Posts by TheOtherJola
68 posts • joined Thursday 7th January 2010 22:57 GMT
I thought G-Cloud was the name of Google's online cloud storage service.
Stupid public sector always inadvertently making their own services more difficult to find or use because of it's ambiguous or non-recognisable name.
If it's a service to do with procurement of IT stuff and is accessible by the Internet and Telephone they should have called it something catchy but unique, like "iPhone".
Re: Let me look into my crystal balls
You forgot Serco and Capita.
Cuts 25-hour chore down to 15 minutes
Some of the latest updates to Backup Exec do that too, by refusing to back things up that it's been happily doing for months previously.
Personally
Personally I think the direct.gov.uk site is incredibly well-designed and is extremely clear and easy-to-use.
I also don't see the sake of updates for the sake of updates - for example, Gmail's latest "new design" has made the interface half the speed of the old one, and has included mystery meat navigation on the buttons. Progress? Nope. Because they wanted to? Yeah, probably.
I like the use of the unit of currency called "OPM". That's quite appropriate. For £1.7m I'd make the government a fucking awesome website. Shame this one's popped up.
SMS-not-routed-over-cellco-if-not-routed-over-cellco SHOCKER
At first I thought your graph depicted a nationwide stat, or something like that. But to see a graph that shows a reduction in SMS messages consumed after you install a program that reduces the number of messages routed over SMS .... well, what were you expecting?
Posted in Kodak heading to Chapter 11
David Allen did a bit on this sort of thing
He of GTD fame said that, once, a company who made precision drill bits couldn't fend off cheap competition from China, so they re-focused their business. Did they make drill bits? No, they were in the market of making excellent holes. What else can do that? Frickin' lasers.
The company was reinvented and became very successful.
The same should have happened here. Are Kodak in the market of making film? No, they're in the market of producing great quality photos. The printer thing should have been completed by a digital camera thing (much firmer than the one we were subjected to) and a scanner thing, and a data storage thing, and an online archive thing, and a sheet-feed photo-scanner-archive thing, and a ... you get the idea.
For the company to stare at the writing on the wall for *this long* ... as someone else said, they deserve all they get.
Posted in WHSmith Kobo Vox e-reader
Eventually, maybe
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/09/hanvon-brings-e920-worlds-first-color-e-ink-reader-to-ces-we/
ATTENTION!! APPLE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT ANYONE ELSE!!
When will people stop thinking that Apple (like many other BigCo's) don't give two hoots about other companies and are only put on this earth for two things:
1. To make as much money for themselves as possible
2. To make as much money for themselves as possible
Strictly speaking that was one thing, but I felt it was so important I should iterate it twice.
Companies like creating profit, especially margin-hungry Apple who have already had a history of shitting on distributors and resellers (http://goodbadstrategy.com/wp-content/downloads/GoodStrategyBadStrategy_Preview.pdf - search for "distributors"). If you don't like the way the company behaves, STOP PROPPING UP THEIR BOTTOM LINE AND VOTE WITH YOUR FEET.
If enough distributors/resellers stop putting up with being shit on Apple's jesusPhone will become harder to get hold of and the popularity of the handset will plummet in competition with its easier-to-come-by rivals (WP7 and Android).
ffs. eBizcuss - put up or shut up. If you can't stand the heat, get out the kitchen.
Posted in Nokia to sell off luxury phone brand
You can't polish a turd
but you can roll it in glitter.
Posted in Cops bust den of text-spam spewers
Though 12 people said they actually found the texts helpful
and this is why we, humans, continue to receive spam - because other people are stupid enough to respond to it and contribute to it.
mine's the one with the purchased marketing database in the pocket.
Toothless watchdog herp derp
It's nice to see that the scam that is insurance is being at least watched from a distance. It's a shame that these companies continue to extort money from individuals and refuse to pay it back when needed (e.g. in the event of a claim).
You mean "reading, walking, riding and driving at the same time", Shirley!
How about using the Kindle's magical and revolutionary TTS?
Posted in The Great Smartphone OS Shoot-out
"Dialling by number is a novelty nowadays"
There are too many points in your post to make me think that you don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to list some of the things that I think you're horrendously wrong about:
- I'm used to the full QWERTY keyboard, so why suddenly switch to a three-characters-per-key keypad for a specific task?
Because it's faster if you're walking/driving/finger-poking/performing another one-handed activity. You can just T9 the first few letters of the contact's name and voila, it's almost as if you've dialled a four-digit number to get to your friend.
- Dialling by number is a novelty nowadays
Tremendously wrong here. Dialling by number can be faster than looking the person up in the address book if (like the article author) you have 300+ contacts in your address book.
Also, since you go on to say you "just want to talk", hiding the dialler is also a very bad idea.
- I don't understand how the Blackberry look up by contact is different to the iOS version?
With a Blackberry, if you are at the home screen, you just start typing the person's name or start dialling the number you want to dial. E.g. if you type in "andr" it will show you Andrew Smith and James Andrews, and you just finger-poke the contact to then perform an operation (dial, text, bbm, etc).
