Re: Buyer beware
Egypt uses whatever DPI tech Virgin Media use.
I overheard a guy selling it to the Egyptian military in a Cairo cafe in 2011...
65 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jun 2007
This is OFCOM's stupid written response:
"In terms of our role, our regulations stating that one should be in place relate to Service Providers that supply and charge end users (customers) for the service rather than Openreach.
Whilst I am unsure as to the nature of your complaint, I should explain that a consumer’s contract is with their provider and as such, they have no relationship with Openreach. In the event that a there is a problem with their phone or broadband service, or an issue about the work that has been done at their premises by an engineer, they should raise this with their service provider.
The provider has a duty of care to have a duty of care to manage their customer’s complaint, ensure that Openreach are doing what they can to sort out the problem and update their customers as things progress. Their service provider can liaise with Openreach as necessary.
If a consumer remains unhappy with the way their provider is handling the issue, they may wish to follow their provider’s complaints process. Details of this should be shown on their provider’s website, or can be obtained from their customer services department directly."
So, OFCOM don't understand basic principal-agent theory. Given that BTOR is the monopoly copper provider, what means of compellence does a end-user customer have if they have to go through an intermediary to whom BTOR withholds information?
I dare anyone in a major urban area to beat 126 days and counting to get a line plant conducted in London.
Moved into a new build in an existing housing estate which already has BT FTTC and Virgin Media. Virgin Media's forbidden for at least 12 months by the housing association, so we're stuck with OpenReach. I spent two weeks trying to get Sky to place an order, but unfortunately they don't understand the process, even when I send them the OpenReach manual explaining how to do it.
Next, I place an order with BT Retail and they book an engineer in for one month's time. I wait, and they don't show up for a morning appointment. BT call centre tells me the engineer is running late, and to stay in for the afternoon. Still no show, phone BT again and they say "there are no notes in the system....ooh one just came in...engineer said there's no cable so couldn't do install." I ask why the previous call centre staff operator lied, which led to denials from BT, with promises of an engineer in a few days and compensation. All lies, obviously.
Nothing happens for a few days. I phone back, and they book another appointment in a months time. Engineer does show up, spends two hours, then concludes there are no cables and leaves.
I phone BT and ask why OpenReach didn't do a line plant, to which there's no proper answer. Am left hanging ever since. Repeated tweets at them were the only way to get status updates, which were usually of the sort "work to be done - update next week".
I start contacting the housing association via my local councillor - they tell me OpenReach were supposed to do a line plant as soon as residents started placing orders - instead OpenReach just happily booked engineers to go visit households where they hadn't laid copper for months. Housing Association and I both start trying to contact OpenReach to no avail for several months. I write a letter to Sir Michael Rake and get unhelpful calls from "Executive Level Complaints", or "Executive Pass the Buck" as it should be known.
Finally, the local councillor tries to contact them on a political level, at which point OpenReach start blaming the council because they couldn't get a permit because of existing gas works. Though, it should be noted that the gas works started to take place several months after OpenReach were supposed to be completing works.
In the meantime, OpenReach continue to book engineer appointments for lines which can't be connected, who then never show up. I've stopped waiting in for them as well.
Argh. I was one of those accounts. I've taken Twiter potshots at Israel, Palestine, China and the US. I am, if nothing, an equal opportunities critic. I'm pretty certain the IDF has no interest in me at all, thanks.
I've pretty much disabled Java on my end, and was only using Twitter API clients when the password was reset.
I'm pretty certain that the hack, if it involved Java, must have happened on Twitter's end, which meant a few NoSQL shards were captured. How else would they get the salt and hashed passwords?
