* Posts by TheOtherJola

68 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jan 2010

Page:

Gagging order on G-Cloud suppliers dropped this Sunday

TheOtherJola
Angel

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".

TheOtherJola
Thumb Up

Re: Let me look into my crystal balls

You forgot Serco and Capita.

Symantec: 'NetBackup 7.5 speeds backup 100X'

TheOtherJola
Go

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.

Cabinet Office moves step closer to killing Directgov

TheOtherJola
Childcatcher

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.

iOS 5's iMessage chops carrier SMS routing traffic

TheOtherJola
WTF?

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?

Kodak heading to Chapter 11

TheOtherJola
FAIL

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.

WHSmith Kobo Vox e-reader

TheOtherJola

Eventually, maybe

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/09/hanvon-brings-e920-worlds-first-color-e-ink-reader-to-ces-we/

Apple accused of starving French reseller of hot stock

TheOtherJola
Facepalm

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.

Nokia to sell off luxury phone brand

TheOtherJola
Thumb Up

You can't polish a turd

but you can roll it in glitter.

Cops bust den of text-spam spewers

TheOtherJola
Coat

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.

Insurance and IT firms agree rules on sharing price details

TheOtherJola
Meh

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).

El Reg's life of Steve Jobs - now available on Kindle

TheOtherJola
Gimp

You mean "reading, walking, riding and driving at the same time", Shirley!

How about using the Kindle's magical and revolutionary TTS?

The Great Smartphone OS Shoot-out

TheOtherJola
Facepalm

"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...

97% of Three's network traffic is data

TheOtherJola

Hotel wifi, anyone?

Disable roaming, hook yourself up to public wifi while abroad ... voila, no bill.

TheOtherJola
Happy

Not any more.

They don't roam with any other UK network now. All its infrastructure is its own.

TheOtherJola
WTF?

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

5 SECONDS to bypass an iPad 2 password

TheOtherJola
WTF?

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!

Vegas man begs web for $1m to fix gigantic scrotum

TheOtherJola
Coat

If The Reg posted a picture

you could clearly see he's nuts.

(audible joke transcribed into text - doesn't quite work...)

HP pushes out OS update for 'defunct' tablet

TheOtherJola
Facepalm

Does HP even know where it's going?

There, I fixed it

RIM hopes to distract punters with free pretties

TheOtherJola
Thumb Up

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...

BlackBerry stumbles to feet, full of apologies

TheOtherJola
Megaphone

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 plunders Covent Garden Apple Store

TheOtherJola
WTF?

"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!

London 2012 Olympics: 17000 athletes, 11000 computers

TheOtherJola
Happy

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. :)

Mozilla to Firefox users: Ditch crashtastic McAfee plugin

TheOtherJola
Trollface

Dump McAfee

Problem solved. The unstable POS isn't fit for use.

Ten reasons why you shouldn't buy an iPhone 5

TheOtherJola
Thumb Up

This.

Bookmarked. Thanks.

Bank emails punters asking for their, er, email address

TheOtherJola
WTF?

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.

Chinese fuzz bust faux iPhone racket

TheOtherJola

Racism ftw!

o_O

Microsoft 'paid over £1m to silence UK exec over sexism'

TheOtherJola

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?

Facebook deletes hacked Pages, destroying years of work

TheOtherJola
Facepalm

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!

Capita coughs up £29m for financial services house

TheOtherJola
Stop

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!

Nokia punts NFC touch-data biz cards at £11 each

TheOtherJola
WTF?

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?

McAfee to wipe mess off .xxx pr0n sites

TheOtherJola
Facepalm

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?

Cambridge gets a white (space) wash

TheOtherJola
Facepalm

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.

Travelodge hacked, investigating

TheOtherJola
Thumb Up

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.

TheOtherJola
WTF?

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.

TheOtherJola
Thumb Down

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

Facebook simulated entire data center prior to launch

TheOtherJola
Thumb Up

"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 carves profit from slim revenue growth

TheOtherJola
Thumb Up

"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.)

RIM BlackBerry Bold 9780 smartphone

TheOtherJola
WTF?

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>

Apple: iTunes ascends to the heavens this spring

TheOtherJola

The world's largest walled garden

Very good, made me chuckle. :)

Microsoft hits autistic Xboxer with cheat evidence

TheOtherJola
FAIL

"would just like to put the episode behind them"

Now you've had your pants pulled down, yeah. Of course you would.

Shocked mum muzzles foul-mouthed toy mutt

TheOtherJola
Go

Put your

fucking arm in, your fucking arm out...

TheOtherJola
Go

Yaaaaaaaaay!

Wait, did he say listenER or listenING?

Diary of a Not-spot: One man's heroic struggle for broadband

TheOtherJola
Thumb Up

You'd need to configure

each one with helicopter USB, whatever that is

How to kill your computer

TheOtherJola
FAIL

I don't know what's funnier

The fact that he was trolling, or the fact that you bit!

Horror AVG update ballsup bricks Windows 7

TheOtherJola
Joke

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!

Monster iPad Case Test: Skins and Hard Cases

TheOtherJola
Alert

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!

RIM opens its PlayBook – tablets clearly set for dominance

TheOtherJola
WTF?

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.

How extreme is your pr0n? Depends on your lawyer

TheOtherJola
Coat

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!

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