Posts by thesykes 556 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Feb 2010
This is Google saying to the tablet manufacturers.. "Here, this is what we can do for £159, go away and beat it".
Have you seen the price of a HTC Flyer or Samsung Tab 7? Effectively this thing blows the market for either of them. The equivalent HTC or Samsung 16Gb wi-fi only tablets are more expensive and have much lower specs all round.
This is the challenge, the kick up the backside the manufacturers need.
It's up to them to pick up the torch and carry it forward.
To me, there are two trains of thought that exist in management.
Train A goes something like: We employ 1,000 IT staff and, because of this, all our systems run smoothly.
Train B, however, goes: All our systems run smoothly, why do we need 1,000 IT staff?
Unfortunately, it's standing room only on Train B, whereas Train A has been cancelled due to lack of demand and a bus replacement service is now in operation.
if only it worked all the time... I only own one DVD that includes a digital copy. The only thing I can play it on is my laptop, it won't play on anything else. If I wanted to play it on the laptop, I can just watch the DVD itself.
I've looked at the FAQ's for the film distributors, which states it will work on "some" devices, but, no indication which ones or whether it will ever be possible to play it on mine. All software I've used to try and get it into a format that can play, fails. In the end I gave up, mainly because I was trying it just to see if it worked, not because I want to watch a full film on a phone screen.
So, you buy a DVD with a digital copy, to make it legit to watch anywhere, and they bugger it up with DRM that stops you doing just that.
"greeted by my earlier online banking and webmail sessions complete with account numbers, balances, subject lines etc."
the thumbnails on mine are so small and blurry I can read The Register banner text and that's it. All the rest is just illegible pixels. Maybe only a problem for people with high resolution displays?
Still turned it off anyway.
Absolutely. Why can't Android be like the personal computer market? You know, the one where everyone uses the same sound chip, graphics chip, screen resolution, aspect ratio, operating system, memory, processor...
If all those were different on every pc made these days, the personal computer would never have been so popular....
Did you send that from your iPad?
Cheating husband blows £1400 on a trinket for the girlfriend, wife spots the withdrawal and demands an explanation. Hubby remembers a story in the local paper about some East European scam artists in a Vauxhall and says.. "I bought these laptops for us dear", and promptly gives her the bag of spuds he went to the shops for in the first place.
The kids got a triple play dvd for Christmas, so thought I'd give the digital copy a go. The only thing I can get to run it is Media Player, making it not all that useful.
Anybody know of a utility that can convert a digital copy to comething more useful? Just tred VLC player on the strength of the review here, only to that, not only will it not convert, it can't even open the file.
Wall mounted? No thanks, I currently have 10 different connections into/out of my TV (counting component connections as 1, not 3 or 5).
All those would have to be hidden in trunking, and one of them is the power cable.
Then I'd still need some kind of cabinet/stand underneath to take the 6 different boxes that are currently hooked up underneath.
"Wonder how facebook gets away with it"
Simple. You put a notice on your website saying something along the lines of "Apple banned our app, boycott Apple" and Apple won't care.
Facebook do the same and post it on the pages of nine hundred million* potential and existing Apple customers pages, Apple will care. A lot.
(*901m active monthly users as per Facebook company info, 500m active daily... still a lot!)
30% for a payment service? Imagine the outcry if Visa, Mastercard or Amex decided to up their commission to 30% of every sale?
Surely such charges should come under the scrutiny of financial watchdogs? If they provide no other additional service other than payment processing, they should be brought into line with other such companies and forced to open the market up.
What I cannot understand is what makes Apple or Google think they are entitled to any cut of in app purchases?
When I pay for a taxi, the car manufacturer doesn't get 30% of the fare
When I go on holiday, Boeing or Airbus don't get a cut
When I watch satellite/cable TV, the TV manufacturer gets nothing
If I buy something online, the laptop manufacturer gets not a penny
So, why do Apple and Google think they should get a slice of the money if I buy somethng using a phone running their operating system?
If "pirates" were the reason for the lack of good movies, it would be because film studios were unwilling to pump money into films they could not get back due to piracy.
Perhaps you can explain why a studio would pour $200m into Battleship?
Does all that money indicate a studio who doesn't believe it will get it's money back?
The reasons for a lack of quality films are many...
Hollywood's determination to milk every penny out of a franchise (Pirates 4 was terrible)
Scriptwriters inability to actually write the ending to a film... I've seen far too many films recently where the film just stops, with no actual ending.
A belief that taking a poor story and script and plastering over it with mega CGI will make a good film
The lastest fad is to stick 3D onto films from 20 years ago and milk the audience (Titanic, Beauty & The Beast)
A severe lack of creativity in the gaming and film industries is nothing to do with copyright or it's infringement.
Nope, not confused at all. As a kid I had a 14" portable TV.. it wasn't all that portable. Nor are the portable loos you see on building sites and at music festivals. I also remember being in portable classrooms too...
Just because someone decides that something can be moved, therefore by definition it is portable, does not mean that it is something that normal people would want to lug around all day, just so they can use it for 5 minutes to do something that could most probably be done on a smartphone.
3G may be available, but not everyone wants another bill to pay.
Is a device with 10" screen really all that portable? I consider a device to be portable if I can put it in my jeans pocket and walk out the door with it. I don't want to carry a bag with me. And just how convenient is a wi-fi only device where there is no wi-fi? At least a phone can use 3G.
Always on? My laptop is very rarely shut down. When I'm finished with it, I just shut the lid and it goes into hibernate. A couple of seconds and it's ready to use. Not that much of a pain.
I'll admit it.... I watched the first 30 minutes of it. Then I turned to the missus, who had seen it before, asked if it got any better and ejected the disc when she said a resounding "no".
