* Posts by Rob

1524 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Apr 2007

Teachers get earful of racy XXX chat in Capita IT cock-up

Rob
Joke

Of course...

... why else do you think they are so expensive and never satisfy their targets.

Skype worm chats up victims - then holds PCs to ransom

Rob
Go

Re: correction - another one

"some 400 *self obsessed* stupid people's PCs were infected in the first 24 hours"

Let's face it they fell for it because they thought it contained a picture of themselves.

Copper-obsessed BT means UK misses out on ultrafast fibre gold

Rob
Go

Re: FTTH is a waste of time

Exactly the reason I haven't signed up for it, I pay £7.50 for unlimited on Sky with on average 8Mb speed, which does fine for our daily use (streaming, gaming, VPN's etc.). What will make me want to pay more for speeds I probably won't max, especially if my router doesn't support 100Mb WiFi constantly.

Even taking the fibre option with Sky see's the bill jump up to £20 a month.

HTC profits lobbed off a cliff by rivals Samsung and Apple

Rob

It's now a software and UI battle

I think the smartphone industry has hit a plateau with how many hardware improvements they can fit in the phone. The last few successful models from Apple and Samsung have all been based on in-house software developments which is where HTC have been traditionally weak. I have had a few HTC phones and where as I do like the Sense UI, the rest of the package just isn't quite up to scratch. Samsung's other minor USP is the connectivity with some of their other goods (I like the fact that I can see who's calling on a small PiP box on my TV).

Zynga cracks open can-o-gloom all over 2012 outlook

Rob
Go

Tip for ya...

... stop paying stupid prices for stupid companies who have no proven financial revenue or forecasts to back up the valuation. It won't come as a big shock when value's get halved/slashed and the original product you were fawning over nosedives as it was proven to be a fad.

Samsung claims Apple jury foreman LIED to get REVENGE

Rob
Happy

Re: Asshat (Fix required)

(Fix required) "...but maybe what we really need is an "Anonymous Tool"

No worries, glad I could help ;-)

Global action takes down tech support scam

Rob

Re: What exactly is the crime?

Sorry to be pedantic "If they charged for something which was freely available then they are guilty of sharp business practice only." Most free software usually comes with a license to say it can't be sold on, in those cases that would also be fraud, but it does come down to how the person says it/sells it on the phone. Worst case scenario they will always have breached the Sales of Goods and Services Act.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 review

Rob

Re: 4G/LTE is missing

Apparently according to the interwebs news, EE will announce the 4G model on the 15th October which will no doubt coincide with the release of their new tariffs. Phones4U sales person said the same as well.

Rob
Thumb Up

Re: Not one for the ladies?

Thanks for that, I just went into town and put my name down for a Note 2 LTE version when it comes out. I've been um'ing and ar'ing what to go for on my next upgrade and your comment finally sold me on the Note's size. Now just have to wait for the upgrade date, damn my patience.

New I-hate-my-neighbour stickers to protect Brits' packages

Rob

Re: Optional, sometimes expedient

Posh neighbourhoods wouldn't have a 40min trip from house to house, they pay for enough space to surround their property but not for the inconvenience of travelling to another property.

Rural areas on the other hand, 40min trip to your neighbour probably means about an hour to the sorting office.

Rob
Go

Re: Optional, sometimes expedient

Could be worse, you might have a 40min round trip to your neighbours.

Apple iPhone 5 review

Rob
FAIL

Review?

Where's the speed benchmarking test that usually accompanies these reviews? Lazy review at best.

Viewsonic 22in Android 'tablet' hands-on review

Rob
Thumb Up

Re: It's a monitor.

I can see this device attached to the wall in my kitchen for media consumption while cooking or easy look up of all my digitised recipes. Would be also nice to leave it on a screen with a large calendar so the family can see what's going on at a passing glance. Like it, want it, hit me with the price?

UK ice boffin: 'Arctic melt equivalent to 20 years of CO2'

Rob
Go

Re: The opposite may be true

We're also getting milder/warmer winters, so in actual fact that's just a shift in seasons.

Guinness World Records pulls beards off online Secret Santas

Rob
Joke

Re: World record?

It won't take rocket science to work out that it will be some UK Council that'll will grab that title.

Rob
Headmaster

Null and Void

Surely they are no longer secret and as such this would invalidate the World Record (I hope it doesn't I'm just partial to a bit of pedantry at the moment before hometime).

3G Google Nexus 7 inbound

Rob
Go

Re: WiFi Only

Ditto, I'd be tethering my phone too. I'm hoping this news will pop a few cheaper WiFi Nexus 7's on to the market as I was about to buy one.

