Posts by Dr. Mouse

Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.

@AC:

"To be fair, it's by far the best solution on the market - with a wonderfully integrated stack from top to bottom - and a massively lower TCO than any other solution that provides similar functionality..."

and your next 2 posts.

You have presented an opinion as fact. Personally, I don't consider O365 the best solution on the market. I find it a jarring experience, difficult to administer, and unreliable. Unfortunately the CEO is completely sold on it and won't hear a bad word...

I have to say you come across as an MS salesman, especially as you hide as an AC. You may not be. Maybe you just really like MS products, which is a perfectly valid point of view, though not one I share.

When it comes to office suites, the only thing I see in favour of MS is that people already know it. That does not make it a better product, it just means that it will take some time to learn a different one.

Given the amount of time it takes to learn where the hell MS have put everything in a new version of MS Office, I would say it makes no difference.

Re: Money to burn

"Well you clearly do, otherwise you wouldn't have bought a 50" plasma TV. It must have cost a fair amount at the time."

Actually, no. I got it a couple of weeks ago from a relative who didn't want it any more for the princely sum of... £50. OK, the sound doesn't work, but as we have a surround receiver (another second hand unit, before you ask, also costing around £50) that doesn't bother me.

Honestly, we had wanted a TV around that size for ages but couldn't justify the cost.

Re: Fall of the Roman Empire

I thought it was because they hadn't invented the semi-colon.

Re: Good to hear

"Microsoft support. Yeh... I know.. we all hate Microsoft, but to be fair, unless Microsoft throws some server and data center love at ARM, there's little hope for this being a really useful technology outside of corner cases."

As others have said, I don't think this is a large issue. I think you over-estimate MS in the server market.

Yes, there are a lot of MS servers out there. But there are many more Unix based systems. If companies can migrate their Unix/Linux boxes on to ARM hardware for less money and less power consumption at the same performance, why would they care about MS support?

As this happens, MS may see a migration of customers over to Unix/Linux systems. That is the point where they would start putting effort into an ARM Windows Server. It is always the case: MS is behind the curve. It's understandable. They only want to invest in stuff which will make them money, so they wait a bit to see how successful something is before they commit to it.

In truth, MS's commitment to ARM servers is unimportant at this point. It will become more important as the platform develops and the market grows (if it does), but MS wont let a profitable market segment go unloved for long.

Re: ASA is a waste of space

'So a few numpty customers who know that "unlimited" doesn't mean unlimited go running to the ASA and make a complaint'

Or maybe a few people, sick of seeing ISPs misleading their customers, complain to try to get "unlimited" to mean unlimited.

It's all well and goof to say that they 'know that "unlimited" doesn't mean unlimited', but it SHOULD mean unlimited. If it is not unlimited, it should not be advertised as "unlimited".

'It's better to teach people to understand what advertising is than the punish the miscreants after the fact which requires constant monitoring by interfering busybodies.'

Or it's better to make sure that advertisers don't lie to their (potential) customers!

Re: OMG

"People who are looking at different packages will look at the channels available and the price and will make a decision based on that."

I think you over-estimate a large chunk of the population.

Re: RE: Fragmentation

Fragmentation does still exists, and in fact exists even more in an SSD. If you read sectors 1-100 on an SSD, these may actually be scattered all over the NAND but are mapped by the controller.

The difference is that this doesn't impact on the performance. You should never need to defrag an SSD (in fact doing so is bad for it, as it unnecessarily writes data, lowering the life of the drive).

Re: I wish the Nexus 4 did have a button.

"I'm forever picking up the thing the wrong way and having to feel around for the buttons to figure which way is up."

This!

I end up picking the damned thing up and trying to push the power button, only to find it's upside down. I thought I'd get used to it, but it's not happening.

I'm tempted to cut a notch out of the case, or put a sticker on the front. It's highly annoying!

Re: Send it to Coventry

"Of course, this takes a reboot to change."

