Re: Samsung Galaxy Y

SE Mini and Mini Pro - 7.5cm screen, comes with Android 2.3.4, Sony have committed ICS for the phone (if you want ICS on a 500mb, 1gHz handset)

Currently available for a bit over £100 SIM free.

Re: Deja vu all over again

Interesting. Tell me how do you know " the versions of dotnet I need"? Is their a magic Windows dependency tool I don't know about?

Re: Really?

You need to lose the DK passport. Remember when SE taxed everything? I do since I was working in London among dozens of SE citizens all living outside SE. I wonder why?

Re: Bloat

Me too, installed, went to settings to move the app to SD, found that not only the app but also the data were in the phone memory and not movable. Uninstalled. Never actually tried the app, if the developer is so arrogant , stupid or lazy as to demand all of the primary memory for their use, I'm not interested.

Re: Hmm...

I agree, funny way to run a business. You buy a Sony TV and spend X, Sony spends X+Y supplying the TV. Perhaps they think they will make up the difference in volume.

They need new accountants, I understand there are some previously employed by Olympus available.

Re: Conspiracy or Cock Up? or buying a cheap patent portfolio?

You seem to think MS are interested in Nokia as a running HW company. I think you will find you are mistaken. Nokia have a huge patent portfolio related to mobile which will, under the leadership of Elop, not be disposed of during the decline. MS will use some of it's cash to acquire the portfolio and Nokia will be no more. Makes sense if you are a lawyer or an accountant.

Re: It's not about the price. Right it's trying to keep the functionality you already have.

Ex Centro user here. You are "stuck" with the best set of PIMs available. Any of the so called "smartphone" PIMs will disappoint when compared to the 10 year old Centro apps. I eventually went Android only because I was fully Googled and the integration was excellent with Gmail and Calendar, but not perfect, Android calendar still does not differentiate multiple calendars in the display and generally the Calendar app is rubbish compared to the Centro, especially if you often change time zones. The Symbian apps come closer but unless Nokia comes to it's senses those about to be lost as well. BTW, HP dumped the Palm PIMs on WebOS so it was rubbish as well. Just what happens when the target stops being the actual user and becomes marketing to the world.

Another POV

You make the assumption that her parents wish to maintain a relationship once their legal obligations are ended.

You don't need to subscribe to Sports to get the F1 channel

If you have the HD package you get the F1 channel, the HD packed is an extra £10.25 if you are not currently an HD subscriber. So the costs for F1 are either £0 if you have HD or £123/year if you are not or £360/year if you are not a Sky subscriber.

Alternatively, if you have a dish you can point it at the Astra 19.2 site and watch on RTL while listing to Radio 5 Live coverage.

Expect a Sky price increase in September 2012 as they have published a freeze until then and quite a lot of content has been added in the past year, some of which is even watchable.

she uses high drain appliances after dark

Then she doesn't know how the FIT payments work. FIT is paid for all generated kW, not just power fed into the grid. So she is buying cheap power in the dark instead of using free power in the day (assumes she generates the full drain during the day)

JC episode

Absolutely correct. That episode was transmitted in 1997. Maddie explains to her boyfriend (Alex McGowen?) the procedure to break into the most popular BT answering machine of the time.

Anyone who says this form of "hacking" has not been going on since at least the mid 90's is an idiot.

Longitude Counts???

While latitude is important, longitude is not. If it works in CA or NV then it will work at the same latitude 3000 miles east.

Cloudy days per year is another story.

"Solar cells which will still need constant maintenance, replacing every few years as they wear out / fail". Then why are the ones on my roof guaranteed by Sharp for 20 years? With 80% generation at 25 years.

The German experience is that there is no maintenance other than cleaning on the panels. The inverters do need to be replaced about half way through the system lifetime of 25 years.

Perhaps you are buying below standard panels?

iThings are "luxury goods"

Apple can't do a spread market. They have developed the brand as a luxury brand like Rolex. They will need to offer a "Tudor" equivalent to the "iThings" so as not to debase the current lux brand.

By design

A smiling Mark Thompson tells us that NO services will be cut. Since the BBC management is structured around these services, that translates to no management will need to go since they still have their service to "manage". We'll just lose content instead which after all in not that important as it employs fewer of Mark's friends and their children. Isn't John Sergeant's son doing well.

Market differs in the UK

That is to say there IS a market. In MA I expect you have access to gas via exactly one supplier for an area. In the UK you can have access to many. The meters are not changed, just the bills come from a different "retailer". So basically in the MA monopoly system only one company needs to decide to upgrade meters, in the UK free market system, either all companies agree or the govt forces the upgrade by regulation (this is happening).

What another word for a lawyer?

What's wrong with this is of course is that the hypothetical artist never gets the reward either way. All of the "profit" is consumed by the "marketing" costs so there is never any money to distribute back to the artist once the promotion, studio, distribution and overhead costs are paid. "Parasite" is the word you are looking for.

The difference is "geographic rights"

In case 1. you are in the same area as the rights holder, who paid to distribute the content.

in case 2. you need not be in the same area as the source of the content.

None of this is really about copyright, it's all about distribution rights. The content providers (these are not the content creators) own the rights to distribution and pre-internet owned or sold licence for most of the distribution channels. They are having a bit of trouble with the fact that those days are gone and they can no longer control distribution. No one wants to pay that much money for the rights to distribute content that was distributed in the US a year ago if everyone outside the US who wanted to see or hear it has already done so using "grey" channels to acquire it. The noise about copyright is only made since enforcing distribution territories would be a non-starter in court (after all Obama gave region 1 DVD's to Brown, was that an offence?).

The BBC contract has two more years to run

It was the BBC's decision. They got Sky to agree to allow the every-other crap, Bernie just trousers the cash.

