* Posts by CraigRoberts

42 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jul 2009

HTC warns of likely loss next quarter

CraigRoberts

Updates...

I definitely prefer HTC's aluminium, premium feel over Sammy's plasticky body (and their frankly gimmicky feature bloatware) but HTC need to support their phones for at least the length of an average 2 year contract. I just upgraded to a HTC One S (last year's model) 2 days before they pulled the update to 4.2.2. Yes, I can and do flash CM10.x - but your average punter shouldn't need to do that.

If they limited their range to a 4.7" flagship, a high-mid end 4.3" device and a cheap and cheerful low-mid £180ish model, they'd probably be in a much stronger position.

FWIW - I prefer to buy last year's model from eBay and chuck GiffGaff a tenner a month. Works out cost effective and to be honest last year's phones are more than powerful enough for my needs... Although I am looking forward to getting a HTC One next year - they look bloody gorgeous! :)

Ten... crowd-funded games from veteran devs

CraigRoberts

Re: Multiplayer ELITE - where are you?

Eve isn't a replacement for Elite. It's a replacement for Excel. </facetiousness>

I don't want a point and click RPG. I want a real time space-flight-fight sim. We used to play Netwars across a Novell 4 network back in the early 90s - there's no reason we can't have an Elite: Frontier sequel where every other ship you meet (or most) is controlled by another real player... Eve isn't that by a long shot.

I played Eve for about a year around 5 years ago - clicking on points in space isn't the same as desperately trying to pull the nose up and adjust thrusters while trying to catch a pirate in a full loop...

Finders of lost mobes can't resist staring at privates

CraigRoberts

Locked Phones

I don't lock my phone - I use iProtect (jail broken iPhone) to lock individual apps... So if I lose my phone (or get hit by the metaphorical bus) people can use the phone, see my contacts etc etc etc but my SMS, Email, Twitter and all that kinda stuff needs a pin code to access...

... Switching to Android next month - hope there's a similar app for it?

Samsung outsold Apple in world smartphone arena

CraigRoberts

They're heeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeee!

GiffGaff boots freetards off mobile network

CraigRoberts

Unlimited Limits

That's the problem with "unlimited" data plans when they're not actually unlimited. Companies shouldn't be able to use the word unless they mean it. Why not be open and honest - 100MB, 500MB, 1GB, 10GB per month?

If I was one of the 1% and they gave me that warning, I'd want to know what the limit of the "unlimited" plan was - how can you be in breach of contract if you don't know what the contract is?

Or is this the law of diminishing returns - bollock the top 1% now, then the next top 1%, then the next... Slowly bringing everyone's data usage down and reducing costs, but still maintaining the phantom "unlimited" plan?

HTC Sensation XL

CraigRoberts

Been looking for a new phone since my 3GS contract ran out in November... Decided to drop off the Apple Wagon and try out a 'Droid. Not sure why they're all assuming we all want bigger screens though - I need something I can leave in my jeans pocket when I sit down rather than having to plonk it on the bar in a puddle of lager... :\

After a look and comparison in the local Phone Shop I've pretty much settled on an eBay bought HTC Desire S; they seem similar in size to the 3GS.

WD slashes warranty periods on Blue and Green drives

CraigRoberts
Thumb Down

Having had issues with several WD drives recently - "Click of Death" just as they've come out of warranty I was already looking elsewhere... This just reaffirms my decision...

Microsoft to offer dual upgrade path for Windows 8

CraigRoberts

Metro

Can't see any reason to upgrade from 7 to 8. Especially if it's limited to the Metro interface. Don't see how a Touch UI is supposed to be useful on a non-touch device. Plus I haven't just bought a 24" widescreen monitor to go back to having one app at a time visible... Maybe if the UI changed depending on what device you were on I'd be more interested...

iPhone 5 now set for October launch

CraigRoberts
Stop

Do we think it's going to be radically different?

When I got my 3GS nearly 2 years ago there was nothing comparable to the iPhone. I've always had an unrational dislike of all things Apple, but after a mate made me play about with his 3GS for half an hour I was sold... And have been a huge advocate of iPhone since then... Until the last few weeks...

Recently I've started looking at what phone to upgrade to next - yeah, I like new tech especially when it's subsidised by the Telco - and I have to say HTC - possibly Sensation although even the Desire HD is pretty sweet - is looking like a winner. The technology is pretty much comparable these days... Dual core 1ishGhz, 1Gb RAM and an 8meg camera... I think with Gingerbread Android has pretty much reached the same "slickness" value that iOS has had for the last couple of years... Certainly from the same "playing around with" experience I've had over the last couple of weeks.

