Posts by Steve Evans
2188 posts • joined Tuesday 17th April 2007 15:29 GMT
Page:
really?
Can you get iphone free on £30 a month contacts now?
No shock...
I regularly find things I would like turn up on Alibaba, but the reputation the Asian continent has for scams and such has always put me off...
Well that and naming your site after a guy who is associated with 40 thieves and was guilty of breaking, entering and theft.
Posted in Bahrain Grand Prix may be postponed
Personally...
I think F1 would be quite entertaining if the crowd were armed with automatic weapons... It would certainly ensure the rules that Ferrari love to bend so much far more efficiently than the FIA do.
In fact if this had been introduced a few years back we would have been spared several years of watching the follow Schumacher precession which made viewers tune out faster than Bernie appearing in a mankini.
Re: Do iPhones really outnumber Android phones 3-1 in Europe?
Remember the stats are based on web hits, not on sales. So all the graph shows is that iOS users browsed sites running this specific counter 3 times more than Android... However, as you say, it could be a case of miss counting. iOS has been locked into the built in browser until only recently, whereas Symbian and Android users have been able to opt for other since year dot. If these are not identified as the correct OS then the entire graph and conclusions drawn from it aren't worth jack.
I for one wouldn't dream of browsing t'intarweb on the default Nokia browser. First install on Symbian for me was always Opera mobile, and the second was Opera mini!
Posted in Nokia: free phones for developers
Re: Yeah, but no, but...
Indeed... The demise of Symbian is probably the end of the mobile that can last 4 days without a charge for quite a while.
Posted in Nokia: free phones for developers
Wait for it...
Standby for next weeks headline from the Nokia PR machine that signups as Nokia developers have reached a record high since announcing the Microsoft deal... Whilst casually forgetting to mention the free phone deal and that 90% of the new signups are just after the freebees...
Time to dust off the ebay account... Now where do I sign up?
Contactly waving...
I was given (without asking) a Barclaycard contact-less visa and Oyster card in 2009... I've yet to find anywhere to wave it... Maybe I've missed opportunities, I don't know, but if the shop staff don't let me know they have wave-able technology, how am I supposed to know?
I guess I should look out for anywhere that has water slides through it as a hint.
Re: Grow up Steve
I apologise if you miss understood the target of my comments, but I did clarify it in my first reply... Now please lay off the coffee and stop being such a victim.
Try a beer.
Or maybe...
"Imagine the boffins' surprise, then, when it turned out that all their bald mice had grown hair again and could not be told apart from the others any longer."
Sounds like somebody's mother accidentally killed them whilst the boffins were away, and replaced them... "They'll never notice" she was heard to say...
Give it a month...
..and Microsoft/Facebook will announce an alliance to run the whole thing on WM7 and power all the searches with Bing!
Not quite that simple...
Some of the viruses are so determined to spread on a LAN that they can saturate switches and effectively cut-off other systems which aren't even infected... Added to this the brute force log in attempts that they often try and you can quickly find that user accounts are disabled purely because a completely separate infected machine has attempted to brute force the log in and the domain controller has had a pink fit about it and locked down!
Re: Lazy
Did I say *all*? No I did not. I singled out the lazy ones who's entire HTML consists of the flash embedding wrapper which they automatically generate.
You decided to walk into the firing line of my comment all by yourself.
Posted in Microsoft polishes Windows Phone 7
Wow!
Playing audio in the background? How very Symbian 2004...
Mines the one with the new Android phone in the pocket.
Re: will limit WP7 to Nokia
Exactly my thoughts... Hopefully HTC will say "thank you MS" for actually making them a mainstream manufacturer and then go and spend all their time working on more new Android devices :-)
Re: "If it is a hit like the N900"
Well that's 1 more than I've seen N97 (yes, I bought one... D'oh), and 4 more (including your N900) than WinMo...
And a hell of a lot less than I've seen the HTC Desire family... Hmmmm
Torn...
I really am torn on this... On one hand I hate St Jobs' "I know what's good for you" control freak attitude, the main reason I own nothing fruit-themed, but on the other hand I hate the lazy arty "web designers", ironically most of whom work on Macs, that don't/can't write HTML and just throw an entire site up that is nothing more than embedded flash!
