* Posts by t1mc

17 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Aug 2007

How UK gov's 'growth' measures are ALREADY killing the web

t1mc

My Precious

Seems straight forward to me. The internet business model is replacing an old world model as in many other areas.

Protectionism might sustain this chappies lifestyle for a bit longer but eventually he is going to have to find his place in the new model. He might have to hitch helicopter rides to reduce his costs etc.

Checkout the guy in the UK that has a fast food job, pays for his own train to London every summer to photograph rich Arabs cruising the streets in supercars. He loves what he does and sometimes people pay £500 for his images.

I believe the latter example is more sustainable while the dust settles a bit.

NASA admits hiding 'really good' news from Martian soil

t1mc

Drive Thru

A sign? Looks like two yellow shapes on a red background?

RIP Psion PLC: You're with Motorola now

t1mc

I used my netbook on a train 18 months ago when I got upgraded to 1st class free and actually got asked where I'd got it from by a couple of business people. I was just testing if out would work on the wifi. They loved the instant on and keyboard. Late Psioneers!

Nokia on 'brink of failure', warns analyst

t1mc

Scale, marketing, and trust

Seems to me that M$ forgot how to take somebody elses product, reverse engineer it and do a fabulous marketing job.

It also seems that hardware manufacturers have learned not to get trapped into shelling out to one dominant company.

M$ might even have the best product, but who is willing to trust them?

Nokia should have realised this before they got hooked to just one pusher.

Colossal dead black neo-sphere approaching Earth

t1mc

We ain't got one

It'll not be an issue for britain, we don't know what an aircraft carrier is.

Hadron Collider 'could act as telephone for talking to the past'

t1mc
Go

Hand me that crystal

Which future will be sending a message to which past and who would notice if that future became a thing of the past?

Android rebellion: How to tame your stupid smartphone

t1mc

A bit of a ramble

T'was an interesting article which did highlight some of Androids deficiencies.

I've just bought four phones for my family recently and am now skint.

The missus moved from a n95 to a Satio and is happy as larry that she has a 12mp camera.

My youngest daughter has a nokia x6 which she loves...music/wifi/facebook etc

My middle daughter has an iphone4 so she's in line with her bf and once I'd set the bloody thing up with itunes etc all has been good

I have spent months looking at what would be an ideal upgrade to my UIQ3 P1i, a three+ year old phone that had solid wifi, good battery, a reasonably useful keypad, good for reading books, RSS, facebook, business card scanner, decent camera, fab lcg jukebox, song recognition etc etc.....I plumped for a HTC legend based on some stunning internet reviews.

It's a lovely and well designed phone but has been the hardest of all the above to set up with my home wifi....I had to get a belkin wireless router (that I luckily had knocking around) and daisychain it to my wireless network. A bit extreme but it was the only fix..i tried all the multitude of android apps that stop disconnections etc but none worked. This needs sorting as it is something that is vital to the operation of a constantly updating phone for obvious reasons.

Then of course I was unaware of the stupid gmail issue and had to factory reset.

I was never going to buy a samsung because they make good tellys and overtooled phones (look good but never seem to have the ability to deliver).

I nearly bought a N97 mini but I do think Nokia has lost its way a bit of late.

I was never going to have an iphone, as nice as they look I just cannot agree with the business model...criticise M$ for years then deliver iphon£....another closed system with dubious areas of censorship.

I do like the HTC...will I love it? Not sure, as with most of the handsets discussed the battery appears to be incapable of removing the need to be attached to a cable for great lengths of time.

Personally I liked UIQ3 the best, it did all that the current phones do and it did it longer....what happened to the last three years?

I like the double tap as it stops you selecting the wrong thing when using a product which is designed to be in motion, then having to go back to where you were to try selecting again.

I like the HTC capacitive screen but also liked the reactive screen because when you are searching for something in google and you need to edit the search string you can easily select the place you want to insert text without it zooming and all manner of crazy things.

And I liked the scrollwheel as it made the machine easier to use in one hand.

The HTC is definitely slicker but possibly a touch more dumbed down, or at least it felt that way when personalising it.

Is it as slick as the iphone? possibly not, but I think in the absence of my UIQ3 preference my Android HTC legend is a good choice and I certainly don't feel that my daughters iphone offers anything more and of course it cost twice as much.

Washington Supremes deliver death sentence to betting site

t1mc
Boffin

What is betting?

Perhaps they should have argued that their business model mimics the stock exchange....is there a difference between betting on the results of one and betting on the results of the other?

French pass 'three strikes' file-sharing law

t1mc

Bleu-tooth

1,000 kids in the local ecole, one cd and a bit of nasty bluetooth to spread it around.

Or of course use the modern equivalent of taping and record the old wireless streaming the ditty over l'internet and then bluetooth.

Funny how it's OK for radio to play what it thinks we want to hear yet when we choose what we want to hear it's illegal unless paid for.......perhaps it's the business model that's bust non?

Maybe we need a French cd mountain, then we could all chip in a bit.

