go back and forth, you talk to somebody and you don't budge until they do something about it.

That, to me, is worth a little extra.

Re: And that's cuttin' me own throat!

You are forgetting that the book store can decide to match the Amazon price, in which case Amazon is 1c more expensive than the local book store...

And Germany has similar (industry enforced since the 19th century, law since 2002) pricing of books. The publisher sets the price and any shop caught selling under the minimum price defined by the publisher is fined 6,000€ per offence.

http://www.thenation.com/article/168124/how-germany-keeps-amazon-bay-and-literary-culture-alive

It isn't all bad news, it means that publishers can support smaller authors with the profits from bestsellers and many publishers price their books at very low margins, where they are always on the point of going bust is sales fall.

It isn't good for the reader, in that you can only get discounted books if the publisher discounts them - it does happen; on the other hand it is good for the reader, because there are great little book shops all over Germany, where you can pop in and read books. Many of the larger book shops (E.g. Thalia, Hugendubel) have reading corners, where you can just wander in, pick up a book and sit and read the book, drink a cup of coffee, then leave again. You don't have to buy the book. It is great for students and it is great for working out whether a book is worth buying or not.

Where Amazon are winning, at the moment, is with self-publishing. There are some very good independent authors writing exclusively for Amazon, because it is easier than trying to get a book deal. The quality of the writing would never get them published (spelling mistakes, poor grammar, missing words etc.), but the stories are good and the text is still readable.

UK.gov warned: Small biz bods 'blunted' by broadband bumbling

Re: How do they define

At my home I have 50/12mbps, but that is at peak times as well, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of contention. Where I work, most of the guys have switched to Kabel Deutschland, with 100/25mbps and none have said anything about contention in the evenings.

For the business, that is 100mbps guaranteed and contention free to the backbone(dedicated fibre line to the exchange, not the cabinet).

How do they define

best?

I'm in Germany and I work in a small town in the middle of nowhere (less than 30,000 inhabitants). Domestic broadband is 100mbps down, 20 up and at work we have 100mbps synchronus...

I know in the countryside that broadband is still hard to get in places - although the roll-out of 4G is easing that problem - as part of the licensing the providers have to provide 4G to areas with no wired broadband, not just city centres.

That said, that 100mbps synchronus isn't cheap.

Microsoft's Lumia 930... a real HANDFUL

Re: Something wrong

Although... He does say not much difference between 8.0 and 8.1; I would say the notification center (drop down a la Android and iPhone) and Cortana are big steps forward. :-S

Otherwise it seems well balanced, which is nice for a change.

I much prefer the feel of my 1020 to my Galaxy S4.

Popular password protection programs p0wnable

Re: Anyone using any web based password manager is just an idiot.

And where USB devices are not allowed?

Or not possible? (tablets and smartphone etc.)

It sounds like

this information is very old. If it was thesis research, then it took a long time to get it written up and published. If LastPass fixed their bookmarklets problem nearly a year ago, then it sounds like this really was a kick in the pants for the password vault industry last year, as opposed to something that vault users should panic over.

Re: Java? On iOS?

exactly. I read "Java" and my first thought was either the story is bogus or the author doesn't know the difference between Java and JavaScript.

Will Microsoft devices sit happily on a single platform?

Re: Am I supposed to care about all this ?

If you aren't a developer, no, you aren't supposed to care that much. But you should benefit from the timely arrival of new apps across all device types in the Windows ecosystem.

We are talking about one development environment with one set of core APIs covering all devices - with the device specific stuff on top of that, for device specific I/O for example.

That means that the core functionality will work across all devices. You can still conditionally compile in different UI elements and I/O devices to different platforms, but it means a majority of your code should work across all platforms with little or no modification.

That means, for example, if you are designing the next Evernote, you write your sync and data format libraries once and just have to look at getting the UI on each platform optimised, without having to re-write the bulk of your code for each platform.

That makes maintenance easier, it makes extending the functionality easier.

Military-grade bruiser: Getac F110 rugged tablet... is no iPad

Re: Rugged?

Btw, usually it's not the water you're worried about. It's the sand/dust/salt that's going to ruin the thing when you need it the most and you're in the middle of nowhere.

Or the cleaning crews or the users... We had a few devices back defective touchscreens, because the users use the point of their knives to press the buttons on the screen. Usually after their employer has warned them that next time they use a knife to operate the terminal they will get the bill, we don't see the terminal in for repair again.

I've heard from rivals that some cleaning crews have competitions to see who can destroy a touch display quickest. Again the threat of having to pay the bill usually stops such silliness.

The most bizarre repair was somebody who drove a forklift directly into the touchscreen and pushed it almost through the back of the casing! :-O

Re: Rugged?

Yes, the Husky was running MS-DOS, although I think it was 3.x at the time.

I don't know why he didn't have anything else he could have use. Although it might have been one of his first field assignments and usually they didn't really need to go that far off-road, so he might not have been prepared.

Re: Rugged?

It was the increased pressure. At 95cm the case was pressed evenly or at least the pressure difference top to bottom didn't over stress the seal; but the extra pressure at the bottom once we hit the 1M mark caused the door to be pushed in enough at the bottom, that a small gap at the top let water in - we are talking about a teaspoon full of water after the hour, but enough to fail. The new design overcomes that problem.

I'm not the physics expert, but I believe, if the case had been laid flat, as opposed to vertical, it would probably have passed, but that would not have been usable in that position, so not allowed.

Re: Rugged?

