Posts by Refugee from Windows 265 posts • joined 10 Jun 2010
The NCA, being one of those goverment quangos, operates in its own area of the law. In this case that of the Ferengi, out of the Star Trek universe, once they've got it you'll never get it back.
Also applies to other "law enforcement" agencies who don't want any external scrutiny.
The ad revenue, even if it's undeliverable, is too much of an incentive for them to leave these out of Android. Neither would Google want to be seen to lose significant market share. The commercial plan is to make sure that the competition doesn't grow significantly. Other browsers, mail clients and mapping services are available, but Google would like theirs to be the default on the majority of users.
It'll be like the browser choice fiasco, they are so deeply baked into their services they can't untangle them. Lip service will be paid that's all. The slurp will continue unabated.
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.
Can we possibly expect that this one will be over budget, late, and of course not meet the specification called for. That is assuming that they have made their minds up, but having changed it several times, the end result will not look anything like the end users wanted in the first place.
Piggybacking the whole lot on a public network I won't comment on, but the phrase "single point of failure" comes to mind. Network coverage is nowhere near universal on 4G with EE, and of course there are marginal propagation changes between the current UHF and the 4G Band V so that existing sites may not provide the required service.
Can we expect further delays in the deployment? Of course. I also expect the odd call-out when Plod, Trumpton and the ambulances find out their radio comms are out of service.
Coat - there's a PMR/DMR handheld in the pocket.
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.
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.
We cannot of course predict disruptive technology. Possibly by then the office desktop PC will be a relic, with just thin clients and server based applications where no-one actually has a office suite installed locally hence no sales. As existing solutions are all browser based, then it won't matter what platform they are on.
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?
Just wonder where they got that idea from? Would be nice but knowing M$ it probably won't work properly when the underlying OS is built on a moving base. Good idea but I'm doubtful if the implementation will actually be of any use.
Want to see the next idea in Windows? Go and look elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppArmor
How about giving the users a degree of control over it then? Will we just get the usual dumbing down?
File systems - how about if you want to us ext4 or something other than they want to tie you into?
Desktop configurations - no tiles as an option?
An ability not to be gradually forced towards just using the Windows Store?
Telemetry - a "completely off" option?
I am sure others can think of more.
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.
Maybe it'll stop allowing the supermarkets to pay less than the cost of production for milk then? If their alternative sources from the continent have a hefty import duty on them they might just find their supplies dry up in the long term. If it becomes a buyers market then the producers will go for the one who pays the best price and there might be empty racks in some supermarkets.
The best thing for the RPA is a bought of transparency, maybe some of those running it need to be looking for alternative work, before the axe starts to fall.
If it's that M$ is supporting SQL server, well the number of times I've seen updates in W10 turning it off and stopping software we support that runs it, I'd say they are looking to drop it long term. I suspect that they'll be "dropping it off into the community" at some point. It'll become abandonware.
Getting it on Linux is good, as with exposure to the producers of specialised software, this is a reason why they've not released it cross platform, and with the embedded systems I've been supporting would be far better being on Linux anyway.
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.
I've come across this wonderful update glitch for 10AV. Whereas a program was installed in its own directory, and the data in another it decides to put that program in the Program Files directory with everything else and then of course it doesn't run properly.
Well it keeps me in a job. I'm just hoping our developers are working making our software platform independent.
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.
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.
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!
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".
Herdwicks? Just come round a bend in the Dales and meet a flock of Swaledales. These are the ones that chase sheepdogs (in fact they gave mine some grief before she decided she'd had enough and put them in the corener of the field). The sheep here are just stubborn, or is it just plain thick?
One flock of Herdwicks saw me (and dog) come over the hill and then decided to leg it - we must have been at least a quarter of a mile away. That's Cumbria for you.
Belgian Blue cattle or Limousins would make the best roadblocks, you wouldn't want to hit one.
Time for me coat, those cows won't milk themselves tonight.
There's not a lot of money to be made, and if you tag the emergency services comms on the back of the public service, when that goes down there's not an independent network to rely on. Oh dear. We do of course know how reliable 4G services are, especially outside main population centres.
Police cars will now be equipped with a box of pigeons to summon help with to cover the gaps in coverage perhaps?
Omnishambles. You've got it in one.
Coat, there's a PMR handheld in the pocket.
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.
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.
Some of the systems designed over 100 years ago have proved to be extremely safe over that time. It's some of the new innovations that appear to have inherent weaknesses. Possibly because there's not a Mk1 brain of a signaller keeping an eye on them.
I'll get my coat, it's got a Bardic lamp in the pocket.
Possibly as the consumer's demands are simply being ignored. Is smart metering only in the interests of the supplier? I'd say it is. I don't see any advantage of them to me, it's not going to change my power consumtion habits by much, and it'd no doubt be out of date by the time it's installed. If my supplier insists, I'll simply change supplier.
That's leaving aside any privacy and security matters of course.
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.
It needs a bit of care both ways. Of course this system will not work on the windy country lanes in $NationalPark where there is no data connectivity and you can't see round the bend. Takes the cyclist to assume that drivers won't see them til the last minute and be able to take avoiding action, and the driver to be driving such that he/she could stop safely.
This goes as well if the warnings are too frequent they will be ignored, far from the other distractions that could be encountered en route from "sat-nag", phone etc.
There are idiots behind wheels and on saddles, you just have to assume you're going to come across them. However go the other way, if a driver lets you pull out or in other ways behaves well, a friendly wave is appreciated. The driver who ignored you is just going to ignore the unconventional hand signal you want to give him anyway - don't bother it's not worth it.
Yeah, I am both a cyclist and a driver.
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.
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