I've bought an Airport Express several years ago for this very reason. The desks in hotels aren't always that big, and so I needed it if I wanted to sit on the bed or use two laptops. And since work got me an iPhone, I've needed it for that too. I can then use Skype on my phone from the bed. Those Airport Expresses are pretty good form factor too.
I still have my old Samsung flip phone that weighs 83g. I just buy foreign SIM cards for that if I'm going to be somewhere for any length of time. I'm old enough that I remember how to look things up before I go out, and read a map. Barring that, there's always the Lonely Planet for find my way when I'm on foot.
It's really annoying, but Google maps doesn't work properly in China. It's offset, and the satellite maps have a different offset amount and direction to the street maps. Photos taken with my iPhone opened in Geosetter make it very clear. Google for this, and you will find that this a problem that goes beyond Google maps and even affects other GPS products. Only those from China work. Consider this when taking such a product with you, or whether you can read Chinese and buy a local one or use a local website from your phone.
Incidentally, I noticed a couldn't even find addresses in Shanghai yesterday using maps.google.co.uk (it appears to be working again today). My usual hotel was booked and our company travel agent's website wasn't doing a very good job of offering alternatives either. Annoying, and so typical of every experience I've had in China over the years: nothing's reliable in the way we used to in the West.
London uses the same charging scheme (access fee + rising rental rate starting with a free first 30 mins). It encourages churn and availability, and if you want a bike for longer, then there are real rental companies.
The lack of helmets is daft, and TfL encourages people to where one. The system wouldn't work in a casual or convenient way if helmets were required, which rather defeats the purpose of the scheme. I wear one when I'm on my own bike. I guess the rental bikes (from Montreal no less) are not designed to go very quickly anyway. Take your own life in to your own hands... funny though that the US would be more of a nanny state in this regard.
The rental car thing sounds like it must come with a whole load of other issues. I need to read about it: how do they cope with liability and insurance. Even a slow moving car can cause a lot of damage to people and its surroundings.
I see quite a few REVAs on the streets of London. It's been panned by the Jeremy Clarkson club, and it has a fairly limited range, but clearly it is selling. The mayor of London has been supporting electric car ideas for a while, and now he's pushing replacing the city's fleet of 22,000 taxis with zero-emission vehicles by 2020, which might mean electric vehicles. But as you say, the cost of petrol in the US isn't providing an incentive, and apparently nor is air quality, all compounded by the greater driving distances Americans travel in and around their cities.
The Firefox team are just continuing a long tradition of Mozilla and Netscape devs who ignore the problems of their users. They've always tried to deflect blame back on to users for their choice of add-ons, or operating system, or whatever bs they can think of.
FF memory has been leaking memory for years, and only recently has it suddenly become more important to them. The new about:memory page is maybe useful to somebody debugging the application, but is crap for normal users. They could make life a hell of a lot better if they would just hurry and catchup with the what the competition have been doing for years: a separate process per tab.
Don't worry, they're still showing the release notes from version 4. When I look at http://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/features/, nothing has apparently changed for a long time. The feature list starts with the "awesome bar" (it's still a nerdy childish name after all this time), and doesn't introduce anything newer after that. They've made it damn hard to find any kind of release notes or new feature list, or any explanation of why you'd want to upgrade from FF4. Talk about the inmates running the asylum.
So rather than restricting cookies to the domain of the HTTP request, we should limiting them only to the domain of the URL in the browser's address bar? That would be a good step in the direction of privacy, and presumably not break too many websites. I wonder if somebody has already implemented a FF extension to do this?
Having spent significant amounts of time in Australia, as well as other countries, Australia hasn't got it right. Internet in Australia is bloody expensive, and limited in performance and coverage. Take TPG for instance, their 50GB plan is effectively halved because they have a concept of off-peak usage, which isn't conveniently timed for the average person. Furthmore, that limit is uploads and downloads combined, whereas most places only seem to consider downloads. Of course, they don't even let you buy more bandwidth, but force you to upgrade your plan altogether, even if you're only trying to avoid being to ISDN speeds for a few days - RIP OFF!
I currently live in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world. My ISP isn't particularly cheap, but I get uncapped bandwidth (up/down speed and bytes transferred), and it's about half the price of one of those limited TPG plans.
