* Posts by Charlie Clark

12110 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2007

Flipping heck: Footage leaks of Samsung's upcoming bendy smartphone in action

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Where's the advantage?

A friend of mine has an ageing Samsung clamshell which he uses for calls and a small tablet for computery stuff so you're obviously not alone.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Lucky you!

Brits may still be struck by Lightning, but EU lawmakers vote for bloc-wide common charging rules

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Hopefully the UK will follow this

The biggest problem with the fused design, apart from adding to the size, is that it's useless for the vast majority of devices with insulated cases as it will never be needed.

Otherwise: cable always at 90° to socket and built-in protection against prying fingers are winners.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Hopefully the UK will follow this

The fact is that such things will probably be followed for quite a time to come, not least because it means importing a lot easier and cheaper. People probably won't care about this but other EU rules that the UK decides to follow might grab more headlines.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Hopefully the UK will follow this

Countries tend to get the governments they deserve…

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Hopefully the UK will follow this

From a perspective of safety and usability I like the UK mains plug but it is over-engineered.

At last, the fix no one asked for: Portable home directories merged into systemd

Charlie Clark Silver badge

So, a desktop environment that's on a network but has nowhere to store profiles? Or shared data?

Log this invention with other great ones like the chocolate fireguard.

Apple finally clambers to top of phone market again as spider-eyed iPhone 11 lures fanatics out of the shadows

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Already way too expensive

For you.

But for others it obviously is.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: One hit wonder?

Take away the phone, though, and all that lovely high margin other stuff would disappear pretty quickly. But Apple has very loyal customers who like the value proposition (this is debatable but understandable) of the phone and don't mind paying over the odds for services and accessories in the generally misplaced hope that they will work better than other off the shelf stuff.

For me, the phone wars are over. Pretty much all the modern phones are fantastic and you now have to look hard to see the difference between Android and IOS – yes, I know there are some telltale signs but at a quick glance it does look they've achieved parity.

It’s not true no one wants .uk domains – just look at all these Bulgarians who signed up to nab expired addresses

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Coat

Re: "I'm a SEO expert"

I think you mean second oldest profession. It's axiomatic that if there's a way to make money online, the porn industry is there first.

Mine's the overcoat, obviously.

Not call, dude: UK govt says guaranteed surcharge-free EU roaming will end after Brexit transition period. Brits left at the mercy of networks

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: EU sim?

Both of those countries have little or no data privacy controls so they can easily just look at all the traffic coming from that IMEI. Of course, if it's encrypted they don't get as much but they know where you are and see a lot of metadata.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Otherwise, get an EU SIM for use abroad, just as we used to do.

You may well find that you will need proof on EU residency to do this. Telcos used to share the profits on roaming charges so there's lot of incentive to reintroduce them. But that's what taking back control is all about, right?

El Reg tries – and fails – to get its talons on a Brexit tea towel

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: A perfect demonstration of eccentric British understatement

I was trying not to reveal my own thoughts about the current situation

But you did and you still do… especially concerning pros and cons of membership and all those potential free trade agreements waiting out there. Many of these are going to require alignment with EU norms not to invalidate existing agreements. The US being a notable exception, of course, because it does not yet have a bilateral trade agreement with the EU.

But, while I might be pessimistic, I don't know how things will turn out. However, as a citizen with dual nationality I'm now of the opinion that the EU should take a hard line in negotiations with the UK, which is increasingly the opinion of my anglophile friends.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: A perfect demonstration of eccentric British understatement

Starts with Without particularly revealing my own thoughts on the matter and then In other words rejoining would not return us to the position we were in before 2016 - we would be much weaker and have less autonomy.

In other words conclusion based on speculation. No one really knows where Britain will be in 5 to 10 years or what the EU will look like, but we can assume the debate about membership will continue.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Sadly, you cannot do the drying up with delight on the big day itself.

Sort of somes it up, doesn't it. Johnson's big project fails to deliver and all I got was this lousy tea towel.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Deliveries [..] won't start until the week commencing 10 February

The Grauniad is annoying but, let's face it, it's not top of the lift of publications to avoid or are you going to pretend you can read the Mail or the Express without questioning the sanity of any who choose to read it,

And it's worth remembering by all that it was founded by a businessman to help uncover the Peterloo massacre. Worth remembering to those on the left that not all businessmen are bastards, and those on the right that free trade was once the cry of the working class.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Coat

Re: Tea towel?

You only sing when you're winning!;-)

Mine's the one with the Fortuna Düsseldorf patches on it.

