Posts by Magnus Ramage

Re: Question

Had the same thought and I genuinely had to check the date when I read this.

Re: Answer

I do remember the days when entering f*ck you on the command line of SPSS-X gave you the answer "your place or mine"

Are you sure that wasn't SPSS-XXX?

Re: @Twilkins - yup, me too...

Aren't there WiFi calling apps more readily available from other carriers? Certainly the Three one is downloadable from Google Play, and I imagine this would be the case for other networks also.

Re: Damn good show.

Guilty as charged, m'lady. That's what you get for copying text from fan sites without checking them thoroughly. Sorry.

Re: 2nd that have a Lumia 925 great user experience...

I'm very pleased you love your Lumia 925. My wife has the low-end Lumia (520?) and both she and I think it's great and excellent value.

Regarding Android and crapware, do you count stock Android in your critique? It doesn't match with my experience of two recent mid-range-but-cheap Android devices, the Moto G (2013) and the Tesco Hudl 2. Both are near-stock with just a few added apps of reasonable quality. Certainly no anti-virus nonsense, dubious launchers, or anything I'd really call crapware (the Hudl is closer to this with its Tesco branding, but that stuff is easy to remove or ignore). And Nexus devices are better still in this regard. I

Not trying to start a flamewar, just observing that my experience doesn't quite fit with what you say.

Re: "Only one remains compulsory: the BBC"

"What was the headline Doctor Who threat about though? I can watch Doctor Who on iPlayer without a licence. Is the proposed model changing that?"

That's a classic 'tragedy of the commons' scenario. Yes, you can indeed watch Doctor Who on iPlayer for free (after transmission time). Perfectly legal. But if too many people chose to do that, the BBC would have no revenue stream, and thereafter either there'd be no Doctor, or they'd need to charge iPlayer users. That's not a threat - simply a statement of market reality.

Re: Positive Spin

@MrWibble: Don't count on it. We've been with Virgin Media cable for approaching seven years. Most of our neighbours are as well (we live on a new estate where external TV aerials are forbidden, so it's the best bet). We continue to receive junk mail from Virgin on a regular basis telling us of their new products.

That's been my go-to argument in favour of Lumia ever since my wife got one. Offline maps, freely updated, are a big selling point. However, Nokia have now released Here Maps as an Android app, complete with free offline maps; it's coming to iOS later this year. I've not heard any suggestion that the Android version is inferior to the Windows Phone version. There could still be plenty of reasons to buy a Lumia (or another Windows Phone brand, not that anyone does), but that's one crucial reason significantly weakened. I'm in favour of multiple smartphone OSs - I think the Apple-Google duopoly isn't sufficient for robust innovation - so I'd be sorry if Windows Phone declined further, but we'll see.

"There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that I'll use my European provider's data plan when I'm in the US, at $DEITY only knows how many €€ per GB."

I agree entirely that hotel-based wifi, preferably free, is extremely useful while travelling. However I know of at least one European mobile provider which allows customers to use their mobile data in their standard package while travelling in certain countries, including the US, as if they were on their home network. Worked very well for me last summer in the US, and indeed in Ireland. (I do indeed mean one particular provider but I'm not trying to advertise them; others can and should copy them.)

Re: What is 5/9?

Try googling the phrase that's actually in the article - "five-nines" not "5/9". It refers to 99.999% service reliability, i.e. almost all the time (though not often enough for some purposes). Agreed about the value of jargon-free websites but El Reg is aimed at techies, and the term is in widespread use. And Google is your friend in such cases.

That said, the list that referred to "five-nines" did feel unusually full of corporate jargon by the standard of El Reg. At a quick glance through the GSMA article, it appears to have been largely pasted from a list in the report - though amusingly enough the original did actually talk about 99.999% reliability...

Re: Still using the term "Fanbois"..... really?

Standard Reg style - mildly snarky, full of in-jokes. I've never seen the term 'fanboi' applied to all Apple users, just to those who are a bit over the top about it - queueing for three days to be the first to get a product they could have delivered online the same day, that kind of thing. Mildly insulting but basically knowing names are available for fans of other technologies.

Re: Name change Please

Hint: nobody seriously uses the term 'politically correct' (PC) any more. It's purely used by those who are against certain policies or ethical frameworks.

That aside, you do have a point that an effective way to bring ethical sourcing into products is to make a really good product that people want which just happens to be ethical - or indeed to make the ethical version the norm. You can't buy non-Fairtrade bananas from Sainsburys, for example. And while I think ethical brands such as Cafedirect (coffee + tea) and Divine (chocolate) have their place in establishing a market, making supermarket own-brand products fairtrade seems to grow the market better.

There's an appreciable market for ethical products, and a slight markup over the less ethical ones seems to be accepted by the market. Likewise premium products manage quite well to be ethical.