Not necessarily. I managed to get a multi-OS setup working without a true reboot using kexec.

Unfortunately, if I used that to boot Windows, it did take a full reboot to get rid of it...

Re: Are they dealing with AGW too.

"I bet none of them are worried about anthropogenic global warming, as none of them are humans."

How do you know?

Life could have been transplanted by a more advanced species at some point, a la Stargate.

For that matter, there is a tiny, infinitesimal chance that humans could have evolved on another world. (Or God could have created humans on another planet, if you're that way inclined.) The chances are tiny, but the universe is a big place.

Re: Beards are Best

"I end up chewing on my moustache and constantly twisting my chin hair with my fingers after a couple of weeks of no trim."

I found that the best part of having facial hair. I used to love playing with it (read whatever you want into that, LOL)

It's backfired now I've got rid of it, though. My other half is constantly telling me off for pulling at the skin under my chin. It's a subconscious thing, I'm trying to stroke my bears, but it's not there.

"Yes, its insulting like when posh kids go off on gap years to poor countries to see how lucky they are, and claim to be helping."

You sound like some people who had a go at a friend of mine.

He worked in Botswana (and several other places in Africa) for many years. He was a qualified engineer who was paid a pittance in comparison to what he would be paid here, even taking the lower costs of living into account. Yes, he was a high earner by local standards, but a very low earner compared to what he would be paid anywhere else.

He did this to help people. He was involved in designing, manufacturing and installing wind-powered water pumps to replace the increasingly unreliable diesel-powered ones most towns and villages were using at the time. He had a car, an old beat-up landrover, and a couple of motorcycles, which he raced. The locals liked him. They appreciated all the work he was doing to help them, and the sacrifices he was making to do so. They enjoyed watching him race, and cheered him on every time.

One day, a couple of do-gooders from a charity turned up. They had a go at him for his "excessive" pay packet and "extravagant" entertainment choices. Apparently, what he was doing was not enough. He should have been working for the same money the locals were on, owned nothing and worked such long hours he didn't need entertainment.

He asked them if they'd prefer he went home, didn't help the people and earned 10x what he was on there.

Some people will never be satisfied. If you donate a fiver to a charity, they will ask why it wasn't a tenner. If you volunteer for an hour, they will ask why it wasn't the full day. Any if you sacrifice a well paid career to help people, they will ask why you aren't living in poverty while you do so.

Re: Not playing their game

My brother does this.

He does not have a TV. He does not watch live TV. But he does download some TV shows. He feels justified because he buys them as soon as they are available.

I feel he is justified.

Re: I find these whole debate a Joke !

"I've had plenty of jobs and never once have I been asked to show ID."

I have always been asked for some form of ID for a job. They need proof that you are who you say you are, otherwise I'm pretty sure they would be liable if it turned out you were using a false identity for, say, tax fraud or illegal immigration (I think it would be classed as due diligence).

Most have also needed to know that I could drive, hence needing a copy of my driving license for insurance purposes, and also that I was able to travel to other countries, hence seeing my passport.

Re: CV generator

I actually started doing this before I got my current job, then started again recently (before getting a job offer for the company I am moving to this month).

I started with a real CV (long form, not the Resume that most people mean when they say CV). I then tagged each bullet point with keywords. These would then provide a score, and the top scoring bullet points would be listed. Just before it was finished I got this job, so I didn't need it any more.

This was all because I had been told my CV was too long. I started tailoring my resume for every job, which was getting laborious (not to mention boring).

The only problem with this, as a system, is that many jobs come through agencies. They will (mostly) put one copy of your resume on file and use that for everything. Most do not appreciate that some people have such a wide ranging skill set that a single resume cannot cover it. What they need to do is allow you to give them a long-form CV which can be searched against. They can then either ask you for a resume for job X, or even generate it themselves from your CV.

Re: Maybe I missed it...

Ooops.

