Posts by chr0m4t1c

Re: Yet another reason

I did RTFuckingA and it looks like a fair summing up to me, Nokia appear to be saying that if their design for the SIM is not picked, then they will not allow any of the patents that form part of the current standard to be used in the new one.

That's like Ferrari telling Sauber that if they don't paint their car red and stick Ferrari badges on it they can't use the engine.

Don't get me wrong, I don't particularly care which design is picked, but I can say which company appears to be behaving like a three year old.

Re: another name?

iDiot's Lantern for a kind of retro-modern feel.

Actually, thinking about it, Google missed a trick last year in not getting GoogleTVs branded "GoogleBox".

Am I getting too old? Does anyone else remember TV sets being referred to as "Idiot's Lantern" and/or "Goggle Box"?

Re: hardware specs

I think you're confusing idle speculation from a source that has yet to make a correct prediction with actual product.

Re: Try this one on for size...

No, I tell them I don't have one.

Almost none of my details (including my picture) are public, so they'd have a hard time proving that I have an account, especially given the number of people who share my name.

If I thought there was a real risk I could even just change the name so I don't match any likely search results.

Re: So cynical...

Were the daughter and the prostitute two different people?

Re: Yup...

I don't know enough about the internals of banking, but isn't a standing order also done as a BACS transfer?

In which case, they presumably reduced the number of transfers from 140k to 139k while also inconveniencing 139k staff.

Or are standing orders charged differently?

Re: iTunes is utter rubbish. What bolox

>Come back and talk when you're talking 80,000 tracks, including books on MP3, split over 2 networked drives. See if you're that keen then.

Really? Wow, I thought I was bad with 19,000 tracks over 1,600 albums.

I'd expect those numbers to tax any music organizer/player, what do you use?

Re: Drax!

I was thinking the same thing.

I wonder if anyone has counted the shuttle's to make sure none have been stolen.

Or made sure there aren't any biological warfare research labs just off Piazza San Marco in Venice.

Worth a check, do we think?

Re: Re: Re: Any with more info on this?

Because the people using the sites are proud upstanding American patriots, whereas the people running the sites are dodgy foreigners who might even have beards.

In an unrelated note: Does anyone know if any casinos in Vegas have been closed because people from Maryland went there to gamble?

Re: Re: Re: LTE with 500Mb fair use

>or alternatively EE won't offer such silly limits.

You're joking, right? When Orange rolled out 3G all of those years ago they wanted £15 for 3Mb.

They're all pretty much the same, they want to posture about having rolled out the infrastructure and tell you what immense speeds you can get, but they don't want you to actually _use_ it, the technology isn't really up to that (and neither is their backbone).

Re: Re: RE: All I need now is for Bill Nighy to play the next Doctor Who :)

I still want Joanna Lumley to play the Doctor.

If nothing else, it'll give the Doctor/River relationship an entirely new dimension.

Re: Re: Lipstick & Pig

I don't have a PlayBook, but I don't hate them, I just don't want one.

I think BB missed their market by a mile with the initial release by not having proper email built in and now they're still missing the target because there's no BBM or BES support - essentially they've brought out a device that doesn't do the things that BB are most known for.

It's like Burger King bringing out a burger that isn't flame-grilled.

Re: Re: Re: Mac can't play AVIs or MKVs....

AirPlayer and GoodPlayer both do DLNA, I've not used either but GoodPlayer seems to have the better rating (and price).

There's also media:connect to make your device a DLNA server.

Re: Re: Only 2 billion?

Because it would not only wipe the smile off the fanboi faces, but they would then be able to see the folly of their ways and join the righteous ranks of the fandroid (for surely they could chose no other platform) and we can move forward together in harmony into a utopian future.

At least until Google decides to stop opening the 'droid source and makes Moto the only licensed vendor.

Something along those lines I'd guess.

Re: Re: WOW

Not really.

1) Not all of the 60,000 will be service personnel.

2) Not all of the service personnel will have spent enough time in the service for the unhealthy lifestyle to have long-term effect on their health.

Re: PROVEN, & ADMITTED! APPLE STOLE XEROX IP the THEFT HARMED XEROX.

