Like it matters.
By the time they've got the "hangouts" extension to the IMAP standards approved, I'll have had plenty of time to migrate to using something else.
9435 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007
We once went through four bloody releases before the Indian subcontractors managed to spell "Miscellaneous" correctly on all the screens, reports and menu options in Miscellaneous processing. I guess the use of copy 'n paste from the spec never occurred to them.
Another system I had the displeasure to be involved with aquired a CR stating that the users were not allowed to enter "various" for the job ID on a contract. A nice simple bit of validation, yes? You'd be amazed how many changes that went through before we managed to get it to cater for all the various (hah!) misspellings that subsequently cropped up.
"It's also looking at whether voice recognition tech from Microsoft and Google may also have infringed its patents...."
Hmm, dunno about Google, but I reckon MS are in the clear. Their antiquated Voice Commander product for the old WinMo platform was around well before 2007. It's also far and away the best for both recognition of speech and pronunciation on readback of anything I've ever used on a mobile device.
Dear MS: Port to Android? Pretty please? I'll even pay for it.......
Car repairs.
A mate once carefully wound a piece of fine fuse wire around each of his spark plugs, between the compression washer and the body, prior to putting his car in for servicing. After servicing there was, as expected, four plugs on the invoice. Removing the "new" plugs revealed a piece of fine fuse wire wound around each one.....
"...so that's just outside the statutory 1 year warranty period here in the UK...."
I think you'll find that the Sale Of Goods Act revolves around what is considered to be "fit for purpose" when it comes to deciding when liability ends. In the case of something sold on a two year contract, I suspect that you'd find in court that "fit for purpose" there would be a minimum of, er, two years.
However, as the contract is with a mobile telco it's probably their problem rather than Apple's. Certainly worth a punt in the Small Claims Court for anyone in that position I would have thought (assuming that the piss is not being taken and the device looks like it has been treated with reasonable care). I'm sure there will be an actual lawyer along in a moment to clarify this.
Er, rather more than similar. Your Honda Concerto or Legend at the time came with a badge on the slam panel that said "Made in Longbridge by Austin-Rover". They were the same car as the Rover 200 and 800, off the same production line, only the trim differed.
The engines were the same too and Rover's continued to buy in Honda engines for some time after the partnership broke up due to their being purchased by BMW, who Honda perceived as a key competitor. That BMW purchase is what destroyed Rovers, as they were overnight deprived of their next generation of mid-range (1.6 - 2.7 litres) engines. BMW's engines were all in-line units and unsuited to use in the transverse engined Rover vehicles without major and expensive modification. A marriage made in hell.
The "K" series was an in-house project and the only tech brought in was the Variable Valve Control system from Associated Pistons (which still ranks as the best variable induction timing system ever made by anyone in my book). As the technology of the "K" series differs radically from anything Honda ever produced I doubt they had too much of a hand in it. For a start, they'd have spotted that the coolant capacity of the head design was inadequate and avoided the legendary head gasket issues. This latter was compounded by the sudden need to take an engine orginally designed to top out at 1.4 litres in a four pot and bore it to 1.6 and 1.6 versions, courtesy of the planned Honda engines being unavailable. The engines so built proved hideously unreliable. The money that should have gone towards sorting the problems of the "K" series four-pot got allocated to building the KV6 engine for the 75 project which, despite its name, has little in common with the "K" and is a rather good unit.
By that time the rot had really started to set in. BMW ditched the company, the planned KV8 engine for the mooted return of the Rover 3500 V8 never materialised. Market pressure required a cheaper, 4 cylinder engine in the 75, yet no money existed to make one. This resulted in the suicidally stupid decision to blow the "K" series, despite its already well-known propensity for blowing up when normally aspirated.
The rest is, as they say, history.
I just had a look at the official website, it's another one where geolocation overrides common sense.
I type in "samsung.co.uk" and it decides that as the point of presence is somewhere else (some of our proxies are more forgiving than others), it'll give me a site I can't fucking read EVEN THOUGH THE .CO.UK ADDRESS IS VALID!
Obviously I typed in .co.uk in error 'cos I'm a complete bloody idiot who hasn't got a clue what he's doing. That's the message I got anyway.
They just got shitlisted for being too lazy to link the "real" in-country address to "samsung.com/${isoc}" and instead just linking the lot to their automated geolocation resolver. Dickheads.
Oh bloody hell. Will people knock it off with the "Julian is a good bloke and girls should just be fucking grateful to get it from him." thing.
It's people like you who are directly responsible for making rape one of the least reported and prosecuted crimes going. In every bloody case that; "she's obviously lying, it's a put-up job" is trotted out by fucktards who happen to like the perv in the dock.
