Re: Also happens on my WinPhone
But, I think it is meant to do that.
Hmm, that does sound plausible. I suppose a similar logic could be causing the phone not to ring at certain times.
5081 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2009
As long as your phone's Skype client is connected to the internet and is in touch with the Skype server, your calls will be delivered to the Skype client on your phone.
Sometimes. Maybe. Depending how your phone feels. I can always initiate a Skype call but it's pot luck whether an incoming call will be seen by my phone or not. I've also had funky things happen like my phone taking the call when I actually picked up on my desktop (?!?). Same with chat messages. This morning my phone was chirping as IMs came in. Then it stopped. No doubt it'll catch up again at some random point :-/
It could of course be an issue with my S3 but from various searches I've done on the web I'm not the only one. I wouldn't want to rely on Skype for incoming calls. Not Android any way - maybe that's the point now that MS own it.
Urban areas aren't always easy to deal with. The ducting could be collapsed, there's loads of other underground infrastructure to deal with. Cables might take crazy paths that make the line too long for useful VDSL. Dense populations act like a discount mechanism but in some places the costs are just too high even with that assistance.
Oh and a lot of city centre properties might be on EO lines. That means the lines go straight to the exchange instead of via a cabinet and BT isn't allowed to install VDSL equipment inside exchanges. Generally urban EO lines are quite short so the user should at least get high-teens, maybe over 20Mb/s from ADSL2+ though.
Me? My point? Well from context the article seems to be implying some love of all things British. Now if the astronauts referred to it as GMT there might be some validity to that but I suspect they refer to it as UTC which is a nationality agnostic timezone. When what you're doing has international ramifications it makes sense to pick just one time zone. You could be nationalistic and pick one of the US timezones but generally the world has settled on UTC. It doesn't mean that the whole world loves us :)
The astronauts of the ISS certainly seem to have Anglophile tendencies, as they stick strictly to GMT, occupying the same time zone as the cockneys.
Nice idea but they are probably working in UTC. That was created for situations where timezones made things too complicated (military, computer networks) or irrelevant (orbiting around Earth).
I think that North Wales has more to complain about. The stretch of coast from (but not including) St Asaph to Bangor has no FTTC and only since summer has BT said they have plans for those towns. That's of the order of 100,000 people in some fairly large towns that have been ignored. Llandudno and Conwy are only seaside towns in name. In character they are both vibrant towns all year round. Neither goes to sleep or becomes a ghost town out of season.
When BT give out a lot of information some of it ends up being wrong (or at least inaccurate) due to the complexity of the task and the number of variables involved (eg;liaising with councils). BT end up taking stick for the errors. So they reduce the amount of information down to the point where what's left is at least reliable. Then they take stick for not saying enough.
It's pretty much a no-win for BT. I've been in a similar position with management on a couple of my projects and - like BT - I decided that if I was going to get stick either way I might as well at least save myself some work and not say anything.
The book actually being parodied is A Fire Upon The Deep. It's a very good novel. One of the few S/F novels that can convey the true size of the galaxy in human terms. A Deepness in the Sky is a prequel (20,000 years prior) that also does a great job of putting things against human scale.
currently reading and not enjoying nearly so much.
Yeah the sequel is something I want to re-read. It was okay but seemed a bit long-winded and convoluted (although of course A fire.. is hardly short and simple). From what I remember it leaves the door open for a third (or fourth if you include Deepness.. novel. I'm not sure how I'd feel about that.
Same on my work machine. It tells me there's an update but when I run it it says everything is up to date. If I got the website it downloads a newer version :-/
But more importantly I wish updaters wouldn't drop a new application icon on the desktop. Adobe seem to have stopped finally but iTunes still puts it there. Only the initial installation should do that (and even then the option not to would be nice).
Their world view and values are not the same as the English. If you remove the English from England, what do you really have left?
The English are whatever particular group of people happen to call England home. Until a couple of hundred years ago everyone and their dog invaded us. Even the French managed it for a while. And even though there've been no military invasions for a long time there have been plenty of immigrants. Far from being a problem I believe that it's one of the things that makes England strong. We are all the result of thousands of years of invaders and immigrants. It's worked well so far - why stop it now?
The only real definition of an Englishman is 'someone who lives in England'.
Most of the HAL was removed in NT 4 to improve speed on x86.
Well according to this support article at least some of it still exists in Win2k8 (search for 'HAL'). But I confess that I wouldn't be surprised if it was cut down from the original concept and implementation. But based on web searches something by that name still exists and is doing a lot of what you'd expect it to since people changing their hardware are getting STOP 0x79 which means 'MISMATCHED_HAL'.
