Posts by thesykes
362 posts • joined Wednesday 3rd February 2010 00:17 GMT
Re: Eadon A Controvertial Topic (for a change)
"Are you aware how many morons there are in the world?"
A lot more than there will be if they all print themselves a fancy new shootin' iron?
Re: Thank god I bought VHS
No DRM?
When my VCR was on it's last legs I tried to back up by collection onto DVD. Most would copy fine, but some refused, with the DVD recorder complaining that they were protected media.
Tried sending the signal to the TV and recording the TV output, still triggered the message. Disney films IIRC.
Posted in Review: Sony Xperia SP
Re: @johnnytruant
Nice thought but... the bootloader is locked and cannot be unlocked. So, no root, no freedom. This is Sony Ericsson, not Sony, seems to be a big difference. May be O2 sticking it's nose in too.
However, the point of my question is... I've been there, done that, with unlocking, rooting etc. with my old Orange San Francisco, which was sorted within an hour of it leaving the shop. So, I've no fear of doing it but I don't want to, I just want to take it out of the box, turn it on and have it working without tons of crap getting in the way. Dumping apps such as Facebook, Google Maps, Gmail etc into the system area means that valuable storage is wasted, space that cannot be clawed back.
The Nexus 4 looks OK, but, I don't want a glass-backed phone (and there are plenty of stories of them breaking far too easily) and I don't really like the look of it.
Posted in Review: Sony Xperia SP
Re: But for £19.99 .....
Do Sony still bundle loads of useless apps on their phones? I'm thinking... 3D Album, 3D Camera, Connected devices, Data monitor, Facebook, Games & apps, Get apps, Get games, Livewire manager, Music & videos (Facebook), News and weather, OfficeSuite, Setup guide, Support, Sync, Timescape, TrackID, Update centre, Wisepilot.
All of these are littering my Xperia, cluttering up the app draw, constantly loading even though they are never used, and thanks to Sony Ericsson deciding to load them into the system storage and lock the bootloader, I cannot get rid of the bloody things.
Also, does the Sony app draw still refuse to show the apps in alphabetic order? Seems hell bent on showing them in "Own order"... What the hell order that is I have yet to decipher.
Nice phone, ruined by the bloatware.
you could always hark back to a bygone era a little and have someone walking in front of your car as you enter, obscuring the plate?
Can't they just just eat the red weed?
Re: 'Cost' for an e-book
@SundogUK... "Paper and ink are dirt cheap; proofreaders and marketing teams aren't"
Fair enough. How does he explain examples like this:
Grapes Of Wrath. Kindle price £7.99, paperback £6.89
No proofreading, no marketing. All that was done in the 1930's
There are costs to be recouped on sales on new books, that is understandable. Books written over 70 years ago have no such costs to recoup. That is pure profiteering.
first car...
This was mentioned on Top Gear a couple of years ago. May and Clarkson were driving some of the oldest working cars, and one of them was the first British car with that arrangement. They also mentioned the name of the American car it was copied from. Can't remember the name of either.
Stil, it may be on Youtube, or just watch Dave for a couple weeks, it's bound to be repeated at some point.
Of course you get downvoted for praising it.
Didn't you know? No matter how good the phone is, how well made, how stylish, what features it has, all of that is irrelevant, it's a Windows phone. That is enough for the rabid 'nix and Apple Fanbois to downvote anything faintly praiseworthy. Individual opinion, taste and thought is not allowed.
And no, I don't own a Windows phone.
I do, however, appreciate that competition is good for all phone users, regardless of their personal choice in handset.
Simple solution
Pop down the local supermarket, pick up a sim pack for anything between free and a fiver, get a paygo voucher and top up.
No registration with any carrier, just an anonymous phone.
Re: Gloves?
isn't this down to the sensitivity of the capacitive sensors? if so, what have Apple invented here? Lights?
Justice? Who said anything about justice?
This is all about money.
Re: University weeks...
Ahhh... the NMB... what a dump. Better off walking up to the Red Lion, better beer, better food.
Surely most people get SMS messages bundled into their contract or PAYG tariff? I get thousands a month in mine, and I'd be surprised if I sent more than a dozen this year.
