Posts by Absent
106 posts • joined Thursday 23rd July 2009 17:38 GMT
Collusion
I think there's massive collusion between patent lawyers going on. If they persuade all these firm to keep filing patents for such things then continually sue the hell out of each other, it's a lawyer's gravy train that roles on and on.
Posted in Fans rap Apple's 'crap' Map app
Re: The launch video reminded me of the crowd faking tears at Kim jungs death
That's what gets me. They're replicating functions everyone including their own users already have, but even just going "we have a map of Paris" makes the audience go "ooooooo!, aaahhhh!".
That was meant in a sarcastic way.
It's the things like slide to unlock and pinch to zoom, people see those features and quite rightly mistake the phone for an iPhone.
Re: Galaxy Note?
It's a direct copy of the Newton damn it!
Posted in BeBook outs Kindle-beating e-book reader
Presumably remove the DRM, convert to ePub and sideload.
I wonder how this might affect the overall use and hence profits for Google. How much of their page impressions are from people searching for torrents and such? If say Bing, don't censor their results and people find it easier to locate what they want there, could it start a slow creep away?
That little flashing barcode that used to be in the top right corner of TV programs
and appeared around the start and end of every advert break. Wasn't the purpose of that so that compatible VCRs could pause and unpause recording thus skipping the adverts? This was inserted by the broadcasters so surely they advocated ad-skipping in the past.
I would have had a gander but not if it's only on iTunes.
Posted in Avast! Mobile Security
I've been using this since the beta and it's improved greatly. Very little resources hit, very stable, the firewall and anti-theft for rooted phones are nice features. Downsides are that the callblocker doesn't catch calls before the phones vibration kick in (on my handset at least). I was really surprised when it came out of beta and was still free.
Always late to the party
Hollywood is so slow. They're only now suing over something that was popular 10 years ago?
Same with me, large sites like Google were fine. Some would only deliver text, others were completely unreachable.
Sorry, that should be "still only getting 20mbps".
"it's the old mid-level package running on the older DOCSIS 2 modem".
Actually I'm on DOCSIS 3 with a Superhub. They silently put me over onto it months back and my connection went down for a week. After an engineer visit he said somehow I was put onto DOCSIS 3 despite still getting 20mbps. After switching to a Superhub it worked fine, but I'm still only getting 30mbps.
The speeds of other packages will apparently be doubled. Mine is supposed to be going from 30mbps to 60mbps, even through I only get 20mbps.
Kindle devices only
Kindle documents still only sync with your actual Kindle device. I would like and surely it wouldn't be that hard for them to make the same documents sync with the Kindle apps on my computer and phone at the same time.
Whilst I wouldn't want to have only touch, I could see it being quite useful whilst typing. Moving your fingers up and selecting something on the laptop screen mid-type would be quicker than moving down to the trackpad and moving the pointer. Defiantly quicker than moving your whole arm over to separate mouse.
Posted in Netflix goes live in Blighty
Is that it?
Are the titles in the "browser selection" section honestly all there is? That's even worse than Lovefilm, who's too poor to pay for. It's worse that than the shittiest of abandoned torrent sites.
Posted in Brits got Kindles for Christmas
The main thing which swung me towards to the Kindle over the Kobo were that side mounted page turning buttons. The touch screen in nicer for typing but for reading (which is the main point of the device) I found the buttons far more practical than having to poke the screen with my other hand (well, that and the fact that Amazon have far more of the non-fiction book I wanted available).
Neo-nazi's arguing about who unfriended who on Facebook? I stopped reading these riveting emails after a few minutes. Is there any real meat in any of them?
Posted in The Commodore 64 is 30
Personally I wouldn't classify the iPad as a computer, more closer to a console. Obviously that's not a textbook definition, just my own personal opinion.
Yes, only essential items such as facelifts and yachts are zero rated.
Posted in Apple stores getting close to overload
They're paid that low so they become ripe candidates for recruitment add double agents.
It's open souce. Anyone can build their own version of.
Could swear my GPS locking has been poorer since I got the 2.3.4 update on O2.
