The UK font has them identical when close up, not just at a distance.
Posts by StephenD
74 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Jul 2010
0ops. 1,OOO-plus parking fine refunds ordered after drivers typed 'O' instead of '0'
Re: And this ladies and gentlemen...
Correction - it's possible to know which are letters and which are numbers. Not everyone does, and why should they be expected to?
I've seen plenty of UK number plates like OOO7 ABC - the first two are O's, the third is a zero. I know this because I happen to understand the format, but it would be unreasonable to expect everyone to do so, and to base parking enforcement fines on this, particularly when the UK number plate font has identical characters for O and zero, and for I and one.
Fitness freaks flummoxed as massive global Garmin outage leaves them high and dry for hours
Openreach asks UK what it thinks about 10 million 'full fibre' connections
London City airport swaps control tower for digital cameras
It's paydaygeddon! NatWest account transfers 'disappearing' (not really)
Re: How slow is slow?
Or as it helpfully says when I transfer money "The money should arrive in the destination account in less than two hours, though it can take longer." Very informative.
But I agree, my experience is of almost instant transfers - how quickly we've got used to that, when it used to take days.
Apple eats itself as iPhone fatigue spreads
Ordinary punters will get squat from smart meters, reckons report
If you haven't changed your Dropbox password for 4 years, do so now
Re: Sounds fishy to me
But, cumulatively, my banks require me to have:
telephone password
Internet password
Internet userid
father's middle name
favourite subject at school
favourite holiday destination
secure key password
memorable address
memorable date
street grew up on
sports personality
favourite actor
Verified by Visa password
personal greeting
memorable word
memorable information
online PIN
mother's birthday
city born in
first boss's first name
passphrase
first pet
spouse born
make of first car
memorable place
memorable date
memorable name
telephone banking passnumber
Internet banking passnumber
rewards password
mobile app passcode
memorable singer
secret question
starting salary
memorable image
place of birth
first school
secondary school
security number
most memorable teacher
first car
Some of these could be subject to your rules, but in practice the only way to deal with them is unique answers, fictitious where appropriate, stored securely (preferably offline).
O2 sales dip 9% as tight-fisted Brits cling to their old handsets
Pollster who called the EU referendum right: No late Leave swing after all
Re: Do-over poll
Poll for Daily Mail, reported in Metro, was that 7% of Leave voters had changed their mind, as had 4% of Remain voters, which if translated into a vote at that time would have resulted in a Leave vote with the margin below 1 million votes.
http://metro.co.uk/2016/06/26/more-than-a-million-people-regret-voting-leave-poll-shows-5968048/
What Brexit means for you as a motorist
Parliament takes axe to 2nd EU referendum petition
Did the genuine signatories actually read it?
It calls for a majority of 60% for either Leave or Remain, and a turnout of 75%. Failing any of those would result in another referendum.
Quite apart from the ridiculous idea that the rules should be amended after the event (even if a 60% threshold for major constitutional change might have been justifiable beforehand), then what the change would bring would be a neverending series of referendums, probably each with a result between 60:40 and 40:60, and certainly each with a turnout lower than the previous one.
Botnet-powered ballot stuffing suspected in 2nd referendum petition
Did the genuine signatories actually read it?
It calls for a majority of 60% for either Leave *or* Remain, and a turnout of 75%. Failing any of those would result in another referendum.
Quite apart from the ridiculous idea that the rules should be amended after the event (even if a 60% threshold for major constitutional change might have been justifiable beforehand), then what the change would bring would be a neverending series of referendums, probably each with a result between 60:40 and 40:60, and certainly each with a turnout lower than the previous one.
Exercise apps track you after you stop exercising
Re: Why does the phone permit this?
"All Android permissions should by default *not* be granted when the app isn't running in the foreground...."
I don't disagree, particularly for the camera and microphone cases you cite (though even there a user on a video call may quite reasonably want to check information in another app while on a call) but in practice Runkeeper et al. will be running in the background in a significant proportion of cases, and with the screen switched off almost universally.
The problem is whether the app tracks the user when not actively (by user action) monitoring an activity (after the user has pressed "stop" or whatever), and what is done with that information. I don't think either can easily be dealt with by Android permissions.
EU set to bin €500 note
The paperless office? Don’t talk sheet
Open APIs for UK banking: It's happening, people
Does your bank offer the midata download? That's a .CSV of the last 12 months' transactions, intended to facilitate account comparison by uploading the resultant file to comparison websites (e.g. gocompare.com), but obviously available for other purposes.
