Posts by Bod

No use in London & South East

Everywhere I go has ticket barriers. And even if they put scanners on there, you'd cause an almighty row with the queue whilst you fiddle around on the phone looking for the barcode.

No. RFID / NFC phones is the way to go. Buy ticket on phone. Wave phone over Oyster style reader. Job done (until the system breaks down or your phone battery dies).

Nerds, Geeks or Dorks

Not sure iProduct users are any one of these or have their own definition.

Going by: http://www.goingthewongway.com/208/difference-between-nerd-geek-and-dork/

They're not Nerds because Nerds actually understand the technology, like to tinker & hack a lot with anything new from any source, usually without spending a fortune, and will bore people to death about the inner working details. Nerds are Linux users.

They're not entirely Geeks because Geeks are interested in things that others are not interested in. iProduct users are exclusively interested in what Steve Jobs churns out and tells them to buy. True Geeks would have been interested in each of the iProduct for a short while until they reach popularity and then they'll reject it and move on to the next obscure product.

They're not Dorks because Dorks have no style and would not want an iProduct to make them cool and stylish.

No, they're a fourth group who are like Geeks but blindly follow one product range at the exclusion of all else to look cool and stylish, even if they have no real understanding of the underlying technology and never consider other options. Money is no object.

I think fanbois is the term we've always used and still fits here ;)

Sony/Blu-Ray fanbois are a similar breed here. They mix a little with iProduct fanbois, at least until Apple come up with their own home entertainment console and then the two will hate each other.

Hmm

Firstly, the level of access to databases (especially the HLR) and network infrastructure here seems a bit beyond the average hacker. It would surely require an insider and not to mention it all sounds highly illegal so the "threat" of companies, private investigators and the like popping up that can harvest the information seems unlikely. Governments already have access to the information anyway, so there's nothing new. The rest of the threat is from a handful of hackers who have the resources and they're just going to go after big names. The average mobile user is hardly under threat here.

Secondly, I don't see how the caller ID database or HLR reveals any names. Or at least it's easy to not reveal anything. Just pop into a shop and get a PAYG sim. You don't need to give full details, or you can just lie (but besides details are usually on a mail in card that won't be registered for weeks), pop in the sim and have it registered by the automated system (usually doesn't ask for details), and off you go. Best caller ID will do is reveal the number associated with the SIM.

Maybe this only works in the US where reverse lookup of numbers is fairly easy from what I understand.

The real threat they revealed, which is far easier to attack is the well known one to spoof a caller ID and use that to access voice mail without authentication and thus harvest voice mails. Simple to protect against if operators just enforce the authentication regardless of whether you call the mailbox from your own phone or not (or maybe this is an option already with some).

People searches

"thanks to sites like pipl.com, doing a search on your name has a good chance of returning your address"

It failed to find much about me. Just twitter & flickr profiles. It couldn't even work out I had a Facebook account, various domains I own, or manage to get my address off the electoral role (though I'm opted out of the full register anyway, but that hasn't stopped some sites).

Not that getting the SSID if it was publicly available via Google (which it isn't) would get any closer as there's nothing to link it with any of my online identities.

Price better, but still apathetic

The price has improved a lot to where you can now get a film for only a little more than the equivalent DVD, but you still have to shop around and still generally ripped off on the high street. However there are now good prices on players and we're seeing proper multi-region players now (albeit from east Asian "no name" models, which are rather good to be honest).

However I just have no enthusiasm for buying tonnes of films like I did on DVD. I look at my collection of DVDs and just realise it was mostly a waste. The majority I've watched only once and I'm never likely to watch again. On Blu Ray I'm only buying the core essentials that I really really want. I could rent, but I'm not that fussed and I really do think decent legal downloads are only around the corner now (especially as BT may be doing fibre-to-cabinet next year in my area). And before anyone jumps on the "ah but you need 50gb or whatever for a movie", well you don't really. I've seen plenty of 720 and 1080p downloads that on a 40" 1080p telly look perfect and are only a fraction of the size. For the vast majority it will be perfectly adequate, and given the vast majority don' really give a toss anyway (judging by their acceptance of low standards on iPods), then it's the way forward.

"but mostly dog slow"

A view formed on the early low spec netbooks perhaps?

Most people who say they're slow have not used a decent netbook. And I'm not talking about running Linux either. XP can run plenty fast enough for general use.

Of course it depends what you want to use them for. Yes, they're not power beasts and you won't be running Photoshop and top end games on it. That's not what they're for. However, for web browsing, office apps, and dare I say even video, they can be cracking.

