Posts by Edwin
387 posts • joined Thursday 12th April 2007 22:03 GMT
Nokia on the way out?
I'm not buying it.
Tripling their (admittedly tiny) market share without help from their new cheaper wp8 models tells me there is a lot of potential there. And whatever the joys of Elop-bashing , I was very pleasantly surprised by wp8.
Re: EEPROM + UV?
No one else has commented on this because it's been so long since I used either that I'd forgotten the distinction....
Re: Question:
Not sure about the Croatian border, but within Schengen you can go anywhere without being stopped. Even so, a border stop at the Croatian border is likely to be a quick glance at an ID card (passport not necessary) and being waved through.
IMHO, if you're 'distracted' enough to drive 1500km and not notice, hints like a border crossing are not going to be substantial enough.
Dutch news...
Says the family claims Jobs agreed to 6% of the cost of the yacht, and that Starck has been paid in full.
Starck claims 6% was discussed but the final bill was €9M, so he's still €3M short.
Either way, it's clear I should start designing boats instead of commenting on El Reg...
Posted in SPEARS fired up for explosive climax
Previously discussed
I believe there's a lot of safety and redundancy built in now, but you still have a single point of failure that relies on mechanics - the relay.
Are you sure it'll work at altitude?
In Google's defense
India has some of the most dynamic, tortuously complex tax law on the planet. Their sales tax regime is even more complicated than the US system, and more subject to change.
Posted in Amazon Kindle Paperwhite review
Shameless Amazon advert?
Ummm no.......... Kindle was NOT first (no matter what the Amazon marketing drivel you're reprinting says). I bought my first Sony E-reader in 2006.
Also - on what planet is it worth paying 50 of any currency to be allowed to borrow one book per month? I can borrow books for free from my local library, and many libraries are starting to lend e-books but usually only in EPUB format (which Kindle doesn't support). You're paying for next day delivery, and the ability to borrow a book per month hardly even qualifies as 'added value'.
Re: I miss the ounce...
In Dutch shops, it's quite common to order by the ounce (100g) or pound (500g). Maybe blighty should slowly change the value of miles, pints and stone (wtf kind of unit is that???) so that in 50 years a metric transition can be made easily.
Re: Move out.
You'd be surprised, and the fact that it's a couple of interconnected buildings means slightly smaller tenants would be an option also.
Kone has their HQ next door IIRC, and there are a couple of other large Finnish companies in Espoo that could easily fill the space if they were so inclined.
I suspect the problem is more that companies are collectively trying to get OUT of buildings, rather than build new ones, so there may be a bit of a glut on the market. OTOH, they're building a metro station quite close by, so who knows...
Re: Frackin MORON JUDGE!
Based on your first post, I never would have guessed that you have anger issues...
Re: The A-Team
Especially considering that the door is the strongest part of many American hotel rooms.
Re: Free Fix!!!
Any professional thief doesn't want to spend unnecessary time in a corridor unscrewing screws - you could possibly disguise plugging a wire into a port as fumbling with your keycard, but it's hard to explain the screwdriver stuck in the bottom of the door lock to a passing hotel guest or employee
So if that cover takes the time required to open the door from 3 to 15 seconds, they'll most likely go elsewhere.
Impressive
how Americans can get themselves so incredibly wound up over choosing between two more or less identical conservative parties.
Re: Poor workman blames his cables.
Alistair, if you want to be able to charge everything at once, then you need to be prepared to take some pain.
I can typically charge two devices at a time, and with a little planning, that works pretty well. Not flawlessly, but I'm not prepared to haul around the equipment required to set up a full-scale office when on the road.
It's called a compromise. If you're not prepared to make one when it comes to hooking up when on the road, you need to stop buying kit that uses different types of connections. So dump everything that uses something other than a standard USB connector. Like those Nintendoes, those fruity products, and so on.
Sheesh.
Scandinavia
is defined as Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
If you want to include Finland, you could say 'the Nordics' though that usually includes Iceland also.
Re: Poor workman blames his cables.
My thought exactly. I sometimes miss those 'mad days' when everything charged via USB - I travel with:
My laptop power brick
My universal plug adapter with interchangeable USB charging port
USB Mini and Micro cables
If absolutely necessary: the micro USB car charger with extra USB port to power a phone (satnav) and some other device.
If I need a camera, the brick lives in the camera bag and shares the figure 8 cable with the laptop power brick
Anything that doesn't like the standard USB charger (looking at you Nokia) charges off my laptop when needed (which is daily at office when traveling for work, or only rarely needed when on hols).
Anything requiring some other form of power provisioning is either not purchased or stays home.
And oh yes: my kids pack their own charging kit to go with their nintendii. I am not hauling their kit around.
Re: That leading sentence
My thought exactly.
Does Anonymous now troll the news looking for excuses in an attempt to legitimize naughty behaviour?
