Posts by Andrew_b65
53 posts • joined Tuesday 20th September 2011 11:57 GMT
Google car?
So is this a manifestation of the third or sixth wave? You state the third in your article, but the car's learning abilities imply the sixth.
Re: New product?
@ downvoters
I posted with my username not AC. It's humour, you eejits. I can see the queues forming outside the stores already.
I knock about with plenty of wealthy types that fill up on any new Apple gear without even considering what they'll be doing with it, or if they even need it. The previous years' models are languishing in the kids toyboxes. They buy a new car every year and throw out more food every week than you eat in a month. Despite peak Apple claims, there is a massive army of buyers out there willing and able to jump on anything they put out.
New product?
They could release shit flavoured lollypops and all those Apple worshipers would be sucking them all day long Kojak-style, bragging on how great they taste.
Nordic spruce
So, in the 1970's when we Britons were being chastised for generating acid rain from our industries and destroying all the forests in Scandinavia, we were actually helping hold back global warming.
Who new? We needn't have turned our economy to the financial services sector and consequentially allowed it to have an inadequate manufacturing base to cope with the current depression after all. Oh well.
Gov't tests
I recall going through one of their tests, which was supposed to be measuring some level of education/intelligence or something, but quite a few of the multiple choice questions contained insufficient data to determine a correct answer with 100% certainty and the only appropriate response should have been 'Don't know'. Were they actually asking the subject to spot that these questions were nonsense, or were they just crap questions?
This isn't an actual question, just the kind of stuff they were asking:
It rained for one hour on Monday, two hours on Tuesday and four hours on Wednesday. How many hours will it rain on Thursday?
a. 5
b. 6
c. 8
d. Don't know
PS4
Here's hoping the new XBox reveal is a bit more revealing than the recent boring, hardware-missing PS4 omnishambles.
Goldmember
My god! Those tracks in the Martian sand look exactly like a giant....
Johnson! Over here, take a look at this (and so on...)
Lambs to slaughter
1500 is a pretty low sample. How many were 'in contract' and how long before their phone was 'due for renewal' Amerkin style? These US consumers live in an entirely different world compared to the EU when it comes to mobile phones and contracts.
If their phone isn't due for renewal any time soon, they may not even be thinking about their options yet.
In all, this would seem to be a positive for Nokia and Blackberry because there appear to be a lot of floating voters. All you need do is bribe the carriers more than Apple/Samsung and you get sales come renewal.
Degree of difficulty to decode
The Reg posted a story a few years back highlighting research that found harder to read serif fonts resulted in better memory consolidation than san serif fonts. It concluded that if the brain was having to 'work harder' to decode the text, then it was better able to comprehend and remember the content.
Extrapolating from this research, it's reasonable to consider that students witnessing their old-skool lecturer's handwritten scrawlings gradually appear on the board are going to have to make an effort to read it and quite possibly be using their brain to anticipate what is being written. Both of these activities are likely to improve comprehension and recall.
Anything which gets these lazy powerpoint lecturers actually doing some work once in a while has to be a good thing. Lead by example.
@ Neoc
Dude, the old Windows desktop is still there. Just hit the Windows key +D i.e. "Desktop mode"
Microsoft really need to point this out. What you think is probably the prevailing understanding of Windows 8. It's wrong.
Lack of Start button?
I offered my kids the low cost Win8 upgrade licence that came with my puny netbook which I bought last year and they turned it down because of the 'too different UI'. One of them uses a Nokia Lumia WinPhone. They like new things, usually.
They discovered the Windows key +D combination last week and are now kicking themselves.
Perhaps Microsoft DO need to point out that Windows 7 is still there, kinda. I think this will be putting a lot of people off. Average Joe Public doesn't think about walled gardens. The kids thought the Metro Start was 'too simple' and wouldn't offer them the flexibility of the familiar near twenty year old desktop experience.
I bet the software engineers envisaged the Win8 Start screen as an introductory bridge to the Metro UI, which was clearly designed for touchscreen devices, so that they could have the same look and feel across phones, tablets and PCs. The marketing people probably just decided to go all in for Metro and neglected to point out that Windows is still there for proper computers and real working environments.
Faddy, played out
This is like chocolate flavoured Philadelphia cheese spread.
What a complete pile of poo!
Posted in Review: HTC One
Potato instead of camera module
HTC will struggle to sell their flagship phones while they continue to fit potatoes instead of camera modules.
HTC's marketing department can claim what they like about their cameras, but year after year, the back to back tests show time and time again their imaging capability is utter shite.
On the positive side, at least the build quality on this new model might actually see out a two year contract for once.