So in summary, I demand the right to waste my mobile bandwidth and data cap by downloading a huge, pointless flash thingy if I want to, but I also want to be able to turn it off in my mobile browser!
Posted in Nokia's 15-year tango to avoid Microsoft
Re: All those people looking for jobs
I wonder if any of them will wander out with the N97 firmware source in his pocket and finally fix the f*ckin' thing whilst enjoying his unemployment just to prove Symbian can do it?
Posted in Nokia's 15-year tango to avoid Microsoft
Re: Big Battalions
Very true. Certainly in the UK you couldn't buy a generic Euro Nokia. It was either an operator supplied or something called a country variant (CV). Firmware updates for operator phones are invariably delayed for 6 months or blocked completely by the operator, meaning you're stuck with the POS early OS version.
CV updates are delayed by some faceless and nameless body that nobody seems to be able to kick up the arse.
The result is that in the UK the updates just don't arrive, the phones are buggy, people curse them, bin them and go buy an iphone/android.
The "cheat" is to change the model number on the phone to generic Euro and then you get the firmware update when Nokia release it... Guess which subject is banned in the Nokia user to user discussion forum... Yup, you got it... Model number hacking... The one thing that can fix so many user problems in one hit. In their conceit for being such a huge mobile phone manufacturer they forgot that a happy punter is a returning punter, and nobody returned. Personally I've been planning my jump to an HTC Android after 10+ years of Nokias for the past few months.
Nokia has spent so much time bent over with their tongue up the arse of the operators they didn't spot Ballmer swaggering up behind them with a pot of vaseline in his hand!
Re: Oh please. Hardly a suicidal tactic is it
Actually, this man and his cat acknowledges that Nokia *used to* make good hardware. The N97 was a bit of a shock in that respect. The lens cover that actually scratches the lens if you use it, and pitiful GPS which couldn't keep a lock if you do something radical, like move!
The way they handled both of these problems showed me something else, conceit towards their customers. This was the main reason Nokia weren't even in my short list for next phone long before they revealed their latest strategy... So glad I couldn't get their Qt development SDK to work on my machine. God I would be pissed right now if I'd spent time learning that.
Posted in America spared Top Gear Mexican quips
Re: Why bother
So does that mean we still can't have Dick Van Dyke locked up in the tower for crimes against the cockney accent?
Oh, and if you're such a royalist, could you do us a favour... Come back and pay some UK taxes to support her instead of being a royalist for free!
Posted in America spared Top Gear Mexican quips
Re: Clueless wankers
Ricky Gervais' award presentation speech was actually the first time that guy has made me laugh! Up until then I had found his shows about as entertaining at a teetotal funeral. Then again, maybe it was the room full of squirming Americans that made it funny.
Now be a good lad and make me some fart-heaters.
Posted in America spared Top Gear Mexican quips
UK iplayer version...
They've already withdrawn and reissued the UK iplayer version earlier this week. They removed the comments JC made about the ambassador not complaining because he'll be asleep in his chair.
"We are standing on a burning deck..."
and now you've just poured petrol over yourself.
Posted in BBC apologises for Top Gear outrage
iplayer edit...
Has anyone notice the subtle edit on the iplayer recording of the program? I noticed it vanish off the iplayer list the other day and thought "spineless BBC have pulled it" but then it returned... A quick check to about 17 minutes revealed the Mexican comments were still there, so I thought they must have just had a glitch...
However, having just played the entire section back to a friend who missed the show, I find that all the Mexican jokes remain *except* Clarkson's comment about the ambassador! Looks like Mr Ambassador was only bothered about his own reputation and couldn't give two hoots about the reputation of the country he is supposed to represent and promote.
Re: My First Thought As Well
I've recently been doing those exact maths for the HTC desire Z... Even with buying myself out of the last 3 months and getting it on an upgrade it works out better than buying the phone separately and going SIM only. Being able to get £100 back for my old N70 from phones4u is even better... Did the same a few years ago, so I had to get another N70 off ebay.... £20 :-)
Posted in Man stabbed to death by chicken
Oh well...
I for one welcome our chopper enhanced cock overlords.
The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.
