Posts by Fihart 1150 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008
Call from friend: "my internet seems to have disappeared. BT say the server must be down".
This is the friend who had a desktop PC wired to an ancient BT router. But she then bought a laptop with wireless. When I asked if she had now got a wireless router from BT she replied that she didn't need one as she had internet from BT via wireless anyway.
Next time I visited to fix some other bit of tech I saw that indeed she had BT wireless -- but she was clearly tapping into a neighbour's BT FON facility. She brushed away my concern that she should actually use the broadband she was paying for by getting a wireless router connected to her own ADSL feed.
So when the call came the other day I sighed and explained that probably the neighbour whose service she'd been using unwittingly had gone on holiday and turned off the router.
"But I'm paying for BT broadband, I don't understand."
I think she still doesn't really believe me but has agreed to ring BT and ask for a wireless router.
"....why most people want to unlock their phone (read Jailbreak) is to play pirated content and games."
I rather doubt that.
I'm sure the major incentive is to switch to a better value provider.
Probably also to enable a newer version of Android than has been released by the telco -- or to rid the phone of branded cruft.
I don't know what's more astonishing.
a) That the US allowed the telcos to successfully lobby for the original move to make unlocking a crime.
b) That the legislature eventually responded to people's outrage about the above travesty.
The lesson (I guess) is that big business will push us around as far as it can until they go just that bit too far.
Locking quite unnecessary anyway if the customer is locked into a 24 month contract.
In the case of pre-pay (Pay As You Go) the telcos could just drop the subsidies on those phones.
Probably, the real solution is to uncouple the telcos from the selling of phones -- let them sell connections and regular electronics chains sell phones. Chances are both connection deals and phone prices would be cheaper with more competition.
Where is the evidence that such devices lead to pirating ?
Obviously they are designed to copy CDs already owned by the driver.
So that the music contained can be listened to in the car with more convenience (and at less risk of distraction) than 1) locating the correct CD. 2) extracting CD from case single-handedly.3) posting CD in slot.
While the telcos have a de facto cartel on distribution of over-priced major branded phones, they are actually growing the next generation of manufacturers that will eat them.
Own-brand models from formerly small Chinese manufacturers -- T Mobile's deals with ZTE for example -- are giving such firms the finance and brand awareness necessary to launch directly into the market. Huawei are the first that most people here are aware of, offering good phones at the right price. In future, lesser-known brands such as the ones mentioned in the article will gain acceptance with consumers.
Will someone tell Yahoo Mobile's designers that putting a CAPTCHA hurdle between signing in for a new password makes the process unusable.
For a start the new CAPTCHA version has not only jumbled letters you have to enter but a swirling mass of other characters behind. Virtually impossible to read on a small screen. Do these people never test stuff for usability ?
When the first postal service was established, recipients had to pay. Result, they turned mail away. Delivery costs were unmanageable and, thus, postage expensive. Royal Mail's solution was the Penny Post whereby the sender paid an affordable amount and recipient paid nothing.
Apply the same principle to all texts so the spammers and scammers are out of business.
As for telcos taking a slice of revenue obtained by deception, that's a case for Small Claims Court (argue proceeds of crime principle).
Similar in UK -- £20 to the telco to get a code to unlock a phone or (often) about the same to dodgy corner shop to do it for you . Problem really is that many phones, after a 24 month contract, are not worth £20 or, at least, a new phone is more tempting.
Unlocking and rooting Android -- maybe not worth the risk with a new phone, not worth the trouble with an older one.
So stuff goes to landfill unnecessarily
Basically, telcos need to be told to automatically unlock phones for free at end of contract or stop locking contract phones in the first place. Personally I'd rather see the end of the telcos phone selling cartel and let them just provide connections on transparent terms. This would make it profitable for regular retailers to sell phones that work with any telco, at competitive prices.
My guess is that as smartphones become increasingly commoditised people will ship in grey market phones from lesser brands (not least because models not crippled by telcos have twin SIM slots) .
If you must listen to music at the volumes needed to drown traffic or rail noise (and deafen yourself) stick with earbuds.
On-ear h/phones like those by "Doctor" Dre look just as stupid as boy-beards, pointy shoes and those jeans that hang around the crotch.
@ John 156 for the most thoughtful comment here.
US TV shows and movies (and many UK films made with an eye on the US market) are too American for my tastes. Ignoring the obvious pointless explosions and shouting and the one-dimensional villains, the stories largely lack the ambiguity of real life.
Thankfully a few shows roll along like Madmen and The Sopranos but by and large I'm happier watching something like the French 'Spiral' or Italian 'Montalbano' and the Scandi cop shows.
I also watch foreign-language films on the basis that if they have made it over here without the hype put behind Hollywood rubbish, they must have something going for them. Surprising how good films from Argentina, Iran or Korea have turned out to be.
Report confirms the general experience.
Best stuff on BBC is old Danish, Swedish, Italian series.
Best US stuff -- Madmen only available via Sky and Breaking Bad via torrent. For most people not at all unless downloaded while on hols abroad -- thanks for that Virgin/BT.
Commercial TV is doomed due to vast choice but little you'd choose and infested with ad breaks that are too frequent and too long.
If enough people dump Chrome and answer the exit questionnaire thoughtfully provided by Google, maybe things will get fixed. Note that the questionnaire also mentions privacy and app store so I mentioned worries about irrelevant permissions demanded by some apps.
I suspect that Google do monitor uninstall reasons -- they are an information company above all.
Your record player example clearly applies to mobile phone -- screen too small for internet, keyboard too small for typing, music player doesn't support folders, mapping which should work with GPS wants expensive data feed as well. Takes a sixty page manual to explain it all (if you're lucky).
