Re: Clueless banks

The last credit card person to call me, and ask for my date of birth seemed rather wearily resigned to my refusal to answer. All the previous times I've met bewilderment that I shouldn't trust random people who ring me up asking for financial details...

I suppose they know who they are, so why should I doubt them?

I'm sure there's a standard for the radio side. I was talking about the phone implementation. The carriers wanted to use the SIM for the encryption keys, so they could charge for it, or better, become transaction agents and take a nice percentage. The phone manufacturers wanted in on the action too, with hardware security they controlled. But Google also want in on the act, to do it in the OS. I don't recall who the banks sided with.

Re: I think you'll find...

More poor comedian than xenophobe. But what is the world coming to if an englishman can't be gratuitously rude about the French?

As a serious point though, there's nothing wrong with making jokes about disability in general. People being over-sensitive is far more of a problem. Plus 'comedy nationalism' is a speciality of British humour, and last time I checked this site ended in .co.uk.

I suggest you lighten-up.

Re: Brewing time

That's where a desktop teapot comes in. First cup poured quickly, not so flavoursome but hot, and welcome. Second cup of perfection, after proper time to mash/stew/infuse/thingy.

Easy for me, I take my tea black no sugar. So I can just pour and go.

When I worked abroad, I used to have a teapot on my desk. That's the only language Johnny-Foreigner understands! Take teapot to kitchen, rinse, warm, add tea, pour in boiling water. Return to desk, drink 2 cups.

You talk of being a serious tea-drinker, and then laughably mention bags! Pah! Humbug! Poppycock! The correct dosage of tea is 2 mugs. In order to achieve this, you need a teapot. Make, savour first cup while scalding hot, pour again, down second cup before it goes lukewarm (the devil's temperature).

Actually, in the office, the teabag is acceptable. At home, only loose-leaf will do, and the strainer lives by the pot, so it takes no extra time.

Re: Possible explanation

It's always the bloody awkward, inaccessible connectors that are the hardest. Bayonet and screw light bulbs are easy, because those are usually on exposed fittings and so easy to see. But spotlights, which are recessed and at full ceiling height are always the hardest. So you get the shitty thin 2 pin types, that you often have to screw in. Using a tiny jewellers screwdriver rather than a nice thumb screw naturally. And then the magical GU10, with 2 tiny flimsy pins to bend and fail to make a connection, and a crappy cheap spring holding the whole connection together. All of this has to be done in the dark, at full stretch standing on the floor, or with you head bent at a funny angle under the ceiling, if standing on a chair.

The same with USB. Mini USB is easy to see, because it goes on small devices that you hold in your hand to connect. The full-size USB on the other end, often goes into the backs of PCs, under desks, and so must be impossible.

I'm considering creating a new connector, that can only be plugged in while the right way up, in a locked filing cabinet, in a disused basement lavatory, with a sign on the door saying, 'beware of the leopard'. Obviously you'll need a torch to see it, because the lights will probably have gone...

Fascist?

Seriously? Calm down dear! It's only a commercial...

Sure, the BBC are over-managed. However, they're not that expensive. When you think what original content the BBC produces for £3bn, and compare it to the £5bn that Sky turns over, and the lack of content that they produce with it, suddenly the License Fee starts to look like decent value. Admittedly Sky are improving that, and they spend an absolute ton of cash on both sports rights and good sports coverage (which are both expensive). But if you compare the £250 cost of basic Sky (without Sport) to the Beeb at £150, Sky look horrendously expensive!

ITV are free, but you have to watch adverts. They have a similar budget to BBC1, but look like they achieve less with it.

Re: In before...

No problems here because no-one liked using Lotus Notes so much they canned it (I blame MS for making a better email client).

I never had the privilege of using Lotus, but are you telling me that they made an email client worse than MS Outlook? Ugh! That's a horrible thought. Particularly as they started losing in the 90s, so are you saying their client was worse than Outlook 95? *shudders*

Remembers (with horror) the IT 'upgrade' in early 1999, where they took my PC with NT4 workstation away, and replaced it with one running Windows 95. I got upgraded to Win 98 the same year, so I've no idea why we went through 9 months of Win 95 purgatory first... Ugh! I hated 95 because of that, and fixing my Dad's PC every few months.

Re: So it's self correcting?

Sadly no. I don't think rebooting the phone works. You have to turn off the exchange server synching, and then turn it back on again.

I've just set up my new work iPhone 5, and the damned thing keeps beeping at me, about every 30 minutes. I can't work out what alert is sounding, since I've disabled alerting on everything but calls and text messages, and I won't get any of those until the number is ported across. The only thing I can think is that it's telling me to upgrade to iOS 6.1. Leading me to my doom...

