* Posts by Neil Hoskins

424 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2007

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Mitsubishi eyes Middle Earth for 'early' electric car roll-out

Neil Hoskins
Stop

@various

@Andy: £9000 starting price? I don't think so. And I don't care what it looks like: it's a means of transport, not a fashion accessory.

@TeeCee: G-Wizz starting price is around £10,000. Still far too much for what you get, which is probably why they don't sell too well. And I still don't care what it looks like: it's a means of transport, not a fucking fashion accessory.

@Matthew: Nice rant, but I was thinking more in terms of a second car for town/city use. An electric private vehicle for those sort of distances is still a long way off. I wouldn't hold your breath.

Neil Hoskins
Unhappy

Let me guess...

...it weighs around a tonne, does 100mph and prices start from £11,000? Car makers just don't get it: why don't they just make a simple, lightweight electric vehicle with a top speed of 40mph, maybe based on one of the French 'sans permis'? Mass production should be able to get it down to around £4000.

Berners-Lee backs web truthiness labelling scheme

Neil Hoskins
Unhappy

@Stephen Gray

Not sure what you're saying. "The Bible" can be selectively picked-from just like the writings of Nostradamus. Are you saying it's more "true" than Nostradamus? So, is the Koran not "true"? Does, say, the Quaker interpretation of the Bible have more validity than the interpretation that was used to justify the Crusades?

Neil Hoskins
Stop

Religion?

Apart from the very obvious pointed out by David Harper, what about those who would fight to the death for the "truth" that Apple is better than Microsoft or the absolute truth that my god is better than your god? Utter, utter utopian nonsense. He's really lost the plot.

Netbooks and Mini-Laptops

Neil Hoskins
Thumb Up

Psion 7 and Netbook

Well done for giving these an honourable mention in dispatches. They were certainly not 'overgrown PDAs', and I agree completely with John White's appraisal. Laptops aren't really 'mobile' devices; they're 'portable' devices. The 7 and Netbook gave you a fully-mobile device in the sense that it was robust, light, and had enough battery life for a lengthy train or plane journey, with apps that were sufficient for the vast majority of tasks.

Royal Society: Schools should show creationism 'respect'

Neil Hoskins
Go

See also...

http://www.secularism.org.uk/eminentscientistsaysweshouldresp.html

Boffinry bitchslap brouhaha: Higgs and Hawking head to head

Neil Hoskins
Boffin

@AC - "before" the big bang?

Before the big bang there was nothing, not even time. So if there was no time there was no "before". I think you should go off and watch Songs of Praise before you give yourself a headache.

Neil Hoskins
Boffin

Question...

I was explaining to the missus that, in a sense, it's more exciting if they *don't* find the Higgs boson, because then they'll have to re-draft the standard model.

So... she says, does that mean they'll have to spend another fifty billion?

No, says I, because all those years of data from CERN and Fermilab could be re-examined.

But hang on. There must have been monstrous amounts of data collected over the years. How much of it has been kept, and how much discarded because it was deemed not to show anything interesting?

Nokia plays MobileMeToo

Neil Hoskins
Flame

WHAT?

menu - tools* - sync - select ovi.com - synchonise

How, exactly, is that so totally "unslick"? How does the Jesus phone do it? Does a genie suddenly appear out of thin air and do it for you? And wipe your arse at the same time? All to the accompaniment of a heavenly choir?

(* or wherever you've put it because you've got a fully configurable menu)

Neil Hoskins
Stop

"...without the slick interface..."?

What, so selecting "synchronise now" isn't slick enough. WTF do you expect? Dancing girls?

Government told: Release secret Iraq documents

Neil Hoskins

This is all so unnecessary.

The fact that the critical meeting of the JIC was actually chaired by the Prime Minister's chief propagandist speaks for itself. No further analysis is required.

Group Test: Wireless music streamers

Neil Hoskins

Interesting but....

...no mention of which ones are DLNA-compliant? I may be a bit out of date, but unless you want to be tied to the manufacturer's own software on your server, isn't this rather important?

