Re: Very impressive.
"Not forgetting the potential for ridiculously expensive headphones for DJ's"
Beats by Dr Dre already managed that for everyone without any of this magnetic science mumbo-jumbo
666 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Oct 2009
I don't have any issues with photographers making money - what I do have an issue with is when they're given exclusive rights to an event, even over non-commercial personal photgraphers - for example, my daughter used to compete in gym competitions and I'd often photograph her performing. But some of the competitions then banned photography "due to child protection laws" but were quite happy to have a professional photographer capturing the event who would happily sell me a picture of my daughter (or anyone else's daughter for that matter) for about £10.
I remember re-installing a very old piece of software on a PC 2 or 3 years ago. As I think was common when the software was written, it gave me the option of backing up the HDD to floppy before I continued with the installation. I had to throw caution to the wind when a quick look in my "old stuff" cupboard confirmed I didn't have the 250,000 disks this would have needed. Or a floppy drive, come to that.
I like the fact that despite Apple coming out with the standard spin of only a very small number of devices being affected, everyone I've read about online says that when they've entered their serial numbers, they're one of these chosen few. Anyone been told they're not within the range?
Even happened to my iPhone 5 after I'd sold it on, luckily Apple carried out an out-of-warranty free phone replacement to the new buyer.
Well maybe it is a concern because despite Three making all this noise about providing consumers with what they want with their 0800 calls and (admittedly great) Feel at Home service, it also seems to have quietly decided that consumers no longer want the "all you can eat" uncapped data plans that previously seemed to be such a big marketing thing for them. So, goodbye unlimited data today, maybe goodbye inclusive tethering tomorrow?
Yes, you can stick with your existing uncapped data plan for now and just stay in your contract for year after year, but the mobile operators are all experts of making customers feel more and more uncomfortable in the legacy contracts they no longer want them to be in as the years go by. Let's see if they're going to want existing contract customers to sign up to new T&Cs when their "free" 4G upgrade becomes available.
And FYI tethering isn't covered under the Feel at Home service - Three's quite clear on that. You may have been able to do it (personally it didn't work for me in Sweden or Denmark), but as it's specifically prohibited that's no guarantee it will work next time.
Indeed - I still despair over the amount of friends' houses I can go to and they'll be watching something on TV, seemingly oblivious to the fact it's stretched and distorted beyond belief because they've got the aspect ratio settings wrong. I mean, 16:9 has only been mainstream for what, 10 years now? Still, I suppose if it doesn't bother them. Though I guess these are the same type of people who horrendously resize clipart and photos without holding the shift button down...
Time for one of my pills I think.
That's the problem with Amazon recommendations and advertising - if I only bought stuff for myself I guess their only failing would be for things I'd just bought, e.g. why keep pushing TV adverts at me when I've just bought a brand new TV from you?
However, the reality is that my Amazon purchase history is a mish-mash of personal purchases, things I've brought for work, things my kids or relatives have asked me to buy for them, presents I've bought for people ranging from babies to 80+ year olds. No wonder Amazon's targeted ads seem to be aimed at the wrong target!
It's probably a sign of getting older, but so many of these sites/apps/services/whatever like Google Maps I used to be able to use without a problem. But every time they get updated, I seem to find them less and less intuitive to use. Ease of use seems to take a back seat to swept-up minimalist design.
Yep, this is one area in which Three really puts the others to shame (it's on contract too, not just PAYG) - OK, it's currently limited to those countries where Three already has a presence or a sister/partner company, but the recent addition of the USA to their list makes this outstanding. I also get a bit nervous that I have to enable data roaming in these countries, worrying that it'll connect me to a network other than 3, So far though, I've used their "free" roaming on a good dozen occasions and never been charged, apart from the time I forgot to turn data roaming off again before I travelled to France.
The thing I love best about these articles in these days of online Amazon and Dabs orders is remembering that there once was a time when you ordered your new computer by cutting a section out of a page of a magazine (following the dotted lines), filling in your details (hopefully in handwriting that the supplier could read), popping it into an envelope with a cheque and then patiently and optimistically "allowing 28 days for delivery".
How times change.
I don't know if just T-Mobile do this, but I've noticed when I look at my bills my monthly charge is actually higher than what I'm paying - but then there's a "discount" that brings it down to my actual monthly rate. I guess this means that the actual contract was for the full amount which lets them just reduce/chop the discount without technically changing the base price they're charging me.
But you don't trademark a word in isolation, you trademark the use of a word in a specific context.
e.g. Everest can still call the things they install "Windows", but if they started to branch out into IT software they'd not been able to call their new OS the same thing. I could start making cakes and call them Everest cakes, it wouldn't be an issue (though arguably if I called them Everest Double Glazing Windows cakes it would as it could be construed that the name indicated an association).
Royal Mail actually own a trademark on the colour red. That doesn't mean no one can use it, it just means any companies involved in the same business as RM can't use it as a predominant part of their branding.
Of course it all gets a bit silly when merchandising comes in and you extend the original game/app context of the trademark to things like bath robes.
I used to work for an Investment Bank (not as a banker I hasten to add) who introduced email filtering. One of the words that would cause an email to get blocked was "rape" - it took several days and the bank potentially lost a considerable amount before the rape seed oil analysts and traders realised what was happening.
