Posts by monkeyfish 513 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2012
Or just maybe the designers will think of this and all them to do something like, oh I don't know, split ranks and allow you in if you use your indicators to indicate that you would like to. Of course that would necessitate the use of an indicator before manoeuvring, which some road users do seem incapable of.
Why don't they let you see the password instead of the ******? A check box to see it would be handy, since most of the time I'm at home with no one looking over my shoulder, and most passwords are hijacked remotely.
My advice to anyone having difficultly remembering passwords is to have them written in a book next to the computer. Seriously, if someone is sat in your house in front of your computer all bets are off anyway. Obviously this advice does not extend to keeping that book in a laptop bag or your pocket... But most of the time people are sat in their houses online, even if they are using a laptop/tablet.
Depends where you get stuck. If stuck on 2.3 plenty of apps don't get updated. Even 4.0 seems to have more app updates that break them now (I'm very wary of updating anything that currently works). Security patches? Pah! You're out of luck if you get stuck on anything other than the latest. We'll have to wait and see if MS gives 8.1 to all 8 devices, and if Moto give any updates at all (they say they will, but they've said that before along with plenty of other droid manufactures that back pedalled as soon as you bought it).
In reply:
1) As previously pointed out, Nokia are still their own company, albeit with several billion in the bank from selling their phone division to MS. There are still 3 other divisions of Nokia (a company that has been around for ~130 years), that are still quite profitable.
2) I would prefer a European alternative to these services not only for privacy, but because I find European products generally better than American ones.
3) Who said anything about the company crown jewels? I was talking about personal services, your company should probably pay for it (of which there are several EU companies to choose from).
4) To take on Google/MS/Facebook in the consumer space you would need a well known brand that people generally trust. I think there is still a lot of fondness for Nokia in Europe, so they would have a fighting chance.
In the end it comes down to trust, do you trust Google/MS/Facebook? I'd be more inclined to trust an EU company, especially a Finnish one.
The European tech industry has failed to produce viable alternatives, he claimed. Even in cases where a tech firm makes it big - such as Skype - these firms get bought by Microsoft or other US tech giants, Hypponen concluded.
Where are the EU alternatives for email, cloud storage, and social networking? None of the ones I've found a rival for Google, MS, and Facebook. Maybe Nokia with all their billions could invest in it? They already have maps after all, and they used to make phones, so they're not unfamiliar with consumer interfaces...
They'd be better off investing in trying to figure out what the "next big thing" is going to be. Rather than waste money on an almost entirely saturated market that has only 3 (count them) profitable handset makers. Maybe there is room for an Android style affair where they sell their software* to samsung et al, but for goodness sake don't get back into the handset business.
* Nokia maps for android/ios would be a good start.
...and what happened to the horse and cart industry when narrow boats came along? ...and what happened to the narrow boat industry when trains came? ... and what happened to the train industry when trucks became commonplace? ... and so what do you think will happen to the truck industry with this? Hint: People moved on, some lost, some won, and within a couple of generations all was forgotten.
Make the inside of late-night taxi's waterproof. Upon such an 'incident' the automatic sprinkler/foam jet/massive hair-dryer system would switch on. Would clean your clothes too. Thinking about it, just get in after a boozy work-night at 6am, vomit, and let the car drop you off at work fully showered, fully awake, and vowing to never do it again.
1) There is a video of it happening in reality.
2) Devoting all of a processor to driving one car is different to splitting it between driving several cars (all your in-game opponents) and graphically displaying all of it on your TV.
3) It is not AI. It would not pass a Turing test. It follows a bunch of algorithms to tell it what to do under certain circumstances. If it is in a new circumstance it will slow down and work out what to do, or simply stop altogether. If it is so difficult to drive a car, why are 17 year olds allowed to do it? Or for that matter, every moron you've ever met. In fact, driving is so easy that after a few years you stop thinking about it and just do it. What is so hard to believe about a computer learning to do it instead?
On the other hand, the automated car could know you've been waiting at a busy junction 10 mins already, and let you out. In the UK, we also flash our lights once or twice to mean 'you can go', and 'thank-you'. Though on the continent some countries toot their horn to mean the same thing (over here it means 'get out of my way, you prick', or alternatively 'sod off, you prick'). So some localisation may be needed, or an entirely different signal, say, a green light on the centre of the grill or dashboard? All solvable problems.
Snow? I think you''l find the ones being worked on by Volvo in Sweden will probably have to handle snow at some point. As these are mostly research vehicles, no doubt they'll talk to each other at some point.
