Posts by dieseltaylor

Amazon's Roomba acquisition gets caught on FTC's rug

Roomba make very good machines and would continue to be a viable business.

The idea that in Amazon's hands it would be better for consumers in any way seems to me to be a case of hope over experience.

Regulator: Wipro and Infosys execs not off the hook for insider trading

Re: Innocent or guilty?

Nice to see a system that picks on insider trading and actually leads to an investigation.

Is it decadent that I use four different computers each day, at different times?

Remarkable and Pocket Book Pro 912

I tend to get slightly irked that other ereaders are unmentioned in this sort of article.

Because I read very quickly, I like maps and diagrams in books, I read pages in double column, I have been purchasing ereaders with large screens 9.7" since pretty much since they became available. This having found the standard Kindle and Sony pretty much useless.

My first large ereader , a Boox, did not survive me sitting on it [never have a black cover if you have black leather chairs] and was replaced by the Pocket Pro 9.7" which gives 24.64 sq cms of reading space. It also can deal with all formats natively and it is about 7 -8 years old. Plays music, has multi-dictionaries and has several other tricks.

These large ereaders still exist but I have no need to modernise as the Pro still works fine. I do have the first Remarkable which I currently use though it is not as gifted as the Pro as an ereader it is lighter and has other uses. I don't expect it to last a month without charging if I am using it heavily. : ) A week or so yes.

You only have one pair of eyes and there is enough squinting at small screens anyway. For pleasurable reading go large and look at the alternatives.

Thought NHS Digital's wind-down meant it would stop writing cheques? Silly you. It's gone on an IT buying spree

overseas

I have noticed in many many areas that some countries do things better than the UK. However the idea of adopting working solutions from another country seems to be an impossibilty.

Unless of course it's from the US and provides lots of loot to interested parties . And it is unlikely to be the best process available.

I live in France. The health service runs very well and my carte vitale ties all my medical records together and used at the pharmacy and the dentist.

A friend who for three years had been seeking a NHS solution to a pain in his leg had it sorted out in two working days here after visiting a nurse in a tiny village who arranged an immediate appointment with a specialist. Another friend had a whistling heart valve identified on a first visit.

Seven minutes a patient for GP's - here it is 30 minutes and I book them online choosing time and date. Never been more than 4 days hence.

Chap who campaigned to oust Nominet's CEO and chairman and reform the .UK registry is elected as non-exec director

After success the hard graft begins to complete a structure that will keep the organisation on the non-profit path

After the kerfuffle at which? Much to members horror the replacement CEO came with a background of wealth and executive position at Carphone warehouse. A salary of over £400k is exceptional for a normal charity. Ousting the previous CEO did not alter the charity enough.

So members of Nominet should pay attention and support the reformers

As another vendor promises 3 years of Android updates, we ask: How long should mobile devices receive support?

Toast

My dualit classic is 30 this year. Two changes of the elements and the timer after 20 years. As there no other working parts I expect to see a few more decades from it.

And it has always been used daily at least once.

Chairman, CEO of Nominet ousted as member rebellion drives .uk registry back to non-commercial roots

How to break the law

Companies Act requires that the details of "shareholders" be supplied in the format requested by the applicant. Guessing that the request was not for 500 sheets of paper but a readable file then someone or some people neeed to be prosecuted. Please please do so.

I was sent a large number of sheets of A3 with the tiniest print possible to show the 10,000 members [guarantors /shareholders] of the Consumers Association owners of Which? I threatened to go to court and the officers would have been liable for a daily fine so they coughed up a database as I had requested under the Act.

Having multimillionaires appointed as charir of Which? Ltd ,owned by a consumer charity, was always an odd bemusing mix as their views on pay differ from the average person's view. . The CEO pulled over £4m in just over a decade. Not bad for a charity leader. The icing on the cake was a £2.24 bonus for four members of staff set-up in 2013. to run for three years. The businesses set up lost a combined £40m before being closed down . The addition of another storey and a roof garden were probably necessary to attract and employ more staff next to Regents Park..

If anyone thinks that charities/ companies/ organisations are subject to effective scrutiny by the quangos and Government departments please take it that it is members or the public who have to be active to highlight gross milking of the entity by staff/directors/trustees.

Huawei invokes 140-year-old law at England's High Court in latest bid to thwart CFO's US-Canada extradition

Re: Nothing to hide

Surely there is an obvious difference between claims for decisions regarding loss and something that puts someone at the mercy of another countries legal system.

