Posts by ad47uk 187 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2007
So we went from the old magnetic strip and signature to chip and pin to make it more secure, then we go to contactless that is insecure and now they are sticking finger print scanners on cards to make them more secure.
why not just stick to chip and pin?
thankfully this is a Mastercard thing and hopefully Visa will not follow suit, it is bad enough trying to tell my bank I do not want contactless.
I am with plusnet and have been out of minimum contract now for over 12 months, I did look at other providers, but the amount saved it minimal once you add the connection fees in and the price they charge for posting a router to you.
Also some of the providers I do not want to use like Talk Talk, had someone from Talk Talk come to me in town yet again and told him i would not touch Talk Talk with a barge pole and then walked on. one day they will get the message.
I will keep looking, but as of yet, I have not seen anything that is better that Plusnet without being a lot more expensive.
while i am not a fan of Talk Talk, there are people who use it that are happy with the service and they get a good service, things have improved since FTTC have started up. TT ADSL was awlful.
would i go for Talk Talk? i doubt it, but i am now out of minimum, contract with plusnet, but at the moment plusnet is fine for me.
It is a social network thing for companies. I can see how it can be useful in some places, but I am not interested. I been told that we could have a section for our department to send notices and messages. we have about 10 people in our department, leave a note on the whiteboard if they want to leave a message.
I still have a Blue-ray writer on my computer, so I could just burn the Iso of windows 8 onto a disk and then install from that, or i could use Universal usb installer to make a bootable copy of windows 8.1 onto a usb stick, would that not sort the problem?
Saying all of that the drivers still need to be produced for the new chipsets once the Os is up and running.
This news have got me thinking now, I will looking at updating, I have a an AMd 8350 machine at the moment and been waiting for the new zen and also looking at Intel, but if MS is going to dictate what OS I can use, then I will stay with what I have got. My motherboard is dying, so what ever I do I need to do it in the near future.
I meant Plusnet was more expensive now, I can only get up to 38 anyway.
Binned the line rental? not really, they may have reduced it a bit and stuck it under a all in one price, but it is still there and that will not change until Bloated Toad closed reach (BTOR) reduce their line rental prices for broadband only.
The £49 payment would reduce the savings a fair bit, what they do not make clear is if that £49 is also for consumers who are already on fibre.
Their router is a big problem for me, I prefer to use my own, but Vodafone will not give any usename and password details to do that.
How do you mean Talk Talk is in the lead? If you mean by the number of users then yes, but then they have been around a long time, still useless but been around a long time. vodafone have not that long started doing home broadband.
Talk Talk is not cheap, £35 a month, that is for fibre up to 38Mb/s or to the proper term, fibre to the cabinet, and line rental, Vodafone was cheaper even before they changed the prices.
I have no idea what Vodafone broadband is like, but if it was a choice between Talk Talk and vodafone then I would take vodafone.
The problem these days are the stupid 18 months contract, far too long and also the connection fees, while Talk Talk do not do that for existing fibre users, other providers do.
With Plusnet at the moment, and i am now out of contract as from yesterday so I can move when ever I want, but staying put until I see something that suits me, so far nothing does, even the service i am on now is really what I want.
If the price is all in one then the line rental which is total rip off as it keeps going up in price and we get less, then it it is not really getting binned, anyone who gets fooled with that deserves all they get.
I have looked at Vodafone but they offer nothing more than what I am getting Plusnet and they are more expensive. As for not having TV content or the lack of it, it is not that important, plusnet offers TV, i do not want it or need it, all I want is an internet connection at a decent price and get rid of the rip off line rental.
Had the problem for a few days, with my Halifax account, part of the same company, so no doubt uses the same system. Furiously hitting refresh? nope, just one of those things that happen, app is fine.
When I asked Halifax last night they said all was fine, but changed that today to all is not fine :)
Not that vodafone will care, but one of of the few reason I stay with Vodafone because it is the most British network provider, it just keeps me with them, if they move out I would not have that reason and I would drop them like a stone. Moving their shop from the centre of town to our new shopping centre almost lost them my custom, moving out of the UK would certainly do it.
but as I said, they would not care.
My energy supplier do not seem to be in a hurry to replace my meter, not that I will allow a smart meter anyway. Not sure what will happen if I change companies as I am thinking of doing before the winter.
A mate of mine had a smart meter put in, but the thing will not work now, the mast that it used to send a signal have been moved and is further away and now there is not signal.
Not interested in all this smart stuff, My phone and tablet is the only smart thing I have really, My TV is not a smart Tv, it is a 8 year old plasma, my heating is controlled by a thermostat, why would I need it connected to the net? My hi-fi got a record deck on it, see music from black plastic things that you put a stylus on, great idea that was.
I think some of these ideas to connect stuff to the net is just because it can be done.
It would take years for it to happen if it ever did. All the cars that are on the road would need to have some sort of GPS system put in, while some have a GPS, they don't normally have anyway of collecting that data. Also smaller cheaper cars do not have GPS at all, it would cost millions.
You only have to look at the mess that is made of trying to have smart meters put properties.
A mate of mine and myself did some tests with data slurping, you need to be pretty close to the person and you need something that puts out a fair bit of power to get anything from cards unless they have them in their back pocket with no wallet., Most wallets are pretty thick and the power of a normal mobile that could be used to slurp the data would not really do it. unless you are really unlucky.
We tried and most times it failed, and only worked when the phone is right up against the pocket of the victim and they only have to move a bit and it fails.
We did modernise a phone which put out more power on the NFC chip, that worked, but the battery died pretty quickly.
If you are really worried then get a wallet with is lined. the data slurping is not my problem with contactless, my problem is if I lose it,l anyone can pick it up and use it for a certain amount of time.
As for using a Android device as contacless, nope, security is not good enough.
i would still have to carry my wallet anyway, i have a coffee loyalty card that is a card and they put a stamp on it. There are other things I carry in my wallet that will never be put onto a phone, so no point for me. anyway I do not like contactless, it think they are a risk
Not all cards would be usable on it, what about loyalty cards? i don't use any apart from a coffee one and that is a bit of card that get stamped, so a wallet is needed for that, still places around that do not have contactless including a large supermarket in the UK, but they are working on it, also there are some places that still have no card machine at all.
i know why the pound note was withdrawn, I am surprised that the 5 pound note is still here for the very same reason, but then it will soon by made from plastic not paper.
Be a few years before cash is replaced, by that time I doubt I will be worrying about it, for the last 40 years or more we have been told that cash will vanish and yet it is still here.
i don't like this new coin, it looks too much like Euro coins, just like the £2 one. whihc I never see much these days.
Saying all of that I still prefer the good old pound note.
Anyway I thought cash was going out and we was entering a cashless society, so another lie then? Governments they are all the same,
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