* Posts by KrisM

33 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2009

Den Automation raised millions to 'reinvent' the light switch. Now it's lights out for startup

KrisM

A second chance?

Was following Den on Fb, and they pushed the following link out today, saying the biggest investor was taking over, and starting operations up again...

https://denswitches.com/

Nexus 7 fandroids tell of salty taste after sucking on Google's Lollipop

KrisM

My nexus7 (2012) updated OTA, and touch wood (anyone got a forest handy?) it seems to be OK. We use it a lot as a baby monitor for a foscam, so screen, processor, wifi etc are used a lot, and so far so good. Its a bit sluggish but no more than before, and could probably do worth a clear out of cache. must check my 4 year old sons profile - he has a habit of leaving a number of games running, which obviously does not help things!

Amazon bags control of .book and .pay domains – but NOT .cloud

KrisM

This one will happen right away - as Amazon now own .book, in effect a registrar for the domain, its highly unlikely their business plan is to let the competition use it - what would be the point?

More likely is they will merge it around their kindle service, and .book will just be a byword for Amazon! (i.e if you see a domain ending in .book, it can ONLY be Amazon's service!

Smart TV boffins hit the Red Button, trigger mayhem

KrisM

Sooo, if you don't plug your new Smart TV into an aerial and instead use SKY or Virgin (but TV is plugged into your network), then your safe?

Important to know as hopefully getting my first smart(ish?) TV in the next week or so...

A BBC-by-subscription 'would be richer', MPs told

KrisM

umm...

So 40% would pay double and 10% would pay treble, meaning 50% (of the remaining 80% that would keep it) would prefer to pay the same as now - how will that work? Will there be a 3 tier system for subscriptions, where you can pay more if you want? Answer, of course not, it would be a fixed price for all (not including any premium service, which I can't see being very popular), so as others have pointed out, they would effectively get 80% of the revenue they get now - hows that being better off? Presumably if you believe the figures, and they decided to price the subscription at slightly higher that current license fee, 50 % would be very happy as they would have happily paid more, but the other 50% would be unhappy and might say no, and thus % of population paying to watch BBC would go down further!

Personally I'm happy(ish) to pay what I do currently - maybe trim a couple of channels and radio stations, keep the online and iPlayer content, and spend the extra money on better/more productions! (why oh why, is Sherlock only 3 episodes per series - fix that and I'll be very happy :))

US Congress proposal: National Park will be FOUND ON MOON

KrisM

another way of looking at it...

I initially read the article that by giving it national park status, they could then apply to the UN world heritage agency to make it protected under that as well. So may be one leads to the other, which would then make a little more sense?

In other news, I own my little acre on the moon, so hopefully they national park/world heritage site is not to close to that :)

There's the company on the web selling plots of if (and most other planets) your still interested (using the old loophole that the space treaty forgot to mention about individual owning land). I know its probably nonsense, and I've not checked in a while, but I've not seen anything that 100% proves this loophole was nonsense, and the company could not sell of the plots to individuals!

Microsoft caves on Xbox One DRM and used-game controls

KrisM

the always watching kinect? or not?

With the need for always on, or dialling home every 24 hours, removed, does this not also go some way to nullify (some?) of the perceived privacy issues around the kinect always being on and plugged in? With no internet connection, it can't spy on you, certainly not in real time, and I think it would be a bit noticeable if it stored voice/video and other data to transmit for a once a week/month/year/whenever connection to the web by the user?

Whilst I can see a possible interest for advertisers to want to know this info (even if somewhat legally and morally dubious, and arguably still why), I have doubts even the NSA/spies/MS would want/care about all the drivel it might capture, assuming that's what actually will happen - and how long for someone to read the data stream coming out of the xbox when connected to prove or disprove this theory?

Inside Adastral: BT's Belgium-sized broadband boffinry base

KrisM
Meh

Re: back in the day...

