We had MBR protection years ago and I believe it's still in most BIOSes. But IIRC it only works if you try writing to the MBR using BIOS routines - which no modern operating system does.
The only issue I have now is that if the touchpad sits idle for a while (around 10 mins or more) it will lock up and I have to hard-reset the touchpad. Otherwise, Android works pretty well.
I keep hearing things like this and I remember why it is I don't like Android.
That, and the Android phone I foolishly bought thinking "it's Android, it can't be that bad". (For those who've never tussled with Android: It's a fairly meaningless brand in terms of identifying quality. It's just as possible to build a terrible Android phone as it is to build a good one so really you want to find an Android phone that's got a reputation of being OK).
AIUI that already exists - and indeed it's the legislation they'd been arguing under. But the court held that the game itself isn't a creative work so isn't subject to copyright.
The title music being broadcast at the beginning is, as is the intro sequence. But not the match itself.
Just to clarify, the reason why this is so important has little to do with individuals buying the sports channels and everything to do with venues that want to show them.
The UK only has one satellite broadcaster - Sky - and that satellite broadcaster has an exclusive deal with the Football Association for broadcast of UK football matches. Anyone wanting to watch a UK football match on the TV basically has to watch it on Sky. (Those using cable instead of satellite, the cable company pays Sky and pushes the same channel over the cable).
A normal Sky subscription comes with a contract that states "You're not allowed to use this for a public showing of an event" - pubs are meant to contact Sky to purchase a special subscription that has no such restriction in the contract. That subscription's something like ten times the price of the one sold to domestic customers - and lots of pubs simply don't have the turnover to buy something for ten times the price.
So a lot of pubs have either bought a domestic subscription and hoped nobody notices - or a subscription from a satellite broadcaster based in continental Europe (who don't charge absurdly expensive prices). Surprise surprise, Sky went ballistic. They had an exclusive license to be the only broadcaster in the UK which this sort of thing undermines; they've been using every bullying tactic in the book to force pubs to buy the UK commercial subscription and now they can't.
I've said it before, we need a global standard rating scheme created by scientists not industry monkeys.
There are plenty of cases - and I believe this is one - where I don't care how many scientists you put on the job, the chances are you'll find there are at least as many opinions as there are people on the committee tasked to forming an opinion.
Exactly. I can think of quite a few businesses that a similar analogy can be applied to:
Here in the UK a lot of neighbourhood pubs have gone. And there's this fantasy going around that the pubs that have gone were all selling a wide range of high-quality beer and good food at a reasonable price; when they closed down it came as a great surprise.
But that's all it is. A fantasy. Without even thinking I can name several pubs that haven't been decorated in years, have walls that are still heavily nicotine stained despite the fact that smoking was banned in public places in 2007; carpet that's threadbare in places and sticky in others. The toilets are a health hazard, they don't do food (or if they do it tastes like they cooked it in the toilet), they've got a lousy range of beer, an equally lousy choice of cider (considering this is Somerset this is practically a criminal offence!), they don't feel particularly welcoming when you go in and they charge prices more commensurate with a fancy city-centre bar.
Specifically, a fancy city-centre bar that serves good food, has clean toilets, a floor you don't stick to and walls that if they're a yellow-brown colour, are obviously intended to be.
These are the pubs that are going out of business. The world has changed and they haven't.
I ask this in all seriousness: Are RIM even trying?
The core of their business that they built up was corporate customers who they sold BES to. But the first 5 apps they're offering are all games.
Meanwhile, the various Android phone vendors and Apple have been merrily chipping away at the corporate market at a rate of knots and are now starting to look at the low-end handsets that are subsidised to the point of being incredibly cheap even on pay-as-you-go.
AFAICT, more-or-less all of RIM's unique selling points have been eradicated over the last few years and all that remains now is "All your data traffic is routed through our servers so if we experience significant downtime - which can and indeed has happened - your smartphone becomes a dumbphone". Not really much of a selling point.
A few years ago now, I had wrist problems which were said to be from spending too much time in front of the keyboard.
