Posts by Len Goddard

Linux

And no linux support? Not that it matters, I'd rather have a proper NAS. No, wait, I already have a proper NAS ... made by Synology. And it supports linux.

Is IE still a thing?

Does anyone actually use it?

Yeah, right

I have an HTC phone which has not been upgraded since 5.something. The news that HTC will be shipping or upgrading devices indicates to me that they will expect me to spend £600 to replace a perfectly good phone with something marginally better(?)/different.

Ain't gonna happen

Simple tech is good

I connect my player to the car radio with a wire. No autoplay to worry about.

Updates

I'm stull using my old HTC One. The only thing I miss is android updates. One of these days I might get around to jailbreaking it, but probably not.

Trash icon

I honestly don't think I have ever used this thing on linux or windoze (not an apple user). Dragging files/icons/whatever there is more effort than hitting del after you have selected them. TBH I'm not even sure if the trash can is enabled 'cause I've never used it to restore anything either.

nope

going through all this makes me more determined than ever to stick to nice ease-to-understand wire

If thats a duck

I'd hate to see a goose.

Consultation?

I worked for IBM when this happened. From memory it went something like this:

Here is what we are going to do. We will consult for one month then do it.

Good faith? Only a lawyer could think that.

Unsurprised

British Gas were unsurprisingly unsurprised when I rang them and told them to put their smart meter where the sun never shines. "Yes sir, I'll make a note on your account not to bother you with this again". Seems it happens so often they have a procedure for dealing with it.

Great British public appears to have more sense than I gave it credit for.

Wouldn't it be easier

just to open the link in your browser of choice to start with?

Why

Why do I need geography when I have google maps?

This is the best tech news all day

It will save me having to figure out how to disable the stupid thing if I ever buy a phone with it installed.

The end

There goes the last Microsoft programme (apart from the actual windows OS) that I use. Really useful when you want to crop, resize and change format of an image. Nothing I can't do in the Gimp but simpler and quicker with Paint.

Am I missing something?

Stochasitc is usually a description of a type of (random) process or sequence. Did the author here mean scholastic or was he inferring that all pleasures in Newcastle are random?

Useful

Yay - new phone ringtones!!

An alternative

Has anyone considered that a small metal token with a difficult-to-duplicate inscription on each side might be a more viable alternative to this virtual nonsense?

Mass market?

The Model 3 is, as the BBC breathlessly billed it, "Tesla's first mass-market car".

...

The Grauniad reports Musk as saying initial production will be 100 cars in August, ramping up to 1,500 in September

This is clearly some new meaning of "Mass Market" with which I was previously unfamiliar

Targeted ads

If the targeting algorithms were in any way accurate, I would receive no ads at all. In fact, on the rare occasion I actually become aware of what an ad is offering it is generally because it has irritated me so much I have made a resolution to never buy that product. I haven't eaten Shredded Wheat since the "there are two men in my life" jingle first aired.

Games

Useless for anything else as to see the whole screen you either have to keep swinging your head from side to side, which would give you a stiff neck in no time, or sit so far back normal sized text would be unreadable. Sure, you could bump up the text size but that would reduce the effective resolution.

I use a 3440x1440 34" monitor which works well for both work and gaming. Also, you don't need to phone a friend if you want to rearrange your desk layout. I'd like more vertical resolution but it starts to get expensive.

Reluctantly

I have to say that I have a degree of sympathy for M$ in this case. I think a vendor has an obligation to maintain a no-longer-sold OS (or application) for a reasonable period - to use the analogy in the article I believe motor vendors have to maintain spares availabilty for 10 years. However you cannot expect a vendor to continue to support the product indefinitely since it is in no way a cost-free activity. Vendors should be obliged to state a minimum period for which they will support the OS after withdrawal from market. Past that they can offer extended support as a product if they wish.

In this case the waters are muddied by the fact that M$ apparently had a fix which they did not distribute. You can argue that one both ways. The unsafeness of XP was the best incentive for tardy users to upgrade and to launch a fix would encourage them in their behaviour. On the other hand, had they released the fix in a timely manner they would have garnered some much needed kudos as good guys.

it is not just that they sell my data

which they don't to any great extent as I do not have a FB account, but they are now charging me for their advertising services. I had two credit card transactions recently from Facebk (sic) which apparently came from FB in Ireland for advertising costs. Googling reveals this is not unusual. There was no evidence that the credit card (which never leaves the house) was otherwise compromised ... just these two transactions near Xmas. So far I have seen no response from FB to the various complaints but I will be interested to hear what my cc provider has to say.

Is there anywhere left?

"In addition to connections in North America, the outage caused problems for Cloudflare services in South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Oceania region."

Antarctica, perhaps?

Giving up on smartphones

I've looked at my phone usage. Basically I make phone calls and occasionally listen to music/audiobooks. I think I will be backing off to a feature-phone and an mp3 player.

Mint is not harmless

Ask Ubuntu

Reduced crapware

At last, a phone without twaddle and farcebook baked in and unremovable! I'd almost buy it for that alone

Pear computer

In the days of the Apple II there was a company known as Pearcom which marketed the Pear II computer (an Apple II compatible with extra expansion slots and a numeric keyboard). They briefly used a rainbow striped Pear as a logo but gave that up when Apple made threatening noises. That logo obviously a direct ripoff, but this case is farcical.

IReadItForYou

May I offer my latest service.

IReadItForYou (IRI4Y)

All you have to do is give IRI4Y complete access to your system so I can trawl through and find out exactly what apps you are using. Then IRI4Y will access the T&Cs and, using fractal heuristic AI deep learning altgorithms, identify the pitfalls and tell you what you should not have signed. As a bonus, it will trawl through all your data and tell you where you are in violation of the T&Cs and also what private data has likely already leaked.

Note: Due to the dangers of infinite recursion, IRI4Y does not read its own T&Cs or issue warnings about them. Just trust us.

Ugh

I think I prefer Sadville

This guy scares me

He has so much money and media presence that people actually take his drivel seriously, which is worrying.

How much has to be made by humans?

like a machine made garment with a hand-sewn made-by-human tag?

Excuses

Anything serves as an excuse in this ridiculous debate. It is quite sickening.

Predictions?

Where does the data for the rest of 2017 and all of 2018 come from?