* Posts by Paul E

175 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009

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Amazon's first live drone delivery flew last week in Cambridge, UK

Paul E

Just because they were not in the video does not mean that they were not there. Would be surprised if the CAA where not actually on site at the time.

Paul E

I think the rural bit is part of the current restrictions on their testing than a limitation of where they could go. Ditto I think the current 2 customers is that it must be in sight of the backup pilot for the duration. The interesting question is how much testing are they going to have to do before those limits are lifted.

US cop goes war-driving to find stolen gear by MAC address

Paul E

No one is going to be sent to jail on the basis of just a mac address and I doubt anyone trying to investigate if a possible MAC 'hit' is a stolen device is going to go in SWAT style with all guns blazing at the very least because there is a very good chance that the current person in possession of the device may have innocently bought it from the actual culprit.

One would hope:

1) The software discards immediately any MAC address not in its hitlist.

2) Possible 'hits' are investigated without undue force and that the device if found must exactly match the description of the stolen item including checking of serial number (if known) and imei if a phone.

3) The current possessor of the device is given enough opportunity to explain how they got the device and to demonstrate they are the correct owner,

Would YOU make 400 people homeless for an extra $16m? Decision time in Silicon Valley

Paul E

Start a new park?

Would the 39 million not be better spent building a bigger, better park somewhere a bit further out and so not on such a prime location?

Would Apple godhead Steve Jobs have HATED the Watch?

Paul E

I think...

If you could find someone who did not know and you put the iwatch and the motorola 360 in front of them (unpowered) and asked which was the apple device then most would choose the 360. After all the concept art about what the iwatch would look like it is disappointingly like adding a strap to an ipod nano.

You can thank Brit funnyman John Oliver for fixing US broadband policy, beams Netflix

Paul E

So

If net neutrality is made law what happens when the networks get so busy that all packets, including netfix video ones, are being delayed? One aassumes netflix csnnot then pay the ISP to give their packets priority.

Honey, I shrunk the workstation … into a Chromebook

Paul E

Doubt Architects and Animators are the target audience.

More likely aimed at staff that current use laptops who can be moved to chromebook and VM. Better security and more easily managable for IT departments.

Climate: 'An excuse for tax hikes', scientists 'don't know what they're talking about'

Paul E

Re: when

http://liberalbias.com/post/2323/how-to-graph-climate-change-without-liberal-bias/

Also maybe someone who claims the governments are only using environmental concerns to raise more money can explain why they are giving money away to help people insulate homes, buy electric cars, install more fuel efficient boilers, etc? Surely if they are only interested in getting in more money why would they actually spend this way?

Paul E

Re: when

The authors position appears to be that governments have used environmental taxes only as a excuse to raise more income rather than their declared aim of reducing climate change. I can only assume the author is very annoyed that his car is in a high car tax bracket or something similar.

Paul E

when

Someone says "seem completely beyond dispute" this generally, in my experience, means the complete opposite.

OnePlus One equals 'killer' new mobe running CyanogenMod

Paul E

Re: Normal Person Here

"However, I cannot count the number of times I've yanked the battery out of one to recover from a lockup."

Holding the power button in for more than a few seconds does the same job on almost all phones with fixed batteries.

Paul E

From the horses mouth about why have a fixed battery

http://forums.oneplus.net/threads/the-oneplus-one-battery-long-lasting-compact-and-reliable.327/

"With these two goals in mind, we ultimately decided on a 3100 mAh non-removable battery for the OnePlus One.

The decision was clear for us. A removable battery would have meant adding a protective layer to the motherboard as well as extra circuitry, resulting in a smaller battery (2500mAh, 20% less battery juice!) or a significantly thicker phone.

With our configuration, the battery will last long enough to get even the most active users through an entire day of use without adding bulk to the overall build and design."

Paul E

Re: Almost nice

Given the number of phones out there without SD cards and with non-removable batteries that are successful I am assuming that your term "FAIL" refers to the fact that you do no want to purchase one rather than that you are prejudging without any supporting evidence what every other smartphone buyer with different priorities will think?

Paul E

Re: Choice

For most people an SD card slot is about getting extra storage on the cheap but it does not come without its hassles. Firstly running programs of SD cards is generally slower than runnng them from main memory but from my experience the main hassle is having to maintain storage in 2 locations. I cannot be the only person who has had to go through all their installed apps and moved as many as possible to the SD card to make space for something else in main storage. Give me choice between 16gb fixed + 48gb removable SD card and 64GB fixed I would choose the 64GB fixed every time. Yes you lose some flexibility but you remove the more regular and annoying hassle of maintaining two storage locations. Expecially in this case where the premium for 64gb over 16gb is so small compared to other phones.

Paul E

Choice

Give your average punter a choice between having this phone as is or having it heavier and/or chunkier and/or have less capacity but with a removable battery and I think I know which would be more popular. The decision in these phones to make the battery fixed in not just some arbitary descision there are real advantages in terms of weight and size by using fixed batteries. As to the lack of an SD slot I have had a number of phones with SD slots and have only had to change cards once or twice a most. Usually the call for an SD card slot related to products like the iphone 5S where there is an excessive premium ($200 or so) between the lowest and highest memory models. For the oneplus one the difference in price is a lot closer to the cost of a suitably sized SD card so the argument has less force IMO.