I looked for every possible way to relieve the problem, hoping that I'd find someone or something that could simply say "Do this. You'll be much better". I learned something that most manufacturers of ergonomic products don't tell you. Specialists in setting up an ergonomic work environment will tell you - but not before you've paid them (£/$/€)a few hundred.
Nobody can say "Buy product X, Y and Z; you'll be fine". The reason for this is what works for me may not work for you; you have to figure out what works for you for yourself. I can tell you what works for me but there's no guarantee it'll help you.
What works for me is this:
1. If you can't get into the habit of using a mouse without bending your wrist, ditch it. I've found a trackball very effective. 2. I've got a Goldtouch keyboard which I'm very happy with. They're not cheap, but they're a hell of a lot cheaper than re-training to do something else. 3. Every so often switch which hand you use for your trackball/mouse. This gives your other hand a chance to recover. 4. Arrange the arms of your office chair so you can't easily rest your elbows on them. Or, even better, remove altogether. I've found I have a tendency to rest my arms on the chair while I'm using the keyboard, which is a Big No No. 5. If it starts to hurt, pay attention. Chances are you're doing something that's making it hurt - maybe sitting in a particular way. As soon as you've figured out what that is, stop doing it. If that means you have to move things around to force yourself to stop, so be it.
I still think that's part of the reason iPods cornered the market so well.
Person wants a nice easy way to carry around vast quantities of music. Has heard the term "iPod"; has not heard the term "MP3 player". What do they ask for for Christmas?
Similarly, I don't hear anyone saying "I'm thinking of getting a tablet computer". But I hear lots of people saying "I'm thinking of getting an iPad". They go to the store or search online, what do they ask for? An iPad. Not a tablet computer.
I've heard from a number of Android users that Android also has voice & language recognition - can anyone comment how it works compared to how Siri's been pushed and demoed?
You would be amazed how many people go nuts over the latest F/OSS platform du jour... and then complain that it runs first and foremost under Linux.
Even if they're never going to go anywhere near the underlying OS anyway, still that gets brought up.
Windows Server licensing is quite lucrative for Microsoft. So if they can now announce "Hadoop: Now certified for Windows (TM) Server" they can sell more licenses for Windows Server.
I was trying to figure out what was wrong with this piece of speculation and I think you've nailed it.
Look at the iPhone versus what the competition was doing - particularly at the time of release. Yeah, OK, it didn't do anything too special but compared to most of the competition, it showed real potential which Apple built upon with the App store.
Ditto the Apple TV. I must confess I've not used many set-top boxes but the ones I've seen reviewed - dear me. It's a choice between "doesn't really do anything much" or "does everything but make the tea. Provided you don't mind an arcane menu system, at least 4 different options for every setting (3 of which you need to be a TV engineer to understand, only 1 of which is optimal) and firmware that crashes occasionally." Beating that isn't exactly a high bar to set.
Last time I checked - which I concede was about two years ago now - you'd be astonished how few phones support IDLE. I can understand that in Windows Phone (support ActiveSync but not IMAP IDLE and you can then tell customers "You'll need to buy Exchange if you want push email"); I can't understand it on other phones.
This is a very common trick used by people in positions of authority everywhere.
When you are want someone to do something but don't have an immediately clear reason why they should (or at least not one you're prepared/able to explain), pin responsibility on the absent third party. That third party doesn't have to be a physical person, it could just as well be some sort of rule - or for that matter the law.
Using "the law" is a common trick used by parents on their children; it's less common to see it used on adults because when it's misapplied, this is the sort of thing that happens.
For the tail-end of last week, there would have been absolutely no point in announcing a major techie thing like "Fancy New Phone Launch". The media was too busy canonising Jobs.
Heh, I've been a customer for years but I'm really unhappy with my current phone. Assuming the stock's there (does anyone at O2 even have the remotest idea how long stock is likely to last in their average store?), I assume I'll be ok to march in and say "Hi. I'm still on contract and I want to buy that contract out here and now and buy an iPhone 4S"?
