Posts by davtom
69 posts • joined Thursday 1st October 2009 12:32 GMT
Re: could have been worse
If someone had their other hand in their pants when they were shaking my hand, I certainly wouldn't like it.
Other hand in trouser pockets, on the other hand, would present me with no concerns.
Well, seeing as this is a UK site...
Re: All bark
And they're not even very good at that.
The one that visited my mother got her to buy two unnecessary Homeplugs because "the existing telephone extension socket is not suitable to take the broadband signal." The problem is that the Homeplugs are meant to be plugged directly into wall sockets, NOT extension leads.
In any case, they weren't necessary, and the homeplugs themselves were not working very reliably. The original (non-Talktalk) wifi hub was working fine off the telephone extension. So did the new hub when I plugged it in after figuring out that the socket WASN'T too far from the TV for the wires to reach. (With about 1m of slack, I might add.)
In addition, all they did was to plug in the aerial lead into the Youview box. They did NOT connect the loop-through cable to the TV which resulted in my mother wondering why her normal TV channels weren't working.
The box itself? Many software problems. She's not 100% happy with it; she prefers the way her Humax box worked. On demand content doesn't stream very well. One box stopped working about two months after installation and had to be replaced.
So I ended up feeling very bad over recommending the deal, which on the fact of it looked good. Definitely facepalm.
Solution is simple. Just use your Android phone to take control of the drone!
Re: The welsh lobby
Amazon don't do any proofreading.
Re: RE: Atheism isn't a faith
An atheist believes... grr. Why can't I edit my post to correct grammar?
Read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins if you don't believe the above. Of course, he might be wrong, but it's not likely!
Re: RE: Atheism isn't a faith
Technically, Atheism is a faith, because an atheist believe there is no god.
Agnosticism is the absence of faith. You do not know whether there are zero, one or many gods. Neither do I.
I personally believe it is unlikely that any "god" or supreme being exists or has ever existed, because the lack of evidence for such an entity speaks volumes to me. However, I do concede that one might, although if it does, I certainly don't believe it is even remotely close to that described by any religion. Therefore I am not a true atheist. The fact that I am prepared to admit that I am wrong is what differentiates me from being an atheist or a religious person, but I think many people would consider themselves atheists even though they would be prepared to admit that they may be wrong. It is purely a technicality.
I think the humanists had it right when they said something like "There's probably no god. Stop worrying and enjoy your life."
It's a daft idea. I understand that deterioration of physical books can lead to an increase in revenue (if books are repurchased), but of course this does not apply to digital media.
Why not increase the borrowing royalty slightly to compensate precisely for this "loss"? Then there is no need for this waste of time.
Apple haven't invented the modern mobile phone or the modern tablet computer. There are plenty of predecessors.
They did release a product that was at one time pretty good with the iphone, then they did it again with the ipad. Now they're lagging behind the curve.
You use it to weed out humans then?
Re: Other way round
Unfortunately, no. What they really mean is they would be *unwilling* to supply cheap books to developing countries.
Re: Why do it anyway?
"Most people are expected to be interference free."
If OFCOM were any bloody good, ALL people would be expected to be interference-free.
Anti-freeze is a BAD idea to put into a washer reservoir! De-icing fluid is a better idea.
Keep the anti-freeze for the radiator.
Re: Quadruple fail
They're = They are
They'er = spelling mistake
Posted in AdBlock Plus BLOCKED from Google Play
Re: Dammit
Just install it from their website. This really is NOT a big deal.
Re: Who cares?
Let's think for a minute, shall we?
I would imagine the New York Times gets a lot of revenue from competing car manufacturers by way of advertising.
Although the reviewer is "independent," in accordance with the strict definition of the word, that is not true. The reviewer is paid for his article by the New York Times. They in turn are paid to produce their paper, partly by advertisers. There may be a degree of separation between editorial content and the commercial arm of the paper, but they will not want to piss off their main advertisers.
Of course, the manufacturer of the Tesla cars will be biased, but so will the reviewer.
IANAL but my understanding of the law is...
Under UK law, you can't do it without permission of the people whose likenesses are shown if you're exploiting the pictures commercially, as Google are doing.
It is only permissible if the image of the person is not recognisable, or there is a crowd of such people there so that one person doesn't stand out.
Re: For the novices the answer is clear
Sorry, but I have to disagree with you. With Ubuntu it is far too difficult to find all the programs that are installed.
Mint is what should be recommended to all newcomers IMHO. It is most similar to what they are already familiar with.
