Posts by lybad 135 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Sep 2015
When I were a lad...
Well, maybe not quite a lad.
When I was a student, our computer labs were on the 10th and higher floors in a city centre building, which then got sunlight (hey - it was Scotland, so it only happened occasionally). We had a lab of Sun Workstations. You know, the ones which needed a metal mousemat painted with dots to work. Had exactly the same problem so you could have 20 or 30 machines at a time suddenly not in mouse mode.
The flip side of this is when people come in and tell you that you don't speak your native language properly.
Happened to a friend and me, when a Polish postgrad student came to the University I worked at. And promptly told us we didn't speak proper English. But then my friend comes from Blantyre... :-)
(I've a weird Scottish dialect - because my parents moved round the country a lot with their jobs when I was a kid)
When I worked in Glasgow I used to get deep fried pizza from the chippy on Buchanan Street next to the south entrance to the underground/subway/clockwork Orange. Used to find them really tasty, but you could feel your heart working overtime.
My daughter used to get deep fried Freddo's after swimming on a Friday. Another part of Scotland though. Look disgusting though.
I agree - we're mainly a Windows and RHEL shop - with some CentOS boxes, which are being moved to RHEL. However, we do have some Ubuntu machines used in some labs - trying to learn the subtle differences when setting them up is not simple.
We had the same type of thing when VMWare stopped including SLES with the licence and we started moving to RHEL based setup.
They're not closing all the stores. Just the majority.
I'm intrigued what they are going to do in areas like where I live where my nearest Sainsbury's is 15 miles one way, and 45 the other, but still have more places to collect items ordered remotely. On the other hand I have 3 Argos branches about 15 miles away and one about 30.
When I was an undergrad in the late 80's/early 90s, I had a lecturer who was a director of the company that made the First Word (and Plus) wor processor for Gem. He told us that there were random counters in the code that were designed to slow the application down, and they just reduced the count on subsequent releases to improve performance.
Of course it can. Xiaomi are available direct from themselves but also through Amazon amongst others. And they are not part of Huawei, so don't have the US issues (yet).
I got a 5g handset for £220 a few weeks ago, from their own site.
Article quoted as "Amazon said: "With British English, you can deliver a robust and localized ['scuse me?] conversational experience that accurately understands the British accent. Amazon Lex also provides pre-defined slots that are localized [ahem] to capture information such as common names and cities found in England.""
So British English - but common names and cities found in England. So that rules out Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland's cities and names then?
MIUI is like every skin - personal preference. I use EMUI and MIUI every day (one tablet, one phone) and can't say I care wither way. But I probably prefer MIUI. Xiaomi tend not to be as aggressive in terms of forcing their own skin on the device owner.
As I mentioned, Poco is now a separate company from the main Xiaomi line, so they are competing now - and as for the launcher, the Poco launcher is a different beast from the main MIUI one.
https://9to5google.com/2020/01/17/poco-splits-from-xiaomi-to-become-completely-independent-brand/
The thing about the web YouTube music is how difficult they seem to make it for you to listen to an album you have uploaded. Search defaults to online media rather than your library, and then when you switch to your uploads, it lists all the music in a random order. Trying to actually find the album is a nightmare.
Yes it is primarily a streaming service. However Google Play allows you to buy music, but according to something I saw yesterday, they're about to stop selling music as well. Which means I need to find an alternative site for buying music if I can't or don't want to buy physical media for those items.
Afaik - the issue with the free YaToob needing the device to be unlocked only applies when you're streaming media. If you have local content it should play it with the screen locked.
For me, I've always just used local content on my device, and at present I use Omnia as my media player. Works for me...
You used to be able to argue that they were cheaper than a tablet, but with the Fire tablets, that's not true anymore.
I used a paperwhite for years as it was convenient for on the bus - especially as some of the books I read are more coffee table books in print. However, since I've been working from home, I've been reading more graphic novels and less books, and the 10" Fire tablets are great for those. If I ever start commuting again, I suspect I'll go back to the Paperwhite again.
Going back to the Kobo/Kindle thing - in the early days Kobo used to emphasise they felt if someone bought a book from them, they "bought" a book from them - so they were free to make backups, copy them to other devices, etc, whereas Amazon only licence the book to you - so if Amazon decide they don't like your face/money and close your account, you basically have the licence (to kill), revoked.
You're missing the point - this isn't about the ROM as such. The global ROM is what is on the phone if you buy a genuine UK market Xiaomi handset.
Given that most people will do some customising of their settings, even if it's just their ringtone and wallpaper, it's not that difficult to search for and turn off a setting for displaying adverts (or as Xiaomi put it - suggested apps).
In terms of ads, there is a single toggle seeing to turn most of them off in the global ROMs. Google it for a guide.
Only took 5 mins on my mi 8.
Another thing is that Xiaomi don't abandon their handsets after 2 minutes, still releasing updates to the OS and MIUI after several years.
I think I borrowed them from a library when I was a kid - probably taped them too, but no idea if I still have the cassette. And if I do, who knows what state it's in.
The did a second album too, which was probably based on Restaurant, which I don't know if I ever found.
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