My choice now isn't really going to be based around minor differences in hardware or OS - I think it's more about how the "Cloud" stuff will work, and who you trust to get it right... Apple where you're locked in, Google where you're not or Microsoft where... Not even they really know yet...

Microsoft floats 'site-ready' IE10 preview

CraigRoberts

Yeah...

... And if they said they'd only be supporting it until IE11/12 came out you'd all be moaning about that too... How dare they not support IE 8 - I'm still using XP on my old laptop etc...

Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

Facebook hurls insults, punctuation at growth slump report

CraigRoberts

@JasonTogneri

Wow...

Right, firstly let me explain a little... Hopefully without resorting to personal attacks, insults and assumptions - unlike your good self...

Facebook doesn't simply gather information about me, from me. When I had my FB account, it had my email address, my name and a partial date of birth. I didn't include my school, my college, place of work, address or any other such information.

However - my friends and family aren't so careful with the information they include. So, you get instances of my sister, for example, requesting that we become "family" members on the site... So, Facebook now have an albeit unconfirmed snippet of information about me that I didn't enter.

From that information, they now know that the connection between her and me is more than random, and should they wish, they can grep her account, and find where the rest of my family live... Hang on - they all live in one part of the country, I live in another... Did the whole family move? Or did I?

Now they can guess where I lived... A quick search of the usual "ex-school friends" who HAVE put which school they attended, and now they can have an educated guess at what school I did... And they can work out what year...

And if they know what year, they can calculate the year of my birth.

That's a quick example of how connections between people can be used to glean more information than is posted by an individual. It might be no more nefarious than wanting to sell adverts at me - but that's not the point. You can bet your final fiver they do data analysis along those lines.

Now - moving on from Family and my birthday - the final straw in the coffin of mixed metaphors was when they turned on the Facial Recognition and made it Opt-OUT instead of IN. I know you can turn it off, and I did - but it got me thinking again about the bullshit privacy problems they've had for the last 18 months... And then I had a typical "tech support" conversation with me old Mum who wanted to know how she can delete a photo of her that someone else put on Facebook - well, short of asking the person to delete it - you can't. You can only delete the tag.

After some careful consideration over the weekend, I decided that these points coupled with a general weariness of Facebook were too much in comparison to the benefits I gain from using the service. So I quit.

I really do hope that's ok with you.

CraigRoberts
Thumb Down

Deleted my account yesterday!

Fed up with the whole Facebook "experience" and finally came to the conclusion that giving away all of my personal information in order to remain in contact with people who all have my email address and phone number anyway was no longer an option.

Just have to not log in for 2 weeks and apparently they'll [pretend to] delete all my data...

Whatever happened to Diaspora? Did they just disappear down to the pub with all that venture capital?

Sony hack reveals password security is even worse than feared

CraigRoberts

How lastpass works...

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/lastpass-is-it-the-password-manager-for-you/3291

Maybe in this day and age of password security, El Reg could do a feature or series on password management tools etc so us more techie types can start educating the general public...?

CraigRoberts
Happy

In the "Cloud"

Does FF store them on your computer or online? If they're on your computer and it blows up, how do you get your passwords back?

If they're online - where are they? How are they stored? Lastpass have published papers (which seem to stand up to scrutiny) on how they achieve all this...

CraigRoberts
Meh

Password management...

I've been using LastPass for about 6 months... All my passwords are unique and strong. And I don't have to remember any of them. Great little browser plugin for Free use, and about £8 a year for the iPhone / Android app with the "Pro" version. Worth every penny.

Win8: A beginner's guide to FondleWindows

CraigRoberts
Meh

Filesystem

WinFS looked great - was disappointed when it was dropped from Vista and then just killed off...

... And didn't Lord Saviour Jobs say t'other day that he wanted to kill off the idea of the filesystem?

Windows 8 looks fine for Fondleslabs - but I'll stick with the Win 7 UI for desk/laptop machines with keyboards and meeces... Maybe I'm just getting old...

NoTW offers apologies, 'regret' over phone hacks

CraigRoberts

10 o' Clock Live

The NotW reporter who was on last night was a proper horrible piece of work... Much as I'm not a fan of John Prescott I was hoping he was gonna dive over David Mitchell and punch the bloke... Absolute twat!

Messenger delivers first Mercury orbital snap

CraigRoberts
Thumb Up

Amazing stuff...

... I just wish the the lunatics on this planet (on all sides) would all hurry up and die out so that we can spend more resource on exploring the universe instead of blowing people up...