History shaped Google's Trojan Horse

Neil Hoskins
Unhappy

Joe User

PHB this morning asked me about Chrome. I told him what I knew, explained that it was a fairly flakey beta, but said that if he wanted a look I had no objections to him trying it out. Five minutes later he calls me in: he's staring at an Internet Explorer window saying that it doesn't seem any different to him. So I find his new Chrome shortcut, launch Chrome, and explain to him as patiently as I can the difference between a "browser" and a "home page".

Whether you like it or not, these are the people who decided the last twenty years and will decide what we do in the next twenty. The same people who think iPhones are cool, basically.

Google cedes Belgium to Germany

Neil Hoskins
Coat

No, England hasn't put on weight...

...Only *northern* England. Too many pies.

<ducks, runs>

Vodafone says termination rate clampdown would hit the poor

Neil Hoskins

Bring it on

I'm one of the pay-as-you-go light users you're all supposed to feel sorry for. I use my N95 for music streaming, VoIP, listening to podcasts, internet radio, photography, video, FM radio, playing games, sat-nav, geocaching, etc, etc.... but can't remember the last time I used it to make, or receive, a mobile phone call. For the very occasional emergency (not, "I'M ON THE TRAIN" or "THEY HAVEN'T GOT STRAWBERRY JAM, IS RASPBERRY OK?") I don't really mind paying over the odds. If prices go up, and discourage all this bollocks, that can only be a good thing. And don't start me on people making similarly inane, pointless calls while driving...

Customs raids tech trade show

Neil Hoskins
Stop

Heavy Handed

It seems incredibly heavy handed to us in Blighty, but then I suppose the Germans don't shoot you for being slightly dusky.

Sikorsky announces first flight of 'X2' triplex supercopter

Neil Hoskins
Black Helicopters

Supersonic Tips

Are supersonic blade tips undesirable purely from the point of view of noise (ever heard a Harvard?), or is there another reason?

Apple slapped for dodgy ads

Neil Hoskins
Stop

But seriously,

It can't multi-task, it can't copy & paste, it can't take video, it can't mms, it can't be used as a modem with your laptop, it can't do bluetooth properly, it has limited browsing ability... Why can't the sodding thing just politely assume its correct niche in the market; that is, a very nice mid-range proprietary feature phone that runs limited proprietary applications (but not j2me, like the rest of the world). Why this evangelical insistence that it's something more than that?

Neil Hoskins
Thumb Up

hehe

hehehehe....

<chuckle>

hahahahaha....

<font size="7">BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</font>

Anatomy of a malware scam

Neil Hoskins

Straw Poll - best A/V for this?

For me, ESET NOD32 picked it up, but it sailed straight through Trend.

Winehouse jibe wins Fringe's funniest gag

Neil Hoskins
Go

Spotted on Youtube:

'My girlfriend said, "If you don't want to talk to me just say so; it's paradoxes that really hurt."'

My head's still spinning three days later. I think the lad's name was Jack Heal. We'll be seeing more of him.

Apple tops customer satisfaction poll as rivals' ratings slide

Neil Hoskins

Pointless

That's like asking muslims if they're satisfied with their religion.

Joint Committee gets it (mainly) wrong on human rights

Neil Hoskins

Bill of Responsibilities

I suggest:

- After a lifetime of drugs, drink, and fags, I shouldn't expect the same healthcare as somebody who was more careful

- Being out of my head is not mitigation if I commit a crime.

- My responsibility to protect life, limb, and property is more important than my right to drive like a twat.

- Believing in Christ, Mohammed, the Easter Bunny, or other deity does not make me a better person or give me more rights than somebody who doesn't.

Kaminsky (finally) reveals gaping hole in internet

Neil Hoskins
Joke

Isn't Dan Kaminsky...

... the bluegrass singer and musician who plays with Alison Krauss and Union Station? The one who's voice was used for George Clooney in 'O Brother, Where Art Thou'?

Fugitive spammer in murder-suicide

Neil Hoskins
Stop

@AC and heystoopid

Word has it that he was a druggie. Personally I don't count that as mentally ill. Mentally ill people don't have a choice; druggies have a choice not to take the drugs.

Inquirer celebrates spammer murder-suicide

Neil Hoskins

GOTCHA!

Hopefully The Sun are still just a tad embarrassed about that one.

