Posts by Roland6

Re: Late to the party?

That's MS's way (being late to the party). If MS include Teams Personal in their basic offering and bundle it with the next W10 feature update, I would not be surprised if many people will switch just because its Microsoft and they think it will be better integrated into Office 365...

>There have been some valiant attempts to provide software to offer such features but generally these fail as they cannot keep up with changes in the underlying os.

That has been MS's intent since the early days, they don't want third-parties to enhance the Windows experience - remember the third-party alternatives to Win3 Program Manager, they much rather you suffered the more restricted and clunky MS bundled functionality.

Re: Dual screen

>Nah mate, when we say dual-screen laptop or slabtop, we mean a laptop that has 2 screens and folds up, like two touchscreen tablets hinged together --- not a multiple monitor PC.

A laptop with two screens is just a single instance of a multiple monitor PC with a predetermined functionality mapping - something the third-party multiple monitor utilities have been able to do for years on Windows/Linux.

Not sure what the relevance of being able to fold up is, unless you are referring to the screen switch that occurs on some devices with both internal and external screens (internal screen is hidden when device is folded). Given how clunky Windows has from the outset handled screen rotation (landscape->portrait) and the switching of external screens/projectors, I suspect any capability to handle any of the more useful multiple screen implementations on modern mobile devices is probably best left to third-parties and/or OS's..

Re: Tax avoidance costs

> there's nothing to stop them writing a large check to the IRS each year over and above their tax liabilities.

If the IRS is anything like HMRC then whilst there is nothing stopping you from paying more than you owe, HMRC will eventually refund you any over payment. So if you really want to pay more you need to complete your tax return in a way that doesn't result in an overpayment discrepancy.

I wonder if you told an accountant, I wish to pay $1Bn to the IRS instead of my normal $1M, whether they could massage the figures accordingly and not commit suicide.

Re: The fruit giveth, the fruit taketh away

1984 called and demo'd a Sony Walkman CD player complete with wire connected headphones.

Once again it seems we are back to comparing the audio quality of D-A convertors. The question is whether the D-A in your phone really is any better than the one in the Sony Walkman...

Re: Electronic Banking

>Any other type of transaction costs us money: Hire or purchase of card reader, % of transaction, connection to the internet. So why go digital?

Don't operate an online fundraising platform?

[ https://fundraising.co.uk/2018/02/09/round-up-low-cost-no-cost-fundraising-platforms/ ]

Whilst they will charge a % they will also handle the tax rebate on donations...

Re: Barcleys allow this

>They didn't for us as they were not able to allow the app to be used with a dual signatory account.

Just open a payment receipt only account...

Re: "administration costs"

>I suggested this to the accountant, but I was told it would not be legal.

Ask the accountant for the legal basis.

I suspect you merely need to amend the terms of supply/conditions of sale to include an admin fee.

Various companies I've been involved with have been charging an admin fee of 12% since the 1980's additionally, they included an interest clause for late payments...

Re: The actual problem

>There's an almost religious adherence to the existing OSS licenses

Yes, everyone seems to be overlooking that what we have is the failure of Stallman's blinked license.

For open source to survive and thrive people have to be able to make money and earn a living from it, something Stallamn et al overlooked from the very beginning, in part because he didn't earn his living from writing software...

Re: Lack of mains

>I worked with a couple of utilities literally decades ago on automated fault detection and management in different kinds of distribution network

I also worked on this stuff back in the 1990's, so I've probably over-estimated the rate of progress in this sector.

Perhaps the removal of the free to the utilities national subscriber fault reporting network (aka phone system) will kick the utilities into action - obviously, they will most probably need to be kicked by Ofgem, who in turn will need to be kicked by UKRN in the first instance...

Re: Lack of mains

From the comments here (and elsewhere where this story is reported), it does seem that many have missed the Ofcom stance on the matter, firstly mandating 4 hours and then reducing this to 1 hour etc. after the bun fight about who was responsible for and thus pay for the batteries...

I think if we want BT to be 'commercial', we do have to accept that some of the old "essential utility" stuff has to be let go. Perhaps the time is right for the power companies to step up and make their networks more reliable and contribute to the cost of phone provision during an outage of their distribution network...

Personally, I'm happy if the battery backup unit can take both rechargeable and non-rechargeable (AA) batteries. This gives me protection from power glitches (sub-10 minute) and if the power is off for more than an hour, I can simply drop in some non-rechargeable AA batteries sitting in the draw as and when I need to make a phone call.

Obviously, if your need is different, then I'm sure different sized batteries etc. can be supplied. In factif the emergency is that great, perhaps a solution that uses the batteries in the electric car would be appropriate.

Re: Competition problems

Interestingly, it seems OpenReach will be resuming the installation of ONT modems with 4 ports. ie. allow for the single FTTP fibre to concurrently carry to up 4 different services/streams/channels. So I would presume these other VoIP service providers could avail themselves of one of these channels.

Re: Lack of mains

>This is a serious issue. When there are floods, gales or other interruptions to power you wont even be able to report it.

The power network is now instrumented and continuously monitored. The central control should know your power is out and be responding without your call. The question how long does it take before someone realises that with multiple services out in a particular area, something big has gone down...

