Posts by Mage

Re: Nope, not on Facebook.

I'd be very surprised if the Privacy exploiting companies don't analyse data uploaded before they publish it stripped. After all, they don't want their competitors trawling their site capturing all that lovely data.

Re: Andromeda: Apple

For all that Apple is overpriced one thing they had right for 2007 till recently:

iOS and MacOS were totally different GUIs for different kinds of use/screen. They maybe need to rethink the latest versions of MacOS a little and think harder about the big iPads and the surface like big tablet with pen, keyboard and iOS.

iOS/iPhone is maybe a bit to restrictive, but it's well suited to the main use & target market. MacOS is still quite well suited to its target market. Windows 10 is a disaster for the most important markets for it, content creators, SOHO, SME and Enterprise. Especially legacy Windows business applications. That is 99% of the market for Windows, yet it seems aimed at content consuming users buying iPads or Android Tablets. MS, that is NOT your market. You are enraging and crippling business users trying to address it. Look how well merging desktop & phone has worked! Once upon a time in North America Win CE had 22% on pocket devices, you have pushed it to 0.3% or less and seriously damaged the laptop/desktop and server market.

Re: Race to the bottom

Apple seems to have paid about 0.1% tax. About 1/100th of what Ireland taxes are supposed to be.

Ireland has started a court case already in an attempt to show goodwill to Apple, MS, Google, PayPal, ebay, Uber, Amazon, IBM, Intel etc.

I imagine Ireland will lose both cases. The other issue is that due to the Leprechaun Economics fake GDP engendered by these USA parasites (partially caused by stupid USA tax policies and high corporate rates and stupider occasional amnesties that reward dragon hoard behaviour) is that Ireland has changed from a net recipient to contributor to EU budget; so Ireland needs to start enforcing their own tax laws. EU needs to block UK and Dutch Caribbean area tax havens. Also put pressure on Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

The International Corporate tax holidays are coming to an end.

Re: You needed to have multiple forms of ID

Still do need multiple ID to open an account, or to get additional ID (new Social Services Card or driving licence), inc utility bills to your address in Ireland. Then they post to the address. Some ID only accepted if you have Birth Cert too. EU anti-money-laundering laws. Preventing Money Laundering doesn't seem to apply to activities of major London based Financial institutions or major international companies stockpiling money in places like UK controlled Bahamas.

Now which pocket is my passport? Some countries even belatedly plugging hole of using dead people's birth cert to get passport. (see this 1971 manual)

Re: This is only for TVs running Roku software

But Apple's "Apple TV" product has no screen and no tuners. Also always been inferior to the Roku product. Essentially "Apple TV" profits are a rounding error compared to iPhone profits.

Comparing Apples and something not even a fruit.

If your TV has no local compatible broadcast tuner it is a Monitor. Most Monitors are very limited in TV broadcast video mode support, especially the majority of the world which uses 25i and 50p. Also Broadcast HD is often not 1920 x 1080.

Silicon Valley products have in Analogue and now Digital TV era been poor or zero support for outside North America / Japan. Which is the majority of the world.

Support for program guides is good.

Re: ASTC.

I'm sure important for those in North America without cable / satellite. US Cable is DVB-C, most Satellite is DVB-S (or S2) and outside China, Japan and NA, most Broadcast TV via an aerial is DVB-T (or T2).

It's true though that Digital is worse than Analogue Broadcast for multiple standards.

Re: wrong end of the stick.

Cunningly the Lenovo I have uses Fn Esc to give either logic! Default is function key is not special.

An LED shows which way round it is. Stupidly though the dot on 'i' of Thinkpad on lid and inside is an LED yet there is no CapsLock LED. So I set pressing both shift keys together to be Caps Lock and the Capslock to be UNIX Compose and a notification tray for the three missing keyboard state LEDs

So Lenovo doesn't quite have the keyboard right.

Re: Oh dear

It's probably an illegal ban, but UK is leaving every institution*, so they can.

(* They can leave UN and International courts a lot more easily than the EU)

sounds like Expert Systems Mk.2

Actually, having been involved with "AI" and Expert Systems in the 1980s, I've thought for the last year that all these new systems are just "Expert Systems Mk.1" with "big data", often inappropriately obtained and with little third party validation.

I don't see the big improvement in "Speech Recognition."

Also why is today's spelling checkers and grammar checkers not noticeably better to programs I was using 30 years ago on DOS and CP/M. Frankly rubbish. Proof reading still needs expert humans.