Thunderbird is go: Mozilla's email client lands in a new nest

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Oh God No

I normally ignore the part entirely and moan to anyone who doesn't sent a proper plaintext part. But, for the purposes of the discussion, Thunderbird offers users the chance to read the HTML and this is a potential attack vector since the code is no longer being actively maintained by Mozilla. I don't follow forks like SeaMonkey so I don't know if the parser is being actively maintained.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Oh God No

They'll need to drop Gecko and much of the UI code if they don't want to take over maintenance of abandoned code and Gecko's important for handling of those awful HTML e-mails that people will insist on sending. It was this maintenance overhead that persuaded Mozilla to abandon Thunderbird.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: I've stopped using it

I'll believe it when I see it. When was the last announcement on this?

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: flexibility and agility

I recently switched to MailMate on MacOS and FairMail on Android and pay for both: power users will generally be prepared to pay for a good e-mail client. After all, business users happily pay for a shitty e-mail client (Outlook)…

Non-power users don't seem to care because they mainly use messaging, where they'll need to reinvent the wheel.

Samsung: You see, what we did was we took the Galaxy Tab S6, right? Then we slapped some 5G on it

Charlie Clark Silver badge

If you want a reader, get a reader. Much as I love OLED, e-paper is just so much better for reading in all lighting conditions.

Brave, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla gather together to talk web privacy... and why we all shouldn't get too much of it

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Besides

Ads are probably more successful than you think, this group of commentards is probably unreprsentative. I mean, if they didn't work at all, El Reg would have closed down long ago.

Digital ads are generally compared with direct mail shots which have success rates of around < 5%, I think. Digital ads have success rates of around < 0.1 % for scattergun but this rises as targetting gets more granular, though apparently mainly for political ads (which might explain why many product ads eschew too much targetting), but digital ads only pay for succesfull clicks, whereas direct mail has to pay for all.

This is a simplified, and not wholly accurate view, of the situation that advertisers and content platforms use in their auctions (throw in some game theory as well) when deciding prices.

Ding-dong. Who's there? Any marketing outfit willing to pay: Not content with giving cops access to doorbell cams, Ring also touts personal info

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: GDPR?

It isn't. But perhaps more of a problem for Amazon is that it is also against the new Californian rules which could lead to those class action suit.

Free Software Foundation suggests Microsoft 'upcycles' Windows 7... as open source

Charlie Clark Silver badge

What points were you making? Something about Unity? Isn't that that awful UI that Canonical dumped on the world? Don't use it or anything that uses it as far as I know.

BTW. you're still virtue signalling.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Facepalm

Wot? I should be careful of making spelling mistakes when labelling myself as stoopid?

Charlie Clark Silver badge

it didn't occur to you that it could just be that typing 4 characters is easier than writing "open source project"?

It could be that I'm too stupid too type "OSS" (why would I need an F if I'm not virtue signalling), or it could be that I consider the abbreviation too obscure to be useful.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Mono? Is anyone still using that? Anyway, as it's apparently run by a Microsoft subsidiary I suspect the point is moot.

VS Code, which I don't use myself, has become very popular with developers on non-MS systems even though it isn't open source.

And anyone who insists on using the FOSS abbreviation is usually as much fun at parties as a vegan. Yes, we get the virtue signalling, we just don't care.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Personally, I don't care about .NET Core because I don't use it. But from what I have seen of it, I can imagine it being useful for some people. And it did require a considerable shift at Microsoft for them to get that far.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Yes, it's just an attempt by the FSF – sorry who? – to try and stay relevant. MS has actually already released a huge part of stuff as .NET Core. But the whole OS is probably asking too much. IBM did apparently seriously consider doing this with OS/2 and then they thought about all the licensed code in there and stopped.

As Windows becomes less of an OS and more and more a client for Azure, I'm sure we'll see more open source stuff dripping out of Microsoft's open source orifice.

UK: From 5G in Tiree to the Isles of Ebony, carry me on the waves… Sail Huawei, sail Huawei, sail Huawei

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Coat

Can you please pick up your end of the string telephone? I've been trying to call you for an hour…

Charlie Clark Silver badge

4G is ok but 5G isn't

Even if I believed the security scares about Huawei's routers, I fail to see why there is a problem with 5G all of a sudden. After all, technogically it's mainly just faster 4G but the marketing bods wanted a new label and most of the networks are already running Huawei kit and the sky hasn't fallen in yet.

There's also the problem of: who else can supply the kit? Huawei has working 5G kit, because the Chinese mobile market needs it and they've done the work and filed the patents to make it happen. They've already offered to license the kit so that others can make it, except those still won't be American companies because they lost the ability to make the kit years ago: China is just so much cheaper.. Regulators could always take them up on this and enforce "second-supplier" rules. Theoretically this might drive up costs, but seeing as no one but journos and orange wombata give a shit about 5G at the moment, it's not really an issue. I got my first 4G sim card this week and it's plenty fast enough for me.