Abba star slates 'lazy, stingy' Pirate Bay fans

t1mc

The argument is lost and the law never changes

In the 70's we taped music

In the 80's we video'd tv

We did and we still do...and we will in the future.

Those people that choose to pay (I do if the product is good enough or if I go to see a gig) are benefiting from the actions of downloaders...the distributors/producers had to cut their prices by half to stay in the market.

Therefore instead of still charging £16-£20 for an album, they now charge £8 - £10. This would never have happened without 'piracy'....cd's were invented in 78 and prices stuck until the mid 90's, that's a hell of a product life cycle, especially when the cost of production came down with no benefit to the customer.

The piss was taken and a new medium came along. People like it, the companies need to respond as there's no going back, and those that say they pay for everything are not paying the required amount of these companies....to take the high ground you owe money to the record companies, it belongs to them but you kept it in your pocket because of pirates.

UK.gov prepares for filesharing fracas

t1mc

a kiddie workaround

So when one kid at a school buys the tune on itunes then bluetooths it to their 10 mates who all do the same.....at what point can BPI and all the other fools get involved?

They are wasting their time on what is really a great source of free viral product advertising if they applied more of their energy to something positive rather than pissing people off.

Meat Loaf gets Q gong

t1mc

Bank out of hell

Well I went to Castle Howard to see him this year. The young (including the not so youthful me) were rocking in front of the stage and singing their hearts our, the elderly were sitting in their fold away chairs further up the bank...they went to see a rock gig and sat in chairs...they were there in the 70's rocking and rolling and now they're in their chairs rocking and moaning

Pub toilet todger tiff ends in bloodbath

t1mc

the IT angle

They hid behind the till, I can't believe nobody guessed it....the stocks were shot to bits when the bar manager did his weekly check.

UK launches major road signage review

t1mc

nice view

The road signs are a nice colourful distraction whe you're cruising at 55-56 mph behind a couple of lorry racers on a dual carriageway or two lane motorway such as the M18. It can take 3 miles or more for them to overtake!

And which twat introduced the rule about lorries speed limit 40mph on single carriageways?

Why can a coach travel at 80mph on a motorway but a lorry can't?

I drove in France recently and I can tell you that I had all on to keep up with lorries at 120-130kmh, no congestion there!

There's some extremely funny posts, all true and all hilarious thank you.

Legal digital music is commercial suicide

t1mc

Don't want the issue settling

The big labels harp about the value of the 'lost revenue' of the p2p downloads but it isn't lost because people wouldn't buy it anyway, or should I say a percentage would.

What really irks the rip-off companies is them having to retail at a heavy discount shortly after release in order to compete.

If the rip-off companies had sense they would see that a much larger market that isn't just teenagers is being created and that they can surf on the back of that market (remember these companies aren't collapsing like Lehman Brothers)

My point is that if the rip-off companies create a sound legal p2p model discounts will not happen as easily because there is no cost to distribution except time. ie there are no scabby cd's and dvd's sitting around in wire baskets in HMV waiting to be flogged for £2.

If the rip-off companies take the initiative they could stop their products retailing for so little therefore we need the p2p's for better customer value, and they need the p2p's for the much bigger market.

Remember these companies have been flogging us flawed hardware for years, how many of us have been conned by having to pay twice just to 'update' our collections from one format to another? At least the consumer now has control if they want it, and they have the opportunity for good discounts on the physical item if they're prepared to wait a short while.

Sorry to waffle and rant.

Set-top box modders sent to prison

t1mc
Happy

Armitage Shanks

Thank holy god that armitage shanks didn't lease their equipment otherwise it would be illegal for us to receive potty training without paying for it....and we'd all be in the shit.

Maybe short sightedly they didn't lease us their taps (fawcetts) also.

And thankfully for the USA the UK didn't lease its language otherwise M$ and others would have found it difficult to patent anything in the first place.

Licenses, tariffs, taxes and all other reasons to stop others from moving forward the progress of man (woman) are there to slow progress and are abhorrent to human development.

If Virgin and Sky don't like it maybe they should have to pay royalties to Eddison and friends for using their electricity idea....then royalties to Scandinavia or China or somewhere for the benefit of being trained in how to deal with metal in the manufactured products...then some kind of fine for promoting smoking within buildings because the training and idea is shown on the programmes they supply. Then further imprisonment for showing us in the UK how to hold a gun and fire it contrary to current legislation because we again have been educated by the films and news they supply.

Sorry I'm off my soapbox now

UK online gambling regs go live tomorrow

t1mc

Youpays your money and gets your enjoyment

Interesting article highlighting how you start with money and end up with nothing.

I suppose this is like all kinds of purchases where you end up enjoying something until it's worth nothing....I remember paying £300 for my first PC but it's worth nothing now.....what did I get for my money?

Enjoyment over a period of time...exactly the same as gambling....if it wasn't like that where does all our wages go to?

Have I spent thousands on IT to get the latest gadget (that's worth nothing a year later)?...you bet I have, but like most, I manage to control myself with gambling and have a good laugh too, and unlike getting hammered on a Saturday night I can remember having a laugh!