Mine is just a humble Atom based netbook running XP, and yet it plays HD video flawlessly (with the right codecs). I use it hooked up to my HD telly and it's fine even upscaling SD to 1080p. It makes a perfect video player, and it's great on flights too as the battery lasts 6 or 7 hours, especially as you can run it in low power and/or lowest brightness on a flight given the relatively high illumination you get at the lowest brightness setting in a dark cabin. Result is a compact device that is great for meetings, office work, email, browsing, video, and doesn't sound like a jet taking off like many of the power beast desktop replacement laptops out there.

The iPad won't be any different in performance terms, just you won't get to see it being slow, because no power hungry apps will be allowed to run on it. I'd love to see if it can play HD video properly though (from what I've read so far it currently only plays "true" 720p video at 720p, and every other format, bigger or smaller is downconverted to a resolution lower than 720p, plus it will only output to a TV at 480p!).

Multitasking, GPS

"Multitasking is de rigueur in other devices such as the Palm Prē and phones based on Google's Android"

Let's not forget Symbian which has always been a proper OS based on multitasking, long before these kids came along. Though multitasking is perhaps the flaw of Symbian also. Too much stuff going on in the background.

"Background location uses cell-tower triangulation rather than a power-hungry GPS circuitry"

How about fixing the iPhone so it's not power hungry. Comparing my Nokia with friend's iPhones I was surprised they complain so much about leaving the GPS on. No problem on Nokia's. Can leave the GPS active all day without much drain (essential for apps like Sports Tracker).

Good point on the e-book usage

Okay she may not be a NHB when it comes to the spreadsheet work, but she was target market with the book reading and it sounds like it's going to be problematic for many. Book reading for a lot of people depends on eyesight condition, the use of glasses or not, comfortable handling of the book, and comfortable reading distance.

I've been hearing big claims that the iPad is going to change the book industry overnight and the death of the paper book is forthcoming. Frankly, no it isn't. Like all other e-readers it sounds like it is just not as convenient and comfortable as a paper book, and it's certainly not as cheap! Besides that, with a cheap paperback you can chuck it in a bag when travelling without a care about slinging the bag about or having it handled by bag throwers at airports, or have to take the thing out of the bag at security. Having to charge the thing to read a book when travelling can be awkward if you're on long flights, trains and so on, and you're not in business class with a power socket. Having to put the thing away half an hour before landing because of "no electronic devices during takeoff and landing" would be a pain. I wouldn't want to read on an iPad in the bath either!

It's probably a good way of reading a book on an electronic device, but a replacement for the paperback it is not. Nor is the kindle or any other similar device.

XP for me

The only use I have for the OS is to run applications that work on Windows. I don't really care about the frills of the OS. So long as it works reliably, and for me XP does.

If I get a new PC I'll be fine with Win 7, but I just don't need one. I'm even still running a near 10 year old (overclocked and tricked out with speedy discs) PC with XP that's very speedy in general desktop functions. Faster in fact than other PCs I'm using that have Core 2 Duo and all that! That's the key thing for me. The speed of the desktop experience. I don't care how sexy it looks, so long as it works fast opening apps and the day to day desktop stuff. At work I need processing power for development, but I don't need Win7 for that either. Corporate policy is for XP and they're happy with that.

Sky sub

"Sky customers will be able to use the app to view material on the back of their subscription"

In my experience it's only a small selection of content you get without having to pay extra. Even if you subscribe to the relevant channel they still charge per view for a lot of content.

And the content available is pathetic compared to what the Beeb offer.

So would this be using the P2P kontiki crap also?

Traffic shaping

If network problems block specifically file sharing sites, it's a clear indicator that it's traffic shaping technology behind the "network problems".

Cheaper, or not

Default Orange tariff for those who are oblivious to the options available to them (the majority of customers), is the £2 per Mb.

However for the grand total of £0 you can change to a daily capped rate where you pay the £2 and nothing more no matter what you use, except, erm, subject to fair use of course! Still, you can happily go through a lot of data for email and browsing on the phone without going over the cap. You do however have to change to that tariff and need to know it exists (it's on their online account thingy though).

But in Europe... no cap. So you continue paying.

That's not the real rip off though. Look at US and Canada. £8 per Mb !!. Roaming data bundles are extortionate as well.

Looks like...

E71/E72, on the cheap. Same layout, cheaper parts. Nothing like the Palm at all other than it has a screen, middle bar and keypad but the layout is far more like the E series devices than Palm.