Posts by Steve Davies 3 7147 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009
You heard about a gig on the Radio and queued up outside the venue to get tickets.
Tickets mostly went on sale less than 2 months before the gig.
you paid for your seat at the box office and some venues didn't accept anything but hard cash.. 1st come 1st served.
Sometimes, I wish for those days back and yes, I am over 60 but still go to gigs and really have having to buy tickets 6-9 months (or longer) in advance.
on El Reg... wonders will never cease.
The review was good on detail and less of a press release. Can we keep on with articles like this please?
I own an iPad mini which does the job it was bought for. Isn't this the aim of just about any product we spash the cash for?
It might not be perfect for everything but for showing off my photos and reading e-Books is is better than anything I've used before and this includes Amazon Kindle-fire and a Samsung Tablet.
Sure, my first digital camera went through AA's as if they were going out of fashion.
My modern DSLR battery is good for around 1,000 shots. Possibly less if I'm doing a lot of birds in flight and using the lest to track them keeping them in focus.
But a replacement battery is pretty small. It easily fits into a pocket or a daysack.
I'm coming to the end of a 3 week trip in the USA. So far I've taken close on 4000 pictures (many 20 frame panoramas) and I've charged the battery four times.
Things have moved on since those early days.
So, back to the watch. My guess is that in 3-4 years, we may wonder what all the fuss was about. OTOH, we may well laugh and realise that wearable like this were a passing fad. Only time will tell.
Until the likes of the BBC and others too numerous to name get off their fat arses and nuke the need for flash from their end this bodge by Apple will still be needed.
As for Silverlight, the darn thing keeps appearing in the list of optional things to install/patch. MS could nuke it if they wanted but they can't be bovvered (like everything else it seems ATM).
I wanted to see how to remove haze from some photos. All the turorials demanded flash. So I had to listen to the sound description and try to work it out from there.
Can someone please stick a knife in Flash. I'll even buy them a few pints. I susprect that I would not be alone the day that 99.99% of the internet works without flash installed.
1977 was a little early for anyone to get fibre as a backbone but your sentiment was well meant.
My issue with Google is their need to be fed data about virtually everyone.
Does Google Fibre slurp your data back to the Chocolate Factory or are they playing a clean game and not sucking your data from under you so that it can be used in their AI, to improve your life with Adverts etc?
It would be nice to know that side of the coin.
Is it a choice between 100Mbits and data sucking (with Google) or 20Mbits and ISP Data Neutrality with AT&T/Comcast etc?
I'm not a US resident so it does not matter to me which wat round it is but it would be nice to know.
Is it not better for you, the individual for the AI to reside on YOUR device than back at the Mothership where the data can be slurped and used for all manner of reasons, viz Advertising and Tracking?
If Apple deciding to keep Siri local you your iDevice is an example of control freakery then frankly, I'm all for it.
They IMHO have a different and better approach to Google/MS/Amazon. And frankly, given the slurping tendencies of the competition, I'm with Apple on this one.
Personally, I would not be seen dead talking to an AI but that is just the luddite in me. Or? Perhaps I don't want to broadcast that I'm looking for [redacted] to the people around me. I certainly don't want my searched to result in product recommendations. I'm sure it won't be long before there are divorces filed where the 'dodgy' searched are cited as reasons for getting unhitched.
IMHO, Apple are being refreshingly different here. Good on them I say.
Is it not better for you, the individual for the AI to reside on YOUR device than back at the Mothership where the data can be slurped and used for all manner of reasons, viz Advertising and Tracking?
If Apple deciding to keep Siri local you your iDevice is an example of control freakery then frankly, I'm all for it.
They IMHO have a different and better approach to Google/MS/Amazon. And frankly, given the slurping tendencies of the competition, I'm with Apple on this one.
Personally, I would not be seen dead talking to an AI but that is just the luddite in me. Or? Perhaps I don't want to broadcast that I'm looking for [redacted] to the people around me. I certainly don't want my searched to result in product recommendations. I'm sure it won't be long before there are divorces filed where the 'dodgy' searched are cited as reasons for getting unhitched.
IMHO, Apple are being refreshingly different here. Good on them I say.
Oh, you mean the monthly Patch Tuesday files that MS dish out? Aren't these 'specially crafted'. Crafted to get you to install W10 that is. According to many in these parts W10 is nothing more than malware anyway.
I passed close to Area 51 yesterday hence the Icon.
and given Google incessant need for your data and with Microsoft wanting to get their slice of the pie, even if you hate Apple, you should at least give them a bit of kudos for not being the same as the other two.
They are trying to be different when it comes to user data security. MS had a chance but with W10 Adds on the lock screen and not the LinkIn data slurp I see them as being no better than Google.
The locals will direct the invaders to say... Morans and give them Guinnes and Smoked Salmon.
Then the marines will be asked, 'Now fellas, do you really want to invade us now? Another pint for our new American friends'.
The invasion will fail miserably and the marines will apparently disappear into a peat bog but turn up tending bar in Dublin.
Don't forget all the Radioactive substances at the Lawrence-livermore site. Connected to SF via the BART.
