Posts by jonathanb
1250 posts • joined Friday 14th August 2009 18:08 GMT
Posted in Verizon to sell iPhone 4 this month
Re: Verizon
Not in the US. AT&T uses a GSM network like the rest of the world, except at 850MHz rather than the usual 900MHz or 1800MHz. Therefore like any other quad-band GSM phone, the iPhone works just fine on the AT&T network.
Verizon uses a completely different type of mobile technology called CDMA, which the currently shipping iPhones do not understand. Therefore you cannot use an iPhone, or any of the other phones you might find in Carphone Warehouse over this side of the pond on the Verizon network. Verizon phones generally don't even have SIM cards, unless they are "world phones" which support both CDMA and GSM, in which case the SIM card lets you use the phone outside North America.
Posted in Ford unveils all-leccy Focus for 2012
claim
What speed do you have to drive at to get this 300km, and how much of it is downhill?
Also, what is the ratio of battery space to useable passenger and luggage space?
No
It means that these countries can get hold of the software anyway, embargo or not, and the rules just put US software houses at a disadvantage compared to companies in other countries that don't have to comply with them.
The work-around by the way for the existing regulations is to print out the code on sheets of paper, mail it to another country, then someone in that country can scan and OCR the code. Printed source code is protected free speech rather than munitions.
Posted in Spam volumes shrink over festive season
It's possible
Russia and other Russian Orthodox countries celebrate Christmas tomorrow. Muslim countries celebrate Eid rather than Christmas. Many South East Asian countries celebrate Chinese New Year which is at the beginning of February.
Not quite
With those systems, the processing is done on the server and the results rendered on a local display. With this system, it will send the software over to the client to be processed locally.
Not surprised
Suppose I reported some strange goings on in the Bristol area on 17th December. I would expect them to look back at these as part of their murder investigation, and possibly get back to me to ask for more information or to appear in court as a witness.
In some cases, they find that the person they caught has committed lots of other unsolved murders in the past, possibly even going back 30 or 40 years. So the time limit for keeping this sort of information might not necessarily be just a few months.
Re: I'm late into this thread
Petrol is taxed by the litre, but you can buy whatever fraction of a litre you like without any difficulties. It will be the same for beer or wine.
Re: erm....
I've seen people google "www.facebook.com" and similar. They don't appear to realise there is an address bar at the top of the screen that they can use.
Re: Flakey tech
You may not actually be driving fast enough to trigger the camera.
The absolute minimum trigger speed for a camera is 10% + 2mph above the speed limit, so on a motorway with a 70mph speed limit, you are safe to drive at 79mph. This avoids any arguments about how accurate the camera's speed measurement is, and bad press about over-zealous enforcement.
Also the tollerance level for your speedo's accuracy is that it must not show you driving any slower than you actually are, but it can show you as driving up to 10% faster. Typically car manufacturers go for the mid-point and show you driving 5% faster than you actually are. That means that if your speedo is showing 83mph, or possibly up to just under 87mph, you could still be safe.
Another thing is that speed cameras can be, and often are, set to a higher speed than the minimum permitted. So if your cameras in the 50 mph zone were set to 60 rather than the legal minimum of 57, you might find that you actually aren't driving fast enough to trigger them.
Posted in World+Dog says 'no thanks' to 3D TV
Re: Recession
The coronation was shot in 3D. That was back in 1953, and it wasn't new technology then. According to Wikipedia, the first 3D film was screened in 1922. That is around about the same time that colour films started to be screened.
Re: auto topup
Auto topup already exists
https://oyster.tfl.gov.uk/oyster/link/0002.do
Not so sure
Ideally, they would like to do an "authorisation only" transaction for the daily cap when you present your card for the first time at the entry gate, and then release it and take the actual daily charge due at the end of the day. That way there is zero risk of loss due to no funds available.
Of course they might decide that the costs savings from doing it your way are worth the risk of losing some money, but I think they will try initially not to do that.
re: HD-DVD
No, because you can still use it. When you bought your player, there was no promise that unrelated third party movie studios would produce appropriate media for it in the future. If the manufacturer remotely disabled your player, then you would have a case.
re: Confused
The lack of stereoscopic vision has nothing to do with it as you are seeing 2d images on this website and you use only perspective to render them in 3d. The reason they change direction is because additional visual clues are introduced in the two outside women in the form of the light shining on their curves, which tells you which way they are rotating. So you don't need any medical help at all.
Posted in Christmas shoppers hit by BT fire
re: urban wimax
And where is it connected to the upstream internet? As far as I'm aware, BT is the only company that supplies pipes around there, you can't get Virgin.
re: high-end car
It was six hours to figure out how to defeat the immobiliser. The method will presumably now be available on some car-stealing website for anyone to use.
because ...
1. The extradition treaty doesn't apply to "political" offences, which this is, and
2. The UK cannot extradite if he potentially faces the death penalty, which he does.
Re: club analogy
Except that the fee you pay is presumably for the right to enter the club, not for the access card. The access card is given to you as proof that you paid the fee. They are perfectly entitled, for example, to change the access system and ask you to swap the card for a new type of access token.