The couple of presentations I had from him were always interesting. Sure, they were a bit 'out there' in terms of what was predicted, but then thats a futureologist does! I'm sure he had plenty of stats to back things up. shame I don't have any of his slidepacks. Wonder who accurate he was 10 years on...

maybe my youthful excitement, or rose tinted glasses have coloured my opinion tho...

KrisM
Thumb Up

back in the day...

When I worked for BT in the early naughties, I blagged a day trip to the mad laboratory. After a quick meeting, got the tour, and saw some of the off the wall stuff they were working on. The office of the future always stuck in my mind - imagine sitting in a large egg shaped device, rotated vertically nearly onto your back, and surrounded by monitors, and all the modern comms equipment. Still waiting for that one...

Had a chat with BT's own futureolgoist as well, which was an eye opener.

Still never saw any of the sandal wearing, long bearded, lab-coated gents that were rumoured to populated the complex!!

The pub down the road was pretty good as well!

Surprise! BT pockets £70m North Yorkshire broadband rollout

KrisM

Re: Cut out the middle man

The USO does not apply to broadband, so they are already off the hook, so to speak!

And their not saying high speed broadband over copper/fibre can't be done in rural areas, just that's its more expensive due to more kit required and less customers!

What your suggesting is BT are forced to write off large parts of their network, and then expect that other (mobile) companies will be willing to upgrade their networks to take up the slack, which they are as unlikely to do, as BT, without any subsidies!

KrisM

Re: Cut out the middle man

Out of curiosity why do you think BT should have done all this off their own bat? There not a charity, and unless these subsidies exist, no company can expect to make a return on investing fibre and/or faster broadband to rural/remote areas!

The whole one horse race issue might be valid, but that's not BT's fault for still tendering, and ultimately winning, and if the end result is other providers can run services on top of BT, thus offerng choice, surely its a win win for everyone??

NatWest seeks volunteers to bonk with their iPhones

KrisM
Happy

using NFC (on my barclaycard) has been very successful

Used it once in a Mcdonalds drive-through, and won 2 tickets to 2 events, with hotel, to the the big sporting event happening in London later this month!

I'm a bit supporter of NFC

Now if Natwest could just sort out a trial for my NFC equipped Android phone please, for my debit card...

smiley face just because :)

Inside the Skynet ghost town built by bunker-based boffins

KrisM
Go

another potentially lucrative income...

Surprised they did not mention, or consider, the use of this empty, all american city for Hollywood filming. Can think of loads of films in the last 10 years that would have happily paid to use a empty city for a couple of days (thinking high risk car chases, post- Apocalypse sci-fi, urban environment for large number of extras etc) , so long as they tidied up when they left. Would imagine the film location rights would be as profitable as renting it out for different trials and projects!

HTC peeves punters with One X woes

KrisM
Happy

I had a HTC Desire, and never had to send it back for repair :)

Only problem I had with it was lack of memory for apps, and a dwindling battery life towards the end. Still works fine, but replaced by my HOX now..

KrisM
Happy

so far...

On my second HOX - the first had GPS problems, making satnav nigh on impossible to use, and if using a tracker app, displayed a route on Google maps that look I was drunk, 30 ft tall (to stagger, in one step, from one side of the street to the other), and had a mobile teleporter to transport me half a mile into a field, before dumping me back on the road!

However other than that issue, the phone was great. Went back to CPW and they swapped for a new one without fuss, and so far (touch wood) new one is absolutely fine. With the software upgrade, I'm sure I'm getting a day and half out of fairly active use, and that's apparently without the known problem of a certain file not being in the right folder (preventing the 5th core from helping with battery issues) being fixed - so even better performance to come hopefully!

Sure there have been some issues, but all phones have it. Build quality of mine is fine, and no other issues to report!

Bulletproof iPhone case set to survive shootouts

KrisM

I know fanboyz can get a bit over zealous in their comments, but this is going a bit far to protect yourself, just because you have a jesus phone...

