Posts by nation of stupid

Windows 8 and the ‘Dad test’ stunts

Re: Got that wrong then :-)

"Again, I am not talking about formal training or support here, which is clearly lacking in a lot of organisations, just someone who can say the words "try moving your mouse to the corners of the screen and see what pops up", and perhaps offer a couple of other basic UI tips."

Honestly, the majority of people out there don't have anyone to turn to, or if they do their help isn't much better.

For example I have a father in law who is pretty technically competent and never asked for advice, but when visiting him discovered that after using a computer for years when going on the internet he still waited for his ISPs home screen to load before typing in the web address he was going to into the search box on the page. That's what happened the first time he went online so he had been going online in the same way ever since. Changing the browser preferences so it opened with a blank screen confused the hell out of him, so much so that I had to set it to Googles home page so it was more familiar to him.

There are many others in the same situation, telling him something all of us here take for granted as common knowledge I would later find out he had used to impress his friends as their computer 'expert'.

'Hypersensitive' Wi-Fi hater loses case against fiendish DEVICES

"The Russians killed a number of staff at the American embassy in Moscow in the 50's and 60's with microwave weaponry and the Americans let them do it so they could measure the results."

Maybe in the minds of conspiracy theorists they did, but official reports found no measurable differences, most likely due to the fact that the occupants would only suffer an increase in exposure if they stood at an open window all day every day.

Facebook replaces non-Facebook mail addresses on Timeline

Re: Fixed it!

Why in an article about Facebook is there always has to be someone who puts in the time and effort to tell the world he doesn't use Facebook rather than just not reading the supposedly irrelevant article. The same with Twitter/Windows/OSX/iPhone/iPad/Android/Blackberry/Phone 7/BBC/Sky/ITV/etc.

I mean, if I read news or reviews of a Ford Mondeo there isn't anyone who posts just to point out they don't drive one.

Jonathan Ive is knighted in New Year Honours list

@David45

Quote:

con. folk into buying over-priced, over-hyped pretty kit that most other manufacturers have produced for a considerably lower sum and does much the same job. People have been mesmerised by the style, 'koz that's all you're really paying for, folks.

So do we presume you drive a Perodua, Kia or Hyundia? After all they do the same job as a Ford, Volkswagen or BMW for a "considerably lower sum."

Just because someone wants to use different criteria than you in their buying decisions doeasn't make them idiot paying over the odds.

Well, unless they buy Sony.

BBC testing fix for iPlayer on iPad ... 6 months later

Yep, rubbish

The actual Android app was rubbish - amazingly it works better now they have dropped it and 'upgraded' it to a web link wrapped up as an app. Still can't download a program to view later, if they did that it might stop being rubbish.Amazing how much better myplayer was, if one man can create an app that accessed and let you download the high quality iPhone/iPad mp4 stream why the hell can't the might of the BBC do the same.

Google whacked with another monopoly moan

So what you'd rather use bing?

I'd just like to be able to use google.co.uk as the default, there isn't any way of changing it or giving you a choice.

Dell, HP badmouth Apple's iPad

Buy a Mac?

<quote>"If most people had the choice, they'd buy a Mac."

No, they wouldn't. Not to mention that ignoring price doesn't make sense. You're basically saying "If the things that people didn't like about Macs were fixed, people would buy Macs." Yes thank you for pointing out the obvious - the same would apply to any make of PC.</quote>

If price wasn't a consideration, then unless they are a rabid Apple hater then yes they would.

Would you really choose a Dell Latitude or Toshiba Satellite over a Macbook Pros aluminium unibody and great keyboard? After all, what's not to like about their hardware.

If your problem is that it doesn't run Windows or your favourite flavour of Linux, then that's fixed in the time it takes to run the install disk.

RE: RE: "And why would I need Flash?"

It's a valid question.

If a company supplies a piece of hardware to it's employees that has all the custom applications the employee needs to do their job, why does it need to have Flash?

After all, there are millions of company supplied Blackberries which seem to have managed perfectly well for years without Flash.

I'm also sure almost every company would be happy to have hardware that guarantees "Freedom From Porn", I can't think of any large company IT department that wouldn't prefer to keep the user from installing anything they liked.

Or are you just using the fact that only the very latest versions of only one of Apples several rivals OS can run Flash as an excuse to have a dig at Apple, whether or not it's relevant to the article.

