* Posts by Mage

9265 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

Wearables are now a two-horse race and Google lost very badly

Mage Silver badge

Re: Wearables

Any "wearable" other than fitness/health monitor / watch, or a smart phone is a solution looking for a problem or dystopia.

What else is there (no not AR specs + camera, especially not disguised as contact lenses.)? Hearing aids? Camera / face recognition blockers? LED soles / laces / buttons / beanie lights?

Mage Silver badge

Re: I can think of lots of uses for a smart watch...

Though security on contactless payment systems is garbage, partly by design so you don't have to type PIN for small purchases.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Apple Watch

A Chinese Bluetooth indicator type watch for alerts from phone and as handsfree handset is about 1/10th cost of an Apple Watch. Takes ordinary replacement straps. Optionally takes microSD card for voice dictation / camera. Optionally SIM and works as GSM phone! Runs about two days on a charge.

The Apple model looks well made, but otherwise is grossly overpriced. Does it work without an Apple phone unlike cheap ones that work iOS, Android and stand alone?

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: tracking bracelets

I only know one person with an Apple Watch. A serious Apple fan and he wants to sell it.

The idea of wearables is not compelling apart from fitness/health devices. The privacy and security issues need to be solved / addressed.

Monitoring / logging (NO Internet!) of walking, heart rate/irregularities/ECG, blood pressure, sugar levels, temperature, breathing, EEG, fetus etc outside a hospital in normal life is a great idea, but useless without accuracy, reliability, privacy & security. No wireless, except optional SMS/999 module for high risk patients. Micro USB to charge and download log. Battery life needs to be several days to a week. Logging needs to be up to a month, or maybe a year, not relying on frequent downloads.

Any display might be useful if eInk and giving text for beep alerts about need to take insulin, glucose, tablet etc in a clear fashion not needing reading glasses.

Irish eyes are sighing: Data protection office notes olagoanin'* up 79%

Mage Silver badge

Data Protection Commissioner?

Not as bad as Financial Regulator, or Comreg that makes Ofcom and FCC look proactive & consumer orientated.

These regulators were an EU idea because the actual governments could not be trusted. The Regulators are captured by Mega Corps and Gov. Finance Dept/Treasuries. EU regulators might be better than national ones. Ofcom opposed voice & data roaming and supported Mobile Operators.

Ofcom & Comreg want to close FM (why? the spectrum is no use for anything else) and also want to close terrestrial TV entirely, re-birthing it as Mobile company owned Pay TV using LTE-Broadcast spec. Bigger licence revenue.

Mage Silver badge

Most people in Ireland.

a) Don't complain because they don't know regulator exists.

OR

b) Don't complain, because almost no complaints about anything are official. People bitch in pub, work, phone-ins etc, especially Joe Duffy show.

OR

c) Don't make official complaints unless they are Eircom/Eir, Three etc as otherwise they are ignored.

Take your pick.

Don't complain if you are in Lidl as the manager just suggests you ring their freephone number. Probably even if the stuff has caught fire. Dunnes, Tesco, B&Q, PCWorld/Currys also all terrible consumer relations.

RIP... almost: Brit high street gadget shack Maplin Electronics

Mage Silver badge

Re: MTM, PWC and BT Italy?

See title.

But Maplins is doomed. Surprising it didn't close 10 years ago!

Mage Silver badge

Re: Terrible service

Also in Ireland (Six stores ex Belfast which is UK), for over 10 years selling stuff that either doesn't work here, or can't be licensed here or is even plain illegal. CE! means not compliant all of EU.

TVs (even Analogue era), tuners, UK CBs, non-446 two way radios and phones are obvious ones in the past and now.

UPS claimed to be "sinewave" but pure square wave, so evil for transformer based PSUs.

Also selling irresponsibly.

Some very keen and helpful staff. Shame to see them so ill paid and in a place with so much junk.