Personally, the whole of the Bay IT Industry area could disappear in a giant quake for all I care (people excepted).
Google is even closer to the San-Andreas than Apple is.
Drove through there yeterday. Lots of carparks on the freeways and hardly a Hybrid/Leccy vehicle in site apart from the Prius. I see more in the US than here... The only leccy car was a Chevy Volt with a vanity place 'GASGONE'.
Come on now hands up there. No not you experts who lurk around this place but the 'Joe/Jolene average user'.
Well? I don't see many out there.
Sure this will be of use to enterprise users but for the average home user? Nope.
Do they eve know or care about all this cloudy containery stuff? Somehow I doubt it.
As has been said,
Still won't install it EVER ok.
Have you ever seen US TV?
It is full of adverts for all sorts of drugs. Some have really serious side effects but that have to tell you in the adverts about ALL of them so the voice runs at about 500 word/min.
Becuse Healthcare in the USA is really, really, really big business with billions and billions of USD at stake, even a bit of extra data about increasing (or decreasing) levels of a particular disease could be worth a huge amount of money to Big Pharma.
Sadly the error range in this study makes it as accurate as me putting £10 on the 16:30 at Haydock and expecting my choice of old nag to win.
Which is where I am at the present
Checks (us spelling) rule Ok.
Where the locals use them there will be a need for a local bank.
In fact the small town I'm in right now (06:11 in the morning) has two right on main st.
There is a general store, a blacksmiths (makes fancy doodads and does not shoe horses), a Barbers shop etc etc.
There is even a Victorian Hotel right across the street from the Saloon (Over 21's only) and a theatre.
Wallmart? Dollar General?
Oh, they are 15 miles away along with BigK and Safeway.
The view of the people here is that the people in the cities need to get out more often and see the world as it really is.
This place is close to 300miles from the ethereal if not downright unreal world of silicon valley and could not be a more different place. There is even a place that is a Radio Shack agency.
Why?
If the locals are strong enough then their town won't become a WalMart Ghost town. Remember thart Walmart are shutting lots of rural stores. What then for the locals? Will Amazon fill the breach? Out here? Are you kidding. It will cost them billions just to setup the infrastructure to rival that of the supermarkets.
It seems most people here are for Hilary but there is one 'Trump' poster right across the street from where I'm typing this.
If you mention 'Salesforce' around here the answer will be 'Oh, that's Hank', not some app on a mobile device. Cellphone signal here is 1 bar on AT&T. T-Mobile is non existent.
IMHO, this article is another pure clickbait flimsy.
After all their previous issues with networking going back to Windows 3.0/3.1 I am actually saddened that MS puts out software that behaves like this.
It is almost as if the droids in Redmond are deliberately ignoring the fact that most of the world is not on 100Mbit Connections (not ASDL either).
So come you MS fanbois, defend this?
My decision to never use W10 that I made lst October seems to be even wiser every day.
IMHO, it is a POS and not fit to wipe yor arse when doing No 2's.
Sadly, MS won't do anything to fix the problems. They are in 'la-la-la-la-la-can't here you land' at the moment.
Such a shame. They could have made a really good OS instead... they failed, miserably (IMHO)
it was reported that there has been a noticeable rise in people browsing the internet from Live CD/DVD distros and VM that are overwritten once it is shutdown.
Good luck to the FBI getting access to those browser histories.
So be careful what you wish for.
I wouldn't put it past one or two browser makers to make 'clear ALL Histories' the default.
You could put floating waterwheels on many rivers.
These are anchored but can rise or fall with river levels.
These would use the flow of water to turn the wheels. As the majority of rivers flows 24/7/52 then there is always a flow of power.
These could be placed under bridges (where the water speeds up) or at the sides in multiples
It wouldn't take an enginnering genius to get a design that could be mass produced thus lowering the cost.
Ok, so it might not be in the mega or goga watt range but as the tesco advert says
'Every little helps'.
Just think what a thousand of these on the River Thames/Severn/Trent might produce?
Maintenance? just lift them out of the water, replace with another one and cart the old one off to a base for work.
But hey, I'm just dreaming. The planners would put a stop to this sort of thing in an instant.
That would I am sure trigger the rest of the world to call in all the debt that the US owes.
How much is that again?
How much does it rise every second?
Now that would trigger a 20+ year depression all over the world.
Maybe that's what President Trump wants to do? (Just a thought)
Not News. This is SOP for the folks from Redmond.
Had an interesting chat with a recent MS ex-employee in a bar in Portland, Oregon last night.
He was not surprised with the recent W10 'upgrade' being forced on users.
He's now working for a Linux only shop. No need to say any more really.
I bought him a pint of a farily decent local brew hence the icon.
You mean dupliate the situation in the USA where Pres Obama (Dem) can't get the bills passed because the republicans control both the house and the senate?
8 years of virtual political deadlock.
And you want that?
Please god no. It would be like a Government having no overall majority and forever facing votes of no confidence.
{Posted while travelling in Oregon.}
Sadly, the Windows EULA absolves Microsoft from being liable for ANY damages caused by the operation of their Operating System.
This may be only correct for the USofA. I'd love to see it challenged in a court though.