If they *really* want to get some good press, they should hack themselves and leak their own email and ID lists...
(puts on flameproof coat)
Posted in LOHAN fizzles forlornly in REHAB
Re: A bigger hammer?
What about one or more igniters cast in the engine using something like crushed rocket fuel and some sort of weak binding agent?
Re: Impossible 2-year warranty for Apple
I suspect things like batteries are subject to the 'normal wear and tear' disclaimer, so not covered by the warranty anyway.
I guess the big question is how 'serviceable' a product should be - maybe a battery shouldn't have to be consumer-replaceable, but perhaps it should cost less than x% of the new price to replace it...
Posted in Ten... dual-band wireless routers
Re: No Apple or Draytek or WAN to LAN throughput measures
Agreed. It would also be nice to know which devices have a built-in modem and (if so) how stable the connection is.
German beermats
I quite like the German approach of tick marks on beermats - it's very easy to understand, even after many tick marks on your beermat.
Sadly, the expense department at a previous employer felt that a beermat full of tick marks with the total written in the middle did not qualify as a proper receipt.
Posted in Ten... dual-band wireless routers
Fritzboxen
Stability and ADSL2+ and VDSL is why I'm replacing my recently deceased Fritzbox 7170 with the 7390 despite the fact that I don't use analog telephony anymore. The 7170 also let me retire my external wireless access point, and I'm hoping the 7390 will prove to be as good.
Unfortunately, researching stability is an excruciatingly time-consuming task, because you have to troll through dozens of consumer review sites and weed out the tripe.
Yes, it's a ludicrously expensive router, but I have never seen anything come near a Fritzbox in terms of stability, performance and features.
Gas strut?
I wonder if you could make a spring that's damped like a gas strut (such as on your car) and use that as a time-delayed tension sensor on the balloon lines? It would take care of momentary bounces during turbulence, but admittedly has a much higher risk of failure in extreme cold
Re: Why?
Still around in some places.
Park your car on the train in Helsinki, wake up in your sleeper cabin the next morning in Rovaniemi. You get a decent night's sleep, save driving 1200km and it cost me less than petrol plus a hotel.
There are loads of others around Europe, but the Finnish one is the only one I've tried. And the beer was acceptable.
Mexican deathmatch
Green chili and cheese omelette vs. huevos rancheros with chili con carne
Flames, because only tremendous amounts of chili, salt and grease can overcome a proper hangover.
Posted in Ten... freeware gems for new PCs
Avast!
By far the best antivirus package, and the voice notifications don't bother me overmuch since I usually have the speakers switched off, but the 'add-ons' (the browser plugin, the widget, etc) are an incredible annoyance - switch all those off too!
Cause and effect?
The idea that smut addiction is learned is an interesting one, but I wonder how many of the 'consequences' being attributed here are really due to excessive smut watching, or if excessive porn surfing is possibly another symptom...
Posted in EA unplugs Rock Band for iOS
Re: Paid for content...
Ah yes, but you see - Apple controls the content in the app store and takes a nice cut of the profits, so I think Apple is fair game in this exercise. All the more so since they claim part of the reason for the walled garden is protecting the customer experience.
The Windows analogy doesn't hold up because, you see, Steve Ballmer doesn't decide what I run on my Windows boxen.
(note that I don't play games, nor do I own Apple products, so no bias from my side)
Posted in Ten... two-bay Nas boxes
Re: Synology all the way
Agreed!
Been running a 410j for two years now. Hardware RAID, great management software and so on. The internal backup system is great - backups run from the main shares to a hidden share to do version management and the really important stuff is backed up to an external USB drive. I hook up the USB disk Saturday morning and by lunch my mailbox is full of messages telling me my data is safe once again.
Meanwhile, it serves up music and internet radio to the Squeezebox in the kitchen and serves whatever else I want wherever else I want it, like sharing holiday snaps with the family abroad over the built in photo sharing server.
The only two gripes are the awful desktop backup software, and the inability to upgrade the RAM (128Mb is not quite enough) but considering the price, I won't argue.
There is a bigger issue.
You whine and moan about there not being any competition but whinge about Digital Editions. I quite like Adobe Digital Editions (if I *must* have DRM). It works across my PC, phone, Sony Reader and the cheap-o Bebook Neo I picked up at AMS for €50.
True, there is a serious lack of choice, but it's mostly about the dearth of cross-border selling online bookstores. If you live in country 'A' but want a book in language 'B', you're buggered. Even most of larger english-language bookshops won't sell across borders.
I'm happy with the hardware I can get. I'm just waiting for the publishers to get their thumbs out and give me access to the content.
Wrung up?
Surely that should be 'rung up' as in a reference to old bell-equipped cash registers?
Consumer expectations
Yes, El Reg, it *would* be quibbling.
Whether or not there is a 4G standard, consumerland probably assumes there is such a thing as 4G since we all know what 2G and 3G mean, we may know about 2.5G and may have seen 3.5G on our handsets.
