Posts by Intractable Potsherd

Re: I can't figure this guy out ...

" ... why would ANY human trust him?"

What's this, jake - a "No True Scotsman" argument? Anyone who would trust Snowden is not a human?

How low are going to stoop in your NSA/GCHQ apologism?

Re: While I like the unified charger idea

I've had some disquiet about this for a while. If I had a choice, I'd have another connector, but I'll accept any standardisation at the moment!

Re: USB: This side up

My phone has the "up" side of the connector as if the screen is facing towards me, my e-reader as if the screen is down, and my camera changes every time I use it ...

Re: Good news....

What do you mean by "better"? A power socket can't really be improved, except by standardising.

I didn't immediate clock you as being the same AC who had been watching the download. Good luck with that work. I'm going nowhere near Win8, but if you are successful you might be able to help a lot of people.

Re: No internet for the rest of the month ?

Is Timmay a Matt Bryant sock-puppet? He's certainly as big an arse-hole ...

Re: Elop was Second Choice?

I'm glad you put "talent" in inverted commas (well, dumb quotes really). In this context, having no talent for anything seems to be the key talent required.

Seriously, I'm absolutely sure that randomly picking people from the shop floor to act as CEO would be as effective at finding someone who can do the job well. You might even get someone with integrity, and not someone who has shown that they can cheat, lie, and back-stab for a living. It is no coincidence that so many companies that started small and were nurtured to success by the people that were there from the beginning, possibly working their way through the ranks, go tits-up when they bring in a professional chiseller to head things up.

I'll wait and see if the Note 3 is region-locked, like we've recently seen on Samsung flagship phones. If it is, I'm not buying.

Re: Odd. @jake

Don't take this as a dig - it really isn't - but it is long overdue for you to write your autobiography. Your life sounds like it has been good fun!

Re: Uncontrollable Urge to Pull Steering Wheel Up

So why didn't he put money into making a flying car!!!

Re: Kiss and tell tramp @ ItsNotMe

"I think a LOT of people already knew this."

We also "knew" about being spied on by our own security forces - it is nice to have confirmation, though.

Re: Good Idea

And if it isn't the police you wanted? Also, with some response times, it could be a couple of days before a PCSO comes out to see what you wanted ...

Re: I thought they already did

As I pointed out earlier, there are easily considered examples of when you might want to dial 999/112/911 from a location remote from the incident (e.g. elderly relative goes quiet mid-sentence on the phone - I'm about 350 miles from from my mother, for instance). Dumping the information about my location as I call the emergency services to direct them to a place in Yorkshire will only confuse the issue, and lead to a false alarm for my local ambulance service (and I live so close to the ambulance station, they might well be here before I've finished the call!). There does need to be some level of control of the information sent out for operational reasons.

Re: For me it;s simple @Richard Rae

The examples you post are all used by choice, and can be avoided entirely or switched off. Your argument could be used to advocate cameras in every bedroom/toilet to monitor for health problems.

There is a big difference between these kind of apps and something that is mandated by governments.

Re: Tradeoffs

Actually, on re-reading your last point I realise I missed your point. You are talking about a "spot-check" of location, I think.

That is the weakness of such a system - if it is there, it is hack/crackable, and how trivial it would be to do it. It is where my, and probably others', concerns come in. I suppose there could be a challenge/response system built-in (without a specific response from the emergency services' end of things, the data are not sent), but that has problems in terms of what the response is, how often it is changed, and international standardisation.

Re: Tradeoffs

These are excellent questions. My thoughts are:

"* Should the functionality be configurable by the user (allow/deny)?"

Yes. There is no duty to contact the emergency services, nor to give any information you don't want to. If a user wants to use the "basic" emergency call system, then they should be allowed to, at their own risk.

"* The user may be unaware that extra stuff was activated. Should it be switched off when the call ends (if it was off)? X minutes after the call ends? A notification presented to the user with a choice of "keep on / switch off"?"

I think that would have to mandated in the specs for all sorts of reasons. I think a combination of switching off after X minutes and a user-operable choice is optimal.

"* Should battery level be checked so that activating extra stuff won't drain it too fast?"

*Any* call is better than none, and so the phone signal should be prioritised, then wifi, and GPS only if there is sufficient power after the other two have been switched on.

"* Is it so difficult to imagine cases where the caller - or the owner of the phone used - might want to place an emergency call but remain anonymous and unlocatable? The emergency may not involve him/her directly, the services may not need to be deployed to precisely the caller's location, etc."

This is a common situation (consider an elderly relative ringing up to say they don't feel well, and then going quiet mid-sentence), and so there needs to be an override to a non-automated system.

"* If there is a mechanism to activate precise location beacon when dialling a specific set of numbers, who will convince me that it cannot be done by, say, making a call or sending an SMS to me? Or, say, by pressing a particular password/PIN (joel's_123_backdoor or something?) on the locked screen?"

Yes, it will be possible, but I would say this is going to be somewhat self-limiting. The battery isn't going to last any time if the whole range of locating devices is switched on (my Galaxy Note will do about an hour with the GPS switched on). Even the most clueless of users is going to notice their device repeatedly becoming dead after a short time (though what they would do about it is another question!)

Re: The Swiss have an app for that

Thanks, Mugs. I hadn't seen that before. I've now installed it on my phone. It does seem to have some limitations (it needs to be behind the lock-screen, so others can't access it, and it needs the GPS manually activating), and I'm not sure if it changes the language of the message sent out depending on where I am, but it is a good start to what we are talking about here.

Re: Sensible approach or is it? @ Brian Morrison

I like the ideas you put forward. Now, remembering that I a not a hardware person, especially wrt phones, what about including a system that punts more than the usual power to the phone's radio transmitter so that there is a better chance of identifying it (either as a big signal in the middle of lots of others, or as a faint signal in the middle of nothing)? If that is rubbish, be gentle with me!

Re: "Theft"?

I'll go one better: I know it does not mean what he thinks it means. See the Theft Act 1968 for what it means in the UK ...

Re: You own servers perhaps? @AC

I did think this was what was happening for some time, but you think we should have expected it? That we should have said "Oh, that internet thing is bound to be leaky, so let's not worry about it"?

Bollocks! The fact that it has been done does not mean we would have allowed it if we had been told about it. Apologists for the "security" agencies and snooping governments, like you, are sickening.

Re: Substitutes.

A typical Turtle post - almost entirely semantically null.