In fact, it's not just for the newbie. I've used Linux for well over a decade, and these days I just stick to Mint. It works, gets out of the way, and lets me get on with what I want to do.
The only question is what variant of Mint. I would say that if you have a computer older than about 5 years, use Mint with MATE, otherwise use Mint with Cinnamon.
So?
If I sell something through PayPal, physical or intangible, I get details of the buyer, e.g. the email address and name. How exactly is this different?
Or you could, you know, just use the web browser...
Re: "Door in the Face" technique
Shouldn't that be "book in the face" technique?
@Chris
However, one should expect the service to work, no matter how much (or how little) you pay for it.
Re: Just goes to show
And what is the age of criminal responsibility in Finland?
15 if my research is correct.
That's presupposing that she actually committed a crime. It isn't stated whether she was sharing songs or just downloading them.
Posted in Samsung Google Nexus 10 tablet review
Re: Why the downvotes?
The thing is, IOS doesn't just work. It's a pain in the neck to do anything simple with it that doesn't involve Itunes. Want to transfer a file to your iPad? You can't just hook the device up and transfer it as you would to a USB stick with IOS; you've got to go through Itunes. With Android devices, it's easy; you plug it in and then select "Mount file system" on the device. And it isn't just techies that can plug in a USB stick and expect it to work.
I don't have experience of this tablet, but my wife has an iPad 3, and I've found that the keyboard on it wasn't amazingly responsive; it was sluggish. Not as sluggish as that on my Orange San Francisco (which cost me about £100 two years ago), but it was still sluggish. What was I doing? Something processor-intensive? Well, yes, if you consider entering a search term on the Safari browser to be intensive.
Somehow, I expected more.
I'm not saying it's all bad, but it's FAR from all good. If this had been around at the time my wife got the iPad, I think she would have got this instead.
I'm not keen on Apple products, but I have purchased two in the past for my wife.
Apple won't be seeing any more of my money after all this.
Re: A PR failure?
What if you're not particularly switched on about affiliate marketing, but you've clicked through Nectar's website to get cookied for some Nectar points when you buy Amazon stuff, then you go through this lens without being aware that the affiliate commission that pays for your Nectar points will be redirected to Canonical Ltd?
But it's not just that. You're not asked whether you want to do it in the first place. That's the first thing that's really bad about this.
The second issue is more serious. Heretofore, whatever you enter into that search box never leaves your local machine. Now, it will. If you enter something that's supposed to remain private into it to search your local machine for stuff, it will be sent to Amazon's servers, so you lose your privacy.
You can remove this feature as others have pointed out, but it really shouldn't be there in the first place. At least, not without an opt-in.
Now Canonical are getting more secretive about future releases, if the press are to be believed. Do you know what's going on? They're NOT LISTENING to the people who use their version of Linux, and they don't even WANT to. This has now happened enough times for me to finally make the decision to move away from them. It's not like there's no choice...
Finally...
Theresa May makes a good decision.
I never thought I'd see the day.
Re: let me be the first to say
And, hopefully, the last.
Re: There is no way...
I don't agree that nobody should ever be jailed for speech and opining, but I do think this has gone a bit extreme.
I think people should be jailed for things like incitement to riot and terrorism.
However, what was done here was in exceptionally poor taste, and my thoughts are with April's family at this time.
A long way to go
Windows has a long way to go to catch up with Android, and do people seriously want to use office applications on a tablet?
I've used Google Docs on my phone when I've had to, but it's a pain and I wouldn't miss it if it were not there. There's no way I would buy a tablet to use an office suite, unless I could use a proper keyboard with it, which negates the whole portable thing; so we're back to a straightforward laptop.
Of course, most people have no need to upgrade their PC if they are just using applications like Office; I don't think they're gonna want a tablet for that, in general. That of course is just my opinion.
Re: Think!
And that £1500 is tax free!
Excellent sleeping tablet
For my four-year-old daughter. If I give her one of these tablets, I'll finally be able to sleep!
Re: Maxing out the device
I would think it's safe to say that most WILL max out their capacities given enough time - just like used to be the case with hard disks.
Re: shame
XBMC is nice and easy to set up, and has loads of on-demand content available for it.
MythTV is a nightmare to set up, BUT once you have it set up, you have incredible PVR capabilities that you will never see on the open market.
"If I had the choice, I'd dump broadcast TV in an instant (and the licence fee that goes with it)."
You do, actually. You could use on-demand services, as long as you do not watch anything live. You'd have to detune your television receiver equipment and unplug all aerials and satellite dishes to be safe from prosecution.