When it was launched in March, Barclays, HSBC (including First Direct), Lloyds, RBS (including NatWest) and Santander offered it. Possibly others have followed suit.
Lights out for Space Vehicle Number 23: UK smacked when US sat threw GPS out of whack
Re: 'precision docking of oil tankers, as well as navigation'
But the metre is based on being one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the north pole of an utterly insignificant little blue green planet orbitting a small unregarded yellow sun, far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy. Not much better, really.
Leak – UN says Assange detention 'unlawful'
Re: We make our own prisons
Because the Swedish government has no power to offer such a guarantee to Ecuador or anyone else. An extradition request (should one be forthcoming, and should JA reach Sweden) would be dealt with by the independent legal system on its merits - the law (rightly) makes no provision for the Executive to meddle in individual cases.
Three: We won't hike prices if you say yes to £10.5bn O2 merger
Meaningless promise
Putting aside the poorly timed decision (from a PR point of view) to turf people off old contracts, the costs of mobile comms have consistently fallen, and it would be reasonable to expect them to continue to fall (notably cost per GB of data - it's not that long since prices were quoted per MB). To promise that the prices won't rise is therefore an easy promise to make, and pretty meaningless.
With three rather than four main players, there will tend to be less competition and prices will be higher than they would otherwise have been, even while they continue their downward trend.
NetNames confirms easily.co.uk whacked by cyber crims
Apple and Google are KILLING KIDS with encryption, whine lawyers
Re: Tough titty, this is the price we have to pay
The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 contains many provisions not related to terrorism, including the ones used in connection with Iceland.
If Brown had acted under the similar powers when they were in the Emergency Laws (Re-enactments and Repeals) Act 1964 then perhaps Iceland (which was reneging on its agreed responsibilities for its banks) wouldn't have had such a PR coup.
West's only rare earth mine closes. Yet Chinese monopoly fears are baseless
The Register's resident space boffin: All you need to know about the Pluto mission
Cortana threatens to blow away ESC key
Re: Why not just use the Windows key?
Personally I find the Windows key useful for a variety of shortcuts: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/keyboard-shortcuts#keyboard-shortcuts=windows-7
But I doubt anyone who will use Cortana is using any of those shortcuts (and vice versa) so your suggestion is sound.
The Martian: Matt Damon sciences the sh*t out of the red planet
So why the hell didn't quantitative easing produce HUGE inflation?
The time on Microsoft Azure will be: Different by a second, everywhere
Lies, damn lies and election polls: Why GE2015 pundits fluffed the numbers so badly
Re: Registration bias
Yes, it means exactly that - students had to register themselves this time, but didn't previously (at least not in the early 90s at any rate).
When I was at uni, I was on the electoral roll at home and at university, through no action of my own (the 'home' registration because my father completed the household information; the 'university' registration because the university/college did; in neither case was it discussed with me in advance).
I never voted twice, but presumably could have with pretty minimal chances of being caught, and it seems likely that some students did exactly that.
Apple v BBC: Fruity firm hits back over Panorama drama
UK banks ill-prepared for return of the rabid POODLE
Updating not their thing
This is the same RBS who helpfully tell us:
"We've thoroughly tested the One account website to make sure you can view it with the following browsers:
Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 for PCs and 5.0 for Macs
Netscape Navigator Version 7 for PCs and Macs."
They then go on to provide a (broken) link to download the latest version of Netscape Navigator for those who haven't yet reached v7.
Very helpful. You also need a 28.8k modem to access online banking, apparently.
The STEALTH Plug-in Hybrid: Audi A3 e-tron Sportback
Re: or just buy an efficient diesel?
From the article:
"The official NEDC consumption figure for the A3 is 176.6mpg but as with all plug-in hybrids that figure depends entirely on how much driving you do using just the electrical charge harvested from the mains. Charge the thing every day and never drive more than 30 miles between charges and you’ll never use a drop of unleaded."
The figures quoted were for a car "being driven with gusto along hilly, switchback A and B roads in the wilds of Northumberland", in two of the cases not in a mode intended to promote economy.
Euro Parliament VOTES to BREAK UP GOOGLE. Er, OK then
France kicks UK into third place for public Wi-Fi hotspots
Re: Who cares?