I understand O2 stores are officially offering the iPhone "for existing customers" on 14 October. Does this mean new customers will be turned away in store? Or have you guys not been told?
They'll have to do something pretty drastic. IME, quality hasn't dropped since Sony entered the joint venture - it's plummeted. Tacky nasty plastics are the order of the day across much of the range, yet I'm not convinced they have a huge price advantage except at the very low end.
SIP's great. I have a SIP phone right next to me and I use it every day.
But it's also a nightmare. Between interop issues, ALGs that try to help SIP get past NAT (and fail) - and for that matter NAT itself (I don't like it, you don't like it. Nobody likes it. But it's a fact of life. Get used to it, we're going to be stuck with NAT for some time yet; burying your head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist doesn't help anyone), it is simply not suitable for deployment in any situation that doesn't involve a specialist to set it up. Which accounts for a significant chunk of Skype usage.
In that case, it seems that they've hit upon an absolutely beautifully elegant workaround to the law.
You can be declared a vexatious litigant if you make a regular habit of suing people purely to suit your own ends, never mind whether or not there's any real evidence on your side. But can you be declared a vexatious litigant if you do everything in your power to provoke someone into give you an excuse to sue them?
By ostracizing his followers from everybody else in town, they reinforce their members' dependance upon one another like any cult, and the family probably sees pretty good revenue in the collection basket.
The family more-or-less IS the church.
BTW, go read the book of Matthew. The Bible more-or-less gives anyone who claims to follow it a get out of jail free card for any ostracisation they suffer. I specifically refer you to Matt. 24:9 and 5:11.
Steve's departure from Apple first time around wasn't a case of "company with much respected and admired CEO knows what the future holds and puts in place a succession plan that is designed to keep the company going more-or-less as it has been, because that's worked out very well so far". It was a case of boardroom politics.
It's entirely possible, therefore, that Cook will be able to lead Apple just as efficiently.
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We had MBR protection years ago and I believe it's still in most BIOSes. But IIRC it only works if you try writing to the MBR using BIOS routines - which no modern operating system does.
The only issue I have now is that if the touchpad sits idle for a while (around 10 mins or more) it will lock up and I have to hard-reset the touchpad. Otherwise, Android works pretty well.
I keep hearing things like this and I remember why it is I don't like Android.
That, and the Android phone I foolishly bought thinking "it's Android, it can't be that bad". (For those who've never tussled with Android: It's a fairly meaningless brand in terms of identifying quality. It's just as possible to build a terrible Android phone as it is to build a good one so really you want to find an Android phone that's got a reputation of being OK).
AIUI that already exists - and indeed it's the legislation they'd been arguing under. But the court held that the game itself isn't a creative work so isn't subject to copyright.
The title music being broadcast at the beginning is, as is the intro sequence. But not the match itself.
Just to clarify, the reason why this is so important has little to do with individuals buying the sports channels and everything to do with venues that want to show them.
The UK only has one satellite broadcaster - Sky - and that satellite broadcaster has an exclusive deal with the Football Association for broadcast of UK football matches. Anyone wanting to watch a UK football match on the TV basically has to watch it on Sky. (Those using cable instead of satellite, the cable company pays Sky and pushes the same channel over the cable).
A normal Sky subscription comes with a contract that states "You're not allowed to use this for a public showing of an event" - pubs are meant to contact Sky to purchase a special subscription that has no such restriction in the contract. That subscription's something like ten times the price of the one sold to domestic customers - and lots of pubs simply don't have the turnover to buy something for ten times the price.
So a lot of pubs have either bought a domestic subscription and hoped nobody notices - or a subscription from a satellite broadcaster based in continental Europe (who don't charge absurdly expensive prices). Surprise surprise, Sky went ballistic. They had an exclusive license to be the only broadcaster in the UK which this sort of thing undermines; they've been using every bullying tactic in the book to force pubs to buy the UK commercial subscription and now they can't.
I've said it before, we need a global standard rating scheme created by scientists not industry monkeys.
There are plenty of cases - and I believe this is one - where I don't care how many scientists you put on the job, the chances are you'll find there are at least as many opinions as there are people on the committee tasked to forming an opinion.