Fortunately is was one of many dvd's watched during a LoveFilm free trial, so cost me nothing... except my self respect and months of counselling.
No... "analysts" don't do real work, they just spout crap and charge lots of money for it.
These people will charge companies huge sums for "analysis" work, and need to get their name out in the marketplace. Nothing better than spouting non-specific, ill-informed bullshit and tagging Apple and iPhone 5 in the title to guarantee some publicity.
want to explain exactly how your eyes will manage to filter out the other players screen without the use of active shutters? Go on, it'll be neat trick. Just how fast can you blink?
Guess you missed it being the PlayStation TV? Two players.... full screen... same time...
Gemini website says they all run ICS, also that the 10 inch has the 1.2Ghz processor, not 1Ghz.
Amazon does says Gingerbread, can't see anything on the Argos website for these though.
It looks like Amazon have older stock? The storage on theirs is less than on Gemini too, with Amazon quoting 4, 4 and 4 and Gemini 4, 8 and 16Gb.
Disappointing only 512Kb RAM though.
TV with built-in freeview and freesat, PS3 to provide everything else.
3D? No thanks, been to see 2 films on 3D at the cinema, normal and Imax, and both times came out thinking the 3D added nothing to the films, and the glasses just irritated me (and I wear normal glasses every day without irritation).
So, it lets you post 2/3rds of a photo? (Assuming my maths is correct in thinking 2/3 of a 6x4 photo would make it square).
So, you can apply a crap filter effect to your butchered photo... to make it more interesting.
Presumably installed by the same people who post their oh-so-hilarious photos of friends and family mangled by the aging and fat apps.
Books and food... what a stupid analogy. Potatoes - finite supply... ebooks not finite.
Back in the dark ages, when monks had to hand-write every manuscript, you could compare the two.
However, if I write a book and it is published, it is written once. I can then sell it tens of millions of times without any more effort on my part. In fact, the only party having to pay out anything in the selling process is the final seller, be it Amazon or any other ebook retailer.
Ebooks incur fixed costs at the start, editing, proof-reading, typesetting etc. Once they're published as a file on a server, that's it.
If you're not convinced, how about this. A book which was published in 2001 and made its author a multi-millionaire. It has obviously been sitting on a server in digital format since 2001, probably before, and in order to create en eBook all someone had to do was press a few buttons (it can't be that difficult to create one, can it?). As it was publsihed so long ago, no editing was required, no proof-reading, no actual work by anybody. That book is now for sale in eBook format for £4.99, 3p more than the paperback version on Amazon. The eBook is not available on Amazon, you have to go to it's own special site in order to download it. The book is the first Harry Potter story. Now, explain why the publishers feel the need to charge more for that than the physical edition? The anser is pure and simple greed.
No.. with you 100%... why would anyone possibly want to strap something to their head at night? How can that be comfortable? And how exactly do you control your sleep, when you're quite obviously asleep? Surely the first step would to remove the stupid headband, that would improve your sleep immediately.
It has to be cheap, but not necessarily cheaper.
The problem the Momo has is that you can't go into a shop any buy one easily, and this is what Google have got to sort out.
Go into any High Street electrical retailer and the iPad is there, as it is in phone shops, department stores and even supermarkets.
Google have got to get these things into all those places, get high visibility, get the advertising right, get the public aware that they exist and what they can do.
Make them high quality, a good screen, fast processor, plenty of storage, no bloatware, good connectivity, decent battery. Make them desirable.
That will create the market demand, it will also show the other Android tablet manufacturers of the way forward... stop pricing the things too high, let Apple have the premium end of the market, let Android take the value end. Google make money from advertising, not hardware sales, so, selling millions of cheap tablets makes more sense to them than a few thousand expensive ones.
Get tablets out there with standard, bloatware-free Android on them, easy to update and not slowed down by useless crap, and maybe we can also benefit from that idea being rolled in to phones.... please!
Sounds like it's up to Freesat, not Sky... from the BBC Olympics page...
"So we're pleased to announce today that's precisely what we're offering to a range of television platform operators - that they can use the BBC's 24 streams in standard or high definition to create additional television channels through the BBC red button and their Electronic Programme Guides.
We've had discussions with cable and satellite providers on a non-exclusive basis to see if they'd like to run BBC-branded Olympic channels that will massively extend choice for their viewers in addition to what we can offer ourselves online, via the BBC iPlayer or through connected TV services.
Many of those discussions are still continuing, but the BBC and Sky have announced today that they've come to an agreement that will deliver the 24 channels to all Sky homes. Sky will also pick up the costs of satellite distribution, irrespective of whether other platforms join in - though we hope and believe there'll be more announcements soon."
So, Sky are first, but not exclusive.
because it's far easier to remove a sim from one phone and put it into another, or remove a sim and replace with another network than it is trying to explain to some Indian call-centre "assistant" that you want to change the software sim on yourr phone and what network you want to change to, then call another Indian call centre for your new network and explain it all over again, only for them to cmpletely fail to communicate with each other and take weeks to sort it all out.
"isn't a standing order also done as a BACS transfer?"
Doubt it. It will be an internal transfer from one account number to another, with the money never leaving RBS.
A BACS transfer is a payment via the BACS company, which then forward it on to the recipient, and charges the banks for the privilege.
the worrying thing is ... I have a few of those mentioned sitting on the Sky+ box, ready for me to enjoy... I'm actually looking forward to seeing some on them even more, just to see if they really are that bad.
My nomination... the first 30 minutes of Twilight... I gave up after that... and possibly Blair Witch... maybe it isn't that bad, but after all the hype that preceded me watching it, I was seriuosly underwhelmed.
Oh, and Into The Wild.
And The Ghost (not Ghost, never seen that).
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