Posts by Bod 634 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jan 2009
"To make matters worse, alot of the distributors in countries were not told by Synology of the issue."
Synology aren't even telling their users. You'd only know if you happen to come across a news article, FB/twitter post or browse their forums. Should be an email gone out instantly and with the latest update advice to all users.
On the colour depth, with current 1080 TVs, many have deep colour or wide gamut, but the source, even in blu ray is not up to it. When setting up mine all the advice I read said to turn off the deep colour options because it was a waste, if not a harm. Blu ray players often handle deep colour, so do the TVs, but apparently most, if not all discs do not have the encoding. There's no advantage as the extra colour bit depth is not there. Deep colour settings on non deep sources can look a bit odd. Something you may notice with a deep colour monitor used on a computer and just go browsing the web. Colours too heavily saturated is often the case.
Still convinced the radar contacts (which are secondary so not even confirmed they are the plane) are rubbish. They have all along been reluctant to release the data and I smell something fishy there. Though I suspect it's more plain incompetence they are covering up than anything more sinister.
Which would mean the plane still went down somewhere on its original course. Which fits more in line with the sighting by the guys on that rig of flames in the distance.
Yes they searched that area before, but I have zero confidence in the Malaysian authorities to have done a competent search there.
And yes there are the Doppler shifted pings back to Boeing etc, but I'm convinced these may be misleading, misinterpreted or just based on false data. Everything else has been.
Now we know the ACARS and transponder were probably lost at the same time after all, and if you treat the radar contacts with suspicion, and other non positional data as speculative and potentially misinterpreted, it all fits with a simple theory that the crew became incapacitated, possibly by fire/smoke, which took out the cabin equipment, signals lost, and the plane flew on and simply ditched. Either in the ocean or in some jungle.
Streaming service is what they're after. Not even the customers as there aren't that many compared to the likes of Spotify, but they then have a streaming service built into iTunes and bingo suddenly all other streaming services are in breach of their app terms for providing a service Apple provides, and all get banned, and then iSheep switch over to iTunes for streaming.
So they found many (I bet probably most) messaging/email apps had no on device / SD card encryption, but singled out Outlook, I assume because it makes good press to have a dig at Microsoft who some still see as the bad guys rather than any Android developer (those that aren't writing one of the millions of malware apps out there).
Besides that, to be honest I've never expected my emails to be encrypted on the device, or on the SD card, unless it states it offers that facility. It never has been the case in any other email application I've used, on devices or desktop, and that's both Windows and the holy Linux where everything is super secure of course. True, there are access rights that keep your mail folder from being read by other users, but if by some chance you ran a rogue app on your account, sure it has access to you mail.
If anything the fault here is with android by not sandboxing apps correctly (or at all) so they can't access other apps or their data. It shouldn't be up to the app developer to implement this.
Blu Ray has never really been as big as they wanted. Even now, DVDs still outrank Blu Ray in your average high street shop. Well, what's left of HMV that is. Bringing music into the equation you've just got to see the rapid decline of the CD and that the vast majority of the population are happy with compressed MP3s playing on the shittiest of ear buds, or even out of a mono speaker on the phone (I've seen many kids "enjoying" music with their mates this way), to know where the market is. It isn't audiophiles, and appealing to them isn't going to save Blu Ray from cheap and crap quality streaming downloads replacing it or people hanging on to DVD for years to come.
The problem is the concept of
"Please sir, would you possibly allow me to run my own code that I have written on my operating system that I bought, which is running on my hardware that I bought, please? please? pretty please?"
Might be an RT only issue, but on full fat Win 8.1, if you're just running your own 'Store' code, Visual Studio does all this for you without having to pay for a sideloading key. I've had a brief play and knocked up simple app and it deploys and runs without payment required on my Dell Venue Pro (full fat Win 8 tablet with really nice keyboard options that makes far more sense out of Win 8. Metro for tablet mode, and it is quite nice to use, slap the keyboard in for desktop apps).
