* Posts by dotdavid

1712 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jul 2010

BlackBerry blog hacked with riot-related threats

dotdavid
FAIL

Idiots

I think that's all I have to say about Teampoison in this particular instance.

Videogames caused riots says plod

dotdavid
Meh

I'm so confused

I thought it was RIM's (Riots In Motion?) BBM and Tweetface that was causing the riots. I don't know what to believe now!

Magellan Explorist 710 hiking GPS

dotdavid

Resistive Screen

Presumably that's essential, as you'd probably use this thing while wearing gloves...

Ofcom report: Mobile operators feel the squeeze

dotdavid
Coffee/keyboard

Funny definition of loyalty

"The first thing operators want to do is get customers on to contracts, and then they want to lock them there for as long as possible. The EU caped mobile contracts at two years, pre-empting operators who'd probably have gone for longer. Smartphones help there, but operators are also bumping up the cost of calls for prepaid customers, and blaming on the regulator's imposed cut on termination fees.

That should keep customers more loyal for longer "

So, er, by the operators' logic inmates in prison are incredibly loyal to Her Majesty's Prison Service. Wow.

People are using third party services rather than the operators' because the operators' invariably suck. The sooner they realise this, and give up to become the dumb pipes for data they were always destined to be, the better.

Esc because they don't want you to escape your contract.

The curse of Google?: Android licensees fail to cash in

dotdavid
FAIL

@Why

Well that's fine, but equally if they don't seem to care about me (by not updating the phone's software) why should I care about them enough to buy another one of their phones again? Especially when (no thanks to them) there is a lot of competition. Brings us right back to why they're at all surprised about the lack of brand loyalty...

dotdavid
WTF?

What?

"once they have their smartphone, they feel they owe the manufacturer very little gratitude. "

Mainly because the manufacturers screw up their handsets with buggy bloated operator-and-manufacturer-specific apps, interfaces and ad-ware.

Tip for the manufacturers - you want brand loyalty? Install your interface as a removable component. Make it fast, or buy one of the third parties that already make a fast UI and use theirs. Let people uninstall the stuff they don't need. Keep your phones up-to-date software-wise for the length of an average contract. Then your customers will feel some gratitude towards you.

Oh, I forget - the end-users aren't your customers are they, the Operators are... well there's your problem.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

dotdavid
Facepalm

Tablets

I think it makes a lot more sense if you read about the current crop of Android tablets while playing the Benny Hill theme in the background.

They'll make a nice slim device, then charge an eyewatering £500 for it. They'll then try and charge you extra for cables. The USB port won't charge unless you use the cable you get in the box and there are no spares available to buy. It won't talk to your PC either, and certainly not in mass storage mode. They'll recommend you download a Facebook app but the Android Market will say it's not available for your device, for some reason.

No the annoyances are more than oversights - I reckon someone in charge at Motorola and Samsung *really* wants to make their final months with the firm amusing, or something. How hard is it to take what Apple have done and do it cheaper at the very least? They can't even get that bit right.

Death haunts government petitions site

dotdavid
Childcatcher

Don't worry

It's only for child killers, which makes it automatically all right as if you disagree with stuff that's done for the protection of children, you're probably a child molester.

Ubisoft insists DRM 'a success'

dotdavid
Alien

SHOCKED! SHOCKED I AM!

...that a company representative would say that a company policy is working as expected, while completely failing to provide figures with which to back up their assertion! ;-)

I suspect it's not working at all, but they can't really measure it. After all they don't have DRM-free sales of whatever-title to compare to....

Alien because whoever thought of this strategy is from another planet.

Chinese giant Alibaba offers 'Cloudphone'

dotdavid
Alert

Hmm

I hope they are putting serious thought how it will work offline.

It's a common failing with mobile manufacturers, it seems - assuming always-on net just because it's a mobile. I always thought the thing that summed up Windows Mobile (6)'s problems the best was the error message "Connection lost for an unknown reason" that would pop up on the train to work now and again. Unknown? No it isn't - we're in a bloody tunnel!

Google TV box flop costs Logitech $34m

dotdavid
Holmes

GoogleTV

GoogleTV has many faults.

1) Boxes are too expensive. When they first talked about it I was hoping around the £50 mark, or at least under £100. For £300 you can get a whole media centre PC, why would you want a GoogleTV instead?

2) Content was always a big problem, and got bigger as (in the US at least) people like Hulu dropped out. Does anyone seriously watch YouTube like you'd watch TV, as opposed to flicking through the odd funny cat video now and then?

