When you're driving down winding country roads, you frequently fall into signal shadow. With FM, this means that you just get a lot of static over the radio as you go around a corner or in a dip.
And not even that these days. Since car radios started incorporating automatic re-tuning, I find I can drive across the country with never a drop-out.
The point which all the pundits fail to address is that DAB is simply pointless. It provides a worse service than exists already, at greater cost. Only those with a vested interest are pushing it (which unfortunately includes the government because they see the opportunity to make money by flogging off the frequency spectrum currently used by FM).
there has been quite a few apps I declined to install because... why does a little game want access to my call history? [Cancel Install]
Browsing the android market I've been struck by the sheer number of free apps which offer nothing but girly pictures. I'm not about to try installing any of them, but I can't help wondering what permissions they would ask for as they install.
If they don't contain malware, then what's the point in them existing? Displaying a set of more or less pornographic images isn't a triumph of the coder's art, and they don't seem to do anything which you can't do anyway with the in-built web browser. You find dozens and dozens of such apps from the same few suppliers. I ask myself, "What's in it for them?"
In contrast doesn't a manual need a clutch replacement every 100,000 miles due to wear during shifting?
That depends on how well you drive. I've no doubt an incompetent driver could wear out a clutch in less than 100,000 miles, but there should be no wear at all when changing gear - only when moving off from stationary.
I've had quite a few manual cars and I've never had the clutch changed on any of them. My current car is pushing 160,000 miles on the clock, and my best score was over 200,000 (when I changed the car, not the clutch).
You might have that IPv6 address, but you are not connecting to slashdot using it in any way. Slashdot does not have IPv6 connectivity.
That's called putting up a straw man. I didn't say I was connecting to Slashdot using IPv6. I said the machine from which I was posting has full IPv6 connectivity - and it does.
Depending on what your problems were, they may not have been faults in Windows 7. (Am I allowed to say that on Slashdot?) A common problem with getting started on ipv6 is having something on your LAN which says it can provide ipv6 connectivity but in fact can't. Client PCs then try to use the faulty gateway and the result is very slow or broken web browsing. As soon as ipv6 is disabled on the client PC, it all starts to work and so the ipv6 implementation on that PC unjustly gets the blame.
I think tightening emissions rules are a far cry from saying we're no longer going to be exporting cars.
Has the USA ever exported cars? (In anything other than very small numbers for the rarity value?) I've been all over the world and you just don't see more than the very odd one USA-made car anywhere other than in the USA.
The USA has exported (and still exports) a lot of things, but I don't think cars have ever been a significant part of them.
I've been amazed lately by the number of regular e-mail users who take no notice of any headers at all. Anything in the Subject: line might as well not be there, and I keep getting replies from people to whom I've Cc:ed something saying, "Who did you send this to originally?"
There are are quite a few people out there to whom nothing but the message body exists.
I've experienced something very similar with a genealogy site in the UK. I signed up to have a look (in the course of which I gave them my name, date of birth and town of birth) and a little later I received an e-mail saying that I was probably in someone else's family tree - all the details which I'd given matched, plus they'd added the hospital in which I was born. It's a sufficiently small hospital that there couldn't have been two people with the same name born there on precisely the same day. And yet I know my family tree very well and there's no way the person purporting to have me in her tree could actually be related.
Sure enough, when I tried to get more details they wouldn't give any details unless I paid, and then after I'd searched a few times the purported relative disappeared from their hits.
The extra information is exactly what they could have got from the register of births marriages and deaths. It was enough to make me cancel my whole subscription.
Well, GCHQ workers *invented* public key encryption...
And the story told by one of the inventors is that he made the crucial breakthrough whilst mulling the problem over in his head at home. So strict was the security in those days that he wasn't even allowed to write down his idea on a piece of paper outside the office, and he worried dreadfully that he might forget the details before he got back into the office and was able to record it.
Clearly if they're now leaving laptops lying around, things aren't quite so strict.
but until these come down a long way in terms of price, it is WAY out of my price range
This is your lucky day. I happen to know where I can get you a pallet of really cheap Intel Core i7 processors, retail boxed, complete with heatsink, fan and a booklet.
