* Posts by David Nash

1434 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jul 2008

Probably for the best: Apple makes sure eSIMs won't nuke the operators

David Nash Silver badge

"How can an MVNO manage to carry out the billing admin cheaper than the network owner?"

My assumption was that they simply charge less margin than the owner, who is seen as worth paying a premium for by some customers.

You know all those movies you bought from Apple? Um, well, think different: You didn't

David Nash Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: false advertisement

"Cue".

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Apple vs oranges

If Apple had folded he wouldn't have complained, as the reason would have been obvious.

In this case the implication was that the movie was there in the cloud for him.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: It's a good idea to take things home with you when you buy them.

"This gentleman is being naive if he thinks that the Apple store works differently from any brick and mortar store."

I would not be surprised if people don't treat movies they have bought on the Apple store, as being in "their cloud", just like many other stored things, which don't disappear on a whim.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: not yours

"the DRM in BluRay can be revoked (eg key rejected) "

My BluRay player is not connected to the Internet so no, it can't.

Microsoft tells volume customers they can stay on Windows 7... for a bit longer... for a fee

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Choice?

That might be nice, but why "should"?

Canny Brits are nuking the phone bundle

David Nash Silver badge

Re: OnePlus

If you're buying from "Europe somewhere" then VAT still applies.

I agree though that if it's outside Europe you won't pay VAT but in theory it will be paid on import, normally the courier holds goods in their warehouse until you pay the VAT and duty and a large fee.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Punished if you buy phone from elsewhere

"Why would I want to pay THEM for when there's no mobile signal if I were lucky enough to get wifi instead?"

I was in the same position as you, wifi calling is new to me. But I believe the point is that it goes over Wifi to 3, who route the call via usual methods. That's why you pay them.

As you say, you are free to use Skype or WhatsApp if your contacts have those too, and these days probably most people do. Wifi calling has come a bit too late IMHO.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: I never quite understood why one would get a bundle

"I saved £100 on my Samsung S9 by buying a contract from mobiles.co.uk"

Yes, third-party contracts used to have some great bargains. Worth getting the bundle when it's a good deal.

Neutron star crash in a galaxy far, far... far away spews 'faster than light' radio signal jets at Earth

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Hope it's true

"because energy applied to them just makes them heavier"

Yes, and time slows down. I am fond of the analogy/model where things are always travelling through spacetime, at the speed of light. ie. 1sec/sec for an object at rest in space, is lightspeed in the time dimension.

The faster you go through the non-time dimensions, the slower you go through time because some of your lightspeed velocity is taken away from the time dimension and used to move you through space.

When you are going through space at lightspeed, time stops because you've used all your lightspeed for space travel rather than time travel. As I believe is said to be the case for photons.

Easy to imagine as a 2-dimensional plane with time on one axis and space on the other.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Relativity - Great! But what about String Theory, Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

Not quite.

Plus you have mixed up Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

Dark Matter explains the behaviour (gravitational) and morphology of the universe and things in it, ie. Galaxies and Galaxy Clusters.

It is hypothesised because it's the simplest explanation that is consistent with other observations. It's not really a circular argument because the stuff that's hypothesised is "matter that we can't see but which interacts only or mainly via Gravity". Nothing wrong with that. We don't know much else about it but lots of work is ongoing to narrow down the options.

More complex hypotheses may be possible too but usually it works to go with the simplest one that is consistent.

Dark Energy on the other hand is much more like the sky pixies you mention. It's a placeholder for an explanation for why the expansion of the universe appears to be increasing.

If and when someone comes up with a better explanation that is consistent with other observations and theory, then great, it will be replaced or explained in more detail. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have such a word.

Newtonian Gravity was much the same. What is Gravity? A force that makes things attract each other. Why do things attract each other? Because of Gravity.

David Nash Silver badge
Facepalm

Theory in this context does not mean hypothesis.

Mozilla changes Firefox policy from ‘do not track’ to ‘will not track’

David Nash Silver badge

outvoted on the UI

I wasn't invited to the ballot.

Fast food, slow user – techie tears hair out over crashed drive-thru till

David Nash Silver badge

Wireless keyboard?

AI sucks at stopping online trolls spewing toxic comments

David Nash Silver badge

Re: The other way around

Maybe he used too-realistic examples. Kind of like why you don't joke around airport security.

