Posts by Tom 35

Re: What people want...

Living in Canada, Spotify will not take my money. Seems it would be going to the wrong middle men and they have all agreed to carve up the world between them.

Re: Blighty telcos ordered to play whack-a-mole again.

They will do this a few times and they will say it's too much work and that they should be allowed to just send the telcos an email asking them to block any site they don't like.

Re: Agree

I don't have a problem with most of the small vendors I use, it's the ones that use that crap verified by Visa or the clone that Mastercard uses where you get sent to another site and enter another password to pretend it's more secure if you have to fart around to do anything, that pisses me off. Most often I go to another vendor to avoid it.

Re: Learning has not taken place

Being in Canada I can't even watch Hulu (but can receive 8 US TV stations over the air).

If you want to see a useless pile of crap just look at the Hollywood answer to online video, UltraViolet. It's almost as useless as DIVX players were. The so called Digital Copy that comes with DVDs or BluRay and expires 3 months after the movie is released.

Re: 4G = TV frequencies

Add that the Operators don't make any money from a free broadcast TV tuner.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Operator apps"

Yes the ones that the operators used to sell from their own website / portal. There were very few of them, and they tended to look like something ported from a Vic-20. Or for one newer example I know of, 680 News Radio in Toronto is owned by Rogers. They had an iPhone app that would only work on the Rogers network (and you could not use wifi). It was crap, much better to just go to the website.

So again I say compared to what you find in iTunes or The Play store (or Amazon, F Droid...) the Operator apps are crap.

The Operators never gave anything away, they never had it in the first place. It was just something they dream about like people subscribing to TV on their phone.

If you could only get apps from your Operator it would tend to be an advantage for the big players as they could buy exclusives for a popular app. The smaller more competitive operators would have a hard time running a competitive app store. Developers would have to deal with all the different Operators.

Re: Would you like a free personality test?

They were calling it a stress test (years back it was an IQ test) in Toronto when I went in for something to do. They try and get you to self diagnose your weaknesses then sell you a course to fix it...

I was thrown out for quoting Mary Poppins. I said I was practically perfect in every way. They said I was not taking it seriously... what would give them that idea?

Re: > how lone/small groups ... could be protected

"allows companies to sell patents to realise funds for other activities, and allows creditors to recover some money form a bankrupt debtor...."

But that has NOTHING to do with the purpose that patents were created for. The patent becomes an end in it's self, it becomes the product.

Re: $100k for a glass door?

Maybe they used the same math the record companies use to get the value of a downloaded MP3.

Re: VC - Virtual Cloud

The biggest problem with cloud is marketing sticking the name cloud on everything that connects to a network to the point that it has lost any useful meaning.

Re: Promises

The Republicans will pull one of their usual tricks like attach an anti-abortion bill.

Re: Never use a simple solution when an expensive high tech one will do.

They would need to focus the light over millions of km. I would think they would need coherent (LASER) light to do that.

Re: Sounds familiar

It's not working... bring me a bigger hammer!

Re: What smart phone?

Ok, I'll give you Blackberry (and it turned the later pre BB10 phones into battery suckers too).

Symbian is a stretch, that would be like saying smartphones run on flash.

But that's still miles from "just about every smartphone carrier".

Re: Where are we going to store it?

If I remember liquid CO2 is less dense then water so it will not stay down there and also dissolves in water. Solid CO2 or Dry Ice will sink but I don't think you will find any place colder then -78C to dump it.

You have an army of straw men in there...

It was not a "13,000-man army".

Washington called up a militia force from Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, you know that thing in the 2nd amendment the gun nuts like ignore.

The armed militia was not created to protect the public from evil tax collecting governments, it was created by the government who could not afford a large standing army at the time. The role is now part of the National Guard, and the militias no longer exist in the form they did in Washington's time.

Re: Broadcast

Somebody is going to sell the frequencies for $$$$ so they can be used efficently for sending "OMG some celeb just said LOL" tweets to millions of phones.

Or they can sell you a monthly subscription to watch TV on your phone...

Re: neither was its lack of tab devices.

To reply to my own message...

Just received some Dell junk mail. They have the Latitude 10 Tablet (Windows 8 Pro) on sale for $699 (claim $323 off). Guess no one wanted to pay a grand for a netbook with a touch screen.

You say that like it's a good thing

People who buy an Apple are now stuck with Apple. If they switch they have to rebuy all their apps.

If you have a Samsung, you are not locked to Samsung, you can buy any Android and keep your apps. Or you can have a Samsung phone and an Asus tablet and still share apps.

Re: Apple stores do definitely have a unique look though. - @Tom

Apple seems to get confused by such things as poo shovels. I don't think they would confine their lawyers to going after computer stores.

Re: Expected lifetime?

I often see expensive cars (Lexus and such) with a normal satnav and built in satnav. Users say it's because the map update costs more then a new satnav and they are still not very good.

Once you have a built in satnav you are locked in for new maps.

Going 7"

I have a Nexus 7 (paid for it my self) and a surface (gift).

I carry the nexus 7 with me. It's the biggest size that will fit in one hand securely and, fit in a pocket.

The surface is too big to hold in one hand securely and is quite heavy to hold for long periods. With the built in stand and add on keyboard it becomes a vastly overpriced netbook that's too top heavy and floppy to use on your lap.

I have an iPod touch 2nd gen and wanted something bigger but found the iPad to be too big. I might have bought the iPad mini if it came out last year, but I like the Nexus 7 better so I'm glad they waited.

DVD and BR is like chalk and cheese

DVD supports 24 fps progressive output over component or HDMI (used to require an expensive DVD player / TV but even cheap setups can support it now).

BluRay is still 8 bit, you get less banding because of the higher available bit rates.

For TV recorded on NTSC Video (or even edited in video) BR has no advanage other then space.

BR only shines with older stuff shot on film, or new stuff recorded in HD.

I have a shirt that tells me "Do not iron while wearing" I have peanut butter cookies that "MAY CONTAIN NUTS".