Of course if I want to distribute apps that's another matter. Buy keys for corporate deploy, or stick in the store and let MS take a slice. It's a fair enough business model really. Apple do the same and everyone thinks the sun shines out of their arse.
"Ah but Android does it all for free". Yes, that's why there are thousands of clones of the same apps, each increasingly more crappy, bug ridden and most likely full of malware. 99% of Android apps are utter junk. The 1% are really nice though. Microsoft's problem is not so much the lack of apps, which is good if most will be crap, but what they've got is lacking key apps the majority use. Which is an issue not with the interface or APIs (which are much nicer than Android's), but with the image of Win 8 that's putting off companies from porting their apps. Sadly, by making 8.1 more desktop friendly, while it keeps the loyal base happy(er), it shoves the Store further into nothingness.
"That is it's not-Metro when no one wants that UI and has a choice. Why would I want to use it when I can use the desktop version*?"
Try using desktop versions of almost any application on a touch-only tablet. Then you realise what Metro is actually good for.
Example is Chrome. Utterly unusable with touch, even with the beta versions and touch features enabled. Many other apps are a struggle to use with touch. They are desktop apps, not touch apps.
The problem Metro has is a vast negativity towards it based purely on desktop users not wanting it. Which is perfectly fair, but Metro is being shot down as unwanted when it's essential for the touch interface.
"On the other hand, in many countries, like here in Germany, there is already a levy on CDs, external hard drives, DVDs and printers!"
I think we would in the UK also, if it wasn't for the fact private copying is actually illegal in the UK full stop and no amount of talk to change it to a fair use law has made any difference.
Though oddly, CD-R Audio discs were still on sale in the UK complete with a levy in the price and yet still copying was illegal, so why on earth pay a premium for CR-R Audio discs if you are only going to be using them for your own original material? Except those fools who bought the hardware that would only record to them. So basically paying a tax to the studios to make your own music.
"Or do you get a larger organisation who can notice a problem on a Sunday and have a fix in place on Monday?"
I had quite a chuckle at that one. We're talking public sector IT here.
1) They won't notice the problem
2) No one knows what to do about the problem and the original supplier has probably gone under or is deemed too expensive to use for ongoing support
3) It will go round and round for months until someone quotes £5m to fix it and then it takes a year to fix it and the end cost has risen to £10m. For something that's probably a 10 minute job to fix.
Okay they're mandating using an open format and yet can still use MS Office, but generally from what they've announced they are strongly hinting the purpose is to reduce costs, which can only mean they think they want to shelve MS Office and use Open Office or Google Docs or similar and think this will be cheaper. It's been tried many times before with some official thinking it's like in the no-support home user world and just because they can download the software for free it will be free for them. Until they require enterprise level support, not to mention the costs of implementation (which is more than just installing the relevant software, as it includes changing back end systems to handle the open doc formats, convert existing documents, and bucket loads of training).
And god forbid they want to use Open Office on Android tablets ;) - or indeed any tablet given Open Office UI is still stuck in a very desktop & mouse Office 2003 world.
Or they could use Google Docs and do away with any useful features.
Anyway, all I say to the gov is, good luck with that, but don't go raising my taxes to pay for it.
Windows 8 on the desktop may be an abortion, but Windows Phone is hardly that.
If anything it's got the most pleasing and idiot proof while intuitive UI out there for a mobile, a more secure mobile OS, and very reliable.
Combine that with Nokia's hardware quality, makes a damn good phone. Recommended to the folks and they love it.
While myself, I do love Android despite it's many frustrations, but I much prefer the UX of Windows Phone. For me though it lacks some critical apps. Not many as most apps in the various stores are complete bollox, but there are a number of essentials by big names that just aren't there. For many who just really want a phone that makes calls, sends texts and can browse the odd web site, receive emails, Windows Phone is perfect. More so when something like a 520 doesn't need charging up every couple of hours like certain Droids.
While the Metro 'Start' may not be great, I've never quite got the love for the old Start menu. It's always been annoying deeply nested method of finding the apps you want to launch and much of it is grouped by vendor named folders which means you have to try to remember who made the app you're trying to find. That and if your mouse drifts off by a few pixels the sub menu disappears.
