Posts by richard_w

Hey, Brits. Your Google data is leaving the EU before you are: Hoard to be shipped from Ireland to US next month

Google is concerned about double jeopardy.

If the UK is still subject to the ECJ and also any data protection rules the UK might enforce after the end of 2020 it might be sued in 2 jurisdictions. (UK and EU)

UK citizens have little protection against their data being used by big government anyway. The investigatory powers act allows GCHQ lots of power. The ECJ think the act is illegal.

At the end of the day, I suspect that the only way a UK citizen can protect their data is to remove it from Google (Facebook et al)

EE unveils shoebox-sized router to boost Brit bumpkin broadband

But it delivers much more than the 18mb I get with fttc. I can get 30mb to my smartphone surely it must be cheaper to beef up 4g infrastructure than to lay fibre to the door

It makes you wonder why openreach are so keen to dig up pavements when you can get 100mB with 4g and 5g will improve dramatically on that

Brit market harshing Vodafone's buzz as sales slump continues

I just moved from Vodafone to ee having been with Vodafone for 18 years. The sim only package deal was so much better than Vodafone could offer. In addition ee has WiFi calling for my phone which makes it usable in my house.

If you then throw in the indifferent attitude of their call centre I had no choice. I actually wanted to stay with Vodafone but their poor service and uncompetitive package made it impossible.

I even emailed the ceo and got back a reply from a minion full of platitudes.

It's not surprising they are losing business.

BA CEO blames messaging and networks for grounding

In BA's case there were 2 things which mitigated against simplification. A lack of understanding of the individual architectural components (for instance there was a mission critical PC system in many airports around the world which exactly one person in the airline understood). If it went wrong, they put him on a plane (first of course), to fix it.

The other was the fact that many of the systems dated from the 1980s or possibly earlier, and had been changed repeatedly. The only way to fix this was to re architect them. Not quick, expensive, and gave no bang for your buck, unless you improved the functionality from the business perspective.

I dealt with BA as a supplier and I also worked there. As a supplier, the IT department was super fast to blame us when there was a hardware problem, but refused point blank to take the steps which would have avoided the problem in the first place. Because it would have cost more, or because they did not need to do what we suggested on their small systems (as opposed to multi terabyte enterprise database systems).

When I worked for them it became apparent that the multiplicity of disparate systems all of which had to communicate to keep the airline running were an accident waiting to happen.

Re: There is Testing it and there is Testing it

Having worked there, I strongly suspect that there is not enough confidence in the DR capability to try it out in anger under full load, for fear of exactly this

Euro Parliament VOTES to BREAK UP GOOGLE. Er, OK then

so use duckduckgo if you must use a different search engine. No ads there crappy searches too

Same old iPad? NO. The new 'soft SIMs' are BIG NEWS

Can't quite see how it will make things cheaper if Apple takes a cut of the carriers cash. Also, it will be quite some time before it's useful in the UK if ever. It's not in carriers interests to promote churn. So a sim which does exactly that and apple takes a cut as well sounds like bad news for the operators. For the users, changing a plan is not something you do very much.

If on the other hand, you could roam in the UK for instance without extra costs, that would be a good thing. One day, mobile comms will be like electricity. The grid is run by one company and the suppliers do billing etc.

Apple: SO sorry for the iOS 8.0.1 UPDATE BUNGLE HORROR

Re: Maids a milking

I dislike both Apple and microsoft, but I have to say that Microsoft does know how to write software which does not break. All Apple had to do was fix a small issue in what is tiny compared to Windows, and has limited functionality compared to windows which for one thing runs on a plethora of platforms, and can attach hundreds of i/o devices.

And they screw it up

Google patent: THROAT TATTOO with lie-detecting mobe microphone built-in

Thinking outside the box a bit, this idea would be useful for hearing impaired people. If you are hard of hearing, a major issue is speech in noisy environments. Various devices are around but they are big and clumsy. You could imagine an environment where the throat microphone signal is transmitted via a smartphone to another bluetooth hearing aid. You need the smartphone to run an app to provide better quality speech etc.

Nokia: Keep codin' for Symbian and Qt!

Downward Spiral

Elop has a mountain to climb. He comes from a bureaucratic environment into an even more bureaucratic environment, and is trying to turn Nokia into Apple. There are probably 20 different committees who are all trying to stop him.

This in turn means that any phone with windows on will take Nokia longer to produce than he hoped.

Add that to Microsoft's inability to produce decent software in a timely way, and the restrictions they place on partners who want to make phones using their software, and it may be years before we see a nokia phone running windows 7.

Possible 2 years. This is a lifetime in this industry. Meantime what does Nokia sell?. They have no option but to continue to develop and support Symbian.

But who will buy it? and will the symbian developers (who have not been made redundant) be prepared to stay before the burning platform sinks? When you RIF staff, its never the superstars. There is always a role for them, but in this case the better Nokia developers are currently voting with their feet. Developers are delicate souls and these ones don't like the closed nature of Windows and microsoft.

All this spells trouble for Nokia.

It begins to look as if Elops decision was about as bad a decision as could be made.

Nokia will continue to lose market share dramatically to Apple and Android platforms at the high profit margin smartphone end, and will continue to see erosion of their position at the low end from cheap mobiles made in china and other places east.

It may be too late to go android, it probably was not the right decision anyway(although less bad than windows phone 7).

If I were he (god forbid), I would run an internal competition between windows and erm... well an OS they already own. And give several sackfuls of dosh to the winner, providing that the winner was of prime time quality , oh, and I would set a time limit. Dont know how long because I don't know their numbers, but it would be less than 2 years, thats for damn sure. Remember what is needed, a good phone with good app. capability running an OS with good development potentialcome to think of it, android fits that bill. Nokia have always made phones which work and work well, android satisfies the criteria, but is a bit rough around the edges. maybe it's not too late

Even better, make the competition between Windows and Android. Nothing like backing 2 horses, and Nokia is big enough

The main issue for Elop is getting the bureaucracy under control