Posts by Furbian

Better the devil you know?

I've been with them for a few years, and have almost switched every time my contract renewal comes up.

Last time Orange were cheaper, I told them, they gave me discount to match Orange, I stayed.

About 2 years ago we had some connection problems, a few day a week for a few weeks. Then only a two hour break we noticed about half a year ago.

The Huawei HG532 router they gave us needs a weekly reset, so bearable. As I have a family, we tend to hit 120GB a month, so Plusnet didn't want us. BT offered the same deal, but wanted more money.

My biggest bugbear, one that has lead to rather argumentative exchanges with them is that I get a lot of nuisance (PPI etc.) calls, not only for me, but also for some other chap. I want to change my number, but they won't do it unless I file a Police report, or pay them monthly for extra call baring. I bought a £40 box for line blocking, which has helped, but I'd still rather change my phone number. So coming January, I'm probably switching to Orange just to be able to change my number.

... and then there was Populous: The Beginning...

This was an already great game perfected. Both were just amazing ground breakers, but the second one was spectacular with the followers suffering all sorts of torments, being swept up in the air by hurricanes, being set on fire, drowning etc. The best was the preacher type character, who would cause the opposing sides followers to sit down listen, and then swap sides.

There's a 'queuing' paradox here.

I for one cannot understand why anyone would want to queue for anything, because I hate queuing, unless I have company. On occasions I have even left queues after running out of patience or buying something else with a shorter queue, when it comes to food that is, not phones. I buy on-line, so the only queues I face in my life are for food, or passport control, 'security' etc. at airports.

So these Apple fans are actually showing a great deal of patience, which I do consider admirable in an odd sort of way.

.. and people think I'm paranoid for not giving Google my passport...

Apparently some people think that I'm being unreasonable for not sending Google a photocopy of my passport, document which in the long term is far far worse than your credit card in the wrong hands.

http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

Oddly enough, Amazon, Apple, Sony (PSN), Xbox Live are just some people I do have paid accounts with, and do not want a copy of my passport.

Two empty slices of bread...

... with possibly a spread applied, if you're an observant Jew or Muslim.

Almost sad to see it go.

As an ex-employee who saw it going from someone competing to becoming a major powerful British IT company, to one that ended up shifting most of its business to India, it's still sad to see it being de-listed from the LSE. End of road. Alas poor Bogica as it was affectionately known at times. On reflection my career their had its ups and downs, but I have fond memories, and I always found the atmosphere to be 'proper' and above board, with only the occasional hiccup.

Alas poor Royal Mail...

... we knew and loved you well.

However they are busy shooting themselves in the foot. Our local sorting office, one of the larger ones in the country, is about a mile down the road. They cut their hours from about 9 to 4 to 9 to 12. Every now again I have seen (we have a camera) a postie with a parcel (not out regular one who has letters and small items, he's excellent) throw a card in and not ring the bell, or ring it and dart off before someone reaches the door. Oh did I mention queuing at the sorting office, takes up to half an hour to get through the dozen or so people there?

Collect+, not bad, round the corner, next door to the Post Office, but longer, much longer, hours, however one big caveat, they have a wireless scanner, and it doesn't always work. So it's always hit or miss, scans and connect, hooray, if it doesn't, then get in the car and drive a mile and a half to the next closets one (in that radius there are five others), Failure rate to date is 50%.

No fan of Windows 8 etc. but...

A loss leader might be the only way to get a foothold in the market. Look at the Xbox 360, a grossly unreliable poorly made console rushed out to get a lead on the Sony PS3, they then spent billions fixing those that died (own experience, over 5 years still on first PS3, Xbox 360 is number 5 (6?)).

But it worked, you can get away with selling an unreliable consumer product, if you time and price it right, etc. Xbox live provides a steady income, that Sony have failed to match, though being first on the block is not necessarily the reason for why Sony's PSN doesn't make it as much (if any) money as Xbox live does.

If the hardware is reliable, I doubt one could mess up designing a tablet (hostility to Windows 8 UI not withstanding) in this day and age, then why not make a loss on the first iteration, and then price the second revision to make money, having got a foot (toe?) hold in the market?

Besides M$ have a huge amount of money to burn, selling these at a loss might still be cheaper than what they overpaid for Skype, and make more economic sense for example.

PC manufacturers, they won't be happy, and will be thoroughly shafted in the process, not sure that will help M$ in the long term.

Oh not again...

So I've had e-mails telling me to change my password from...

Twitter

LastFM

Linkedin

But not from Sony after their grand hack, but I changed it anyway on my ancient PSN account.

I have a trial WoW account, so maybe I can expect and e-mail from them too, or I'll do it myself.

With these on-line services, many of which even keep your credit card details, (Google Play want to keep a copy of my passport too because I updated an expired credit card), leaking credentials like a sieve, this is becoming tiresome.

