"Suddenly the MS tie in looks more like a noose."
Suddenly?
Posts by Robert E A Harvey
3010 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2006
Page:
A rapid first hands-on: Nokia’s Windows phones
Leaked Nokia WinMobes ready for midrange scrum
Monday 24th October 2011 22:39 GMT
I want to be able to have 3 sims active at the same time [2], and a months standby time. [1]
I want to be able to make and receive calls.
I want the voicemail on the phone, so I don't have to pay for international calls to retrieve it when I am abroad
I don't really care about SMS, I would not miss it if it was missing. I certainly don't want to use up my battery listening to music or being a torch.
I don't think this is rocket science.
[1] My TimePort L7089 with the double size battery and extended case could do around 45 days standby time. in 1999.
[2] I have had two Smasung that did this for two sims, on rental, but they are not quad-band or world-wide which is daft. There are chinese knock-offs with up to 4 sim slots, but the software is so crap I end up throwing them at the wall.
Appcelerator juices HTML5 support with Particle Cloud buy
Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy Blu-ray disc set
Can the iPad save newspapers?
Monday 24th October 2011 14:17 GMT
@Chris W
Yes, we are probably of an age.
But I was referring to the 15 years or more of getting free newsfeeds off the web. I don't think the paywall idea will become a widely accepted commercial reality unless they all change at once.
Its all very weird: Reuters are cutting their own throats with http://uk.reuters.com/ bypassing their own customers (the newspapers) and giving it away for nowt!
Monday 24th October 2011 08:34 GMT
Hmm
I am /never/ going to pay anything like as much for pixels as for a physical object. I might consider a pound a month for a local paper, and about half that for a national one. If it turned out to be worth reading.
I can use old newspapers to clean windows, line the budgie cage, and crumpled to make packaging material. Try that with a bunch of pixels.
I think it is far too late to start a subscription model for web news services. The newspapers could have established the habit in 1995, but not now. In effect you would be paying for the columnists and commentators, not for the raw news, like you do with physical papers. And why would commentators not start subscription blogs and keep /all/ the money?
As you say, part 94.
Ten... small screen HD TVs
HTC Radar WinPho 7.5 smartphone
Cable employee admits replacing Superbowl feed with porn
UK has enough sheep shearers, needs more coders
Thai floods flush storage channel clean
Toshiba demos monster hi-res tablet display
Gov: DAB must battle on, despite being old and rubbish
New RAM shunts data into flash in power cuts
Friday 21st October 2011 13:22 GMT
"especially on pcs running OSes other than Windows."
You /are/ having a giraffe, aren't you?
My 'buntu and fedora boxes hibernate with no bother whatsoever. My $MEGACORP can only be hibernated 2 or 3 times before needing a clean boot. If I don't then little things like clicking icons to launch apps, or switching between running programmes slows to a halt and then crashes.
Vegas man begs web for $1m to fix gigantic scrotum
Acer UK sales slashed in HALF in Q3
Thursday 20th October 2011 14:37 GMT 
The penalty of "me too"
You do this "me too" marketing trick, and when the market is busting itself to buy you pick up trade. When the market shrinks you shrink faster than anyone else.
What happened to the uniquely Acer products, that no-one else was offering? Things like the N300 series, still used by service engineers and stores inventory people all over the world. (They still sell a P300, if you can find one)
What about all that talk of pocket projectors? never seen one of those in real life either.
Ballmer disses Android as cheap and complex
Wednesday 19th October 2011 20:33 GMT
I've said before,, and I will say again, they employ a load of clever people, and it would be quite surprising if most of the things they coded did not work quite well (sometimes not well enough, but even Chrysler built the ypsilon). I am actually surprised that this, their 7th (at least) go at a phone OS had stuff missing at launch. I was expecting it to be better than it is.
It is the way they do business that really gets up my pipe. Forcing windows onto pc builders, taking and ruining publically published standards, etc etc etc.
Look at all the business users stuck in winpho 6.5 never-never land (including my own employer, whose java based pda call-out suite can't be ported). I remember autoroute, whose software offerings other than the well-known routefinder included lorry delivery scheduling, solutions for the travelling-salesman problem, area based call management (for service engineers or emergency response). All scrapped when M$ took them over.
I like c#. I thought they way they got .net turned into an ecma standard was laudible. Then they went and spoiled it by 'upgrading' and 'extending' it into proprietory space again.
it ain't the coders I hate, its the management.
RIM lifts skirt, flashes 'new' OS at devs
Wednesday 19th October 2011 16:04 GMT
distraction
QNX is a proper OS, developed and maintained by someone who knows what they are doing.
Then RIM bought the company, and seem intent on doing a Nokia. I feel sorry for all the other users.
Stop fiddling about with the names of things, and farting about with press releases, and get on and make something new.
How about a server-based digital secretary, so you can say things like "find out when Frank is going to be in Scunthorpe, and get me a hotel on the same night"? Or persuading app developers by charging a penny per time for using an app instead of buying it outright, then splitting that 50/50 with the developer? coming up with some innovative calling systems - like getting your calls routed to both landlines and blackberry simultaneously, so you can answer whatever is nearer? Having the whole sales force's blackberry ring when someone calls the sales hotline, so the first one free picks up the call?
It seems to me that most of these can already be done, and that RIM is loosing ground by the day. Renaming the OS is a distraction that won't help.
Yahoo! revenue! AND! profits! bomb! as! expected!
OPERA review serves up a feast for physics geeks
Currys, PC World websites slated by punters
Apple iPhone 4S
Hundreds of Mr A N OTHERs discovered on payrolls
Apple and Samsung discuss... CPU production deal
iPhone 4S: Our *hit list
Apple: 4m iPhone 4S handsets sold, thank you very much
WD: Thailand floods worse than feared
Monday 17th October 2011 22:40 GMT
Can we spare a thought for the people whose homes and jobs have been affected already, and in the future? around 300 are dead and 3 million homeless.
I don't know about you, but I can live with my existing hard disks for a while.
if you want a tech angle, the Radio Amateur Society of Thailand is organising communications and accepting relief donations: http://www.qsl.net/rast/
Boffins whip up SELF-WIRING chip
Apache insists OpenOffice is alive, well, and flush
Toyota Yaris 2011
Apple, tech titans lead US brands to world domination
ISPs end PM's web smut block dream
Friday 14th October 2011 15:54 GMT
In response to all the down-voters
it would not be hard, as in many hotels, for the ISP to have a filter maintained by them at their end, which you could ask to be be removed on a subscription-by-subscription basis. Then, at least, the big boys would be doing some of the work, not blaming the victims.
My Virgin Mobile account worked exactly like that. I telephoned them and confirmed I wanted access controls removed, and they did it. What is wrong with that?
Wednesday 12th October 2011 07:47 GMT
Bone idle bastards
I can recall campaigning in the 1990s for them to develop spam-proof email, but 'nothing to do with us, chief'. Still the same. Giving customers a hollow choice over what they do on their own machines will cost them nothing.
It is this sort of 'give us money, we do nothing to earn it' attitude that will lead to government legislation, and that will be a shambles
Ubuntu's Oneiric Ocelot: Nice, but necessary?
Friday 14th October 2011 15:53 GMT
Nothing wrong with trying something new
I applaud Canonical for trying something new. And, if it is not to your liking there are loads of alternatives, unlike certain other OS suppliers.
That said, I'm not too convinced yet, and find the idea of searching by programme name faintly laughable in an environment where silly names seem de rigeur!
But lets not stick in the mud, eh? This is an industry that started with teletypes.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