Posted in Windows Phone 8 support to end in 2014
Re: So if I had bought a Windows Phone 8 on day of issue [1] ...
Skimming through the version history for iOS, it would appear that the support/update cycle for any giver version, i.e. ios3, ios4, ios5, etc. is a little over one year with Apple too. If you bought an iPhone 4 on day of issue, Apple expected you to upgrade the OS to the next version as it was released and didn't continue to support the originally installed version beyond 13 months if you didn't bother to upgrade to iOS 5.
iOS 4, released 21/06/2010, end-of-lifed as iOS 4.3.5 25/07/2011
iOS 5, released 12/10/2011, end-of-lifed as iOS 5.1.1 25/05/2012
iOS 6, released 19/09/2012, probably not long to go now before final update released either
If iPhone users are getting on okay with 'roughly' annual major version upgrades, why is it not going to be okay for WP users? I think this WP update cycle story has spread around the 'net without due consideration and I expect to be reading an official statement from MS on this in the next few days.
If MS don't clear this mess up with a statement, they're idiots and deserve to have consumers thinking that their partners are selling phones with an unsupported, obsolete OS, like the stories try to implicate.
Posted in Windows Phone 8 support to end in 2014
Re: All current handsets are supported and will be upgraded to WP9
Described by their own readers as 'bullshit FUD'. Go figure it out before you spread nonsense like this around the Reg.
@ aluminium goolies
The real issue is naked trampolining. It sounds like a set of clackers as you jump up and down.
Swindling bastards
Hey Barclays, how about you actually try to make some money through adding value to products and services instead of just swindling it from everyone else? You might only be taking a penny here, a penny there, multiplied by ten trillion, but the money you 'make' doesn't come from nowhere.
Every casino banking market manipulation gain is a loss on a balance sheet somewhere else. False profit from ill-gotten gains. The only loser is everybody except you.
Metro light touch makeover?
Nokia could be on the right track when even El Reg is going for a light touch Metroish-style makeover.
Square corners, big typefaces, grid layout. Looks much more, modern...
TPS is wank
The TPS is able to act only on unsolicited LIVE 1to1 calls. Pre-recorded messages are not covered by the scope of the TPS which is why it is completely crap and useless. Have you noticed how most of these unsolicited calls start with a recorded announcement with a list of options to speak to an operator?
The TPS is perfectly fine with this activity. Their remit needs to be changed to encompass recorded messages.
Re: ...
...or two square tables arranged adjacent to each other forming a rectangle, but not actually being a rectangle?
Fuck me! This is all so pathetic. I hope @pple burn all their cash hoard on lawyers, wankers!
Re: I also thought I was alone...
Me too. Retired my first gen MSI Wind last August for an end of line Acer Aspire One 753 @£240. A few more pixels on the display, and the slightly better gpu can now handle HD video with HDMI out to a TV if I need it. Figured I had better get it before netbooks ceased to exist. Not Win8 compatible, but who cares? Best of all, it's still too puny to run Minecraft so the kids won't touch it.
Re: The Ponemon Institute
Me too <:(
Too risky?
Maybe Apple won't buy their own shares back because they think they are a risky purchase? Didn't they announce that they intend instead to spend a fair wedge of their cash reserves on trying to develop something 'new'? Perhaps portrait TV sets for iPhone-captured video?
Personally, yeah, I think the Apple bubble looks like it's finally ready to burst, or at least is getting like an old saggy balloon with all the helium leaking out. Apple is beyond boring now. They've benefited from being 'in' for long enough. Hopefully they'll start to return to a market share more representative of their actual usefulness as a manufacturer of technology products for users who don't like to think too hard and can take them into a shop on the high street for 'repairs' when they unwittingly f**k them up.
I have a question
Which end is the front?
Pity the fool...
...that fails to keep an eye on his enemy.
Asked for his thoughts on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, the search supremo replied: “I have not used it.”
The arrogance of this man. Perhaps in a few years' time: 'All of your Googlephones are belong to us' while his back is turned, ignoring the feeble and irrelevant competition. Seismic shifts have happened before, Yahoo!, Apple.
They've found...
... a flattened Panda Pop bottle!
Different biz
They're not both in the same business.
I can see why YouView aren't bovvered. There's little chance of confusion and the benefit would all be in favour of Total Ltd anyway. I think the legal action is just about publicity.
Re: As they say...
That's not even security camera footage. I reckon those idiots filmed it themselves in iPortrait video format on their very own iDumb.