David Nash Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Definition of Trolling

Upvoted because I agree to a point but unfortunately the media and some politicians got hold of the word and liked it so much they redefined it, and that battle is probably lost.

It may be poor man's Photoshop, but GIMP casts a Long Shadow with latest update

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Forget the geeky stuff, sort out the user experience.

I've never understood these complaints about the UI. Maybe because I wasn't a Photoshop user first?

How is it complicated? Seriously, is there any site where someone has reviewed the UI and listed out specific items? I am interested to know what I am missing out on.

Use Debian? Want Intel's latest CPU patch? Small print sparks big problem

David Nash Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Well Done...

What's wrong with "they're" ?

EU wants one phone plug to rule them all. But we've got a better idea.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: EU Standard plug

The 13A fuse is not because the TV is expected to draw 13A, it's because the TV is NOT expected to draw 13A.

Most short circuits to earth or wherever will blow a 13A fuse pretty much as quick as a 5A fuse (no I haven't done the calculations) so it does the job even if 5A is theoretically safer.

Google risks mega-fine in EU over location 'stalking'

David Nash Silver badge

it also tells you that it will do it.

Actually, it doesn't. It says that pages won't stick around in your browser's history, cookie store, or search history after you've closed all incognito tabs. It then warns you that this doesn't protect you from your employer, ISP, or the websites themselves, naturally.

But it doesn't say that Google/Chrome will record your history when incognito.

Ad watchdog: Amazon 'misleading' over Prime next-day delivery ads

David Nash Silver badge

Re: amazon

"usually says Prime next day on the page but confirms the delivery as X days away when you pay"

Yeah that's when it gets annoying. I do find it's almost always next day anyway, clearly had a different experience than the complainers.

ZX Spectrum Vega+ blows a FUSE: It runs open-source emulator

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Sir Clive's health

I don't recall the C5 being pedal-powered...was it?

David Nash Silver badge

"first Sinclair computer (a ZX spectrum+"

You were spoiled. You missed the real revolution - the ZX81, or for us real pioneers, the ZX80, flashing screen and all.

David Nash Silver badge

There was nothing to compare against

Yes there was, there was Sinclair's earlier effort for one, the Mk14, which was similarly priced and much more primitive, and there were home and business machines from the US, some of which may have been better but were much more expensive and less suited for home geekery.

Emma's Diary fined £140k for flogging data on over a million new mums to Labour Party

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Should have been more given the domain

Calling themselves "Emma's Diary" sounds so much nicer than "Lifecycle Marketing". I wonder how many new Mums would have agreed to hand over their details if they'd been approached by the latter rather than the former?

WhatsApp security snafu allows sneaky 'message manipulation'

David Nash Silver badge

Backup to Google Drive

WhatsApp sometimes decides to ask me if I want to backup to GD but I have never said yes.

I It seems to be optional.

Top Euro court: No, you can't steal images from other websites (too bad a school had to be sued to confirm this little fact)

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Dying embers of copyright

Actually copyright "began impinging directly on the public mind" because technology enabled both creators to create and consumers to copy, from home taping through to computer files.

It works both ways and it's still valid. I have put a deal of effort into astrophotography over the years, largely due to technology making it possible, and I'd not like for a freeloader to use my work for their own benefit without at least credit. I have been asked, and granted, permission to use certain of these photos over the years and never felt that I had to say no. Some educational publishers gave me a fee although the admin involved means I now granted them to use it free of charge. But that's not to say I would do the same for any organisation, depending on the intended use.

You say Copyright is bad law because it's difficult to enforce. So is enforcement of not stealing bicycles in London. But it's not bad law that stealing bikes is illegal.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: but... That city spent all that money..

"Where French copyright law will hit you though is if you take a photo of the Eiffel Tower at night"

Clever, I like that!

David Nash Silver badge

Are you supposed to just not use an image in case there is a copyright?

YES! exactly. Images are generally placed on websites to add something to the content of the website, not for freeloaders to use for their own benefit.

Bank on it: It's either legal to port-scan someone without consent or it's not, fumes researcher

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Code

"They are running code in my machine without my explicit consent for their own benefit..."

I'm not defending the port scanning but every web page that has Javascript is running code in your machine without your explicit consent.

'Can you just pop in to the office and hit the power button?' 'Not really... the G8 is on'

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Long ago.

Looks like a good idea, provided they got the security right.

30000 hours? 32767 probably!

