Posts by Fihart 1150 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008
Apparently Sony have a problem with Koreans buying in neighbouring countries to get round Korea's rather "structured" retail system.
The department stores are owned by the familiar industrial giants (Hyundai etc) and presumably they protect Sony's margins in a manner that makes Hong Kong, Singapore etc seem temptingly cheap.
I can tell you worse about Sony -- like the Korean friend living in London bought a Sony camera, needed a Korean language manual -- not allowed to download from Sony Korea because camera not bought there.
Yesterday, at car boot sale, for 50p I bought a Sony camera memory stick 256meg -- in original pack but as old as the hills. Features "Magic Gate" which seems to be some sort of DRM nonsense. The blurb makes it sound like an advantage -- how we all laughed.
But seriously, have a look at their players.
Sony has decided to try to wrench back a share of the portable music market. Obviously, the first thing to do was to attack Apple's weakness (iTunes) -- by sparing users any need to load software in order to use the new Sony players. The screens are great, the battery life exceptional and there's a proper volume control.
I own players from Apple, Philips, LG, Samsung, Sony -- plus three or four nasty Sigmatel chipped Chinese horrors.
I think I'd know if Sony had pulled any fast ones -- though I was careful NOT to install any of the software on their CD -- in fact kept it in the wrapper just in case !
The reason Sony are now okay to buy is that they've realised that everyone hates Sonic Stage, their terrible proprietary system which stifled sales of the earlier Sony players.
Precisely the problem with Apple. Is this the first time they've actually heard that iTunes is one of the worst, most inscrutable, bits of mainstream software most people have ever encountered.
I have an iPod but recently bought a mid range Sony player. Beats the pants off the iPod as hardware -- and it has drag n drop, so no barmy control freak proprietary software to clog your computer and try to own your music.
Without interference from moronic urban-music stations broadcasting illegally either side of most BBC FM wavelengths.
The Dept of Trade used to go up and confiscate the equipment from tower blocks but presumably have stopped hoping we'll all switch to power-hungry, overpriced DAB.
I loved the commentator on CNET who noted that, previously, some brand had put a mirror on the front of a camera and that didn't sell so who would buy the Samsung ?
He later corrected himself saying that he'd learned that girls of the Facebook inclination spent a lot of time taking self-portraits.
Really Samsung have your designers nothing better to do ?
Due to the open (not to say opportunistic) aspects of our economies, Western nations have been very patient, allowing opposing cultures access to our technology, our infrastructure and even our countries.
Time is coming when we may have to curb access by those who don't believe in freedom, if we are to maintain our own liberty -- and safety.
I once read a video card manual which suggested that if no image was visible one should check that the monitor screen wasn't too dirty.
My impression is that many Far Eastern manuals are written by the only person in the company who claims to speak English and they turn out to be someone who knows nothing whatsoever about the product.
Here are some warning links as (so fecking rudely) requested by Anonymous Hero:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2661800/18m-to-retune-Freeview-sets.html
http://www.tvretune.co.uk/troubleshooting/
http://www.avforums.com/forums/freeview/793928-freeview-update-old-boxes-wont-work.html
http://www.homecinemachoice.com/blogs/team_HCC/freeview+fiasco
Equipment expected to fail at Switchover includes...
Ondigital receivers:
Alba / Bush ONdigital models
Nokia Mediamaster 9850T
Pace DTR730 and DTR735 settop boxes
Philips DTX 6370/ DTX 6371 /DTX 6372 receivers
Pioneer DBRT200 /DBRT210 Set Top Box x
Toshiba DTB2000 settop box
Early Freeview receivers and IDTVs expected to fail:
Pace DTVA-T (the famous Wedge Adaptor)
Hitachi 28WDDODTN / 32WD40DTN / D36W840DTN IDTVs
Panasonic TX-28DT2 / TX-32DT2 IDTVs
Philips 28DW6734 / 32DW6834 /32DW9625 /28DW6557 / 32DW6557 IDTVs
Sony 28DS60 /32DS60 / 28DS65 / 32DS65 /28DX20 / 32DX20 /28DX30 /32DX30
/28DS20 /32DS20 / KP 41DS1 / KP 51DS1 /KP 51DS2 IDTVs
Toshiba 28WT98B /32WT98B /28ZT29B /32ZT29B /36ZT29B /42WT29B /50WT29B
/57WT29B IDTVs
If this is the update that we've been warned about, some people are going to get hurt. Owners of older Freeview boxes (including some expensive, sensitive and reliable boxes such as early Pace models) may find the box ceases to function if they attempt to retune.