I could just about imagine a box like this being faked up for use at trade shows before the real product was available. You'd want some boxes to stack, some to have standing open, and perhaps one or two to unpack completely. Rather than trying to remember which ones had the real-looking components inside you'd make them all the same and just open some.
I still think it's an unlikely explanation though.
I think the core problem is, perhaps, with the mindset of most software developers. They think logically and prefer a computer to immediately notify them about exactly what's wrong, as soon as an issue arises. They're also accustomed to the traditional way errors are reported, and feel most comfortable making things stick to "tried and true" methods.
The typical user, however, doesn't see any of that as advantageous or even sensible.
I think you overestimate the difference between programmers and users.
I remember a curious thing when Acorn first launched their C compiler (Norcroft C) for the Archimedes computer. It was far more sophisticated than most C compilers then available, and was very good at spotting mistakes in the code and warning about them. Compared to the contemporary Microsoft C compiler it was streets ahead.
The odd thing though was the number of times I saw this reported as a defect in the Acorn compiler. "Microsoft C can compile this code without difficulty but this new compiler had 128 errors." was a typical comment. The fact that the errors were in the source code and the Acorn compiler was actually doing a much *better* job of diagnosing them was beyond the comprehension of most of the reviewers.
"The date you entered is wrong." should be "The date you entered cannot be parsed. Please provide the date in the format YYYY/MM/DD, e.g. 2009/12/12".
You think the average user knows what "parsed" means?!
Both the original error message and your "improved" version are horrendously bad. For a genuine improvement you need to make the entry of the date much more user friendly - it should be the computer's job to adjust to the user, not the other way around.
Either use a versatile date parser, or give the poor user a calendar and let them click on the required date. If you really insist on an error message then something like, "I'm sorry - I didn't understand that" is more on the right lines.
If error message is 'jargon' then i think someone needs to go back and take remedial english.
But so often when a user complains about a message being "jargon", it's no such thing. We're back to the "not reading the message" problem. Users *assume* it will be jargon and thus don't read it. I've lost track of the number of times I've had people complain about jargon when there hasn't even been a hint of jargon in the message.
Compared to *any* ADSL provider they look like paragons of virtue. 8meg ADSL my ass. I have yet to meet anyone that's gotten above 5.
Hi there - today's your lucky day. I get a solid 8 megs pretty much all the time.
When you talk about people getting less than the advertised rate you need to be clear on what you're talking about. There are two possibilities (possibly more).
1) The rate at which the ADSL device syncs to its local exchange. This will be dictated by the quality and length of the intervening copper. You can get a full 8 meg up to a couple of miles away, then it starts to fall off.
2) The share of the pipe which you then get to use on from the exchange. If you go with a "Look how phenomenally cheap we are!" provider then the chances are they will heavily overload their pipe and you won't see anything like the advertised speed. Go with someone reputable and you can easily get the advertised speed.
and then of course there is the speed of the rest of the 'net and the host which you're talking to at the other end.
I used to use NTL in the days before they were re-badged as Virgin and their customer service was quite unbelievably and mind-bogglingly bad. Fortunately I've had no experience of them for the last 8 years or so.
Not by any stretch of the imagination the cheapest, but I'm afraid you get what you pay for. With A and A you can readily get to talk to someone who actually knows what he's talking about and isn't reading from a script.
They also give you full IPv6 connectivity. Until recently they allowed genuinely unlimited bandwidth usage between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. It is now metered, but you get a ridiculously large allowance (in the terabytes/month).
Slashdot Mirror
When you're driving down winding country roads, you frequently fall into signal shadow. With FM, this means that you just get a lot of static over the radio as you go around a corner or in a dip.
And not even that these days. Since car radios started incorporating automatic re-tuning, I find I can drive across the country with never a drop-out.
The point which all the pundits fail to address is that DAB is simply pointless. It provides a worse service than exists already, at greater cost. Only those with a vested interest are pushing it (which unfortunately includes the government because they see the opportunity to make money by flogging off the frequency spectrum currently used by FM).
Which brings us back to the point which I made originally.
