Posts by Teddy the Bear 56 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jan 2010
Deezer works well for me. When I researched the streaming services, it came out best in terms of stream quality. It's got all the artists you might want, desktop app, mobile app, family profiles so you can share it and so on. It also works with google assistant so when I'm in the car with Android Auto, I can just say "hey google, play awesome playlist on Deezer" and away we go.
Well there's Claire Williams who's team principal at WIlliams, and Tatiana Calderon is a test driver for Sauber F1 off the top of my head. There are also women senior technicians and data wranglers in F1, you can sometimes see them in the back of the pits (though there are far more at the factories).
There are more women in F1 today than ever, but there's still work to do - the gender pay gap is terrible (though no worse than banking for example).
Surely this is about managing the variables that can be managed? If Volvo are working towards (and are on track to) build cars where occupants do not suffer fatal accidents, surely lawmakers can mandate the building of autonomous cars which offer the same protections? That would remove the variable of killing occupants, and therefore anyone outside the car has priority. That could be a start.
The moral machine also assumes mechanical failure - again, this is a variable which can be managed. Multiple redundant systems will help (certainly European cars already have redundant brake systems, though most people don't know that or know how to use it).
I can't help thinking that philosophers are making the problem even more complex than it already is...
It does - this is the "free" OneDrive storage that comes with a free MS email account. If you've got Office 365 you get 1TB storage on OneDrive.
And if you saw the link, signed up and protested the change last year when it was mooted, you got offered Office 365 free for a year (complete with the 1TB storage). <smug> Which I did. </smug>
During that free year, I'll be pulling my data down onto my NAS, naturally. I'm not actually going to *pay* for cloud storage.
Yeah - the IAM train people in how to improve their driving significantly, mainly by anticipating what's going on a long way ahead, and focusing on small, smooth inputs and corrections. It's recognised by insurance companies to reduce accident rates - so if you pass the IAM test, you will get cheaper insurance because you're proven to be a safer driver.
Quite how complicated making a phone call is these days.
Used to be a direct wire connection between two handsets (admittedly, a long time ago).
It's now a radio to a mast, on to a microwave backhaul (sometimes), on to another mast, onto a fibre line into an exchange, then bounced to the caller's network servers, then back out and around wires and switches and such, then on to the recipient's servers, then bounced around more switches and such, then spat out of a fibre line onto a mast, then maybe fired off over a microwave backhaul onto another mast, then on to the recipient's phone. Pretty much every part of that could be owned & operated by a different company, and yet most of the time you dial a mobile and the call goes through in a matter of seconds.
It's quite a feat, and we don't realise until this sort of thing happens.
How on earth have motor manufacturers been so lax as to only be introducing bug bounties in 2015??
The new Astra TV ad (UK) goes on about the 4G hotspot which you can use to stream via the in-car entertainment system. I don't know what sort of testing has been done, but I sincerely hope that some white-hat gets stuck into it sharpish. Motor manufacturers have basically ignored all IT security on cars for years - about time something happened. I just hope it spreads across the industry.
There's been huge interest on the continent in quad-play, but I'm not convinced there's a compelling reason for it for the UK at present.
Until consumers can actually get unbeatable quad-play deals, any telco offering them is on a hiding to nothing. I'm really surprised BT/EE are pursuing such an enormous merger based on an untested product.
The more I think about this, the more difficult I realise it is...
First, there's all the rocket science which is, well, rocket science. So very difficult.
Then there's the turning it round in space.
Then there's the aiming it at the right spot.
Then there's adjusting for Earth's rotation.
Then there's the bringing it back through the atmosphere.
Then there's the actually slowing enough to land without smashing.
Then there's the landing.
Then there's the refurbishing.
And all of this had to be thought up and designed and amended and refined even before a single piece of metal was bent in a complicated way.
This has got to be the achievement of the century, if not the millennium.
It's a great start - but Sphero have missed an opportunity here. They've been properly tight with the kit on the droid itself - given the cost of this stuff these days it's not going to make much difference to add a camera, accelerometer, even a speaker for goodness sake.
Maybe the second gen BB8 will be worth a punt...