It can be much more inefficient and exact a personal cost on the Western managers running it, but delays are often management error. Some expectations about what can be achieved and when need to be reset, whereas new things are also possible.
Boooring! Certainly worth a giggle the first few times, the chainsaw against the demons gets dull after a while... they just run on to it. The shotgun remains my favourite... it's slow, and best close up and person. Makes for an adrenaline rush:D
Yeah, definitely a daft idea. Presumably from somebody who doesn't travel much or doesn't work with people in other time zones.
For example, part of my dealing with jet lag involves doing things at the right time, and at that point, I'm in no state for adding/subtracting from UTC and trying to figure out if I should be trying to stay awake a few more hours, or trying to hang on longer before giving up and going for breakfast. Or if I'm trying to schedule a meeting between California, Shanghai and London, I'll try not to start the loser after 11pm or before 5am... (yes, I do have a weekly meeting that spans these three TZs)
Can somebody please do this for Orange in the UK, and publish their results? They're unbelievably bad in central London. I can walk around Soho for 15 minutes and find what I'm looking for before maps load on my iPhone4. I had better service using the phone whilst on holiday in Greece last October... problems with network performance and timeouts returning when I was on the Tube from Heathrow.
I know you said it with a sense of humour, but to quantify from TFA: "Linux gained 0.03 percentage points (from 0.95 percent to 0.98 percent). Unsurprisingly, mobile operating systems gained share."
So they can expose all customers to the same retail obstacle course? The owners of LHR have repeatedly shown that they only care about shopping. They don't care about passenger comforty, snow clearance equipment, etc. It's hard to find a good bookshop squeezed in amongst all the high end shops found 40 mins away on the Picadilly Line on Oxford and Regent Streetd
Instead of raising prices and locking down selections and distribution channels they should be lowering prices, making things more reasonable, enticing people who haven't been paying to go back to legitimate channels. Release movies on Netflix and DVD at the same time, open up their entire back catalogue, make it available wherever and whenever the user wants.
I don't think Hollywood gave them that choice. To offer a flat monthly fee, they weren't allowed to match retail release dates. Maybe the removing the content at times is related to the HBO black-out window where they get exclusive rights. Gotta love Hollywood and they way they try to control the market. If you want something streamed on the day of retail release, you'll need to use another service like RoxioNow. There's lots of choices out there, which is why Netflix is so powerless on the licensing fees, and that's the ecosystem that Hollywood is encouraging so that they keep control (or *think* they keep control)
And to think so many Americans have criticised in this forum countries like the UK for it's license fee. I pay less in a year than the parent pays every two months. I get most of the good stuff, whether live via free DTV or free satellite, or over the internet via free catch-up TV. There's no advertising on the BBC channels, and you appreciate how bad that must be for Americans when American "hour long" shows only last 43 minutes on British TV. The only thing I dislike is the Murdoch empire taking away some of our national sports and trying to extort us.... so I'm rather happy to see Rupert and James squirming in front of Parliamentary questioning and coverage from their media rivals.
Netflix is bringing them a lot of business they may not have enjoyed otherwise. That should be a decent bargaining position. If not, someone at Netflix needs to learn how to negotiate...
If you run a 32 bit process multiple times under a 64 bit os, it will use ("not leak") More memory [microsoft.com]. Users often don't have a choice in this, but developers have!
Did you read the MSDN article you linked to?:) It says the problems exist for Itanium, not x64.
Compatibility with 32-bit plugins seems like a good idea. Then they can switch to 64-bit browser without causing users hassle. For instance, they already run Flash in a separate surrogate process, so with the right interface, it shouldn't matter whether the Flash plug-in is 32 or 64 bit. And yes, I've taken this approach on Windows via COM/DCOM to make unportable 32 bit DLLs available to 64 bit applications. Can XPCOM or whatever Mozilla uses handle this kind of thing?
It seems my sarcasm is lost around here. The US is way behind the times with this credit card signature business. I can't believe it's still common. I haven't been asked to sign for years, except when visiting the US, due to chip and pin being the standard elsewhere. Even more bizarre is that it seems nobody even bothers checking the signature in the US when it is given.
