Re: Battery life?
Batteries do perform more poorly over time. Just pop off the back cover and replace it with a new battery.
Oh yes, Apple device. Hmm, sorry, you're stuck with it.
432 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2009
I agree with your conclusion: Microsoft should have bought RIM. But in my opinion they ruled it out because it's so widely perceived as failing that they didn't want to be associated with it.
It's a shame as RIM do still have plenty of USPs that nobody else has. Personally I think a Windows Phone, with toys like BBM and the end-to-end encryption plus all of the centralised server management gubbins, would be well worth having.
Did nobody mention to them that BlackBerry Enterprise Server also needs you to buy client access licences for all the business features? Microsoft really like selling licences. I'm sure that would have persuaded them.
My parents recently moved house and had BT transfer phone and broadband to the new address.
Then a 'sorry to hear you're leaving us' letter arrived. They weren't changing providers.
BT investigated. Apparently. The conclusion was that they'd been 'slammed'. But, after weeks, it turns out they hadn't. They're still with BT and always were. But all this cocking around means that nobody has asked for any money. So my parents have the wonderful situation of free telephony and broadband until BT realise that they're the ones providing the service.
A letter to the chairman's office saying 'I'd like to pay for my services' finally elicited a response but still -four months on - they won't take any money...
A, er, friend of mine once wanted to print a document while working at a US army base in Germany.
Ignoring the odd-looking mysterious black box next to the printer he found a spare IEC lead and plugged in the (US-voltage) Laserjet. It did actually start a self-test before the smoke started and the lights went out for the whole building.
Several scary-looking men with guns weren't impressed with me. Er, I mean him.
Probably not, since the cost of all those new cars (let alone the environmental cost of destroying millions of old-but-still-working classic cars) would be prohibitive. There's plenty of us out there who are quite fond of some of those old-fashioned machines.
But I suspect that once the self-driving cars' liability issues are resolved it'll cost a lot more to insure a human to do the driving.
Personally I quite like this way of working. I can still do most things via the GUI and the majority of wizards show the actual Powershell command that they're going to execute at the end.
Having a GUI present you with the Powershell is a great way to get a feel for it (and also see if the shell command might be quicker and easier next time). I'm no scripting expert but I'm building up a bank of scripts / commands which is, slowly, improving my skill.
Ultimately you should end up with the flexibility of both systems - GUI and shell - and hopefully the skill to use whichever is most appropriate.
"I suspect that the reason is management. The institutions are clearly in the hands of the academics, and the IT people are clearly expected to provide a working system"
You're right that it's down to how it's managed but it's primarily because most academics respect the skills and experience of their IT staff just as we're expected to respect their knowledge in their field.
Out in the corporate world IT is seen only as a cost that reduces profit margins, rather than a crucial part of the infrastructure.
We're already paying climate-change taxes in the UK.
With this idea you could at least be sure that the taxes you're asked to pay are directly linked to the outcome of the activity, rather than the current arbitrary government-decided number.
That's why they won't change to this system.
If you'd like to see the effect of alternating current on a filament bulb take a look at The Slow Mo guys' video. Well worth a look.
"Waze offers nothing more than the text messages sent by people stuck in traffic to local radio stations for the DJs to read out"
That's not quite right - by capturing the data about the current speed at which a Waze user is travelling on a road it can display that as accurate realtime travel speed for others. Waze users do have the option of reporting a holdup but that's not required for Waze to collect beneficial data.
I've found it to be very accurate at reporting what speed I can expect to do on a particular rush-hour road.
"I still find the screechy white noise comforting in a way."
I was startled to realise that my kids had never heard dial-up internet either.
If you look a little more carefully, the distribution costs have gone up. By quite a lot.
It's almost as if there was a need to run pylons and cable to all sorts of out-of-the-way places to connect up wind turbines... By creatively allocating that cost to 'distribution' - without explaining why the cost has gone up - they can make it look like it's nothing to do with green policies.
Factor in that bit too and it's a lot more than ten percent.
As someone who suffered with a mere 0.5Mbps (surely a breach of fundamental human rights these days?) there are some things you can do yourself to improve things. I managed to get up to the heady heights of 3.5Mbps by moving my router to the BT master socket and disconnecting the redundant bell-wire from my phone extensions. A better quality router did the rest.
If none of those help my council are saying that rural locations with a school have a higher priority and will get fibre first (because of the high cost of their existing connections). Might be worth bearing in mind if you're moving house in the next twelve months.
"out of single-occupancy motor vehicles and onto bikes, public transport, and car-pooling."
Living in a rural area with a long commute, none of those work for me. What we need are employers who accept that encouraging working from home is a sensible idea. It would reduce congestion, reduce carbon emissions, saving time and energy. But the mindset that you're somehow skiving is what needs to go.
For my purposes Open Streetmap is better - and more accurate - than Google or Streetmap.
Being popular doesn't allow you to sit back for the rest of eternity. Even Google may be outfoxed one day.
I'll concede that it's possible that there is a Machiavellian agenda behind this action. But bitter experience and a combination of healthy cynicism and scepticism suggest otherwise.
I can think of plenty of embarrassing governmental revelations that no amount of effort have been able to suppress. A US President couldn't even manage to hide a clandestine BJ from an intern for heaven's sake!
Documents revealed after thirty (or more) years of being blocked don't generally reveal successful plots either. Think of corruptible civil servants, deliberate leaks and lost laptops. Add in prospective whistleblowers, if the plot is against the public interest, and there's an awful lot working against secrecy.