3) The problem most under Google's control was the bloody things didn't even come with the Android market. So no-one else could deploy innovative features via apps to mitigate the first and second problems a little. Google claim this will soon change with the forthcoming Honeycomb-based Google TV update by "end of summer" but I guess we'll see. And why not leverage the substantial Android userbase? Apps to integrate your smartphone and your TV? All sorts of missed opportunities here.

4) TVs and other TV-related boxes are rapidly catching up, and some provide this sort of functionality out-of-the-box. Why buy another box for your TV when your TV/BluRay/Whatever does YouTube already? Google could have differentiated their offering from these usually pretty poor manufacturer-offerings but haven't particularly done so.

I'd love to have one of these things, but the cost-benefit analysis doesn't stack up. I will revisit if there are more cheaper boxes around and when the update is out, however I fear much as I like the Google TV concept, I suspect Google will give up if the going still proves tough, like they normally do.

Ubisoft revisits Internet-at-all-times DRM

dotdavid
Pirate

Of course...

...this isn't going to drive away the pirates at all, is it. I'll bet it's already on some torrent site somewhere.

Beeb rolls out global paid iPlayer app in €urope

dotdavid

BBC3

"I want my money to be not spent on tripe please"

I guess that's where the licence fee model falls down. You can't vote with your wallet about what constitutes tripe.

Film studios thrash BT in Newzbin site-block test case

dotdavid
Thumb Up

Second-hand

Exactly what I started doing when the RIAA started suing college students all those years ago. Second-hand CDs sound just as good as the originals.

Of course since then someone invented Spotify so I'm back to supporting their evil empire, albeit probably less.

But you'd think the Movie people would have, I dunno, learnt from the music industry's mistakes...

Developer fury as Google makes Android apps vanish

dotdavid
Facepalm

Doh

My sarcasm detector malfunctioned somewhat just there...

dotdavid
WTF?

Let me get this straight

"Yes, my completely non-technical old mum who can't work computers, for example. She was going to get an Android phone, but after reading about the Market search issues on the Google support forums, she's now getting an iphone"

So your completely non-technical mother now develops iPhone apps? Because if she wasn't a developer, why would she be that concerned about this?

Would explain a lot of the sub-par iPhone ports I've been seeing in the Android Market recently ;-)

dotdavid
Joke

It's no joke

Allow me to demonstrate my deepest apologies which are undoubtably due.

dotdavid
Joke

Google Arrogance

"partly irritation at Google's arrogance: the company hasn't bothered to respond."

This is the worst thing about Google. You and I see their lack of response as arrogance; they see it as "the engineers are busy fixing the bug you reported, wouldn't you rather have them do that then respond to your email?". A post on Google Operating System explained it; reading it was a eureka moment for me!

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/07/customer-service-in-early-days-of.html

If there's one thing I've learned from my years of working in IT, it's that users value communication very highly. If there is a problem the best thing you can do is keep them up-to-date so they know what progress is being made on the resolution.

Joke alert because Google's support is often one.

Apple Flash buying clout will give it the ultrabook edge

dotdavid

Cheap?

No, more likely to have higher profit margins instead.

Virgin Media sees 36,000 cable customers scarper in Q2

dotdavid
Thumb Down

Average revenue

"The firm added that its average revenue per cable user had climbed 3 per cent to £47.35 per month, which somewhat helped offset customers who altogether abandoned the ISP."

I'm not surprised, my Virgin bill for example has climbed over the last year even with no change in service.

I do have a phone line but never use it (I only got it to get a discounted package deal). I think what probably happened is they tried to get people to sign up with a discount deal, and then jacked the price up later hoping the vast majority wouldn't bother switching afterwards. Seems they're right.

If I hadn't been tricked into a new 12 month contract in exchange for a HD TV box (no mention of a contract renewal on the page I signed up for it from) I would have definitely been gone by now.

HTC Salsa Android smartphone

dotdavid
Unhappy

@Dogged

Alas the Venue Pro doesn't quite meet the requirements, as the keyboard is still a tiny cramp-inducing portrait qwerty not a number pad like dumbphones of yore.

Plus it runs an operating system I've never heard of. Windows what-now?

I kid, I kid...

dotdavid
WTF?

Two phones I'd like to see

1) A smallish smartphone, like the Wildfire, but with a 1GHz or higher processor. Why should small handsets all be budget phones?!