At the very least MS should cough up for this org's Satellite charges but I wouldn't get my hopes too high.
Perhaps the passing of time has clouded peoples memories.
If you cast your mind back to the SCO vs IBM case, a lot of it centred around the alledged copying of 'errno.h'.
The Judge ruled that this file was generic (or words that I can't remember) and did not violate copyright.
errno.h is a standard file in every Unix and Linux distro. It has been there for decades.
To use the definitions contained in that file is not a violation of copyright (well, the SCO Lawyers still seem to think so after 13+ years) so I'd go with the jury on the use of a published API but not the code behind it.
IMHO, it is ok to take a published API and reverse engineer what it behind it. As long as you don't peek at the original sources then you are ok. This is how the various 'clean-room' Java JVM's got developed.
If my recollection of the SCO events is wrong then sorry. The gory details are available of www.groklaw.net.
Where are you PJ, just when we need your dissecttion of the Oracle and Google Lawyers statements and truths and definite untruths?
Herr Mueller had to admit that he was paid by Microsoft to 'do stuff'.
This was covered on Groklaw in gory detail.
My first question to Mr 'Foss Patents' would be...
Ok, Florian who is paying you at the moment?
IF he does not answer then you can infer whatever you like.
As for me? Where's that 40,000ft barge pole.
Same on you El Reg for posting this diatribe unchallenged.
and if this was an Apple device, a 100 Class Action lawsuits would have been filed, News of the issue would be on the TV and Radio news and the share price would take a hammering and senior execs hauled up before politicians to explain their inaction.
But it isn't so MS has decided that like the wartime slogan said
Keep Calm,
Carry On.
Nothing to report. Not news. etc
And then next quarter, we see Surface sales tank. What then Mr SatNad?
Common sense does not enter into US Law Enforcement/Prosecutors' minds when deciding to take on a case. You break the law and you go to jail for the max time possible. That is their No 1 position.
I'd go as far as to say, that it is surgically removed when they sign up.
It remains to be seen if the Feds go after the company OR that the company is sued into oblivion by a class action suit from the people who's records were left exposed.
don't worry, they are going to get a literal barrage of WTF's! from people who see this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36367221
Sneaky MS had decided that hittig 'X' to close the window does not stop the install but schedules it anyway
That has to be close to breaking the Computer Misuse Act.
Get off my PC! Trespassers will be shot.
Well done! But don't forget all that lovely data you are providing to the Google 'Big Data' machine that is powering its AD AI system.
There are downsides to running Android, just as with any OS.
Just because the largest amount of Sheep are Androids (Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?) it does not mean that it is the best environment.
IMHO, the more choice there is the better which kinda makes me sad that MS is AFAIK, letting W10 mobile wither and die. It remains to be seen if there is a Surface Phone around the corner but even if there is, there is a huge great mountain for it to climb before it becomes relevant.
There must be some magic sauce that only Apple Phones have. Why else would they not sue Samsung, HTC, Nokia, Microsoft and the rest...
Oh wait.... Apple has $200B+ in cash. Plus there is a lot more publicity to be gained from filing suit against the fruity company than the others.
Their lawyers must be after a new [insert luxury item of choice here].
They go 'meh' and get on with earning a living.
All this embiggening of Cloud, SAAS, DevOps is largely irrelevant to them
They'll give you a blank stare when you mention 'Big Data'.
the likes of Gartner live on a different planet to 99.99999% of the rest of us.
Still, it makes for a smile on a monday morning.
Quote
no end to the interesting things to peer at.
Yes there are lost of interesting things to peer at not all of them legal.
Any voyeur flying one of these things should be strapped to one of these rockets for the next launch or put naked into the stocks for a week.See how they like that.
Just saying..
An invitation to go to somewhere that is undesirable and possibly illegal.
Remember just accidentally viewing kiddie porm is a criminal act here in the UK.
If it ain't on of these siate, how do you know the the short URL you just clicked on is not owned by a bad guy.
I won't click on any short URL's, QR Codes or anything else that hides the real desitnation of the connection.
Sadly the carriers (well most of them) want to operate smaller aircraft more frequently. gone are the days of one flight per day to popular destinations. 3,4 or even 5 are the norm. These all require airport space. viz,
runway slots
Apron space
Gate/airbridge/bussing
Checkin desks
Departure holding areas
etc
etc
with larger aircraft (up to a point) then a two runway EGLL would work. Perhaps they could try using the same runway for two A319/737's to take off at the same time. One from the very end, and one from halfway down.
Well, If you have NFC Capable cards in your wallet then their details can be slurped by someone just standing next to you in a queue/train/on the street.
You could get rid of all the NFC versions of your cards and put them on your phone which can't be snooped like the raw cards. You still have them available for chip/pin use.
However, I really doubt the intrinsic security of Android in this area when compared to Apple devices. Their secure vault was designed from the ground up for this sort of thing. Unless there is an equivalent in ALL android devices then won't some be more secure than others?
With all the malware doing the rounds on Android, do you really want to risk using this?
Only time will tell.
Does not matter to me as my own phone is an old Nokia 6310 which is working fine thank you very much.
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