Posts by Paul Leigh

Oh joy. You can now buy a gold plated quadcopter drone

Re: Hmmm

The 400ft stipulation is part of the ANO, therefore it is a legal requirement to observe.

There are exceptions, if flying inside controlled airspace and/or under agreement with ATC though.

The world .sucks at a minute past midnight on Sunday

This is just getting silly now

I'm all for having a bit of fun, play on words and so on but this is juvenile and further proof, if it were ever needed, that the naming bodies are getting off on their own drug addled state of self importance.... and a load of cash too.

Shame on anyone who uses these domains.

China is now 99.8% sure you're you, thanks to world's-best facial recognition wares

Slippery Slope

Gattaca here we come.

Previously stable Greenland glaciers now rushing to the sea

Re: Don't Panic!

I guess you've fallen for the same spin that the Icelanders did when following Eric the Red to the "Green" land ~1000 year ago.

Barclays warns freelance techies of DOUBLE DIGIT rate cut

Meh...

Same old, same old.

Barcap tried this with me a few years ago (more than 3, for sure). Was quite happy to not accept the reduced rate and leave instead. I thought it was Resource Solutions that called it though, not Barclays themselves.

Not everything in life can be solved by an accountacy decision. It's the financial version of feeding the donkey less and less each time, till one day it just dies.

Apple 'hid AUD$9 BILLION' from Australia alone: Report

Obviously

If you don't like their practices, vote with your wallet and actions, just stop buying the products/services they produce. It won't take too long for them to notice if the outraged public took this step - certainly, it would be quicker acting than any government (in)action.

Given the scale of these companies, unfortunately just a handful of moralistic activist individuals won't make any difference though.

Object to #YearOfCode? You're a misogynist and a snob, says the BBC

Interest

Instead of forcing coding (whatever that turns out to mean) upon our young. Give them an hour or more a week to go out and find what interests them and let them explore it. Some will find coding/computing and that's great, some might be interested in the mechanics of a lawnmower but if that's what interests them, that's also great. Give them the option to make up their own minds and guide them if they need help.

Sure, they need the mandated skills, Reading, Maths, etc. but coding or computer based work of any kind takes an active interest to be able to follow it to any meaningfully competent level.

I learnt to write BASIC on a Vic20, not because my school forced it on me but because I found out about it and was curious. I'm still eager to learn and my career is based around that continued curiosity.

How about the #YearOfChoice ?

Walking while texting can – OUCH! – end badly, say boffins

No shit, sherlock!

Really? It needed research project to confirm this?

I'm all for boffinery in any guise but anyone who has eyes (and not looking at their phone) can see this in every street nowadays. What would have been a useful outcome would have been to reveal the best angle and volume to shout "Oi, muppet" to cause maximum confusion to said anti-social phone using perambulator.

Nokia Lumia update spreads Black death

Worked 1st time for me

Per title, no problems. A happy lumia 1020 owner here, the app folders are very useful as is the glance screen improvement. The camera updates make a brilliant camera option, even better.

Would be nice to see an update that helped it not die a death midway through the day due to exhausting a fully charged battery in about 12 hours though :)

'BILLION-YEAR DISK' to help FUTURE LIFEFORMS study us

Eh?

Since when does digital data need a permanent medium in the ranges of millions of years? Just copy the stuff to the new media of the day. For it to ever be viable, the controller, computer and software would also have to last millions of years too.

Salesman: We got this multi-million year archiving solution.

Buyer: Cool, what does it cost?

Salesman: £Loads....

Buyer: Hmm... We got budget for a 10 year storage solution. Next!

Fanbois, prepare to lose your sh*t as BRUSSELS KILLS IPHONE dock

Warranties....

I just wonder how this will affect warranties. If a rogue "few quid" charger causes damage to a phone, is the PSU mfr liable or the mfr of the phone being charged or even the person who without any forethought or technical training, plugged the two together?

I imagine the support system writers are adding this question to their scripted genius help sheets right now.

NASA Mars tank Curiosity rolls on old WET PATCH, sighs, sniffs for life signs

wtf

I can't even begin to imagine how your mind got so confused about everything, if i didn't know better, I'd swear I was reading a post by Deepak Chopra. Utter fecking nonsense.