It's sad. The present owner claimed it would be reformed, but it got worse.

There is a place for a properly managed Bricks & Mortar Electronics & Gadgets shop. PC World/Currys now have no choice or parts worth speaking off. Carphone warehouse hardly better than Tesco for phone / tablet choice. What if you what a phone that's not a Doro or full touch screen slab? Online only.

HiFi or speakers for mortals that's not Audiophool stuff? Online only.

Mage Silver badge

Re: >> it was a mere pamphlet

Ambit catalogues

Sigh.

Maplin got pointless. Ordinary cables cheaper in Tesco, who are expensive compared to Poundland/Dealz Eurostores, Primark/Pennys.

Increasingly didn't have what you wanted anyway, or poorer quality than elsewhere. Even B&Q or Argos better for tools.

About x5 to x 30 dearer than China mail order, but often identical or poorer quality.

US Supremes take a look at Microsoft's Irish email slurp battle, and yeah, not a great start

Mage Silver badge

Re: using Windows on any internet-connected

Using Chrome, Office365, Google Docs, ChromeOS, LinkedIn, Google services / facebook script on your site, Android, Windows, most cloud services, Internet Toys, Streaming services, IoT etc might already be illegal in EU for the user depending on content, and/or the Provider.

Don't hold your breath for any EU regulator proactive action, especially in Ireland. It will need companies or individuals to bring court cases/.

Inviting nearby exoplanet revealed as radiation-baked hell

Mage Silver badge

Re: Plane of the flares?

True, sort of. Planets tend to orbit around the same plane as equator of the rotating star. Simplistically if the flare lasts half the time of the star rotation period (or orbital period of the planet), then 50% chance of toasting a near enough planet. The flares are mostly going to be in the same plane as the planets due to the star's rotation.

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, which are known to be more prone to flares. It's much less than the mass of our sun, so flares are worse. It's thought that red dwarfs are poor candidates for ET life as the goldilocks zone is much closer to the star and thus more easily damaged by the usually bigger and more frequent flares.

Proxima Centauri b is really close to the star so a "year" (an orbit) is less than 12 days. Curiously star's rotation period is about 84 days.

Mage Silver badge

Re: operation space craft is 40 AU and that has taken decades

All true, except it is really really near. It's just our probes are much more use for the Solar System. The two Voyagers and Horizon just happen to be exiting the Solar System eventually, but they, as are all of our probes, are Solar System probes. KBOs and Oort Cloud origin comets are really Solar System things. Though we did have a rock from interstellar space visit lately.

A world our distance from GC in our galaxy on the other side is about 40,000 ly away, that's TEN THOUSAND times further than Proxima Centauri.

Mage Silver badge
Alien

Re: Not really near

It's very near, 4 ly versus the approximately 100,000 ly of the diameter of our Galaxy, the Milky Way.

Estimates of the number of galaxies in the observable universe range from 200,000,000,000 to 2000,000,000,000. Andromeda isn't the closest, just the nearest galaxy like ours.

Our Oort Cloud is very wide and maybe from 0.03 to 0.08 ly at closest to as far as 0.79 ly to 3.16 ly. It's sparse, so hard to tell accurately.

So Proxima Centauri B is very close indeed. Though the Oort Cloud outer edge might be a 1000x as far away as the Kuiper belt.

100,000 AU = 1.58 ly. The Kuiper belt is about 30 AU to 50 AU. It's also not got a definite edge.

Voyager 1 is still within the Kuiper belt (40 AU), hardly out the front door!

1 AU = approximate distance Sun to Earth.

Jupiter SEEMS far at about 5 AU and much beyond it solar power isn't much use. Hence EM or Cannae drive or Solar sails only serve to get a fixed velocity long before the Kuiper belt. Very very slow for interstellar travel.

4G found on Moon

Mage Silver badge

Stupid

This is just PR.

