Posts by Mage 9273 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007
From 1st link, 2004
It has a long way to fall. It could do everything wrong for a decade before it started to be in remote danger, and you never know...
Strangely it was about 2003 - 2004 MS started losing the GUI Plot (Ribbon, Vista development etc).
They now claim Aero was a mistake, but have jumped to the other extreme. Win 3.1 3D effects and Win95 desktop was their GUI pinnacle. except they messed up explorer and still didn't fix it. Nice that Caja has dual windows (F3 I think?)
If you use a VPN, you'll get a visit, or a trojan keylogger on your device.
My Linux Desktop Windows Like "Control Panel" is called “Control Center”
I doubt either term can be protected.
Lack of Updates
Often not feasible due to lack of Flash space to download the new to before upgrade. Amazon sells loads of 8G Flash tablets with Android 4.4, with only 3G free.
"It's widely understood that relativity claims that c is a constant"
Not just Relativity. It comes out as a constant in Maxwell's equations, for a vacuum. A medium allows for slower propagation of light, radio, magnetism, electric fields. A coaxial cable slows radio waves, like fibres slow light. Or PCB traces on a multilayer board slow the signals.
Einstein was understandably pleased when he studied Maxwell's work.
Chop cable up and add fibre fed cabinets. The Coax is MUCH better than copper Cat3 from a street cabinet. A nieghbourhood that had one cable can be easily a fibre cabinet per street, feeding maybe only one side or half a side per coax instead of one area. Also "downlink" can easily be 750MHz wide, at MUCH higher QAM than Wireless, as the interference can be lower and power higher, it can be easily a total of 10 Gbps per coax on downlink. The Uplink total might though be under 300 Mbps per coax segment.
Hybrid Fibre Cable HFC. Even Ireland has it now.
Coax can be extended above the 862MHz on shorter runs, 100m can support up to 2GHz ultimately, giving a capacity on downlink per coax of 30Gbps. Cat 3 Twisted pair is only 100Mbps / 200Mbps on very short runs, at the sort of length often used for coax, Cat3 phone cable is 5Mbps to 25Mbps, though that's not shared. Even forty to 1 contention on a single coax is pretty good performance, reliably giving 200Mbps per user at peak times.
Yes, probably "bonding" or aggregation of carriers even from multiple base stations and sectors as well as channels, with a perfect signal. Nothing to do with real world performance.
You could nearly get 400Mbps aggregating all the 900MHz channels of entire band using GSM EDGE (1Mbps per 0.2MHz channel is easy), with a specialist DSP receiver. Without details of terminal used, aerials, base-stations, channel width, number of channels, signal power and interference levels, this is a totally meaningless claim.
"Like most people with small businesses, I run my complete accounts and invoicing system in the cloud and it costs me barely £15 a month."
The market leader charges more like £40 a month for what used to be a £90 package.
Indeed ANY small business would be mad to do that, be at the mercy of Internet connectivity and the "trustiness" of the Cloud vendor (Much less than 1970s vendors on mainframes) and paying rent forever.
£180 a year
£2,000+ over 10 years.
Add the need for backups etc too.
No, Cloud for small business makes no sense except for a website or ecommerce online. Subscriptions are a rip off.
Indeed plenty of small businesses can't get fixed Internet, or even reliable mobile!
That implies the sound chip connects to speaker(s) directly (maybe class D), in the past the sound chip used a separate analogue amp to drive the speakers, which as they point out, blocks the attack.
Strange too, that the pins are reprogrammable, like a PIC micro etc.
What next? The LCD screen capacitance sensed and thus acting as microphone?
They had some sort of Watch product in USA long ago. Did it use messages over SCA on FM Radio?
I remember they had a Tablet in maybe 2003.
Anyone remember "Plays for Sure"?
I still have a Microsoft Keyboard here, though I don't use any of the round multimedia buttons on it.
Why did the Xbox after the XBox 360 be called an Xbox One? Why was it an Xbox and 360?
"Amazon’s Echo as just the kind of "crazy hardware experiment"
Actually just plain evil and creepy.