The future, a digital economy where the gates are left open every so often for a quick mass account grab by some thieves.

I hate micro SIMS, and now this!

That's it, I hate them. I bought a stapler like cutter to do the job, but it's still annoying. My Sony Xperia-S has one, for no good reason, there's empty space galore to it's left. Yes I had an Iphone 4, that's what made me having to keep a SIM adaptor and an iPhone ejection pin in my wallet.

Why do I need to switch SIMs? Because every time I travel abroad, I obtain a local SIM to avoid paying for roaming. So yes call me cheap if you like for saving money being my main reason for hating micro/nano and probably eventually, pico SIMS.

Irony. The phones become larger, and the SIM size shrinks, fantastic.

Even Worse than Apple.

I can't even begin to imagine what happens when your phone dies (I had three Motorola Atrix's and I am not on my second Sony Xperia S).. do Google Play sort this out for you? I don't think so...

http://furbian.blogspot.in/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

Or do you contact each software developer, giving them your new IMEI number?

Our whole family shares an Apple Account (for iPads), and the only limitation appears to be the maximum number of PC's we can sync with, i.e. 5. Having Apps locked to your phone alone is obviously more restrictive. Being restricted to an account, and all phones registered to that account, would be bearable.

Oh I do miss Apple at times...

My ragtag experience since my Android switch has been as follows...

Motorola Atrix, Gingerbread released on its US phones, 'reaches' UK phones some 6 months later. My son has it now, waiting for ICS.... Turns out the unique selling point for their new phones is that they are on ICS...

Wife's HTC Sensation XE, came with ICS, which obviously meant that everyone else could see the improvements they weren't getting any-time soon.

Yes that included me on my Sony Xperia S, my first one had Gingerbread and the yellowed-out screen problem, they sent me a replacement after waiting a few weeks for spare parts that were 'delayed'. Even though ICS was now available for it in Europe, the replacement was still on Gingerbread. Eventually I saw my IMEI number turn up on their update website, but my 'phone is up to date' claimed the phone, the website, and the PC update software.

So I downloaded a European copy of ICS for it and promptly flashed the phone with a config file! Fortunately it was not bricked, flashed it properly and it worked. Only annoying thing being that a so called full 'backup' program didn't quite work as it should have so I lost some save games.

Then there's the sole iPhone user in the house, who will just plug in, backup, update and restore when the iOS version is released. Or just do it over wif-fi. Bliss.

Green ..... with envy perhaps?

I remember a quiz in Personal Computing Weekly, I think, it was along lines of ..

What is a Dragon Users favorite colour:-

(a) Green.

(b) Green.

(c) Green.

I still remember my mates having with it's black on green editing screen. Being a Z80 Spectrum guy, I was really impressed with the 6809E having TWO accumulators, it was like wow, hats off to my mate, his machine's has two, A and B. Sad, geeky childhood, but I'm the better for it.

Probably not too little, but definitly too late.

Samsung introduced, and then made larger the 'plus' sized phone a desirable item, which has sold very well, and made others follow suite (mine's the Sony Xperia S 4.3" screen by the way). I personally know a number of iPhone users who were so disappointed with the 4S not having a larger screen, they jumped over to Android phones (various brands mainly Motorola and HTC), because of their screen size and price, despite having had iPhones for years. I don't see them switching back any time soon.

Personally I can't imagine how anyone could use a Galaxy S3 easily on the move, never mind a Galaxy Tab, but I've met people who are quite happy with their purchase, even two chaps who use a Tab as a phone.

Then again the iPhone '5' maybe revolutionary and not evolutionary, and may turns heads.

They want my passport and bank statements too...

... because an 80p Google Play app I wanted to buy revealed that my credit card had expired, so I updated it, and that triggered the request. But as they probably have access to my wi-fi network, they can easily find a scans of them on my PC, no?

How Google 'ask' for your 'details'....

http://furbian.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

Wot? Not for Windows...

.. come on, I thought a bit of development effort would be worth when hoards of Windows 8, rather Metro, users look for a desktop experience that works with a mouse?

Admittedly not me, yet, unless I upgrade my PC and find that Window 7 drivers are missing or kludges, in which case it will be a toss up between Linux and a Mac.

Too late... and maybe too little...

Obviously what I want and when I want it is no concern of Apple's but I when I got to try a Motorola Atrix last year, that was almost the same size as my old iPhone 4, but with a larger 4" screen, I switched to it. Since then I have upgraded to a Sony Xperia S.

However with Google having banned me from their 'Play' store, for not sending them a copy of my passport and bank statements in response to spam like e-mails, and that I still 'own' a lot of paid for Apple apps (and an account that still works, we still have our iPads') a spectacular iPhone 5 could make me switch back....

But then I love my aquarium wallpaper on Android, but I hate not being able to sync with Outlook/iTunes flawlessly... decisions decisions..