Presumably networks bundle a charge for these texts within the tariff, if you don't use them, they get money for nothing.
This Android user uses the brain he was born with.
Get out of car, look round, see where stairs/doors/exit/lift are
Get to stairs or lift and make note of floor number.
Remember these facts.
So far, I've never actually misplaced a car.
Are the worlds car parks full of iPhone owners, wandering aimlessly around, unable to find their cars?
Are there special teams of car park attendants who round them up and take them round the back, and put them out of their misery with a single shot to the back of the head?
is the frame part of it? looks nasty.
Re: On the bright side
easier? for me, it's already a foregone conclusion it won't be O2 (terrible coverage where I live)
Only difficult decision will be which one of the other useless, incompetent bunch of half-wits I do sign up to...
So, all the pervs watching grumble flicks in public will have unlimited data packages.
Wonder if the House of Commons bars also have filters on any wi-fi they provide?
Posted in Review: Disgo 8400G 7.9in Android tablet
Re: for not much more...
true, but, this review is for a £150 tablet, a Nexus 7 16Gb is £159, so is close to the same price, the 3G version is much more.
Posted in Review: Disgo 8400G 7.9in Android tablet
for not much more...
Got a Nexus 7 wi-fi, then picked up a brand new mi-fi off eBay (looked like T-mobile had been giving them out like sweets, judging by how many were for sale at the time), only cost me £23. Couple of quid for an unlock code. Job done.
Now got 3G when I need it, and can hook up a laptop, phones etc., which is useful when the phone 3G signal is hopeless and the mi-fi network is stronger.
Don't have the mi-fi with me? Just tether the phone, one widget press, thanks to Widgetsoid.
Re: Several problems however.
Why is it vulnerable? I have downloaded apps from Amazon and yet, my phone and tablet still have the option to allow installations from other sources unticked.
How? Well, it's called unticking it when Amazon prompts me to, then ticking it again when the app is installed.
Hardly rocket science.
Re: And one day they will support he Nexus 7
which bit don't they support? The Amazon App store and normal Amazon app both work perfectly fine on my Nexus 7.
Still prefer to get apps from Google Play though, as then you get notified of updates. Having to open the Amazon app, go to my apps and then updates... no thanks.
Re: Their response
I had to read that a couple of times as I just could not believe it.
thanks YouGov!
All I ever get are surveys about supermarkets and politics... why don't I ever get ones that interest me??
Re: Not bad....
Minor tweaks to hardware specs have hardly done Apple any harm over the years....
Re: Is the new App compulsory?
The worry for all of us is that on the next phone you buy, this piece of cr-app might be pre-installed on the phone. Combine that with a waz to prevent people rooting their phones and what are you going to do?
Easy... don't buy it. If manufacturers or operators see that Facebook-riddled phones don't sell, they won't stock any more.
Re: Oh boy...
Seems you were a minute too late.. good old reliable-as-ever Eadon.
Re: Cheapest place is Tesco
" with no instagram ... app in sight."
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Hmmmm
This is tempting. My current phone is Android, and I like Android. But,I've just thought about what I actually use it for, and, to be honest the OS is fairly irrelevant.
A couple of games to kill time, email, calendar, make phone calls, check my bank balance and a bit of web browsing. All this can be done on WinPhone. My bank has an app on the Windows market, so, this ticks all the boxes.
I find I use my phone far less now I have a tablet, so, a limited number of apps doesn't bother me. Seems all the ones I do use on my phone are available on Windows Phone.
Oh, and less than £100 really appeals too.
Re: Entropy is winning...
Personally I thought that Springfield produced the best company name... until it was "bought out" by Bill Gates....
Shame...
My 6-year-old daughter loves playing Day Of The Tentacle on my Nexus. Maybe it's the cartoon graphics, the lack of time limits or just being able to wander around at your own pace, but something appeals to her.
Shame that games these days demand split-second timing, loud irritating "music" and minimal puzzle-solving. The imagination needed to create DOTT, Sam n Max etc is sorely missed.
