* Posts by Fihart

1150 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008

T-Mobile US gobbles up another 2.2m customers

Fihart

could be nicer in UK themselves

Just finished bitching at EE (T-Mob) about mystery 60p deduction from PAYG balance, allegedly for a call to voicemail that I have no knowledge of making.

EE's Twitter drone suggested calling Customer Service (cost 25p). Obviously more time and cost-effective to write off the 60p.

I won't forget this on the day I buy an unlocked phone -- when it's curtains for EE..

Jaron Lanier: Big Tech is worse than Big Oil

Fihart

Enemies of the people.

I suppose it's a sign of the times that we've gone from hating institutions like landlords, the power utilities, the taxman and the local council to hating Microsoft, Apple, Google and the phone companies.

Perhaps because, like the old enemies, they have the power to take money from us for unreliable services without much remedy -- but now also invade privacy and threaten our security.

Ten years in the clink, file-sharing monsters! (If UK govt gets its way)

Fihart

Stakeholders ?

As usual with "consultations" stakeholders are the one who hold the stake (as in cash).

Uninstall QuickTime for Windows: Apple will not patch its security bugs

Fihart

unwanted spawn of demonic iTunes

As I recall, QuickTime is normally installed when the hated iTunes is downloaded.

I can't bring myself to look any more than is necessary at the computer I quarantine iTunes on.

But any other reluctant users might want to check.

Apple faces €48.5m fine from furious French

Fihart

Don't buy phones from telcos

It may be convenient for manufacturers and short-attention-span consumers but retailing phones via cellular providers is a recipe for exploitation.

Okay, smart shoppers can sometimes take advantage of locked phone contracts but the majority of users are just treated like cash cows, happily paying through the nose for a "free" phone.

Apple is the most egregious example, where perfectly functional phones are artificially hobbled so that they lock to the first provider they're used with.

This doesn't require legislation (though it would help to grow altenative retail channels for phones ) instead just spread the word that everyone should buy unlocked phones and then pick a provider which offers a deal sufficiently transparent to ensure individuals can choose a plan priced to really suit them.

French mobe repair shop chaps trash customer's phone

Fihart

Switch and bait.

Some years ago a friend bought what he thought was a £30 Nokia from a well known telco's high street outlet.

Few days later we checked the receipt for his phone when we spotted a similar but different looking phone with that model number in another shop's window. Turns out the telco boys had sold him a £20 Nokia for £30.

Returning to the telco shop, noticed that the guy who'd served my friend ducked into the back office as we entered. Manager "explained" that the error had been spotted after my friend had left -- but they hadn't thought to ring him about it. No apology was offered and they still tried to charge £8 for the USB cable that Nokia hadn't included.

Convinced that these jerks had been pulling this switch ever since spotting how similar these Nokia models looked -- assuming few would notice the difference (the poor camera performance was obvious immediately).

Which keys should I press to enable the CockUp feature?

Fihart

Falling like leaves.

Have yet to witness a "utility" which beats the one that caused the letters on the screen to fall into a heap at the bottom.

As for the Mrs Doyles, how many of us have had to tape over a wall socket to stop the ladies of the night unplugging IT stuff for the Hoover.

Here's a great idea: Let's make a gun that looks like a mobile phone

Fihart

Self Defeating

Surely the point of carrying a gun is to deter, not actually having to fire it.

How is the average bad guy going to react to having a phone pointed at him ?

And as you're likely to miss with a regular handgun, what chance do you have with a novelty product ?

Monster crowdfunding total raised for Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+

Fihart

Re: Well we can confidently expect a product..

Probably spot on. Didn't Sinclair do a sort of crowdfunding in the 1980s by announcing products like the QL with a very long lead-time between payment and delivery

Let’s re-invent small phones! Small screens! And rubber buttons!

Fihart

Another pet hatred.

These days too much complicated stuff is made out of black plastic, sometimes with the added horror of letters moulded into the black plastic. Illegible to those without perfect eyesight (that's anyone over 50, pretty much).

My current hate object is a Sony digital FM tuner with a black fascia and 21 black buttons, with their function printed in tiny letters. No manual for the product is obtainable from Sony so the purpose of some buttons remains a mystery. It's a good tuner, but I am fed up with having to use a torch or magnifying glass to use it.

Black may look cool, but an anodized silver finish with black lettering is way better to use.

Yahoo! kills! more! passwords! with! push! notification! app!

Fihart

Abuse of trust.

It's an extraordinary situation where moves by companies one has been a customer of for years have to be regarded with the utmost suspicion.