Now that's a dodgy Giza: Eggheads claim Great Pyramid can focus electromagnetic waves

David Nash Silver badge

Re: I want to believe..

Of course...you've hit the nail on the head. But why do you "want to believe"?

How much is "enough" magic or mystery? There's plenty of mystery. The magic (of this kind) we can do without.

Early experiment in mass email ends with mad dash across office to unplug mail gateway

David Nash Silver badge

Not to mention

Powergen Italia

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Firetruck?

The presence of those 4 letters in the word gave a clue, but the original comment

"the compiler should proceed firetruck to a different location. " still makes no sense.

Mmm, yes. 11-nines data durability? Mmmm, that sounds good. Except it's virtually meaningless

David Nash Silver badge

Uptime is understandable, but why would they ever lose small amounts of data? The provided should have proper backup and redundancy in place which means they never lose anything, ever (subject to a certain amount of downtime), or they lose everything when they go out of business. How is there any in-between? Sounds like pure marketing to me.

Either my name, my password or my soul is invalid – but which?

David Nash Silver badge

Paypal

Agree - I too had the experience of giving a merchant my preferred email address for them, and receiving email from them to my paypal login instead.

David Nash Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: "Wrong" email addresses

I seem to remember also that some sites only accepted email addresses from what they considered to be proper email, ie. hotmail, etc. Anything else wasn't a "known" email so was rejected.

Brits whinging less? About ISPs, networks and TV? It's gotta be a glitch in the Matrix

David Nash Silver badge

Re: I Love My ISP

on the first few times this happened,

Only the first few times? What changed your mind?

British Airways' latest Total Inability To Support Upwardness of Planes* caused by Amadeus system outage

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Amadeus

If they started weighing passengers then it would be a short leap to charging them accordingly, which makes sense but which lots of people would not like.

Windows Server 2019 tweaked to stop it getting clock-blocked

David Nash Silver badge

how do we progress beyond using this irregularly spinning rock?

We do have an alternative but the problem is not that we use the spinning rock as a base and it drifts, it's that we use a more regular source as a base, and it doesn't drift, therefore getting out of sync with the spinning rock, so if left uncorrected the point of highest sun wouldn't be at 12:00, eventually it would be sunny in the night time, and so on.

By Jove! Astroboffins spot 12 new spanking moons around Jupiter

David Nash Silver badge

Re: What is a moon ?

Pluto wasn't demoted, strictly speaking, because it was too small. It was because other bodies had been found of similar size, and they didn't want to open the floodgates.

Actually the only criterion for planethood that Pluto doesn't fulfil, is that it has not "cleared it's neighbouring region".

Look, what's that over there? Sophos nips Windows DNS DLL false positive in the bud

David Nash Silver badge

So sounds like a case of "Small earthquake, not many dead"

'Fibre broadband' should mean glass wires poking into your router, reckons Brit survey

David Nash Silver badge

I don't think it's as simple as marketing guys calling something fibre when it's not.

In the old days it was copper all the way to the exchange (or aluminium I guess). Then FTTC came along and they needed a way to describe it.

There is some fibre in there, where there wasn't before. So they call it Fibre, and mostly it's a couple of times faster than ADSL. I don't recall many people complaining. Then along came FTTP which is more fibre and even faster. So now the old fibre should be called partial fibre or something perhaps?

Cancelled in Crawley? At least your train has free Wi-Fi now, right?

David Nash Silver badge

Re: If only...

"Can't they put the signal boxes on the same network?"

I hope not! I know the signals fail regularly but we need them to be at least theoretically better than the rubbish train wifi.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: If only...

"Am I the only one to get the HHGTTG reference?"

No.. Thanks for confirming my memory!

David Nash Silver badge

Re: If only...

"Life is a bit more nuanced"

I think he was making a joke, and possibly one stolen from Douglas Adams (not 100% but I've definitely heard it before)

Leatherbound analogue password manager: For the hipster who doesn't mind losing everything

David Nash Silver badge

Re: I've got a better solution...

Labelled kitchen jars...it's so you know what they are for when you buy them.

Every step you take: We track you for your own safety, you know?

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Corporate Security

I've worked at several places where they have a system to ask people to "check-in" in the case of such incidents. No tracking involved, just concern for their employees.

David Nash Silver badge

Smartphone pouches

You don't need pouches, just turn off location when you are not on company business.