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MrBeck

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  • Jun 09, 2011 @ 04:28am

    Has the Bank changed its on-line security?

    If I were the plaintiff, I'd watch the Bank's on-line security carefully, the instant they "improve" the security I'd re-instigate the suit with new evidence, that the Bank has seen it necessary to implement different security.

  • Apr 26, 2011 @ 05:30am

    Re: Re: Google

    Apparently there is this company on the internet that is has been somewhat successful selling ads internationally and supporting their services through these ads. I believe they are called Google. I believe broadcaster=dinosaur and that alone is the problem. They had a good run, as did the buggy whip makers and now they are about as useful. The only thing keeping them alive are the millions spent on lobbying our "public servants" to strangle competition. Whatever the solution I find it very unlikely the current crop of broadcasters and content "suppliers" (they don't make it, and the people who do are beginning to discover they don't need them) will be part of it.

  • Apr 26, 2011 @ 05:03am

    Re: Why the BBC care

    The BBC care because the sell the shows to the US. If the US watch the shows via some other means, the value goes down so the BBC make less money when they come to sell the show. Why they don't offer a subscription for internet TV I have no idea. Teh licence fee is about $20 per month so a sub of the same price would seem reasonable.

  • Apr 20, 2011 @ 03:30am

    Proper Nouns and CJK languages

    A word to the wise. If you want to control what people who do not use the Latin alphabet call your product, do not trust transliteration. Get language appropriate names out for all the markets you want to operate in. Chinese has no useful transliteration, Japanese has two phonetic alphabets (one is Romanji, using the Latin characters, but normally reserved for "foreign" words). Arabic names are spelled differently in different Latin alphabet based languages since the letters in the alphabet are pronounced differently in different languages, not just the vowels, the consonants too. Just ask a Dutchman to pronounce Jans.

  • Nov 13, 2010 @ 03:37am

    Re: This Is Why America Is The Greatest Country On Earth

    You must be referring to Al Gore. Tim B-L is British and he was working at CERN (in Switzerland) at the time he proposed this work.

    You have a future in North Korean PR.

  • Nov 11, 2010 @ 03:55am

    AFAIR Jukispot was the first

    Despite what the author says, unless another vendor put wifi on a mobile before Nokia, unlikely, JukiSpot was the first to put a hot-spot on the phone. They released the code for the first Nokia with wifi, about 2003/4, and as I remember it pre-3G. So it was wifi and GPRS. Why Nokia didn't include the function in the phones I'll never understand. The E series have DLNA and VoIP built-in (no need for an app for that) but baulked at hot-spot, go figure.

  • Oct 22, 2010 @ 08:31am

    Twatter

    Anybody registered the above name? Seems appropriate as a alternative for Twitter

  • Oct 02, 2010 @ 02:53am

    Nokia has twice the smartphone market share of Apple

    Nokia has the largest market share for smartphones in the world, twice that of Android (2nd) and iPhone (3rd). The E-Series is my choice, probably not a smartphone on this blog as they do not have touchscreens, but they do have SIP client built in, and satnav with local maps, and keys, real live keys. Phones that work as phones (even have noise canceling mikes)and can be operated in winter (with gloves on), with one hand. I have never seen a fart app though so maybe not really a smartphone.

  • Oct 02, 2010 @ 02:48am

    Re: Re: Nokia is not able to advance easily.

    The maps are stored on the phone, by using OTA, wifi or via your PC. There is zero connection needed to use th emaps.

  • Sep 16, 2010 @ 10:22am

    "savvy enough to use an iPhone"

    Huh? The whole UI concept of an iPhone is that any idiot can use one. Just read the original reviews, filled with descriptions of how you don't need manuals or anything, just pick it up and use it. And descriptions of how other smartphones are so complicated. If iPhones are now considered complicated the whooshing sound you hear the sound of the national IQ in freefall.

  • Jul 28, 2010 @ 02:51am

    Tickers are owned by the issuing authority

    Firstly, there are different tickers for different exchanges, the ticker is assigned by the market (exchange) not designed by the company which gets it. I assume you are talking about North American markets when you refer to "tickers" but market data suppliers use "tickers" for the same instrument (share, bond, ...) that differ from the ticker used on the trading exchange and other exchanges use different tickers for the local version of the equity (IBM has about 18 equity tickers around the world, "IBM" is one of them). Asian exchanges generally use numbers for "tickers" and Reuters assigns its own "ticker" (called a Reuters Instrument Code or RIC) for each of the thousands of equity instruments it monitors (capital market instruments have tickers assigned too). If you want to use RICs you need a licence from Reuters. You will find that you need a licence for SEDOL, DUNS and others too.

