Posts by spiny norman

HTC: We (don't) listen to our customers.

I bought a Desire S at about the time the One came out, and as a combined phone, mp3 player and camera I think it's pretty good. But it's been spoilt by the preloaded, hardwired software, particularly HTC Locations, which tries to send you to a premium navigation service every chance it gets. I also don't want a Facebook app on my phone, but that can't be uninstalled either, without rooting. Emails to HTC get a reply starting "we listen to our customers" followed by "no, you can't delete all that rubbish we put on your phone."

Freeview?

On Freeview the red button only provides an alternative way of switching between the 3 main channels, plus some text news options, so it's really very little use. If you want the full service, you have to subscribe to Sky or a cable provider. I can't see why the BBC would want to send its customers to one of its rivals, but I suppose we have to pay the license fee anyway, so they're not bothered.

So as far as I was concerned, they got a bronze at best.

I suppose they had to explain this somehow.

http://www.playmobil.co.uk/on/demandware.store/Sites-GB-Site/en_GB/Product-Show?pid=4697&cgid=Special

I'm not a fan of Facebook, but I have some sympathy for them over RKJ's "experiment".

Basically, he sets up a page for a company that doesn't exist and doesn't have a product and "targets" a few quids' worth of advertising at countries which are not, as he later admits, the most lucrative potential markets, but are ones that someone else had told him generate a large number of false responses. Unsurprisingly he gets a large number of false responses.

As a result of this experiment, we know nothing we didn't know before. In particular, we don't know whether Facebook is right to claim that fake accounts aren't a problem for a company with a real product, that is prepared to employ someone who understands how to do social media marketing. It is entirely possible that false likes could be useful to someone who knew what they were doing.

The BBC, being an on-line news site, clearly know that "Facebook is rubbish" articles generate a lot of comment and traffic. Maybe they should try going behind a paywall.

Eh?

"There seems to be a disconnect between what young people perceive a career in IT to be and an acknowledgement of how this translates into the gadgets, smartphones and consoles they use on a daily basis."

How stoking the mainframe in the basement of RBS translate into gadgets, smartphones and consoles?

Not for the first time I read "draft .... bill" as "DAFT .... bill". I guess my brain's now hardwired to expect anything the government does to be barmy.

I remember in the 1990s seeing ads on the tube for Cobol programing courses promising untold riches in the safe and prosperous world of data processing. I wondered at the time how many people who paid for those courses actually got a job, and if they did, how long it lasted.

Haven't seen any iPhone or Android App Programing courses on tube ads yet. Clearly a gap in the market for some enterprising developer with training skills to make a killing, before the bottom drops out.

Sad day

In the early 1990s I bought an Atari 520STfm, which is even now in the spare bedroom. It hasn't had any use for years, but my wife (yes, really) refuses to get rid of it.

We got it for the kids, then 10 and 6, to play games on, but soon we were all hooked, from Gauntlet II to Leisure Suit Larry, to Dungeon Master, to shareware games that cost next to nothing, but provided young children with hours of safe entertainment.

The range of business software on the ST is often overlooked: there were spreadsheets, word processors, DTP packages, databases, even a database for unstructured data and a hyper text system. The Atari converted my sceptical wife from typewriters to word processing and inspired her to do a course in desktop publishing.

It was real, affordable computing you could get involved with and it's sad there's nothing like it today. Jack Tramiel earned a long and peaceful rest.

One day, coming home, I left the satnav on long after I knew where I was going. It confidently told me to turn right down a lane I know leads to a ford that is only suitable for horses. I ignored it, obviously, but I'm surprised the river isn't full of Japanese tourists.

GO, because, well, the satnav INSISTED.

Aaargghhh

As if Fats Waller didn't suffer enough. Two songs on that album.

What happened to the British passport ????

The one with the page that said: "The bearer of this passport is British. Let them in or else. Yours sincerely Victoria, Regina, Empress of India and everywhere else."

pics??

I see no pics. Is it worth disabling Adblock for?

Last night I watched "The old blah blah blah shop of stuff" on I assume a BBC channel, since I don't remember any adverts. It had the inevitable Stephen Fry playing Kingdom in a frock coat and whiskers, along with other stand up comics who can't act and Celia Imrie, who can, but didn't get the chance. The writing was on the level of a public school end of term concert. So is there no law to prevent this? If it's a parody of Dickens, then it's open season, but if it's a parody of Dickens adaptations, presumably they're protected and we can send the whole production team to jail.

local authorities to submit their daft plans

was how I read it at first.

Dumbo

"How ironic would it be to have Hadoop, named after a stuffed elephant, running on a server called Avion? You could call the solution Dumbo and peddle it to upper management..."

Someone has to do this. The C levels would never notice.

Facebook - identity manager

I read something recently which suggested Facebook is becoming a de facto identity manager, as increasing numbers of sites allow you to register using your Facebook profile. The site you've registered with can then track back to your public FB profile and probably find out all sorts of things about your interests, friends and family. I don't know if FB is charging for this, but maybe that's where the money is.

Gonks Go Beat

Graham Bond, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Dick Heckstall-Smith. How could you forget?

"Bizarre sixties fable resembling Romeo and Juliette, but instead of Montagues and Capulets, there are two musical communities, one who like rock and roll and one who like ballads ..." IMDB

OK, I get it

12 = R 11 = LL. You might still have to explain 61 to me, I'm not in the Twitter generation.

I'm hoping the revenue DVLC gets from egotistical je12ks, who have to have their names on their number plates, pays the salary of whoever works this stuff out.

So Government + IT = huge joke. Which might be why Cameron's deputy CIO just resigned and went to EMC.