Posts by Joe Harrison
232 posts • joined Friday 1st June 2007 14:40 GMT
wtf wtf wtf
I think I've slipped into a parallel universe where everyone is competing for the most repulsive idea imaginable
Re: Data driven
They vary but I talked to the callcentre lady for one of the companies and she said she had it in her own car and loved it. You pay a premium in the normal way but they give you a web account to which you login every week and see how many discounts you got for keeping your cornering, braking, acceleration and speed within the parameters they like. She said it had made her more conscious of her driving which yes I suppose it would really if you knew that scorching away from the lights actually cost you money.
Telematic insurance is more expensive
I recently spent a huge amount of time looking for insurance for my teen son and his first car. Insane amounts of money were quoted but the cheapest was not actually the telematic. The whole thing is a very expensive mystery for example the company I eventually went with offered me fully comp more cheaply than third party fire and theft.
The premium for the rejected telematic quote was £100 per hour extra for driving after 11:00PM. I can see why they would want to try and deter night-time young driving but don't forget a young person is likely to be a student and thus to have a part-time evening job and so it is with my son he clocks off at 11 and obviously needs to get home from work.
I don't care it's a mess
In the old days I typically used to pay quite a lot for something like a Nokia series 40. The "user experience" was never all that configurable, iut was take it or leave it, and I just had to get used to working around all the things I didn't like.
Now for what seems to me like much less money I can get a much nicer phone with which I can do more or less whatever I want. Android FTW all the way.
Re: Artist can also choose to share their music with pink singing ponies and a barf bag.
I spend a lot of time in clubs and the DJ comes along with his laptop and plays an MP3 which sounds great to him ON HEADPHONES. Sounds terrible however on big speakers. I'm guessing it's something to do with the psychoacoustic model.
My problem with Lester
I approve in general of what he is doing but I wish he wouldn't make it sound like he is going through such hell. His colonic eruption piece yesterday was funny but it's not helpful to encourage people to think that healthy/frugal/whatever eating is something you do for a limited time as a sort of penance which brings nasty toilet consequences. I am sure his guts really do feel a bit funny but this is actually the result of suddenly loading his body with high-fibre food when it has previously been used to an easier ride. If you eat this sort of food all the time you are no more gassy than anyone else. Just sayin.
I approve and award you hero of soviet union
Seriously we should all do more of this. You can get fantastic nutrition out of cheap veg and pulses and I do get tired of hearing "poor people are malnourished because they can only afford mac fry king burgers."
Slight shock when I speed-read the article as "while peeing occasionally into the bubbling broth"
Mobile contracts = Fail
If you are a business then OK maybe there is a reason to sign up. For the average person it's difficult to get value from these typical one-sided mobile contracts. They dangle the shiny "free" smartphone to get you on board but after that you are powerlessly over a barrel paying through the nose for two years. Stick with pre-pay, save money, and have the satisfaction of disrupting their extorting business model.
What is the point
What is the point of having free and open competition if the best one is not allowed to win?
Remotely flashing BIOS?
Do people really do that, on boxes that matter? I wouldn't fancy it!
Re: No more contracts for me
Yes of course I read it, and used my biro to delete that and a couple of other daft clauses. They accepted the amended contract, no doubt because I was bringing my own hardware so they were not subsidising me . Did not stop them half-heartedly trying it on later when I terminated.
I was just making the point that the current two-year lock-ins are NOTHING! People should stay away from contracts altogether - if the operator finds a reason to surprise you with a huge bill there is little you can do about it. At least with pre-pay the most you can lose is a tenner or so.
No more contracts for me
My first ever (1990's) mobile phone came with a TEN-YEAR contract with Nokia Mobira. I was able to get out of it but since then have never trusted contracts and prefer the way pre-pay puts you back in control. There is always an affordable handset which is nearly as shiny as the expensively subsidised ones - currently the phone modding community likes the Huawei Ascend G300. So, 100 quid for a very capable rooted phone and £7.50 a month with unlimited data.
ADS-B is really good
Although it's a one-way broadcast from the plane so I don't completely see the security implications apart from the possibility of somehow spoofing the aircraft location with a stronger signal.