What? MI5 don't have a Nigerian branch office?
Posted in Paying a TV tax makes you happy - BBC
catch up TV?
and what exactly will you be watching on catch up tv? Imported TV from America or the trash churned out by ITV, C4 and Five?
Sounds right to me...
I've gone from just over 1Mb to just under 3 in that period... things are improving.
Posted in ITV catches up with TVCatchup
So, a quick test to see if I can ditch TVCatchup and use the "players" from the various broadcaster (Should they actually broadcast anything worth watching).
This is on the relatively obscure device known as a Nexus 7, some of you may have heard of it.
BBC iPlayer. Crashes the instant I click on play, on anything, video or radio
ITV Player. Not compatible, in fact they list 5 devices that are. Surely the only people on Earth who make SkyGo look comprehensively supported
4OD. No Live stream
Demand 5. No mobile player? Certainly can't see an Android one. Not really a problem, as 5 does broadcast some crap.
Sky. Sky Go. What can I say? A handful of devices supported on a limited number of versions of Android. Recent support for the Nexus 4 & 7 failed after a minor OS upgrade, Sky took two weeks to fix. Oh, and won't support rooted devices. The Sky Go On Android message board makes entertaining reading, if only as an example of how an incompetent company deals with customers.
So, it seems that a relatively small company, with limited resources can produce a service that is far superior to those of the major broadcasting companies.
Who'd have thought that?
Re: Granular controls on the phone...
Have to say I'd like to see the ability to revoke rights per app added to Android, functionality only available to rooted devices at the moment.
So, some analyst somewhere produces a report that says Android is fragmented, it's this, it's that.
Of course, all these analysts only give the world the benefit of their immense wisdom as a favour to us all, as in reality, they're all multi-billionaires following their shrewd investments over the years on the technology trends they are so brilliant at forecasting.
It's not like they pluck numbers and thoughts out of their arses and try and be controversial or stick Google/Android/Microsoft/Apple in their article titles to just get clicks, is it?
Posted in Twenty classic arcade games
Glad to see Gauntlet ln there, loved that.
Another favourite was Battlezone, may have just been the eyepiece you had to look through, but I always headed straight for it.
Re: Why bother with tthe phone
with a pencil up each nostril, saying pa-paaa? wubble.
Posted in Keyboard, you're not my type
It may not have been that good, but, my favourite keyboard was on my first computer. I was still at school and the schools computers comprised a BBC B, Apple IIe, a couple of Sharp MZ-80Ks and a scattering of Spectrums.
None of them could match the keyboard on my TI-99/4a.
Perfect size keyboard for my hands at the time.
Who needs...
...a rear view mirror replacement the size of an iPad? It's bad enough seeing people driving with sat-navs stuck to the middle of the windscreen without attaching something that big.
Re: Sort of agree
cheers... hadn't noticed that option.
Re: I thought this kind of thing had been explained as a 'wick effect'?
Still got my full set of The Unexplained, perfect condition in binders... and can remember the walking frame and leg sticking out of a burnt floor. May have to dig them for a read...
Re: Nexus 7
Strange... downloaded, installed & running on my Nexus 7 on 4.2.2
In fact, 4 different versions are available through the Play Store on the Nexus, phone & tablet versions of trial and full apps.
Re: re: Who goes into a shop and asks for something these days?
well... the neighbours were wondering why your mother was getting a "delivery" every day....
think bigger
NFC is more than pay by bonk.
Look at Sony Smart Tags. Program your phone to do all sorts of things when it comes into contact with one. Turn bluetooth on or off, mute the ringer, turn an alarm on...
How about having a NFC reader in your car? Put your phone on it, bluetooth comes on and pairs with the car, and the car recognises you as the driver and sets your mirrors, seat etc to your preferences.
Get to work, quick wave and the phone mutes, vibrate is on
Use it to pay for stuff? Security? no thanks... but to switch phone settings depending on location, yes please.
They have the stray cats under CCTV surveillance in Japan? Or, was it an undercover police cat?
"warning: contains firearms, sex, violence, etc, etc"
I'm on my way....
Some of those pics are good... some are just disturbing
