Posts by Lord Snooty

nbn™ says nobody needs gigabit internet, trumpets XG-Fast at 8Gbps anyway

Aside from home entertainment and leisure activities needing higher speeds, one way of overcoming the 'tyranny of distance' is what used to be called telecommuting. In other words, working from home but having enough speed / bandwidth to run video conferences with the rest of your team. Having run dev teams simultaneously spread across the UK, Ukraine, Thailand and Malaysia, access to good video conferencing made a real difference. Repeat that but substitute with Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth and you get the idea. And, of course, it's all very green with fewer commuter journeys, less pollution, fewer cars on the road etc etc

Not putting in fibre all the way is the most short sighted policy imaginable.

UK will build new nuclear bomb subs, says Defence Secretary

So this is where Boris' '£350m a week' is going then...

EU turns screws on Android – report

I have a OnePlus 1 which, admittedly, runs a variant of Cyanogen but it is an Android phone and Google's footprint is fairly minimal....

Hmmm. That said I do use chrome / gmail / G+ / Maps / Play Store / Google Docs and a few more Google apps so who knows...

Well, all of this is very interesting but the key question remains; Are there any European phone manufacturers left for whom Google is anti-competitive and for whom the DG-COMP need to take up cudgels?

I know Nokia are trying to revive themselves (with Android phones) but is there anyone else? Or is this entire exercise a sop to Finland and an attempt to give Nokia a leg up (so to speak)?

Re: Beware of ladies knitting elephants in meetings...

upvoted for "naso-rectal interfacers"...

Everything's going to be all white: Google Nexus 5 mobe expected Friday

Is there a sweepstake for when this wretched device is actually going to be launched? If so, can I have Nov 5th as I imagine Google would want the launch to go off with a bang! (And, in case you were wondering, I did say that in my best Basil Brush voice complete with the obligatory 'boom boom' at the end)

Re: No sale

Good points on access to Wifi and lower cost Chinese handsets (which, more than Samsung are what will eat Apple's lunch) but NSA / GCHQ? Really? Well, ok, if its an issue best give up on all forms of electronic and digital communications and revert back to the written form only. In invisible ink. Although, frankly speaking, its probably safer to adopt the 'shoal of fish' approach, use the cloud and simply blend in with the millions of other users rather than make a point, not use it and stand out....

It's the '90s all over again: Apple repeats mistakes as low-cost tablets pile up

What are Apple known for?

Well, lots of things, but, for me, I'd say they are known for design innovation; certainly in the last 15 years or so that Jony Ive has been instrumental in their product design. The resurgence of Apple can be traced to a resurgence in the quality of their designs. I remember when the original 'Bondi Blue' iMac came out and, shallow though this may be, how it was the look of the thing that made it such a draw. Same too with the iPod, iPhone and iPad. If they want to maintain their differentiation and prices then it is the quality of their industrial / product designs that will be critical.

Microsoft's Nokia plan: WHACK APPLE AND GOOGLE

MS have acquired Nokia's patents, not just licensed them

I've noticed a few people saying that MS have only licensed Nokia's portfolio of patents when in fact they have acquired the key smartphone patents and licensed the more general utility patents. Slides 19 & 23 in the MS presentation make this clear...

Re: RIP Nokia

Well, you seem to be part of the "Army of the Will Not Read" as slides 19 and 23 of the MS presentation (mentioned and linked to in the article) explicitly state that as well as licencing a ton of Nokia's patents, MS have also acquired outright 8500 patents pertaining specifically to smartphones.

Moto X: It's listening to you. But can voice control finally take off?

Puzzling launch?

A puzzling product launch from many perspectives. Yes, it is an interesting handset but it seems a tad too expensive ($600+ for the 32G device) when compared to other handsets (the Nexus 4 being a case in point). And yes, I can select different colours for the device, but building an entire supply chain based on essentially secondary selection criteria is a curious thing to do. Also, as it stands, its a US only device, which cements a view that Moto is a US only company (Droids are Verizon exclusives, for example, and historically Moto customer support in Europe has been a complete joke). So I am quite puzzled as to what they think they can achieve with this launch? Certainly, there are some interesting features but the manner of the introduction merely gives Samsung / HTC / Sony / Huawei / ZTE some good ideas for where to pitch their next set of devices without really giving Moto a winning phone. So I'm left puzzled as to what Google / Moto thought they were doing...