Paying for a handset on a contract? What a very strange idea!
Re: comments here
Yeah, I can't wait to see your colonial boys try to drive the track, it's got tight corners!
Is there actually a TG US?
Hmmm...
Any mention about badly behaved children? Some of the most distracted people I have seen on the road are looking over their shoulder and shouting at the misbehaving rug-rats in the back.
Posted in Dutch get wound up over invisible SMS
Re: The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits
It wouldn't stop them triangulating, but as already discussed, this is not particularly accurate and needs a signal from multiple masts. I regularly find myself having problems getting a reliable signal from one, let alone three.
My comment was aimed at the hidden message which gets the GPS to report back. With open source there is nowhere for it to hide!
Re: TG equal opportunities
Sarah, can you imagine the uproar if they replaced Clarkson with a black woman, and then made the same "pubes for hair" comment they regularly make towards Clarkson?!
The BBC's switchboard would melt from the influx of complaints! Most of which would come from the white middle-class who feel they should be offended on behalf of any black people who didn't see the program... All completely forgetting that the target of the joke, Mr Clarkson's replacement, was laughing about the joke and not at all offended.
Posted in Dutch get wound up over invisible SMS
Oh well...
Reason_to_purchase_open_source_Android_phone++
My thought exactly...
Proving discrimination might be a bit tough though... Clarkson and pals have made jokes at the expense of pretty much everyone and everywhere, including each other. Which to me sound like the complete opposite of discrimination. Equal opportunities insulting.
Re: OMG
Oh, correction, it's back again, and the comments are still there... Looks like there was either some wonderfully timed technical hiccup or two arms at the BBC can't quite agree on what to do!
Typical!
Egypt comes back online just when we could have done with their addresses!
OMG!
I just went to show a friend the source of all the scandal and guess what... Top Gear Season 16, episode 2 is no longer available on iplayer! Episode 1 is still there.
If it does reappear I guess it will be about 3 minutes shorter.
Looks like the BBC have finally lost the last vertebrae in their increasingly floppy spine!
Well...
I couldn't help but be amused that it took until Tuesday for the reports of a complaint to surface on the BBC news site... I hope that delay was caused by the BBC, because if it took the Ambassador 2 days to complain about something which occurred on Sunday evening it really doesn't help the lazy/sleeping stereotype of his country!
Anyway, I found Top Gear funny. Political incorrectness is such a rare thing these days, it's quite refreshing. We're English, we take the piss out of things, and we expect the piss to be taken right back! After Clarkson's fantastically funny VW advert with the "Berlin to Warsaw on one tank" tag-line I braced for a Polish protest, but do you know what, there wasn't one. There were however a couple of good "reply/reaction" videos made on Youtube by some Poles! Brilliant, they've got the idea!
I've even heard rumours that some Germans may be replied in a humourous style via youtube too!
So with the Germans displaying evidence of basic humour, it's quite lucky that Mexico has seized the moment and stepped forward to accept the humourless baton.
Posted in Gates: Killing the internet is easy
Of course...
Of course it's not hard Bill, the army of infected windoze desktops do a pretty good job of shutting down my email almost every day!
Posted in US lawmakers eye internet 'kill switch'
Hmmm..
Do they mean shut down the net for everyone, or just disconnect the USA from the rest of the planet?
I'm not even sure if they could shut down the net for everyone, although I'm sure screwing root DNS servers and poisoning some major US routers would have a significant impact on the rest of the world.
If they just want to disconnect the USA, well I could live with that. Amazon/Google etc all have internationally distributed systems, so they should be fine, and the volume of spam being pumped into my inbox by Billy-Bob and his infected PC should drop rather nicely.
This is all theory of course, how about giving it a test run?
re: Interesting use of statistics
Ah, very good point.
What they should add is all the fields divided into several columns.
Reported/Solved/Unsolved
That would certainly show some useful info.
Although it would also be nice to see what punishment the little toe-rags get too. From what I've seen on "Police stop camera you've been framed action", the going rate for driving without insurance, tax, MOT or a license is £200 and a 12 month ban on the license you don't have... Significantly cheaper than paying for road tax, insurance and MOT!
Hehe...