It's something like the older boxes lack enough memory to store so many channels and go belly up if you try.
I'm going to retune only an unbranded crap model I have and leave the Pace alone -- that way I can use the crap one for Channel 5 and ITV3/4 and be sure of better reception on all other channels with the old Pace.
Unhelpfully the Freeview website was down last night but I think there are lists of brickable models elsewhere. Like DAB, Freeview looks like being a casualty of the triumph of quantity over quality.
Will someone issue an ASBO (anti-social behaviour order) against Adobe for its appalling Flash product.
Flash-based ads are too often intrusive resource hogs which interfere with users' experience of the internet -- I'd like to see all sites running Flash ads carry a warning that your browser may freeze or crash.
Meanwhile if everyone uses Firefox and enables Flash blocking , perhaps we can stamp out this Adobe malware ourselves.
Yahoo used to be a simple to use reliable e-mail service. Now the site is cluttered with useless links and services -- it offered to notify my mobile of new mails, I applied and it assumed I was in the Ukraine.
I prefer to use the US portal for news, but Yahoo detects that I'm in the UK (this time) and impertinently over-rides my Home Page choice, sending me to the UK site full of nonsense about Z-list celebs in London.
Worse, the site is frequently marred by intrusive Flash ads -- meatballs raining on my e-mail text from some kids cartoon movie ad ? Keyboard freezes as the Flash hogs all resources. Only solution, crash out of my browser of choice and use Firefox with Flash blocking.
Hotmail is a refuge by comparison -- Microsoft didn't have to offer to buy Yahoo, the present management are simply destroying the business for them.
Hard to believe anyone would be influenced by the MS ads except on price, which just confirms Apple's better market image.
The Apple campaign was quite persuasive.
But the parody is in a league of its own compared to either Apple or MS. If I was hiring at those companies' ad agencies I'd be looking at the talents behind Frank.
Panasonic's conduct is as disgraceful as Epson et al microchipping their printer refills.
Batteries for torches, calculators, watches (and everything else) come in a range of about 10 formats -- so what's so special about Panasonic cameras?
EU really must address the US, Japanese and S. Koreans and warn them that they have a few years to introduce a standardised range of phone and camera batteries and printer refills that work across all brands and that any products that don't conform (unless with solid grounds for variation) will be barred from EU markets.
The precedent was set in English law by an action between pharmaceutical firms when a brandname was used by a competitor in an ad that read like "X replaces Carter's Little Liver Pills and costs less". The trademark owner sued successfully on grounds that their name was being used commercially without permission. For decades afterwards UK advertisers avoided comparison ads that named competitors.
Comparison ads began to reappear in the 1970s but I suspect that the advertisers ensured that the use of a brand was relevant to a substantiable comparison -- not just a blatant use of one brand to promote another.
If Google are using brand name searches to divert potential customers to a competitor who has paid Google they may may not escape the legal precedent set in Edwardian times.
The ISPs issue wireless routers routinely and people are too stupid to realise that a wired connection is faster and more reliable.
I've seen setups where a desktop is directly next to a wireless router in a bedsit -- not even a laptop as an excuse for wireless.
In my neighbourhood full of studio flats you could barely swing a cat in, I can detect an average of 33 wireless routers -- most on default channel 11 (which shows how little they know about changing channels).
My immediate neighbours' router was on the same channel as me about 15 feet from my computer, badly interfering with reception from our router which is downstairs and about 50 feet away.
Fortunately my neighbours are some cute Scottish girlies and their router is on auto select. I could make it switch channels simply by placing a couple of my redundant wireless routers next to the party wall and asking one of the girls to cycle the mains to their router. But such cooperation is rare, given the high turnover of tenants (thanks to so-called "Assured" Shorthold tenancies leading to people moving annually).