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I've bought an Airport Express several years ago for this very reason. The desks in hotels aren't always that big, and so I needed it if I wanted to sit on the bed or use two laptops. And since work got me an iPhone, I've needed it for that too. I can then use Skype on my phone from the bed. Those Airport Expresses are pretty good form factor too.
I still have my old Samsung flip phone that weighs 83g. I just buy foreign SIM cards for that if I'm going to be somewhere for any length of time. I'm old enough that I remember how to look things up before I go out, and read a map. Barring that, there's always the Lonely Planet for find my way when I'm on foot.
It's really annoying, but Google maps doesn't work properly in China. It's offset, and the satellite maps have a different offset amount and direction to the street maps. Photos taken with my iPhone opened in Geosetter make it very clear. Google for this, and you will find that this a problem that goes beyond Google maps and even affects other GPS products. Only those from China work. Consider this when taking such a product with you, or whether you can read Chinese and buy a local one or use a local website from your phone.
Incidentally, I noticed a couldn't even find addresses in Shanghai yesterday using maps.google.co.uk (it appears to be working again today). My usual hotel was booked and our company travel agent's website wasn't doing a very good job of offering alternatives either. Annoying, and so typical of every experience I've had in China over the years: nothing's reliable in the way we used to in the West.
London uses the same charging scheme (access fee + rising rental rate starting with a free first 30 mins). It encourages churn and availability, and if you want a bike for longer, then there are real rental companies.
The lack of helmets is daft, and TfL encourages people to where one. The system wouldn't work in a casual or convenient way if helmets were required, which rather defeats the purpose of the scheme. I wear one when I'm on my own bike. I guess the rental bikes (from Montreal no less) are not designed to go very quickly anyway. Take your own life in to your own hands... funny though that the US would be more of a nanny state in this regard.
The rental car thing sounds like it must come with a whole load of other issues. I need to read about it: how do they cope with liability and insurance. Even a slow moving car can cause a lot of damage to people and its surroundings.
I see quite a few REVAs on the streets of London. It's been panned by the Jeremy Clarkson club, and it has a fairly limited range, but clearly it is selling. The mayor of London has been supporting electric car ideas for a while, and now he's pushing replacing the city's fleet of 22,000 taxis with zero-emission vehicles by 2020, which might mean electric vehicles. But as you say, the cost of petrol in the US isn't providing an incentive, and apparently nor is air quality, all compounded by the greater driving distances Americans travel in and around their cities.
The Firefox team are just continuing a long tradition of Mozilla and Netscape devs who ignore the problems of their users. They've always tried to deflect blame back on to users for their choice of add-ons, or operating system, or whatever bs they can think of.
FF memory has been leaking memory for years, and only recently has it suddenly become more important to them. The new about:memory page is maybe useful to somebody debugging the application, but is crap for normal users. They could make life a hell of a lot better if they would just hurry and catchup with the what the competition have been doing for years: a separate process per tab.
Don't worry, they're still showing the release notes from version 4. When I look at http://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/features/, nothing has apparently changed for a long time. The feature list starts with the "awesome bar" (it's still a nerdy childish name after all this time), and doesn't introduce anything newer after that. They've made it damn hard to find any kind of release notes or new feature list, or any explanation of why you'd want to upgrade from FF4. Talk about the inmates running the asylum.
So rather than restricting cookies to the domain of the HTTP request, we should limiting them only to the domain of the URL in the browser's address bar? That would be a good step in the direction of privacy, and presumably not break too many websites. I wonder if somebody has already implemented a FF extension to do this?
Were you distracted by your mobile phone when they were teaching basic geography?
Having spent significant amounts of time in Australia, as well as other countries, Australia hasn't got it right. Internet in Australia is bloody expensive, and limited in performance and coverage. Take TPG for instance, their 50GB plan is effectively halved because they have a concept of off-peak usage, which isn't conveniently timed for the average person. Furthmore, that limit is uploads and downloads combined, whereas most places only seem to consider downloads. Of course, they don't even let you buy more bandwidth, but force you to upgrade your plan altogether, even if you're only trying to avoid being to ISDN speeds for a few days - RIP OFF!