Wow, spectacularly ill-informed rant there, chap.

Apple licensed the Xerox ideas and Xerox sent them engineers to help them implement the Mac GUI; this has already played out in a failed lawsuit from Xerox in 1989.

I'd also say you have no idea who Scully is or why he was the wrong guy.

@SYNTAX_ERROR

A) Outlook isn't the only address book on Windows.

B) It only does that for "unauthorised" programs, it's never asked me for permission when any of the Nokia sync programs access the address book for example.

There's a difficult balance to be struck here, Outlook doesn't provide any simple way for me to make sure "authorised" programs are blocked or to permanently allow "unauthorised" programs.

It's a headache for developers of all software (including those developing the OS) and it's a problem that most users don't care about until something like this happens and then they want someone to hang for it - but they'll completely forget about it in about a week and then complain bitterly that the enhanced security brought out as a result gets in the way.

No, it's not irrelevant.

If we could take a step back from the players involved then you *may* be talking about a scenario like this:

Company X produces a phone that sells for $300 and uses a 10c chip from a third party supplier that implements part of the 3G standard.

That chip implements 100 patents from various companies that are included in the 3G standard, for which the chip manufacturer pays royalties to those companies.

For simplicity's sake, lets say those 100 patents are split in roughly equal measure between companies A, B and C.

Company A doesn't make phones and only asks for licenses from the chip manufacturer.

Companies B and C both make phones and so decide that whilst their licenses must also be bought by manufacturers using the chips, they will not charge each other anything (even though company C ships three times the number of phones of company B).

Now, along comes company X with their new phone. Company A charges them nothing (fair), company B charges them 0.225c per chip (could also be considered fair), company C charges them 2.25% per handset - i.e. $6.75. Is that even slightly fair or reasonable?

N.B. I'm not defending or attacking any company in particular here, just trying to illustrate the scenario; it's all very well hating a company, but don't let that stop you supporting what's right. You'd be pretty upset if you were charged double when you went shopping because you happened to earn twice the average wage.

A more plausible explanation for your poor data rates may be that Giffgaff are offering unlimited data for £10/month and the only way that O2 could sustain that business model will be to throttle the traffic.

I think you over-estimate the hearing capabilities of the bulk of the population; if they could tell the difference then they wouldn't have switched from portable CD players to MP3 players in the first place.

My father-in-law genuinely can't tell the difference between Metallica and Paloma Faith, as far as he's concerned they live in a box labelled "stuff I don't like". It/'s the same story with the majority of my friends, they categorise music as "good" and "rubbish", mostly based on whether they encountered it before or after they turned 20 or if they identify with the image of the artist or not.

It saddens me greatly, but I think you'll find they are the majority and that they can't tell the difference. If they could, then Simon Cowell would be a pauper.

>Remind me how you get paid for stating the bleeding obvious again?

1. Change your name to G10 Research.

2. Stick this behind a paywall.

3. Profit!

"All painting your house in magnolia shows is that you have no imagination or soul and that you could probably do with having a full tin of paint to the head."

Unfortunately, that describes a lot of potential buyers. I've known people decide against buying a property because they didn't like the seller's sofa or the colour of the spare bedroom walls.

And when you point out to them that the sofa will leave with the seller or that they can paint the bedroom walls whatever colour they like, you always get a reply that starts "I know, but...".

(Coughs)

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/browse/

You only need a web browser for Apple too.

Yes, Apple don't sell physical stuff, but then neither do Google.

Also, I'm curious as to how you can fully evaluate the Amazon experience without buying into it in some way. Yes, I can read a Kindle book on my desktop, but I'm not fully evaluating the experience without actually buying a Kindle.

I can buy DRM free music from both companies that can be played on a "free" music player that came with my OS, but both *both* require proprietary download tools (iTunes, Amazon MP3 downloader); apart from Apple's "walled garden" for apps, there really isn't a significant difference between the two companies.

(And if you think that Amazon aren't seriously considering walling up their own garden once they have a decent spread of hardware, then you don't have a good grip on normal business practice).

@AC 02.00

Your eight month old article appears to be talking about the same evidence that has failed to turn up in court.