Tax credits
These tax-dodging multinationals could at least be sent a bill for tax credits paid out by the government to their underpaid workers. Why should the UK government subsidize their wage bills so they can make bigger profits to be hived off into an off-shore tax avoidance operation? Low pay means less tax & NI revenue for HMRC and more tax credits payouts. It increases our budget deficit.
Corporation tax should be paid to each country in which these companies operate according to the ratio in which revenues are generated. The current regime allows these multinationals to leach money out of economies which are active, spending, and generating revenues, causing a distorted picture of the balance of trade. There is no upside to our economy in allowing the current system to continue. Countries which balance their books by offering tax-dodging facilities should be held to account.
Maemo 5 ?
Your timeline completely missed out Maemo 5 and the N900, just sayin'.
iPhone user - Q. How did I know on the very first page?
I will not be rushing to trade in my iPhone - no shit, Sherlock.
A.
"Yet as a camera, the complete lack of grip and the protruding lens so close to the left edge makes handling as uncomfortable and unsafe as any other phone. On the plus side, you can fire off the camera from a large button on the edge. In fact, once you turn the phone horizontally to use it as a camera, it is a pleasant surprise to find that commands such as the shutter release and the zoom lever are exactly where you expect them to find them on a compact camera."
Despite being a professional snapper, this chick instinctively holds a phone in portrait when taking a photo like all those other gormless iphoners.
*never seen before
I see no problem here.
*as defined by Apple
Re: The USA patent system is a disgrace
I'm willing to bet my full cooked English breakfast that Apple have a different team working on litigation than the one that works on spotting new technology and ideas coming into vogue so they can be 'invented' as magical new things for their followers to behold.
I can't be sure which team is the larger and best funded, however.
Re: FaceTime works better than Skype
Yup, for sure. I've seen the Apple adverts on TV and the quality of their iFacetime video calling looks fantastic, on a par with the HD video call quality I get on Skype desktop. iPotato owners must be so pleased with this amazing service. It's magic. One of my kids' friends tried video Skyping him on his iToy over WiFi and the video was shit. So on this evidence, iFacetime is better than Skype video.
Come to think of it, they also tried iFacetime with two iToys and it was still shit. Could the adverts be exaggerating the quality? I dread to think what it would be like over 3G.
Re: Weather
Yup, right on cue the weather guys are now saying that the jetstream has finally stopped howling over the UK and is moving north allowing the Azores high to expand and let us in on a bit of that southern European summer weather at last.
If I recall correctly, the last mega CME was back in March before which we were all expecting a great summer with temperatures already being unseasonably high. Things turned noticeably wetter and cooler following the last 'event'. Perhaps there is something in it?
Re: Weather
Maybe it'll give the Jetsteam a kick up the ass and send it packing up to Greenland where it belongs so we can at least have a few weeks of summer instead of this incessant rain? It's even driving my cats nuts. And they look at me like I'm the one causing the rain.
Re: not very keen ...
I have found that running two radios instead of one generally results in poor battery life on my mobile device. I only ever switch on its WiFi radio if the 3G data signal is too pants to use, or I need to do a large download.
For me,
WiFi ON, battery = 1 day
WiFi OFF, battery = 3 days
Easyjack
I found this too with Easyjet. Each time you re-visit the site, the price of the flight goes up. Use a different browser, and it starts at the base price again. The other one they do is "this flight is no longer available, please choose another flight" when you get to the checkout. Go back and the flight is still there, just not at the price you originally added it to the cart. I guess they figure that if you are actually ready to pay, there's no harm in sniping an extra quid or two out of you at the last minute.
Hmmm, I wonder what sort of cookie declaration Easyjet should be making here...
Re: Advertising does what it does.
Perhaps put a bit harshly, but iPeeps are a marketing dream. A self-identified group of consumers with an easily predictable set of values and responses. It's shooting fish in a barrel for the marketing guys.
This particular story isn't negative, though. iPeeps aren't being ripped off, just being presented with offers more likely to meet their expectations / aspirations. Although thinking about it, they should also offer these specially selected rooms at a slightly lower price but perhaps with the bedsheets not changed and dirty bathrooms for the growing army of 'second users' so they can keep up too.
Clearly, over time the mode average profile of iPeeps is changing from 'iHave' to 'iWannahave'. Eventually the cycle will eat itself and the iHaves will turn away from the brand. Take BMW cars as a perfect example.
National survey
My 11 year old brought home a letter a few months back asking permission for him to be included in a national survey into weight trends among the UK population. The weigh-ins would be carried out by an external agency and compiled nationally (presumably to highlight child obesity hot spots).
Not a bad objective in theory, except any nugget can tell if their kid is fat. It's whether you do anything about it that matters.
