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Comment Here in the UK (Score 1) 124

On the 3 network, the only network that owns and manges its own infrastructure....

£30 / $55 a month gets me...

1/ Free SGS rooted and running 2.3.4
2/ 5000 free minutes talk per month any network or landline
3/ 3000 free 3 to 3 minutes a month
4/ 5000 free texts (sending, no charge for incoming text / sms / mms) a month
5/ "all you can eat" data allowance, and I typically get 1.7 mbit minimum up and down anywhere, tether to laptop, run wifi hotspot, all free.

It's a good deal, the SGS + 3 is essentially science fiction from 1980 come to life.

Comment I was falsely accused of rape, custody battle (Score 3, Interesting) 323

I *wish* Google latitude / check-in and Android smartphones with GPS were around ten years ago, it would have made my case so much simpler, and prosecuting her so much easier.

Let's face it, opting out doesn't mean you turn into a ghost that nobody tracks, so you may as well opt in, control it, and who knows, one day it may save your ass....

Comment It's a HISTORICAL record, dummies... (Score 1) 198

The secret of this record isn't about setting your clock right NOW... The secret is you can use the HISTORICAL record of changes to work out how many seconds have elapsed between midday on the 7th July 1988 and "now" or, to put it another way. You can work out at precisely which local time satellite ABC123 was directly overhead at any given location.

Comment In the UK, Three.co.uk is the only honest one. (Score 1) 257

Only carrier with their own towers and data infrastructure, which they are still investing heavily in.

my plan is sold as;

2,000 free minutes per month
5,000 free texts per month
"all you can eat" data per month (their quotes)

For 30 quid a month, around 45/50 bucks, Samsung Galaxy S on android 2.2 included.

Comment The UK perspective. (Score 0) 101

As readers may be aware (here in the UK) T-mobile just brought in swingeing cuts in mobile traffic caps, from 3gb and month down to 500mb, the cost thereafter per mb being equivalent to late 1980's 9.k modem on pay per minute landline charges of the era.

Here in the UK, the *only* phone company with its own infrastructure (towers etc) is www.three.co.uk, so 2 days ago I took a new phone with them.

2,000 minutes of calls, 5,000 texts and "all you can eat" data plan for UK£35 a month.

3 basically offer two decent smartphones (yes, they offer loads of phones, but only two that really tempt the /. type geek) and these are the iphone and the Samsung Galaxy S android.

For me it was a complete no brainer;

wi-fi hotspot and tethering
excellent battery endurance
android so cheap and free apps
android to the excellent google navigation

the iphone couldn't offer any of these, so it was a non-contender, even if it had been half the contract cost of the samsung android.

BTW, Google Samsung Nexus S only available from carphone warehouse, who sell it on T-mobile, good luck using the sat nav in satellite / street view mode with a 500 mb data cap.

YMMV

Comment reducing childhood obesity through healthy gaming? (Score 2) 80

why not simply go outside and play a REAL LIFE fucking game instead of some shite computer game if your concerns include childhood obesity....

in addition to burning more calories, using more muscle groups, and breathing fresh air, you will also learn to speak to and relate to other human beings, first hand, and learn essential social skills like co-operation and mutual goal seeking...

ffs

Comment UK Legal Point. (Score 1) 131

Unlike the US, in the UK, individual lawyers first duty is not to the Client, but to the Law Society (Guild in other words) so the point here is that there is a difference between Andrew Crossley, individual lawyer, and Andrew Crossley, company with a single partner / lawyer.

You get a lot of "odd" cases that this throws up, especially in Family Law where it is quite likely that a given Client has at some point instructed more than one Lawyer in more than one Case (eg two separate cases against the ex, or two separate cases against two ex's) and you try to hand documents issued by the 1st Lawyer to the 2nd Lawyer, who will not want to touch them, see them, or even discuss them (seriously) with you.

The point being, the Law does some strange things, it throws up anomalies like these, that don't make sense at first to laymen, and never will without an adequate explanation, which these sorts of articles make a point of never giving, instead highlighting the inanity.

Comment Re:New Complexities in Cars (Score 2, Interesting) 207

My 1990 MB W124 diesel has ABS, yet it doesn't have a single computer anywhere on board, no ECUs, nothing.

The interesting fact is more modern cars with the same basic systems PLUS computers are LESS reliable, and always generating system problems and failures.

Often, the fault is not the "computers" themselves per se, hardware wise, not even software wise, it is the peripherals (eg MAF senders etc) that die, and then take the whole system down.

Comment ARM, Acorn, RISC, x86, MIPS and RAQ2 (Score 3, Interesting) 283

Have run all of these, in anger, in production, at one point or another.

I still have an extremely soft spot for the RAQ2, 64 bit MIPS processor.

Image link - http://dev.gentoo.org/~vapier/pics/mipsel-raq2/inside-main-board.jpg

Nota Bene, NO HEAT-SINKS OF ANY KIND, and yet these puppies could saturate a 10 Mbit connection (of course this was the days before flash and stuff) and the whole mainboard used about 10 watts, most of which was the RAM, the biggest power eater was the IDE HD.

Downside was it was MIPS, which is a lot like the downside of the Acorn ARM based A series and Risc-PC series, eg not x86 compatible, ergo not mainstream.

Now that ARM is used is zillions of other devices, ARM is no longer the backwoods, everywhere except in "a computer" eg desktop or server.

Which means ARM on the desktop or ARM on the server won't suffer so badly for not being x86... it will still suffer, but not so badly.

RAQ3 went away from MIPS to x86, IMHO because of this accessibility and availability of x86 code, not because it was technically superior to MIPS... one RAQ3 wasn't more powerful than two RAQ2 in any sense except power consumption and thermal rejection.

In practical terms x86 has gone nearly as far as it can go, both in terms of light speed and die size, and thermal dissipation per cubic mm, so the alternatives are catching up, not so much because of sheer lifting power, but because of thermal dissipation per cubic mm they still have "development room" left to play around in.

The next 5 years or so are going to be interesting, as this "development room" is explored and used up, and especially so if anyone comes out with a robust cross architecture compiler / translator.

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