Also Amazon's landing page pushes THEIR locked down Fire Tablets, crippled version of Android (no wonder they have over 30% growth on those), the Amazon Echo and the button thing. No wonder they sell.
Not only that, it appears on the list of stuff you are interested in under a product page, supposedly based on your browsing.
Amazon's marketing of their own products on Amazon is getting obnoxious. Now they want Indie eBook publishers to spend money on advertising campaigns on Amazon. KDP Select is evil too, gives Amazon a monopoly on selling content.
"I thought 4G was also more spectrally efficient than 2G or 3G"
Sadly that's a myth, or mostly a myth with only two tiny bits of truth.
More than basic GSM, but EDGE and HSPA are both about the same bits per Hertz as LTE.
4G encompasses LTE, WiMax and Flash-OFDMA (which can run in 2MHz).
see also
on here
It's true that as the number of simultaneous users rises, the 3G becomes LESS efficient than GSM or LTE, cell size shrink (cell breathing), thus tending to half the efficiency (speed per user about 0.2Mbps). However if you are getting any sort of decent speed on 3G, there are not many simultaneous users and thus not much overhead. Any improvement then on 4G will be the less users or x4 wider channel. Many LTE systems, especially 800MHz or 900MHz only use 5MHz or 10MHz channels, not 20MHz.
Native GSM voice is rather less spectrum efficient than EDGE on GSM as they don't use the same modulation, but then the voice link has more range, more robust.
Very high spectrum efficiency is only with a perfect signal, on EDGE, HSPA or LTE, basically the mast is visible.
You can't beat the laws of physics. Specifically Shannon Law / Theory is actually derived from Thermodynamics. Trade off of noise, power, bandwidth and data rate.
a) Do we actually know what it is?
b) is it not more about integrating bands & modes and Infrastructure.
c) Boringly, the thing that makes the most difference to customers is doubling the number of masts.
A lot of the reason for people reporting good 4G is either:
1) Not many people have it yet.
or
2) Simple mathematics. 4G can use 20MHz channels, 3G only uses 5MHz and GSM 200kHz. That's the main difference to speed when there are only a few users, not LTE vs HSPA+ vs EDGE.
If there are so many 4G users that your speed is only 1 or 2Mbps, then it would indeed be only 0.5 or 1Mbps on HSPA, as it uses rubbish CDMA to allocate user traffic. If EDGE (GSM) had bonded channels of 5MHz worth (25 x 200kHz) it would be superior to 3G and close to 4G in a 5MHz channel. Such a thing is technically possible. But Qualcomm gets far more royalty from 3G than GSM, hence GSM development stopped. 4G is more efficient than 3G for data, if there are more than a few users. It's less efficient for voice per MHz of spectrum than GSM or 3G as it only does VOIP. The main increase in headline speed is simply a four times wider channel (20MHz vs 5MHz), fewer users and better efficiency when congested (when speed is poor anyway).
Indeed it's a waste of money spending on 5G if doesn't get you or retain customers.
"“Most chatbots aren’t really artificial intelligence in the purest sense of the term: they’re more carefully scripted question-and-answer programs capable of serving content.”
Or indeed they are not intelligent in any useful sense. Not really AI in any sense. The original Eliza was meant to be a prank, a joke.
Also the only reason to run Windows at all is for older Applications.
So why would people want to "upgrade" from Win7 pro to Win 10?
Even Win7 32 bit is easier to run older programs on, though they OUGHT to work on Win Pro7 64bit. Just been through a huge heap of CDs to re-install on Win7 pro 64 that were all working on 32bit XP.
Only 2 worked / even installed:
One had text missing from all buttons on main menu level.
The other would only install DOS version (via DOSBOX, sound & mouse working) and wouldn't install the Windows version (which worked on XP) at all.
Windows 10 seems even worse for compatibility.
"Surely there are new versions of all these programs for Windows 7 or Windows 10?"
Er, no, unless it's a top selling payroll or accounts package. The developers are gone, or doing newer shiny games you don't want, also do you WANT to re-purchase all the programs you already bought?