There are better solutions. LTE is designed to suit patent holders, the issues of terrestrial channel size, handovers between bases etc.

Drones replace models on Dolce & Gabbana catwalk

Mage Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Today Program

The BBC Today Program used to be heavyweight till the BBC hired a paper magazine person, who is trying to abolish journalism and replace it with propaganda, magazine and lifestyle items.

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Primark

Though they may have just as good dresses, bags, sunglasses.

~

~

~

Made in the same or similar Chinese, Bangladesh, Turkish or Indian factories.

Work continues on 5G, shame no one's sure what it's for yet

Mage Silver badge
Flame

5G aims to cover a wider set of use cases from the outset.

This is nonsense. Very many things can use 2G/GSM, 3G and now more often 4G/LTE. Small low power embedded modems have existed for years. Despite what Apple claims, the SIM size isn't a problem either.

The issue has always been about COVERAGE, due to lack of proper universal coverage regulation. The 5G makes no difference to ability to include a modem and it will make almost no difference to coverage. That's only increased by regulation. It's about capex vs revenue. Adding more coverage or increasing base density (smallest cells give up to x10 speed) adds very few extra subscribers. Existing ones won't pay the 4x more needed to give same profits.

Comcast offers £22bn to snatch Sky from Rupert Murdoch

Mage Silver badge

Re: P.S. Irish & UK competition regulator

Why was UPC/Virgin allowed to buy TV3 channels?

Why is a subscription platform (Sky) allowed to OWN any channels at all?

Why are Skyboxes only able to take Sky Pay TV cards?

Why can you only download Amazon eBooks in UK & Ireland from Amazon UK (Sterling).

Why though you can install Kindle App on phone/tablet/laptop, NO competitor's eBook reader can read Amazon eBooks that have DRM?

Why does the Kindle (which is bought outright) not accept ePubs, not even DRM free?

Mage Silver badge

when F1 goes to Sky full time?

Buy a scalextrix? Maybe though that's USA racing. Rally driving seems more interesting to me. But I appreciate the pain of people wanting Premiership football (might soon need 3 or 4 subs in some places) or F1.

Perhaps if no-one subscribed, it would end up FTA on BBC/ITV/C4?

Mage Silver badge
Pirate

Pay TV & Subscriptions.

As I don't watch the Pay "sports" and little sport at all, I don't any longer subscribe to anything except Internet provider.

PAYG phone credit.

Amazon Prime/Subs cheat book authors.

Streaming music cheats musicians.

All subscriptions make excess profit and cheat consumer due to renewal is usually automatic and novelty wears off. Consumer pays more than simply BUYING the content they really want (which also doesn't depend on a dish, cable TV or broadband connection. Or fragile cloud servers.

I'll buy the CDs/DVDs/BDs/Books I actually want. If I buy an eBook, I'll make sure it doesn't need a server to authorise it and I'll back it up.

Mage Silver badge
Pirate

UK competition regulator is less keen on Rupe getting his hands on the remaining 61 per cent stake

Idiotic. They missed the bit where Murdoch has been CONTROLLING Sky for years. The Murdoch bid is because he thinks he'll get more profits, not more control.

The various UK competition regulators have often looked at the wrong aspect of take overs for maybe 60 years. They made Ever Ready ripe for asset stripping by Hanson by blocking their take over of Mallory (rebranded Duracell). The husk of the brand bought after stripping by US Eveready (now Energiser and owned by a pet food company).

Yet strategic UK assets often thrown to the wolves abroad.

How did so many UK / Ireland newspapers & some radio stations end up being controlled by an Australian that bought US citizenship so as to be able to buy USA media?

Look at what happened to two Italian Pay TV companies. Search card piracy, who funded it and who bought/controlled the wreckage.

Dishonest Sky take over of BSB and also 28.2E satellite spot (intended for Central Europe).

It's irrelevant now what Competition Regulator thinks of Murdoch's takeover, damage long done to UK media.