Excellent news. Now all we need is someone with the resources and inclination to actually act on reports. The TPS relies on the ICO already and how many fines have actually been levied? According to Wikipedia.:
"The effectiveness of the TPS is limited. Enforcement is so lax that many organisations completely ignore it and do not check numbers.[3] There is no control over calls from outside the UK; many of the most abusive and sometimes fraudulent calls originate from overseas. A spokesman for the Direct Marketing Association—who run the TPS—said in July 2012 that it had received a dramatic increase in complaints from telephone subscribers cold-called by telemarketing firms, and that some firms simply chose to ignore the rules. The DMA sent between 1,000-2,000 complaints to the Information Commissioner's Office each month, yet no penalty fines had been imposed in at least 18 months"
Although that 18 months appears to be a note from 2012.
Huh. Also from Wikipedia:
"The entire TPS database is now considered compromised, as many sales people and businesses will add potential leads (Your Number) to the TPS database to prevent rival businesses from calling them. Furthermore the TPS organization has no credibility as flaws in their system were pointed out many years ago and nothing has been done about it."
He wanted first-class support for native C/C++ code
That'd be a clever trick. No version of Windows has ever had support for 'native C/C++ code' whatever that is.
Presumably what he meant was first-class support for the Windows API and x86 family of processors. There are many languages that developers use to generate 'traditional' native Windows applications.
It might also be worth noting that 'professional' backup software (that aimed at larger businesses) is often quite complicated.
I'm a programmer and at my previous job we sometimes had to install and test backup software (mainly when a new version of Exchange or SharePoint was released). The infrequency meant that none of us were really familiar with the backup software packages. The result was a lot of wasted time re-learning and re-educating ourselves and all too often fighting the same battles just to get our tests performed.
In our situation that was mostly acceptable because it was a once every year or so event. But in a proper real-world scenario you want the people responsible for backups to be familiar with the software so that they are always ready to respond in a timely fashion and always know what they are doing.
But above all (no matter what the environment): Perform a regular test restore. Never just rely on the backup software saying the back up completed okay. Sometimes they lie. You can never really trust a backup set unless you've actually restored it to a new location and verified the data.
I'd like it if they could offer WAN access to my Planner. It's all very well being able to set up a recording from anywhere on the planet but there's currently no way to know if there's a tuner available so it's of limited use. I wouldn't think it needs access to my box from outside the LAN. All it needs is for my box to upload the Planner to their servers every time it changes. Then the Sky+ app can do the rest.
Though it may ruin the drive for committed drivers for long distances the most efficiency is cruise control.
That may depend on the implementation. I've never really tested it but the CC on my Jazz doesn't fill me with confidence in that respect. It's fine on the flat but going up inclines it lets the speed drop quite a lot (2 or 3mph) before putting the clog down(*) and accelerating to 2 or 3mph above target. Worse still it often seems to start accelerating just before the brow of the hill then it lifts off when it realises it's over shooting in.I do use it but only on motorways and long stretches of A-road that I know are free of upward inclines.
(*)Although to be fair it is supposed to be better to accelerate 'sharply' rather than barely tickling the accelerator. It's more the way it so often has to lift off and engine brake at the brow of a hill that bothers me.
Best tip to save fuel when driving: DWB (Driving Without Brakes). It's easier if you have a manual but I manage it with an automatic that has a torque converter. Not only will it save a lot of fuel but it makes you a safer driver and adds a lot of interest to driving. To do it well you have to be paying attention and become very good at anticipating what other road users are going to do.
My instructor (30 years ago) told me "Brakes are for stopping and correcting your mistakes". I've always stuck by that advice. It doesn't mean that you use gear changes instead of braking. It means never needing to slow faster than you can achieve by lifting off.
Overhead fibre has been around for more than 20 years. It's just as ugly as overhead copper but less susceptable to lightning damage.
There are no overhead wires of any kind on our estate (or indeed in most of the town). The council wouldn't give permission for them to suddenly appear and neither would I.
Oh good. So they're going to fit new distribution boxes every 20 metres? If you're going to run fibre from the cabinet to within 20 metres of a property just take it to the damn door!
That's a nice idea but a lot of the cost is going to be dealing with those final few metres.