How many current Windows users know the difference between Windows Explorer and My Computer? How many even know Windows Explorer exists ?
Yet the difference is crucial -- My Bloody Computer (effectively) autoruns anything you select with it. Not clever.
Meanwhile the more useful Windows Explorer which shows you stuff properly without automatically running it has been demoted to an Accessory.
The internet seems to foster an accelerated business model. Small enterprises, if successful, rapidly evolve into monopolies.
It took the UK motor industry a century to go from hundreds of small brands to three majors (BMC, Standard Triumph, Rootes) to one (British Leyland). To zero.
Ditto the US car industry, by the looks of it.
Of course, monopolies can behave badly and get away with dud products but eventually they drive away all their customers.
First to go will be e-bay, hopefully Microsoft next.
MS ads always miss by a mile because they're clods, immune to irony. Example; the dreadful one with Gates and (was it really ?........) Seinfeld.
MS ads mostly do more harm than good. They'd be better off keeping quiet about Vista. We know that the cute little tots will be foaming at the mouth within minutes of trying to do anything in Windows. The laptop comparison ad ?.... no cool guy would buy an HP instead of an Apple (it'd be a Sony or Toshiba).
Though I detest Apple's fey, effete, overpriced and under-teched products, I can't fault the company's taste. The products look good, the OS looks good. As a copywriter I have to say their ads are sharp and locally relevant (well, The Mitchell and Webb ones were).
What is the point of Facebook ?
I could see it was a good idea when it just extended a college yearbook to a network so that students could identify faces seen around campus.
But I'm puzzled when I get invited to join in order to look at a page put up by a girl in S. Korea which consists of pictures of her in Paris, her in London , her in Venice, her in Madrid. Her friends pages are much the same.
In the end I created a page for my cat showing the views the cat might get from the windows of my flat -- on the assumption the girl would either be deeply insulted or think it was terribly cute.
Seemed to go with the latter.
Microsoft has never managed to sell hardware very successfully, with one exception.
Of course the MS mouse has been supplied by default with many new computers (which seems to be Microsoft's sole marketing strategy) . And it's better than rival mice.
In the UK, the Zune is non-existent -- I've seen one, at a car boot sale. I'm amazed that it can have outold Sony's MP3 range which are presently cheaper and better than Apple's and are widely distributed.
Too right, mate. I've used computers daily since 1985 starting with MSDOS, thru Windows 3.1 and 95 and XP. In the past five years I have tried Linux repeatedly and each time walked away.
I don't want an OS which forces me to learn new commands that have to be typed in laboriously. I don't want to have to do puzzling partitions to hard drives. I don't want to have to search reams of internet postings to find drivers that should be supplied as standard either in the OS or with the device. I've done all that before, it's not a productive use of my time and it's boring.
Linux -- it's obviously just too good for the likes of me.
"hey, didn't this happen with blank tapes in the UK in the 80's"......No I think the first time it was tried was with consumables for CD Recorder Decks which only worked with so-called "audio" or "music" CDR discs.
These discs contain pre-recorded code which is recognised by the deck but are otherwise identical to data CDR. The discs cost around 50p each (compared to about 5p for data discs) the difference partly being a levy for the music industry but largely due to the fact that very few of these discs are sold.
Of course no-one in their right mind would buy a CD Record Deck for £200 which used media at ten times the usual price when a computer CD/DVD RW drive can be had for £17. No-one, apart from musicians who record their own music -- ironically they are the only ones paying the levy intended to compensate musicians for piracy.
Just to rub it in, CD Recorder Decks have proved hilariously unreliable compared to computer drives.
A family member who is a (very) senior civil servant is being squeezed out of his career after earning approx 30% of the equivalent post in industry, on the expectation of job security.
Former colleagues have already jumped ship to the likes of Vodaphone who welcome their experience and contacts, doubtless to further protect that industry's ludicrous pricing and business practices.
The reason bastards like MS and Apple get away with murder is amply demonstrated here. Good men debate, bastards just do what they like.
Microsoft uses its monopoly position to bully hardware firms into installing Vista when it cripples their machines and the customers don't wantt it. End of story.
