* Posts by Mark Stanbrook

18 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Dec 2007

Apple, Spotify, Amazon: All your Cloud are belong to us, says firm

Mark Stanbrook

If the patent was even targetted at digital delivery over the 'net

... then British Telecom would have prior art, although I doubt they would have filed for a patent in the US.

It's just one example and I expect many others have done it too but back in '96 BT had an on-demand video service from an archive of laser disks style storage which has direct parallels to Spotify. It was only in Westminster and only on one of the two cable TV networks they had in the region so very few ever got to see it.

Brussels: Water cannot be sold as remedy for dehydration

Mark Stanbrook
WTF?

You what?

This is the oddest thing I've ever read! Water is a cure to not having enough water? Well yes. Bottled water though should be carrying a warning saying "This water is no better for you than what comes out of your tap." The stuff that the Coca-Cola company sells under some Japanese sounding name is in fact from a tap.

And that whole thing about drinking 2 litres per day is poppycock. You get your 2 litres, or the majority of it, from meat and plant matter if you're eating properly.

Anyway recent research has shown that chocolate milk is better at rehydration than water is.

ASA goes online to swing stick at new media advertisers

Mark Stanbrook

I believe it's a good move

You're right but generally the ASA are a very easy group to work with as a consumer. Firstly they always respond and they always act and they always tell you what they did. I've used them to take down numerous pieces of misleading advertising for snake-oil. Now I will be able to do the same not just for adverts in emails but claims on their websites.

Previously I had to go through the OFT for the latter which is fine but the OFT have no requirement to tell you what actions they take so you're not always sure if they did anything.

The ASA will refer complaints to the OFT and the ASA has a simple webpage for you to register your complaint, unlike the OFT. Makes the process that much easier for the consumer.

It also means another avenue of 'attack' for campaigns. For example the Chiropractic complaints that recently led to some 25% of all practitioners in the country being placed under investigation for misleading claims could now also be referred to the ASA. A three pronged attack via the ASA, OFT and Regulatory body generates three times the paperwork for the snake-oil vendor to deal with. The BCA apparently had to take on new staff just to deal with the volume of complaints they received and it could have been so much more work!

And while the ASA might not have any teeth of their own it's at least better to have a regulator that is respected than no regulator at all.

Secret ancient code, basis of all modern civilisation, cracked

Mark Stanbrook

Are you serious?

Why is this even news-worthy without any counter-balance? All of these Code systems have debunked over and over and over. In any large enough set of data using an effectively infinite set of encodings you can find anything you wish to find. My favourite debunking:

'... an ELS analysis on Drosnin's Bible Code II: The Countdown (2002) found the message "The Bible Code is a silly, dumb, fake, false, evil, nasty, dismal fraud and snake-oil hoax."'

Cloud computing, eBooks - no thanks (or not just yet)

Mark Stanbrook
FAIL

Bravo!

Well said... I picked up a copy of Wind in the Willows from my bookshelf last night as I rearranged a few things. It's been in my possession since I was a kid. On a whim I checked the printing date. 1951. And it's in perfect condition.

I have other books in just 'good' to 'excellent' condition that date to 1880 or earlier.

Anyone willing to wager that something they buy as an e-book today will be readable by them without paying for it again in 130 years?

Not to mention the value...

Feel.me up for grabs in dot-me domain auction

Mark Stanbrook
Paris Hilton

Already own...

using.me. Lends itself nicely to subdomains like conf.using, bem,using, am.using.

Paris, because someone used her. :)

Google execs protest Italian guilty verdicts

Mark Stanbrook
Pint

Wasn't me gov!

I find it highly amusing that the Google Executive is using the 'Pirate Bay Defense' of 'We didn't put it there. We're not responsible for what our users do!'.

The Pirate Bay guys were eventually found guilty based on the profits they allegedly made from advertising.

Google... profits... advertising...

Women face 'glass cliff' after breaking glass ceiling

Mark Stanbrook
Stop

Re: The timing must be a coincidence

"most of the current crop of women politico's are all pretty much vapid, brain-dead, window dressing"

Exactly what are they dressing the windows for then? Depression???

Teresa May used to be my MP. Whenever I wrote to her the only thing I got back was a form letter:

"Thank you for your recent correspondance regarding <subject>. We at the Conservative party think something else entirely, so please piss off."

So who cares who's in politics... the policies come down from the top, decided by spin doctors not politicians.

iPad vs e-book readers: price matters

Mark Stanbrook
FAIL

Google Android, Really?

Considering that Google just shafted all their hardware partners on the Android Phone by releasing their own I would think that most people who might have produced an Andriod Pad would be very very cautious about jumping in to bed with the company that does no evil again so soon.

Amateur CCTV sleuth site probed by privacy watchdog

Mark Stanbrook
Go

Don't see any problem

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this business model.

- Sign up business to have their cameras monitored cheaply.

- Contract individuals to do the monitoring.

How is that in ANY way different from having a security guard in the building watching the camera(s)?