Comcast isn't much liked by USA customers. Replacing a rapacious controller with a USA company?

Also while Irish takeover of Chorus and NTL cable was by UPC, (Sort of Dutch flavoured, Tulip logo, big in Europe) who then took over Virgin Media, is the renting of the name Virgin for UK and Ireland to hide the fact from ordinary consumer that it's actually Liberty Global / Liberty Media, another rapacious USA company?

~

The USA rarely cares about consumers or Corporate Control.

Disney: Fox, Muppets, Starwars, Pixar and more.

I've lost track of what MS, Google and Apple have taken over.

Facebook assurances about customer privacy on their takeovers proved worthless.

Amazon: IMDB, Abe Books, Book Depositary, CreateSpace, Mobi and many more.

Fender's 'smart' guitar amp has no Bluetooth pairing controls

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: I will not hear a word said against Fender

All this "smart" garbage needs to stop.

3.5mm & 1/4 jacks. Canon plugs.

Real knobs, not apps, up/down buttons or rotary encoders (unless absolute grey code).

Mobile industry wants less regulation, mooooar radio spectrum

Mage Silver badge
Big Brother

Amazon, Google, Facebook, MS, Uber, Apple etc

Need slapped down hard with % of turnover fines unless they stop their illegal data harvesting.

The Mobile & ISPs absolutely must not be allowed to "join the party". It's got to stop.

Everything you watch on HDMI connected players, Broadcast, apps, streaming, conversation potentially being sent to Google and often TV maker. Android TV needs banned and firmware updates to stop the spying.

Chrome, ChromeOS, Android, YouTube, all Google APIs & services, Analytics, scripted buttons on websites to Social Media. Kids Toys. IoT gadgets.

It's all beyond the nightmares of most dystopian SF writers ALREADY!

Mage Silver badge

Mobile Greed

More coverage and better speed will only exist with MORE regulation. It's got too light. They cherry pick and build minimal number of base stations.

They are already underutilising the spectrum they have due to cells too big. Lack of regulation.

This is crazy.

Also having multiple PHYSICAL operators underutilises spectrum. There needs to be ONE infrastructure operator with licence setting minimum performance & 100% coverage. Raise "licence" revenue by sales tax on the retail operators selling access.

It's not like baked beans or beer where multiple "operators" makes sense, and need less regulation. Spectrum is very limited.

FCC, Ofcom & Comreg encourage the greed of these operators by not regulating enough and wanting to raise revenue by auctions of spectrum.

Huawei guns for Apple with Mac-alike Matebook X

Mage Silver badge

Re: laptop desk stand

Mine is a thick hardback only under rear end of the laptop. Nice keyboard angle and better screen height.

Mage Silver badge

Not a Mac Clone

Because it doesn't come with Mac OSX, but with increasingly annoying windows.

Unless Apple is selling Mac OS for it or Linux Mint + Mate is perfect on it, it's nearly pointless.

Also Lenovo's online agent for Ireland (Invoice is from Shannon) refuses to honour 2 year SOGA and will only refer replacement queries to wrong Lenovo technical support or even IBM UK.

I'm not buying Lenovo again till they start implementing Irish / EU law on sales. What is Huawei SOGA retail sale compliance in EU like?

Sony Xperia XZ2: High-res audio but no headphone jack

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Middle age spread?

I'll stick with my Z1. Fits small jacket pocket, fantastic FM radio, Headphone jack and also micro HDMI socket. Replaceable battery, Micro SD card slot, regular SIM.

I'd buy a slightly fatter one with longer battery life. I don't want a smaller bezel. Makes screen too fragile and leaves nowhere to hold the phone.

Mage Silver badge

High-res audio but no headphone jack

What are they smoking. Wireless connection REDUCES the quality compared to Analogue jack (extra codecs) and means earphones need charged. Idiotic.

"High-res audio" is fake snake oil. No-one outside a studio/mixing desk needs it. Idiotic.