I live in a fairly modern house and you could blow fibre through ducting all the way to the access panel in the pavement outside. Would be easy and pretty cheap. But to get it to my house you'd have to micro trench my driveway which is more costly because that run of cable is not in a duct. They can't just go around doing that everywhere (not everyone would give permission and anyway for a typical housing estate that could be a few thousand kilometres of micro trenching) so it becomes a bespoke installation cost. Then there's flats and offices where the fibre would terminate in the basement. Who pays to run the cables to each property?
I'm not trying to be obstructionist, just a realist. Replacing the final few metres of cable from the property edge to current demarcation point is quite expensive and involved. It's likely a minefield that no-one wants to deal with until/unless they get a specific request from the property owner.
The power shower pump failed. Not only does that model no longer exist but the replacement isn't a "drop in" fit.
Yup, had that problem several years ago. I was lucky though I managed to find a 'new old stock' later version that with a bit of cutting, drilling and finagling could be persuaded to go where the failed unit was.
And shoes can be a pain. Why do Nike have to keep releasing a new version of their 'Dart' series? The more recent versions don't have the arch support I like and seem to feature a raised heel and toe that wasn't there before.
How many wouldn't want a handy "f--k off" button for when cold callers ring the landline and the answer phone kicks in with "about your accident/PPI claim"?
's a bit expensive but I have one and it's eliminated 99.9% of cold calls while allowing calls from known numbers (or people who know the bypass code) to go straight through. The 0.1% was one pillock who having heard my recorded message saying "We are screening all incoming calls and don't want to talk to cold callers" decided to leave a message whittering on about whatever crap he was trying to shovel.
i'm sure you would defend their right to say them......Free Speech
Free speech is about interactions between citizens and government. The Register is a privately owned site and is entitled to edit and censor anything that is posted here. Free speech is irrelevant when discussing their editorial policy and how they deal with commentards.
P.S. I wub El Reg :D
Today you don' want people knowing where you are.
Can't say I'm all that bothered. But if you're that paranoid you'd best be unemployed and homeless then. Anyone with a full-time job and permanent place of resident can be found by the authorities almost any time they want you.
Do you recall that they actually cut the existing cable in situ (deep underwater) using a cable cutter on the end of a long cable? (!!!)
I didn't but your mention of a long cutter on the end of a cable rings a definite bell. I thought it was pretty clever that they could pull a cable up from that depth. Mind you they did that with telegraph cables back in the day without the aid of ROVs. Astonishing.
A couple of years ago I watched a documentary about a team that added a fibre optic link to some South American country on the west coast. It was actually a very interesting documentary. It showed them using the plough on the beach out into the shallow sea. It showed them spooling out the fibre and ensuring the tension was appropriate.
The relevant bit is that the cable was going to be spliced into one of the fibres that runs down the Pacific coast of the Americas. They pulled up one of the amplifiers I think (it was a large 'blob' surrounding the cable) and I think they replaced it with a three way version. Then they put the cable back where they found it and sailed off to another job.
Presumably that technique could be used by spooks if they wanted but as this article says - I doubt they'd bother. They'd have to rent the ship and that's a lot of people to keep quiet.
I'm not really following what you're saying there. What do you mean by 'work session'? Are you talking about something like the xIX virtual terminal where you can log into your computer multiple times (what Windows calls user switching)? I'm not sure that's what's suggested here. It's more like they've increased the desktop size then subdivided into screen sized pages. That's just a bit of fairly trivial GDI trickery.
And if you're trying to suggest that Windows struggles with multiple versions of VS running at the same time then I can only assume you've been doing it on machines with too little RAM. I've done it lots of times. I currently have VS and Eclipse open (and MySQL WorkBench) and everything is responsive without any disk or CPU thrashing. I have 8GB of RAM of which just under 2GB is currently available. I just did a quick user switch and fired up VS as a different domain user and it's fine. Flip back to my normal user and that's fine as well.
They are slowly getting rid of the interesting parts of the business, the big European cars are dead. Now Holdens is going, not much interesting left.
I don't want an 'interesting' car. I want a car that gets me from A to B safely in reasonable comfort while consuming as little fuel as possible.
And while you're at it don't forget the 'sequel' A Fire Upon the Deep. Possibly his best novel (IMO). Both novels do a great job of conveying the sheer size of the galaxy. The final 'chapter' of A Fire.. is haunting.
I'll also recommend the novel Outcasts of Heaven Belt written by his ex-wife. That's a lot shorter and less weighty tome but it does a good job of conveying what life is like in a fallen (or falling at least) advanced civilisation.