For real-world ADS-B fun try
www.flightradar24.com
Google Latitude
Google Latitude is interesting but scary. If you let it, it will produce a fascinating report with pie-chart showing how much of your time you spend at work, at home, other places (complete with addresses), your airline flights, plus detailed log of your movements day by day. All without you doing anything apart from install the Android app and letting it run.
set the controls for the heart of the sun
I went there as a child too. The smaller dish (still looked big to me) was designed to pick up radio signals from the sun. They displayed the sun's position and if you steered the dish right (using the joysticks) then you were rewarded by an oscilloscope display of solar noise.
I remember feeling smug when I did it but was immediately told off by some other kid's dad for hogging the controls. The other kid then proceeded to drive it around some random and very unsolar directions :(
He's not too bad
Can't say I'm a fan but he's not that bad. If we're looking for genuinely deserving targets for the Reg's fully operational deathstar then I am sure forum members would be only too willing to come up with suggestions.
Posted in Review: Sony Xperia Z
Why is it £500?
You wouldn't expect to pay anything like that for a similar spec tablet. Why does the price shoot up when the telephony module goes in.
Her dad is a laugh
Robin Lane Fox used to write a column in the FT and in it he was spouting in all seriousness about a mysterious American internet guru named Batson D. Sealing. The next week his piece started with "Er, my daughter has explained to me that..."
Re: Scarily agree with Google!
That is where we all lose out by saying goodbye to a very handy Google feature.
If Google is actually caching the data then their argument is a lot weaker than if they can say "but we are merely pointing to something that is legitimately there." Google know this so they are phasing out their cache availability. Cached content is already a lot harder to access than it used to be and I expect Google will eventually cite the decline in usage to get rid of it altogether.
wi-fi providers their own worst enemy
The pub near me offers free wi-fi but it is a lot of trouble to use.
How would the average person understand why their tweetbook app is reporting "no connectivity" despite the wi-fi icon being lit?
Even if they can figure out that browser-based signup is required they still are faced with typing in several fields of registration data. Simple on a laptop but irritating on your phone keyboard. Then a password a random mixed case string which really is tricky on a phone especially when fighting against the spelling corrector.
The owners were quite proud when they put in the free wi-fi but I suspect they are disappointed at low customer take-up...
Re: robots.txt is bollocks
Here is an example robots.txt - if you don't believe it got respected by Google then show us some disallowed content in Google's results.
http://www.last.fm/robots.txt
No sympathy
Anyone with basic webmaster experience knows that putting un-password-protected content on your website implicitly means you are granting access for world+dog to see it.
If you are OK with that but specifically want Google to keep its nose out of your content then use a robots.txt and Google will stay respectfully away from you.
Can anyone point me at a good newbies guide?
I just happen to have some large traditional-style databases within which I suspect there is valuable information I am not finding. I would like to experiment with "big data" (whatever it's called) alternative approaches, hopefully bolstering my CV in the process. Now what?
Re: To further calms the nerves
It's not very convincing. DA14 is 45 metres across therefore is worth tracking and warning about. The one that hit Russia was 17 metres across therefore is too small to bother with. There does not seem to be a big difference to me especially given the difficulty of accurate measurement of remote space rocks.
Meanwhile the population of DA14 is cheering "yay that big planet thing didn't hit us"
I can't believe nobody has mentioned
Water, because it is a big factor affecting how your cup of tea turns out. For example here in the Thames Valley hard water zone it's virtually impossible to make a decent cup of tea. Using bottled water or those jug things is an improvement but it's not so easy to make authentic Yorkshire tea outside of Yorkshire.
Boring
How many times a year does this story get rolled out. Of course the skills exist.
Can't remember but
"Lethe, whose waters caused those who drank to forget everything" I think I might actually have been there
Posted in Why you need a home lab to keep your job
A great idea and everyone should do it
It's unfair to restrict "train yourself at home on the cheap" only to IT people - everyone should do it. For example airline pilots don't need all that formal training they can run flight simulator after the kids have gone to bed. And brain surgeons could have a rack of little bubbling tanks in the garage containing squidgy grey things. I would still feel completely safe taking my brain on their planes.
