Posts by Jon B 139 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Mar 2011
Seems like it has a 75% chance of landing in the Ocean, Antarctica or Australia or Siberia. And a miniscule chance of hitting me personally, and if it does hit someone they get the privilige of being the first person to be killed by falling space debris and all the posthumous fame that goes with it.
@Matthew42 We have speed tiers in NZ UFB, and it hasn't seemed to have damaged the system in the way you describe. I'm on 50/10, previously on 100/20 and those who want it can get 1000/500 for not a huge increase in the wholesale price from Chorus. Network build is chugging along nicely.
My parents, in a small North Wales village were connected to FTTP recently, after being on the end of a 5km ADSL line previously. It's great when I visited, and set them up so their phones were actually using it. Was built using funding from the EU though, so good luck for any other similar villages..
I know Xiaomi were prevented from marketing and selling their phones in most Western markets under the threat of severe patent litigation from one incumbant or another. My last few phones have all been Xiaomi direct from China and they are great, the Redmi 4X Pro is seriously the best bang for buck phone out there right now.
Anybody who watched Blake's 7 knows that voice activated computers ought to
1) Confirm their activation word with a chime or a very irascible "yes?"
2) Ask "Confirm?" after being given an order.
Given that an 80's TV sci-fi scriptwriter can get it right, it's a little sad that Google, Amazon et al. can't quite manage to get there.
To which said toddler replies 'yes'
Measuring coverage by landmass instead of population percentage makes that report is a load of rubbish - it has NZ even worse than UK, when it has nationwide 4G coverage, and according to Akamai some of the fastest mobile data speeds. Band 28 (700mhz) rolled out near nationally for less urban areas, and the globally popular 1800 and 2100 bands in urban areas.
I find Cortana pretty cruddy compared to googles voice recognition, specifically the ability to convert what you are saying into recognisable sentences, whereas Cortana likes sticking in random words that don't make sense in the overall context of the sentence.
The wholesale price of 100/20 fibre is only a couple of dollars extra a month than the 30/10 basic offering - so the ISPs can market faster speed for pretty much the same price. The wholesale price only really jumps up by 20-30 dollars a month for the 200/200 plans or 1000/500 plans.
Here in NZ we are in middle of the FTTP rollout, which seems to be progressing as well as it can be.
Also excellent 4G coverage, including 700mhz for more rural areas, and we are starting to see the first offerings from the mobile companies for fixed home wireless broadband. Costs about 40quid for 80GB, it won't ever be unlimited though, which you can get for about same price on adsl, vdsl (FTTC already completed 5yrs ago) or fibre.
Well done Microsoft for another nail in the Windows Phone coffin.
My two year old Lumia 735, bought for less money than the launch price of the 650, has superior specifications in every regard.
This is a budget phone in budget hardware for mid-range phone price.
From a networking technology position it is sensible - wireless is heaviliy effected by contention and more congested it is, from maybe just a few users on your cell tower, the worse the experience is for everyone.
That's what happens when marketing triumphs over engineers, and then have to weasel their way out of it. Meanwhile in New Zealand we're fairly content with ~3GB data limits per month and world leading 3G and 4G speeds.
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