The worst experience I had was when Virgin silently moved me from the old network to the new network (which is meant to be for 30mbps and up, I only have 20mbps). The trouble was, the old style router isn't compatible with it. It took several phone useless phone calls to script monkey call centre technicians and several days wait for an engineer to turn up. Took him about 20 minutes to figure out what had happened and he called his boss up to check if this could possibly be the case. Apparently there's been an influx of such problems in the past few days. The engineer said to me "I wondered by there was 30 Superhubs in the van this morning rather the usual 15 and 15 regular".
format motivations
I wonder to what extent the motivation behind the creation of non-recordable formats was driven by being able to control the manufacture and supply of recordings? Think back to the birth of was cylinders etc, I imagine a large part of the idea behind their invention was having the ability to record as well as play back. By the time you got to bakelite records, was mass production the main idea behind the format or was controlling or eliminating duplication a major concern back then?
"75 per cent of its players are women aged over 30"
Big Fish are big in the point and click 'hidden object' genera, very popular with women. In fact one of the best known dodgy sites for these is run by a woman called Wendy.
I had WordPerfect for the Atari ST, it was a pretty bad piece of software and seemed ludicrously priced, $400 to type shit on the screen?
You don't need to use a VPN, just use SSL. Virgin won't slow you don't until you hit their standard cap. In fact with most ISPs that apply shaping to non-standard traffic, just access Usenet through SSL on port 443 and you avoid the shaping.
"Would Half-Life today be reviewed as highly as it was?"
Would Manic Miner today be reviewed as highly as it was?
"a whole mess of different regulations" which the Lib Dems stated in their manifesto that they would sort out. Yet another political frap by Clegg..
People don't need to buy The Who any more, they're sick of hearing them every day for free on fecking CSI.
"Death is but a door. Time is but a window. I'll be back." would have been more fitting.
It's almost identical to the already open source and very widely used FLAC codec.
Posted in Apple shouldn't bother with TV...
touchscreen remotes
"For me, a context-sensitive touchpad on a display like an iPod touch/ small Android tablet/ smartphone would be an improvement..."
Samsung have one of these for their phones and TVs. You get choices between a simple, full, keyboard, game style controls and swipe pad for different context uses. Controlling the TV and using the phone as an DLNA server over wifi is a very nice feature.
Ashton Kutcher is currently the spit of 70s Steve Jobs. http://9gag.com/gag/338184
Backward rationalisation
That's how sites like Gizmodo "prove" every Apple decision is the right one.
"How do I get home?" Siri
Most people use their phone to call a taxi.
"the new antennae"
As you know, the new antennae is just a spin doctor style way of saying they've corrected the fault they never admitted was inherent with the old antennae.
I commented that the "Let's talk iPhone" tag line meant voice integration was the main feature of the announcement but got shot down for such a suggestion.
Apple are playing catchup with the rest of market now rather than innovating. The 4S is a stop-gap 'cos the 4 has fallen behind and the no-show of the 5 I'd guess means there's some problems with the real world delivery of the device. The iPhone 4 now feels like a generation behind something like the Galaxy S2, maybe this is all behind the litigation delaying tactics of the patent disputes.
One of the worst PR years for Apple in a long time?
I went to apple.co.uk and thought I went back in time to the 90s.
Posted in Amazon's Kindle Fire is sold at a loss
Customer aquisition
There's always a financial cost associated with acquiring new customers factored into every business plan. The Kindle also locks new customers into the Amazon content eco-system so such a customer would be of high value. Factor that in with Amazon's cost of acquiring standard website customers and the value is probably pretty high, possibly higher than the loss on the device. Basically the loss making Kindle can be seen as a cheap customer acquisition tool.
Posted in Amazon's Kindle Fire is sold at a loss
re: Will be £225 in UK...lots of profit here
The $79 US version is advert supported. That model won't be available in the UK, the £89 UK Kindle is equivalent to the $109 version = £69.76 + 20% VAT = £83.71
My Samsung TV uses FAT32 as well, do the payments go beyond just phones?
Posted in Ex-Microsofties' IE6 kill squad hits UK
Egg Banking
If you try to log on to Egg Money Manager using Chrome, the site tells you that you should download IE6 for improved security.
Reversals
How many of these companies originally filed patents for the defensive purpose of stopping themselves being sued by someone else rather than actively suing others? Since the Apple have started to aggressively go after competitors (usually the action of trolls from which the patents protect), maybe others have just gone "sod it, Apple need to be put in their place".