Firefox bloke blasts Microsoft IE 9 hardware acceleration claims

CraigRoberts

No- you couldn't...

... It's COULDN'T care less... If you could care less, then it means you care some what...

... That said, you're absolutely right - speed is no good when your browser's downloading all kinds of nasties through drive by downloads...

I use Chrome... It's fast enough for my needs, it boots quickly, renders well and most importantly is apparently pretty damn secure. That'll do for my personal use (I have to use the others to test layouts etc for work)...

While on the subject - wouldn't it be nice if there was ONE rendering engine that all browser manufacturers used and built their bells n whistles around? Or is that just me?

Ecstasy doesn't make rave-goers any stupider - official

CraigRoberts

Re: Waste of money...

I stand corrected... And slightly happier than I was... :)

CraigRoberts
Thumb Up

Thanks... :)

I'd managed to miss that some how...

CraigRoberts
Thumb Down

Waste of money...

Why bother doing scientific tests on these substances? The Government is never going to legalise them or anything. Remember the hoo-ha over the David Nutt cannabis row?

Until the powers that be start listening to the experts instead of the Daily Mail/Middle England etc then all of this is a complete waste of time and money... Of course now the head of the Drug Council is a God Botherer who thinks that homosexuality can be cured through prayer... Ugh...

Mozilla takes on web data miners with privacy icon release

CraigRoberts

GMail

Gmail does that too - yourusername+anystring@gmail.com allows you to customise your email address on their free service... Very handy.

Dutch police arrest 16-year-old WikiLeaks avenger

CraigRoberts

Anonymous... Kinda...

Here's where we see how serious Anonymous etc are now that arrests are being made. Going up against Scientology or (other) stupid people on the internet is one thing - DDOSing 2 of the biggest financial institutes in the world is another.

Personally, I agree with their sentiment. Until Mastercard/PayPal/Visa pulled the plug I wasn't going to make a donation to Wikileaks, now I want to know if there's any way I still can.

But I don't think that launching a pointless script kiddie attack against massive corps. and getting yourself nicked is going to change anything either. So I won't be doing all that.

Unfortunately with our reliance on our credit/debit cards and buying tat on eBay through Paypal or getting most of our Xmas shopping through Amazon, boycotting these companies is futile. I hope the leaks keep coming, I hope people keep talking about it, I hope it all turns out like The Pentagon Papers did. If need be - let's get a protest going... It seems to be all the rage, even though it didn't help the students... Bugger.

This WikiLeaks stuff is important. Whichever camp you fall into, there's an important argument going on and it deserves attention.

Cinema iPhone pirate escapes jail in test case appeal

CraigRoberts
Pirate

Ouch...

Caught pirating a Jennifer Aniston rom-com... Poor bastard... He has to live with that shame for the rest of his life... :(

Facebook Places - why, and why not

CraigRoberts

Hmmm...

I use Facebook - preferring Twitter these days though... Really starting to get annoyed by FB and it's privacy problems...

Thanks for this El Reg - settings edited and disabled...

Any news on when they might stop offering up my name and correct email address if you try and log in with a rough approximation?

Apple as a religion: How the iPhone became divine

CraigRoberts
Happy

I'm Technology Agnostic thanks...

Windows monkey for day to day - Windows 7, .NET development etc ...

Linux for crappy old laptops for Grandma so she can email and Facebook without me having to de-virus every 2 weeks...

And I got an iPhone 'cos Android phones just weren't anywhere near the iPhone at the time... 18 months left on contract and it'll depend on who's the best at upgrade time... But I use Cydia out of principle...

Zero brand loyalty from me! :)

Nipper's naked arse provokes Street View outrage

CraigRoberts
Unhappy

Uhhhh....

I...agree... with... a... Daily... Mail... commentard??!?!

That's it... Stop the world - I want to get off...

CraigRoberts
Happy

GoogleMobile

Seen one of those? Car driving round, great big camera on top... No?

You're probably not on Street View then... Panic averted...

Cameron promises yet more Avatar

CraigRoberts

Insert your own title here

Saw Avatar...

....Went "wooo" for a bit 'cos the 3D and effects were pretty good...

... Stopped going "wooo" when I realised that it was no "Aliens" and that the script was clunkier than an extremely clunky thing...

... Forgot about it...

Kick Ass on the other hand - 2D, $30 million to make (apparently) - and it was pure brilliance.

Mandybill: All the Commons drama

CraigRoberts

Yup...

