Posts by Mick Stranahan

Naive

Eloquent piece but naive in the broader sense.

The US has been up to its elbows in the blood of the poor, the powerless, the yellow and the brown for the best part of a century (Vietnam, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Iraq etc etc etc) but now that it has become clear that US spooks are looking at our emails journalists are up in arms and howling that the world is about to end.

Has this news seriously come as a surprise to anyone? Oddly enough about a year ago a friend of mine asked me if I though the intelligence services could or were looking at people's digital communications - the answer I gave was yes to both questions. It never occurred to me for a moment that they couldn't/weren't.

Getting misty eyed about the US Constitution is utterly facile. The governing class of the USA has been fucking over "the people" - be they the rank and file US citizenship or the rest of us on the planet - for a hundred years or more. And no, I don't think the governing class of the UK is any better, its just that the USA's power gives it more scope for abuse.

If anyone seriously thinks that the USA is any different from China in it's disregard for liberty, freedom and privacy then you seriously need to wake up.

If you can't

remember where you parked you are clearly too stupid to be allowed out on the open road.

I suspect Google is loving this - Facebook Home is arguably the first app to provide a simple and obvious reason for teens and avid Facebook users (and there are a lot of the latter) rather than those of us who like Android for it adaptability to want an Android handset rather than an iOS/WP8/BB10 device. The rest of the phone is still Android complete with Gmail, Maps, Drive, Picasa and such, Facebook has just pinched the lock screen. Even Google Now is still present and correct.

This is the first time Android has had a mass-appeal and highly publicized app that can't be had anywhere else.

"None of the staffers demoing the app were able to tell us if it's possible to put a lock screen in front of this."

hmm....I suspect said staffers where taken aback by the the question - the whole point of Facebook Home is that there isn't a lock screen.

If you want a dumb lock screen you don't use an app that punts live data onto a live lock screen (which is essentially what Facebook Home is) to start with.

What you asked was the same as "does the app have the functionality to do something entirely contradictory to the very point of the app?"

I wouldn't want a live social feed showing on my phone all the time. but I know plenty of Facebook users who would.

That's no skin off my nose 'cos I post nothing to my Facebook account that I wouldn't be happy with anyone seeing.

"no self respect"

if you have to rely on the car you drive to inject some self respect into your life you are truly the most worthless and wretched of men. Or you have a very small knob.

Too simplistic

the wife and I have had several Dell and Samsung netbooks but now I have an AMD-driven HP Pavilion dm1 and she a Chromebook 3 as our second/travel machines. Neither is technically a netbook but both have 11.6inch screens, no optical drive and cost £290/£220 respectively so really they occupy the same market nich . The "netbook" is only dead if you are restricting the term to 10.1 inch 1024 x 600 Atom powered mini-laptops.

nah

if camera quality was that big a deal the first two models of iPhone would never have sold and the PureView808 - which has a truly extraordinary camera - would be flying out the door.

For 99% of the world a run of the mill 8MP camera is enough, more than enough in fact.

The 480 x 854 pixel screen feels narrow

What? That's 16:9 near as damn it just like the 720p screens on the One X, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy 3 etc etc.

May look narrow compared to the iPhone's 3:2 but so what? 16:9 is better for video.

Nice

Tried this when it was new and like the reviewer says it was dog slow. Will give it a another chance this evening.

Updates

I'd be inclined to agree with the author that an ICS update is more than likely now Google owns Motorola. It's also worth pointing out that at this moment in time nothing runs ICS, nor will it until the Prime goes on sale.

Excellent feature

'nuff said.

One thing missing

When Bill Gates' turn comes I don't doubt the B&M Gates Foundation will figure prominently in the man's legacy. In all the copy I've read about Steve Jobs and Apple under his leadership I've read not one word about any part of either's vast fortune being put to charitable use in any way. Is this because they didn't or they did/do but keep it under wraps?

When a man is worth that much money and this much coverage surely attention must and should be paid to what he did outside the narrow confines of the business he worked in?

Excellent article

One of the best pieces of Op Ed I've read on the Reg.

That's not a lightsabre

it's an enormous willy!

Well said that man

"The fundamental issue here is Lion's assumption that you don't know what you're doing, and it's going to ensure you're protected from cock-ups"

Change the word Lion for Apple and that line sums up my issue with most things fruity in a nutshell.

I grant you Ubuntu and Windows 7 (or Android for that matter) are not as graceful as their Apple equivalents, but they generally let me do the things I want to do in the way I want to do them and as the person who has paid for the bloody thing (well, the hardware in the case of Ubuntu) that's what I look for.

I turn my kit off when asked

Not because I think the plane will fall out of the sky, but because I've been asked to by the flight attendant and it's the polite thing to do. Nothing worse than sitting by some know-all tw*t who insists on keeping his phone on and has to be asked three times to turn the thing off.

Last time I was next an idiot like I quietly told him to turn it off or I would turn it into a suppository. Bingo, phone off.

Not sure about Chrome / Chromium

but I am tempted by the Ubuntu version

http://www.kogan.co.uk/shop/agora-pro-12-ultra-portable-laptop-computer/

what complete, utter and absolute

"It's just record labels ripping everyone off all over again."

bollocks.

Ever worked for a record label? Even seen the P&Ls? No, thought not. Tit

IQ indeed...

The Toyota iQ is in a completely different size class to the Jazz. Agreed it's cheaper and more economical but it's smaller and slower, has two less doors and if you move the rear seats back so that anyone other than a dwarf or under-8 can get in the boot vanishes. Makes as much sense as a comparison as saying a Fiesta is cheaper and more frugal than a Mondeo - of course it bloody is.

As for Jazz drivers, well my experience is that if I am stuck behind some twerp driving at 35mph in a 50 zone for no good reason said twerp is usually behind the wheel of a Nissan Micra or something with a Rover badge on it.

Time to dust off

my "Cromwell didn't for far enough" t-shirt

what utter cock

"Google’s cloudy calendar was the main reason I adopted Android as my mobile OS of choice" which I think implies you cannot use it elsewhere but it's not worth arguing about.

The reviewer's opening comment suggests it was Google's calender that drew him to Android because, I assume, Android offered him the convenience of one-sign-in sync. That's how I read it anyway.

Can't imagine any WinPhone 7 and Palm WebOS users feeling the need to clarify that Google calender can synch to their handsets. Must just be an Apple (user) thing.

Brilliant

Funniest thing I seen on Reg Hardware for some time.

Product costs...

As with an iPad, a BMW 3-Series or a bottle of Calvin Klein CK1 the price is what the market will support and has sod all to do with the genuine product cost-to-market.

Right now the Kindle, both as hardware and content, is a blazing success for Amazon, and until such time as that changes prices won't drop or until Amazon thinks that that a price drop will massively increase demand and consumption and thus overall profit.

And at the end of the day, like iPads, BMW's and CK1, eBooks are not essential purchases. If the price pisses you off so much, don't buy them.

I can't foresee any mechanic on the horizon that will force a drop in new published eBook prices so I suspect we will see some degree of parity between eBook and paper edition prices for some time to come.