2) A smartphone with a touchscreen and a slide-out portrait numpad, a bit like the old HTC Touch Dual. I reckon the kids would love it for txting, and it would probably appeal to those that find full tiny hardware qwerty keyboards a bit cumbersome.

Either of these would be more innovative than a Facebook button. Come on HTC!

George Lucas defeated by Stormtrooper helmet man

dotdavid
Joke

Depends

It would all depend on where and when you were when you were saying it was a long time ago and far away. It could well be that the author of the giant spaceborne text seen at the start of the movies is speaking from our future of events that still happen in our future (but were in his past).

So, er, yeah to summarise people read way too much into these films ;-)

Historypin

dotdavid
Thumb Up

Um

"We didn't originally have app2sd because it wasn't introduced until 2.2. We had to disable use support for 2.1 and below to get this working."

I may be wrong, but that's not true as far as I know. You can use the 2.2 and above SDK to generate an APK targeted at 2.1 and above if you want, which would allow app2sd on 2.2+ devices but retain compatibility with 2.1 devices.

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-sdk-element.html

Thanks for the heads-up about the rotation issue fix and the link. Looks like a nightmare to implement! Will be happy to more thoroughly test the app on my OH's Transformer (I've mainly used it on my own Nexus One).

dotdavid

App2sd

A bit unrelated to the app HistoryPin (although it's a fine app), but it's good to see El Reg Android reviews saying whether or not the app supports "app2sd".

It baffles me why devs still release apps that DON'T support it*, considering it is a mere one-line change in the application's manifest XML file.

As for HistoryPin, it's a fascinating app. The only issues I've found with it so far is that on the OH's Asus Transformer it inexplicibly rotates to Portrait when you're holding the tablet in Landscape (and vice versa), and you can't seem to view the "modern" views of each photo in the app.

(* apart from the obvious launchers and widgets thanks to Android limitations)

Dead bloke reanimates in mortuary

dotdavid
Terminator

Hmm

Surely morgue employees learn to recognise dead people after a few hundred examples?

"Your foster parents are dead" because, well, are you sure?

Mozilla moots open source web OS for mobiles

dotdavid
Alert

Considering how long it took to make the Firefox Mobile app...

...I wouldn't expect this to be ready to use before, say, 2020.

Utah cops baffled in case of mysterious anonymous cuffee

dotdavid
Joke

Maybe he has a really silly name

Just sayin...

Microsoft hit with lawsuit in Kinect tech spat

dotdavid
Thumb Down

Patents

When the patent lawyers wage war it's the innovation that dies.

Google grabs facial-recognition 'ware firm

dotdavid
Facepalm

Fine

...except someone you know could always come along and take a photo of you, then tag you without you even needing to be *on* the internet.

I think that's what makes this so creepy. Alas the "shut your eyes and the problem will go away" solution doesn't really work.

dotdavid
Paris Hilton

Don't Google already have this?

PIcasa seems to detect faces more-or-less OK. It is still a bit creepy though.

Paris because she can detect fac... er, just because.

RIM workforce decimated: 2,000 jobs slashed

dotdavid
Facepalm

Redundant redundancies

Well it's obvious what happened to RIM. The inmates must have taken over the asylum years ago.

Dixons store to sell Samsung 10in tablet early

dotdavid
Thumb Up

Yup

I'm really hoping the AndyPad (and AndyPad Pro, which still comes in under £200) will be decent and enough of a success to kick-start the market for non-Apple fondleslabs.

In the meantime, a netbook is the way forward for 99% of users I think.

Beeb to fund ad-mungous Local TV for local people

dotdavid
FAIL

Consumption of local news

"Apparently, today, ninety per cent of us regularly consume local news of some sort,"

Oh yes. Sometimes I accidently read a few sentences of our local rag while I'm transporting it to the recycling bin where it lives, and find out that Mrs Smith has lost her cat again and some local oiks have sprayed graffiti on a derilict local pub.

Engaging it is not. Plus the quality of the letters page makes me wonder whether the schools around here are that good after all...

Virgin Tweets a sorry for TiVo series link snafu

dotdavid
Thumb Down

Woohoo indeed.

Hmm, sounds like a typically-Virgin response to genuine concerns. They're all about their trendy informal branding nowadays.

The TiVo thing looked interesting until I realised it was inexplicably tied to Virgin Media. Could I buy the TiVo box seperately and hook it up to Freeview or Sky if I no longer wanted my Virgin subscription? Er... no. OK, so having bought the box surely I wouldn't need to pay more of a subscription charge to Virgin? Er... no again.