That a companies internal papers are required surely is relevant in the cladding inquiry - and logically any case where a death has been involved should have access to all that is relevant.

Nominet vows to freeze wages and prices, boost donations, and be more open. For many members, it’s too little, too late

Possibly in a similar way that Wthe Which? Board was headed by the ex-head of P&G Europe and the Chairman of the Trustees worked in marketing specialising in the FMCG sector. The two people added to the Board from Unilever plc plus other industries shows how important it is that charities need proper control from senior businessmen who will obviously identify with the average subscrber and the aims of a consumer charity.

Faced with the sack, Nominet CEO half-apologizes for taking the 'wrong tone,' asks angry members to hear him out

Re: Patterns repeating themselves ?

And look what happens when you have a small unsuspecting base and unsavoury types smell power. centralise the choice of candidates to make sure the right type get the seats ....

Patterns repeating themselves ?

I applaud theRegister's ability to shine the light on dubious doings.

This case has some similarities with Which? the trading arm of the charity [and limited company] the Consumers' Association which under a major deviation in the 2010's when the executive board of Which? lead by multimillionarre Mike Clasper headed the organisation to investing in two new companies that lost £40m of effectively charity money. Paying four members of staff a bonus of £2.24m did seem a trifle off also - especially as the CEO's salary had risen from £120K a year to averaging over £400K.

It is actually in the Companies Act that the data should be in the form requested by the applicant - data or print. I asked the Consumers Association Ltd for data, was given the passowrd for the data, and then received hundreds of pages of A3 in tiny print. It took the threat of legal action to get the excel file of the Members details.

Subscribers [600k]are not necessarily members. In fact from 40K members in the 1990's it is now down to around 6K following a deliberate no recruitment policy. After all who wants lots of Members to receive the Accounts and see what is going on !?

Remember that clinical trial, promoted by President Trump, of a possible COVID-19 cure? So, so, so many questions...

Re: Echo chamber aside

The coroner said it, the family repeated it, and the hospital says it never gave Covid as the cause. More news to follow ...... But it looks a little dubious. Coroner's office response still awaited.

Decent, legal, honest and searchable: C'mon, Ofcom. Let us check up on the ad-slingers ourselves

And the surveys

An excellent idea to commence the throttling of lies. I have always thought that surveys should be publicly available - that is the questions etc and full results - to see dishonest or seriously flawed design.

For decades I answered Which? surveys and the poor design was concerning. For instance the reliability of machines used in gardens .(or Hoover's) never asked frequency of use or size of task.

I have little faith in any survey now realising that unless you can see how it was constructed it may well be simply media filler fodder.

One of Blighty's most-loved charities hands £46m to one of Blighty's least-loved outsourcers

Re: Charities, transparency, and the disinterested.

Wrong. I was aware of the ease of putting forward motions etc and that they did a live broadcast as this was included in the election and AGM details

The costs of this was the interesting part and were quite minimal. I passed ThIs information on to the Trustees of Which/consumers association and also mailed most of the dwindling number of actual members 9k as opposed to 500k who subscribe.

The concept of charity staff capturing a charity is not unknown in the charity world.

Re: Charities, transparency, and the disinterested.

Wrong. I was aware of the ease of putting forward motions etc and that they did a live broadcast as this was included in the election and AGM details

The costs and logistics of this was the interesting part and were quite minimal. I passed ThIs information on to the Trustees of Which/consumers association and also mailed most of the dwindling number of actual members 9k as opposed to 500k who subscribe.

The concept of charity staff capturing a charity is not unknown in the charity world.

Charities, transparency, and the disinterested.

BTW I dislike Crapita intensely and I dislike out-sourcing BUT ...

The National Trust [E&W] is actually one of the most "open" charities in the UK. The 5m plus Members can meaningfully put forward motions and have them voted on at the AGM. The AGM is actually broadcast live and open to viewers to send in questions live. Or it was when I was asking their advice on these matters three years ago as I campaigned aginst Which? [the Consumers Association] which was and is still the complete opposite in transparency.

THE consumer charity run by business people that managed to miss the housing/leasehold scandal for a decade, lost around £40m over 9 years with two failed commercial businesses, and paid big bonuses [ £2.24m to four execs in one scheme].* In comparison both National Trusts are beacons of rectitude. However most people are happy to whinge and few do anything about it or even pay attention to Annual reports and then what is really going on.

* Which? is slightly improved now.