Yahoo are not alone in seeking my mobile phone number and I simply don't trust them or any of the others enough to give it to them.

Computer companies created this situation via a history of greed, lies, cockups and contempt for their users.

Microsoft's done a terrible job with its Windows 10 nagware

Fihart

Bunker mentality.

Microsoft again demonstrates that it is about as in touch with public opinion as Hitler in the last days of the Berlin bunker.

LG builds a DAB+ digital radio radio into a smartmobe

Fihart

Battery life ?

Let's hope the DAB is a bit more power efficient than the DAB radios I own. As it is, I don't use my phone for music or watching vids because of the battery issue.

You say I mustn’t write down my password? Let me make a note of that

Fihart

No marks to the following:

1) All-uppercase passwords -- these are a pain to type on mobile phones lacking Caps Lock. Ditto passwords involving non-alphanumeric characters.

2) Websites and devices which obscure entered passwords with asterisks. No, no-one is looking over my shoulder, give me the option of displaying the password as I type it on my tiny, error-prone, phone keyboard.

Oh TechNation. Britain's got tech talent. Just not like this

Fihart

Re: What has the picture

Please, no further pictures of the lipless lord of musical mediocrity.

My devil-possessed smartphone tried to emasculate me

Fihart

Voice search works surprise !

I think Alistair is being a bit unfair.

I certainly wouldn't trust speech dialling as even touchscreen seems to have a mind of its own.

But I was amazed to find that the little microphone logo which popped up on my first Android phone allowed me to search Google by speech -- and actually worked. Mumble easily mispronounced name of long-defunct Clydeside shipbuilder and almost instantly it comes up with an accurate find.

Useful, particularly when on the move.

Alcatel drives upmarket with Idol 4 smartphone series

Fihart

Re: I have a bad feeling about this...

I think Alcatel made the error of selling budget phones under their own name so brand will, generally, be associated with those.

Huawaei made cheap phones for others but saved the wider launch of the brand for some more attractive products.

Fihart

Usual tangled multinational corporate story The Lucent we know for making computer chips was formerly an AT&T division (I always confuse it with Conexant which was formerly Rockwell). The Alcatel name was once associated with Roneo which was a Vickers subsidiary and made, among other things, filing cabinets.

Confused, bored -- you will be.

ADpocalypse NOW: Three raises the stakes

Fihart

Re: Advertising adds *value?

Sky TV -- amazed when visiting friends to see that though they paid for Sky, they still had to put up with ads. Obviously they calculate that if you're stupid enough to pay for telly, you won't worry.

Glad to undermine neighbouring landlord's deal where Sky installed dish and cabling for free (while removing regular TV aerial cables) so that tenants are "encouraged" to buy Sky. I regularly find Sky boxes in the trash and have been happy to give these to his tenants who can use them as Freesat devices.

Yahoo! is! up! for! sale! – so! how! much! will! you! bid!?

Fihart

more management twaddle

"The Board is thoroughly committed to exploring strategic alternatives while simultaneously supporting management and the employees in their implementation of Yahoo's strategic plan. We believe that pursuing these complementary paths is in the best interests of our shareholders and will maximize value." ®

To see why this abuse of language is actually encouraged at places like Harvard Business School cast your mind back to James Murdoch hauled in front of MPs -- he managed to say almost nothing while sounding as if he was actually saying stuff.

India's ‘Facebook ruling’ is another nail in the coffin of the MNO model

Fihart

Re: If only.

Had a slightly similar discussion with Thames Water about being charged water rates on a parking space I didn't use. Their response was that I was paying for drainage of rain that fell on the space !

Logical, though I might have replied that as I didn't cause the rain to fall they should take that up with a higher authority.

Putin's internet guru says 'nyet' to Windows, 'da' to desktop Linux

Fihart

Our enemy's enemy.

With friends like Russia, we are in trouble !

Doubtless will confirm view of a few that Linux is a commie conspiracy. Others will see this as adding Linux some extra cred.

Foxconn to slurp Sharp for US$5.6 BEELLION

Fihart

Ah, the good old days !

When Japanese brands like Sharp, Sansui and Sanyo destroyed the UK television manufacturers and all but the premium UK hifi brands due to their impertinent reliability.

However an impressively large 1960s Sansui hybrid transistor/valve (tubes for US readers) receiver threw a friend across a room while he was trying to fix it. Oh, how we laughed.

I still use some 1970s Japanese hifi (Sony and NAD) and a friend has an equally ancient Trio/Kenwood amp which he swears cannot be matched by modern stuff, regardless of price.

