Posts by big_D

Re: Had to go back to 8.1

My 1020 has gone from 12 - 14 hours battery life with the previous build to 36 hours average with the new build.

Re: @Richard 12: Note on Windows 8

@Dave 126 for me it is the convenience of just having one device. Full stop, end of story. If I am working at my desk and go out, I grab the Surface and all of the data is there already, nothing to sync, no app incompatibilities etc. And when I get back, I plug it back into the dock and carry on. My notes from the trip are in OneNote in one window on one screen and I type up my report on the other.

Simple, no fuss, no muss, no problems with syncing data before starting to work. No worrying about not having the relevant app installed on one device or another.

Re: Is anybody surprised by now?

AFAIK, the engines are made at one plant for all models / brands that use that type of engine and they are then shipped to the relevant plants.

It doesn't make sense to have half a dozen small plants turning out the same engine, just because it is for a different brand.

Re: Bait and switch

Or abusers ruining it for the rest... Although they are hoisted by their own petard, such a service really isn't designed with storing rips of DVDs in mind... When it was announced, I had a feeling it was going to end badly, because you just knew somebody was going to take them literally.

I would struggle to fill half of the 1TB that is offered to me by the service.

Re: Disabling Hyper-V worked for me

I had a flickering screen on my Surface PRo 3 when it came out. It wasn't as bad as this, but for some reason it was set to 59Hz refresh rate. Setting it to 60Hz cleared the problem.

Which is why such a commission is needed, but as was pointed out, the industry is changing fast and such commissions are always slow.

That was the problem with the Microsoft story over a decade ago. By the time they got around to doing anything, the market had changed and much of the punishment was irrelevant - by then Firefox had grabbed a substantial share of the market and Chrome and Safari were also there, but MS had to offer the browser ballot, even when their market share had dropped from over 95% to around 50%. All the browser ballot did was annoy users and show how slow and out of touch the monopoly commission was.

The browser ballot would have been the right punishment in 2001, but it was silly by the time it was implemented and in 2014 it was irrelevant.

They need to move quickly in the internet age, they can't procrastinate for half a decade, either they need to react swiftly and decisively or they need to steer clear. As a consumer, I'd like them to react swiftly and either slam the brakes on these organisations quickly or clear them. Having these cases hanging around for half a decade just says that they are out of touch.

Re: By 'improve' she means

My first thought was, but the EU is currently tightening up their DP rules... Then I read it again and, yes, I think she means that the EU are going in the wrong direction. Democratic laws don't work in a non-democratic, capitalism driven world.

Maybe they should implement a few rules for the politicians:

1. Accepting a bribe is a criminal offense

2. Attempting to bribe a politician is a criminal offense.

That would change the whole lobbying system and should put pro- and contra- on a more even footing, poor consumer/citizens' rights groups would have a more equal say than big business. If it just comes down to who has the best argument and not who can buy the best laws.

@Vic

exactly. The companies wouldn't just have to move their data outside of the USA and over to Europe, they would also need to re-incorporate themselves overseas and they would need to close all offices and data centers in the USA and move all of their staff over seas. Only then would they be in the clear.

Most users don't even know you can access the router. They plug it in, it sucks down the configuration from the ISP and "just works".

Re: Sounds like common sense....

The problem isn't the companies involved. it is US law and its steam rolling of people's rights.

The data from the EU can only be handed over to the US Government if they have a valid EU warrant. And that is what the US agreed to, before they enacted the Patriot Act and nowadays say "ah, well, the data is on US soil, so we can ignore those pesky EU people and their silly data protection laws, just give us the data or face fines and imprisonment."

Under those circumstances, there isn't much a US company can do. Until the US Government and the US Justice agree that data held under Safe Harbor is actually safe, there isn't much any company can do.

It is always a a Bratwurst because they a fried, Bratwurst literally means "fried sausage" and isn't a specific sausage, but a category. Knackwurst wouldn't really come into this category. But within the "Bratwurst" category, there is a lot of leeway.