Exactly. I can think of quite a few businesses that a similar analogy can be applied to:
Here in the UK a lot of neighbourhood pubs have gone. And there's this fantasy going around that the pubs that have gone were all selling a wide range of high-quality beer and good food at a reasonable price; when they closed down it came as a great surprise.
But that's all it is. A fantasy. Without even thinking I can name several pubs that haven't been decorated in years, have walls that are still heavily nicotine stained despite the fact that smoking was banned in public places in 2007; carpet that's threadbare in places and sticky in others. The toilets are a health hazard, they don't do food (or if they do it tastes like they cooked it in the toilet), they've got a lousy range of beer, an equally lousy choice of cider (considering this is Somerset this is practically a criminal offence!), they don't feel particularly welcoming when you go in and they charge prices more commensurate with a fancy city-centre bar.
Specifically, a fancy city-centre bar that serves good food, has clean toilets, a floor you don't stick to and walls that if they're a yellow-brown colour, are obviously intended to be.
These are the pubs that are going out of business. The world has changed and they haven't.
I ask this in all seriousness: Are RIM even trying?
The core of their business that they built up was corporate customers who they sold BES to. But the first 5 apps they're offering are all games.
Meanwhile, the various Android phone vendors and Apple have been merrily chipping away at the corporate market at a rate of knots and are now starting to look at the low-end handsets that are subsidised to the point of being incredibly cheap even on pay-as-you-go.
AFAICT, more-or-less all of RIM's unique selling points have been eradicated over the last few years and all that remains now is "All your data traffic is routed through our servers so if we experience significant downtime - which can and indeed has happened - your smartphone becomes a dumbphone". Not really much of a selling point.
They've been doing it for 25 years, why stop now?
A few years ago now, I had wrist problems which were said to be from spending too much time in front of the keyboard.
I looked for every possible way to relieve the problem, hoping that I'd find someone or something that could simply say "Do this. You'll be much better". I learned something that most manufacturers of ergonomic products don't tell you. Specialists in setting up an ergonomic work environment will tell you - but not before you've paid them (£/$/€)a few hundred.
Nobody can say "Buy product X, Y and Z; you'll be fine". The reason for this is what works for me may not work for you; you have to figure out what works for you for yourself. I can tell you what works for me but there's no guarantee it'll help you.
What works for me is this:
1. If you can't get into the habit of using a mouse without bending your wrist, ditch it. I've found a trackball very effective.
2. I've got a Goldtouch keyboard which I'm very happy with. They're not cheap, but they're a hell of a lot cheaper than re-training to do something else.
3. Every so often switch which hand you use for your trackball/mouse. This gives your other hand a chance to recover.
4. Arrange the arms of your office chair so you can't easily rest your elbows on them. Or, even better, remove altogether. I've found I have a tendency to rest my arms on the chair while I'm using the keyboard, which is a Big No No.
5. If it starts to hurt, pay attention. Chances are you're doing something that's making it hurt - maybe sitting in a particular way. As soon as you've figured out what that is, stop doing it. If that means you have to move things around to force yourself to stop, so be it.
Whoa, Nellie. Small difference between looking and fantasizing, huge difference between fantasizing and doing.
Not important. By watching CP - and either creating it or asking someone else to supply it, the person is creating a demand for it.
I still think that's part of the reason iPods cornered the market so well.
Person wants a nice easy way to carry around vast quantities of music. Has heard the term "iPod"; has not heard the term "MP3 player". What do they ask for for Christmas?
Similarly, I don't hear anyone saying "I'm thinking of getting a tablet computer". But I hear lots of people saying "I'm thinking of getting an iPad". They go to the store or search online, what do they ask for? An iPad. Not a tablet computer.
I've heard from a number of Android users that Android also has voice & language recognition - can anyone comment how it works compared to how Siri's been pushed and demoed?
You would be amazed how many people go nuts over the latest F/OSS platform du jour... and then complain that it runs first and foremost under Linux.
Even if they're never going to go anywhere near the underlying OS anyway, still that gets brought up.
