Re: It's all in the materials

> So, er, where's the rest of the money going?

Good analysis, but you forgot the WiFi/mobile network kit required to connect all these FaceTime sessions. I'm sure it could be frigged with cables between each pair, but that's not the style of elegant solution that St Steve would have wanted, and would result in some fairly exotic antenna systems to provide dedicated bandwidth to each session. This has the added bonus of the possibility for some controlling software somewhere that can change the orientation of the external view - picture it as a sort of carousel of views that someone in the building could move around if they wanted to re-orient their office.

Re: @Gwaptiva

> moutuus est? But he was in the garden only a moment ago!

> Damn it, poor guy.

Well, he did have a garden on the slopes of Vesuvius

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Caecilius_Iucundus#Fictional

Re: Not sure I agree with this.....

That's the whole point of a femto - they don't cost much. AT&T get an additional 40K sites for $140M (assuming that's the price, which I doubt). My point is that femtos aren't useless and they fill a valuable niche in providing coverage/capacity in hugely densely populated areas where macro would struggle. Plus, they can provide a cheap solution to rolling out extra coverage where it's needed. Note that in these types of solutions it is the operator that installs and pays for the backhaul and anyone on the right network can use them, rather than in the residential scenario where the backhaul piggy-backs on the home-owners DSL and they can only be used by the homeowner and a few other pre-specified phones.

Re: @Gwaptiva

Caecilius mortuus est. That's about all I remember

Re: iPhone 6 and iPhone6s

perhaps an extra column, instead....

Re: There sure as hell is a need for press regulation

Intriguingly that article is no longer visible on the Daily Wail website - I can't find it either searching on "Lucy Meadows", or "Nathan Upton" or even clicking on "see all of Littlejohn's articles".

Can't think why it might have disappeared...

Re: Why do they throw back the rest of the shark?

> piscine equivalent of horsemeat

FWIW, "good" horsemeat is more expensive than beef. Naturally Findus et al aren't using "good" horsemeat, though.

Re: Death of the sensible UI

>And give me a paste-special-unformatted-text button!

Give me one of those, too. Although you can set the default behaviour of a paste action:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32562/make-microsoft-word-always-use-plain-text-for-pasted-text/

On the plus side, there are add-ons you can get that put the old menu system back as an extra UI. Granted they don't have complete functionality, but they cover 95%+ of what I need.

err, I think you have the wrong end of the stick in thinking that personal use != copyright infringement.

The rights & wrongs of the current legislation can be debated, but as it stands the current law states you're not allowed to make unlicensed copies of IPR for any purpose (outside of fair use provisions if you're in the US and other countries that have these). You might be able to claim that looking at the CAD drawings fall into fair use, but using them to make a new physical part is certainly not within fair use

Re: Part of the process

> Can a 3D Printer make the sand-based moulds for casting iron? I doubt it, and I doubt whether developing the tech to do so would be worth it.

But can't a 3D printer make a copy of the object to be cast in iron and that could easily be used to make the sand-based mould? Or does it get rather more complicated than this simplification in "real" industrial processes (IANAIron Caster)?

Re: Security System

ZoneMinder looks cool - lots of stuff to tinker with :)

The only issue with the RasPi solution is possibly in making a waterproof housing for it if mounting it outside, plus making sure it doesn't take pics of stuff outside your property as that might get you in trouble.

Re: Things I'd like to see in a future iteration of a 'smart' phone.

I want more networked TVs/disc players with remote control Android (or iPhone) apps - works nicely for my little WD Live TV box and I'm a lot less likely to (a) misplace my phone or (b) have to replace the battery in it. Plus the remote control app can use the keyboard so text entry is better than scrolling around an on-screen keyboard (although BBC iPlayer app in the WD box has limited support of this, grrr).

Agreed that this shouldn't be an IR port in the phone, though.

That way I can take all the batteries out of the plethora of remote controls I have and recycle them into the plethora of garish plastic toys my kids use.

Re: Tested a drivers skill...

Perhaps the testers could have saved a bit of time and watched this film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbjSWDwJILs

An organisation in Belgium pretended that the driving test had been extended to also cover texting while driving, so students demonstrated their abilities on a closed course. Predictable results.

Re: Follow the money?

http://www.skype.com/en/legal/emergency-calling/

They support emergency calls in 4 countries, even if it's with caveats.

Re: Just say no.

>specialist apps will require less data to be transferred and are often better formatted for my device.