The worst of it was that the external agency also required the full name, date of birth, full postal address, telephone number, names of parents for each child (referring to it as standard contact information). The reason given was so that they could write to parents with the 'result' of the weigh-in.
Naturally, I refused to allow my child to be included and wrote to the agency carrying out the 'survey' to query why they needed identity theft levels of data for a simple weight survey. They didn't see a problem with it.
The first USB stick-in-a-coat-pocket-on-a-bus comment here says it all for me.
Accept malware
This site uses cookies. Some may have been set already. Read About Managing our cookies. Please click here to unwittingly accept the installation of malware on your machine under the guise of accepting cookies.
This is going to be a dream for botnets!
It will be safer to install a browser extension to automatically accept genuine cookie requests to prevent my 9 & 11 year old users from filing their machine with dross. Are these cookie requests going to be certified?
Double facepalm.
SIM Swap
This Bemilo 'big brother' proposition is worthless. Any sprog of mine will be smart enough to maintain their privacy by carrying two SIMs, one for dopey Mum & Dad and another for mates & dates.
Posted in Nokia Lumia 900 WinPho 7 smartphone
Re: Android Porting
Erm, I can't imagine what ICS would be like running on this hardware, except dreadful. The point is that WP7 doesn't need the most recent hardware to run smoothly. It was the same with Symbian. I guess this was probably a driving factor behind Nokia's dramatic WP move (like it or not). Most consumers won't be buying a phone on the specification, they'll be buying based on eye-candy and what it can do for them.
It's funny to think that Microsoft, who used to be the driving force behind the need to constantly built more powerful PCs to cope with the latest version of Windows, are now producing a mobile OS which is able to work really well on two year old hardware specs.
I was livid when Nokia dropped Maemo and disgusted again when Elop shot Symbian in the back. Lately I'm becoming less hostile towards the Nokia/WP thing as it does seem to be starting to turn into something new and refreshing.
I can run faster than an aeroplane...
Heck, even a trolley dolly can push her cart of wares faster than a plane. If she's pushing her cart from the back towards the front, her forward velocity is in excess of the plane's.
Sure, her velocity relative to the plane is minimal, but relative to the whole universe it is still greater than that of the plane. It's the same on those 'moving pavements' at airports, you can stand still, or walk. If you choose to walk, you're actually moving at a fair old lick due to the combined velocity. You could probably beat Usain Bolt in a 100m sprint if you run.
If these guys have figured a way of making data carried on the light wave increasing its velocity relative to the wave, then it would be travelling faster than light by moving forward on the wave instead of just being carried by it. Perhaps these experiments could lead to a way of making it easier to control the Beagle 9 Mars lander without that annoying 20 minute delay?
As observed by a common idiot, being me.
Roof?
You had a roof and newspapers? Bloody luxury. We had to hold up us 'muddy stick wi' our freezing cold hands from our hole in t'middle o' road. Well it wasn't really OUR hole, we rented it from t'council for two week's wages a week. And t'muddy stick was borrowed from us posh neighbour what had an empty fish & chip wrapper recycling business.
Why bother...
... ripping it up and starting again. Apple now have enough followers who's wealth exceeds their common sense. All they need do is squeeze out a 'new' model each year and it'll be sucked up with last year's shiny tossed into the toy box for the little'uns.
Retina PPI? I don't see any current need to supply more than 1920 horizontal pixels in a device like this. Even a 4:3 device would be capable of displaying full HD video.
Posted in PlayStation Vita price dips below £200
iPod Touch?
The price of the Vita is kinda in the same ball park as iPod touch. I bought my youngest an 8GB version for £150 this Christmas. The Vita has a larger display, real controls, GPS and expandable memory. Add to that, the Vita packs a quad-core processor and the price doesn't look too far off being about right.
There are plenty of low cost chicken-shit games already available for the PSP under the 'Minis' moniker, so it's not all £40 epics.
If it drops to £150-170 it'll be a serious contender to the rotten-fruit's casual gaming device for kids. My older son has already blown his birthday cash on a Vita pre-order with an 8GB card from Amazon for £209. I have urged him to wait at least three weeks in case the price...
Posted in Lumia sales fail to set world alight
Eggcorn
I love that one - 'as a pose to' instead of 'as opposed to'.
Classic. Cheered up my miserable day.
You're doing it wrong..
It's the way you're charging it. Other users are not having battery issues. The people with problems are charging it the wrong way. iCustomers don't know what they want, they have to be told what they want. Apple have already made this clear.
This is the battery life you were looking for, you can go about your business, move along.