Re: Hmmm

Live tiles haven't really worked so far. At least as a user of Win Pho 7. Because apps weren't really multi-tasking, they weren't really allowed to do the clever stuff. So, for example, my weather app would update its live tile when I looked at it, but it never seemed to manage to do it again until I ran the app again. Whereas what could be simpler than a weather app that shows you the picture of today's forecast? Not that iOS can do it either... The people hub could keep changing, showing bits of photos, but only if you were plugged into Facebook and got your phone filled up with all the pointless Facebook chatter. No, I really don't care how much of a melon-farmer you've just been...

Sadly the only thing that really seemed to work well on the live tiles was badges. Which is no better than what iOS can do, and massively worse than Android's brilliant widgets. Although, none of the non-techies I know have managed to customise their widgets very much, so maybe it's not the huge advantage it ought to be? Many things frustrated me when I was on Android, but the ability to customise the phone to perfection is something I missed on Win Phone. I've just taken delivery of a work iPhone 5, and as a phone it's a step back from WP7. My trusty £130 Lumia 710 is sadly going out to pasture. As a mobile computer the iPhone is superior, but then it does cost 4 times as much...

One thing I've noticed that should worry MS and Nokia is how prominent the new Blackberries are in the phone shops. They're getting pushed in a way Windows Phone and Nokia's Lumias never did. Does this mean the phone companies are going to push Blackberry as the 3rd way (to keep Google and Apple honest)? They never seemed to have their hearts in pushing Windows Phone...

Re: Legal copyright violation is not stealing

If you are successful - you get sued.

Eadon,

I think in the main, that should be: If you have money you get sued. There's no point getting triple damages from some poor schmuck without a billion to his name...

Obviously there's 'if you're a threat you get sued' as well.

Psyx,

Yes it's true that trackday mileage sucks, in a petrol or electric car. There's a huge difference though, that makes the Tesla a lot less use as a trackday car. Do 55 miles in your Tesla, only 10-20 laps, then go home. In a different car. You can't do any more, as you can't charge it up - until tracks have fast chargers. Do the same in a Ford GT, fill up with petrol, carry on. Alternatively, you can manage 4 laps of the Nurburgring - and pray you don't run out on the 4th...

They said it was a nice car, but it was fair to point that out. But Top Gear aren't a consumer program any more, they're entertainment. So they're not going to be nice about it, they're going to be sarky, and funny. It's not lying to show the car being pushed, it's entertainment.

If Tesla couldn't cope with that, they shouldn't have gone on the show. If Top Gear had lied, I'm sure they'd have lost the court case...

Electric cars are brilliant for town mileage. Lovely and efficient, as they do stop-start so well. But they have short ranges, and are impractical for long-distance work in most cases. Until we've got better battery tech, that's the way it's going to stay. I'm not even convinced I've seen a hybrid that's got any better fuel consumption than a decent diesel. The 2 Toyota Prius-es-es-es that I know owners of both only manage 35 mpg. Which you could get from a petrol car of that size, costing half as much. They may just be stupidly heavy-footed, and others do better, 2 instances does not good data make.

Re: I suspect

David Hicks,

I guess we mostly agree. I got the impression you thought Samsung had been unlucky to lose that case, and should have a decent chance to overturn it on appeal. I just replied with me opinion (not a legal one I hasten to add) that the obvious grounds look unlikely to work. Even if they're totally reasonable. Sadly justice and major corporate lawsuits don't exactly go hand-in-hand.

I too would like to believe in a rational legal system. Sometimes I do, many times though, I wonder...

The foreman of the jury seems to have gone on some bizarre crusade against Samsung. If we can believe his TV interviews. Very strange case indeed. It would be nice if something this obvious would be looked into - but from the judge's comments I somehow doubt it will. We shall see.

I must say I didn't think my post deserved downvotes from either Samsung or Apple fans, as I wasn't having a go at either. Unless of course it was legal fanbois, given I was being rude about the legal system. In which case I suppose I mustn't grumble...

Re: I suspect

there will be a few years of appeals on that $1bn before we see any cash change hands. It certainly seems that there were more than enough shenanigans in the Jury room to get the whole thing reconsidered, and that's before Judge Koh's weird rulings on what could and could not be entered as evidence.

David Hicks,

I'm sure there'll be years of appeals to look forward to. After all, for a billion dollars, it's worth making the effort. However, I'm not sure Samsung have much hope of being successful. I think there are strict limits on what notice the courts are allowed to take of interviews with the jurors afterwards. So even though some of that sounded quite dodgy (the foreman appeared to be a total numpty), I'm not sure they're going to get any joy.

As for the evidence Samsung failed to get included, wasn't that their own fault? Didn't they miss a submission deadline? If so, it's tough luck. That evidence may have changed the case, but they had every opportunity to submit it, and the lawyers all know when the deadlines are. They can't claim they didn't know, and after spending tens of millions on preparing the case, that kind of sloppiness is pathetic. Of course if it was the lawyers' fault, they might be able to sue them.