Agreed: by the time you've eliminated those which require the elaborate sign-up dance, and the elaborate login dance, and the give-us-your-money dance, and those which are broken because the host doesn't know how to maintain the system, and those where the connection is so slow as to be useless, and those which require me to receive a verification text message on my data-only tablet, and those that are time-limited, what's left is far more often a hindrance than a help.
Windows 8 or nowt: Consumer Win 7 fans are out of luck
Rosetta's comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is one FUGLY space rock
"More or less nothing"?
If you've heard nothing, maybe it's because you haven't been listening in the right places.
Try http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/ or http://rosetta.esa.int/ or https://www.facebook.com/RosettaMission or https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta, plus various tech/astronomy websites, etc. etc.
Even the Mail Online, once past the populist dross, gives reasonable coverage: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2721752/The-face-Rosettas-comet-Eerily-human-features-spotted-67P-icy-rock-hurtles-deep-space.html
Ofcom: UK beats the US... in race to buy online tat
Shopping list for Tesco: Eggs, milk, bread, tablets (the £60 7in Android kind)
Londoners in mass test of telly tech savvy as 4G filters mailed out
I read it to mean that 63% of primary TVs (living room) are watching via satellite (whether that be Sky or Freesat) or cable. Seems high to me, but it at least makes sense in principle. Most secondary TVs (bedrooms, kitchens, etc.) are then still using Freeview, which is where the wording of the article perhaps becomes loose.
The supercomputers LIED: UK rainfall is rising, but won't drown our phones
Re: Not wanting to pour cold water on a good rant....
Not quite.
The data shows the increase (or decrease) in extreme rainfall events. Ofcom couldn't care less about how often it rains or the total rainfall, but extremely heavy rain is what it is apparently interested in.
The data show that the heaviest rainfall rates (the 0.01% of top rainfall rates) have generally got heavier, and therefore more likely to interfere with communications (among other problems).
Belgian boffins find colossal meteorite
Re: Why...
If a bit of rock is found on the surface of the ice in Antarctica (or at any rate in an intelligently chosen subset of such locations), it is a meteorite, pretty much guaranteed. And rocks show on ice very well. And not many people about. And in places the ability to survey large areas with relative ease.
Taken together, they make it an ideal hunting ground. Compare temperate zones where there are rocks everywhere, lots of forest and private land, etc.
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite review
Still no buttons
Still no page-turning buttons on these new Kindles. Why? Sure, the touch-screen interface is great for navigation, etc., but I spend very little time navigating, and most of the time reading. The page-turn buttons on my Kindle Keyboard get pressed thousands of times a week. Surely the cost of including real page-turn buttons in addition to the touchscreen would be tiny. The focus should be on making the reading experience perfect. That "horribly intrusive" flash to refresh the screen bothers me not one jot - but having to stick my thumb in front of the text every page seems a lot more intrusive and is definitely a retrograde step.
Amazon quietly un-wipes remotely wiped Kindle
OLYMPIC SECRETS to stay locked up for 15 YEARS
BT gets postcode knickers in twist, plants Shoreditch on Mount Everest
To be fair...
...the site does say to "Enter your full postcode". It should deal more elegantly with those who fail to follow instructions and enter "N1" and the like, but garbage in, garbage out, and all that.
What a surprise - the 13 exchanges around me are all described as "Not currently in rollout plans".
Spy under your car bonnet 'worth billions by 2016'
Clearly not for me
I thought I'd look for interest at the quotes being offered for me.
One refused to quote because I'm too old (at 38)
One refused to quote because I do too many miles per year (25,000)
One refused to quote because I use the car to drive to business meetings.
One refused to quote because parking sensors have been fitted to the car.
Not quite ready for the mainstream yet?
Shock sales surge sends Amazon shares soaring
Re: How is it a shock sales surge...
I don't think there is any requirement for a shock to be nasty, just surprising, though they often go together.
Chambers: 1 a strong emotional disturbance, especially a feeling of extreme surprise, outrage or disgust.
Concise OED: 1. a sudden upsetting or surprising event or experience
Amazon Kindle Touch touches down early
Touch easier?
Agree with all of that, but actually I spent 95% of the time on my Kindle reading books (who'd have guessed it?) and much prefer the handily placed buttons for page advance than moving a finger over the screen and back every page. Each to their own, but retaining the page advance buttons on the touch versions would have seemed to have kept the best of both worlds.