Posts by Refugee from Windows

Phooey?

Bigger rockets have been launched in the past (notably Saturn V), and in the days when HF communications were more important commercially, there were no problems reported with the ionosphere recorded. If there had been, I am sure the FCC would have picked this as having been noted by members of the ARRL. Surely there would have been plenty of reports of the effects of launching through the various layers, indeed various governments (including the UK) have carried out experiments and regular measurements of the ionosphere.

The frequencies used by GPS are c 1.5GHz - these pass straight through largely unscathed. There may be some odd rotation effects for instance very occasionally, but unless you're trying to thread a needle from space, largely insignificant.

Not so much punching a hole, more just a minor ripple.

Playing catchup

This is a game that Microsoft haven't put much effort into, and I'm afraid to say that they are so far behind I don't think they'll ever catch up. Being tied down to x86 has turned them into a one trick pony, and their speciality is wearing thin. ARM is likely to become the most popular platform from both embedded through to servers, if it hasn't already overtaken already, and so they are primarily in a declining market. They're playing second fiddle to Google.

They've not even woken up to this, let alone smelt the coffee.

Genii meet bottle

It's going to be a case of when all this connected information gets into the wrong hands, in which case it won't go back into the bottle. My phone can only guess about how I'm travelling about. In congested traffic I could be on a bike (with pedals), bus or car - and I'm sure that would be information that would happily be used for marketing purposes.

There's so much they could work out from the travel data already available - where you work, shop and where you visit - already and tracking it down to one vehicle is possibly one step too far.

Maybe the on board accelerometer could identify the exact location of the pothole that bent my wheel, but it's unlikely. They'd have to make the incentives to have these in place pretty good for savvy users, and no I'm not in the market for a brand new car with any connectivity.

As for most of the populace, they'll just accept this data slurp as they're not made aware of any reasonable alternative.

Let them pick up the bill

Most of my customers are out in the sticks, off the beaten track, and their only regular visitor is the milk tanker. If we can't use Teamviewer to connect and sort out their systems, can they bill Talk Talk for needing to have someone travel out to them rather than it being done remotely? What about subsequential losses incurred?

Don't hold your breath

What will no doubt happen is that they'll make you jump through loads of hoops just to report a problem, and never give you a firm date for an installation or changeover. We'll be able to go back to pre BT days, three month waiting list for a line, and then telling you it's your equipment or internal connection that's the problem (and they'd charge you for a callout) just to cover their rear by not starting the "waiting repair" clock.

Really the one that would hurt is being compensated for not being provided with the contracted service, you know the one ... X MB broadband promise but only X/3 MB delivered which seems to be about what you actually get.

Says someone who is not in an FTTC area but they keep promising you the moon on a stick.

So what happens when the lawyers get hit? Wh are they going to run to when their data is being rifled?

Not exactly a developing market

I can name a number of players in this market, for both fertility management, robotic milking and general automation, so it's hardly a new opportunity.

Maybe it'll produce a new opening for the likes of Google? Will cow collars suddenly start to play advertisements for a feed company?

The cows? Well so long as they get fed, access to the cow brush and generally pampered they'll be happy if they're connected or not. Saying that, the state of some of the "broadband" in rural areas of the UK I'd say not.

Making it up as they go along

All these headline speeds are not a lot of use to rural broadband users, in some cases if you can call it that. In doing farm IT work I'd be lucky to get 150k, usually it's a lot slower. The only advantage is that I can go for a coffee, walk the dogs, or indeed have a nap whilst waiting.

A friend's farm has 5 miles of wet string between it and the exchange, the nearest village is 2 miles away but of course that's not where it is, and there is little chance of a green cabinet appearing to service a group of 4 farms. They've sprouted a 4G Yagi and a box, and it means they have a chance of doing anything on line, which the powers that be assume everyone can.

I would suggest that OFCOM make them advertise the speed that 90% of their customers can achieve, otherwise it's like having a Ferrari in a 20 mph zone.

Saving bandwidth

I consider that it's bandwidth issues that drive these network level adblockers. When page contents appear to be getting more ad-heavy and problems occur with plug-ins (hello Adobe..) and content (malverts) then it makes sense. After all, the customer will be paying to read the adverts in the end, and if you're not willing to pay then the model is sort of broken.

Of course this really says that the advertising model is not working, it'd be like paying for junk mail to be shoved through your letter box. If they were restricted and actually relavent to the site being visited that wouldn't be too bad, but the scatter-gun approach has just dug them into their own deep hole.

The difference between adblocker on or off can mean whether a page loads on a mobile or not. That's possibly the main issue.

Not really necessary

Funnily enough trains run on predictable routes and don't have conflicting traffic to slow them down. Even then there are signalling and control systems that know where a train is, a system that's worked for over a century and seems to make them pretty safe.

Other factors can't really be controller by a satellite, it'd be a bit like problems in Discworld - you can know how much fresh prawns cost at their source but no chance of getting them to market!

Just wait and see

EE are now owned by BT. We all know that company's reputation for providing services in out of the way places.

I'll guess they'll just sit back now and see what happens. Piggybacking the ESN on the public network? Well I've experience of that when they're a spike in demand they just fail to work, so I'm sure Motorola have plans to provide an alternative network "off the shelf".

He'll be okay

So long as the ISS Computer hasn't told him the AE-35 needs replacing.

Finish the job properly

Please make available an "Internet Explorer" removal tool for those that have opted out of using it as a browser, it's like having a ticking time bomb in your machine.

A sort of tearing noise

A friend was regularly landed with £7 a day for *any* data with this lot, he's moved to a dumb phone and ditched them. Do they really want to keep anything other than corporate customers?

Down the pub

There's a boozer in West Yorkshire that also hosts the local amateur repeater. When it's in use it's been known to desense car receivers as they have awful SAW type direct conversion receivers (cheap) and a signal 600kHz away from it causes problems.

You could always upgrade to Mr Bean type locks.

1980's tech

I understand that TCP/IP was just a thought in Tim Berners-Lee's head back in 1985, back then there would be no thought of connectiong this sort of device to a large and somewhat anarchic network.

Personally I prefer my control devices to be double pole with a nice mechanical actuator.

Spotted the building

Ripon Workhouse. No don't give Iain Duncan Smith any ideas...

Too late

Acrobat Reader is but a memory, I'm afraid I ditched it six months ago, so I'll be missing this one. I wonder how much of the original code is left?

Formby, Lancashire

I'm surprised, none have spotted the Dan dare connection.

Lightweight?

I've got LAMP running on a Pi, is that lightweight enough?

Mysterons

Something of ours has accidentally destroyed the Mysteron City. Now where have I heard that before?

Please turn the lights off

M$ are banking that the x86 franchise keeps going, but given that a lot of the world develops on ARM based cores, that would really mean an exit from the embedded market for one.

The danger is that their OS that's supposed to run everywhere can't because there's a whole class of processors it can't run on. In that case, Google will rule the roost with Android and M$ will just be selling an office suite as a service.

Police budgets

Forget Huawei, with the current climate maybe it'll be Wouxun who'll be providing the kit.

Substantial majority

How about only being able to advertise the speed which say 90% of customers will experience for 90% of the time in order to be representative of the service they would receive?

Superfast 5MB broadband doesn't sound quite so appealing.

I wonder if the cost of contacting all the "victims" and the cost of the administration has been calculated. The bill for that should be considerable - or have EE just left it? Should this be claimed off the "victim surcharge thing"? However 50p per person seems too small a charge, make it a tenner and send the collectors round.