Then you end up pinning things you want to find to the root of the menu or in modern versions to the start bar, along with sticking thousands of shortcuts all over the desktop in a right mess.
I'm unsure about Metro Start but playing with a bit more I see it simply as a launcher much like iThings and Android. Also having found all the menu items are still there and can be dragged about into the main menu as you like, it's quite flexible, and it keeps the desktop from being cluttered.
Okay you have to click/tap into it which brings up the menu full screen to launch something. But then most of us probably have to close a dozen windows to expose the desktop to launch various apps anyway.
I'm a bit Meh about the whole thing. Only thing is yes Microsoft should have offered the classic menu for the luddites, who I admit are most of us. If it asked on first run if you wanted the classic experience and gave you the desktop with old Start, then few would be complaining. What you've got not is not far off, just lacking the old Start menu... which you can get 3rd party apps for.
"Have you ever tried another collaboration platform? They are pretty much all better* than Exchange."
Including Notes? !!
Pretty much the main alternative to Exchange you'll find in a corporate environment and will have you pulling your hair out and screaming for them to switch to Exchange.
I still don't get why we aren't into Satellite radio in the UK.
In the US, every car I've hired has Sat radio built in and gets hundreds of channels, reliably. Makes a huge difference when driving through many states just gives you "both kinds of music" on FM.
DAB is expensive, reception is poor in rural areas limiting the choice of channels, few car manufacturers want to invest in it, and few other countries use it (those that do have limited availability and might be on a different band your radio doesn't support anyway. Sat radio at least might still be available in other parts of Europe and likely you'll get all the same UK stations.
Meh - micro USB does the job, charges the phone. I don't need to spend five times as much for a stylish design that does the same job to make me feel smug.
However, the EU rules may insist on a standard connector, but I bet it won't stop Apple continuing with their devices only working with connectors that have their proprietary chip in. So only an Apple branded micro USB cable will work, though technically that cable would work for other brands, just not the other way round and it of course blocks the use of cheap alternatives to ensure you pay a premium for your Apple lifestyle.
Parent's phone line went dead and it took BT a month and a half to fix it. Most of that was in waiting for people to come round to look at it and then the relevant contractor to be booked and get permission to dig up the road, and another to dig up the driveway to run a new cable, and another to actually connect the new cable to house. They were effectively considered low priority as a residential customer compared to other work the contractors had to do.
In the old days BT did all the work themselves in a day or two, and for a phone line down they were looking at heavy compensation for even just a few days. Now the compensation is limited unless you complain at the highest level and all the work is contracted out to different companies who have to fit into their schedules and coordinate with each other (or rather they fail to do that).
Putting aside any possibility (almost certainly probable) that Google et al obtained/devised their technology before Apple in 2008 or not, in the US as I understand it, patent pending does not technically protect the filer, but regardless of that the intent of patents is that you are to actively develop the product or process or otherwise have a granted patent and/or already a product on the market.
But even regardless of that, before Google did it, it was a stupidly obvious way to have a phone unlock mechanism.
Prior art, failure to develop on patent filed and produce a marketable product, patent not granted before competition went to market, blatantly obvious.
But that all counts for nothing. USPTO will grant it. It will go to court Apple vs Samsung (never Google), Obama will comment that Apple is good for US and Samsung bad, Apple will win, Samsung pay Apple for a feature from Google that was never stolen from Apple in the first place for an obvious idea that wasn't patented correctly and Apple hadn't developed until way after the competition had. All perfectly fair in the land of the free.
The patent system has its theoretical benefits, but in general the whole system is so corrupt it would be far better to scrap patents entirely until someone comes up with a better one.
"That's interesting as the Corporation I work for has gone from XP to 7, and the thing we noticed most was on the same hardware our computers needed more RAM to perform the same with 7 as when we were on XP"
Likely because Windows 7 installs will have been 64bit, which naturally uses more RAM. RAM is cheap however and more to the point 64bit Win7 lets you use all that 8GB of RAM whereas 32bit XP will barely let you use 3GB. Suddenly it's free to do far more at the same time and faster also.