- Until any smart phone has an SLR-like instant-on camera, they should all be scored low. The delay is just inexcusable.
It's almost as if you are comparing a CAMERA to a PHONE. Weird. And I'm sure the purpose of this article is to compare a PHONE with a PHONE.
- Likewise, all should get low scores for their walled gardens.
You mean as in SMS? The world we live in has many, many different messaging protocols. The article is, again, comparing the out-of-the-box experience of handsets. All of which at a very basic level support SMS, MMS and Email - none of which (AFAIK) are "walled-garden" protocols.
- Flash is subjective
Ah! You're an iPhone user. Suddenly your obsession with impossibly high standards, not seeing the point of otherwise useful features, and irritation with walled gardens all becomes clear...
Posted in 97% of Three's network traffic is data
Hotel wifi, anyone?
Disable roaming, hook yourself up to public wifi while abroad ... voila, no bill.
Posted in 97% of Three's network traffic is data
Not any more.
They don't roam with any other UK network now. All its infrastructure is its own.
Posted in 97% of Three's network traffic is data
ODFO, troll
3 are obviously (and quite rightly) capitalising on the fact that most "Internet" bundles are as low as 500Mb (not MB) and therefore downloading just 10 MP3s on them would cause your usage to be eaten up in an instant.
I use streaming radio on my 3 phone in the West Midlands and have, on more than one occasion, enjoyed near-100% coverage whilst driving from central Birmingham all the way up to Lincoln and back, with only a bit of packet loss - the UI showed me, but the buffered shoutcast audio didn't stutter once.
Also I've just been driving around while holding a Skype call (over data) with me sending video to the other party, and the call only dropped as I pulled up at home and my phone abandoned my data connection in favour of Wifi.
You clearly aren't a customer of 3, and one wonders if you are the same Anonymous Coward as the one who still has a Sony Ericsson T610... http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1216430
Posted in 5 SECONDS to bypass an iPad 2 password
Only a minor issue, really
O hai guise, I heard about the feature on my front door whereby anyone can get in, regardless of using the security features built in to the door (i.e. the yale lock). Here's why the vendor is still great:
1) you can only access the hall of my house. If I've left some stuff in there, then yeah, you can get to it, but since I tidy my hall up quite a bit (doesn't everyone?) this isn't an issue.
2) only AFFECTS those who use a magnet-based sensor, and not many people have those.
Stop trolling, guise - it's not that big a deal, you're just holding it wrong!
If The Reg posted a picture
you could clearly see he's nuts.
(audible joke transcribed into text - doesn't quite work...)
Does HP even know where it's going?
There, I fixed it
Back to the niche market they came from
Now that Android et al can do all the things a blackberry can *for the home user* I think their time in the home-user market is limited.
As mentioned above by M7S@12:33 it is going to be difficult to switch the large enterprises away, but as an owner of an Galaxy S II and a Blackberry Bold 9700, both of which are connected to an Exchange server, the Android wins for functionality whereas the Blackberry wins for remote-manageability. Want assigning to a new mailbox? No problem - try doing that on an Android remotely though.
We will see what happens. I don't think RIM will die, but I think their home-user market will die in its current incantation and be reborn as something not connected to their infrastructure maybe...
Rats, sinking ships, etc
I had enough yesterday and ordered an Android device. I wonder how many other people have done the same.
"Biker gang"?
Whenever the media use "Biker gang" they usually refer to Hells Angels type of people. People with proper bikes and proper beards.
It sounds like these crims could manage neither.
Please change your headline - it is disparaging towards us bikers!
Running Vista ... not about the fancy specs
I notice you wrote
"that the vast majority of them are running Windows Vista. But it's not about the fancy specs"
If they're running Vista it will *need* to be about the fancy specs!
Anyway, nice article and nice pics. Thanks. A good read. :)
Dump McAfee
Problem solved. The unstable POS isn't fit for use.
This.
Bookmarked. Thanks.
I hate the way banks do this
Release a statement saying "you may think that what we did was stupid and unnecessary, but actually what we did was protect the world from the threat of the evil scum of the universe, so actually that makes us the good guys and makes you the illiterate and pleb-like."
Mind you, releasing a statement saying "yeah, pretty stupid wasn't it. Give a job to an apprentice and you see what you get. I told the boss that it wasn't a great idea, but he overruled us all, so there you go" is probably not going to be great either.
Syntax error
<quote>
"Although women compete on an equal basis further down the organization, they hit a glass ceiling at around "level 65 or above," the source added.
</quote>
What did the source add? The whole thing, or just the "level 65 or above" thing? Or did she say all of it apart from the level 65 or above thing, and there's a stray quotation mark?
That's absolute fucking bollocks.
Facebook's lying help pages, not this article. This article has actually probably saved me a bit of time, as the FB help pages say that giving someone is a good way to ensure that you never lose admin, as you can give access to someone else and if they have been admin for a shorter time than you they can't delete you.