Not that I'm saying there isn't some other reason for Samsung to win. But their case being right and 'justice' are even less important at appeal than they would be at a normal trial. Appeals tend to focus on technicalities even more than trials, as judges aren't normally supposed to second-guess the juries, just to make sure they got all the right facts in the right way.

Re: @I ain't Spartacus

Mostly Harmless,

People complain about low wages, off-shoring, poor management, and a little bit of harmless torture. And yet workplace vending machines are allowed to continue in this state! Clearly revolution is the only answer.

The psychological damage done to you by that chocolate chicken soup is profound, as has caused you to countenance this cofftea abomination. It'll probably require years of therapy to cure you. What's worse is that we've grown to accept this awfulness as a normal part of the working life. Hence you taking a while to realise that your chocolate was worse than the normal level of awful.

If, however, we lynched a few facilities managers we would have drinkable coffee, tea and chocolate in offices throughout the land in no time flat. Productivity would increase, the country would rise out of its slump and into the kind of levels of economic growth to make China jealous. Then we'd have sufficient spare tax income to properly fund our armed forces and could use them productively, to impose acceptable global standards of tea availability at gunpoint. It's the only language Johnny-Foreigner understands!

On second thoughts

I can't remember if the Jaffa Cake is a biccie or a cake now, but my opinion has also begun to change on this recently. High quality chocolate covered ginger biscuits are exceptionally yummy with tea, but they seem to be about £2 for 8. Ouch!

Re: MS Surface pro FAIL

@AC's haven't you got a better career than to harass authors of on-topic and relevant, technical comments

Eadon,

Oh dear, oh dear, oh deary me. I'm killing myself laughing at that. An author forsooth! I'm struggling to work out which is funnier, "author", "technical" or "relevant"...

I try not to be gratuitously rude, but you really do spout some crap on here. And given your propensity for calling everyone who disagrees with you a shill, I think it's justified. That's also bollocks by the way - no one cares enough about your opinion to be worth spending actual money to dispute it. Yes astro-turfing and shilling does happen, but it seems to be quite rare on here. Much more likely to appear on online reviews, and it's harder to spot there because the comments are shorter, and you often can't check posting histories.

As for your MS copying Apple comments. Well, sometimes they do. Sometimes Apple copy them, sometimes they both copy Google. That's business for you. You might argue WinRT is a copy of Apple (unfairly in my opinion), but Surface Pro certainly isn't. MS have consistently been trying to put full-fat Windows on a tablet since the 1990s, even when the technology barely existed to do it. They've probably spent billions on it. In tablets they are maybe the biggest innovators in the industry - even though they keep cocking it up when it comes to releasing products...

They've almost got full tablets right, although there's an argument that the chips still aren't quite there to do it properly even now. ARM aren't quite powerful enough, and Intel still a bit too power-hungry. Plus Win 8 doesn't look to be perfect for tablets quite yet, but one service pack might solve most of those problems - I think they could make it fit for desktops with minimal changes.

I do agree with you that it's quite sad seeing MS trying to copy the Apple cool factor with stores though. And they also copied Apple with Zune and did it better. The Zune software was much worse than iTunes, which must have taken some serious effort to achieve...

Outlook Aaaarrggghhh!

I have to agree about Outlook. And that's the killer MS Office program. If it wasn't for the slightly complicated stuff I do in Excel (I've not used it for anything hard in 10 years), I mostly use Outlook now.

For example, we changed our company name slightly 3 years ago, and I was amazed to find I'd not updated my letterhead when I went to write a letter last year. In 3 years, I've written 2 letters, and I've not updated my fax header, so I've not sent one of those either. 5 years ago I would send out several per week. Everything's done by email nowadays. Even most of the quotes we get are now PDFs.

Obviously it doesn't apply everywhere, but documents are becoming less formal, and communications are more likely to just be emails now.

I used to hate Outlook when I first had to use it for business. Then I tried to find an alternative when I moved to a small company where I get to control large parts of the IT. Haven't found one yet. I guess the integration of calendar, email and address book is always going to end up somewhat messy. I do find it odd that email programs seem to be a less popular thing to create now than they were 5 years ago, even though email is becoming more important. I'm also sure there would be money to be made from small business who don't really want to run Exchange servers, and wouldn't mind paying £50 for an email client plus monthly cloudy server hire, rather than full fat Office/Exchange.

Re: Not just for loyalists

I guess there could be a good market for these Berries. I've seen an awful lot of people complain about not being able to get Android handsets in the UK with physical keyboards, and Nokia doesn't seem to have talked about doing one with Win Pho (even though they've done them for ages). I wonder if MS won't let them?

I know that touch screens are more flexible, and some people (like me) don't like hardware phone keyboards - but surely with all the road warriors who send loads of email while out-and-about there must be a large market for something decent with a proper KB?