(If you don't remember, the Murdoch rag was celebrating the deaths of hundreds of (mostly conscript, I imagine) Argentinian sailors.)

Seattle Spam King Dark Mailer faces 47-month sentence

Neil Hoskins

Does anybody know...

...what became of Billy Carson of Weston, Florida? He was spamming dodgy medical insurance at one point, and when a British GP exposed him, he (the GP) got joe-jobbed off the internet. This struck a chord with me because I have friends in Weston, and their next-door neighbour died because she had poor medical insurance.

Truphone brings VoIP to the iPhone

Neil Hoskins

VoIP for Numpties

Truphone is probably better suited to the iPhone, since it's very easy to set up and use. On the downside, it's 3p per minute to landlines. Alternatively, you could get a Nokia , get into the SIP settings, and set up something like VoipFone, at 1.175p per minute; admittedly a task probably beyond most fanboy's capabilities.

MS issues eleventh hour Snapshot bug workaround

Neil Hoskins
Unhappy

No worries

Doesn't affect me, then, since the PHB has decreed that we don't need to upgrade Office 97.

The Moderatrix will see you now

Neil Hoskins

How does...

...the feller who drives the snowplough get to work in the morning?

Warning sounded over black hole in UK physics teaching

Neil Hoskins
Go

Sign of the Times...

It turns out that, as a country gets more affluent (/decadent?), fewer kids want to be scientists and engineers, and more of them want to do graphic design and media studies. This process was put in motion with the lack of post-war investment in manufacturing, and put into practice by Thatcher deciding that we didn't actually need to be able to manufacture anything. So don't worry, we'll be dependent on China and India for... well, just about everything, but we'll have the best fashions and prettiest advertising.

Nokia pays 8 2* years' royalties in advance

Neil Hoskins

@various - EPOC 5 Agenda and S40

Series 5 Agenda... now yer talkin'. Try setting the Beaconsfield Farmers' Market (which is the fourth Saturday of every month) as a recurring appointment on S60 calendar. It can't be done, yet was piss-easy with Agenda. You have to go and buy a third-party calendar like Handy Calendar. Joe User does not want to faff about like that.

S40 is not on SymbianOS. However, Symbian *is* currently finding its way into mid-range phones. The really daft thing though is that S40 is in some ways better than S60. It's the UIs that let down Symbian smartphones, not the underlying OS.

Neil Hoskins
Thumb Up

In five years...

...can we please re-visit this feature and the one by your 'esteemed colleague' to see which one got it right? My own view is that one of you has written an objective and thoughtful article and the other one has lost his objectivity to trolling and fanboy-dom.

Time to move on from Chinook to the real MoD cock-ups

Neil Hoskins
Black Helicopters

You could go on...

The prototype Eurofighter/Typhoon first flew around the time I started working for Plessey in the early 1980s. The first production models have only just entered service. How many F16s could we have bought for the same money in the same timescale?

Organised crime law crushes animal rights duo

Neil Hoskins

"Political Activism"?

The activities of those tossers and their like transcended "political activism" years ago. Passing laws to protect their victims was long overdue.

Asus to release desktop Eee PC as Ebox

Neil Hoskins

Anybody know if...

...MediaTomb or other uPNP media server works under their flavour of Xandros?

Apple sued over Mighty Mouse

Neil Hoskins

Remember when the Yanks put a man on the moon?

And now they just spend all their time and energy in court arguing over who had a silly idea first.

Nokia says no plan to switch phones to Linux

Neil Hoskins

@Danyal

Ummm... SonyEricsson smartphones use UIQ on Symbian as opposed to S60 on Symbian.

Neil Hoskins
Flame

What Darren Said.

Yes, it's surprising how many otherwise-clued people confuse the OS with the UI. This is probably not the time or place for a resume of why S60 is shite but, what the hell, I'm bored.

- Access point control. People with laptops are used to setting up authorised access points and connecting to them pretty-much automatically. With S60 you have to either set a single access point or set each app to "always ask". Truphone's excellent and tiny VoIP-assist app includes a little 'priority list' of APs, which includes a dotted line above which APs connect automatically and below which they "always ask". Why can't S60 have something similar? Worst case scenario is streaming via RealPlayer, which takes you down through no fewer than SEVEN menu layers every time you realise you're on a different AP from the last time you used it: tools - settings - applications - RealPlayer - streaming - network - default access point.