Memo to iPad mimics: No one wants a $799 knockoff

@Bullseyed

Not a problem assembling exactly the same parts in a different case to undercut Apple.

Just a couple of problems though, you'll have to develop your own OS to run on it, develop and maintain an online app shop to support it, then create the infrastructure to allow developers to create the apps you need for the app shop.

Can't really compete with the iPad unless you have the whole experience, not just the hardware.

Fanboi king hails Apple 'love affair with open web'

@David Simpson 1

Unfortunately that link you posted confirmed that all those phones listed still don't have Flash right now, so you have unintentionally proved Walt Frenchs point regarding flash support on phones.

They might all support Flash in the future, in the same way we might all have Windows phones.

El Reg takes a spin round Team Lotus's F1 factory

two lotuses?

There's only one Lotus in F1, that's team Lotus and they will be running in green and yellow like this year.

The team Group Lotus are sponsoring is called Renault, and will be listed officially as Renault GP in the same way McLarens cars are called McLarens and not Vodafones.

Feds subpoena Twitter for info on WikiLeaks backer

sealed subpoena

What's missing from most news articles including this one is that the first subpoena presented to Twitter was ordered sealed - Twitter was supposed to reveal all the information they have without informing the users at all. It was only unsealed at Twitters request so Twitter could ask the users named if they want to object. If the same sealed subpoena has been sent to other organisations such as Facebook, Google, Wikileaks' web hosts, etc and they had not requested it be unsealed they would have to to send the information to the DOJ and are not allowed to inform the users they have done so.

Explains why the news is over Twitter feeds when almost everything they have is publicly available, while there are other organisations holding much more private information have made no mention of it.

It's also known that the DOJ have also requested the names and IP address of every follower of Wikileaks on Twitter. I wouldn't be surprised if they have requested the details of everyone who has donated to them, friended them on facebook, or any minor connection with them.

The leaks have shown the US government like to throw their weight around and have little respect for the law. Their response seems to be to throw their weight around with no respect for the law.

Beastly Android will batter Apple's iOS beauty

@Jedidiah

Quote:

"It might be fine for some housewife."

"Thus many power users view Apple products in general as some sort of joke."

Considering the handful of 'power users' that want to run shell scripts on an iPhone (why!?!) against the many millions of iPhone owning housewives, to misquote you:

Thus Apple view 'power users' in general as some sort of joke.

If it's that much of a problem for you to do what you want on an iPhone, why aren't you using an android phone then? You might consider running a shell script on a phone a "pretty basic use case" but more than 99.9% of the world think it's irrelevant.

Most of the world right now think "basic use cases" for a smartphone is to be able to make calls, send texts and MMS, check Facebook and play Angry Birds.

@yosemite

So as an iPhone can be upgraded to the current OS version s well, so the only reason you've given for buying the San Fran is that it's cheaper, and whatever open source advocates may think, that's the number one reason Android phones are selling, and it's exactly that reason why I got a Desire.

If your options were paying £400 for an unlocked iPhone, or £400 for an unlocked Android phone, would you still go for the Android one.

@spencer

"However, android (which is what we are talking about) *is* mostly open source software. Which you can hack, chop and change as you (or to be honest, other, more smarter people with lots of free time on xda) see fit."

So, for 99% of the users at large Android is just as closed as Apple then.

I would like to basic editing (just trimming) to my videos, with an iPhone there's a selection of apps to choose from. With Android there's nothing, except it's open source so I can download the SDK and build my own video editing app for my phone, after I've learned how to program in Java. Yep, really open for the general public at large.

@Tigra 07

Advertising supported Angry Birds for "free" here as well, as long as I remember to turn off any data connection when I'm out an about so the ads don't eat into my data allowance (had the full screen movie promo video ads yet?) and so the ad doesn't blot out part of the game as it's hard to boomerang the green birds when they are hidden behind an advert. I guess the unobtrusive ad in the bottom corner didn't generate enough revenue.

Still waiting for an ad free paid version, although I guess Rovio think the majority of Android users are happy to put up with the ads.

Worthless iPhone 'Wikileaks App' removed from Apple Store

there's money to be made there!

Put that together and charge 99 cents for it and see the money come in.