ISS 'nauts take to the escape pods in Russian sat-prang debris peril

KrisM
Alert

don't forget the self destruct

No self respecting space faring ship/station has every been abandoned without a lengthy process to initiate self destruct, and then having an ominous computer countdown to annihilation as everyone scrambles to get off the ship/station. Usually results in an individual cancelling self destruct with seconds to go...

make for a nice firework display but probably would not help the debris field issue up there!

Boffins cook up transparent solar car roof

KrisM
Thumb Down

how woudl you see at night???

If the cabin of the car was as bright as the concept picture, how would you see out of the car to be able to drive it? It would be a bit like the goldfish bowl effect of standing in a room at night, with all the lights on, and no curtains -you can't see outside, but the whole world gets to look in. Not a good approach for driving surely??

clever idea tho, but not sure how practical it would be...

ICANN snubs critics, opens domain extension floodgates

KrisM
Facepalm

The ability to allow company brands to protect 'their mark' means that they pay a one time fee to secure the domain from ever being used by anyone else, including themselves - the domain brand.xxx won't appear on WHOIS, you won't know who registered it, and more importantly won't have a zone file attached to it, so can't be used by those brands to direct traffic to their main site. As such the .xxx should not be diluted, as it can only be used by those in the porn industry!

Whilst a criminal could register the domains you suggest, they would need deep pockets - all of the above would cost £4,070,000 and that's just to apply for right to run the registry for those domains. You'd have to prove you could run a registry and then actually run said registry, all of which would cost extra money. Assuming some crook did actually manage to purchase .banking, it would, if anything make it far easier for ISP's world wide to simply block any domain under the GTLD!

Lastly, and specifically for the banking sector, I'd be very surprised if .bank was not requested, and if run correctly, could ONLY be used by a legit bank. This would mean that if you saw natwest.bank or hsbc.bank as a customer, you knew it was and had to be legit, as any potential scammer would not be able to register such a domain. If the consortium bidding for such a GTLD did not make this a cornerstone of their policy, then obviously it could be doomed to failure!

SEVENTY-FIVE wirelessly charged devices will demo at CES

KrisM
Go

fixing a problem that does not exist...

whilst its true compatibility is sorted with microUSB chargers (my blackberry charges my android whcih also charges my camera etc) at the moment, every manufacturer still supplies a charger with every device. However if (nearly) all devices came with the wireless charging, then manufacturers could maybe supply two versions - one with charger or one without, or maybe sell them all without, and allow the user to phone in for a free one if they need it. In the meantime the problem that gets fixed is less chargers being made and sold which saves resources, means smaller/lighter packaging (although admittedly not sure who apple could make packing smaller on their iphones and ipods), which means less cost of delivery and storage, all of which should mean slightly cheaper gadgets and widgets... little things take little steps, but if we save making a few hundred million chargers then that's got to be a good thing?

iPhone baby clothes shop mauled by Apple

KrisM
Black Helicopters

I hope The Reg got some commission on this article - all the offending baby clothes have now sold out!

The Beeb is broken

KrisM

not been to the beeb homepage in a while, but...

there is now a link to their new BBC beta homepage (I quite like it). maybe launching that stuffed the site?

The nomal site is working now tho!

Eggheads use Twitter to work out if it's raining

KrisM
FAIL

has this not already been done?

I enjoyed looking at www.uksnowmap.com last winter which worked in a similar way. Admittedly you had to #uksnow but its similar, and seemed pretty accurate!

Didn't Google use their search results to track the flu epidemic a few years back as well?

Best skiing in space is on Saturnian ice moon Enceladus

KrisM
Trollface

perfect for snowboarding surely

Everyone know the powder always suits snowboarders better - the skiers like the harder compacted stuff!

Plus snowbaording on a distant planet is surely only cool enough to be done by boarders?

Plods to get dot-uk takedown powers - without court order

KrisM
Black Helicopters

mission creep anyone??

With a little mission creep here in expanding beyond .uk domains (via ISP's maybe?) and expanding the list of offences to include oh say public disorder and rioting, could this be the method by which the police could shut down Facebook or twitter during times of civil unrest, without 'any new powers' as mentioned in earlier news article??

pass my tin hat please...