So if a consumer has seen 2G, 2.5G, 3G and 3.5G come along, is it unreasonable for them to expect that a 4G product will work with whatever network upgrade their operator offers next?
Whether or not 4G is 'defined' is irrelevant in this case: what operators are calling '4G' is faster than their 3G offering (in theory). If the iPad is known to be incompatible with that technology, Apple is misleading their customers because their product is 'only' 3G and they know it.
Therefore, calling it the iPad 4G outside the US is nothing short of misleading.
Not getting it
Aren't we already providing all this data via ESTA, which presumably has none of the restrictions lined in the PNR agreement?
I wonder
what did you do, Andrew?
What did you whisper in someone's ear that resulted in the fisticuffs?
yay
next, install webcam and deduce the right ones by process of elimination over a few weeks :)
Posted in Dutch clog up The Pirate Bay (again)
Meanwhile, the Finns
appear to have received a bomb threat from Anonymous according to YLE (http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2012/01/police_investigate_anti-piracy_group_bomb_threat_3165279.html)
If nothing else, this sort of activity keeps us entertained as the entertainment industry screams about piracy, the ISPs shout about freedom and unreasonable cost and the freetards throw temper tantrums.
Wondering...
is there any particular reason you lot are suddenly plugging all sorts of Amazon products? Dropping advertising revenue? Unreasonable salary demands by the writing peasantry?
Personally, I find it a bit of a turn-off, but my employer would probably chalk that up to change resistance, so it may not be you - it's me. Really.
Doesn't mean it's a bad idea though.
Just amend the law to allow anything that uses the car speakers and a fixed microphone.
Posted in FOI request turns up Carrier IQ surprise
Is it possible...
That this is all just a storm in a teacup?
While CarrierIQ's software does seem to 'see' keypresses and content, it doesn't necessarily follow that it logs them, much less transmits them 'home'.
I have nothing to do with the handset biz, but nothing I've read so far (discounting media hysteria) would constitute 'proof' of actual snooping.
The only thing we can definitely blame CarrierIQ for is sloppy software: if their software does what it says on the tin, then it should have been written to avoid any appearance of privacy invasion.
Oh dear...
Kindle only? Oh well, not for me then.
I'm disappointed El Reg. Would an open standard ebook format have been too much to ask for?
Because
...then any loud-mouthed idiot with a blog could claim protection under journalist protection laws. I'm sure the US has an association of journalists. Maybe membership of that body should be the litmus test.
As part of the 99%
I would be more interested in seeing these clowns behind bars.
Unless I qualify for large donations of course (cash only, please)
I agree completely. Great it's gone, too bad they didn't follow due process. Whether or not law enforcement is inept at these things, the fact remains that they are 'law enforcement'. Anonymous is not 'law enforcement' - Anonymous is 'vigilantism'.
The cynic in me also wonders if this is Anonymous trying to generate some positive press...
Posted in El Reg in SHOCK email address BLUNDER
Thanks?
It is indeed an impressive list (and yes Neil, I found you on it)
I agree a notification to the 46k plus recipients would be in order. I can send you a copy if you'd like.
Sorry El Reg, but there is NO excuse!
Posted in Amazon revamps E Ink Kindle line
There is an answer!
Buy a Sony (or Nook, or some other brand of ereader)
Amazon is not the only game in town...
Posted in Ten... digital voice recorders
Accessories
One of the topics missing in this review is the availability of accessories. Transcription pedals (mentioned above) are pretty much essential if you're going to be using a voice recorder much - they free up hands for typing while you either transcribe what's been dictated or summarise the discussion.
I think it's a key area where these devices compete with phones - shame they're not covered.
I think the idea behind rocket motors is that they provide their own oxygen...
The pressure issue
Once you ignite the motor, pressure in the chamber will increase very quickly, so unless you have a monster vacuum pump (or a fairly large hypobaric chamber), you won't be able to reliably assess the burn (e.g. does the motor burn properly, or does it fizzle enough to raise the pressure in the chamber and only then burn properly).
Two things spring to mind:
- a large-ish tank of some variety, connected to the test chamber via a pipe to effectively increase the available vacuum (similar to the expansion tank on your central heating system)
- a pressure sensor under the motor to measure the engine thrust, particularly during the first one or two seconds - to be compared against a similar burn performed with the chamber at normal pressure.
I once had...
...a BIOS that required you to confirm a BIOS reprogramming by flashing up a text screen. I'm guessing this feature died because Joe User didn't want his Windows BIOS update utility crashing Win95 every time he updated the BIOS.
With most BIOS now able to update themselves from a USB drive directly from the configuration screen, I guess it should be possible to reinstate this feature.
Mythbusters!
built a hypobaric chamber when they were testing whether or not bulgarian airbag implants will explode during flight.
This strikes me as the sort of test they would be delighted to assist with!