Not if he gives it away for no charge.
A few weeks ago Jobs claimed the Droid was a porn magnet
Surely that's a plus point - no?
there has been quite a few apps I declined to install because... why does a little game want access to my call history? [Cancel Install]
Browsing the android market I've been struck by the sheer number of free apps which offer nothing but girly pictures. I'm not about to try installing any of them, but I can't help wondering what permissions they would ask for as they install.
If they don't contain malware, then what's the point in them existing? Displaying a set of more or less pornographic images isn't a triumph of the coder's art, and they don't seem to do anything which you can't do anyway with the in-built web browser. You find dozens and dozens of such apps from the same few suppliers. I ask myself, "What's in it for them?"
In contrast doesn't a manual need a clutch replacement every 100,000 miles due to wear during shifting?
That depends on how well you drive. I've no doubt an incompetent driver could wear out a clutch in less than 100,000 miles, but there should be no wear at all when changing gear - only when moving off from stationary.
I've had quite a few manual cars and I've never had the clutch changed on any of them. My current car is pushing 160,000 miles on the clock, and my best score was over 200,000 (when I changed the car, not the clutch).
No it's not.
Yes it is.
You might have that IPv6 address, but you are not connecting to slashdot using it in any way. Slashdot does not have IPv6 connectivity.
That's called putting up a straw man. I didn't say I was connecting to Slashdot using IPv6. I said the machine from which I was posting has full IPv6 connectivity - and it does.
Not sure what you're asking there.
If you mean, "Does your LAN still have IPv4" connectivity?" then the answer is yes.
If you mean "Do you talk IPv6 to your ISP?" then the answer to that is yes too.
Or to put it another way, my IPv6 connectivity does not depend on my IPv4 connectivity.
Me too.
This posting coming to you from 2001:8b0:e9:1:222:69ff:fe07:5046
Depending on what your problems were, they may not have been faults in Windows 7. (Am I allowed to say that on Slashdot?) A common problem with getting started on ipv6 is having something on your LAN which says it can provide ipv6 connectivity but in fact can't. Client PCs then try to use the faulty gateway and the result is very slow or broken web browsing. As soon as ipv6 is disabled on the client PC, it all starts to work and so the ipv6 implementation on that PC unjustly gets the blame.
Every once in a while I think about it, then I can't find a reason. Anyone?
ipv6porn?
My point isn't to be fussy about spelling, but to point out some people are good at some things and bad at others
I'm good at everything you insensitive clod!
Precisely. Ford *make* a lot of cars in Europe, but they don't export many from the USA to Europe.
I think tightening emissions rules are a far cry from saying we're no longer going to be exporting cars.
Has the USA ever exported cars? (In anything other than very small numbers for the rarity value?) I've been all over the world and you just don't see more than the very odd one USA-made car anywhere other than in the USA.
The USA has exported (and still exports) a lot of things, but I don't think cars have ever been a significant part of them.
I've been amazed lately by the number of regular e-mail users who take no notice of any headers at all. Anything in the Subject: line might as well not be there, and I keep getting replies from people to whom I've Cc:ed something saying, "Who did you send this to originally?"
There are are quite a few people out there to whom nothing but the message body exists.
I've experienced something very similar with a genealogy site in the UK. I signed up to have a look (in the course of which I gave them my name, date of birth and town of birth) and a little later I received an e-mail saying that I was probably in someone else's family tree - all the details which I'd given matched, plus they'd added the hospital in which I was born. It's a sufficiently small hospital that there couldn't have been two people with the same name born there on precisely the same day. And yet I know my family tree very well and there's no way the person purporting to have me in her tree could actually be related.
Sure enough, when I tried to get more details they wouldn't give any details unless I paid, and then after I'd searched a few times the purported relative disappeared from their hits.
The extra information is exactly what they could have got from the register of births marriages and deaths. It was enough to make me cancel my whole subscription.
Well, GCHQ workers *invented* public key encryption...
And the story told by one of the inventors is that he made the crucial breakthrough whilst mulling the problem over in his head at home. So strict was the security in those days that he wasn't even allowed to write down his idea on a piece of paper outside the office, and he worried dreadfully that he might forget the details before he got back into the office and was able to record it.
