Posts by Stuart Ball
53 posts • joined Monday 28th September 2009 07:42 GMT
Rolling upgrade
If the phone comes in two halves, you could end up with a rolling upgrade "programme" whereby the front and backs are upgreadeable independently, so if you splash for the uber spec camera, you can upgrade the front processing unit & screen as and when you can afford it.
Interesting concepts.
http://scouts.org.uk/get-involved/
There is a chronic shortage of adult helpers, and waiting lists for children to join, if you can help out, even as an occasional helper, or fundraiser, please get in touch with your local group or district.
Stuart
Dumb Telly?
Hang on!
You get a massive screen, huge resolution and its all connected to an STB which makes it smart, so you can keep the screen but upgrade your Smart TV bit....
It's a TV and Console combo!
Shows you that O2 know NOTHING about modern scouting, and the benefits that Scouting brings not just in fending-for-yourself skills, but also leadership, practical problem-solving, and a wider sense of community.
That's appallingly naive from O2.
Stuart Ball
Scout Leader
Sorry this doesn't ring true, and is possibly a lie. If they are an enterprise with an enterprise backup system that retains tapes off-site for longer than 2 years, it can still be associated with you if the backup is restored within that time period.
You would need to be able to guarantee the tapes had been destroyed to really be able to say your data is anonymised.
Well they lost a sale from me because of the Exclusive EE.....Rarr.
That being said, I really like mt HTC 8X.
Re: @Stuart Ball
BT was NOT a state monopoly at the point it was broken up. The "Golden Share" had already been sold off.
If you take BT as comparison example. BT was split up into the platform (OpenReach) and Retail arms, and had to compete fairly with other retail providers of broadband products.
The same could be done with Google, with Google's competing services forced to be treated as essentially external customers to the platform.
Hold on, there is a ManFromMars imposter! That made perfectt sense!
I need a lie down.
Re: MASSIVE red flag here
I agree with you mostly, however the Common Carrier argument is lost the moment any processing is carried out on the stream to alter it in anyway. By censoring anything, even at the laws request, it is devoid of the moral high ground that pipe providers have, by injecting it's choice of adverts into the stream of results, it is not a common carrier.
IMO
Nokia not selling Windows 8 phones can also be the fault of Nokia, not MS, by signing stupid exclusivity agreements with a single carrier, and not releasing the full palette at launch, and a multitude of other reasons other than the OS.
EADON FAIL, AGAIN
Posted in Tizen mobile OS releases v2.0 code
Tizen may help Samsung crack China, where Google is frowned upon, and an iPhone costs you a kidney.
And it won't be beholden to Google, or MS, for code changes, it can fund features directly.
Re: Inside job
That's why we cashed our new ones in as soon as they became available online. We had £462 of vouchers because of a Tesco Bathroom/Kitchen deal on points.
Without knowing the "How" I was buggered if I was going to leave them another opportunity.
Sorry Dave, I disagree with you.
Ours were stolen from the November mailout, as was others, so its not just the Feb mailing impacted. the Register has an ICO article from November where Tesco is heavily criticised for its online security, the inference being that as forgotten passwords are emailed out in plain-text that there is two-way or n-way encryption on the password field in their database.
Online vouchers are available 2-3weeks before the voucher booklet arrives on your doorstep, I know mine arrived today, and we'd spent ours the day they went live online so as not to get stung again.
Our vouchers were spend instore, up near Burnley, and we never spend them instore and they were spent with a clubcard that wasn't ours! So the cashier didn't check vouchers matched the card, and nor did the computer system. I still have the mailed out vouchers in the In-Tray upstairs, so it wasn't Il Postino nicking them either.
There are reports also today that Pizza Express email voucher codes that have been converted from Clubcard Vouchers, have also been used in appropriately.
Suffice to say we've cashed ours in this time around before the mailout, as they appeared online a couple of weeks ago. Would hate to lose them again...and have the points rolled towards Mays mailing, we've got stuff to do!
We had ours nicked November last year, I did some background digging to see if I could replicate the fraud with login details etc, and as far as I can deduce it's an inside job re-printing online vouchers, or the printer is re-running the print job.
In my experience most teachers can barely drive Office to any reasonable degree. Making them cross train to LO just for the sake of pennies will dramatically decrease their productivity. Trust me, Teachers have enough to do as it is without wrestling with a new package.
Eeejit making sweeping assumptions!
Re: Increasing the pace of global business disruption
And that is why Apple doesn't do Xserve any more I guess, consumers proved more lucrative to them.