We all hate Word docs and PDFs, but have they ever led you to being hit with 32 indictments?

Mage Silver badge

Re: There's a worrying implication

" just a lot slower"

Maybe when banks used Line printers and SOHO users had a daisywheel or MX80 DMP. It might not be true now with a leased Nashutec copy/print/scanner on the network.

Vatican sets up dedicated exorcism training course

Mage Silver badge

Re: To paraquote..

He's dead. Or at least supposed to be.

Mage Silver badge

Re: so the House of Commons is in need of an exorcist then...

I wondered why they all seemed mad. I assumed it was mercury or lead in the disintegrating Commons chamber.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Professional not required

Actually they have specially trained priests and check first it's not mental or physical illness. I think DIY isn't encouraged by any major religion?

Does my boom look big in this? New universe measurements bewilder boffins

Mage Silver badge

Re: Light

No, not excess of light. Lack of dark. The sun is a dark sucker.

Mage Silver badge
Alien

What’s it expanding into?

It's very hard to grasp. It's just expanding. But not expanding INTO anything. Not even vacuum.

IT peeps, be warned: You'll soon be a museum exhibit

Mage Silver badge

Dabbs

Top form today!

Thanks.

BBC Transmitter engineers are gone. Such a shame. Most of the jobs or entire companies I've worked for are gone. In one case they closed entire R&D dept.

I bought my first copy of Byte and of PCW before there was an IBM PC.

PCW - 1978. No idea when I first got a copy.

IBM PC in N.I. UK = 1981

Byte launched in 1975. I first bought a copy of a UK edition of Byte, that had the Apple II on the cover. Was it 1978, 1978 or 1980?

I do still have a computer magazine with launch of Archimedes and a later one of UNIX launch for it. Perhaps Acorn User?

I'm about to dump my 1993 to 2004 collection of MS CDs and DVDs of Select/MSDN/TechNet. I dumped Microsoft December 2016, though I still have 2 x Win 10, 1 x Win 7, 2 x XP (games & Satellite TV) and 1 x Win2K (test gear controller) with multiboot to DOS /Win3.11/Win98 (for radio programming).

Mage Silver badge

Re: dystopia: Jeff Bezos

Curiously so to the three wise men at Alphabet, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and a few others.

Will it be like the Dune "Great Houses"? I hope they ban atomics first.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Back in the day

Some TVs & Radios had remotes in 1950s. One 1930s USA Radio had a WIRELESS connected dial to select a preset radio station.

I'm pretty common and I had email (300 baud or 1200/75 depending on if Prestel, BBS or X25 PAD) from 1981 on CP/M. By 1987 using an account to get access to Telex, Fax and Bitnet email from a PCW8256 with 300 baud modem. Fax replies were posted to me by physical mail.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Rotary dials

You can even buy the parts and breadboard a rotatary to DTMF. A pi or old laptop with serial port (sense a handshake line) can do it. Even easier if old laptop has a built in modem (AT D command).

Some exchanges and ATAs do still support pulse dialing.

Two analogue phones (any kind) and a 6V battery all in series makes an intercom. We used top & bottom wire of a fence when we were kids.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Round goes the wheel...

Nobility mostly went bust when Industrialisation and imported food & cloth killed ability of their Estates to make money from agriculture (mostly wool, which is why eradicating wolves was seen as so important and the "woolsack" in Parliament).

Managers, Politicians, senior civil service...

Mage Silver badge

Re: holographic storage

Unlike magnetic bubble memory which actually made it into some military products. I wonder what archive life is and how small/capacity and fast it can be? Flash isn't archival, but certainly seriously beats bubble memory on speed and capacity.

I expect commercial fusion power stations before we see consumer holographic storage or proper performance VR with focus & movement tracking of eyes as well as head.

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: Archive

And re-writeable CDs / DVDs last less time than a passed around C15 tape for a spectrum.