Looking back, the speed that the internet has changed (not in technical terms, but in usage terms) is astonishing. It used to be a novelty which occasionally astounded with new things like easily downloading new software. Then it went to useful, with collaboration on a whole new scale. Now, it's full of rot, lies, half-truths and clickbait. Web 3.0 sucks. Wake me up when Web 4.0 arrives.
You're using a pre-release build there GlenP - the "can't turn wifi on without reboot" was a problem before the full release of 8.1 (I remember - I was using a Windows Insider build which had exactly that problem). Might be worth unticking the box in "preview for developers" - you should then get a standard build.
Windows Mobile was at one time the best platform for 3rd party apps - I remember the days of Side Loading apps and so on. I was genuinely confused with Apple launched the app store on iPhone - I'd been able to load apps onto my phone for years, what's the fuss about?
When Windows Phone 7 launched, its focus on integration of social media into the OS was genuinely groundbreaking - at a time where apps weren't reliable it brought a coherent way of doing things which made social networks genuinely useful on the phone.
Now we're in a position where the hardware on Windows Phone 10 is great, but the software is not ready - it's still trying to do innovative things (and good for MS that it is) but isn't ready yet. I've felt for a while that the Agile way of developing Win10 shifts pain to the end user, and this isn't acceptable for WinPho10. Us die-hards have stuck with this mess for years - give us some bloody benefit MS!!
(Incidentally, I use Android as my personal phone and use WinPho8.1 on my work phone)
Interesting that Moto are fixing a problem which seems to be much more of a problem for iPhones than for other devices.
Used to work in a phone retailer and I would see at least two broken iPhone screens every day, whereas other manufacturers' broken screens were much more unusual. Much as I dislike Apple, I just can't bring myself to believe that their build quality or design is that much worse than any other manufacturer.
Is it just that there are more Apple devices to get broken? Or are Apple device owners more careless? Or are Apple devices simply designed such that they break their screens? I really don't know. But good work Moto for building something truly innovative. Hopefully Cupertino will nick their design!
If the emissions can be gamed so easily, and if the MPG is so far off all the time, why aren't there better tests?
Government agency (possibly VOSA?) gets to carry out the tests & certification using real-world testing (we've got Millbrook Proving ground ready and willing), and all this can be paid for by a levy on new car sales (say, 0.01% of the value, or £36million based on sales in 2013). This tax wouldn't be unpalatable to most new car buyers (it'd be a lot less than the cost of anything on the options list) and would mean that the punters are paying for the testing rather than the manufacturers.
Am I being desperately optimistic in wondering whether user behaviours might change once permissions become granular and everyone knows? Or will they see it as UAC from Vista and get their knickers in a twist?
Hope it's the former... have to admit it's likely to be the latter though.
Emergency stop systems are on a range of new cars - Volvo, BMW, Toyota among plenty of others. To get EuroNCAP five-star rating, the car has to have "Autonomous Emergency Braking" which can bring the car to a stop without the driver ever touching the brake.
I'm more interested in the "platoon" uses of autonomous vehicles - that should increase capacity on the existing roads which will help for a while on that bloody M6 (on whose tarmac I have sacrificed literally months of my life).
I've got a first-generation ChromeCast, and the answer is yes, possibly. If an app on the mobile device is cast-enabled then it can pull DNLA stuff off a NAS box, then push it to the ChromeCast.
I tried it - it wasn't pretty (very slow, and hammered the mobile's battery) but it did work for music. Couldn't face it with video though...
Average revenue per user (ARPU) is much lower than £30 - remember that as an end-user that includes VAT, and the carrier has to provide you with a nice shiny phone for that price too. That £1.5million per day is supporting the fastest rollout of a mobile (4G) network ever in the world, it's also paying for complete overhaul of all 2G and 3G services and it's paying for guaranteed 98% indoor 4G coverage by the end of 2017. O2 is the only carrier brave enough to accept that requirement, and is the only carrier in the UK to have CAS(T) Certification too. So ner ner nerrr nerrr.
Are you using an iPhone perchance? Had a number of my customers (all over the country) reporting the same problem, all them iPhone users. Also, try TuGo - if you're sat at your desk, you'll have wifi and TuGo will route calls using that instead so you won't miss the calls. There are options...