Agreed, but if the developer needs to develop an app for Android, iOS and Win8, what is the development cost of maintaining three load-lines of code (I assume they don't cross compile!) compared to a suitably designed HTML5 website?

Re: small cells?

Perhaps they should mandate that the operator can only charge the roaming rate if it can prove that the phone has received the "Roaming Charges" SMS? Often SMSs get held up in the SMSC for quite some time (whether the originating one or the home one) and there is no guarantee of timely delivery.

Re: small cells?

Some ferries already carry their own network infrastructure that they can activate when undocked/in international waters (not that "international waters" applies to the Dover/Calais Run, it's more for longer distance ferry trips)

http://www.winssystems.com/ for example.

PS - How do you disable voice roaming on an android? Settings only allow for disabling data roaming - receive a call and you'll still get billed through France. Does "manual network selection" achieve this?

Re: Going on for years and years

Here's a similar story from 2-3 years ago, for example:

http://www.people.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2010/08/21/no-headline-102039-22504429/

Re: Lastpass for me

Or rather, the one you're more likely to write on a Post-It and stick to the underside of the keyboard

Re: Nice one

Well, there's rumours that the Key Lime Pie release will be Moto.

http://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/news/2013/02/google_nexus_x_android_key_lime_pie_phone_on_way_from_motorola/

But it was still 90% about the patents

Re: how about a modern computer?

Brute forcing with a current PC would still have been useless in the war as the key-space is too big and they were changed daily. There is (was?) a distributed processing outfit that were trying to crack some last remaining texts, but the site doesn't seem to have been updated in a while, even though one such text was still uncracked.

The Bletchley Park crowd used extra information gleaned from sloppy procedures from the Germans - one instance I've heard of is that there was a weather service Enigma broadcast that got reused for something, or particular operators would always begin a message the same way, or other such tweaks that can help get a hint as to the rotor settings (or narrow down the solution space) and it was these that were fed into the bombe.

Re: Correct me if I'm wrong..

I think the Bombe was a design by Turing that improved a design by the Poles, who, as you rightly point out, had done a lot of work on Enigma too.

Enigma started out as a commercial device, and the UK openly bought one in the 20's, but the Mil-Spec device was different so required additional analysis and the Poles were the first to get any significant breakthrough thanks to the French handing over 2 pages of intercepted daily keys.

Then the germans added more rotors, which increased the complexity of the Polish "computer" beyond their resources.

Re: There's a reason for Geolocation lockouts.

So you're saying that copyright law is not aligned with a global internet? Perhaps that's something that needs fixing, too.

bypassing the landing page...

That no doubt contains a "by clicking connect you agree to our Terms and Conditions".

I wonder if that is legal?

Re: Yes.

Agreed - it's not the new builds blocking radio, it's the fact that they're built in areas with no coverage anyway. Unless the aforementioned house-owner gets 5 bars by pushing the phone out the window? More likely he's on a massive development that never had coverage cos it was a farmers field until last year, and - apart from those sheep fitted with SMS units - not many farm animals need phone coverage.

use case

it'll work for any major live event - like important games of US football and other such essential viewing in N America.

It won't work for stuff like regular TV series unless the network operator gets an exclusive and they can figure out a way to cripple the phone to ensure it doesn't get recorded at the same time (I presume there are video-screen-grabbers available for at least Android)

Re: Busting your data allowance in minutes

You;'ll actually end up using more data in general when given a fatter pipe to use on the device - you'll be more likely to watch videos as they are less likely to stutter... You may even end up watching (gasp) HD content which requires a higher bitrate

Not massively more, but a little bit.

Still, I find that 250MB/mo is just about all I can use in a month - even allowing for app upgrades over 3G rather than WiFi. It also took me up until last year to upgrade from my old GSM-only phone (a Motorola PEBL) to a SamGalNex phone - I appreciate that I'm not the target market for LTE service, though :)

Re: Religions...

Yeah - but I bet they license the CoS branding for a large sum. Anyone care to peek at companies house for their latest accounts? The last 5 years reports have them with only £20 in the bank, and no other income (and were nearly struck off, too, recently)

(see http://www.companycheck.co.uk/company/03235420 for Cos England & Wales)

Then there's the Bournemouth mission, which seems to have £130K in the bank but a negative net worth

http://www.companycheck.co.uk/company/02081181

This is only two Scientology related companies - I suspect there will be more.

Hmm - "enjoying tax exempt status" is a bit more liberal when you can create a multinational corporate structure