Harvard freshman kicked out of US over OTHER people's posts on his social media

Given my critical and reasoned posts on the US actions in Iraq over the past decades I doubt very much that I would be allowed in.

Seems so so wrong that it claims to be the bastion of democracy. Fortunately I have no desire to travel there.

Jeff Bezos finally gets .Amazon after DNS overlord ICANN runs out of excuses to delay decision any further

cultural imperialism?

The concept of businesses appropriating famous words is in itself problematic. This is particularly so if it involves geographical places which have a specific use. And of course this is the thin end of a wedge as there will be a freefor all now on names that will be designed to obscure and confuse the public. It should have been a UN body to make decisions on cyberland grabs.

Bloke fined £460 after his drone screwed up police chopper search for missing woman

Hit on the head

Seems funny that downing a helicopter is discussed but the debris from a disabled drone be it from contact or wash, is assumed to vapourise before landing somewhere.

Possibly a person, possibly a vehicle where the driver is distracted enough to cause a serious accident.

A friend neighbours drone crashed into my friends roof killing tiles.

Which? That smart home camera? The one with the vulns? Really?

Readers reviews Which? has killed them all

Employing outside labs they have no expertise. subscribers provided the long-term in use drawbacks which often would be very helpful.

As of last week they were allwiped

Brit regulator pats self on back over nuisance call reduction: It's just 4 billion now!

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/boss-firm-fined-making-100-10396244

ICO fines company; company files for insolvency. Perhaps all these sorts of articles should include amounts actually paid rather then eye-catching headline figures.

Cambridge Analytica's ex-CEO decides not to front UK Parliamentary Committee again

Add a photo now

Spartacus...redux.?

However perhaps more practical we just use wrong names as Spartacus could be weeded out quickly.

Which? leads decrepit email service behind barn, single shot rings out over valley

Because of crap management thats' why.

Unfortunately corporate capture is not restricted to the US and a few years ago what is ostensibly a consumers charity designed to educate and inform and lobby for consumers was being run apparently by its subsidiary commercial off-spring Which? Ltd and its businessmen who apart from originating some very expensive expansion ideas of a commercial nature decided that four of the top executives should share in an LTIP which eventualy paid out an additional £2.24m to them.

The chairman of Which? ltd at the time was multi-millionaire Mike Clasper of P&G, BAA, HMRC, and now Coats. You may wonder who co-opted him, and the two folk from HMRC, the two from Unilever, the Barclays banker, etc. I have always worried that business folk may not view a consumer fronting charity in the same way as most folk.

The expansions - a consumer organ in India - shutdown after losing nearly £13m , a mortgage service which after seven years is meant to be reaching profitability but has required £22.5m of support and this despite having taken over £10m income from mortgage providers and referral fees. The refurishment of the HQ in central London with the addition odf another storey and a roof garden has also not gone down well with the few members who are aware of it - but then at only £16m it is a snip.

The new Council of the Consumers' Association have been handed a problem but they have been in place a couuple of years so they have handled it very badly. Apparently one subscriber at least is severely handicapped and has been using his Which address for two decades sorting out helpers and all manner of things and has written very angrily as for him it takes great effort to use the computer.

Council's problem may be the entrenched senior management I think who certainly should have flagged this up for immediate preparatory action if GDPR was a future problem 20 months ago.

'Every little helps'... unless you want email: Tesco to kill free service

So Tesco can give a months more notice than the consumer's champion. (Self-styled)

Nice reversal of roles.

Shocking: Former Amazon analyst fed frat brother insider info

Amazon presumably are not to be fined for having insecure control of market-busting quarterly reports. Well that is OK then because then there may be dozens of more successful insider traders - perhaps higher up the chain?!

Web-enabled vibrator class action put to bed

oh! Oh! Canada

[ the national antherm of Canada to be re-named]

Amazon may still get .amazon despite govt opposition – thanks to a classic ICANN cockup

I agree that ICANN are rubbish but the actual decision in respect of Amazon I applaud.

Cultural imperialism - the grabbbing of a defined area of the world - should be resisted at all costs. Famous cultural names which may be geographic or historic should not become corporate playthings.

The use of categories such as . bank as outlined above or a direct equivalent has the bonus of being very monitorable. I am sure with some more thought I could make cogent cases for the proposition.!

UK council fined £150k for publishing traveller family's personal data

The size of the fine is interesting as it is more than pharmacy2u got fined for deliberately selling lists of clients names and diseases and addresses. A very specific list was sold to an Australian "lottery" company.