In the North, they tend to be pale fried sausage (as per the photos in the article), in the South they tend to be red sausages, with the option of pale if you want. Each region has its own version of what a typical Bratwurst should be and each Metzger (butcher) has his own recipe.

I prefer the Zigeuner Wurst, which is, again, a Bratwurst but this time a spicy paprika sauce. The traditional Bratwurst is also very good, you get it on a bit of cardboard and the end of the cardboard sheet is torn off and bent into a "U" form, so that you can hold the sausage while you eat it. It is served with a dollop of mustard and a slice of baguette.

Interestingly, given the German's penchant for sausage, the number one fast food over here is the Turkish Döner Kebap.

Re: EU data protection authorities are committed to take all necessary and appropriate actions

The data protection authorities, at least in Germany, does have clout.

And as a business, if you use a cloud service and they illegally move the data outside the EU borders, then the data protection authorities can prosecute - because the Safe Harbor is now nullified and the cloud providers cannot guarantee that they won't hand over the data to the US Government if requested to.

Various EU courts have already ruled on what can be used to identify people and IP addresses are enough to identify a person, usually. Especially if they have a time stamp, because even with a leased IP, the provider has to hold records for a set period about which IP was assigned to what address at what time.

Re: "We'll go wherever our customers are"

But their services customers (Office 365, Skype for Business etc.) are often on Android for mobile devices and have a Windows desktop / notebook / 2-in-1 etc. So if their customers are using Android handsets, they need to have their apps on Android as well.

I hope they stick with Windows handsets, I'm on the waiting list for the 950. I have been through iOS and Android and I much prefer Windows Phone 8 / Windows 10 Mobile (I have the preview on my 1020). My family independently came to Windows Phone, my wife had my old iPhone and when she dropped it, she said she didn't want another one, so bought a 620 and now a 630. The kids were on Android and both saw the 630 and went straight out and bought themselves one.

One daughter is a Mac user, but she is sticking with WP8, she likes the iPhone but isn't willing to spend over 800€ for a phone and finds the Lumia is fine for what she needs.

To be honest, they don't care about which OS is better or which has the most apps, they are using the one they feel most comfortable with. They probably couldn't even tell you what OS or what version they are running, just that they like it.

Deutsche Telekom has a large number of data centers and provides a wide variety of cloud services and cloud computing.

There are also some large independent cloud providers in Europe as well.

Re: People who use adblockers...

I don't have Flash installed and I run NoScript and only allow the main domain I'm visiting to run scripts. The advertising sites are blocked from running scripts. They can serve me static images and text if they want, but not nothing interactive.

The biggest problem is the bandwidth. I think the advertising shouldn't add more than about 30% to the volume of traffic being loaded from a page. The problem is, it is often 300-400%... And then you have all those damned libraries that are linked to and add yet more MBs to the "bill", just for a couple of hundred bytes in one function!

Re: Not Worth It

I patched ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H deinstalled it on my systems back in January. I don't have to worry about patching it any more.

Re: Still Nude here!

German news yesterday also reported that this only affects the US version.

Interestingly, they interviewed a female psychologist and she stated that, here in Germany and large parts of Europe, we have come to terms with our bodies and accept nudity as something natural, whilst the USA is riding on a wave of neo-prudism.

Re: Sooo...

Our customer have hot stand-by locally. They cannot afford to "take a break" if there is no internet connection - and being rural food processing facilities, they tend to not have the best internet connections in the first place. Funny people want to eat meat, but they don't like having slaughter houses and food processing plants slap.-bang in the middle of their industrial estate or town, where they have good internet.

The farmers are worse off, they have to electronically upload their registration data for each animal, before it can go to slaughter. One of them took nearly 2 weeks to download the 64MB installer for the registration program.