Re: "IP is the worst possible protocol for voice!

>When people are harmed because of the loss of emergency calling, will BT accept any responsibility?

Funny how the loss of (analogue lline) emergency calling from the home is a downside, yet in general the use of personal mobile phones outside of the home is regarded as being able to save lives compared to relying on fixed line phone boxes and the time and effort needed to locate a working one.

Re: "The handset will plug into a router"

I wonder how many people still use a line powered phone these days.

Re: Catch 22

Not being a Which subscriber and so not able to access the full report, from what has been reported (eg. BBC News) it does seem Which has gone off half-cocked on this.

There are a number of problems it seems Which fails to unravel.

Firstly, we have the router itself, in the main the support and update issue is down to the ISP and their agreement with the relevant OEM. So provided the ISP keeps paying the router will/should be supported and getting updates. The only potential benefit here is for the government to insist that routers are supported for a minimum period - say 10 years.

Secondly, we have the issue that ISP's don't generally update the routers of existing customers to new models - I've had problems with my EE Brightbox 2, EE's solution has been to send me a replacement Brightbox 2 and not their new router which they send out to new subscribers.

Thirdly, we have the issue (already pointed out in Elreg comments) that with ISPs insisting residential customers use their router, there is little Joe Public users can do if the ISP supplied router is not fit for purpose.

Perhaps the government should legislate giving ISP's 90 days to fix vulnerabilities reported to them (clock starts when vulnerability reported to a trusted third-party clearing house eg. Ofcom) after which after which the service contract becomes void and the ISP either has to provide a new more secure router or pay customers ISP switching costs. Also all ISP's contribute to a bug bounty pot (administered by a trusted third-party...).

Keep it down! This is the sort of thing social media 'influencers' would extoll and their unthinking (mostly )teenage followers would adopt...

Trouble is this outcome is inevitable with the blind pursuit of free (ie. £0 ) to the user/consumer software.

If users/customers aren't going to directly pay to use my app then I will need to find other ways of funding that app and if advertisers are willing to pay good money for leads then I will orientate my business to maximise my revenues from the ad/referral networks.

>So you've missed the articles about Linux having driver vulnerabilities for 15 years then?So you've missed the articles about Linux having driver vulnerabilities for 15 years then?

I actually went looking...

Dell do in their advisory say Dell System Update Linux isn't affected. So at least Dell do take Linux sufficiently seriously to actually check to see if (Windows application) vulnerabilities have been ported.

Re: No Dell Update app, no firmware update?

>If the user's uninstalled the Dell Update app (or performed a clean install of Win 10) they'll not get this firmware update?

It's not a firmware update, it is a (Windows) driver update to a driver distributed with the Dell Update app, albeit the driver that is used to update firmware from Windows. So if you've uninstalled the Dell Update app and deleted all files, you aren't vulnerable and don't need the update...

Interestingly, given the main purpose of Dell Command Update is to automatically update firmware remediation Step 1 effectively castrates DCU...

Re: expendable

>Best choice I ever made was to listen to my instructors and NOT go into an all-tech field. I may have made more money during my younger years but decades later you're nothing more than a disposable part.

Back in the 80's it was obvious "Computing" was a young persons industry, and with the UK retirement age being moved up towards 70's, I took the decision to aim to 'retire' from my first career at circa 50, leaving circa 20 years for a second career with a different focus and pace. This decision was reinforced during the 90's when we started to see many redundancy programmes with the 50+ generation being disproportionally represented.

This approach has meant my pension disproportionately benefits from my early years. Word of advice to those starting out - always sign up to the pension scheme, even if you don't envisage staying for more than two years - if you leave you can reinvest those monies in your own free-standing pension pot...

Re: RIP Michael Collins

>Just Three Billion people, wow ... we've come a long way.

Yes, however, even that number living at then-current first-world standards and consumption levels was assessed to be unsustainable...

>Tomorrow we get back to work on fixing this planet.

Trouble is, no one wants to address the (population) elephant in the room...

Re: You misquoted your own poll

>is going to play havoc with the economics of season tickets.

I encountered this back in the 1990's.

For my irregular "regular commute", I worked out the value of weekly, monthly and annual session tickets. With my breakeven points being:

3 peak returns = 1 weekly session ticket

9 peak returns = 1 monthly

92 peak returns = 1 annual

As it was irregular, but most of the time you knew what you were doing the following month, I didn't bother with the annual ticket, instead used monthly's - I never had a year where I purchased more than 10 monthly tickets and most years included December and January - both of which were prone to delays for which monthly session ticket holders got an automatic refund - there were several years when I effectively travelled for free in those months...

Naturally, once you had purchased a session ticket, additional journeys that month (including those at weekends) were effectively free...

The art of knowing all this was to plan and schedule office-based work so that you got the best deal ie. minimised your out-of-pocket travel costs.

Re: Global operating system

>So does he consider the global operating system Windows or Linux?

Taking the obvious corollary being made, it doesn't really matter, effectively we have a duopoly in computer OS's. In this situation, it does become possible and given the discussions about MS and Linux also it becomes desirable in some quarters, to control those OS's,