Re: Decisions, decisions
I too have no problem with banning bots, but it should be dealt with under the US equivalent of the Computer Misuse Act as unauthorised access to a computer system, not under copyright law.
Re: Not an easy beast to starve
And the second biggest tax take is VAT added to everything you buy and paid over by the retailer. That is what I was trying to pay yesterday. I phoned up and they took the payment details over the phone, so everything is fine, they got their money. If you pay VAT by cheque it has to reach them in time for the cheque to clear by the end of the month, whereas if you pay by internet, you get until about a week after then end of the month to pay. You also get a dated, numbered receipt to print out to prove you made the payment on time.
HMRC already down?
Go to www.hmrc.gov.uk , then click on "Paying HMRC", then click on one of the taxes (I tried VAT), then click "Paying by debit or credit card over the internet: BillPay", then click "Make a payment or register on the BillPay service". You get taken to https://www.billpayment.co.uk/hmrc/scripts/index.asp , which is operated by Santander. Usually you can type in the appropriate tax reference number, your debit card number and the amount you want to pay and send your tax liability money across to them. It hasn't been working all day. Could someone be trying to starve the government of cash?
Not sure it will work
I can see Android fondle slabs overtaking the iPad in market share at some point and carving their own niche in the market. At home they will function as the giant iPod touches they essentially are, and the larger screen will mean more use for video, web-browsing, and possibly ebooks. Though with ebooks, I think they will be used in situations where greater interactivity is required or beneficial rather than as dead-tree replacement ebooks from the iBooks / Kindle store or similar.
I can also see Android tablets replace rugged laptops in many mobile worker applications, such as the laptop car repair people plug into your car to see what the engine management system is reporting or engineers use to control complex machinery or to take survey measurements.
For netbooks, people generally expect to get an ultra-portable laptop that does everything a normal sized computer can do. You can of course get such a thing if you are prepared to pay, but as technology moves on, the c£300 price point machines will get ever closer to that ideal. For anyone who doesn't want to play games, edit photos or do anything with videos, your average netbook is already there, and it is getting closer to managing those other things as well. For that reason, I don't think Crome OS will manage to replace Windows XP or Windows 7 in the netbook market.
Posted in ITV, C4 catch-up players coming to PS3
Wii can't deliver ads?
Surely the ads on 4oD are just flash video files just like the program videos that BBC iPlayer delivers, so if you request the Ugly Betty video, it ought to be just as easy to send one with ad breaks in it as it is to send one without ads.
It will hurt Syco because ...
Every christmas, all the previous years' Christmas number ones get played, so getting a Christmas No 1 means regular annual royalty income for ever more. Joe McEldry's cover of Hannah Montanna's Climb probably won't ever get played again on radio, because it only reached No. 2 on the Christmas charts, and No 1 on the New Year chart which doesn't count.
Bonjour
To speeek to ah reprenteteeve een Eengleesh, pleeze press one.
pour parler à un représentant en français, s'il vous plaît appuyer sur deux
zu sprechen, einen Vertreter in Deutsch, bitte drücken Sie drei
di parlare con un rappresentante in italiano, si prega di premere quattro
para hablar con un representante en español, por favor, pulse cinco
techo siarad Cymraeg y el techo de spa cynrychiadol, por favor presione seis
Posted in BT tests 1Gbit/s broadband
Re: What a lot of dummies
Kingston is still Kingston as far as I'm aware. Outside of Hull they operate as Eclipse, and resell BT's service. Smallworld and Wight Cable are the two cable companies that aren't part of the Virgin Empire. They own their own pipes.
Re: Nectar
A one way ticket to Basingstoke from where? For anywhere much further away than Bramley, that can cost a lot of money.
Re: Except
Have you tried Alt-Gr+3? That works for me most of the time. I needed a registry hack to make it work in the login screen, otherwise you need to use the standard PC layout keys.
Rab C Nesbitt
Rab C Nesbitt is from the Govan area of Glasgow. Most people round that way speak like him.
One important point
Use a debit card, not a credit card to load any money into a gambling account. Virtually all credit card companies treat gambling transactions as cash advances and charge accordingly.
Posted in Now Oz to ban online cigarette ads
No online advertising in the UK then?
So could someone explain what this
http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Tobacconist_in_Tesco.html
is, if it isn't advertising?
Posted in Attachmate gobbles up Novell for $2.2bn
re: also
There is the small matter that SCO published their own Linux distribution. I have a copy of the linux source package from their ftp site, therefore I have the right to use any copyrighted SCO code it might contain under the terms of the GPL.
actually
Electric cars have been around since before the internal combustion engine was invented.
A previous article on El Reg pointed out that modern diesel cars emit less carbon dioxides than electric cars. Yes, you can charge them with windmills and solar panels, but it is better to use the green energy to displace other uses of electricity currently powered by fossil fuels than to move cars from diesel or petrol to electric.