The only thing is, if you're into sports, you'll probably want to watch those live. Even though you have to pay a provider for the privilege, since these are live broadcasts, you still need the TV licence. You could choose just to watch those when they are streamed by on-demand services instead.
I already interact with ads...
I push the fast-forward button when I see them. Or even better, the skip 2 minutes button, twice, usually does the trick.
"Hello... You got the data? Excellent. Let's go home."
"Waddaya mean we left the driver behind?"
Mine's the one with the dodgy GPS receiver in the pocket...
Re: "rebuilding your Linux OS to try to get wifi working, or sound, or getting your video driver .."
My HP printer installs much more easily on Ubuntu than Windows. You plug in the USB, wait a few moments, and it's ready. Getting it to work on Windows 7 is a pain in the neck.
Rebuild your Linux OS? If you're a huge techie, fine. Otherwise that's the type of thing I was doing about 15 years ago. No need to do it today. But at least you CAN do it. You can't do it with Windows because you don't have the source code.
Both operating systems have their pluses and minuses, but Linux isn't bad at all; it's not as bad as people make out.
Posted in US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet
Re: Yuk
Under GPL, you only have to release the source code to a product if you also release the object code to that product, so that basically means that if they sold their munitions to a third party, then they would have to release the source code, otherwise they don't.
@bob's hamster
What's wrong with it is that it doesn't provide any reasonable solutions acceptable to a normal person motivated by materialistic pursuits rather than the desire to grab a club and head for the nearest cave to spend the rest of their life.
Surely you didn't need me to tell you that.
Autopilots
It's interesting that a number of people have made comparison to autopilots here.
From an air transport point of view, autopilots are simply taking load off the pilot(s) who do not have to maintain control over the aeroplane to execute the six manoeuvres that occur in normal flight: straight-and-level flight, level turns, climbing straight, climbing turns, descending straight and descending turns.
There are other systems that are still available. Of course, there are the pilots, who can (usually) override the autopilot and fly manually if required for any reason. There are air traffic control who modify flight plans, e.g. by passing vectors and altitudes to the pilots, who are then either responsible for flying those vectors or to set the autopilot to fly them.
What the autopilot is doing is reducing the workload of the pilot.
There are similar systems for cars that already exist, one of which is of course cruise control, which attempts to maintain a constant speed by varying the throttle position automatically. This is just a very advanced form of the system.
In the aircraft situation, the pilot is ultimately responsible for the safety of the flight, and I can't see it being any different for a car situation: the driver will be ultimately responsible for the safety of the trip.
Autopilots do increase safety (certain procedures can be flown by autopilots that are not allowed by pilots alone) and I have no doubt that this car "autopilot" will also increase safety.
Posted in Indiana cops arrest violent 6-year-old
What's the age of criminal responsibility in Indiana? -9 months?
Re: @Oliver Mayes Can I...
I can't imagine it's going to be hard to prior art for people moving a finger over a surface to cause something to happen...
Posted in A million TVs to go dark across London
A million TVs go dark...
... actually means the quality of the programming has improved...
Re: Car dealerships
Warranty terms for cars can't say that an authorized dealership must service the car now; that was legislated against, probably because it was anticompetitive.
Re: Itt's been bugging me...
Nah. Metro because it needs to be hidden underground. :-)
Re: There are alternatives...
It's funny you should say that.
On my most powerful PC at home, I am using Linux Mint, and only that.
I don't like the way Ubuntu is going, and I don't like the way Windows is going.
My experiences with Mint? Some things work well, and some don't. Some things are better than in Windows 7 and some things are worse. I'm doing real stuff with it and not just playing around. I have Windows 7 on my laptop.
On the whole, the people behind Mint seem to be the only people left who are making an operating system that is truly usable without trying to make it look flashy but extremely limited. It's only fair to say that I do not have experience or knowledge of MacOS, though. But it's time to wean myself off the drug.
The obvious way forward is to move away from the incorrect use of the word unlimited. Provide a limit and stop drawing customers, especially those ultra-consuming ones who are not desired, with fake promises of unlimited.
Anything that says "subject to fair use" ought to be banned in the context of saying something is unlimited. What is reasonable is subjective.
So remove unlimited and apply a reasonable limit that would cause customers in the top 1% to have to pay more. It would then be possible to allow tethering with no penalty. Simples.
And how much...
has El Reg given to charity from its turnover in its time?
Does it compete with 0.001 of Google's revenue?
How was it possible for your child to develop any sort of confidence at all in their abilities to handle life solo with such draconian supervision?
"Oh, right, now you're 18 years old. You can now go outside the front door without me holding your hand."