Microsoft is in a position where it has to please both the server and infrastructure userbase, and consumers & company desktops.
Not an easy position. It would perhaps be better divorcing its consumer & business divisions, which should each have their own engineering sections with a common kernel developed by a separate division. Kinda of like I perceive linux distros. Common kernel fiddled about with to meet the needs of disparate customers.
My Youngest was most put out that a cross platform painting programme she used on my Asus Transformer was not "Touch-Enabled" when using it on Windows, as her monitor doesn't have touchscreen.She point blank refused to use the mouse to finger-paint.
There is a danger we are missing the point in that Touch is not an interface for "our" generation, but those actually growing up with touch now. MS is laying the groundwork, possibly badly, for future markets.
However £400 for a touchscreen standalone monitor is a TAD excessive.
eh?
"As Eadon has long predicted here, Microsoft will collapse surprisingly quickly."
isn't that an oxy-moron.....Long predicted, and surprisingly quickly...
But that's what we used to do with computer magazines, the included the text to copy and run, because it was cheaper than including cassettes with the magazine.
I cannot create code from scratch, yet, but I can read VBA, some PHP, some ASP and Javascript to understand whats happening, and why.
Copying code is a good place to start learning good habits, for when you DO start to write your own fart apps..:)
If you never "own" the phone outright, and only lease, with the ability to unlock it at your discretion, surely then the carrier becomes responsible for recycling it.
I am SURE Carriers want THAT responsibility.
Posted in Review: HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 handset
I have an 8x primarily because Nokia faffed about with their Lumia 920 release. I really like the phone. I bought the Navigon Satnav software for it, which is good, but expensive.
I much prefer it over the Mrs' iPhone 4, although she is resisting upgrading her 4 to anything newer at the moment, even though it's out of contract.
App store is a little sparse, but I have what I need, and for games I still have my TF101. Coupled with an Xbox Music subscription who needs iTunes? or additional storage for music.
What I really want is a decent dock for it. non iphone accessories are still very hard to come buy despit ethe fact that micro usb is probably as populous as the iphone port.
Stu
I got Win8 free with my HTC 8X phone, and I must confess to not fully understanding why all the negativity.
I'm sat here with the desktop open, pretty much doing things I always did, no live tiles present, Outlook is running, as is IE, and a citrix session connected to the corporate VDI platform.
All Metro is is a full screen start menu, I barely use it!
Spoke to Nokia Customer Care today and tehy had no clue 9where I should really stop, but humour me) when stock levels would ramp up so you could actually buy one, let alone on a network you want it on.
HTC were unable to say when their O2 exclusive would run out, but its supposed to be soon.
So of the 5 phones on the Windowsphone.com website, you cannot actually BUY one with any degree of success, let alone in a colour you want (yellow in my case).
It's like someone forgot to raise the purchase order to manufacturing for the hardware part of the WinPho8 launch.
HTC comes in Orange is thats any help...
At least I am not the only one wanting the Tweetie Pie Yellow one. I too am on Three, and it's galling I cannot have what I want on a contract with my preferred provider.
Re: Weird, isn't it.....
It is an odd observation, but yes. Android and IOS are so prevalent that in order to be different and individual WP8 and HTC/Nokia colours is a way to express that individuality.
Apple is no longer cool IMO, it's common, mainstream, mass market. You cannot be a premium brand if every bugger you see has one. Samsung for example, never tried to be a premium brand, again IMO, they wanted mass market numbers.
So in order to be different, the only real standout differentiator is WP8, rightly or wrongly.
According to the Nokia Press release from yesterday:
http://press.nokia.com/2012/10/29/nokia-lumia-920-and-nokia-lumia-820-now-shipping/
They are in the "Channel" so it will be down to internal P4U supply chain on when they hit the shelves I would guess.
I want a 920 in Tweetie Pie yellow.....sad, i know.
This has put me in a real quandry. I want WP8, partly to be contrary, but my contract is up for renewal today. I wanted the Lumia 920 in tweetie pie yellow (contrary theme again), but still no firm release date, and now HTC tempt me with a snot green one...
No Fair!
There's a man who should have been Nobel-ed.
So you pay for 100GB and get 95GB and your free 5GB allocation?!?!? The wording will need to be clever on that one or trades descriptions comes into play?
Maybe thats why Asus have dropped the Eee branding from Transformers etc....