Besides, THIS IS A NEW TECHNOLOGY. Seriously, they've done very very well to get to this point. They are not proposing letting these things out on their own for many years, by which time I'm sure all this crap will be sorted out.
I very much suspect that if it was driving near a cliff, its' algorithms would tell it to drive veeerrrry sloooowly indeed. No chance of killing either, no risks, no street racing. In all this will be a good thing. Hopefully the authorities will be open to the idea of closing certain roads and letting humans loose occasionally, like the IoM TT.
Bah! Still a horrid blue colour on win7. The only add-on I found that gave me proper nice grey with aero support (Aero Improved) slowly stopped working with every new update. Poo. I hate that blue. Themes I like never work for more than a few versions with both Chrome and FF.
It's pretty much the only reason I switched to Opera. Grey by default.
+1 for Worms (in-coming!).
But also Tony Hawks (any of them). Sure, it wasn't a good 2-player. But spent many endless hours of trying to beat each others high scores.
Also, Quake 2 on the PSX. It was the only 4 player split-screen FPS there was. We didn't have an N64.
I agree facebook is full of mostly drivel, but when signing up to G+ my wife found just 3 people she knew on there. We have mostly the same friends so I didn't bother. We check occasionally to see if anyone else turns up, but nope. It's unfortunate, as I think I prefer the interface. But most of the friends I want to communicate with on social media are uni types, since spread across the country, and only a handful of them are techies. Some of them even think facebook *is* the internet, and communicate in no other way :(
1) Is the mobile forum going to get the edit post feature of the desktop version (I'll edit this myself if does already...)?
2) Is the mobile version finally going to get post icons to choose from?
3) It appears that text re-flow stops at a certain maximum width in the current implementation (it didn't with the old version, and also not in the article). Is that a concious decision? Not a big deal, but I'm not sure why you'd need to.
I own a 3DS, but the 3D effect stays off. It's all well and good so long as you look directly at the screen and don't move it. Only, it's a hand-held console, so small movements are inevitable. As such, the 3D effect pops in and out the whole time I use it, and that screws with my brain. Hopefully the eye-tracking tech works a bit better, but I'm yet to be convinced by any 3D tech I've seen (outside of an old plastic viewmaster, that is!).
A verified subset of the play store (as suggested above somewhere) would be a very good thing. Android could easily have a setting to allow non-verified apps from the Play store (the same as installing non-play store apps).
That said, if you want a cheap, largely locked down, non-apple smart phone, then I would suggest a look at a WP Nokia. It'll do maps, email, facebook, most of what people want, but won't let you download dodgy apps from anywhere you like.
What are you talking about? We have fantastic batteries right now. It's just that as soon as the capacity goes up, so does the processing power and what we expect to do with it. How long would a palm pilot last if you connected to a modern battery from a note 3? Most of the year I'd bet.
His only valid point (and presumably where the upvotes came from?), is that it is beyond him why MS couldn't have given Aero as an option. XP came with a 2000 option, as did vista and 7. I've not used 8 much, so I can't tell you if there is still a 'make it grey' option, but an Aero option would have been nice. For that matter, allowing 7 to access the win8 app store (in a dedicated access and run apps program) would have given them a welcome influx of customers, but nevermind.
Fair enough, I'll concede to that. But it amazes me the number of people who complain about some new feature cluttering the interface, but never actually check the settings to see if they can turn it off. My wife and extended family included, even though some of them are computer literate in many other ways.
...reminds me how much I liked it. I've got used to the G+ style since, but I turned it off for as long as I could.
As an aside, if they want a new killer feature, I've got one I suggested to them years ago: Let me select multiple emails with different subjects and put them in one 'conversation'. It's a pita when someone changes the subject slightly and forces the whole thing into a different list.
@A J Stiles Indeed. I have a long-standing phobia about utility bills, so my electricity is paid for in advance through a key meter. The money is in my supplier's bank account, earning interest for them, before the juice comes down the wires to me. And yet they would give me a discount for paying in arrears by direct debit.
That is exactly backwards. In fact, now I come to think of it, it's borderline disability discrimination.
Not to be corporate shill, but try looking for a company called Ebico. They are an energy company with just one tariff. One. That means it doesn't matter how you pay, your always on the cheapest tariff, and you don't get bumped on a more expensive one because you didn't switch this year. They were 3rd cheapest on a comparison website when I switched about 4 years ago, and I'm still paying a competitive price.
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