Clearly if they're now leaving laptops lying around, things aren't quite so strict.
but until these come down a long way in terms of price, it is WAY out of my price range
This is your lucky day. I happen to know where I can get you a pallet of really cheap Intel Core i7 processors, retail boxed, complete with heatsink, fan and a booklet.
I could just about imagine a box like this being faked up for use at trade shows before the real product was available. You'd want some boxes to stack, some to have standing open, and perhaps one or two to unpack completely. Rather than trying to remember which ones had the real-looking components inside you'd make them all the same and just open some.
I still think it's an unlikely explanation though.
He clearly thought I was an imbercile
Yesterday I couldn't even spell "imbecile" - now I are one.
I think the core problem is, perhaps, with the mindset of most software developers. They think logically and prefer a computer to immediately notify them about exactly what's wrong, as soon as an issue arises. They're also accustomed to the traditional way errors are reported, and feel most comfortable making things stick to "tried and true" methods.
The typical user, however, doesn't see any of that as advantageous or even sensible.
I think you overestimate the difference between programmers and users.
I remember a curious thing when Acorn first launched their C compiler (Norcroft C) for the Archimedes computer. It was far more sophisticated than most C compilers then available, and was very good at spotting mistakes in the code and warning about them. Compared to the contemporary Microsoft C compiler it was streets ahead.
The odd thing though was the number of times I saw this reported as a defect in the Acorn compiler. "Microsoft C can compile this code without difficulty but this new compiler had 128 errors." was a typical comment. The fact that the errors were in the source code and the Acorn compiler was actually doing a much *better* job of diagnosing them was beyond the comprehension of most of the reviewers.
"The date you entered is wrong." should be "The date you entered cannot be parsed. Please provide the date in the format YYYY/MM/DD, e.g. 2009/12/12".
You think the average user knows what "parsed" means?!
Both the original error message and your "improved" version are horrendously bad. For a genuine improvement you need to make the entry of the date much more user friendly - it should be the computer's job to adjust to the user, not the other way around.
Either use a versatile date parser, or give the poor user a calendar and let them click on the required date. If you really insist on an error message then something like, "I'm sorry - I didn't understand that" is more on the right lines.
If error message is 'jargon' then i think someone needs to go back and take remedial english.
But so often when a user complains about a message being "jargon", it's no such thing. We're back to the "not reading the message" problem. Users *assume* it will be jargon and thus don't read it. I've lost track of the number of times I've had people complain about jargon when there hasn't even been a hint of jargon in the message.
Compared to *any* ADSL provider they look like paragons of virtue. 8meg ADSL my ass. I have yet to meet anyone that's gotten above 5.
Hi there - today's your lucky day. I get a solid 8 megs pretty much all the time.
When you talk about people getting less than the advertised rate you need to be clear on what you're talking about. There are two possibilities (possibly more).
1) The rate at which the ADSL device syncs to its local exchange. This will be dictated by the quality and length of the intervening copper. You can get a full 8 meg up to a couple of miles away, then it starts to fall off.
2) The share of the pipe which you then get to use on from the exchange. If you go with a "Look how phenomenally cheap we are!" provider then the chances are they will heavily overload their pipe and you won't see anything like the advertised speed. Go with someone reputable and you can easily get the advertised speed.
and then of course there is the speed of the rest of the 'net and the host which you're talking to at the other end.
I used to use NTL in the days before they were re-badged as Virgin and their customer service was quite unbelievably and mind-bogglingly bad. Fortunately I've had no experience of them for the last 8 years or so.
Go on then - who offers a reliable, honest, cost-effective UK broadband service (preferably with a static IP)?
Andrews and Arnold - http://aa.nu/
Not by any stretch of the imagination the cheapest, but I'm afraid you get what you pay for. With A and A you can readily get to talk to someone who actually knows what he's talking about and isn't reading from a script.
They also give you full IPv6 connectivity. Until recently they allowed genuinely unlimited bandwidth usage between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. It is now metered, but you get a ridiculously large allowance (in the terabytes/month).