Posts by Steve Evans

So....

Does this mean the banana will now become the El Reg unit of measurement for drugs?

Pah!

I'd just be happy with a signal in my house.

It used to be fine.

Then about a year ago it got worse... A month or two later I got a text message telling me that they had performed some modifications to my local cell and I should notice an improvement in the signal.

It's been the same crap level ever since.

I can move the phone 2 inches on the table and it will go from 2 bars to nothing. Earlier today as I picked it up it had 4, I looked in disbelief, and then they all vanished.

Oh, and I'm talking old 2G signal here, let's not even go near the 3G signal level!

Hmmm...

So they split up on the 22nd, so how comes she has the presents he bought for her?

Sounds a bit odd to me too...

Plus technically if he bought them, and never gave them to her, then they are not hers to sell... Aka theft.

Haha...

I love how Apple's glove has to solve a problem that they have created. Resistive touch screens work fine when you touch them with anything, only capacitive ones, like the ones used in the iPhone, object to being touched by non conducting objects and require a glove with holes cut in it!

Scrooge outfit?

You sure?

If I were him I'd keep well away from Stockwell tube station!

I'd rather...

I'd rather have a repeat of Quincy or Kojak than watch yet another premium rate phoneline financed quiz/bingo/roulette program. Channel 5 barely gets past midnight before it hangs up any pretence of making real content.

the iPhone has nabbed 50 per cent of worldwide smartphone usage

Do we have to debunk your figures yet again?

Honestly I trust HM Govts usage of statistics more than El Reg at the moment!

"She was, however, cuffed on 18, 22 and 26 April"

Well no wonder she got over excited!

Wonderful...

I've never heard mutex described with the uses of toilet cubicals before, but I shall be using that simile in future! great stuff...

Big artists...

...but I bet the tracks are the album filler kinda tripe.

Friend whores

So don't be a friend whore, or if you must accept every friend request, learn how to use the different privacy levels and group features.

Personally I keep my friend list down to about 100 people tops, and regularly have a cull of the pointless, inactive or annoying ones, this can even include relatives.

Oh, and it does help having a common name too.

Privacy theory sponsored by wood for the trees research :-)

Pity...

Nobody bothers to turns the anti-competition laws against the oil companies who meet together to fix prices in something called "OPEC".

WTF?

This man doesn't need prison, he needs sectioning!

@Daniel

I don't think the "You're cute, do you come here often?" line is going to work on The Moderatrix.

Try more grovelling, pleading and begging; scatter with profuse apologies, the words "Maam" and "Mistress", and you might just get away with some red marks across your behind.

Errrr

That doesn't exactly sound like the description of a starving man does it!

And now for some less skewed figures from Gartner...

According to figures released on 12th Nov, 09 by Gartner, world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, Microsoft’s mobile OS witnessed a downfall from 11 % of the global smartphone market in Q3 2008 to 7.9 % later this year. The iPhone’s share saw a rise to 17.1 % from 12.9 %, and RIM’s share had risen from 16 percent to 20.8 percent. Symbian’s market share fell with 10% from 49.7 % to 44.6 % over the same period The new open-source Android operating system did not have any market share in Q3 2008, however, in Q3 2009, it had managed to capture 3.9 % of the smartphone market. Palm’s WebOS had 1.1 %, and other Linux-based mobile operating systems had 4.7 %

17.1% != 50%

Ummm...

So you need turn by turn navigation to walk from A to B in a city built on a grid system?

Hell guys, you should be able to do that yourself with nothing more than long/lat!

Come test it in London, whilst driving, and could you avoid the congestion charge area too.

Eeek!

But won't somebody think about the ferrets?!

@Coruscating Frenzy

I'd say there is no feedback loop (or feedback at all) between the first line support we talk to, and anyone else in Nokia with N97 issues!

Tut tut...

"Raid-protected"...

Raid isn't about protection, it's about availability... However it does beg the question... How do you back this bugger up?!

Also...

This example is no justification for logging and retaining the information.

It's only a justification for using it real time as it occurs, and with the callers permission.

For many years this has happened with mobile calls to the emergency services. Last time I rang 999 from my mobile I spoke initially to an emergency operator on the mobile network, then I heard them hand me over to the "real" emergency operator and give my number and approximate position before dropping out of the call and connecting me through. So that when I said the name of the road I was reporting the incident in, the operator didn't need to know the postcode or town name (which if you were a bit lost in strange parts you may not actually know reliably) as they were already on the correct page of the map thanks to the location info the mobile operator had passed over.

I thought it was rather cool use of technology at the time and didn't feel at all intruded upon or spied on. Although why they couldn't send that information in digital data form instead of spoken words is a little more concern to those of us familiar with Heath Robinson!

I'm sure that any day now the "think about the children" line will be thrown in, saying that missing children could be traced by this system (because everyone is a paedo, rapist or murdered these days don't-you-know). Which of course will be instantly defeated by the villain in question when he checks his victim for a mobile phone (which I'm sure they would do anyway) and throws it out of the car window.

How about we set up a test study group... Like say all the MPs. Then we will study the movement log information and decide if it is of any use... Who knows, it might detect fraud, dubious meetings, or where they go instead of attending parliament and representing the views of the people. That is their job isn't it?

Only 15 minutes...

So if all 200 turn up it will take over 6 working man weeks to clear the queue?

Isn't it nice...

Our govt are trying to legally push to have our ISPs monitor our every move when they really should be encourage them to actively contact and help disinfect people on their network who are spewing spam.

First thing I did...

Skip forward to find the info on the flash...

Why kit a phone out as a camera and then giving it the flash illumination of a candle? I really don't understand Nokia sometimes, they have previous experience with xenon flashes, and it worked great!

Wait for it...

Some company will earn £500,000 for coming up with the name/logo OM or O-M.

Honestly...

If this doesn't prove the sheer volume of dross on the app store, nothing will.

Come on, there aren't 100,000 application requirements for a phone! Where am I is useful. So is a map (which the iPhone gets straight from google, so just an http interface there). And locating local things, oh google again or yell.co.uk.

How many of these apps are either just a front end for, or could be replaced with a RSS feed? An RSS enabled phone and/or the ability to use a google search would wipe out most of them.

@A/C 12:16

Actually the original N95 works perfectly well with later firmware. I have V31 on mine and it's as stable as a rock. I'm always using Opera mini on it. I agree with you it's far better than the dedicated symbian versions!

Pity Orange UK didn't bother approving firmware releases past V12 so if I hadn't used NSS to change the ID code to generic Euro model I would have never known... The wouldn't have been trying to make me upgrade to another phone would they? Hmmmm...

Another head in the trough...

No shock...

When you've seen the brick of St Jobs shifting for silly money, why ruin the illusion for the mases by setting a sensible price.

Hmmm...

Be nice if there was some indication on the front page of the cost of the software...

Freeware, Nag, Crippleware, 30 day full, £30... You get the idea