Anyway, all this rubbish about boot times - the major audience for Windows now is corporates. Who aside from touch being ludicrous for a productive environment, generally leave their PCs on overnight or at least sleep / hibernate them. Boot time - non issue.
"There's an abundance of choice out there like Mint, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, and Debian. "
The vast majority of consumers would be utterly lost with any of these. More so the instant they are told they have to edit some config file and browse through dosens of linux forums to find out why they can't do something they can do easily with Windows (even Windows 8), or where instructions are written for Ubuntu but they've got any one of the huge number of other distributions. Or they buy some USB gadget but it won't work without recompiling the kernel or ripping drivers from a Windows install, hacking about with this and that, etc (I speak from experience here).
And god forbid they want to do some Excel work. Open Office is okay, if you want the equivalent of Excel 97 and don't mind it taking several minutes to launch and doesn't quite do what you're used to in Excel and isn't quite compatible with the latest Excel document formats, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I like linux and use it for what it's good for, as a server. I would not recommend it to my parents however (fairly representitive of the average consumer).
In fact I'm even recommending Windows Phone over Android as the former would be less confusing and less easy to get into a mess or download something they shouldn't and generate a lot of support calls.
Fewer quality choices = worse
FTFY
Not that I'd say Win Phone has quality choices, but I wouldn't want it to be filled with a million apps if they are the quality you get on Android, just so there's a chance one of them might actually be decent. Though a half a million are ad spamming crap games.
Really the only issues with RT are...
1. Price
2. Not enough quality apps
And that's pretty much it. If you have got your head around it not being 'Windows', just the same as all Android tablets are not Ubuntu or any other linux desktop distro and iPads are not OS X. Everyone understands this fine and they're popular tablets, so what's the problem here? Basically the above combined with the media generally slating RT for it not being Windows.
Even compatibility with Win Phone is not an issue to the consumer, so long as they can get the apps that do what they want on the tablet version. Okay for a developer it needs a port, but even iOS needs alternate builds for iPhone and iPad, and while maybe much easier, it certainly is not the case with Android where fragmentation is vast compared to iOS and Windows devices.
Myself, I want a nice tablet for a low price I can surf and send emails, plus a few funky apps. It doesn't really matter if it's iOS, Android or RT, and certainly doesn't matter if it's not OS X, Ubuntu(etc) or full blown Windows. So long as I understand that. Price and subsidies so you can pick them up for £100 to £200. Sorted.... except for the lack of apps.
That said I do actually want something that will do spreadsheets properly in a productive way and is compatible with modern Excel formats. Turns out Office on RT pretty much does, minus macros. Though there's still a major problem that editing spreadsheets on a touch UI just isn't that useable.
More than national pride. It would be generating various levels of business, some international trade, and moving the economy, providing employment. Okay not so much trickles down to the poor areas, but still more benefit than just dishing out £45m to the entire population.
And in perspective, £45m is only the price of 45 houses in some parts of South East England ;)
And considerably less than the more collosal waste of money HS2.
Fair play to them. At least they can stick rockets into space, unlike the UK.
Far worse for bad grammar is Stackoverflow, though to be fair a large number of developers on there have broken English, not to mention no clue about software development. I'd suggest a typical location they come from too but I'd be accused of being racist. Well, those and students looking for the answer to an exam question, and candidates for jobs likewise for interview questions.
The issue I have with exoplanets is the conclusions made are based on our only knowledge of planetary bodies we actually can observe, i.e. those within our own system. It's perfectly fine science to conclude because of X and Y observed and what we know about similar planets with properties X and Y therefore it must be the same, but could easily all be blown out of the water by a new discovery. After all, we don't even know what 'dark matter' is and yet it comprises a large chunk of the universe.
The other issue I have is it's all rather pointless as not one will we ever see or visit. The likelyhood is the human race will be extinct long before the time it would take to visit such places and they won't be there any more anyway.