Oh no, now I remember how I ended up with the Atrix, it was free on Orange on a legacy £10 a month contract. So now I am used to 4" + screen and paying around £250 (the Sony) for a good phone, sorry Apple, but I'm too mean/poor for your products now.

Gory details of my Google 'Play' ban...

http://furbian.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

I've been banned from Google 'Wallet'/'Play'...

... ask a few questions in reply to their spam like e-mail requests for quite a lot of personal information and that's it....

http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

So I can't even buy one, I tried and failed because they 'were unable to verify the information of', me.

So all you Nexus 7 fans out there perhaps you're happy to send them (Goggle, the worlds most privacy respecting company) photocopies of your passports and bank statements etc. in response to badly written e-mails,. I am not.

Grief, this has degenerated into a 'beat up satellite woman'

Has anyone considered the sort of company such a person might keep? She probably keeps company with, maybe through working with things that go into space, other people who do research into other space related matters. Much more so than the vast majority of the general populace,

I know this from experience, as I have a lot of contact with people working on some new processor technology, have read some new papers on it, and even peer reviewed a few. Is it my field of work? No, do I know more it about it than the vast majority of the population, yes.It's my prerogative that I don't wish to offer comment on it.

Anyhow, I don't see any in the 'extra terrestrial exploration' field complaining loudly about her public statement.

Sinister indeed, but fun can be had...

.. if they looked up my Facebook page and greeted me accordingly, I'd be welcomed in Mongolian and be given a complementary cheapo Barbara Cartland novel to read. I don't speak the former and have never read anything by the latter.

Do 'customers' actaully matter here?

MS and Nokia appeared to have developed a mind set where ditching platforms, switching to new ones when they 'think' it's a good idea, and last but not least even selling phones that they admit are technically obsolete?

..and I thought Apple were arrogant! True my old iPhone 3g is no longer updated after iOS 4.2, but it's also over three years old. Android phones now have an ecosystem where people are in a state of near frenzy waiting for the latest updates to be released for their phones.

Yet against all this the only Windows phones out there are already a dead end for updates (bar minor tweaks). No doubt Windows 8 phones will arrive with great fanfare and a major selling point encouraging people to get one will be what runs on them and not on Windows 7.5 (maybe 7.99 at the time) phones. If they were going to make sure that everything that runs on a Windows 8 phone is backwards compatible with 7.5, it would make them a little pointless as upgrades or new devices wouldn't it? Such assurances are worthless anyway, they did the same with the Xbox, offered support on the Xbox 360 for it's games, and one day decided that after improving the software emulator a few times, that they were not going to bother with it any more. A good number of Xbox titles I have were wasted as a result.

So secret Plan B? I'm just not interested.

Pricey back then..

The ZX81 was only £50 when my dad bought me one, and the Spectrum £130 (sold the '81 for £40, added pocket money, and parental contribution). The £200+ jobbies were way out of our league, used to see ads of it thinking, wow, a proper-ish keys AND an LCD, cool! I hated the BBC Micro, because if was just so expensive at £400, had great graphics and sound, and I never did own one, ever. Oh and the only chap in the class who had one was held up as being the only one with a 'professional' dad. Enough envy there to turn one a very deep shade of green indeed!

Fascinating article though, but the idea of trying to load 256kb off tape! Rough guess, a 3k bit per sec baud turbo loader could manage it in about half an hour. Did disk drives ever come out for the New Brain?

Was using it once in a while for the best part of a decade... but then..

... I failed their security review on renewing my card's expiry date, because it had expired obviously... so no more 'paid for' Google Android apps for me... here are the gory details...

http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

Further invasive examination of these 'stones' is needed.

If Stargate is to be believed, a hoard of treasure lies under Glastonbury Tor, with some alien technology to boot... so it follows that we must pull out these stones and see what's under them! There could be even be inscriptions on the underside of the stones, telling us how to a make a 'Contact' style alien device, in 12 easy to follow steps, though there is more likely be an ancient version of 'Kilroy was here' scrawled on there instead......

I don't 'get' how YouTube is still 'legally' in business.

The whole thing is a massive copyright 'infringer' in the first place, I find it surprising that it's still in business and that the RIAA and BPI haven't shut it down, maybe the argument they didn't like with regards to mp3 sharing, i.e. that some free music or a few free plays maybe helping the industry, is something that they think does apply to YouTube. Or maybe it's because you only get 128kbps copies?

Anyway, there are a huge number of ways of getting mp3's out of a YouTube video, I can't see them being able to stop anyone who wants to. Isn't a 128kbps mp3 copy considered the equivalent of a tape to tape recording of the present day era? Then again they did try to ban tape to tape copying too....

The UAE (Dubai) also has a VOIP ban...