  • Mar 13, 2010 @ 06:21am

    Don't scoop the wires

    While most folks think of the wires as feeds to conventional news distribution channels and websites, that is not what lies behind the admonition to "not scoop the wires". Thousand of desktops in financial institutions receive a feed of Reuters wire news (in addition to various feeds of financial data) and Reuters compares its delivery of news of market changing events to its competitors (DJ, AFP, Blomberg, ..) in milliseconds, as do some of the larger customers. He who is first wins (the next contract). Market changing events are released as headlines only initially to get them out as quickly as possible. The story follows and develops as the event is better understood and reported. What constitutes a Market Changing Event? How about an earthquake in Chile and copper prices, very significant for the initial event (the headline). You have a third of a second to buy cheap copper. Not much interest afterwards to the commodities desk as the market will now have adjusted, therefore no money to be made.

  • Feb 18, 2010 @ 03:01am

    Re: Freedom of Speech

    I'm afraid that in the UK there is no "freedom of speech" as enshrined in the US Constitution. The effect is as shown, there is no requirement to demonstrate "harm" to declare the "speech" unlawful, hence there is no requirement that the "speech" was ever heard. As an American who has lived in the UK for over 30 years, I am still amazed that there has never been a modern revolution here to establish some modicum of citizens rights (like the bill of rights). My only relief is knowing that Europe is even worse.

  • Feb 10, 2010 @ 03:44am

    BBC coverage detailed here

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/01_january/19/winter.shtml

    maybe NBC should just set-up a proxy

  • Feb 06, 2010 @ 04:21pm

    1984?

    What did Orwell call it, "new speak"?

    No Contract = contract
    unlimited = limited
    full coverage = partial coverage

    I think this is great by which I mean I think its crap.

  • Feb 05, 2010 @ 08:18am

    Re: Jumping the gun a little?

    They knew this (a new res system) would cause terrible problems. It always does. If they didn't understand that then they are truly incompetent and have never looked at the history of this action in the airline business.

    Their reaction appears to be one of denial. I think we should all watch this carefully as it may well be the rare opportunity to watch a company commit suicide.

    As to what the travelling public should do?, fly someone else and see how you like it, you may get a surprise.

  • Dec 30, 2009 @ 12:02pm

    Why WINE is not an "emulator" or why Win7 is

    Firstly, I fall into the WINE is not an emulator since it doesn't actually emulate a machine only an API layer. But for those who do consider this emulation I would like to point out the following, WinNT3 and 3.5 contained the first Win32 API systems available and by the logic that makes WINE an emulator, all Windows systems since NT 3.5 are emulations of these OS version too.

    There was a time before the amateurs took over that words used in computing had precise meanings as they do in other sciences. Unfortunately that no longer applies.

  • Jul 25, 2009 @ 09:33am

    I don't live in the US, who is Erin Andrews?

    Perhaps the other 4 billion people have an interest in whether the Internet is regulated. In England this is called a "tempest in a teacup", a largely (on a worldwide basis) unknown person has an innocuous but embarrassing video posted on the 'Net. The person is a journalist?, so journalists are outraged. Remind me, who cares?

  • Feb 06, 2009 @ 07:03am

    Don't buy DAB, it just gives them hope

    I just asked a car salesman if the DAB radio he was pushing would work in France, where we often visit. His unexpected answer was, no, it would not as the French (and other chunks of Europe) were using a later standard. I bought the FM model, works everywhere, but even that is different in the US where the distance between stations differs, so watch that digital dialling. Looks to me like the vested interests are now wearing woolly coats. The European wide FM digital sub channel is exploited for station id and traffic, if your receiver has the options, most car radios have. DAB doesn't have the traffic info either.

  • Nov 19, 2008 @ 05:45am

    Tax CDs

    By far the easiest way to deal with this is to add a TN tax on CDs of say $.10 per CD to pay for the filters. I'm sure the music sellers wouldn't want to take a free ride on the TN population and after all it's they who benefit.

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