But this isn't really aimed at the typical Reg reader is it? This might be "noddy" stuff, but if all my friends and relatives actually understood and followed it I'd have a lot less of my life wasted cleaning up their infected laptops and explaining why they keep getting all these rude emails and need to cancel their credit card
Its' not just at house or street level that Virgin have a track record of mis-advertising availability to. A year or so again Virgin undertook a big campaign in my small town telling us that Virgin fibre had arrived, including mail flyers, posters and full page adverts in the local paper. Unfortunately, they were actually laying fibre to another town with the same name about 150 miles away
This causes quite a bit of confusion - If you buy an iPhone from Apple, it is truly SIM-unlocked, you can swap SIMs as much as you like and it will never lock you to a network. However, buy an iPhone from the likes of O2/Orange or somewhere like Carphone Warehouse and it will arrive in an unlocked state, but as soon as you insert a SIM (which you need to do to set up and activate the phone) it will lock to that network.
In other words, all iPhones come unlocked, but if it was sold to work on a specific network (even PAYG), it will lock as soon as the SIM is inserted.
Great suggestions - or at least they would be if I could convince my 83 year old father to sign up for broadband rather than just using my old 64k virgin.net dial-up account on the 2 or 3 occasions a year when he steps out onto the information highway. "I've lived for 83 years without the Internet, what use would I possibly have of it now? And you've still not sent me a CD of those pictures from the summer. And did you manage to find out why my Flight Simulator scenery wasn't working properly?"
"Apple claimed iBeacon offers "a whole new level of micro-location awareness, such as trail markers in a park, exhibits in a museum, or product displays in stores".
What that really means is that whenever you visit somewhere armed with iBeacon transmitters, your iPhone will bombard you with unwanted messages."
A few years ago we were constantly told that if we left Bluetooth turned on on our phones we would get constantly hit with similar advertising messages - never happened to me, not even once. Maybe it's just me and it's because it's Monday morning, but lately I'm beginning to find El Reg's unimaginative cynicism just a bit tedious and predictable. Off to get some caffeine...
Helped of course by Apple's storage hostage-taking tactics - the installer for iOS7 was helpfully automatically downloaded to most iOS6 devices taking up anywhere up to 1GB of storage. Of course it was still up to the user whether they chose to install the update (and thus the installer was deleted and you got your 1GB back), but with no way to otherwise delete the installer the price of staying with iOS6 was you lost 1GB of storage from your device.
..."the law under which Abadie was cited forbids in-vehicle televisions and video screens mounted "at a point forward of the back of the driver's seat." It makes specific exceptions for information displays, GPS systems, mapping displays, and devices solely designed to assist in driving – such as rear-facing closed circuit camera displays – as long as these are installed in the vehicle.
Beyond that, however, the law forbids "any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications."
So under the letter of the law, it's as just as equally illegal to use a GPS system running on a smartphone on two counts: 1, the smartphone isn't designed solely to assist in driving and 2, it's also capable of displaying a TV signal etc. But I'm sure doing so isn't practically deemed illegal, so why this?
Yes, was wondering exactly the same; unless you already have a spare SSD sitting around, is it not easier to just install a Momentus and let the drive deal with the jigging around of files rather than the OS? Running one of these in my MacBook Pro and one as a boot/primary drive on my Mac Pro and they seem to offer a very good bang/buck compromise.
Dear Honorable Freind
GREETINGS!
Allow my to introduce myself, I am Wami Abdul, the only son of great Mr ABDUL, esteemed program manager of ETV. I have sad news my friend, my father Mr ABDUL is now deceased and I am now I contact with his collegues from ETV who are to eliminate the purchases of my father to store new series of Ethiopia’s got Talent. I pleed very much with them to save OLD EPISODES OF DC WHO but they say tape is expensive and I must pay €50,000 US Dollar to have them. I contact BBC for assist and they will pay owner ONE MILLION POUND DOLLARS but I am poor man with little money to raise to buy these precious tapes having only 10,000. I contact you my friend with proposition that for just your investment of 40,000 I will offer to return NIN HUNDRED THOUSAND EURO from BBC. This is approved and guaranteed under Mr Lord Reith, the head of BBC himself.
We must contact soon to ensure safety of time space adventures
Wami ABDUL
Indeed, Three now offer use of their networks in all countries where they exist - for example I can use my phone in Sweden or Hong Kong and basically it's as if I was still in the UK with my calls (to UK numbers) and data usage just coming off my monthly allowance, or charged at normal home rates. Why the Oranges, T-Mobiles and Telfonicas can't also do this I don't know, though I suggest it's more a matter of "won't" rather than "can't".
Not sure I even get how this is meant to work - so, they can work out that a pirate copy of Star Wars XII that's the most downloaded film on PirateBay originated from a Sony 4K BD player sold in Singapore... then what? Is there going to be a global Big Brother database somewhere that records who owns every single 4K device?
I was once sat in the front row of a domestic flight in Italy, with the air hostess sat directly opposite and facing e as we came in to land. Next to me was sat a sweating, overweight passenger whose BO and waistline overflow I'd had the pleasure of sharing for the previous hour. He'd obviously not bothered turning his iPhone off during the flight and with perfect timing, the second the wheels touched down, his phone starting ringing with the (very loud) klaxon ringtone.
The look of sheer terror on the air hostess's face (and presumably other passengers in earshot) was only eclipsed by the look of rage that replaced it about 10 seconds later when she realised where the sound was coming from and although I don't speak Italian, I got the gist that she wasn't thanking him for flying Alitalia.
Sadly, I discovered that my own instant mental association on hearing a klaxon is with an iPhone ringtone, rather than an imminent call to "brace brace brace". Sign of the times, I guess.
What is it with NASA and bad IT security? I remember getting my Commodore 64 modem in 1985/6 second hand, along with a copy of The Hackers Handbook and a printed list of phone numbers, IDs and passwords which was widely circulating at the time. Of all the companies and organisations on there, the only one anyone was really interested in was NASA because, well because it was NASA. So while everyone else was playing Jet Set Willy you were hacking NASA.
MIght need to find that list though and just check it wasn't actually the NSA...