If it's cheap and easy to set up as a business as well then even better. Lots of people will be kicking themselves for not seeing it first. Although there's nothing patentable here so no doubt many copycats will spring up shortly when its shown that there's no privacy/data protection issues that can or even SHOULD stop it going ahead.

Blu-ray capacity to increase by a third

Mark Stanbrook

Hope it goes nowhere

3D is just a gimic which kind-of-works with a few films. I don't actually think it contributes anything to the experience. It makes it a slightly different experience. I saw Avatar in 3D and it seemed more like a pop-up book than a real 3D field. It also seemed to lack detail, colours weren't right and perspective is completely off when objects get too close to the plane of the cameras.

I don't want it in the home. And not because of the cost of a new panel, player and Amp (you'll need a new amp to passthru video while decoding Audio if you use bitstream not lpcm). If you want to make my TV better, give me a full colour spectrum, lower power consumption (50" Plasma = hungry), lower weight and then start working on holography. :)

But there's money to be made so it'll happen. I just hope the uptake is so slow that it eventually gets canned.

Sky want to broadcast Football in 3D in the 2010/11 season! Can you imagine inviting your friends round for a match and asking them to buy their stereoscopic glasses on the way?

Apple preps adaptable gadget adapter

Mark Stanbrook
FAIL

You what?

Surely you can't patent a sponge?

Panasonic Viera TX-P42G10 Freesat HD TV

Mark Stanbrook
Thumb Up

Standard Definition not so hot?

You really should review the V10 Plasma. I have the 50" model and its treatment of SD content is quite astonishingly good. Roughly speaking an SD broadcast looks as good as a 576p DVD playback. Set the panel mode to THX and lower the sharpness to nearly zero for best results. Nothing else on the market can touch it except the, now out of production, Kuros from Pioneer. I'm actually very surprised that you don't rate the G10 for SD but I haven't checked one out personally.

And no it's not 600Hz in the interpolated way of the 100Hz and 200Hz technologies that are out there. Instead it displays the same frame up to 12 times per received-frame to eliminate flicker. You get a good steady picture but you don't get the errors that interpolation can lead to.

The V10 series also benefits from a THX certified screen with very accurate colour reproduction and 24p playback over and above the G10's features.

No I don't work for Panasonic but I do love my new screen!

Virgin Media opens bandwidth choke for 50Mb launch

Mark Stanbrook
Thumb Down

Overpriced...

For the package price one could also get 2 BT Phone lines and 2 22Mbit DSL lines which would give you load-balancing and failover, plus a pick of numerous suppliers for the DSL of which there are sufficient who don't throttle.

This doesn't include TV but your options there are a Sky Basic package - the same channels at the same price, Freesat - less channels but free, Freesat HD - less channels but free and some in HD, or regular terrestrial broadcasts - FREE!

Group Test: Blu-ray Disc players

Mark Stanbrook

Missed the point slightly?

It really doesn't matter whether these players can decode the 7.1 channel sound formats. Any multichannel amplifier worth the name that can accept 7.1 channel sound over HDMI will have its own decoders which are likely to be better than those built into the BD Players. So what matters is whether or not the players can transmit the formats in LPCM for the amplifier to decode. And that's where the Yamaha (potentially) scores. Rip out the decoders from the player and you can spend money on improving other parts of the system - in theory.

And, for the record, the PS3 cannot do either. It can only decode the compressed 5.1 core of an uncompressed 7.1 channel soundtrack and can only transmit that in miltichannel mode.

British boffins perfect process to make any item '100% waterproof'

Mark Stanbrook

Why is everyone comparing to Gore-tex?

Gore-tex is no longer king for most applications where it once was. Both eVent and Paramo's analogy system are more breathable and equally as waterproof (more waterproof in the latter case).

But this has the potential to blow away Gore-tex and eVent. It can be as light as eVent and as hard wearing as Gore-tex. All you have to do is find a fabric woven in such a way as to have lots of breathability and then waterproof it with this technique.

However I can't see how to apply it in such a way as to do what only Paramo can do - allow liquid water to pass only in one direction.

Amazon Kindle set to go massive

Mark Stanbrook
Thumb Down

Just no appeal...

As others have said I am attached to my books. There's an intrinsic 'value' and 'pride' in the printed work. Maybe because it encapsulates such work and creativity. Maybe because we're all stuck in some Victorian romantic ideal. Either way I'm not changing for a long long time.

However for reading long technical documents at work... I could be persuaded by an open format device with sufficient speed, indexing, and super-high clarity and battery longevity. Guess I'll be waiting years for that though.

Data breach officials could be sent to the big house

Mark Stanbrook

The understanding is lacking.

Sadly there is no understanding of, or real attempt to educate about, security inside any government departments except the MOD. I've worked for local and national government in various roles. Oh they're great at making getting in and out of buildings convoluted and irritating, in some places, but have no idea about data.

I actually worked on a government e-mail migration project some years back where our solution to get to their mailboxes was to hack into their accounts!

Some form of PKI would be a good initial move and the costs of implementing it would be trivial compared to what the government is going to fork out to Cable & Wireless for them to change infrastructure halfway through the National Health IT Project - there's a story that's gone unreported if ever one was!