Posts by Russell Jones

Ten unlikely iPhone insurance claims

Skydiving claims have been paid

Not sure which company my friend was insured with but he had an iPhone in his back pocket when he went skydiving and got a new phone courtesy of his insurance policy (- a £25 excess).

The next day he remembered he had some location software running on it and thought he might be lucky and find it in the sofa or his car etc. Unfortunately the software showed the ride to altitude in glorious detail leading to a final fix at about 500ft above the ground but we never managed to find the phone. Not 100% sure what the terminal velocity of an iPhone is but i guess if it hit end / edge on it wouldn't leave much of a mark and would probably bury itself quite deep.

Archos adds Android 'andheld to PMP collection

Costs extra for codecs?

Do they still charge for all the useful video codecs? A friend bought a really nice looking player a while ago and then realised she would have to buy €50 worth of codecs to watch most of her videos. It went back to the store the next morning.

FDA approves cloned animal products

Anyone heard of monoculture?

I'm sure I've heard somewhere that Windows has the most infections of any operating system due to its prevalence on the desktop.

Now we're going to have a situation where every animal in a herd is an identical twin and also identical to every animal on every neighbouring farm as presumably the same traits will be beneficial to most farmers. The farmers will have to pump their animals full of vaccinations and antibiotics continually just to hold back the disease.

Lets just hope that the measures they have to go to to keep these animals alive don't result in infections in humans that are resistant to treatment. Can anyone say MRSA?

Fraud abroad drives up card losses

You'd think that was a great idea wouldn't you

I've had issues in the past where my card stopped working as the bank flagged my card as having "an unusual spending pattern" while i was away on business.

The next time I was away I rang the bank to tell them I was going to be abroad just to make sure that the same thing didn't happen again. On the first afternoon away my card stopped working again.

When i returned to the UK I phoned my bank to be told that there was no way they could tell "the computer" that I had told them I was going to be away.

I believe the banks see the current situation as cheaper than the cost of implementing decent measures to prevent fraud. I guess it's not the banks who have to deal with the fallout of being in a foreign country without any money or trying to repair their credit ratings after they've incorrectly loaned money to someone who happens to live at an address you lived at 20 years ago

Apple unveils larger nanos

It's the seventh wonder of the world

What more can I add, Steve already said it all.