Although unfortunately for you it's the iPad owners who will be laughing at their gullible mates. Just look at the fingerprint security app.

UK Man cops to £500,000 iTunes royalty scam

Be your own record comapny

That's where most of the money paid to iTunes ends up. What the record company pays to the artist and the songwriter is down to their record contract, nothing to do with Apple.

Although I agree it's a pretty dumb scam when the downloaded tunes are traceable, while also having any profits going to a traceable account at the other end. It's like paying for a taxi ride home with a stolen card.

Google questions tests that praise IE's bad website blocker

@Hubris

If you actually read any of the reports, the drive by download problem affects Windows machines, the same flaw that affected IE and Firefox as well.

As rafox says, it's not a problem if you are using a non Windows machine, either Linux or OSX.

US Army 'to issue every soldier with a smartphone'

No one makes a phone as yet that meets these specs.

For a smartphone, as has been said above there's the Motorola Defy.

As for dumbphones there are plenty of tradesmen using military spec tough phones such as the JCB Tough Phone and Samsung B2100 which are specifically targeted at the building trade. Just because they aren't available at Carphone Warehouse doesn't mean they don't exist.

Personally, the JCB Tradesman is a great phone for those of us who go near water - drop it in and it floats so you can't lose it. Don't ask how I know it works.

Orange overhauls app store

no wifi though

Of course the one big disadvantage of the Orange Store is that it's only accessible over your network connection, wifi connections don't work. Yep, that really helps me want to try browsing round it when I can find more apps on the Android market over my home wifi connection that I don't have to pay Orange to use.

EU telecoms to Apple, Google: 'Pay up!"

@ Graham Marsden

"If you built a motorway network and businesses started huge lorries along it, breaking up the surface and causing congestion for other users, would you consider it unreasonable to ask those businesses to contribute to the cost of upkeep or would you think it better that those businesses' traffic be diverted to slower roads?"

Using your road analogy, we the customers are already paying the road owners for the building and upkeep of the small branch roads to enable delivery of the content we want to our doors. They aren't provided for free.

Apple, Google et al are paying the super highway owners for the building and upkeep of them, to get the content delivered to the small road owners so it can then be delivered to us.

Do you consider it reasonable for these small road owners to expect payment from customers at both ends of the roads?

Alan Sugar's 'cockup braindead in call centre clueless' BT row

Amstrad?

Just to point out, strangely, Alan Sugar has nothing to do with Amstrad these days. Amstrad is owned by BSkyB, which is why they specialise in set top boxes.

Alan Sugar owns that 'famous' computer manufacturer, Viglen. They make Dell look as stylish as Apple.

Google targets iPad with Android 3 Honeycomb tablet yumminess

ready for 2.3?

That will be after they stop getting calls for when they will be updating to 2.2/2.1/1.6 depending on your current hardware. I think they have beaten most of us into submission and we'll wait until we actually see it before believing we'll get the update.

This year's comedy Xmas No. 1 contender: Silent song 4'33"

Rage...

Rage Against the Machine is also owned by SonyBMG, I'm sure they loved the fact that people trying to stop their XFactor single reaching number one were paying them for the alternative as well - a win/win for Sony and Cowell, and the anti-capitalist RATM still made a healthy profit from it.

At least all profits from this one will go to charity, although I prefer Surfin' Bird for number one as it would be funnier for the XFactor song to be beaten by it. Be even better if both outsold the XFactor dross and it only made number 3. Either way, unfortunately the XFactor song will still make it to number one the week after.

The Mac that saved Apple (and Steve Jobs)

really, yes

"when I started playing on BBS, telenetting all around the world, Macs where hardly jumpstarting anything, "

Then again, at the time neither was Win95.

You sum up the general publics perception of the internet at the time of the iMac as a place for geeks to hang out and overcomplicated for home users, unless you played in the walled gardens of AOL and Compuserve.

The iMac got everyone interested in the internet even if they didn't buy an Apple machine, although the fact you could literally be online within a minute of taking it out of the box made it so much simpler for home users to get online than trying to connect with Win95/98.

Whatever your opinion of Apple, the iMac did kick start the internet age for home users the same way the iPhone has kick started smartphone usage today. In both cases they weren't the first to market but thanks to Apples marketing they got people interested in the concept whether they buy Apple products or a rivals.

