Posts by b-a-r-k-i-n-g-m-a-d

Apple iPhone owners are the most loyal smartphone buyers

My iPhone just works - it's had the odd software bug along the way but the whole experience has been a happy one. My old 3GS got a slight crack (and I mean 'slight') in the plastic near the dock connector - mentioned it to the guy in the Apple store and he arranged a brand new one for me.

Compared to colleagues / friends with Androids they seem to 'moan' a lot more about problems, not being able to upgrade etc. I want a phone to 'work' and it does - I tried Android on a second handset but for me it just was not the same. It's nothing about the look / design of the handset - it's just about it being reliable and easy to use.

Production electric motorcycle breaks 100 mile range

"I've seen three Priuses involved in RTA's when running in Leccy mode. "

What a pointless statement. Perhaps you have seen 50 Priuses involved in RTA's when running on petrol or 50,000 RTA's involving other cars running on petrol.

I'm not convinced you can say for sure that making an electric car louder would have avoided those RTA's.

RIM hopes to distract punters with free pretties

They may as well post out Apple store vouchers ;)

You know it's got bad when they are paying you to use their device. I bet they wish they had spent more on their network than gimmicks like this. For many people it will be too late - we want reliability not a few games.

They may as well post out Apple store vouchers ;)

Ten reasons why you shouldn't buy an iPhone 5

Samsung.

Perhaps Apple should just buy Samsung and use them to manufacture iPhones.

Nobody has any idea about new pension thing happening

Phasing them out...

The problem is many people start a pension far too late in life and £100 put in 10 years ago is (typically) going to be worth a lot more than £100 put in today.

I'd guess most people need to be putting in 15-20%+ of their income into a pension - although by the time you get tax relief and some employers will match your contribution the actual cost out of your pay will be much less.

You can expect to put in 0% now and enjoy anywhere-near the same standard of living when you retire and don't rely on a state pension - the fact is they can't afford to pay for them with people living longer etc. My guess is these reforms are the first part in phasing them out.

Apple girds loins for 'obscene iPad sales surge'

Pointless.

"but they'll also show you there is a market for $99 versions from HP."

What a pointless comment when HP were selling them below cost - you may as well say there is a market for £50 notes at £20.

Osun MushRoom Green Zero USB charger

Fail.

This will result in more charge cycles (or partial ones) so will actually wear your battery out quicker = fail.

Most smartphone AC adapters will charge the phone then run the phone off the AC adapter thus keeping the battery at 100% and resulting in fewer charge cycles. This one charges to 100% - then your phone will discharge overnight - you wake in the morning and have to charge it up again.

Sky wins TV riot battle

Media fanning the flames!

Pretty certain the media made all this 'worse' - how many extra people went along to spectate or join in 'as it was on telly' and not once did I hear a newsreader calling them "a mob of miserable, thieving scumbags who should all be dumped on Svalbard (with no weapons and sprayed with polar bear pheremones)".

Energy scavenger eats leftover wireless signals

Emergency...

"I've had for 2 years the idea that slowly accumulating WiFi energy would be a good way to reverse the normal trend of an emergency torch to STOP working after a while (the classic "a torch is a case with which to carry dead batteries" symptom). As LEDs use a lot less power there ought to be enough there to drive at least one simple HiBri LED."

Those crank torches are an option - but mostly they are pretty cr@p.

Just make life easy and fit either hybrid NiMH rechargeable cells (like Sanyo Eneloop) or better still Energiser Lithium (primary) cells - the latter has a shelf life of 5-10+ years. In an emergency do you really want to be cranking a torch for a couple of minutes use.

Keep some spare cells handy and remember to check / recharge it every year.

Apple’s long divorce from Samsung near final

F 'em in the A(5).

F 'em in the A(5)

Whether or not Samsung helped develop the iPhone - they did it for Apple as Apple's customer (forget all this 'partner' b'lox) - Apple pay Samsung - Apple are the 'customer' - you don't go copying your customers products and selling them yourself in direct competition.

If that were the case you would happily have an external design studio for a new Ford car - designing it for Ford (and being paid by Ford) but then hawking the same design (or one very similar) to other manufacturers or making them themselves.