Windows Server licensing is quite lucrative for Microsoft. So if they can now announce "Hadoop: Now certified for Windows (TM) Server" they can sell more licenses for Windows Server.
I was trying to figure out what was wrong with this piece of speculation and I think you've nailed it.
Look at the iPhone versus what the competition was doing - particularly at the time of release. Yeah, OK, it didn't do anything too special but compared to most of the competition, it showed real potential which Apple built upon with the App store.
Ditto the Apple TV. I must confess I've not used many set-top boxes but the ones I've seen reviewed - dear me. It's a choice between "doesn't really do anything much" or "does everything but make the tea. Provided you don't mind an arcane menu system, at least 4 different options for every setting (3 of which you need to be a TV engineer to understand, only 1 of which is optimal) and firmware that crashes occasionally." Beating that isn't exactly a high bar to set.
Last time I checked - which I concede was about two years ago now - you'd be astonished how few phones support IDLE. I can understand that in Windows Phone (support ActiveSync but not IMAP IDLE and you can then tell customers "You'll need to buy Exchange if you want push email"); I can't understand it on other phones.
This is a very common trick used by people in positions of authority everywhere.
When you are want someone to do something but don't have an immediately clear reason why they should (or at least not one you're prepared/able to explain), pin responsibility on the absent third party. That third party doesn't have to be a physical person, it could just as well be some sort of rule - or for that matter the law.
Using "the law" is a common trick used by parents on their children; it's less common to see it used on adults because when it's misapplied, this is the sort of thing that happens.
With the added bonus that your employer almost certainly doesn't back up your local hard drive. So if your PC dies horribly, your email goes with it.
For the tail-end of last week, there would have been absolutely no point in announcing a major techie thing like "Fancy New Phone Launch". The media was too busy canonising Jobs.
Heh, I've been a customer for years but I'm really unhappy with my current phone. Assuming the stock's there (does anyone at O2 even have the remotest idea how long stock is likely to last in their average store?), I assume I'll be ok to march in and say "Hi. I'm still on contract and I want to buy that contract out here and now and buy an iPhone 4S"?
I understand O2 stores are officially offering the iPhone "for existing customers" on 14 October. Does this mean new customers will be turned away in store? Or have you guys not been told?
They'll have to do something pretty drastic. IME, quality hasn't dropped since Sony entered the joint venture - it's plummeted. Tacky nasty plastics are the order of the day across much of the range, yet I'm not convinced they have a huge price advantage except at the very low end.
SIP's great. I have a SIP phone right next to me and I use it every day.
But it's also a nightmare. Between interop issues, ALGs that try to help SIP get past NAT (and fail) - and for that matter NAT itself (I don't like it, you don't like it. Nobody likes it. But it's a fact of life. Get used to it, we're going to be stuck with NAT for some time yet; burying your head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist doesn't help anyone), it is simply not suitable for deployment in any situation that doesn't involve a specialist to set it up. Which accounts for a significant chunk of Skype usage.
In that case, it seems that they've hit upon an absolutely beautifully elegant workaround to the law.
You can be declared a vexatious litigant if you make a regular habit of suing people purely to suit your own ends, never mind whether or not there's any real evidence on your side. But can you be declared a vexatious litigant if you do everything in your power to provoke someone into give you an excuse to sue them?
By ostracizing his followers from everybody else in town, they reinforce their members' dependance upon one another like any cult, and the family probably sees pretty good revenue in the collection basket.
The family more-or-less IS the church.
BTW, go read the book of Matthew. The Bible more-or-less gives anyone who claims to follow it a get out of jail free card for any ostracisation they suffer. I specifically refer you to Matt. 24:9 and 5:11.
Not necessarily.
Steve's departure from Apple first time around wasn't a case of "company with much respected and admired CEO knows what the future holds and puts in place a succession plan that is designed to keep the company going more-or-less as it has been, because that's worked out very well so far". It was a case of boardroom politics.
It's entirely possible, therefore, that Cook will be able to lead Apple just as efficiently.