$5 million?

Actually it was $150,000,000 investment in Apple shares, in exchange for Apple abandoning suing Microsoft for copying the OS, and included a deal to put Explorer on the Mac. Kept Microsoft away from monopolies commissions for a while, and made Microsoft a huge amount of money when they later sold their shares.

Apple files patent for iPad weight loss

titanium case, sounds familiar

"You could make an ultra-lightweight metal body using titanium or magnesium I suppose, but it would be VERY expensive."

The original G4 Powerbook was known as the TiBook because the case was made of titanium, mounted around a carbon fibre chassis. Tough and light, but unfortunately titanium seriously affects your wifi signal - the titanium lid would shield the aerial from your router if it was pointing in the wrong direction.

Probably not a good idea to use titanium on something that's designed to work mainly over a wifi connection.

iAds to flood UK iPhones, iPads

(untitled)

Considering that if you have a data connection anywhere with Android it will download ads then I expect the iAds will do the same.

If the ad supported games and apps don't need a data connection, turning it off when using them prevents the ads downloading on Android, I expect the same will work on the iPhone.

@Jaitch

"An option should be available whereby purchasing an App entitles you to use free of adverts or the collection of data unrelated to the App operation. 'Free' Apps should be allowed to display adverts."

Yes, that's usually how the system works and is the whole point of it. Want the app for free, then put up with ads to fund the developer. Pay for the app and they remove the ads.

@Pirate Peter

"so now they have their captive adience locked in, they will be spamming them with adverts they don't want"

So I take it you'll be going nowhere near an Android phone then.

For example:

Angry Birds on iPhone - paid for ad free app.

Angry Birds on Android - free annoyingly distracting advert supported app.

Samsung plans to smash Android rivals..what about the iPad?

@Yeah..

I presume you didn't bother reading this in the article:

The Tab has a bill of materials far closer to that of a phone than an advanced consumer media product. According to teardowns by iSuppli, its BOM is $205.22, far less than the $264.27 figure for the 3G, 16Gb iPad.

So the Tab is cheaper to produce than the iPad, yet retails for the same price..

Apple iAds soar as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! sink

@AC 16:52

"Try to download a porn app on your iPhone...

Try to browse a flash website with your iPad..."

Try to find a porn app for Android...

Try to browse a flash website with your Android phone...

Nope, those don't work either, so what's your point again?

You might if you are lucky get the flash website working on the minority of Android phones running froyo - I wouldn't know as I'm still waiting for the update from my phone company. I might fix that though by rooting it, which is "being able to do what you want" just as much as jailbreaking an iPhone.

revenue?

This is the one good reason anyone with sense will make sure Flash comes nowhere near their newer Android phone.

Although Android does have the advantage of Adblock Plus for Dolphin.

Moms stand firm against antenna madness

evidence?

Strange people start getting all these problems when phone masts appear, yet they have managed to go through the rest of their lives quite happily while living inside the more powerful radiation fields from TV and radio masts.

Of course every one of those complaining about phone mast radiation won't have a much more dangerous mobile phone in their possession would they, so they would be somewhat hypocritical to complain when they can't get a phone signal.

Android app secretly uploads GPS data, warns Symantec

rename it "track your teenager"

That's the actual purpose of it, and if anyone has actually followed the link to GPS Spy the Tapsnake game is supposed to be one part of the GPS tracking system simialr to zest:trak, not as Symantec claims that it's a separate piece of malware that broadcasts your GPS location to the world at large. As you said, the developer should have just picked a more appropriate name.

Heck, you don't even need programs installed to be able to track a mobile http://www.traceamobile.co.uk/

Good idea hiding it in a snake game, it's more likely to stay on the phone and not be deleted when the teenager cleans up the phone memory.

Of course it's all pretty useless if the phone user turns the GPS off to get the phone to last all day as it's constantly checking it's location.

Vodafone issues real Froyo update for HTC Desire

Why is the carrier controlling the OS?

If the carrier can modify the OS, it certainly adds value to the phone for them.

For example an Orange UK branded Desire comes with Oranges own version of the HTC browser as standard, that uses Oranges homepage that it can only connect to using Oranges mobile internet and won't work over your own wifi. At least that can be reconfigured, although I assume they hope customers can't work it out. It also includes Oranges own maps app, which costs an extra £5 per month to subscribe to and relies on the customers using it by default instead of the customer knowing about Googles free maps app that isn't installed on the phone.