Get your politicians to jail them -- like any dictatorship would do.
Apple ? Try taking a failed ipod back to the Apple Store outside one year warranty and they will either charge to fix it or offer you a 10 per cent discount on a new one. Any Trading Standards Officer will tell you that a product like the ipod should last up to 6 years -- if it fails in 2 the retailer only has the option to repair for free, replace or refund a fair percentage of purchase price (66% ? in this case).
Google long ago changed from being a search engine to being an advertising medium. When my brother needed a hotel near my home in London he could not find the one he had in mind on Google because of the plethora of irrelevant paid-for search results. Google is now officially a nuisance.
MicroSufferers may snigger at Apple fanbois and their silly overpriced white toys but at least they love the products and the company.
We, meanwhile, don't just hate Windows, we detest Microsoft. Their overpaid bullies bleating about how the latest turkey is misunderstood ain't gonna change that.
Just give us an operating system that's slim, reliable and cheap -- that's the only way they'll earn any respect.
UK phone companies are long overdue for investigation. They exist via confusion marketing, vastly overpriced call costs -- and a ludicrously outdated link between hardware provision and service provision that defies all concepts of anti-trust legislation (and tempts users with new phones for "free" so that they discard perfectly usable handsets).
Roaming charges are a blatant refusal by these companies to to accept the single european market -- and they deserve to be fined daily until they cease breaching the law or cease trading.
Vista nags you and nanny-knows-best you and puts files in odd places (rather than letting you choose their destination).
But what really irritates me is the continuing growth of the Windows operating system beyond the dangerously ramshackle behemoth that is XP (especially with SP2). This at a time of ever-growing threats from viruses and trojans.
Nobody in their right mind goes around deleting DLLs for fun yet already XP doesn't seem to let you delete rogue DLL's put there by trojans (even if you start the computer in Safe Mode/Command Prompt).
Hey, it's my computer and I'll delete stuff if I want to !
MS seems to go on aping Apple products' disregard for logic in favour of slickness and alleged simplicity of use that maddens me every time I use one (even when I have to use iTunes for Windows).
I mean, I still don't understand why My Computer in XP lists the Desktop as a separate entity when it is actually a directory (sorry, Folder) in Drive C: It may be convenient (or something) but it's not true. That typifies to me the way that Apple's influence actually makes it more confusing to understand the basics of computing (such as file systems) at any depth beyond that of the average Mac user.
Why have WEP and WPA have been renamed in Vista (again a borrowing from Apple ?) adding a new layer of mystification as hardware makers still use the existing terms.
Many of us would have welcomed Vista and put up with the irritating changes in the way we had to work if it had actually been smaller and quicker than XP. If it had been cheaper as a result, more people would be prepared to buy the OS rather than use naughty copies.
The mobile phone industry has the moral standards of a lap dancing parlour.
The Vodaphone facebook ads are aimed straight at teenagers' social insecurity -- don't be left out, waste money with us. The slogans say it all -- make the most of now=live now pay later.
I treat my £10 PAYG phone with the same cynicism as the providers. Use it only when its unique facilities make sense. Such as when out of the house and expecting an urgent message or with a group and likely to get separated -- or when meeting someone from a train etc. Costs about £20 a year.
My neighbour has a "free" (£200) luxury phone and spends about £40 a month with her provider, frequently calling my landline on her mobile when I would simply have rung the doorbell.
The fact that the phone companies thrive on confusing their customers with "free" phones and complex billing systems isn't enough for the regulators -- so let's at least cane them when they are caught in a outright lie. But in the long run they need to be de-constructed (separating hardware sales from service supply) and transparent billing systems forced upon them.
Deplorable that American approach of wringing the last cent out of every opportunity is permitted in Europe where many cultures abhor such a philosophy.
It's really up to us to tell suppliers to give us what we have ordered, not what they have been bribed to force upon us. I'm thinking of the time-expire Microsoft applications that led my brother to cancel his order with Dell when he realised that they weren't actually usable without making further payments.
Sadly though, most computers I fix for friends are also clogged up with nonsense they have added themselves that strangle performance, even after being uninstalled.
Just because you can add programs to computers willy-nilly doesn't mean you have to.
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