Incidently, the vast majority of rapes are reported "retrospectively". It's the nature of the crime in question.
@the upvoters: Shame on you too.
I'll make my mind up once he's been convicted or aquitted in a court of law. As he seems intent on avoiding having to challenge the evidence, I'm leaning towards "guilty as sin" myself.
"...those coke machines will have to be crammed full of alcohol..."
Ah, you appear to be suffering from advertising indoctrination. You see "coke machines" and "journalists" and think; "What would the hacks want with Coca-Cola?".
I see "coke machines" and "journalists" and applaud the cunning exploitation of a marketing opportunity by the Bolivians.
I'll take that bet as I don't think it will.
9 on the other hand........
It all depends on how well 8 goes with the public. If there is the mass rush to touch interfaces that MS are hoping for, then they'll probably stick to their guns and push same to the corporates. If touchy , feely desktops don't take off, 9 will get the schizophrenic makeover.
You missed the elephant in the room.
In the Enterprise world, just about everyone stuck with XP until around now and most are at some stage of a 7 migration, quite the reverse of putting off updates in fact. Once that's complete they'll be expecting to sit on it for a while, so 8 has pretty much nowhere to go in that market. MS are well aware of this and are taking the opportunity to pilot touch with the consumer market. Lessons learned will go into 9.
+ 1 for black. Not too bothered about beige / white / whatever. The trend for everything to be silver-coloured plastic not so long ago? That was the work of Satan.
I'm still waiting for an explanation as to why all the TV and HiFi manufacturers decided simultaneously that they wanted that el cheapo, '80s Binatone/Goldstar/Amstrad look......
Oops. Some sort of award required for the analogy FAIL there.
The first mass-produced car, the Ford Model T, set the standard. The fact that at one time 50% of the entire world's cars were Model T's says it all here. In that car, the three pedals are one to switch gear ratios, one to engage reverse and a transmission brake. There is no clutch. Two levers operate the parking brake / neutral selector and the high/low ratio axle. The throttle is operated vis a lever on a quadrant attached to the steering column.
So in actual fact that car UI you are so fond of has undergone a major change. More than once. Go back a bit further and you find tiller steering control with hand operated brakes become rather more common than other mechanisms. Move on a bit and we get automatic transmissions (one fewer pedal), a wealth of parking brake options (hand operated with a variety of detents and positions, foot operated and now switch operated), automated chokeing / enrichment, also ignition advance / retard and more switchgear variations than you can shake a stick at.
Your bloke from the '30s would be rather puzzled by a modern car. How's it supposed to be started without a choke, an advance/retard lever and a starter button to press once you've turned it on with the key? Hang on, starter buttons are making a comeback, so he might be lucky on that one. Then again, if it were an auto he'd be a bit stuffed (Aha! "D" means "Forwards"...........???????).
"....uses Google's own proprietary and incompatible version of Java which therefore isn't really Java at all."
I was of the impression that the whole Oracle / Google shitfight was over the Java TCKs. You can't say it's "Java" without it getting the Test Compatibility Kit seal of approval and the TCKs are proprietary to Oracle, who reckon mobile devices should be restricted to the Mobile Edition and won't license 'em for testing on Android, so they're not allowed to run 'em........officially.
Nowhere have I seen it said that Android Java won't run the TCKs correctly, only that they're not allowed to stick the magic badge on it to say that it will.
What did I get wrong?
"....you could drive all day, and let it recharge overnight."
Or, if you are Roy Orbison, you can let it recharge during the day.
Joking aside, the 10 minute recharge time might just be achievable in the not too distant future. Batteries with an energy density that'll produce an electric car having 1500km range and still somewhere to sit people inside it are rather less likely.
....and if it still won't go in, spray it with WD40 and then hit it again.
Heating with an oxyacetylene torch until a brightly glowing cherry red colour is achieved and then belting the living daylights out of it with a sledgehammer is the nuclear option[1].
[1] If you happen to be a nuclear physicist with access to a decent amount of high-grade fissile material, your opinion may differ here. However, it should be pointed out that reducing your trivial engineering problem and a wide surrounding area to radioactive slag in a fit of pique counts as admitting defeat.
.....apart from the Eurocrats?
<Slow handclap>
The EU. Pissing your money on the wall in a pointless bureaucracy-fest since 1993[1]. They'll probably end up fining MS again, we'll pay for it indirectly in higher prices somewhere and they'll spend the cash on hiring a load of quants to analyse cattle hoof health surveys, a new institute to foster better relations with Ghanaian squirrel-farmers, more plushly appointed carriages to cosset their backsides on the Brussels-Strasbourg run, or similar......
[1] It was called something else before that. Pick your favourite from "Common Market", "European Community", "European Economic Community", Fourth Reich.......etc ad nauseum.