Panasonic throws in towel on plasma tellies, preps for BILLION-dollar kick in pants

Tough as old boots

Shame for Panasonic. I have two Vieras, one a 50" Plasma and a 37" LCD. Both are rock solid and after 6 years still have great pictures - no need to replace them but if I did have a need, I would have had no hesitation in looking at Panasonic as a preferred choice. Got a Samsung LCD too and tbh, it;s a bit sh** by comparsion.

The plasma one weighs a lot and seems indestructible, it'll probably outlive me.

Hey, Bill Gates! We've found 14 IT HOTSHOTS to be the next Steve Ballmer

Re: An obvious choice

Thats a fair point @Nightfox but the buying masses, esp the corporates don't buy from technologists (in fact often they are put off from the hardcore tech chaps/chapettes), they buy into the N year roadmap and from what I've seen, KT can sell whatever he's pushing. He seems very credible to me.

Maybe the job is just too big for a single person to span the needs of such a large organisation. Can't please all the people all the time and all that.

An obvious choice

If they don't choose Kevin Turner (current COO) then they really have, royally, lost their way.

Microsoft announces execution date for failed QR code-killer

nfc?

"the vast majority of smart phones have the requisite circuitry these days" (NFC)

No they don't, it's just a relatively small handful that do and the users hardware changeover holds back the uptake. whereas an image based system can be deployed quickly as "the vast majority of smart phones have the requisite circuitry these days" (Cameras).

I always felt that MS missed a trick here, the reliance on having a connection was problem at times and it often spoilt the usefuleness of the tag system. They could have had an app that snappe dthe image and stored for later pickup when the data connection was available.

Shame it's going imho.

Lawsuit claims Microsoft misled investors in Surface RT fiasco

Microsoft != Pied Piper of Investments

Sorry, investors. If you want more and more money. Don't be too surprised if your greedy little mitts get burnt every once in a while - the value of investments may go down as well as up, every school child knows this.

Read the information available (ALL the information) and you can see, regardless of numbers by MS, the Surface wasn't massively well received in the market, hence it would not have been reasonable to expect any growth large enough to slingshot shares through the roof.

Get real and stop blaming your own failures on someone else, take responsibility for your own lack of thoroughness and diligence. You weren't forced to buy the shares, you had a choice.

EE's revenues dip, but smartphones lure in 200k new contracts

EE coverage

I have a Lumia 920 on EE, so should get the full 4G lovliness.

When it works, its like being on a dedicated Wi-Fi but most of the time, in and around London, the 4G coverage sucks balls! EE via their twitterbot simply claim that thy're working on masts in 'that' area and have no knowledge of any completion dates, in other words tough luck buddy, you bought it now what you gonna do?

I chuffin hate mobile phone companies, they're all as bad as each other but they are a necessary evil these days

Ten 3D printers for this year's modellers

Copied

I liked your quote so much, I have copied and reprinted it to use as my own statement too.....

I have no need for a 3D printer but for some strange reason I want one.

Phones 4U scrambles onto EE's back, flings out own virtual network

EE Sucks

per title.

Just did a walk around the southbank, at no point was I able to browse a website reliably. Worst mobile operator I've ever had the misfortune to use. F'ing crap, they are, crap!

Lynch mob of bankers say they'll stump up cash to take Dell private

Re: Banks willing to stump up the cash?

Thats not true, only one is UK based and they didn't take any bailout funds from the government,

Google gives fat fingers the flick before they click

Completely agree

Looking at the normal bounce rate on my site from web adverts compared to bounce rate for mobile adverts is a shocking difference, 14% vs 85% - Of course it's easy to argue that the audience is very different but having accidently triggered ad clicks myself a number of times, the stats were not overly surprising.

I don't have much faith in mobile advertising as a consequence.

Data gobbling app lands Delta Air Lines in the dock on privacy charge

States!

Mental that each state can impose different laws. Imagine if UK companies had to cater for the whims of Essex county council and not Devon. Fecking Lawyers!

Oprah Winfrey too late to save Microsoft's Windows 8

Having tried win7 & win8 side by side

Win 8 definitley gets my vote, it's massively quicker on the same hardware (I had two identical laptops for a while). Sure the tiles takes some getting used to but I found it much quicker overall.

Don't see where all the hatred comes from really.