ICO fined them £130,000 which actually means £117,000. They have not been struck off the NHS recommended list and it has badly upset the pharmicistb and doctors bodies. Curiously they hold the belief that this information is private and pharmacies should know that.

I think the Basildon fine is in the right ball-park but agree that the fine should not be for rate-payers and also those in charge of the sytems /training etc need publicity etc. The fine by ICO for pharmacy2U was totally inadequate, as is the NHS response [zero].

BA CEO blames messaging and networks for grounding

His CEO experiences is from a minor airline so accept that fact. His previous experience reads well but then every exec I know of makes sure it does. : )

Should he jump? Probably not but some people somewhere must be guilty of hiding, or not implementing, necessary IT improvements.

30,000 London gun owners hit by Met Police 'data breach'

Re: ACPO

THE ASSOCIATION OF CHIEF POLICE OFFICERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

and the Accounts are overdue according to Companies House bu then it is being wound-up.!

Private Limited Company by guarantee without share capital, use of 'Limited' exemption

16 Aug 2016 Resolutions

Special resolution to wind up on 2016-08-02

Autonomy's ex-chief beancounter tries to kill HP investor settlement

Does seem that the burying of evidence is the aim here. Shareholders are being shafted.

Anyone using M-DISC to archive snaps?

M-disk marriage

II have been using them for over a year and have an external drive so I can lend it around to others who want to archive their data.

A couple of weddings have seen the couples get an m-disc of all the pictures I took -plus some video and music. I reckon that it makes more sense than any other method.

I also have an interest in ships and took many thousand shots last year. They may be of interest to enthusiasts in a hundred years so they will be going on m-disks.

Personally I think a physical disk has got a lot to be said for it in terms of durability. A fuure with EMP warfare may well sort out a lot of systems based on magnetic data storage. Not to mention accidental or natural EMP events.

Q: What's black and white and read all over? A: E-reader displays

Lets be honest 9.7" e-readers do exist but are not reported

I have had a Sony , a Kono, and the Onyx Boox - early veresion. Which I sat on so I now have another 9.7" e-reader the Pocket Book 912

Does all the formats, plays music, in theory can browse the web and the battery lasts for months.

For someone like me downloading pdf's, books from Gutenberg [3000+ of the 33000 available in English] it is a godsend with a screen real-estate 3 times the size of the bog standard readers. That means accounts, articles in two columns, and maps are hugely more easily read.

A complaint I will make is the huge number of reviews in the UK media and not one mentions the 9.7" readers which in my view offer the best read. I read very ery fast if it is a novel and small screens just do not have enough text so plus all the other benefits make it ideal. Not everyone will agree but lets not suppress the existence of the big screen readers.

This optical disc will keep your gumble safe for 2,000 YEARS

For those who think long term

I really don't understand the short-termism evident here. I can back-up my entire music collection onto a 50GB disk and then forget about worrying about dead drives for the next 30 years.

I took 25,000 photos last year so that also would seem suitable for some permanent storage so I can be worry free. I have copied my daughters photos from 2005 when she was touring in South America onto an Mdisc and feel happy she will be able to look at them in 50 years time when she is in her dotage.

And I think there could be a business case for storing them in a vault with my will : ) in case the house burns down.

I already have an external M-writer so I can use it with any of my machines

FLASH better than DISK for archiving, say academics. Are they stark, raving mad?

In the terms of what they were measuring there may be a case. However I am concerned that the headline term of flash versus disk may beseen by the more general public as an endoresement of the technologies for , if you like, home archiving.

I am talking about the weddings photos, the holiday phot0s, the research data, lovey emails that we may wish to keep. I have looked at the Gold DVD's but have place my trust in the M-disk as gold being perpetually expensive may become more uneconic whereas M-disk if mass adopted will become cheaper. It also claim 1000 years as opposed to 100 years. If we accept both cannot know for sure and sya they are both 80 wrong I am still better off with Mdisk.

Incidentally I was cruising with a rather brilliant software professor [with a patent to his name] who had 73 DVD's relating to his research work around the world. The pain of keeping them renewed was not insignifiicant.

Wanna keep your data for 1,000 YEARS? No? Hard luck, HDS wants you to anyway

M-disk user

I have just given copies of my sons wedding photos on an M-disk to my son. To my daughter the wedding and her 2002 holiday travelling around South America. I think everyone who cares about important information should be putting it on the most robust media - not forgetting that the media should be in a format that is widely readable.

Given the writers are quite cheap it seems daft not to use an archive quality disk for important data.