Intel's announced PCs packing 5G, and that's just plain wrong

Mage Silver badge

Re: one bill that allows me to access X GB of data from Y devices

Only with broadband operators selling mobile packages. No way at all can 5G or any mobile ever compete with speed, capacity, cap etc of real broadband. Fantasy.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Consumer use in the UK?

It's handier to have a "bar of soap" Mobile to WiFi hotspot. Can sit on windowsill for FAR better mobile signal, allow more than one device / user. Often has far better & easier to configure firewall than tablet / laptop.

Built in mobile is near dead except on phones, maybe also a thing on Amazon Kindle eReaders for people with no wifi / laptop etc.

Mage Silver badge

re: about 25% of the corporate laptop market

Really? Where?

Also notoriously bad and over priced extra compared with a USB stick.

Also the entire idea of a so called "5G" modem / radio for consumer space is laughable.

~

Perhaps the master plan is to have revenue for mobile operators by an in Office femto cell for so called 5G (i.e. on a band higher than 2.1GHz and thus useless outside) instead of WiFi.

Unless these properly work with GSM, 3G and LTE worldwide, properly, it's stupid. I've a Lenovo with Intel's ill fated Wimax as well as WiFi and 3G in it. Only the WiFi is any use.

Mobile network O2 UK leaps into 5G test bed with Greenwich trial

Mage Silver badge

Re: O2 Arena 5G

Ha Ha.

It's just chargeable WiFi.

You'd be lucky to have 20 users with actual decent frame rate & quality physics.

The 5G isn't really about new bands or higher speed or more capacity. We reached the Shannon limit more than 12 years ago. The 4G is more efficient than 3G with multiple users. With one user on the same signal level and channel size there is almost ZERO difference between 3G, 4G and so called 5G.

The 5G is supposed to be about integration. The 4G can only do VOIP for voice, 3G and 2G have native codecs, so ironically per MHz of channel they are more efficient than 4G for voice. The 2G is more robust than 3G because 3G cell varies in size with number of users (largely cured in 4G). The 4G is mainly faster because the channels can be 20MHz instead of 5MHz (thus 4x faster for one user with perfect signal).

All these 5G Press Releases are just um, PR :)

Samsung left off Google's new official Androids-for-biz list

Mage Silver badge

Re: they don't slurp data for advertising

Is there any independent audit of what Google stores about users of Android, Chrome, Chrome OS, Android TV, any web site with any Google hosted content (apis, fonts, analytics, adverts), Google services (maps, translate, plus, groups, YouTube)?

Targeted advert usage is only part of the story.

Google has too much power & dominance.

Amazon, Apple, MS, Adobe, Facebook etc all need investigated too over data acquisition and retention. Also what is spent on lobbying and front groups, takeovers etc.

Mage Silver badge

Re: "The Register notes ... that Nokia's kit is made in China."

Apple is certainly mostly Chinese made.

Android & Android TV is worse spyware than non-Android anything, though MS trying to catch up.

RIP, Swype: Thanks for all the sor--speec--speedy texting

Mage Silver badge

Familar pattern

Big company buys in innovative thingy.

Development stutters. Sometimes later versions worse or unchanged (Paint Shop Pro, Visio, Skype, Pebble, Mobi-reader, Glen-Dimplex buying Roberts etc, Harvard then Argos with Bush/Murphy, Flarion bought by Qualcomm)

Big company loses interest and kills it.

Who wanted a future in which AI can copy your voice and say things you never uttered? Who?!

Mage Silver badge

Replacing their accent

No, totally creepy. Talk to some grandparents. Perhaps you might be one eventually.

Actual AI that's actually useful and not exploitive and isn't fragile (because none of it is intelligent, it's a narrow mimic) would give AI acceptance.

Mage Silver badge
Pirate

It's an old idea.

I mentioned Program for a Puppet before on this site.