I obviously didn't make it that far down the page.

Thanks

Re: I would look into this

Only my own opinion, but I can highly recommend giffgaff for the most part.

The good:

+ Great value: I have seen no other PAYG "bundles" which come close to matching giffgaff. You can match it on a SIM-only 30-day contract, but this doesn't give the same flexibility.

+ Flexibility: If I am skint one month, I can easily not buy a goodybag, use PAYG credit only, switch my data off on my phone and spend only a quid or 2 over a month, or until I have the money. Similarly if I am out of the country for most of the month, I don't have to buy the goodybag.

+ Payback: If you know your stuff and help out on the forums, you get paid for it. I generally get back most of what I have spent on goodybags over the month for a very small amount of work.

+ Community support: If you have an issue (which is not account related), the community will help you very quickly.

The bad:

- Account-related support: Giffgaff don't have call centres. The only way to get account related support is by an online ticket system. It can take days to get a response. I have found the forums good at speeding this along, but it is a major headache.

- Reliability: There have been more major outages on giffgaff since I have been with them than I have ever known from a mobile network.

So, you pay your money and take your choice. I am currently trying to decide whether to stay with them due to a degradation in signal quality at my home. It's been getting steadily worse for the past couple of years, starting with mobile internet dropping to Edge, then GPRS.This was not a major issue as I can use my Wifi at home, but now more than half the voice calls I make or receive from home have such bad audio quality I have to hang up and use the landline. This is an O2 network issue (SWMBO is on O2 and has the same trouble), but it means I can't use my mobile for voice calls at home (admittedly, this is now it's secondary purpose...)

Re: DRM - bane of the law abiding......

"When it becomes more difficult to be law abiding than a freetard then something is wrong with the system."

I completely agree with this one.

Just look at what happens when a PC game, for instance, is crippled by a DRM system. People crack it, cracked copies appear on torrents et al. People who have paid money for the game start getting the cracks, and people who were going to buy the game download it because it is easier.

The same thing happens with DVDs. My brother is religious, and refuses to just pirate material. But often, when he buys a DVD he downloads a copy from the internet, too. It is easier to handle, being just stored on his PC (from which he plays all his content), and it doesn't have all the mandatory viewing at the beginning telling him not to pirate stuff. Think about this: He buys the DVD, but still downloads a "pirate" copy because it's better (less hassle) than the DVD!

This is a broken system.

Re: "...licensing is an effective way to share technology and build on each other’s work."

Actually, used as they should be licensing your patented innovations IS an "effective way to share technology and build on each other’s work" while still being rewarded for the work you have done.

It is when the technology should not have been patented, or when a company refuses to license it, that the main problems occur.

Re: Raspberry Pi

@TakeTheSkyRoad

Yeah, I take your point. It does have use cases.

Re: Renewable Energy

@Dodgy Geezer: While your points have some grounding, I do have some issues.

"We already use far more energy per head than our parents, and our children will use even more - and that is not a bad thing. It is part of the way human societies better themselves."

Not exactly. DOING more is how we better ourselves. This normally uses more energy. However, it does not always have to. More efficient technologies come along allowing us to do more with the same energy or less. So with no increase in energy use we can still have advancement.

"The Greens have now been defeated in this latest fight. But they will come back again over some other technology. They are anxious to achieve zero growth and stop all human development. Being on their side is not something I would be proud of..."

This is the hard-line, extremist green view. I consider myself a moderate green. I want the world to move forward, but that does not mean we have to "destroy the planet" in the process. We can generate electricity from clean sources. The current generation of renewables is not up to the job (specifically wind and solar), but we can use cleaner gas-fired stations and, in particular, nuclear as a stop gap, as well as the more advanced renewables like hydro. We can use more efficient appliances to reduce our energy needs without lowering our quality of life. We can continue to research additional clean energy sources. All of these would be for the ultimate advancement of mankind, while also being green.