If you ask me it's Samsubg being greedy here!

Femtocells at tipping point: Don't want to become also-RANs

Get one now...

"I don't like the idea of paying for a mobile contract, and then because I've a poor signal being expected to pay for my own cell and then pay for the broadband connection on top of that. What's in it for the end user?"

For many people the quality of signal 'indoors' is never going to be perfect - I have tried O2 (awful - worked by one window), Orange (no signal anywhere), Three (no signal) and Vodafone (1-2 bars). Vodafone worked perfectly outside and most of the others got a signal at least.

Got a Vodafone Suresignal - get 5 bars all around the house and a reliable 3G signal = happy. Surely it uses a tiny amount of bandwidth but it's insignificant compared to the benefit.

The reality is without thousands more masts (at huge cost to the networks and therefore passed on to us) many people would not get a reliable signal 'indoors'. Get a £50 box from Vodafone and it's solved (assuming you are on Vodafone) - equivalent of adding just £2-3 a month over a 18-24 month contract (and of course you can continue to use it after that) - pretty small price to pay for being able to use your phone fully / anywhere at home / office.

Guess you are saturating your link?

"Well, at least until I start uploading photos to my Skydrive account (other clouds are available), then the poor little thing loses synch."

Guess you are saturating your link and the unit decides it could not offer a reliable connection. Most routers these days have some form of QoS built in - so it's less likely to be an issue. I have never experienced it but my router does have QoS / traffic prioritisation.

NHS IT boss walks out and steps back

Public sector!!

Be like someone I know - get made redundant from one part of the NHS with a generous voluntary redundancy (VR) package to take up a job doing effectively the same just 3 weeks later - on more money!

If you get VR from the public sector you should not be able to get another public sector job for at least 2 years or they should be able to claw back the VR payment.

Public sector!!

Dropbox security fubar infuriates customers

Encrypted or not...

"If they got access to my account then they could have downloaded an encrypted truecrypt file"

Encrypted or not I would still rather they did not get 'access' to the file at all.

Has UK gov lost the census to Lulzsec?

What is surprising...

What is surprising (or depressing) is how easily people belived the census data had been taken - i.e. no trust in the people holding this data.

Apple, Google, Microsoft seek gargantuan tax break

Taxes too high.

When taxes are too high people will look to evade them. It's been shown that when taxes have dropped - tax revenues have risen - whether that is due to less evasion or growth - who knows but who cares?

Apple pulls app after dev publishes users' PINs

Is anyone actually surprised?

Is anyone actually surprised?

It's the same as all the people who use 'password' or 'letmein' or 'qwerty' etc. as their passwords.

8m health records go walkabout

Truecrypt anyone?

Have none of these muppets heard of TrueCrypt??

Facebook value hits $100bn, to go public in Q1 2012

Pr0n...

"Face it, Pr0n is the only money maker in the inter-tubes, the rest hang off its revenues."

I have heard otherwise - there is so much available for free people are not prepared to 'pay' for it.

Inside the 'funky' history of Groupon's biggest shareholder

Don't fancy it myself...

So let's see - they are making a big loss - they have loads of BIG competitors entering the market (or are already here) and most of the offers appear to be cr@p... they have no real USP - can't see them lasting that long - basically until they have burned through all the IPO cash.

Thumbs down.

Reg hack cast adrift as Illuminati Online goes off-line

WHY?

"I'm in the process of setting up a Acer Revo R3600 as a little CentOS server just for email and stuff - nothing major.

I already have my own domain, just need to learn some of this Linux malarky and I'll be done :)"

But why... you pay a company to professionally host your domain and email - I have been paying about £4 a month for years. I get 10+ mailboxes (for family etc.) so it works out at about 50p per user per monht = bargain.

Instead you suggest leaving a dedicated box running - probably costing at least as much in electricity alone and have to be bothered with maintenance, updates, upgrades etc.

Plus unless you know exactly what you are doing (!!) it's a massive security risk.

Oh really?

2. With webmail, all your e-mail archives are in the cloud. You don't have to worry about backing them up, and they're accessible from anywhere. And storage is effectively unlimited.

