Posts by Jeff 8

Tesla’s Autopilot losing track of devs crashing out of 'leccy car maker

Compensate for bad weather

Do these self driving systems take into account the poor weather? If there is snow or ice on the ground, does it know this? Will it continue to take a corner at the speed limit, or will it slow down because the road conditions are bad? Do the sensors work in a white out where you can trust that you are staying in lane because the lanes are covered in snow, and yours eyes can't see more than 20ft in front of you.

I guess that comes down to common sense, and I would not let the car take full control in those conditions, but what if some do. They then not only risk their but those in another vehicle.

Brexit? Cutting the old-school ties would do more for Brit tech world

Missing the point

I think a lot of people who want out of Europe are not thinking about the economy and more about the social/cultural problems that are present in British society. Likewise those that want to stay in Europe are only thinking about the Economical benefits of Europe and are not taking into account the social impact that being in Europe brings.

Those that want out are seeing the impact it has on their lives from a social perspective. Those that want to stay in are happy with the current state and welcome the security/stability being in Europe offers.

As someone that grew up in Essex throughout my childhood, I had such amazing community experiences. I remember carnivals where the whole estate would get together to watch, and there wasn't as big as a worry of crime. Havering growing up was the safest London Borough. It's still a great place to live, but I now live in America and each year I go back to see my family I see the town of old gradually disappearing. Maybe you could attribute this to me now living in a different culture. But I see now the number of different languages being spoken in my home town and I can't help but think that those from different cultures have struggled to integrate into regular society and divides are now created. Those of wealth that wish to stay in are probably affluent enough that they don't see this social divide, so life in that respect is no different. Adapting to your host nations culture is the biggest problem for Europe, and in most cases I feel it is ignored.

The writer of this article sounds bitter to me. If his not happy then I think everyone in the country that is happy is glad you are leaving.

Girls outpace boys in US IT and engineering test

This made a headline because it was girls beating boys. Had it been the other way around, there would be no news.

I sense a changing of the tide and equality is moving in favour of females. You know that there isn't a problem with equality when articles like this never surface comparing genders.

Stop whining, America: Your LTE makes Europe look slow

Re: But at what cost?

The problem with T-Mobile in the US is that their coverage is very limited to the major metropolis areas. When you live in smaller towns, or visit smaller towns you are out of luck

Google signs up Sprint and T-Mobile to sell its cellphone plans – report

Republic Wireless

Republic Wireles offer this type of service already. Calls are routed over wifi when connected, and when you are not in a WIFI zone you use the Sprint Network. My wife has their Moto X phone and the service works well.

$5 a month and you can call, text and have unlimited data. Wifi only though

$10 a month you can call and text (unlimited), data is only available on wifi.

$25 a month you can call, text and have 3G data (unlimited).

$40 a month you can call, text and have 4G data (unlimited).

Way cheaper than many other providers and the service has been uninterrupted when changing between a wifi zone and mobile network.

It'll be interesting to see Googles pricing on the phones and service. With T Mobile too, I wonder if they will allow you to change sims. That would really get my attention.

Microsoft exams? Tough, you say? Pffft. 5-YEAR-OLD KID passes MCP test

I personally think it's amazing that the kid can read that well for a 5 year old. My son and nephew are both 5 and currently cannot read. They're not stupid either, it's just not that common for kids this age to read, but obviously there are a number that can too.

This kid could not only read the questions, but could also understand what they were asking. That in itself is amazing. The boys technical knowledge is irrelevant IMO, he's a smart lad. The certification he just achieved is going to be meaningless by the time he starts work, but the boy deserves an amazing amount of credit for what he achieved.

SLAPPING an iPhone out of a corporate drone's hand: You're not the only one who longs to do it

I think if they could have Active Directory authentication, and perhaps have a login prompt on the phone and full group policy integration, they would be onto a winner. No one will want to type in a username or password, so perhaps a schema update for allows for facial recognition to log in using the existing camera, or now have every Nokia phone have a fingerprint scanner and have all the users scan their finger prints for their network login.

The phones at the moment are very difficult to manage on a mass scale, especially considering they are no longer just a phone, but now have access to corporate email too among other things. The Apple configurator doesn't go far enough in terms of how much control you have as an administrator.