If the Fairphone had launched with a slight premium and better marketing, it could have done well. The trouble is that it was somewhat more expensive than comparable models, and its launch coincided with the arrival of really good budget Android phones (Moto G etc), making the price disparity even starker.

Re: On Street Parking

Regarding pollution and electric cars - yes, there is a risk of simply pushing off the pollution. But less-polluting electricity generation is being actively pursued in a number of ways (renewables, carbon capture, even nuclear), needs to be solved anyway for other purposes, and is certainly in principle feasible. The ICE by contrast is inherently polluting, and the best to be expected is more efficient engines or small-scale remediation of their effects.

That said, it would be very interesting to do a comparison of carbon emissions (and other pollutants) from an ICE vs the equivalent emissions from a standard gas- or coal-fired power station, for the generation of sufficient power to drive a car a certain distance. And then of course, as Thomas Gray suggests, to look at the local distribution of those pollutants.

Cherchez les geeks

Presumably because a high proportion of the readership of El Reg are geeks, many of them old enough to have grown up on the original Star Wars movies at the cinema. (Raises hand.) And just waiting to, ahem, introduce their kids to the new series when they come out.

Re: And this is better than Chromecast how?

Unless I've missed something, this is a standalone device. Chromecast only works with a phone or tablet. That's fine if you're in a household of adults with their own smartphones, not so good in a family situation. I wouldn't want to let my kids loose on my phone, but would happily do so with a standard remote.

Re: Just another power hungry HP

I have an HP Touchpad too, happily running Android 4.0 via CyanogenMod 9 (to whom I'm very grateful). It only charges at all well with the charger which came with it, rated at 2A. I've never had it successfully charge much at all on any of the other chargers in our house, whether no-name or from a specific manufacturer. Even a Nexus 7 (2012) charger didn't do it much good.

Re: Worst infographic EVER

@Platelet: Fair point, but then this is more of an advert for an infographic than an actual infographic. I quite like the format, but really I'd have liked a key too, or at least a note after the 1st, 2nd etc to say the actor's surname.

Re: Conflicted here

@Gordon 10: IANAL, but my understanding is that while Microsoft and Noka have agreed the sale of the Nokia phone division to MS, it doesn't actually happen until the early months of 2014. So while you might say that Nokia are well on their way to assmilation by the borg, it's not final and official yet. Cheer away!

Re: Happy Clappy Crappy

They don't have to be happy with it, just to chant it. Perhaps they simply want to keep their jobs? People have had to do many worse things in the name of corporate conformity.

A better question might be why people can be so vacuous as to require others to chant a company song.

Re: Fingerprint scanner?

Same here with my Lenovo laptop. Sometimes the fingerprint scanner works, sometimes it doesn't. I could never rely on it (and don't).

Re: Netscape won the browser war

Ironically, one of the best proofs of that is Evernote. Their Windows and their Android clients are both updated frequently, for reasons good and bad. On Android the install whizzes through (after a single approval), mostly happening in the background. On Windows it's a constant cycle of approvals, dialogue boxes and progress bars. Not sure whether it takes longer, but it certainly feels that way. The irony is because you'd expect a cloud-centric service like Evernote to work as a web-based app; instead under Windows it feels just the same as it would have a decade earlier, only updating more often. I've now uninstalled Evernote from my PC and only use their web interface or the Android version.

Re: No they don't!

The Glasgow Underground was certainly popularly referred to as the Clockwork Orange when it was rebuilt in the late 70s - I remember it well as a child living there. I don't live in Glasgow any more, but I don't think I ever hear anyone using the term now when I visit. But as demonstrated by some of the stereotypes above, perceptions of Glasgow in the rest of the UK still seem to be based on what things were like a couple of decades ago.

Re: Thought this might happen...

@xyz: "should one be wary of Rom/Alb/anians at bus stops with suspiciously large batteries next to them?"

Only if one is a racist. The technical point is a fair one, but the issue is surely about being wary of *anyone* at a bus stops with suspiciously large batteries next to them. Their country of origin is irrelevant.

Re: Agreed

@Goldmember: It might be justified, but it's still a lot of money.

Re: The problem...

This is a really interesting assertion (that Metro was designed for keyboard usage). I too would really like to see more details of the design principles, even just a blog post.

Re: And yet...

What? Marc Andreessen is a weeping angel?

(Point taken though. The blink tag was a truly awful creation, and led to some abominable web design for a while.)

Re: Price?

That's why the G300 has done so well, at least in some circles - it does 80-90% of what most people need in a smartphone for £100, very much as the ZTE Blade (Orange San Francisco) did a couple of years ago. That's cheaper than your sweet spot, but fits well into my sweet spot!