Posted in Why you need a home lab to keep your job
Re: Alexei Sayle
Before I got into computers I went for a job as a lathe operator but I was turned down.
Re: Some tips for sites
Offtopic for mobile but I would like to propose:
8. After allowing me to view the site for only three seconds DO NOT pop up a content-covering box asking me to take a survey where I feed back my experience of how much I do or don't like your site .
Re: Bring back the O2 Joggler
Wash your mouth out the Joggler is a lovely piece of kit - assuming you bought after the reduction from 400 pounds to 50 of course. I have one right now it is my general media control thingy in the kitchen. Very well built with nice solid chrome at the front. None of your creaky thin plastic box like cheapo tablet would have.
I'm floored
Why everyone's obsession with making sure there is a reinforced floor? 400kg sounds a lot but it is only the weight of five people. Whenever I enter a room with four people already there I never worry if the floor will fall in.
Moar!
Obviously share peoples' security concerns but in practice contactless payment is extremely handy. Bought a sandwich in M&S the other day and a lot easier just to wave the card than fiddle about with PINpad for three quid. If it were integrated into your phone then eventually would no longer have to remember car keys, door entry card...
What's the benefit for Mr. Confused Punter?
Assuming there is a winner and the whole NFC thing gets implemented - what do consumers and retailers get out of it? Surely not merely a more simple payment process because contactless payment already works with cards already in use.
Re: Lo-tech alternative
OK I got it a bit wrong about the simulated beard. In fact you have to smear the boot polish around a bit more asymetrically. The faces without the red squares successfully remained undetectable,.
http://cdn.gajitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/defeat-facial-recognition.jpg
Lo-tech alternative
You don't need Near Infra-Red. Instead just smudge black paint or boot polish over the lower part of your face it confuses the hell out of facial recognition software.
Payments to MS
I didn't realise the extent to which Google had to license from Microsoft. Perhaps this explains why Google recently announced they were discontinuing their free Exchange sync tool.
Re: Nothing wrong
There's plenty wrong with eating horse meat. Ask any horse.
Re: Just a consumer.
I am not a big fan of Mills & Boon -style paperback fiction but I'm sure it's a "great reading experience" for you. However try using your Kindle for PDF reference material intended for A4 size, you will soon wish you had a 10 inch tablet instead.
Is this a legit patch? SSL failure here
Is it just me or is there something funny about the authenticity of this page. Other SSL on microsoft.com are signed by a different CA and don't have this problem.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-008
I get "unknown CA".
Even worse are the "now give us feedback" nags
Yes I bought a small item for 1.49 delivered. No I cannot now bother to click through several screens logging back in and rating the seller's performance.
L.P. was nothing...
...compared to Marina
not again thankyou
Vendors always claim "this time it's real" for their certification programs but honestly they are a treadmill delivering value only to the vendor itself. Any decent syllabus will by definition be time-consuming to complete and by the time you finally do get there you will find that the industry has moved on to the next thing.
I did absolutely tons of Novell and Microsoft exams but always no sooner had I got the latest shiny badge than it would be obsolete and back to square one. Comes a time you have to draw a line and ask yourself is this a good investment of your time.
What really happened
"That's one small...er, leap... for the world.. AAHH DAM DAM FKKIT!"
"No problem Neil we can do another take, remember light and bouncy luvvie as you come down the ladder"
Proud to be a Piler
I get tons of mail and I know that most of them I will never need to read again. I also know for certain that there are a small proportion of them I certainly will need to refer back to in the future, and I don't know in advance which these will be. So I keep everything, but it doesn't make sense for me to waste energy diligently filing the useless 95 percent.
Comma
Hi! Monday morning pedant here. Please can we not import the American habit of replacing the word "and" with a comma. As in "40nm NFC tech easy on batteries, case sizes"
Disability discrimination
As he must only have had one kidney.
How about...
Ankylosaurus? Now there's one evil-looking mofo.
Boot on the other foot
"Android-only for the moment - iOS is promised soon"
Traditionally the other way around so I think this is an interesting comment on global Android takeup.