When I find a toaster that also makes coffee without compromising either function or second guessing (wrongly) whether I take sugar or not, I might take smartphones more seriously.
Good point Simon Harris. The 70s Kenwood stuff in the pic may still be working somewhere and much of it sounding good.
My personal best for an old amp is a US spec (110 v) Kenwood budget model found in a car boot a couple of years ago. I remember this model's Trio (UK) equivalent belonging to a friend in the mid seventies when it was already a few years old.
Car boot find works perfectly after cleaning some switches -- it was low spec (15 watts ?) bottom of the range kit so never sounded the bees knees but it's acceptable. Particularly like the fake wood printed steel case and champagne coloured alloy fascia.
Presently listening to impressive 1980s Quad 405 Mk 2 and preamp, elderly Marantz CD player and 1970s B&W DM2s -- some found in charity shops and dumped in street.
I have no reason to change that system.
I guess some of the IBM magic rubbed off on Lenovo, so I was unpleasantly surprised opening a four or five year old Lenovo desktop to see bulging capacitors like I've seen on "lesser" brand computers which were older.
Astonished this problem has gone on for so long.
Replaced the Lenovo with an Asus.
All you need to know about phone system in Mexico (actually, all you need to know about Mexico) is that Carlos Slim is the richest man in the world making money in one of its poorer regions.
But over the border in the land of the free, Verizon and AT&T pretty much have a duopoly that's reflected in prices higher that in Europe.
Corruption isn't the issue (its endemic in Mex) the system is what's wrong. Where governments dish out licences to print money, no surprise when the recipients do so left to their own devices.
Before the curbs on roaming charges, who'd have thought we'd be grateful to the EU.
They didn't need to ban CD recorders because consumers didn't buy them.
1) They cost too much
2) Some models proved very unreliable.
3) The discs they needed cost more (to pay fee to copyright owners) and were hard to find.
4) You could rip CD etc on a computer without any of the above issues.
Ironically, many recorders were bought by musicians to record music they actually owned the copyright to.
If you complain about T Mobile they later send you an invitation to contribute to improving their service. Thinking this might actually be helpful, I started completing the questionnaire. After a number of questions I realised it was just a market research tool and sent them a snotty reply.
From their pricing, one might guess that the telcos think we are idiots and this rather confirmed it.
Long years ago a friend living in Covent Garden with no car applied for a permit and sold it to a local ad agency. Since then Camden Council have tightened up on applications and enforcement.
As for comment above that it's public space and we can do what we want with it -- the permits are intended to facilitate people living there to park without having to compete with outsiders commuting by car. Both London and (in my experience) San Francisco have reasonably good public transport for commuters.
Right in principle but, more accurately, it's not a warranty and the six years is a different issue.
Warranty's really an arrangement between the maker and the retailer under which the former undertakes for one year following sale the retailer's duty to repair/replace. Trading Standards in UK have a rough benchmark that consumer durables should be serviceable for about 6 years -- and that, in cases of product failure (roughly speaking) not caused by the consumer, the retailer should repair at no cost or replace -- or refund (a proportion relating to age).
Big UK retailers seem to deliberately fail to train their shop staff (including managers) in the realities of the law and most will brush off anything outside the manufacturer's warranty. Solution is to call head office threatening Small Claims action -- in my experience they will always blink first.
When I've been to court, the judge took a commonsense approach similar to the above and awarded damages and costs.
Half right about the trini tellies -- great picture but terrible remote/interface.
I was speaking with an old colleague last week about this very subject and he recalled how at the ad agency we worked for in the 80s the conference rooms had Sony monitors and video players -- few, if anyone, could get the monitors to talk to the players.
Re the coroporate security stuff -- what peed me off was simply trying to dowload an app from Blackberry World was a faff via the phone (can't remember why) so I started all over again via PC/wireless link/router and it took an age updating stuff on the PC and rebooting the phone a couple of times (at 3.5 minutes per reboot). Quite apart from the lousy selection in BB World, I've avoided going that route again.
I appreciate that BB10 loses some of the annoyances -- such as over moving the SIMM to another phone -- but I quickly lose goodwill with firms that have forced me to do things their way without any obvious benefit to me.
While I really don't like Blackberry's way of working, the recent hardware's about right.
I dislike things like (apparently) having to wipe the phone if you change the SIM. Or the SIM being linked to Blackberry rather than your telco so data capacity paid for can't simply be transferred to another phone. I dislike the (to me unnecessary) corporate level security stuff which just hampers normal use.
Though I normally use a BB 9800, I recently gained a friend's cheap Android (thanks to T Mobile not fixing it with the required OS reload) and realised how unusable on-screen keyboard is on a small phone if you have adult male fingers.
Though the issue is partly resolved on bigger Androids like the HTC One, I find myself looking at Blackberry Q10 for its reasonably sized screen and large-ish physical keyboard. This addresses my issues with a previous Nokia E71 (screen too small but keyboard brilliant) and present BB 9800 (screen bigger but keyboard too small).
From my observation driving on the LA freeways people were also reading books and doing their hair while driving. On the surface streets I daily saw pileups at junctions in the rush hour and nearly had one myself due to the monotony of low speed, lane-disciplined driving combined with drowse-inducing effects of fatty breakfasts.
I wish they'd ban these confusing "£3.49 per month" (only for 6 months, then much more) offers.
As is intended, just makes comparisons more confusing. Most providers (as with mobile/cellphones) seem to share some infrastructure and offer essentially the same services -- so comparison ought to be fairly easy.
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