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/03/asus_ceo_sounds_netbook_death_knell/
Didn't they check the .com was available first???
http://www.ee.com/
I stopped updating Uno when it started to want address book access. Not necessary!
Spec Sheets
Are already up at Nokia.com. Been browsing myself. I want the Banana one!
OneNote
The OneNote App is rather good, if you already have Office installed at home, the Sync is seamless. Better than other note apps I have tried on Android. The cross-platform capability is really useful, as I can write stuff for the RPGs I run on a desktop, and use the tablet to run the sessions on.
Re: "Issues"
It can't be a problem, because the incident is still open, with no documented workaround, or service restored.
Gotta love ITIL
Morally how is this different to phone hacking? Interceptions carried out in the name of profit, with little corporate governance and respect for lawful privacy...
Should Google not be getting the "Murdoch Treatment"?
JFDI
When someone namedrops someone higher up and says "He has said this needs to be pushed through, can you just f***ing Do It!".
JFDI - it ALWAYS goes wrong...
Phorm for Mobiles?
DPI of mobile network traffic with accompanying location information. I'd switch provider first.
Using your "mug" to login
They have facial recognition in Xbox Live, so it may be a move to have that style of technology built into Windows 8 security model. Kinect means it wont be fooled by a cardboard cutout, but a rubber mask or prosthetic makeup may dupe it.
Users don't understand storage costs when wrapped in a service, because world+dog knows 1TB costs £60 from PC world. Not thinking about the additional costs that make up the service, like high availability, DR, the backup hardware costs, manpower costs and paying Iron Mountain to look after your tapes.
Making way for Phorm?
Does this not give BT ammunition for authorising DPI for its subscribers to ensure they are not copyright infringing?
Seems a lot of weak (short?) planks in the defence...
Did it rollover for a greater purpose?
Lies, More Lies & Statistics
As I understand it Insurance uses a LOT of profiling data, and employs a huge degree of statistical maths to generate it's risk profiles.
Those profiles happen to include one for gender, but they also include age, post code, whether you have on street parking and every other question you have to fill in when getting a quote.
You are then given a risk profile which dictates your premium. If we are saying mathematical discriminiation is bad, unfair and there illegal, are we not undermining scientific principles?
So Age risk profiling will be next to be outlawed, and everyones premiums will go up to match the current risk profile of a 17yr old "Boy Racer" as that is the safest financial risk the insurer can offset.
Whilst you can generally manipulate statistics to show the view you want to present, a simple bar chart of value of payouts vs gender is simple, and effective.
Either they do, or they don't present a bigger, or smaller, risk profile, and should be compensated, or not, accordingly.
It doesn't need an OED definition
So should Clarks trademark Shoe Shop?
eh?
"This information has been in the public domain for a year. Plenty of time for the banks to act on it, plenty of time to block the process."
Have you seen the Change Process hoops you have to jump through to get a change approved in a financial institution!
I'm amazed Barclays managed it!
Become a Laird, buy up Scotland 1 sq ft at a time.
My view is that they are trying to use as much of the same base code for the next iteration of Small Business Server, and Home Server as they can to save dev money. As some have alluded to WHS has had some gains in the small business areas because of its automatic backups, sharing of data, and the ease of use. All of which appeal to "micro" businesses that have hosted email with their own domain, or more likely their ISP hosted mail.
My guess is that they couldn't get Drive Extended to work with Exchange and SQL Server, which are core services in SBS, due to the way drive extended replicates and balances the data around the drive pool. That probably breaks databases.
I seem to recall an earlier issue with the Drive Extender fixed in Power Pack 1 regarding Access databases.
I use WHS, I think it rocks. But I get mine through Action Pack subscription, I do think it's overpriced though.
Stu
Posted in GSMA opens the way for Apple SIM
Apple as an MVNO
Why not go the whole hog and do a Virgin and be an MVNO on someone elses backbone. Billing all done through ITunes...
Allowing you to internationally roam without the need for additional hardware, sim etc.
Obligatory Title
Will Chrome OS have the same ballot screen?
Presuming that Opera, Firefox et al do a compile for Chrome? Would Google be compelled to offer the same browser choice on their OS?
At what point of OS Market Share does it become compulsion to offer choices over the default browser for the OS Vendor?
Given corporate dependence on IE is this really necessary for Enterprise & Professional versions of Windows, because a single user is not going to make the corporate decision on what the COE browser is going to be.
So the ballot screen os only going to have limited impact on browser market share, and key protagonists won't get the result they seek.