>> Until they lose your mail and you have no backup.

3. Likewise your contacts.

>> Ditto.

4. Because your contacts aren't stored locally, you're protected from viral-emails (until somebody finds a way to do this with webmail)

>> Unless someone hacks your Yahoo account as happens all the time.

California set to impose 'Amazon Tax'

... but you could be bothered!

[cant be bothered to spell check this, so all spelling mistakes are my lazyness]

... but you could be bothered to type that instead ;o

Rumbled benefits cheats offer sensational excuses

Get a job...

"These excuses are outrageous, of course they are, but they represent a tiny fraction of benefit claimants"

Anyone claiming benefits should ensure they are entitled to them and if something like unemployment should be seeking 'employment' so they are not a drain on the rest of us. Unemployment benefits should be short term - even time limited - people should be given the chance to find a new job / retrain but it's unfair on the 'rest of us' to keep paying for them to not work.

He is a benefits claimant and I work.

"He is a benefits claimant and I work."

If unemployment benefit - tell him it's about time he got a job - you go to work to pay for him not to.

Ofcom awards fastest 3G mobe-data crown to O2

In the real world...

In the real world it's coverage that matters - no point having 3Mbit/s next to a cell tower but no signal where you live. I travel around the country quite a lot and have a SIM for each network - in my (rather non scientific) tests I find Vodafone and Three are typically the best for overall coverage and speed. T-Mobile is next and O2 and Orange the worst. Orange coverage is generally ok but often much slow - i.e. basic 3G rather than 3.5G.

Samsung must cough up Android prototypes to Apple

Maybe...

Maybe Apple should take some of it's cash mountain and build it's own flash fabrication plants and two fingers up to Samsung.

Middle East questions get under RIM boss’s skin

Denial?

He didn't deny it...

Ten... on-ear headphones

Sub £50 - really...?

The review says you can get the Grado SR60i's for under £50 by shopping around - all the new ones I saw were more like £80-90?

Ofcom gives shonky Sitefinder Google Maps boost

'no teeth'

Know what you mean about 'no teeth' - they should be made to turn off any transmitter NOT listed.

Hackers make off with TripAdvisor's membership list

FFS

FFS - security I've heard of it!

Play.com: Only customer emails lost in data breach

Of course this was not a one off...

Of course this was not a one off - their customer list is now in the hands of virus writers / spammers who will surely pass it on to others - so expect to receive more of these.

Very annoyed - just asked Play to 'remove' my account - will be interesting if they do!

BlackBerry users get free remote wipe, backup and location

iPhone has done this for how long?

iPhone has done this for how long?

RIM should just stick to providing software / email services - should just do a Blackberry client for Android, iOS etc.

London's Olympic clock claps out

Omega not impressed...

I have an Omega Seamaster (self-winder) - been back to them twice now (for 6-8 weeks at a time!) and still runs slow - guess based on the Olympic clock I should be glad it runs at all.

WD works on hybrid drives

Super cap?

So does anyone know for sure if they do include a super cap - I could not find anything definite that said they could.

They appear to write to the hard drive first and more frequently used data to the SSD so it may not need a super capacitor?

Tesco heralds 2011 as YEAR OF ANDROID

Perhaps Apple users spend more...

Perhaps Apple users spend more money on apps than Android user. 30% is quite a lot for subscriptions but from what I remember that is only when purchased in-app or via the Apple app store.

Apples and oranges...

Going on about cost differences between Android and iPhone is a bit like comparing a Ford Focus to a Mercedes S-Class by saying 'they both have 4 wheels and get you from A to B' - if you don't want an iPhone don't get one - simple.

Criticising people who choose to buy an iPhone due to it's cost is just as bad as someone with an iPhone telling you your choice is because you are too poor to afford one.

My iPhone gets used far more than any other phone I have owned - it saves me a huge amount of time and is worth it for that alone.

Boss leaves Buying Solutions, writing on the wall?

Sinking ship?

As title.

Ofcom okays Derren Brown psychic-baiting

Found it..

Found it... http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-investigates/episode-guide/series-12/episode-2