.. despite it's own telecom provider routing a bulk of its own traffic using it. You get a message stating that it volatiles their cultural and religious values etc. (?!). However they have become more upfront about it, stating that VoIP providers haven't helped build up the infrastructure for voice communication, so yes, they want to keep the duopoly (there are just 2 telecoms providers) going.

Even with the ban people are busy using proxies etc. to by pass it, but they'd only raid net caffes who tended to offer it at a price to customer, as far as I know. They were also busy blocking the proxies as they appeared, just like a cat and mouse game.

Obviously call costs are exorbitant, so all those poor ex-pat builders and road sweeps etc. who can't bring their families over, then have to pay for these expensive calls to stay in touch with their families, nice! Broadband costs are also sky high compared to Britain.

So less horsepower is used to render, due to more bloat-ware...

The moment I first saw the new Windows Phones with their flat look, and the Xbox 360 update with flat tiles too, I wondered if it was so save the effort required to produce the '3d' look and free up horsepower so they can write more bloated bloat-ware.

3D Aero was the only thing I liked about Vista (which we didn't use for long), and now enjoy on Windows 7.

I know there's a big UGH already posted, but many, like me, just think it's ugly, ugly, ugly.

It all looks so completely insane, it beggars belief that they, such an enormous company, are on this path to flatness, a stupid giant sized tiles interface etc. Have they not taken a moment to reflect, that when iOS and Mac OS upgrades are released, they don't quite attracted the hostility Metro has?

"The Prince of Darkness" really is his friend...

.. this chap sprang to mind,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Perle

'Perle acquired the nickname "The Prince of Darkness" '

Richard that is.

Is the reference deliberate?

Brains growing larger...

.. just like the bloat-ware all the systems around us have become, they now have to accommodate how to keep your PC going, more so if you're using Linux, how to program your multi-remote, washing machine, dish-washer, car, gps in car, syncing your Android phone, 'managing' your iPhone music library, looking for cheap flight deals across a dozen websites, dealing with cold callers who want to help you claim PPI insurance for loans you never had, sorting through your junk mail filter to stop e-mails from your bank that are actually useful from being junked etc. etc. ad infinitum...

Knowing humanity's rotten luck...

They will have sent us a message something along the lines of, we're coming, and you're toast, using a star powered transmitter, indicative of the vast amounts energy they have harnessed.

When we receive their message, it should then be obvious that they pack a punch, which will then be confirmed the following day when their battle fleet folds space into the solar system.

All because they found a Voyager plaque which read to them as a declaration of war, or a gigantic insult mocking of their historic figures.

So a solution to the Start Menu having become a Start Screen..

.. using two monitors, clever, but here's my problem, I have a 28" 1920 by 1200 monitor (you can imagine just how HUGE metro looks on this, I launched 'solitaire' and the whole screen filled with it!)... and there's not enough room on my desktop as it accommodates a 17" laptop (HP Envy), docks for my pair of phones, a proper Teac Hi-Fi system etc. So no start menu, is still a gigantic fail.

I started using Windows 7 since is Beta releases and never looked back, but started abusing Windows 8 since I installed it's Beta, and went back to the comfort of my Windows 7 desktop.

... and we'll all pay for this madness...

... as the virus is reversed engineered and sent out by criminals who are so keen to get hold of our credit card, bank account details etc.

Now we know who to blame it would seem. Politicians obsessed with short term goals who can't see beyond the end of their noses, are they to thick to realise that these virus will come back to haunt us all? I suspect they don't actually care.

If the Iranians have learnt from their previous experiences and battened down their hatches, then that will leave further efforts from the US and Israel hitting their 'wall' and bouncing off, much like the ricochet bullet, but worse as all an sundry with malign intentions get hold of it and use it further their, umm, 'interests'.

Isn't it odd...

Lots of down votes for the comments, that are all negative, but no one speaking in support of this, umm, abomination. Come on, let us know what's so great about it and how it improves productivity, and is a joy to use.

No I cant' sit on the fence either, stupid giant sized tiles (SGST)? Unless that start button, orb, whatever, comes back, properly, this is one to avoid. Played with the last release, no intention of installing this one, I haven't got the time to waste on it.

Managed to live with XP until Windows 7 quite well, and avoided Vista. I can do the same again. If it's a rip roaring success and MS change the way we use machines over the years, then it will be time to switch. If not, then their next 'fixed' OS will probably be worth the wait. But that's me, others may decide that an Apple Mac or some flavour of Linux is a better change, though watch out, Unity on Ubuntu appears to follow the Win 8 paradigm, and that attracted so much hostility that certain discussion boards were shut down over it.

Nothing new, happens from time to time...

... but it does beat the Pakistani Czech-Check flag snafu http://www.gadling.com/2007/06/16/check-flag-welcomes-czech-prime-minister/ and the Bengali upside down flags http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3175100.stm by a mile!