"Though I will also wait the law banning encrypted data transmission for the sake of the security forces and the already lost war on terror."

That'll be the next thing... And because the Paedo's have been using it... Probably...

Home Office to secure mobile phones

CraigRoberts
Jobs Horns

@Pete 43

Ah-ha! Nice one...

... Hang on...

Oh bugger!

Don't suppose anyone want to buy a 3 month old jesusPhone do they? My first ever Apple device and I've just learned a very important lesson...

Sigh.

CraigRoberts

GPS

What would be useful - for all the GPS enabled phones out there - is a free or much cheaper than £100 per year MobileMe type service...

Lock your phone to it, and if it goes missing you can locate via GPS and call the Rozzers... Who'll just LEAP into action...

... Probably...

BPI rejects scareletter approach to possible pirates

CraigRoberts
Thumb Up

Hmmm...

Maybe El Reg should send them a letter demanding £500 if they want to avoid further questions/investigation? Helps pay for the Friday lunch time pub "meeting" doesn't it...

... Mine's a pint, please! :)

Trouser-bomb clown attacks - how much should we laugh?

CraigRoberts
Thumb Up

Once again...

... Another well written article from Lewis that goes against the usual hype from the government and the mass media and tells it like it really is.

Why oh why is Mr Page not on every news program in the land explaining this to the Sun readers?

Mandy declares 'three strikes' war on illegal file sharers

CraigRoberts
Unhappy

@Fred 1

We need to try something... The bastard's politically immortal now what with being a "Lord"

Never needs to be elected again (wasn't this time)... There's nothing stopping the fucker from switching sides to the Tories or the Lib's after the next election and staying in the damn cabinet...

Decapitation is definitely my favourite option!

Lord Mandelson wants mobile internet fix

CraigRoberts
Happy

@Gall, @Frank ly

I appreciate that we don't directly vote for our Prime Minister - I'm not a complete muppet, no matter what you may think...

However, the leader of the particular political party is (fairly or unfairly) a direct influence on the way that some (majority?) people vote in the general election. Tony Blair (and Gordon) were directly responsible for "New Labour" and with Blair as the figurehead, it could be argued that a large amount of people voted for the Labour party based on the fact that he was at the top.

When Gordon took over, there was a HUGE movement in the media and the public - certainly the people that I've spoken to - to try and get a General Election called so that Gordon could ratify (for want of a better word) his position. And it looked like he would... The General Election machine was so far into the gearing up process that even Labour MPs were banging on about how the election was on its way... Then all of a sudden, as soon as the polls came back where Labour was looking to take a battering, Gordon Brown changed his mind.

It is due to this, where were almost promised and election which was then snatched away from us when he realised he would lose, that I won't give it a rest.

My other point about a non-elected corrupt manipulative evil bastard seemingly running the Government and who seems to be power building more and more stands.

:)

CraigRoberts
FAIL

A challenge for the Labour Government

.... Piss up... Brewery... Organise...

Ugh...

And can someone please stop the Prince of Darkness getting involved with everything? No-one elected Brown as Prime Minister, and the Mandleson twat got kicked out of government not once, but TWICE for corruption and is now an unelected Lord, in charge while Gordon's doing community service...

The Americans are into spreading democracy... maybe they could pop over and assist with a bit of regime change over here? I'm pretty sure they'll enjoy more support than in Iraq and Afghanistan...

Thanks.

UK.gov revives net cut-off threat for illegal downloaders

CraigRoberts
WTF?

FFS!

"UK's Intellectual Property minister, David Lammy (elected by Tottenham), said the government would not force internet service providers to pursue file sharers.

'We can't have a system where we're talking about arresting teenagers in their bedrooms,'"

- BBC News 12th May 2009

So now Mandy (elected by nobody apart from Gordon), who was twice sacked after corruption scandals, has now decided that the elected ministers don't get to make the rules - he does, coincidentally after a nice spot of lunch with David Geffen?!

Please, do fuck off Peter...

How the hell do we take the power back from these corrupt, money grabbing, self serving, conniving toss pots? Serious question...

Google kicks Maestro into touch

CraigRoberts
FAIL

3D Secure

I wonder if this is something to do with all merchants who accept Maestro having to implement the supposedly "extra secure" 3D Secure Code stuff...

We got a letter from Barclays telling us we had to implement it by the end of June (10 days notice) before Mastercard started fining companies up to $25,000 per day or something stupid like that...

What I'd like to know is how something, that if you've "forgotten" your password just allows you to reset it after providing your easily obtained birth date, is meant to be secure...