Brummie plod cuffed in Facebook troll hunt

Rob
Go

Re: oh yeah

You can tell it's the school holidays, roll on term time.

P.S. when you get back to school concentrate in those English classes.

Ho ho ho! Apple's Samsung ban bid pushed back to Christmas

Rob
WTF?

Re: It Seemed A Little Too Quick

I'm glad you said that Alex as I too was wondering what planet this commentard has been residing on for the past few years.

I have a drawer full of Windows/HTC touch screen phones that I was using years before the iPhone/Android lot came out to play.

Curiosity rover hijacked by will.i.am to debut science song

Rob

Re: Jeez, what next?

He is quite big on technology, coincidently he was on Top Gear last night talking about a car he's designed and wants to start manufacturing in the 'ghetto' where he grew up to help the community. He's on a par with Bill Gates for philanthropy, nice to hear that he's trying to bolster interest in science and tech for kids specifically though.

As for his music, not overly bothered. Although I don't see how he fits in time to write music with all the other stuff he does.

$1bn for Instagram? Knock yourself out, Facebook - UK watchdog

Rob
Go

More fixing required

"And instagram are hoping that the deal completes before facebook's stock plummets further..."

Wannabe media barons outed in UK local telly bid list

Rob
Go

Re: How long

Yeah, I'm filled with confidence when some of these bidders are using an aol or gmail accounts as a point of contact, extremely professional.

Boffins create 100,000 DPI image

Rob
Happy

Re: Picture reminds me of...

Wow it's amazing what detail you forget, I spent most of my younger days using Deluxe Paint when I had an Amiga, always remember marvelling at the graphic detail on the gold Egyptian sarcophagus.

Thanks for the blast from the past which stirred some happy memories.

Alleged 'Xbox 720' dev box eBay'd for $20,100

Rob
Joke

I have one of these...

... some guy in a car park with a white van and a funny accent sold it to me. I do find it strange though as to why MS have installed bricks in there new console like my box has, I still haven't figured out what they do yet.

Not a Cloud in my holiday sky

Rob
Go

Ditto...

... I like the writing style.

Particularly liked this one as I did similar in Cyprus feeding off a neighbours weak open WiFi (couldn't get a decent signal for the mobile data booster I'd bought), although mine wasn't for work purposes, more I needed to download some books from my cloud storage.

Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think

Rob

Re: Mine brings back fleas

You have my sympathies, we had an outbreak last year, a dose of frontline, washing all bedding and clothes and a large can of spray I bought of the internet to fumigate the house and furniture, took a whole day to do but definitely killed all the buggers off.

(Let me know if you want the name of the spray, very effective).

Rob

Do you find...

... they also tend to leave the kidney/liver as well (I'm not sure which it is but mine always leave it).

YouTube app wrenched from next Apple iPhones, iPads

Rob
Go

I'm sure it will get reinstated...

... if it doesn't then it looks like iOS is turning into a mini communist state where Apple are slowly cutting it's users off from the outside world and soon it will be the Great Firewall of Apple we'll be reading about.

Curiosity needs OS upgrade before getting down to science

Rob
Joke

Re: CURIOSITY NEEDS OS UPGRADE BEFORE GETTING DOWN TO SCIENCE

What other thing... you're not seriously suggesting a NASA robot dumped a cat in a wheelie bin are you?

Rob

Re: Re:

lol, that conversation reminds me of the robot tanks in Ghost in the Shell SAC.

NHS trust: Not buying through NHS IT saved us £7m

Rob
Go

Re: Mapping software to suit idiotic procedures

A correction to your rant on public sector, I think you could have just said '... and managers are stopped.'

Rampant fake Facebook ad clicks riddle hits dead end

Rob

Re: I don't believe a word of it.

Either that or Limited Run are talking up some billy bullshit to save loss of face.

Greenland ice sheet not going anywhere in a hurry, say boffins

Rob
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Good work as always Lewis!

I'm not commenting on anything else you've said other than the fact that you used the word politician and somehow tried to suggest that ludicrous and sense don't happen and exist (in that order) for a political type. That alone will keep me chuckling for the rest of the day.

If Hotmail was a person it could have kids now. But it would be a crime

Rob
Go

Re: If it wasnt for free hotmail accounts

Ewww, [shivers], pass me the mind bleach someone mentioned AOL.

SHEEP NEED TWITTER, insist my noble Lords

Rob
Coat

Mental image

I have a mental image of all these Lords sitting around a large table and someone pulling out a black box and saying 'This is the internet,The Elders of the Internet have given me permission to show it to you'.