"The long-term climate history provided by the JRI ice core shows that natural millennial-scale climate variability has resulted in warming on the eastern Antarctic Peninsula that has been ongoing for a number of centuries and had left ice shelves in this area vulnerable to collapse during the recent phase of rapid warming. If warming continues in this region, as is suggested by its attribution in part to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations7, 23, then temperatures will soon exceed the stable conditions that persisted in the eastern Antarctic Peninsula for most of the Holocene. The association between atmospheric temperature and ice-shelf stability in the past demonstrates that as warming continues ice-shelf vulnerability is likely to progress farther southwards along the Antarctic Peninsula coast to affect ice shelves that have been stable throughout the Holocene, and may make them particularly susceptible to changes in oceanographic forcing"
I think what Microsoft is attempting to do is this:
WM 6.5 as natural successor to Windows CE, since this is what faces competition from Android as an embedded OS platform.
WM7 is more mobile centric, possibly with less backwards compatibility, and not designed to encompass both mobile phones and embedded applications.
Open access version of paper is available at http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~amatoe/
El Reg's spin makes two major errors:
1. Confusing local trend studies with global trends.
This paper specifically deals with the North Atlantic. The authors clearly state that temperatures are higher than those predicted by CO2 forcing models by a further 0.3C.
2. Confusing short-term with long-term
The paper specifically talks about decadal variations, not the long-term CO2 forcing.
@Time:
Here's the last few paragraphs in full -
"Over the last 30-years temperatures in other tropical ocean basins have been rising steadily, but at a slower rate than the Atlantic (31). At the same time projections of surface temperature increases under a doubled carbon dioxide climate suggest that the Atlantic should be warming at a rate slower than the other observations (32). We suggest this apparent disconnect between observations and models may be due to the influence of Atlantic dust cover. Our results imply that since dust plays a role in modulating tropical North Atlantic Ocean temperature, projections of these temperatures under various global warming scenarios by general circulation models should account for long-term changes in dust loadings. This is especially critical as studies have estimated a reduction in Atlantic dust cover of 40-60% under a doubled carbon dioxide climate (33), which, based on model runs with an equivalent reduction of the mean dust forcing, could result in an additional 0.3-0.4°C warming of the northern tropical Atlantic."
From the conclusion (behind the paywall):
Don't want to copy and paste too much to avoid copyright restrictions, but the final sentence reads:
"...a reduction in Atlantic dust cover of 40-60% under a doubled carbon dioxide climate (33), which, based on model runs with an equivalent reduction of the mean dust forcing, could result in an additional 0.3-0.4°C warming of the northern tropical Atlantic."
I.e. The Northen tropical atlantic is warmer than that predicted by the Global Circulation Models.
The end product of the DiDA, or the Diploma in Digital Applications is the e-portfolio. Specifically, the e-portfolio is a website.
It's not a matter of resaving the documents - the teacher has fundamentally misunderstood the requirements of the course. Hence the need for evening classes for the students involved.
You do, from time to time, come across articles like that plagiarized piece of nonsense. It's important to recognize that this problem isn't limited to postmodernist journals, like the infamous Sokal Social Text affair.
I've done Computer Science to masters level, and I don't think I've once been assigned a nonsensical paper. I'm now doing a degree in politics and sociology, and the quality is still high. The choice of course materials invariably reflect on the course designer, and it seems that the damage limitation began from the beginning - with new levels of damage limitation introduced as each preceding one failed. I.E. Epic fail!
I wonder if there's anything in the quantity of nonsensical papers being indirectly proportional to the age of the discipline involved. Postmodernist social theory and computer science (separate to mathematics) are similarly young disciplines. Also, note the wide variety between mathematics-heavy computer science courses taught at Russell Group universities, and the business-oriented approach of new universities. Computer Science is simply not well institutionalised, but the bar would probably be higher if it was.
Paris, because she's jealous of Britney's PhD in semiconductor physics (google it).
Sony must be ramping up efforts to get the Xperia out before Xmas, as it's the iphone that those of us who prefer tactile responses and open software ecosystems are waiting for. Orange has always been a strong Windows Mobile shop due to the SPV brand. Apple might be looking to block attempts by carriers looking to punt the Xperia as a serious competitor.