Re: This could be useful-

"Maybe, but if we can get it onto BMW's"

Haven't you heard? (B-b-b-bird bird bird... sorry, couldn't help the Family Guy reference)

Audi drivers are the new BMW drivers.

Re: Wrong...

"I was just criticizing what the article's author suggested, of it being a path towards not subsidizing handsets."

TBH I think they have pretty much stopped subsidising handsets anyway. Having compared many operator contracts and SIM-only plans, I have always found that it is the same or cheaper to buy the phone outright and use a SIM only plan. In fact, buying the phone on some credit cards can sometimes work out cheaper!

Re: The difference between Facebook and e.g. Vodafone 360

"They were more concerned about creating the lock-in than they were about giving the customer the goodies that make them buy-in to the lock-in voluntarily."

Right there is the key.

To get something to work which people aren't bothered about, you must make things they are bothered about which, coincidentally, need them to use the thing they aren't bothered about.

Had the operators had some foresight, they could have easily concocted a standard to allow people to buy in app stores and have the cost billed through them. That would have been a great money spinner for them.

I think it's a lot like the UK government ID cards. Although we are here on a tech forum where most just thought it was a bad idea from the beginning, most non-techies I know thought it was a reasonably good idea but didn't see much benefit. The government could have made it a lot more attractive. Adding the ability to store payment cards, loyalty cards, memberships etc. on it would have swayed many, for example. Incorporating an electronic cash system would have brought more into the fold. Hell, even I would have been tempted with that lot. But instead, they plodded along with the core idea, and it failed to gain any real interest from the public.

Re: "...digital copies of books should "deteriorate"..."

"OK, provided that the rate of deterioration is set to match what Libraries find in practice"

I beg to differ.

The only reason a library should pay for a new book when it deteriorates is because it costs the publisher to print a new copy. OK, it doesn't cost as much as the library pays, but it does cost.

For eBooks, the "deterioration" should be built into the royalties. Instead of "pay the full price after x thousand loans", spread that cost into the per-loan royalty and it's sorted. The only thing which would be affected is the publishers figures.

Re: Why the Browser?

"Why are so many resources devoted to browser development? ... The overwhelming majority of users... just want to see a web page."

They want to see it fast. They don't want to wait 30s, or even 10s, for it to load (even if it is just a picture of a cat).

They want to see it correctly. They don't want to be unable to see the cat because their browser doesn't support this or that.

That is why there is so much work going on. They have to keep up to the newer technologies as they appear, while improving efficiency of existing components.

Re: Those who want to be managers....

"Best manager I ever had only did a single thing get the rest of the company to leave me the hell alone and speak to her instead."

That's what my current manager does, for the most part.

I'm sure he does more than I can see, but he is fantastic in a crisis. We had a serious problem in the systems I look after, resulting in a good week's work to get everything working again. I had nobody hassling me for that time. He asked me for updates regularly, drafted in help for me, and kept everyone off my back. Basically, he let me do my job and provided me everything I needed to get it done quickly and smoothly. Without that, it would have taken me a good month.

Re: Noise

"Apparently the older you get the harder is to differentiate speech from background music."

Pardon?

If this is true, I'm royally screwed. I have had a lot of trouble with that from my early teens.

Strangely, I can pick out a particular instrument from an orchestra no problem. But if someone tries to speak to me, directly in my ear, while listening to said orchestra, I need it repeating 3-4 times before I understand.

Re: Really?

"Sky are okay, but they're only estimating 40Mbps where I am so they're already off to a worse start."

If you are talking about Sky Fibre, that is because 40Mbps is the max they offer.

You need to take Sky Fibre Pro for 80Mbps. I did, and as a heavy user I have encountered no throttling or caps.

A small tip, though. They charge you for installation of Pro (as an existing customer, at least). The don't charge you for plain fibre. However, you can get Fibre and, as soon as it is installed, upgrade to Pro.