Murdoch's fondleslab epaper axes 50 staff

Rob
Go

That device culture I reckon

I think this is the signal that customers are generally aren't interested in device specific content but are more than happy to consume and pay for re purposed content, it then gives the customer the choice of what device they want to consume it on. To me the 100,000 subscribers doesn't sound nearly enough for them to be breaking even, hence the staff cuts.

To me tablets and mobile's have always been about the media I already consume just available on a device that suits my needs at the specific point in time.

Boy cuffed after Twitter troll's drown threat to Olympic diver Tom Daley

Rob

Re: Arresting is over the top but...

Scroll back further in his timeline it appears he has form for personal attacks.

Rob

Re: Arresting is over the top but...

You should read some of his tweets, he threatens a lot of people and is generally a very nasty character or he has some very real mental health issues. Either way it is something the Police should be involved in, although I think they should have been involved a long time ago not just because an Olympic celebrity caught a dose of verbal abuse from him.

Clearly a kid with no boundaries, his parents must be ever so proud!

Samsung plonks universal search BACK into Galaxy S IIIs

Rob
Thumb Up

Re: Fail

Thanks for filling in the gaps TeeCee, I did always wonder why the K Series had the head gasket problem when I thought it was far east technology, which at the time was fairly bullet proof. Was too lazy or forgot to look up the history (probably because I was concentrating on the smoke pouring out of my exhaust cause the head gasket had gone).

Rob
Go

Re: Fail

That's because the western car manufacturers pretty much all traded some design techniques with the Far East in exchange for some engine technology way back. I can't recall exactly but I think it was Rover and Honda that inked the first deal which led Honda to have similar chassis design's to Rover's. In return Rover was then able to develop the K Series engine which was in all of it's models for a number of years.

Although nowadays chassis design is not really considered a commodity because when you have a bunch of designers and a wind tunnel, the choices that come out will be pretty similar no matter where you are in the world. Car manufacturers then rely on technology in the car, offers/deals and marketing to compete with each other and differentiate their products that way.

Samsung: 'Apple's proto-iPhone Jony is a Sony phone phoney'

Rob
Go

Isn't about time...

... a re-filming of the pop video "two tribes" was done replacing the superpower leaders with the CEO's of Samsung and Apple.

P.S. please consider this post as my evidence of prior art should anyone consider making money off this idea.

Girls tricked by STEAMY message: Webcam spyware student jailed

Rob
Coat

Re: @ Aaron Em

See I'm confused now, I took my Cat to the Mechanic and he told me to 'eff off, my cat was equally unimpressed and tried to remove my face using all of it's claws.

I don't trust the advice in this forum anymore.

BOFH: Shove your project managementry up your mailbox!

Rob

Project Managers

I tend to find the phrase I use the most with these folks is 'No, your missing the point'. Which is always because the simple solution has suddenly been over engineered and sprinkled with bullshit.

Zynga plays BLAME GAME with Facebook as stock tanks 40%

Rob

Games on Facebook

I think the majority of the people I know on FB who plays games are all fickle users. They play a game for a short period of time then get quickly bored and move on to another one, of course each time they do this they try and drag all their friends into the game as well, ultimately it's all short lived.

I get the feeling that this is another tech company that has based it's earnings and market share on the wrong set of analytic's and it will eventually all come crashing down around them.

Don't get me wrong I know there are folk out there that will play these games longer and also spend money on the in game items etc but I only know of a couple of those types.

BSkyB delights City with record profits: Broadband subs pass 4 million

Rob

Re: Sky not too bad really....

Not sure what that was about then, as my Wife's PC connects via VPN for work and we never had an issue setting it up. We are on the MAX package so not sure if it might differ from bundle to bundle.

Virgin Media staves off cable punter seepage

Rob
FAIL

Re: Year-on-year, VM's overall cable customer base remained flat at 4.8 million subs...

I think the point is in the title where it says "... overall cable customer base..." note the word cable.

If my electricity provider was using a different system that required unique cables then yes I would expect them to re-wire my house. In this case I'm talking about someone rewiring the street with cable.

Rob
Go

Year-on-year, VM's overall cable customer base remained flat at 4.8 million subs...

... but then it would be flat if they aren't going to roll out the network nationwide. They should be investing more money in rolling it out around the country but I think they are probably far too late to the game now for that to make a difference to their business anyway.

Apple CEO: Frothing fanboi iPhone 5 hype screwed our sales

Rob

Western Europe was the main culprit...

... I think that might be partly down to the fact that most of Western Europe is in the financial shit bin.

Virgin Media's 'bye-bye to buffering' beardy Bolt boast BANNED

Rob

Re: Dear BT and Sky

Of course that's all well and good if you live in a cabled area. Where as BT is trying to roll out those speeds to as much of the country as it can financially justify, I don't see Virgin upping the amount of cabled areas they have.