Apple patent LOCKS drivers out of their OWN PHONES

Paul E

Re: How exactly

Don't think the camera is that wide angle is it? all it will see is your head and the roof.

Paul E

How exactly

Is this system supposed to distinguish between unsafe and safe if its being held low and with the front point up towards the roof?

Samsung puts ultrasonic echolocation cover on a smartphone for the blind

Paul E

One would assume that its because the echo location method is more reliable. Stereo cameras are not going to stop you walking into a glass door for example.

Virgin Galactic's supersonic space ship in 71,000-ft record smash

Paul E

Re: What is the long term goal?

"There is no long-term advantage to this craft. "

SS2 possibly not but they do intend to use what they have learnt to launch satellites cheaper.

http://www.virgingalactic.com/launcherone

Apple loses sauce, BlackBerry squashed and Microsoft, er, WinsPhones (Nokia's)

Paul E

Following the law...

"The biggest negative in 2013 was the bizarre decision from Judge Cote in the ebooks price-fixing case"

How exactly was this a bizarre decision? There appeared to be ample proof that Apple colluded with the publishing houses to change the payment model. Now it may have been a sensible move but the fact is that 'selling at a loss' is not illegal in the US but colluding on prices to increase the cost to consumers is so the decision was, outside of the apple distortion field, entirely justified and a correct application of the law. If the law does not take into account the other factors in terms of amazon's dominance it is the the fault of the judge is it? Judges tend not to like making new laws off the top of their heads so they apply the law that there is and the law that is said apple was guilty.

Chromebook 11 CATCHES FIRE at last, FLIES off shelves

Paul E

Australia only?

As on an oz google blog and refering, I think, to an oz institution it may well only be a problem with the adapters provided in australia?

Apple's Hacker Princess really needs to stay away from Idaho cops

Paul E

Reality Distortion Field Generator Maintenance Supervisor

Travel much? DON'T buy a Samsung Galaxy Note 3

Paul E

Bad sticker wording

There is a line that actually the region locking is ONLY for when the device is first registered. i.e. a euro phone must be registered with a euro sim. After that its region free the idea being to reduce the gray market. If this is the case then it should not be a problem for anyone who wants to swap sims but if it is the case then the person who worded the sticker needs a slap.

Apple returns to courtroom once again to contest ebook shafting

Paul E

"The lasting "harm" to the public by Apple and the five publishers – who were bullied into private settlements by the DoJ – is even harder to discern."

Just go and look at what happened to the average price of an e-book once the arrangement came into place. I would suggest that people having to pay 50% more for their e-books after the cosy relationship started counts as "harm" to the public? If all the makers of TV's got together and came up with an arrangement that made the cost of all new TV's to go up by 50% how would you describe that?

Chromecast: You'll pop me in for HOT STREAMS of JOY, hopes Google

Paul E

For 1 the answer appears to be that when first plugged in it runs as a wifi hotspot with the SSID displayed on the screen. You then attach to this and can set the SSID and password for your wifi at which point it then stops being a hotspot and just joins your home wifi. No need for a PC or cables.

Cold, dead hands of Steve Jobs slip from iPhones: The Cult of Ive is upon us

Paul E

8 year old with paint

Icons look to me like someone gave an 8 year old a picture of the iOS6 screen and told them to copy the icons using paint.

Penguin pays $75m to settle ebook price-fixing case

Paul E

Two wrongs do not make a right..

Wrong 1: Amazon abuse its position to try bully publishers to try and get a monopoly on e-book sales.

Wrong 2: Apple persuade publishers to swap to different sales method in such a way that no-one can sell e-books cheaper than apple.

Difference being Amazon, though probably morally in the wrong did not break any laws.

Ebook price-fixing: Macmillan settles with DoJ, Apple fights on

Paul E

Re: Pushed into a corner ...

The point of the DOJ case is that all the charged publishers colluded to change the way they charged for ebooks at the same time to a method favoured by Apple which gave Apple a guarantee that the books could not be sold for less elsewhere. If they did do that they yes, in the eyes of the law, they did "do wrong".

Paul E

Re: Hardly surprising

If they could get away with a sorry I am sure they would bite your hand off. Its the other constraints and possible fines that the DOJ would insist on as part of any agreement that is the part they are obviously not willing to accept.

Paul E

Hardly surprising

Apple must be seen as the ringleader who got all the publishers together and got them all change their conditions in Apple's favour so any deal with the DOJ would, I suspect, be rather severe so probably worth their day in court in case they can get away with it.

Samsung mocks Apple lawsuit in SuperBowl teaser ad

Paul E

Not selling anything yet..

Its not an ad for as product its the ad for the ad for the produce.

Just too damn lazy to reach your phone? Pick up the remote

Paul E

Convergence

Which is better. Carrying a phone and a tablet or carrying just a tablet that has a connected, but otherwise fairly dumb, handset?

I can definitely see the appeal having the one larger main device but having a less obtrusive way of using it as a phone.