Kid spanks a grand on Xbox using Mum's bank card

KrisM

solictor?

whats a solictor going to do? although annoying, surely she would not have much scope for suing microsoft, seeing as she entered her card details willingly, and did not remove them (and also explaining to son not to buy stuff, assuming she knew this was possible - son must have know what he was doing tho!)

Virgin Media readies 1TB TiVo set-top for Brits

KrisM

next year now apparently...

A friend of mine who works in the VM offices has beeb told 11th january is now the more likely launch date, so this year looks unlikely...

A shame, as I'm very keen to find out the pricing of this new service! 1TB will be dam handy. For the first time I hit the critcal storage space message last night when my V+ box decided it would be a good idea ti record the 3 eposodes of fringe (as latest series is on a short break, sky deicded to play catch up) from Sky HD - 3 hours of HD (well 4 if i include stargate that was also on last night) and I ran out of space...

Apple swaps good iPhones for bad, say fanbois

KrisM
Pint

no problem here, just move along...

Android quite happily plays with the music collected through iTunes without any problems at all. As others have pointed out, you can get Android apps which intergrate with iTunes, but if you happy to plug your phone into your computer, and move songs and albums from computer to phone, then it works fine. I only recently found out iTunes removed DRM from all of their (new) songs early last year, so have been happily moving stuff from iTunes, almost at will, without any problems. Even picks up the albums coverart!

So if the question is"But, does it work with my iTunes?" then the answer is yes, it will happily play music brought through iTunes...

Sky Player hits Xbox 360

KrisM
Thumb Down

Real pity that did not do a PAYG option for individual events/programs

As above, really. Would have found it really useful if the service allowed you to pay for individual matches (Xbox points maybe?) , movies or even regular TV programs. Coud have created a real niche market. As it is, with me having Virginmedia at home, can not justify the cost of paying another monthly subscription even if you can cancel after a month!

Guardian loses half a million CVs

KrisM
FAIL

can't even change the password...

My G/F received the email from them, and logged in to check. No CV on file (she tended to send CV with job application apparently), but then we looked at all the past jobs she had applied for - they system says it keeps the last 6 months, but there are jobs going back to March 08 in there!! There is no way (that we could see) that allowed her to clear off the past applications, or CV's that were contained within. Furthermore, we could find no way to change the account password - 'My details' and 'Your Account' were both on the site, but went to the same page which only allowed you to view CV's uploaded and past appointments. So how do you change a password on the acocunt then??????

Microsoft rubberstamps Windows XP Mode

KrisM

The main reason I will use XP mode in Windows 7 is...

so I have an easy way to run IE6, 7 and 8 on the same machine without the issues/complexities of currently doing so on vista or xp machines (anything for an easy life). Was hoping I might be able to load XP onto a spare PC I use as a NAS box and run XP within Win7 to mange the NAS box,but still not figured out if I can do that with XP mode...

Wireless power gets lovely shiny logo

KrisM
Pint

powermat anyone?

Sure it was powermat (just googled and it appears to be, although can't find any reference to UK media reviewing it 3-4 yrs ago), and they had it all ready 3-4 years ago, but the biggest hurdle was getting the manufactuers to build the tech into the batteries themselves so you did not have to have seperate dongles/chargers etc (which kinda defeats the point). So what might be of more interest was hearing Nokia, Sony, HTC, Samsung etc announcing that they would be building the technology into all their batteries (or powermat standard which is apparently seperate from wireless consortium). At the time i vaguely recall that the worry was the phone companies might not do it because they could not sell their own cable and connectors but not sure how much of an issue that is now, as most seem to be using stardard USB connections!

Awaiting the day I don't have to hear my g/f say 'do you know where my phone/camera/ipod charger is?' having lost the appropriate one yet again!! :-)

KrisM

oops, not powermat, it was splashpower

and even found the bbc article about the british start up... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2861987.stm

Typcially they been brought out and the eCoupled (the new company) are part of the wireless power consortium!

doh!