The 800MHz spectrum for 4G came with a requirement for 98% indoor population overage by 2017. O2 bought this band and have this requirement, and while it's not location based (which would be preferable) it should make a significant difference to the roll-out of 4G in rural areas. Until the investment all the networks have made in 4G is paid off, I doubt there will be appetite in the UK for 5G from the carriers.
DropBox and Box were always competitors, and Box was aimed more at business users. Box is really quite expensive though; it has great version & access tracking, but OneDrive is much cheaper and now DropBox is getting built-in integration with Office 365. How can Box respond to that?
This shouldn't be any surprise at all - Apple have wanted to dump sim cards for years to make more room in devices for useful stuff. However, you can absolutely guarantee that Apple will want a very handsome payment for including each and every network on the AppleSIM, so the smaller (more innovative) MVNOs may not be willing or able to pay what Apple wants.
Remember, this is a company who demands a 7-figure listing fee from networks to just allow iPads to be shown in a price list, even before the network actually purchases devices...
Few things to clear up here.
First, the O2 & Voda sharing deal is called Beacon.
Second, it's under way but is far from complete. The plan is for it to be complete by the end of 2015, so coverage isn't going to be perfect immediately but it is improving. The trick to knowing if your area is done its to see if there's 4G in the area - if there is, then mast sharing is under way.
Thirdly, all the networks use estimated coverage for their checkers, based on predicted coverage. Short of physically sending a radio mapping car to every location in the UK (something O2 is planning to do), there's no effective way to make sure there isn't a giant Faraday Cage blocking the signal (I.e. A Norman Foster glass-and-steel edifice).
Mobile networks are shockingly complex when you get into it, and it's just a blessing that the operators are upgrading the 25 year old equipment that's been limping on for so long...
Dull but important: Freehold property = asset. Rent = liability. If you sell an asset, your size (as measured in money) reduces, and is reduced further because you now have a liability to fund.
This could have two motivations: 1) "Look what we've done Mr Cameron, we're much smaller now", or 2) "Look at the cost of rent Mr Cameron, please can we put the licence fee up?"
There are also considerations of maintenance costs if the freehold buildings are old and in need of a lot of work, and if the Beeb are now shedding thousands of jobs it's better to sell an inflexible building and rent flexible space instead which can grow or shrink as required.
So not a bad thing then really.
I seem to recall something in the BBC's charter which prevents it from directly competing with commercial TV, specifically because of how the Beeb is funded.
As for the F1 debacle - it's utterly shocking that the the "agreement" reached over freezing the licence fee has resulted in the best F1 coverage for years being lost. I would pay the licence fee for the F1 coverage alone, so the fact I get gems like Dr Who, Planet Earth and Sherlock as well is fantastic. I dread to think of quite how badly Sky will present F1...
Right, some things to point out:
1) WM6.5 was not "rubbish" - it just aged badly. It worked fine, and is still used in enterprises widely today. It was less user friendly than iOS.
2)WP7 is a brilliant phone OS, possibly a contender for the best. It works as fluidly as iOS on an iPhone 4, is more intuitive to use, and has proper facebook integration at the OS level. There are useful things missing at present, but Mango update will add many of these.
3)Nokia is NOT scrapping symbian (yet). WP7 will be for high-spec handsets, and symbian will continue on mid- and low-spec handsets.
I work for the UK's largest mobile phone company and have regular meetings with senior reps from WP7, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson etc. I've had these discussions with those people myself.
One already does this - the Dane-Elec MyDitto. Accessible from anywhere with a net connection, relatively secure, and accessible from multiple devices. If it's access to data you're after, it works.
Lacks the syncronisation of calendars/contacts/email though, which is a pity. Perhaps the MyDitto 2 will include software to do this...
Been using Ubuntu Netbook remix with the unity interface on my netbook for a couple of months now... no problems at all. Took all of ten minutes to get used to, works well & does everything I need it to. I am a geek, but I'm also very inexperienced with the penguin. So far everything I've tried on Unity works just as it did before. Hope it helps the penguin become more accepted!
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