The operators also get nice backhanders from app and game developers to include demos coded into the OS, using up spare phone memory and you can't get rid of them without rooting the phone.

Plenty of ways for them to screw more money out of the customer.

After the good publicity Vodafone is getting out of unbranding their Froyo update, hopefully Orange might follow suit although I don't expect them to.

First SMS Trojan for Android is in the wild

@Strike Vomit

Quote:

These "stupid stupid users" obviously had enough technical nous to disable the safety features built into Android and install an application from outside the official marketplace.

Easy to do, go to Gameloft or similar third party websites and buy an app or game. The 'stupid stupid users' follow the instructions to enable downloading - of course there's no instructions given to change the settings back again.

Technical nous just doesn't come into it.

Did the iPad just save Wired, and Conde-Nast?

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

Apple is nothing special in this regard, Google charge exactly the same for developers selling via the Android Market Place, and of course both of them make no money on free applications even though they pay the distribution costs.

Your comparison with Dell is irrelevant as in this case Apple is being paid as a retailer, not as the hardware manufacturer. If you are using Dell as a comparison, then your comment should have been "If I buy my software for my Dell PC from Dell, would 30% of the cost go to Dell?" In which case you would find Dell getting more than 30%, and the developers being paid considerably less than 70% for the software they sell.

For a developer getting 70% of the retail price for their product is unbelievably good compared to any other means of distribution, especially considering they have no distribution costs and as your product is placed in the one and only app store (whether it's the App Store or Android Market Place) you have very little or no advertising costs to publicise it.

Steve Jobs issues open letter on Flash

Its hard to kill OSX..

but flash does crash Firefox and Camino, so it's not just a problem with Safari conflicting with Flash. Although when most applications do crash, OSX will notify you and then carry on, Flash can completely lock up the system thanks to it's take over of the CPU meaning rebooting the system to regain control.

which devices?

So which devices are those then?

Name one smartphone that runs Flash right now, not the cut down Flash Lite

price of flash?

After all, Adobe doesn't give CS4 pro away for free either. The full version is not much cheaper than Apples SDK.

Jobsian Vendetta - Flash stabbed by Mac the Knife

developers...

Why develop online flash games that cost you bandwidth to run in the hope you can make money selling adspace when you can make money selling them in the app store or android marketplace?

Apple in shock public attack on Adobe

monopoly abuse from a minority?

"What percentage of smartphone market share would Apple need to get to before this can be actively pursued as an abuse of a monopoly position?"

Usually a majority. Certainly a lot more than the less than 20% share they have at the moment. To abuse a monopoly you actually need to be the market leader, not fourth behind Symbian, RIM and Android. A bit difficult to be accused of monopoly abuse when there are plenty of alternatives.

Steve Jobs bans all apps from iPhone (or thereabouts)

Depends on the developers

It depends on whether the developers have stuck to Apples rules and the offical APIs. If developers stick to Apples new rules you can guarantee that your apps will work with newer versions of the OS. If the developers (such as Adobe) bypass the official APIs there's a good chance the apps won't work with newer versions as the workarounds they use might not still be there.

Been down that road with Adobe in the past - update to a newer Mac OSX version and you have to upgrade to a new version or wait for a patch for Photoshop and Dreamweaver as your old versions no longer work. If Adobe stuck to official Apple APIs the software would still work and not need hacks by Adobe to stop them crashing.

Strangely enough my old version of Office still manages to work fine.

Milkman skewers Google Street View over garage break-in

Ho hum...

In reply to 2:

Privacy is a right, on private property. Only the most deluded in the world would expect privacy when the public are in a public place - such as the street outside your house. Unless you build an 8 foot wall around your property. Photographers in the UK have the right to take any photograph they want when in a public space - this includes taking photos of the contents of your garage if they are standing on the public street outside your house.

In reply to 3:

So you think you should have the right to not have a photo taken from the public highway outside your house, of the inside of your garage that isn't seen for at least six months before it goes online, with the option of having the picture removed for the paranoid.

What do you do about protecting your privacy from any stranger walking past your house when your garage is open and seeing the contents at that exact time? Only allow them past wearing blindfolds?