Never was a fan of Skype. Hyped up, inefficient and proprietary, and pretty much killed SIP as a standard that a lot of hardware manufacturers were already supporting but no one used because it was all 'Skype this' and 'Skype that', and no one took the time to invest in quality SIP services.
"A. It isn't Windows compatible."
Nor is Android - doesn't stop them selling bucket loads of tablets and phones.
Problem is the marketting. Selling it as *Windows* RT made people think it would run Windows apps. Daft thing is most people don't really need that on a tablet anyway. They just want to browse, read emails, play videos and games.
With the exception of Office use, and in the main it's Excel that's the killer part of Office but the traditional spreadsheet interface is useless on a touch interface. Hence why Android and iOS don't really have this cracked either. So basically you don't need proper Office either for a tablet (but MS have provided it in RT anyway). So what really do you need legacy wise on a cheap tablet? As said, Android has shown you don't need anything as plenty of Windows users are buying Android tablets. Yet won't touch RT.
Market as the Microsoft Tablet (or Microsoft Tab !), price at £150 to £200, chuck in a decent camera, optional 3G/4G... and maybe more attractive. *If* the Store was utterly revamped and developers could finally be convinced to knock up decent apps. But even then 'Microsoft' in the name may still be making people think it's Windows. Hmm... Nokia tablet... running RT... ;)
They won't need to. They can release a curved phone that obviously is the same style, patent it and USPTO will grant it despite prior art and even if Samsung et al have their own patent. It'll go to court, fight out and even if Samsung win and get a ban on Apple, Obama will overturn it as Apple is of benefit to the US economy supposedly, plus he probably likes his iThings, then Apple will win a ban against Samsung and round we go to the next product.
"Because we will never find 106. Part 7 of The Dalek Master Plan - "The Feast of Steven" (actually the original first Doctor Who "Christmas Special") - was never recorded onto film and never sold abroad"
Thank god for that!
Dalek Master Plan is better with just that whole episode represented by a "Scene Missing" card.
Though the embarising 4th wall christmas greeting from Bill to the camera would make a funny dvd easter egg.
"We heard it takes people's fingerprints. That's got to be better than us doing it ourselves."
Probably think they just need to ask Apple for them.
Sure Apple don't store them of course. The NSA can help out though if they feel like it ;)
Alternatively they've read how easy it is to hack, so they'll welcome the ability to hack a perps iPhone if they've upgraded to iOS 7.
Surprised this hasn't been mentioned more. Legondary connection to Dolby.
The full quote -
Jeanine: You don't, you don't do heavy metal in doubly, you know, I Mean...it's
Nigel: In what??? In what???
Jeanine: In doubly...
Nigel: In dublin!?! What's that?
David: She means Dolby, alright? She means Dolby, you know? You know perfectly well what she means.
A market cap that has dropped from $40bn in the last 2 years (and was over $200bn back in 2000) and yes what does the remainder represent without Devices and Services? A division that includes all the feature phones.
Yes, MS have got a sale of the century. They have a mobile brand, access to patents and manufacturing business for next to nothing relatively. What remains (some $12bn if you like, if you're talking US$ when quoting $19bn, so $19bn - $7bn for the purchase, not 5) is perhaps the true value, or maybe inflated. I think the latter still a little, but anyway. We'll see what the market thinks of the company when it has no mobile phone business, smart or otherwise.
When you think of Nokia in the future when it comes to other than mobile phones, who are they? Little more than a mom & pop outfit dabbling in this and that with no special qualities.
"This deal allows Nokia to buy up a startup company and start producing Linux based phones again. They are free from the Microsoft shackles."
Dead end there. A novelty niche market perhaps, selling a few hundred a year to obsessed Linux fans, nothing more. Operators wouldn't touch them, so no market.
Nokia would be far better off bringing Nokian back into the fold and go back to making tyres.
Money or not, in a take over you don't keep employees who are literally redundant just because you feel it's morally right to keep them employed twiddling their thumbs. I can't see those 32,000 being that important to operations. All that's left of Nokia now anyway is hardware manufacture and that can be outsourced to China.
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