I guess I need to install a VM with no Internet access. Stupid. WOW used to work. NTVDM used to work, now even 32 bit apps allegedly compatible with Vista as well as XP often won't run on Win7 64, though I suspect badly written installers as "new" 32 bit Windows applications (some of which work on XP) do install and run on Win7 pro 64 bit (but significantly from "Program Files (x86)" ).
Windows has turned into a mess going downhill.
Mines the one with two USB sticks in the pocket, Linux Mint cw Mate, 32 bit and 64 bit.
I just bought a Lenovo half the price of Apple Mac Pro with 2G just for GPU, main memory 4G RAM.
4G RAM seems standard on decent laptops.
The local shops and supermarkets have poor spec laptops, but then they cost less than a decent phone or tablet.
Pedant mode
WHY are LCD TVs with LED back lights called LED TVs? (There ARE Screens that use real LEDs, not the diode like EL panels called OLED or AMOLED, usually at sports or exhibitions, though Sony did demo a TV sized one called "crystal", because LED had been debased by LCD TVs)
Why are MS calling their products Holographic and Hololens when they are Stereo viewers, nothing whatsoever to do with Holographic techniques or Holograms?
Even with signing, an update server might be compromised. The concept of infiltration of update servers (using some other method) is worrying:
Linux, Windows, iOS etc.
Yes, WP org have made a mistake, but even if they hadn't there is still a single point of vulnerability.
FPGA are for desktops, niche or prototypes. Horribly power hungry and expensive each compared to an x86 HW subsystem.
Legacy x86 needs a decent screen, so really only usable on a decent Tablet (Surface Pro is x86 family anyway?) or docked simply using a phone as portable storage. Put x86 in the dock.
This too is doomed.
Only larger tablets are suitable for "legacy" x86 apps. Even then Emulation (VM makes it WORSE, though more secure) is rotten performance.
I was disappointed. I thought they were adding a better x86 compatibility layer for Windows 10 DESKTOP x64, that would avoid RAM and licence overhead of a full VM with XP 32bit (or earlier).
Doing this for ARM phones is pointless.
"continued prospect of open access to LinkedIn’s APIs as well as “allowing” OEMs to install LinkedIn on their devices in addition to social networks from rivals."
This is a nonsense assurance.
Still, be worse if Google or Facebook bought it. Then any assurances would be even greater fantasy.
For a moment today I laughed, I thought Oracle had wasted money buying Twitter (it was Dyn, which is nearly as funny).
I expect though MS buying LinkedIn might be like Murdoch buying a Social Media (Was it Bebo, Mebo, Myfarce, Unfriends? One of the now dead ones). Or it might be like MS buying Skype, IMO worse as it's some use. LinkedIn is now merely a spam generator, malware spreader, privacy stealer (encourages people to share address book) and pointless to advancing your career. It might briefly have been useful 2006?.
And how does the ISP block WiFi based attacks?
It's all nuts on ADSL. DOCSIS does unfortunately need remote access, though Cable Labs have improved security on that. There is no argument for Eir DSL modems to have remote management because users can plug their own combo modem/router/airpoint in unlike cable.
I don't have much choice on a phone, but I sure won't assist Google steal my privacy by using Chrome, Chromebook or a WiFi point. They are an advertising company anyway. Android and many other products bought in.
My WiFi is a mini-PCI card in my router running OpenWRT.
Mesh is slow. I prefer to cable airpoints together, Minimum of twice the performance with two airpoints and even better with more.
"and so it doesn't interfere with TV transmissions, 802.11af uses a cognitive radio to sense other spectrum users, and a localisation database to keep track of broadcasters."
Totally flawed. Can only work if EVERY TV receiver is reporting to a central database with frequencies and locations used. Apart from the lack of internet access in 10% to 30% of cases, there is a privacy issue too.
Also assumes no mobile TV.
See "hidden transmitter syndrome". If these are not 100% illegal, then the regulators are not fit for purpose. I can imagine the howl if Mobile or Military licensed channels used.
This is pure evil.
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