I tried this very early this morning, and it worked really well. I now feel safe to walk my road at night without anything happening to me... Although I am curious what the "violent crime" was just round the corner... I must complain to the local curtain twitchers about the lack of gossip.
I also signed up for an API key, but haven't heard anything back from them. Probably too busy trying to transfer the access database onto something more capable!
Re: Am I missing something?
No you're not... The Reg regularly think USA = Whole world. (Ignore the .co.uk URL).
Often figures based on the USA aren't far removed from the rest of world, except unfortunately when it comes to mobiles... The USA view of the mobile market is very distorted. Nokia barely exist. SMS interchange between networks was (might even still be) so unreliable that most people send emails between mobiles instead... That's why the Blackberry became so popular over there.
Confused?
Have Intel started making power tools now?
If not, why is Mr Am wearing safety goggles?
Whinging Aussies
So let me get this right... A map drawn by an Englishman, in the HM's Royal Navy is the property of Australia because it's a sketch of Australia?
Well I've just drawn a sketch of a Kangaroo mooning, and another sticking it's fingers up. Would you like those too?
Actually...
... It reappeared.
But at the time in question during the cold war it would have indeed been Czechoslovakia.
Ooops
Yes, I typo'ed Oric into Orac... The one was a home computer from the 80s, the other a sarcastic perspex box from 80s TV.
Anyway, how can you guys forget the BBC vs Spectrum arguments. Sir Clive printed some wonderfully biased comparison adverts which had Acorn (manufacturers of the BBC) sent the advertising standards at him on several occasions.
Personally I thought there was no competition, the Beeb had hardware sound, graphics, I/O ports etc. The Speccy basically tried to do everything in software. A neat trick, but very cheap cheap, and not the sort of thing you can really pull off properly with a <4Mhz CPU!
Posted in HTC Desire Z Android Qwerty smartphone
Nice...
I've been looking at the Z for a few weeks now... Renewal time finally coming up... This looks like it is the phone my Nokia N97 should have been.
The N97 hasn't been too bad. The battery life is pretty good, usually long enough for me to misplace my charger before needing it again (2-3 days). Unfortunately its GPS sucks so bad it can't keep track of a moving vehicle reliably enough to be use the free turn by turn navigation Nokia dish out!
What has really put me off Nokia after 10+ years is their unwillingness to admit the faults (scratching camera lens, faulty GPS, buggy firmware), and the crazy delays even non mobile network supplied phones suffer waiting for firmware updates in the UK.
If that wasn't bad enough, a post I made to give them constructive criticism on the Nokia discussion forum was pulled by a moderator for "disrespecting" Nokia... I think if there was anyone being disrespected in this relationship I don't think it was the big company who got the money for the phone.
So roll on next month, I'll be hitting the phone shops, playing with the Z, and then ordering online (like I wish I had with the N97) so the UK distance selling regulations will let me fire it straight back within 7 days if I see the slightest hint of it not measuring up... That Z is going to have the toughest 7 days test it's ever likely to see.
Oh, and on the subject of keyboard ribbons, I wouldn't worry. The N97 has exactly the same, and one thing that has never been any problem has been the keyboard and ribbon cable.
Posted in HTC Desire Z Android Qwerty smartphone
Re: HTC need to learn... Battery life is king!
I must admit that the battery life is my only concern about this phone, unfortunately people buy so many of those damn fruit themed phones that barely make it past 4pm before crawling towards a USB port that battery life doesn't appear to be high on the agenda for the masses.
No Beeb...
There's a reason for that... The Beebs all still work!
Well both my two do! Including the one I put into a flight case and turned into a disco light sequencer with a load of triacs... Unlike the earlier poster I didn't blow mine up, although I did trip out the electrics once RCCD's became common, I'd forgotten the triac tabs were connected to the neutral and I'd earthed the heatsink!
It's funny to see the author writing so lyrically about the computer revolution in '83... It started 3 years earlier in the UK. Back then we had more home computers per capita than any other nation on earth...
ZX80,81,Spectrum,Orac,Jupiter Ace, Dragon, Acorn Atom, BBC Micro... Fond fond memories.
How did it all go so wrong?
Now does anyone want a Tatung Einstein? I seem to have a couple kicking about!