I currently live in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world. My ISP isn't particularly cheap, but I get uncapped bandwidth (up/down speed and bytes transferred), and it's about half the price of one of those limited TPG plans.
If it cost more financially, it wouldn't happen.
It can be much more inefficient and exact a personal cost on the Western managers running it, but delays are often management error. Some expectations about what can be achieved and when need to be reset, whereas new things are also possible.
Presumably something like a tank generates a lot heat if it has its engine running. Where does that go without giving off tell tale signs?
Boooring! Certainly worth a giggle the first few times, the chainsaw against the demons gets dull after a while... they just run on to it. The shotgun remains my favourite... it's slow, and best close up and person. Makes for an adrenaline rush :D
Yeah, definitely a daft idea. Presumably from somebody who doesn't travel much or doesn't work with people in other time zones.
For example, part of my dealing with jet lag involves doing things at the right time, and at that point, I'm in no state for adding/subtracting from UTC and trying to figure out if I should be trying to stay awake a few more hours, or trying to hang on longer before giving up and going for breakfast. Or if I'm trying to schedule a meeting between California, Shanghai and London, I'll try not to start the loser after 11pm or before 5am... (yes, I do have a weekly meeting that spans these three TZs)
Can somebody please do this for Orange in the UK, and publish their results? They're unbelievably bad in central London. I can walk around Soho for 15 minutes and find what I'm looking for before maps load on my iPhone4. I had better service using the phone whilst on holiday in Greece last October... problems with network performance and timeouts returning when I was on the Tube from Heathrow.
I've been noticing that with Snow Leopard with my 2007 MBP in the last month or two.
I know you said it with a sense of humour, but to quantify from TFA: "Linux gained 0.03 percentage points (from 0.95 percent to 0.98 percent). Unsurprisingly, mobile operating systems gained share."
My 60GB PS3 sounds like a jet engine. It does have builtin PS2 support. Great, because I use it mostly for the BBC iPlayer these days.
So they can expose all customers to the same retail obstacle course? The owners of LHR have repeatedly shown that they only care about shopping. They don't care about passenger comforty, snow clearance equipment, etc. It's hard to find a good bookshop squeezed in amongst all the high end shops found 40 mins away on the Picadilly Line on Oxford and Regent Streetd
You don't have to pay if you can prove you can't receive the broadcasts.
I don't think Hollywood gave them that choice. To offer a flat monthly fee, they weren't allowed to match retail release dates. Maybe the removing the content at times is related to the HBO black-out window where they get exclusive rights. Gotta love Hollywood and they way they try to control the market. If you want something streamed on the day of retail release, you'll need to use another service like RoxioNow. There's lots of choices out there, which is why Netflix is so powerless on the licensing fees, and that's the ecosystem that Hollywood is encouraging so that they keep control (or *think* they keep control)
And to think so many Americans have criticised in this forum countries like the UK for it's license fee. I pay less in a year than the parent pays every two months. I get most of the good stuff, whether live via free DTV or free satellite, or over the internet via free catch-up TV. There's no advertising on the BBC channels, and you appreciate how bad that must be for Americans when American "hour long" shows only last 43 minutes on British TV. The only thing I dislike is the Murdoch empire taking away some of our national sports and trying to extort us.... so I'm rather happy to see Rupert and James squirming in front of Parliamentary questioning and coverage from their media rivals.
You haven't dealt with Hollywood, have you?
Did you read the MSDN article you linked to? :) It says the problems exist for Itanium, not x64.
Compatibility with 32-bit plugins seems like a good idea. Then they can switch to 64-bit browser without causing users hassle. For instance, they already run Flash in a separate surrogate process, so with the right interface, it shouldn't matter whether the Flash plug-in is 32 or 64 bit. And yes, I've taken this approach on Windows via COM/DCOM to make unportable 32 bit DLLs available to 64 bit applications. Can XPCOM or whatever Mozilla uses handle this kind of thing?
It seems my sarcasm is lost around here. The US is way behind the times with this credit card signature business. I can't believe it's still common. I haven't been asked to sign for years, except when visiting the US, due to chip and pin being the standard elsewhere. Even more bizarre is that it seems nobody even bothers checking the signature in the US when it is given.