- Anyway, why are RealPlayer streams part of Gallery and not in the music folder?

- PIM apps. Why, years after Psions, when hardware and memory are so much cheaper than they were, are the PIM apps so crap? They haven't significantly changed since the 3650. Try setting "the third Saturday of every month" in the default calendar and you'll see what I mean.

- No html support in the messaging app.

etc, etc...

I have to admit I have no experience of UIQ but if the Z8 had had WiFi I definitely would have given it a try.

Neil Hoskins

Strange...

...that Symbian is not considered any good for an internet tablet, considering that its predecessor, EPOC r5, was considered good enough for the awesome Psion 7. Frankly, I suspect that the shortcoming is with the piss-poor S60 UI, rather than the underlying OS.

Royal Bank of Scotland takes three weeks to squash nasty Worldpay bug

Neil Hoskins
Flame

No surprise...

...since the tossers STILL don't have an SPF record.

Teen battles City of London cops over anti-Scientology placard

Neil Hoskins
Go

That young lad...

... is my new hero. With more like him there could yet be hope.

Is Vista ready for Business?

Neil Hoskins
Unhappy

Mixed Networks

At home I have an 802.11g network. To this are permanently connected a PC running Vista Home and one running XP Home. At evenings and weekends my N95 joins the party, and occasionally we get another XP Home Machine and an XP Home laptop out of the cupboard. The Vista machine seems perfectly happy with these neighbours. What really screwed it up, though, and took a long time to figure out, was when we set the Wii to a permanent connection. The Vista machine then sat and sulked, with only an intermittent network connection. Everything else in the house is perfectly happy to co-exist in peace with the Wii. I've had to set the Wii to only connect when browsing, which means I don't get friends' Miis, the weather channel, or the news channel. Frankly, this pisses me off greatly.

If it's not ready for my home I wouldn't let it anywhere near my business.

Heathrow 777 crash: Siberian cold to blame?

Neil Hoskins
Boffin

Well I am an engineer...

And I think the emphasis needs to be not on what happens when the system gets cold, but what happens when the system warms up again; like when you descend from 33,000ft to 720ft. Things can either melt or boil when you warm them up. The pressure increases as you descend, too. I presume that somebody has already looked in detail at the properties of various compounds (water, kerosene, water/kerosene mix, liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen, fuel additives, cleaning fluids, CO2) with varying temperature and pressure? Phase transitions can also be exothermic or endothermic. If the compounds are particularly clean (condensed water vapour?), with nothing to nucleate on, you can also get super cooling or super heating, meaning that the phase transition occurs much later than you would expect, and happens very suddenly.

UK punters love Nokia, hate McDonalds

Neil Hoskins

Nokia and N-Gage

Presumably, the big companies do similar research, so Nokia must have known that the N-Gage brand was tainted. Odd, then, that they decided to keep the name for the relaunch, rather than calling it "Ovi Games".

Apple to announce handheld games console at WWDC?

Neil Hoskins
Thumb Down

No way.

Nobody is stupid enough to buy an iPhone and a separate iConsole when they could just get an N-series Nokia with N-Gage included.

Why Microhoo! is like, so, totally dead

Neil Hoskins

I remember...

...repeatedly telling Americans to look up 'irony' in the dictionary. Sadly, this has now been replaced by telling Brits to look up 'satire'. It's a dying artform on this side of the pond.

Nintendo Wii 'like a virus', games boss sniffs

Neil Hoskins

3.5 sounds about right

The people who are buying them (me) aren't the usual demographic and are probably more careful with their money than the kids with lots of disposable income and nothing better to do with it. The titles are BLOODY expensive.

Apple MacBook Air Early 2008

Neil Hoskins
Stop

Translation:

Oooooo.... shiny, shiny, shiny.

SHINY.

Shiny, shiny, shiny...... SHINY!

Neil Hoskins

"Apple unveil iNvisible iBook"

http://newsbiscuit.com/article/apple-unveil-invisible-ibook-279

"‘Anyone with any taste or appreciation of computer design can see that this is the best product on the market’."

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