Remember Netbooks? Windows 10 makes them good again!

Fihart

no comparison

Having found both types of device in the rubbish, intrigued by author's comparison. Except there is no comparison.

Starting with the Elonex netbook, originally given away by Orange to tempt users to eat expensive mobile data via a dongle. This failed to work using the screwed-up Ubuntu installation on board (confirming my then prejudice against Linux) but booted from an external CD drive to install XP. Apart from a horrible keyboard and exhausted battery, has proved a usefully portable tool when visiting friends to fix their systems.

Next the no-name Android (model name AC1 or something similar) 10 inch tablet which turned up a couple of years later. First clue to its lack of utility was the inclusion of a stylus. Without that the screen is as responsive as a sloth with a hangover and, even with, is inaccurate enough to make text a pain. Add strangely reluctant network socket, weak wireless and battery -- plus the weird phone-based version of Android -- and the thing is rapidly gathering dust.

So -- netbooks good, but for a nicer experience stick with better known brands. Cheap iPad knockoffs, avoid, even if they are cheaper than cheap (i.e. free)

The Mad Men's monster is losing the botnet fight: Fewer humans are seeing web ads

Fihart

Re: Telegraph

My experience of such sites started with a leading industry mag. Tried to block web readers who didn't have a paper subscription. Result, I stopped sending them editorial contributions. Since then I notice that they have unblocked access.

The fact is that newsprint media are in decline and their best bet is to jump to the web where turnround of news is as quick as TV, costs may be less and audience numbers easier to multiply.

The key, though, is to replace cover price and newsprint ad income with web ads. The Guardian is a good example of how to transition readers to new media and actually further the reach and influence of the paper. They are losing money, but I'm sure the solution is not to turn away potential readers such as those with ad-blockers.

Layoffs! Lawsuits! Losses! ... Yahoo! is! in! an! L! of! a! mess!

Fihart

Re: Wait, what?

As long term user I've seen a reliable and easy to use mail service revamped to be less easy (tho some improvements too) and, recently, unreliable.

Gimmicky interface redesign, pointlessly redesigned logo, slowdowns, outages. Probably time for me to pull the plug on Yahoo before they do it themselves.

Why the Sun is setting on the Boeing 747

Fihart

Re: Awe inspiring

Ditto. Saw my first Jumbo from upper deck of a bus in London. First time I flew one, the interior seemed like walking into a cinema.

Such a contrast to my first ever flight in a passenger plane -- Vickers Vanguard, London to Glasgow in the late sixties. Whole damned thing vibrated from the turbo-prop engines and I spent the journey watching a rivet in the bulkhead turning in its socket, hoping that the plane's structure was better finished than the interior.

But worst flight; from Frankfurt on a really old Boeing 707 of Kenya Airways. The only seat on a flight to London on a Friday evening. Had come in with a fairly full load from Mombasa and was quite ripe. The seat tray fell off when opened and the plane had to be diverted to Manchester as it lacked fog-landing tech.

Little warning: Deleting the wrong files may brick your Linux PC

Fihart

Odd photo.

Presumably from stock library and, like so many, taken by photographer who has no knowledge of the subject being shot. Otherwise why would one insert a wholly unwired plug into a motherboard ?

Other examples I can recall; ad with turntable arm lacking counterweights or turntable with arm on left side -- presumably correct shot flipped by dumb art director.

Windows 10 will now automatically download and install on PCs

Fihart

Breaches No. 1 rule of upgrading.

Rule One says never upgrade an existing OS.

Instead wipe old OS (or install new hard drive) and start afresh.

Has MS not heard of this ?

Apple yanks international travel plugs over shock worries

Fihart

Re: Is it just me ...

Except when you tread on them in bare feet, bloody painful.

Fihart

Re: Interesting: USA (etc) flat prong version recalled many years ago

US type mains plugs are probably safe with USA's 120 volt supply, despite the naked prongs.

Use in Europe (230v supply) is potentially lethal. I remember reaching behind a hifi amplifier to remove a US style lead from the auxilliary mains socket and getting hefty shock because the pins were still live when removed far enough for a finger to touch them.

Since then, US style sockets were sealed on equipment imported into UK and have now largely disappeared.

Modern auxilliary sockets (for what are called loosely called kettle-leads) are safe and present day European mains plugs have plastic covers on the prongs, as per pictures in article.

The main danger with UK mains plugs is treading on their upturned prongs in bare feet. That feature of their clumsy design actually caused me to break a toe.

Of course, Apple making stuff so badly that it breaks in normal use would be scandalous. I've had the case come off a third-party charger when simply removing it from the wall socket, exposing the live innards still plugged in.

Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

Fihart

Re:Updates

Quite the reverse on patches. One of the things that most impressed when trying Linux was how quickly and painlessly it updated. Certainly, compared with Windows where the only option sometimes is to switch off disruptive and lengthy automatic updates.

Eighteen year old server trumped by functional 486 fleet!

Fihart

Re: How old?

Visited IBM's research place at Hursley(?) in 1974 and was shown strange object with a matrix of wired and ferrite thingies. Assume that was core memory -- as I recall it was a museum piece even then.

Still, probably more stable than mercury baths with a transponder at each end to act as a delay-line memory.

Fihart

CP/M lives ?

Friend working for one of the NatWest subsidiaries told me that their entire system went down after some bright spark changed something minor like a logging file that managed to exceed CP/M's capacity to address memory.

I was astonished that they had anything CPM still running in the 1990s but apparently no one still working there had any idea how to replace the machine in question. So it remained central to their IT system.

I recalled then that the first word processing prog I used in 1985 was Superwriter by CA and it had been created for CP/M so, even ported to DOS, it could not deal with documents over a certain length.

Twitter goes titsup

Fihart

Or like buying a wallet...

...and having no money left to put in it.

Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10 by denying support for Win 7 and 8 on new CPUs

Fihart

Anti-Trust suit impending.

Collusion between rival hardware manufacturers to benefit a third business ?

Anyway, bloody stupid because it will stifle sales of new PCs and, thus, depress sales of new processors.

Microsoft obviously has suicidal tendencies -- and mostly we are watching and shouting "Jump !"

No escape: Microsoft injects 'Get Windows 10' nagware into biz PCs

Fihart

Re: Who's squeezing Microsoft?

Maybe you are over-thinking this one. It doesn't take a conspiracy for MS to make a cockup of this magnitude.

I've worked with enough large clients (on the marketing side) to know that the inertia/momentum in something like a car company will propel stupid decisions with an unstoppable force. Everyone below board level knows it's a disaster but it's not worth anyone's career to argue.

Before the Second World War (and for some years after as their factories had not been worn out or bomb damaged) American cars were common on every continent. Just look at movies of the period.

Microsoft is at the same size and life-cycle stage as the US car giants were in the 60s when, even at home, their products began to be displaced by better made imports.

What happened with IBM when, irritated by PC clones, they brought out the PS/2 range with non-standard connectors ? Obvious (to everyone except IBM) that many customers would switch to Compaq and Dell to maintain compatibility.

Fihart

Re: Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux,

Ah, so you have a compulsive downvoter too. Or is this nut just downvoting everyone who's ever disagreed with him ?

Fihart

@ Shufflemoomin

My previous experiences with Linux were similar to yours. Until.

Until a friend strong-armed me into trying Peppermint Linux and it installed without any serious issues -- even the wireless adapter. Put it on another computer too and no real problems there either.

Linux still isn't for everyone and some of the apps I've used just don't compare with Windows'.

But if Microsoft's bullying isn't mitigated by it's products' ease of use (and Win10 seems to combine lack of intuitiveness with bullying) Linux may be a viable alternative to Mac. Of course the latter are just as awful as MS -- e.g. crippling USB and Bluetooth on iPhones and forcing one to use the vile iTunes.

Windows 10 makes big gains at home, lags at work

Fihart

Re: Why keep reporting these stats

@ Avatar of They

I support several friends with PCs and two of them have Win8 as a result of new machine purchases. Both dislike it compared with previous OS (XP).

Confirmed: How to stop Windows 10 forcing itself onto PCs – your essential guide

Fihart

Average user.

Would not want or should not try editing the Registry.

Will Microsoft be so helpful when Windows is borked ?

Swiss try to wind up Apple with $25k dumb-watch

Fihart

Still looking for.....

....a wrist wearable sundial.

Activist investors want tepid Yahoo! to reboot crashed Marissa Mayer

Fihart

Fix Yahoo Mail

Then worry about investors. Service is frequently slow and mails have a habit of shedding attachments.

Sure ways to drive users out of the door.

Got a pricey gaming desktop from PC World for Xmas? Check the graphics specs

Fihart

Re: Quality Vs quantity. PC Chimps.

Too right. Had a friend who built and repaired PCs in his shop and I'd occasionally drop in and see him. After similar "experiences" with PC Chips we renamed them PC Chimps.

Fihart

To quote...

Stanley Kalms of Dixons/PC World/Currys;

"a customer is a man who walks into my store with my money in his pocket"

Allegedly.