Try sticking your Sony or Samsung under the rear tyre of a bogged down vehicle in the middle of a field to gain some traction to get it out...

We had a field engineer literally stuck in his field. He stuck his Husky under a wheel of his Mercedes G Wagon and managed to get himself unstuck. After driving out of the field, he walked back, dug out the Husky, washed it off in a near-by stream and carried on working with it.

I'm guessing the Sony or Samsung won't stand up to that sort of abuse. But if you want to test it and prove me wrong, go ahead.

Also the IP65 testing is relatively cheap. All the additional rugged bits on the tablet for the rest of the certifications isn't cheap (well the raw materials are, but the design effort to produce them isn't) and then there are the prototypes that get destroyed during development and then the expensive certification testing.

We make our teminals to IP65 and IP69K, that is expensive enough. IP65 is enough for most people, the IP69K is great for our industry (food production, where they are cleaned at the end of a shift with a high pressure stema jet). Mostly they just want to ensure that blood doesn't get into the works and that the cleaning liquid that follows it.

Out in the field you generally don't need a tablet that can spend an hour at 1M under water. IP65 is enough for most purposes (generally they go above and beyond IP65, but don't reach the breath holding qualities of IP67 and IP68).

Our terminal held for over 24 hours at 95cm, but didn't survive the hour at 1M (the only tank we could get on short notice for internal testing was a couple of cm too short). The extra couple of CM make a big difference. That said, we are hopeful our modified design will get IP68 next time around. In essence, it means the terminal is IP65; even though it can spend a whole day submerged in water, it doesn't rate as IP67 and waterproof.

'Green' Apple: We've smudged a bit off our carbon footprint

Re: Promoting disposable tech is not green

The best way to be more green would be to design products that last twice as long, before they have to be replaced - and I'm not just talking about reliability; I'm talking about performance.

The problem is that technology is still advancing at a fast rate, although on the desktop it has slowed, because Windows uses less and less resources with each new version, at the moment. But OS X is getting more and more bloated.

My old iMac 24" is pretty much unusable, but my similar vintage Windows PC runs faster under Windows 8 than it did under Vista and 7.

In the mobile world it is even more frenetic than the PC industry has been for nearly a decade and devices are replaced at a very high turnover rate.

To be truly green, this cycle needs to change. We need to go back to mobile devices that last 4 or more years, before they become fully obsolete. I'm not looking at Apple specifically, in fact Android is a much worse offender, or at least the manufacturers releasing equipment running Android are.

The problem is, everybody is only interested in selling new hardware and people have come to expect free software upgrades... It is a vicious circle, if they can't charge for upgrades, then their only income is in shifting new hardware.

Thought PCs were in the toilet? They're STILL eating Apple's lunch

And most people at work still need a PC and need to run SAP, Dynaics, JD Edwards etc. plus MS Office.

That means that Windows is the obvious choice, the Mac is more expensive, and you still need to buy a Windows licence on top of that...

New startups and media type businesses might be more flexible, but traditional business is stuck with what runs their business critical process software.

Global protest calls for canning SOPA-by-stealth treaty's IP bits

Sorry, that was supposed to be sarcastic, based on how Google react now in some countries...

Hmm, will it make much difference? YouTube already take down about 90% of videos with music in them over here, claiming that it might contain music for which they haven't bothered checking to see if GEMA will give them a licence for...

Re: Bah!

Or that they think that by then they will be so far along that it doesn't matter and the text so befuddling that the average Joe won't have a clue what they are on about and ignore it and signing off will be unopposed.

UK gov rushes through emergency law on data retention

Re: squek squek

Apropos... I miss Screaming Lord Such!

Looking at what is happening in the UK from here in Germany, it is sometimes embarassing when friends ask me just what is going on...

Re: squek squek

When did the Brits become so spineless?

On 9/11 I was working on a project in Frankfurt on the approach to the airport, in a tower block and I was staying on the other side of the road on the 44th floor of the Marriott.

That night the French, German and US colleagues all booked out of the Marriott and moved into German hotels around the town. The Brits had the attitude of "we won't let the b*stards affect us!" And stayed in the hotel and paid tribute in the bar...

Now it seems that the UK is turning into a bunch of sheeple that do whatever they are told.

When I was growing up, my parents talked about the IRA attacks and said that no matter what happenned, they wouldn't let it affect how they lived their lives. That is how I carried on after the attacks on 9/11, but now it seems that that attitude is uncool and I should be grovelling to the government to put me under ever more surveillance "for my own good."

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Re: What's the emergency?

More like:

Euro Whiney: Spying on your citizens indefinitely is wrong, the current rules are invalid. Keeping all their communications data for 12 months or more is a human rights violation.

UK: Hmm, we'll see about that! Sergeant Porno, we'll show the Euro Whiney just how intelligent I am!

Sgt. Porno: Right Sir, you get the two short planks and I'll get the tape measure.

Mostly harmless

@Khaptrain

you are mostly harmless, which means a bit of you could be dangerous, so expect that they will be following your every move.

China trawls top-secret US personnel lists – report

Na, Jeff Aiken was called in. :-P

Spooky that I'm just reading about Chinese infiltration of western networks in Mark Russinovich's Trojan Horse...

The Windows 8 dilemma: Win 8 or wait for 9?

Re: Desktop != Tablet != Smartphone

Sorry Khaptain, I use a Windows tablet that plugs into a dock on my desktop to be used as a desktop replacement in the office. It works very nicely.

Re: So...

As a Windows user since v 2.0, I find 8 is a great step forward. Horses for courses I suppose.