Boris celebrates taking back control of Brexit Britain's immigration – with unlimited immigration program

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Good, good.

They can, but this is the official and legal position adopted before negotiations with the EU on trade start.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Good, good.

Anything the government says or decides has to be taken with a pinch of salt because thy change at will.

Sure, but it put this particular decision into law.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Good, good.

Actually, the government decided last week it didn't want to guarantee such rights as it wants to be able to use them in negotiations.

Windows takes a tumble in the land of the Big Mac and Bacon Double Cheeseburger

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Megaphone

Do you really want Scotland to take credit for McDonalds?

Never go there myself, or use any form of diminuitive but it was always Maccy D's when I was growing up and that sounded appropriate for the kind of place you could expect to meet the Macc Lads! ;-)

Apple: EU can't make us use your stinking common charging standard

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Would it actually reduce waste?

For a phone it's possible to argue that dedicated chargers are a requirement for proper power management. But since everyone standardised on micro USB the number of peripherals that came with their own chargers has fallen off sharply. Many of them still come with cables though even these are being phased out.

In reality, of course, this means that manufacturers can save money by bundling less kit but the net effect is the same. Except, of course, for the fact that we all keep on buying non-serviceable gadgets and associated peripherals.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Re: Hate Apple, love Lightning connector though

I regularly plug my phone in in the dark, nay problems so far. Though my phone doesn't have a nice aluminium bottom to scratch in the first place. And, it's in a case because, doing this sort of thing in the dark often leads to the thing falling on the floor when I miss my bedside table.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Money for nothing

it's not unreasonable to assume a decent chunk comes from…

The licensing business. With proprietary connections (Lightning) and protocols (AirPlay) there's plenty of money in charging vendors for using it in their products and you can just watch the money roll in. Apple wanted to do this with wireless charging as well but, presumably because Jony and the strategy boutique spent too much time deciding on a name, they were too late to the party.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: "It'll stifle [..] innovation."

The port isn't just for charging but also data transfer. Not that this doesn't mean that Apple shouldn't use industry standard components, but for charging only an even simpler solution would be possible.

BOFH: When was the last time someone said these exact words to you: You are the sunshine of my life?

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Only when it's not a SNAFU

For one of my customers I only seem to get a request to complete the survey when it's a trivial problem that could be solved quickly. I know that some people's performance reviews depend on this, but if I get the feeling it's being gamed (not by the grungs but by bonus-chasing "managers") I bail.

Normally you can assume that if we don't complain we're happy or at least satisfied. If this is not the case, make it easy for us to say what didn't work, otherwise forget it.

Beware the Friday afternoon 'Could you just..?' from the muppet who wants to come between you and your beer

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Happy

Re: I helped someone once.

Sounds like you were short changed! ;-)

Well done, you!

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Machivelli says

I don't think there's any suggestion that he was mad, but The Prince has been given such bad press by the usual crowd who can't differentiate between descriptive and prescriptive.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Machivelli says

People respect fear but not generosity, ie. if people think you will do favours then they will keep on asking. So, learning to say no or that it will cost, is an essential life skill.

New SAP co-CEO 'runs simple' to Davos in Mercedes hydrogen car

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: BEV's are a dead-end; HEV's are the future. Discuss

I know, Toyota has been working on them for twenty odd years. Noble prize for whoever cracks it.

10nm woes, CPU supply shortages, competition from AMD... What? Sorry? Intel can't hear you over the cash register going bonkers

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Seeing as most of the money is made in the Data Centre Group they down seem to care about the declining revenues in the PC and notebook segment.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: "the company realized $3.8bn in AI-based revenue"

It's basically Mobileye.

Rockstar dev debate reopens: Hero programmers do exist, do all the work, do chat a lot – and do need love and attention from project leaders

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Projects have domain experts, who'd have thunk it?

Open source projects are generally driven by need or interest, unless they're being paid for by a company. So contributions will always be skewed by those who are the most interested in the work in much the same way in any volunteer organisation. Over time, they're likely to become experts on the project though this doesn't necessarily make them any more suited or talented than anyone else. The big problem with the approach is that code review isn't automatic and criticism is likely to be taken personally because of the investment.

Company projects are very different because you often don't get to choose what to work on…

Safari's Intelligent Tracking Protection is misspelled, says Google: It should be Dumb Browser Stalking Enabler

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Shock

Or, you could read the article again and see that the engineers are highlighting the flaws in Apple's approach, which can be abused to create a fingerprint for the each user.

Chrome suddenly using Bing after installing Office 365 Pro Plus... Yeah, that might have been us, mumbles Microsoft

Charlie Clark Silver badge

This is stupid of Microsoft because it leaves them open to a suit from Google the developer of Chrome. Presumably, Google will now disable the extension, which it has the right to do.