Posts by AIBailey

I've been a convert to Android Pay over the past year or so, but only turn on NFC at the point of paying. Usually it's turned off.

Re: It's a marketing coup

I've been impressed in the past with Huawei phones (I've had one, my wife has one, my son had one and now has a Honor).

However, it was only recently that I discovered that in later version of EMUI. they've intentionally removed the option to install apps to the SD card. This was found out the hard way when Mrs B was no longer able to install anything without deleting other apps first.

There's no workaround short of rooting, and by doing that you probably lose access to online banking from the phone.

I was considering a Honor for my next handset, but unfortunately this restriction has put me right off.

Re: If the author of this PoC

Twitter haven't suppressed what Trump has been able to say, they've merely added a flag to point out that what he's spouting may not be grounded in any kind of fact at all.

He's still free to say what he wants, but that doesn't meant that anyone else has to take it as gospel. What's really wound him up is that he might not be able to post a bunch of lies any more without it being openly called into question.

You could launch at any time and achieve Earth orbit.

The challenge here is to launch when the ISS is at the right point in the sky, otherwise you waste too much fuel chasing down its orbit.

Re: Because ... it’ll just work : Nope

Our main family laptop is a Dell from late 2010. Upgraded several years ago with a SSD, and I've chucked a couple of extra GB of RAM in its direction, but otherwise I've not had to repair or replace anything.

It's still getting all W10 updates as well.

Re: Millimetres?

I'm hoping that last one is a typo. An 8K compatible 5" screen? That's a serious pixel density.

You could have stopped after the first 5 words in that sentence.

Re: Let's be honest...

Your memory does you credit - taken from ST-Amiga Format, issue 13 (1989), an article on software piracy:

"There is a story doing the rounds of a lad who hacked into Ocean's Operation Wolf, which in ST format comes on three disks, removed a bug on level five which caused the game to crash when a particular object is shot and compressed all the code to fit on one disk. Disks aren't cheap - Ocean would have been extremely happy to have left two disks out."

Of course, the original ST version would have been on single-sided floppies, where the cracked version would be double sided.

Re: What makes you think it's Windows 7 ?

Windows 7 with the Windows Classic theme does show a gradient across the window title bar.

Re: an obscure sport largely absent from this country

Hockey != Ice Hockey

Google cannot supply the code for Google Mobile Services to Huawei in China for them to include in their phone build. There's nothing that says that a user of a Huawei phone in another country (e.g. Australia) can't use US-centric apps though.

Netflix (to use another example) may not be able to provide code directly to Huawei, so the Netflix app can't be embedded in the phone from the factory, but again, nothing prevents a user in another country from installing the app.

If I was to suddenly become the owner of a Huawei phone without Google, installing the Amazon App store and F-Droid would probably get me 95% of the apps that I have on my current phone. *

*- ...at a guess. I already have some apps that I've obtained from the two sources above, and know that a great deal of others that I've downloaded from from the Play store are available in at least one of the alternatives.

Simply place the backup tape next to the drive array, and wait for some kind of data-osmosis to occur.

Of course, verifying the backup will be difficult, but I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time that backup integrity checks have basically consisted of crossing your fingers and hoping really hard.

Re: "..a 21.9:9 aspect ratio."

That actually makes more sense than 21.9:9

At least you can immediately visualise how much wider or taller a screen is from that.

Re: To be honest ...

95% approval in the Republican party...

95% approval amongst career politicians that have realised that the best, in fact the only way to get ahead and remain in a job is to back the orangeutan leader?

Occasionally a few of the Republicans show a bit of backbone and actually resist (Romney being a recent example), but a public dressing down from the comedian in chief usually reminds them not to misbehave again.

THAT says a lot, you know...

Re: Can't hear you!

I use Poweramp as my media player. Amongst the plethora of options is a toggle to mix audio to mono.

No need to inflict your music on anyone else.

Re: Captain Buzzkill

No he didn't, he came here for an argument!

Re: Sooo....

The other take home is that if you need to kill time while waiting for your criminal mates to arrive, take a book to read rather than have a few games of Angry Birds.

Re: USB A

I've got a couple of double sockets in the kitchen that have 3 x USB-A connectors built in, rated at 3.1A total.

They're really useful for charging most devices, and save having to dig out a multitude of plugs to charge the family's' phones at the end of the day.

The exception is the wife's phone, that somehow tries to draw as much power as the national grid can supply to the whole estate. This means that after about 10 minutes, all the devices that are plugged into the USB sockets periodically stop charging for a few seconds as the circuit inside the plug has got hot enough to trip the thermal cutout. The socket itself gets too hot to keep a finger against it for more than a second or so.

That reminded me of the old News Of The World reports, when they'd get so far into an investigation of some kind of sordid event before "making their excuses and leaving".

Really?

Re: Really?

How about right click, Properties?

That works if you want to see how much space a given folder is taking up, but if you want to know, at a glance, which of the 50 folders in your directory holds the most data then you'll need a pen, paper and patience.

Hence the reference to TreeSize Free, which is an incredibly useful tool.

Wouldn't that only be correct if there was also a restriction on setting airports with a 90 degree heading as well?

Re: oh no!

Considering the number of reviews that seem to focus on this nowadays, Micro-USB is surely still more prevalent. In the drawer of cables at home, there are only 3 USB-C's , plus a couple of extra in the car, but at least 10 Micro-USB.

USB-C is more convenient by far, but I certainly wouldn't write off a product just because it's using a cable that's been an established standard for well over a decade.

Who?

Re: I Can't Stop Myself

No, simply "ban it" because it doesn't bloody work.

The fact that this moron thought he could sort out a dog in the back seat of his car, leaving the driving of said car to a souped up cruise control, is the reason. Give people too much automation and they forget that the need to keep their brain engaged.

Presumably, yes.

Or at the very least, if a piece of the machine falls off, it'll try and file it away. There's something a little bit "wrong" about that however, kind of like someone knitting, not realising they're using wool from their own gradually unravelling jumper.

That apart, this is quite possibly the greatest use of AI I've heard about so far.

Re: Can he claim diplomatic immunity?

I was going to suggest a trade for Anne Sacoolas - seems that the US want the flow of "justice" to only work in one direction.

Re: IMNSHO...

It does seem to be the wrong way around.

I wonder what would happen if HP decided to try and turn the tables and launch a hostile takeover of Xerox instead?

I think in this case, the main problem with glue is that the people in the Apple accounting team have obviously been sniffing too much!

Re: RIP BeOS

I thought NetWare too.

The "competitor to Windows" thing confused me at first as I was thinking of desktop clients (which would probably have been either Mac or OS/2), but once you think server-side (and then take the obvious clue from the capitalised NW), it's clear who it was.

Re: More guns = safer for everyone

So by your argument, a safe state is one that allows you to carry a concealed weapon?

Taking that thought further, if you can assume that everyone has a concealed weapon, and nobody starts any trouble* then surely NOBODY needs to actually own a gun?

Just the thought that someone might own a gun is enough.

* - it depends on what your initial definition of "safe" truly means. Low crime overall, low number of gun related crimes, low homicide rate?

Re: How not to hold up autonomous cars

I'm thinking that Deathrace 2000 should be reclassified as a documentary in order to understand what might eventually go on in the "mind" of an autonomous vehicle.

Re: Quite...

You go in for a tin of beans and come out with a car jack.

I totally misread that, and assumed some kind of carjacking scenario.

My first thought was "You're not wrong. The kids that hang around the local Aldi will try and pinch anything."