In the processing plants, the software controls the production lines and without a working server, they cannot do anything. If the conveyor or the industry specific hardware (Fat-o-Meter, AutoFOM, scales etc.) break down or stop communicating with the server or the servers go tits-up, then they have 15 to 30 minutes to get it working again, otherwise they have to start throwing carcasses away - and if it is a software problem, the software provider gets the bill for lost production.

At such facilities, you just can't rely on out-of-house facilities. You might use them for backup or for production analysis, but for the important work, you need reliable, local systems. If you can't guarantee that the internet connection is back up in under 15 minutes (Telekom usually say 2 to 3 working days), then it just isn't an option - and then you have AWS, they probably don't have an SLA that guarantees a maximum of 15 minutes downtime during production hours (usuall 01:00 through to 16:00).

In addition, controlling the PLC on the production line or in the cool house needs response times measured in milliseconds, again, something a cloud service can't offer, let alone guarantee.

Re: Wonderful

I'll wait and see. I don't see any problem at the moment.

Re: @bri

I agree, nobody would have confidence in Winterkorn, whether he had known or not. With a "clean" start, with a new CEO, there is less residue for people to point fingers at. (Sorry for the puns).

What got me was this: Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), himself a former engineer, noted that if this defeat device was the work of two Volkswagen engineers acting alone, the company's intellectual property department would have every reason to seek to patent the innovation unless they were directed otherwise by management.

And if he knew anything about Europe, he would know that you couldn't patent that anyway. That is software, software isn't patentable.

Re: I blame the four Norsemen with Paperclips

On the other hand, I had one user who never got the hang of computers, never managed to install and application and didn't even understand saving documents! (Write 3 pages, print, save, delete the pages, type 3 new pages, print, save, repeat... Where is my document, I saved it! I kid you not! I was just thankful that they printed the pages out before deleting them!!!)

A switch to Windows 8 was like a breath of fresh air, within 30 minutes they were proudly announcing that they had managed to install an app...

Re: Nail on the head

It depends, I use 3 displays (not possible on the 3, available with the 3 Pro), I run a web browser, Outlook, X-Windows client, Teamviewer, VNC, ERP client, Word, Excel, OneNote, Paint.net and Powerpoint all at the same time, something which a 3 would struggle with, but which the Pro 3 is comfortable doing.

Obviously on the run that lot is not really realistic as I only have one display and having more than 2 windows visible on the small display isn't really practicable, but when it is docked it is fine.

Re: I would suggest....

The problem is, the car will probably be around in 20 or 30 years time. How many people will still be using a 2015 iPhone or Android device that can still connect to the iOS or Android head unit?

It needs a simple, open standard that just channels the input and output and works with any device.

Re: Stick with 8.1

I'm running it on my 1020.

Just taken a photo from the lock screen, fine, no problems.

Yes, it is a little laggy, I'm hoping that that is because it is still in pre-release mode with extra debugging.

The new Audible app is as slow as ever, but other than that I haven't found it worse than 8.1.

It has also been relatively stable. I've found that Audible gets its knickers in a twist every so often and I need to reboot about once a week on average. The Podcast app also crashes sometimes when it has been running and you try and refresh the list of podcasts - restart and it is fine.

Re: Wrong!

@moiety according to the Highway Code, the flashing of headlights only every means "I am here" it is a form of getting notice. The problem is, over the years it has come to mean other things.

Re: NSA hurting US business interests

One can hope...

Re: Looking forward to seeing Windows 10 for phones

I've not experienced any delays in Skype (Galaxy S3 and Nokia 1020 and Windows PC).

I've been running Windows 10 preview on the 1020 and it is pretty good so far. A couple of apps, like Podcasts, crash now and then (luckily Podcasts only crashes when refreshing manually refreshing the list of podcasts and not during playback).

The new Audible App for Windows 10 is also much improved, but still as sloth like as ever.

Re: Optional security - bah!

Yes, some way of looking at the app in settings and setting a switch for each permission to on or off. No game needs my contact list, call list, location etc. for example.