Second-gen Surface and Surface Pro rumored to be minor upgrades

I'm not sure what all the criticism of the Surface RT is about to be honest. I get the impression that people think it should be a full blown Windows 8 experience, but it's meant to be an easy to use tablet device. Just like iOS isn't a full blown OS like OSX, Windows RT isn't a full blown OS like Windows Pro. You can't install any application you want on a surface RT, but nor can you on iOS or Android. You're restricted to the App Store. If you want to install any application, then you choose Windows Pro, OSX or Linux. If anything Microsoft have upped all the others by offering a full blown operating system on a tablet. Yes it costs more, but you get more.

It's like me being mad that I can't access Entourage on the iOS platform when I can on OSX. They're different operating systems.

The worst thing Microsoft did with RT was not go the whole way and get rid of the option to go to the desktop and just make it the new metro GUI only.

Surface Pro is great but overkill for those that just want to check email, browse the web, look at some apps. The Surface does this equally as well as the iPad and Android devices.

Microsoft Surface Pro sales CANNIBALIZING Surface RT

Lower the price

I think for the tablet to succeed, they need to follow the console model and take a loss on the cost of the device and try and make the money back through the app store and possibly other software with the pro.

The iPad name is now synonymous with tablets, and it's not like other device haven't tried to break that. They need to lower the price by $100 - $150 for this venture to work. MS need to realize they're not the major game in town anymore, and they need to fight to get back their customers.

New vicious UEFI bootkit vuln found for Windows 8

Local Admin rights

This looked as though the command line had to be run as an administrator. If you take away the admin rights in the first place, your users should be fine right?

Tesla X e-SUV to sport monster touchscreen on the dash

I like it

I actually like the look of it. The first thing that struck me though, was how would I get out of the car in a tight parking space. The second thing was, where are the side/door mirrors?!

MasterCard joins Visa in pushing PINs into America

Have to sign with my US card

Every debit and credit card purchase I make has to be with a signature. I live in America, and it's possible it depends on the bank you are with how this works, but I believe in most cases a signature is always required. I don't know anyone where I live that has a chip and pin card.

When we come back to England to visit my family, our credit cards don't work here because they require a pin and we don't have a pin on the card. The stores don't accept the signature either, so we use my existing english bank account.

Some credit cards will ask me for a Zip code at the gas/petrol garage, but that is only exclusive to those places. Stores only require signatures.

Why I'd pay Apple more to give iPad factory workers a break

If it was built in the West

I'd be willing to pay more if it was built in the West, but if it is being built in the emerging markets then no I am not.

Sounds harsh, but we have to look out for our own. Our economies are becoming weaker because places like China will accept low wages. If they are going to earn a developed countries wage, then I would want it to be built in a developed country. Jobs are being lost for cheaper products and if they are not cheap, then why have jobs taken away from nations like the UK and US.

Microsoft's uphill battle to push Win8 tabs into punters' paws

@gerryG

Sounds like you're throwing your toys out of the pram.

Good summarization though!

@Hans 1

You obviously don't administer a network and are probably one of the usualy suspects who I constantly have to fix their PC for, because they are:

a: useless with technology

b: stupid

c: both

Group policy is excellent, and when you have hackers on the inside of a domain trying to get to data they shouldn't, group policy becomes one of our best defence mechanisms.

Problem with not being on a domain. How do you update the software 10000 machines that are in a workgroup? I can do it pretty quickly and easily in a domain.

You'd never get anything done at my work!

I think I would like a Windows 8 tablet

I work for a school system and all the teachers want are tablets. Providing every teacher with an iPad would be a network management nightmare. We have a bunch of iPad's for a Special Education program and each one has to managed individually. They were purchased without consent from the technology department, but we now have to manage them.

I am hoping and I am sure this will happen, that a Windows 8 tablet can be joined to a domain and controlled via group policy. We could then roll out tablet devices extremely easily for all our staff.

This is where Microsoft can win and are winning in the business sector. The iPad will probably continue to be the main player in the consumer end, but in the business market I see only one winner and that's Microsoft unless Apple get their game face on and provide admins with better controls for a network.

I believe Microsoft will overtake Android though in the consumer end and will be number 2 in the tablet market. There just seems something missing with the Android platform.

Mars, Moon, solar system could be littered with alien artifacts

Maybe we are more advanced than we think

The assumption always seems to be that other civilizations are at the same level as us or perhaps even more advanced. What if other civilizations are no further along than we were say 200, 500, 1000 years ago. They may not even be sending out messages into space.