Re: Paradox
I don't *wish* Windows 7 Phone dead. I just think it is a statement of fact. MS won't die without a mobile platform, as all the other mobile platforms have Exchange Activesync as their preferred email protocol.
The reason Windows 7 Phone will die is that it is simply too late to the game. It isn't going to get to the same level of functionality as other platforms until probably about v9, and by that time, it will be too late. The network effect will work against it. Developers won't write for a platform that nobody uses, and people won't buy into a platform where there are no apps available.
Microsoft will continue as a niche player in the server market - with Exchange, Sharepoint and Small Business Server as their strong products, and as market leader in the desktop market, though tablets will make inroads into the home market and the mobile worker market.
Blackberry as OS/2?
OS/2 was very popular in the banking sector and a few other big corporates. I get the feeling Blackberry occupies a similar niche.
Of course Blackberry is also popular with teenage girls who like the fact they can chat with their Blackberry owning friends for free on Blackberry Messenger, a market segment that never really existed in the pesonal computer market, so the analogy isn't quite identical.
Then again, Android phones have Google Talk, and apps are available for all the other IM networks, so that could tempt them away from Blackberry.
iPlayer
The BBC will have its hands tied by contractual obligations. When it buys the rights to put shows on iPlayer, it will be buying UK rights only and the contract will say they can't stream it overseas. They don't have a copyright licence to stream overseas, therefore it is a copyright infringement in the UK to do so from their UK based servers.
When they licence overseas rights to shows like Top Gear, they will agree not to stream it on iPlayer to people in those countries. If they do, they can be sued for contract violation, not breach of copyright as they are the copyright holder.
In summary, this will make no difference to the BBC.
Re: VAT
The e-commerce directive already covers this. If an overseas company sells things that are delivered online, they must register for VAT in an EU country of their choice and charge the UK VAT rate to UK customers. An EU company can charge their home country's VAT rate to everyone in the EU, so companies generally set up shop in Luxembourg which has the lowest VAT rate.
Re: exhaustive attack
For one extra character in your password:
Multiply by 26 times if you use only lower case letters
52 times if you use lower and upper case letters
62 times if you use lower and upper case letters and numbers
98 times if you use every character available on my uk keyboard
Posted in US may disable all in-car mobile phones
Not really
The US government can change laws so that isn't going to be a problem. I'm pretty sure I've seen research that talking on a phone impairs your driving ability even more than being drunk. Certainly I know that I am unable to talk and drive at the same time, though talking while stuck in a very slow moving traffic jam or stuck at traffic lights I think is OK.
I'm against these proposals though because technically I think it will be very difficult to jam a signal inside the car without affecting the signal outside, and the measures could do more harm than good. There is certainly no reason why a passenger shouldn't be able to make phone calls.
Not a good study
What percentage of non judas phone users are sad and mentally unfocused? It could actually be higher.
64GB ought to be enough for anyone?
Over here, C:\Windows alone occupies 38GB of space, and I haven't looked at c:\program files or c:\program files (x86)
If you are the sort of person who collects video files, then you will definitely be in the market for larger hard drives.
I don't think they "intercept" to do that
They search the p2p networks for infringing videos, download them to check that they really do belong to their client and find out the IP address they downloaded it from. That's not intercepting a communication because they initiated it. It may be unauthorised access to a computer system under the Computer Misuse Act, but that's another matter, and there are claims from some quarters that they didn't actually follow all these steps to get the correct evidence, which is also another matter, and I don't know if these claims are true or not.
Opening someone's unread email has been held to be interception, whereas opening a saved email that has been read is not, because it is no longer in the course of transmission. I guess it is the same situation for p2p files.
yes they are
Google are a communications provider when operating the GMail, Google Chat and Google Talk services, but not when operating their Streetview / Google Maps / Google Earth services.
Any chance of a review?
And a comparison with some of their other offerings such as the Kindle?
Posted in Toshiba AC100 Android smartbook
It's an ARM Machine
Windows XP is Intel only so it won't run on this machine. The only Windows that might work on it is CE. There are smartbooks out there that run on Windows CE, and they work a bit better than this machine, but you will still have problems with websites serving up the mobile version.
Re: definition
But the main problem is that the Pascal unit to measure pressure is in part derived from the kilogram, so the kg can't be based on an amount of water at a particular pressure because then you get a circular definition.
Posted in iPhone to tap NFC, rumours say
Solution looking for a problem?
You can already sync your phone to your desktop from half-way round the world if you have exchange server or mobile-me. What additional benefit does this offer?
Re: It's no burglary..
It would be attempted burglary which attracts the same slap on the wrist as burglary.
That is true
however imperial measrements are now defined by reference to their metric equivalents. For example, the troy ounce is defined as being exactly 31.1034768g.
Re: Er
How about the John Prescott? That is sometimes used elsewhere as a unit of mass.