Nokia HERE iOS maps app review

Paul E

Road naming

Does appear to be that a common problem with HERE is roads often taking names from nearby buildings. e.g.

http://here.net/52.1948737,0.1352692,18,0,0,normal.day

Where the station road in Cambridge is shown going along what is a private access road to some large houses and the real station road is labelled after an office block.

YARR! Library Wi-Fi PIRATES can't be touched by Queen's men!

Paul E

When signing up for wifi at our local library

You have to agree some terms that I suspect include this sort of activity so though not explicitly covered I suspect libraries can easily cancel access for those who abuse their wifi access.

Nokia HERE today with decent mapping on Apple devices

Paul E

Street name problem

Just looked at the web version of HERE and it names the street opposite after the flats it is next to not the actual road name it should use. Same happens on the station road where the according to HERE station road detours around a road that is the name of building on station road.

Google stealthily coalesces UK music cloud into being

Paul E

Re: It wont lure me away...

You still keep your local copy so what's the problem. As you can download as well as upload from music manager you consider it as a free insurance policy against losing your local copy.

Apple bans 'memory' games from iOS App Store

Paul E

I was going to trademark 'Amnesia'

But forgot all about it.

Acer lowballs on price with Celeron-powered C7 Chromebook

Paul E

yep..

Up as being £199 http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/chrome/devices/landing-acer.html#utm_campaign=en_GB&utm_medium=ha&utm_source=en_GB-ha-emea-gb-bkws&utm_medium=oa

Acer Iconia A110 8GB Android tablet review

Paul E

Re: 50 quid cashback at Comet

The £50 cash back is from Acer themselves direct and not through the retailer. The main risk on cashback is forgetting the window in which you can claim it.

Paul E

50 quid cashback

on this at ebuyer at the moment.

British judge: Say you're sorry Apple... this time like you MEAN it

Paul E

El Reg gets a name check...

http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/beloff-baked-apple-roasted-britons.html

"By now the fire was catching hold and the smell of melting plastic was plainly detectable, but the point of no return may well have been when Mr Carr produced an article from the highly respected online forum The Register (motto: "Biting the hand that feeds IT") commenting on the statement published by Apple,the headline of which read (or perhaps screamed) “APPLE: SCREW YOU, BRITS, everyone else says Samsung copied us….. But we will apologise because the judge said we had to”. While that in itself was not accurate (Apple was not required by the Court of Appeal to apologise) this probably simply confirmed the conclusions which the judges had already reached regarding the overall impression created by the statement. So a well-timed can of petrol, thrown on to the bonfire by Mr Carr, ensured that the nicely warming bonfire turned into a total conflagration."

APPLE: SCREW YOU, BRITS, everyone else says Samsung copied us

Paul E

Re: Countries are all hypocrites

"was the court battle not there first."

No the UK case was first. When it did not look like it was going apples way they decided to file in germany even though the courts there should not have accepted it.

Paul E

but

The german case they quoted covered exactly the same patents so they can't play the copy card there and not with the UK judgement.

No GPS in the iPad Mini Wi-Fi: People are right to criticise

Paul E

Re: "It's not at all accurate"

"my iPod could differentiate between me being on one side of a road or the other.

Particularly in the Bloomsbury-Kings Cross-Euston area of London"

Which side of the road is the beret shop on there?

Apple slips bomb into ITC filing: Samsung being PROBED by US gov

Paul E

Sorry ITC not FTC

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20121007194355579

"He ruled that injunctions are definitely available at the ITC for standards-essential patents, and that there is zero evidence of any wrong behavior by Samsung. Furthermore, the judge told Apple, which had claimed that the amount Samsung asked for licensing was too high to be a FRAND offer, that Apple can't unilaterally decide what is or is not a fair price. If it had objections, it could negotiate, which Apple failed to do, or there is a mediation process at ETSI it could have used, which it also apparently failed to do. Instead, the ruling says, the court battles are about negotiating a lower price."

Paul E

This is the same apple who where told off by the FTC judge in his interim report because rather than negotiate with samsung or go to arbitration they went straight to court to complain it was too expensive?

Apple's iPad Mini mishap: scratching out the retina screen

Paul E

Re: Cheap Chinese Knock-offs

Indeed. A year or so ago all the cheap tablets were very slow but as ever moore's law has come to their rescue and now the difference in performance between these as 'branded' tablets is between 'good' and 'better' instead of 'bad' and 'good'.

Paul E

Re: Double dip

Given the speed they replaced the ipad it will probably only be a few months before they come out with a retina replacement.

Actually I wonder if the problem with adding a retina display is scaling? I believe on the ipad the resolution is roughly twice that of the original ipad in each direction so scaling is simple. However with the ipad mini you would probably only be able to get a 1.5 times increase in resolution in each direction so how do you scale? I would expect in that case for text to look wonky at least.

Paul E

I do feel that

by sticking to their 4:3 aspect ratio they have removed one of the main reasons why people are going for the other 7" tablets. At what I assume in an inch or so wider it drastically reduces the ability to put it on a pocket and carry it with you. If its not portable you might as well go for the ipad 2 which has the same internals.

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