Nice to know it's a crock of shit. Time to go and tidy up my facebook pages!
Not hanging around
Unlike your customers on hold to speak to the useless twunts at the countless insurance and other data-mining companies you own.
Get your own house in order before you invade others!
Near Filed Communications
Not aware of that technology - although I used to have a lot of documents on my desk that were nearly filed. Is that the same thing?
Posted in McAfee to wipe mess off .xxx pr0n sites
McAfee is so, so poor
If McAfee have another false positive debacle, it's a good job it can't start deleting your MySQL database because it looks like something found in a virus signature.
Seriously, when will the population realise that marketing spend != R&D spend?
Posted in Cambridge gets a white (space) wash
rtfa
and how would that allow it to know where in the country it is?
Your geographical location determines which frequencies are available. So that's why GPS is needed, and GPS is why visibility of the sky is needed.
Posted in Travelodge hacked, investigating
Travelodge want your spam
If you've received spam, send it to customer.services@travelodge.co.uk as they are collating as much information as possible. Remember to include headers and message source.
I've just phoned their CS number (01844 358500, they're quite busy at the moment for some reason) and the CS team are all over it - a credit to them, at least they've not got their heads in the sand.
Posted in Travelodge hacked, investigating
A copy of spam received
Just checked my spam folder. Surely enough...
from Bernarda Mcgee ffMcgeeBernarda@hotmail.com
to travelodge@<my personal domain>.com
date 22 June 2011 19:04
subject <My full name>
Greetings.
This is unique business opportunity.
Reputable agency is seeking for energetic worker in United Kingdom to help us start our business in the UK sector.
Necessity:
- Full age United Kingdom resident
- Only operational knowledge of Internet & computer.
- Free access to personal e-mail box
- 2-3 free hours per day
- Fast replies on our written tasks
- good organizational skills.
You can without problem combine our work with your primary work.
Admirable salary ability. easy study available.
Applicants must be intelligent and business oriented. Operate only some hours per day.
Any person residing in the United Kingdom can become our representative.
Our manager will contact you within several if you attracted.
----------------
Breaking News: holy spirit graduate aj holland to sign with braves.
Posted in Travelodge hacked, investigating
Lenny Henry's favourite motel chain
No, he's actually a purple Premier Inn kinda guy.
Travelodge is way, way too cheap - just look at what happened when he used to stay there, before he discovered the delights of the overpriced Premier Inn!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_EGCSFHnfY
"Where else would they go?"
Exactly. There *is* nowhere else to go.
I got some "Cannot write to the database errors" today while liking someone's status, so it appears as though not *all* is well...
"Dell didn't dive as much as HP"
That's because HP can't write decent, quick-installing software for any of their devices if they tried.
Dell, on the other hand, can.
HP's latest printer driver is probably a 6GB download from their website.
I'd buy Dell over HP every single time.
(for workstations and servers and storage, anyway.)
Posted in RIM BlackBerry Bold 9780 smartphone
Agreed.
When I read that paragraph I was instantly annoyed, because the fact that it makes sense (to me) is one of the defining features of the device.
The blackberry is designed for quick and hassle-free data entry. True, it could be mentioned on the "welcome, here's how you use this thing" screen, but including them on the keyboard would, to me, be a massive mistake. When you press space in an email field, you get an @ then a . which is brilliant.
<rant>Anyone who complains about their omission is obviously a blind advocate of the Jesus Phone and needs to get a life.</rant>
The world's largest walled garden
Very good, made me chuckle. :)
"would just like to put the episode behind them"
Now you've had your pants pulled down, yeah. Of course you would.
Put your
fucking arm in, your fucking arm out...
Yaaaaaaaaay!
Wait, did he say listenER or listenING?
You'd need to configure
each one with helicopter USB, whatever that is
Posted in How to kill your computer
I don't know what's funnier
The fact that he was trolling, or the fact that you bit!
Go on, I'll bite
Add to that list No keyboard + No mouse + No media drives + No network connection and you've got yourself a 100% secure system!
It'd be a better article
if you took photos of YOUR iPad in the case, rather than using their promotional ones.
If you're reviewing a BK Whopper, I'd much rather see the one YOU got and the box it came in compared to the one they'd love to sell you (aka the marketing material).
Real photos next time please!
Actually attachments are fine
I can open XLS, XLSX, DOC, DOCX, PDF and most other formats on my handset just fine thanks.
I even opened a massive XLSX spreadsheet with tabs in it the other day and, unlike its Windows Mobile counterpart, the Blackberry handled it just fine.
Thank goodness for Apple!
If they'd have correctly populated the bluetooth stack in their iPhones and allowed access to bluetooth OBEX as well as the file system, the Jesus and Judas Phones would both be vulnerable from this type of security vulnerability.
Thanks to Apple, you cannot receive files via bluetooth and therefore cannot be prosecuted.
Hurrah!