Too Old

Not only do I remember the chain printers (still around I expect) but I remember the field change for the the two IBM printers (14??) that arrived in huge boxes. The change was a new lid, with a pointy top, instead of the lids we had with flat tops. The problem was coffee cups resting on the flat top when there was a fault or out of paper on the printer. The OS got the fault from the printer and raised the lid for the operators convenience, dumping the coffee all over the print-out at the back of the printer. The new lids were shaped so that a cup would not rest on top. Expect IBM has a patent on that.

I have three of these

Unfortunately they are locked to TracFone. We have another three we use for US trips. And I agree, I liked them so much I have two more in the UK we put into the glovebox for emergencies. The batteries hold their charge for months. Just take them out every six moths, make a call to keep the SIM alive and recharge the battery.

And don't forget the built-in torch.

Job description for tabloid journalist

You might want to copyright the phrase.

because the voicemail interception technique hadn't been perfected yet?

You do realise the "interception technique" of which you speak is ringing the voicemail number and guessing the PIN. Hardly a complicated process.

I don't doubt the NOTW might have given Payne a phone to be able to listen to the voicemails, after all she was a major investment for the company. She was an unknown quantity and it would be a lack of due diligence if they did not want to know if she was talking to another paper.

Suspect this is closer to the mark than generally accepted

If I had a job "hacking" phones (ringing the voicemail number and guessing the pin), the first thing I would do is keep a good record of all of the numbers I came across as they might well come in handy in the future. People often leave their number when they leave a voicemail message. This simple fact could explain the quantity of numbers and notes found. So if I "hack" 200 numbers, how many new numbers can I gather by listening to the messages of those 200.

I'm not suggesting the NOTW did not "hack" phones but I am suggesting Mulcaire's notes may not reflect just NOTW funded activities.

Finally, if anyone believes that the NOTW was the only "news" organisation doing this, I have a bridge they might be interested in.

I use my E52 for GPS and music/radio

I can't speak for the comsumer Nokia's (N-Series) but I have had little problems with my E-Series phones and normally use an E52 for GPS and travel info (the ITIS traffic app is good) while using the FM or internet radio app. The battery lasts for two to four days depending on how much 3G time. I don't use it for browsing much, just news and the like, but email and calendar are pushed from Google mail and calendar into the phone apps, not some add-on. I prefer the built-in SIP client to Skype but use both. I don't really have much time for playing games.

Just buy old E Series

I now have a collection of the older E Series phones to carry me through the current Fisher Price Phone fad. Nokia are updating the E72 and E52 with a few updated apps and you will find that most of the other apps for Symbian can still be found (but install them now as they will doubtless disappear).

A disclaimer here, I know the E Series do not have touchscreens. I consider this an advantage. I know the E Series are not particularly media presentation friendly, I could not care less. I know that the E Series are excellent at telephony, integrate with Google apps pretty well and have long battery life, all of which I do care about. I also find that my E52 has a DLNA client and control point, FM and internet radio, GPS and maps, integrated (with the native contacts DB) SIP client, and the sort of "home" screen as discussed above. I also understand that some people find it very complicated to use. I don't.

Jonathan Creek

In the first JC episode (The Wrestlers Tomb) there is a scene where Maddy sits at her desk entering digits on the phone keypad. Asked by her boyfriend (amazingly played by Alistair McGowan, you never know who is going to pop up) what she is doing, she replies with the model of the BT answering machine she is "hacking", two digit "pin", "ah there it is, 36", and proceeds to listen to the messages.

Since this was originally broadcast in 1997 we can assume it was common practice at that time for journalist to hack "voicemail". Looks to me like the only change is that the length of the unchanged PIN is now 4 digits (0000) instead of 2 (00).

So will we go back and get all 14 years worth of offences?

E-Series have DLNA too

My E52 has DLNA client, server and control node. It also has a built-in SIP client (I use SIPgate) that is integrated into "Contacts", GPS nav that does not require a connection (handy if you are travelling where the data costs £7.50/MB), a noise cancelling mic that makes calls from noisy environments understandable, wifi tethering (I did buy an app for that) and currently a four day battery life (I do have a spare battery to pop in if I have to). It does not have a "touchscreen", it has a keyboard, therefore it is not a "smartphone".

I assume Nokia removed vast chunks of feature from the ^3 version of Symbian to try achieve that magical UI, so simple that anyone can use. This should be called "Appletizing", remove features until it's simple enough for your customer base, make it smooth and shiny, set an "exclusive" price point. This has luxury goods marketing written all over it.

Some of the features get added back by "apps", not as good as doing it right but much cheaper to develop.

Poor example of poor example

Not digital doesn't mean not electronic. Germany was still installing analogue (semiconductor based, not mechanical) exchanges into the 70's, as were some providers in the US. Will these be replaced by digital exchanges? Why when digital cable/fibre and cellular systems provide the same coverage and more services. Exchanges (point to point wiring of any sort) will go the way of the dinosaurs.

I know something the Board didn't,

what was going to happen to the Nokia share price once the deal was leaked/announced. Had they known I suspect they would have been far less quick off the mark to believe Elop. He certainly didn't tell them they were going to wake up a few weeks later 30% out of pocket on Nokia shares (8.45 EUR on 9 Feb, 5.975 EUR today). Has he actually bought any Nokia yet, or is he still holding MS?

Investment accounts, you can't just close these

Think about it. They chose to screw the investment account holders specifically because you can't just close the account. If they had done it to the current or straight savings (any of those left?) they knew that since there is no legal problem with moving the account they would. But investment accounts are typically one to five year investments with expensive escape clauses. They knew exactly what they were doing and exactly who they are screwing.