As I'm already stuck with them for 12 months after getting a HD box upgrade without realising that tied me into another 12 month contract with them (I double-checked afterwards, and there was no mention of a new contract from the pages I signed up from) I can't see myself ever signing up for this sort of thing from them.

'There's too much climate change denial on the BBC'

dotdavid
Thumb Up

Absolutely

I've always been ambivilent towards the whole AGW argument, but I can see the attraction of "going green" in other ways.

1) Energy-efficient lightbulbs and other devices save me money on my electricity bill.

2) Better insulation does the same for my heating bills.

3) Less petrol/diesel cars around will mean less pollution on my way to work (although perhaps only if we have similarly "green" power stations).

4) Recycling lets my council sell some of my household waste, supposedly subsidising it a little (not sure if I *quite* believe the council's leaflets with this, but whatever).

Saying not doing this sort of thing will cause the sky to fall on my head isn't as good a motivation, IMHO. They need to find a better banner to rally behind.

HTC loses prelim patent ruling to Apple, takes stock hit

dotdavid
Trollface

Steve?

Is that you?

Vote now for the juiciest LOHAN backronym

dotdavid
Happy

Poutine?

Any chance of having a Parmo instead? I think I'd much prefer that.

Although a parmo-poutine combo wouldn't be sniffed at.

Moto cold shoulders upgrade-hungry Xoom users

dotdavid
Thumb Up

Forget about the Xoom

Get an Asus Transformer instead. They're excellent and a bit cheaper.

Plus they got Honeycomb 3.1 in a timely fashion and it's looking like they're getting 3.2 soon too - Asus seem to actually understand their market.

dotdavid
FAIL

I gotta ask

...why is a wifi tablet regionally-restricted at all? It's not as if it's an operator-specific version in each country. My OH's Transformer got Android 3.1 when everyone else with a Transformer did.

After reading this I don't think I'll buy any moto products, their phones are equally complaint-inducing from what I've heard.

Google gears up to give tablet makers Android 3.2

dotdavid
FAIL

Asus already have it...

...as they're testing a build for the Transformer now.

Well, according to Twitter, which is probably a bit more conclusive than some anonymous tipster.

https://twitter.com/#!/ASUS/status/91252492712677376

If Asus have it I bet the others do.

Fail because your mole seems to be a bit out of the loop.

BlackBerry-style LG Android phone outed

dotdavid

Third party?

It may be worth trying out one of the third party keyboards - most of them are more forgiving than the backported Gingerbread or other stock keyboards.

dotdavid
Thumb Up

Professional or not...

...£160 SIM-free will appeal to the txting kids, I think.

HP TouchSmart 610 touchscreen all-in-one PC

dotdavid
Thumb Down

How Much?!

£1200?! For a family computer?! You could get a hell of a Dell for your family for that price! ;-)

Dinner Spinner

dotdavid
Facepalm

iOS Heritage

"The icing on the cake is the app's iOS heritage, which shines through at every turn - it’s simply a pleasure to look at and play with even if nothing ends up in’t pot."

In my experience, "iOS heritage" often means "we couldn't be bothered to work out how to create menus in Android apps, so we put hundreds of unnecessary buttons on screen instead".

Stieg Larsson: Oxfam's number one best seller

dotdavid
Thumb Up

Exactly

Greater sales of new books will mostly correlate with greater sales of used books as, well, there are more of them about.

Apple v Samsung: Jobs strikes back

dotdavid
Meh

*Yawn*

These legal shenanigans are getting tiring. I think I'll ignore the whole thing until a judge actually says something that's binding on one or both Samsung and Apple.

Insider says doom looms at RIM

dotdavid
Thumb Up

I was gonna post the exact same thing

There is a certain degree of karmic effect, methinks, for Lawsuits in Motion.

Travelodge hacked, investigating

dotdavid
Meh

"Hotel chain's customers aggrieved"

...yeah, but to be fair they mainly were before the hack.

After a series of incredibly bad experiences with them I avoid them wherever I can. Lenny Henry's favourite lot are much better, and often not much more expensive.

ITV player streams onto Android

dotdavid
FAIL

Adobe Air?

Sorry, not interested. Good to see ITV has learnt from the BBC's mistakes forcing iPlayer users to have to have flash... no, wait, they haven't learnt have they!