The law firm that has "investigated the evidence" is the very same one that first decided to no longer represent Ceglia.

Are you sure you have read and understood both articles and the timeline?

At this stage, I'd guess he's not going to be a very rich man.

The new firmware allows you to configure the (not so) SuperHub as a modem only, which should then give you no trouble whatsoever (mine doesn't, it just works as a drop-in replacement for the old modem).

Of course, I'm mildly annoyed that I paid the one-off fee to upgrade a few months ago, but I guess that there's always a risk when upgrading your tech that the next model will come out as soon as you buy the current one.

What's so difficult to believe?

Windows Media Centre and Windows 7 have offered DVR capabilities for almost as long as the Xbox360 has been around and they work quite well, what do you think the problem would be?

In this case, they probably should apply. Google is effectively a monopoly in the search space and it doesn't indicate that it will return results biased towards Google services, so ordinary folk have no reason to believe that it is returning anything other than independent results.

Put it this way: If you phoned 118 118 for a taxi firm and they always gave out the number of a firm they owned, would you feel like they were acting inappropriately or not?

@jonathanb

If that's the case, then Samsung are onto a loser with that part of the case, 'cos the iPhone doesn't do that (some apps do, but that's not Apple's fault).

If things continue like this the Germans will be back to tin-cans and string before long.

Unfortunately

It's a well-documented phenomenon known as Risk Compensation.

Basically, if you feel that you are safer (or less likely to come to harm) then you will behave in a more risky way to ultimately balance out the risks.

It's why (for example) you might see a 4x4 driver tailgating more, or driving significantly over the speed limit even though their vehicle is (ironically) considerably less safe in those conditions than a normal saloon.

5th Gear did a series of tests where they crashed 4x4s into standard saloons in a series of typical accident scenarios, in each case the crash experts said the occupants of the saloon would almost certainly be killed instantly (sounds good for the 4x4 driver, doesn't it), but they also said that the 4x4 occupants would probably die from their injuries before any emergency services managed to get to the scene (not so good after all).

>4.Crewed by a slavish cult

I think you're mixing up employees and customers...

No particular reason to limit the SKUs worldwide, most of the planet has either deployed or is in the process of deploying one of four or five digital standards which can be decoded with some pretty inexpensive kit.

In fact, if you can do DVB-T, DVB-T2 and ATSC you cover pretty much everywhere but South America, China and Japan.

It's the analogue standards that were all over the shop.

@Ivan

You're confusing IP with patents, IP mainly covers four areas:

Patents: What makes stuff work (like the formula of a food item or the operation of a machine).

Trademarks: Signs that distinguish you brand or product to the market, like logos or words.

Copyright: The automatic right that applies when a work is created.

Designs: Protection of the way something looks, like the cut and shape of a fashion item or the shape of an aeroplane.

I hope that's more useful than the other answers.

10 years: Probably all of them.

20 years: Probably all but the Nissan; I expect advances in battery technology to make it obsolete, but it may be possible to refit it with newer battery technology in which case it may still be around.

30 years: Only the McLaren. How many Peugeot 305s, Mk1 Ford Fiestas or Datsun Sunnys do you see on the roads? Those are all 30 year old vehicles now.

Ultimately, the Leaf is probably the most awkward one; it's hands-down the best for someone on a restricted budget who only uses their car for short journeys (shopping trips, school runs, etc.). Unfortunately, those particular people are probably unable to even afford a £10k car, never mind a £26/31k one.

That means it's most likely to be bought by people who don't really need it, but can afford it. And a few of those (cough, Robert LLewellyn, cough) may even have large enough properties to put up sufficient solar panels to charge the car - effectively making it free to run from both a financial perspective and a carbon perspective. It's going to get an even bigger "smugmobile" reputation than the Prius.

Current predictions say that doubling of CO2 levels will lead to runaway change that will ultimately destroy life, but levels have already more than doubled in the last 21,000 years without causing that outcome - so it is entirely possible that the prediction is incorrect. There *may* be a level of atmospheric CO2 that will lead to runaway warming, but there may not.

Unfortunately, it seems we cannot correctly predict what those levels are and so may only find out when (if) it happens, at which point it is too late.

Last one alive turn out the lights.