MattWPBS

Okay, if anyone else read Transmetropolitan, they’ll understand why I want these with one red circle lens and one green rectangular lens.

1. What is your Minecraft player name?
MattWPBS
2. Why do you want to join Vergecraft?
People keep telling multiplayer is the way to go, and I like the idea of playing on a server with a sane community, the guidelines sound like the sort of place I’d like.
3. What servers have you played on in the past?
nada.
4. What do you want to work on / build in Vergecraft?
A farm in the sky, eventually with only water access.. No, seriously.
5. Anything else you’d like us to know.
Not really.

Yeah, if you buy direct from the network. That’s what I was getting at, CPW or P4U normally have unbranded handsets as stock.

My guess is the logic is along the lines of:

1) Got the people who were going to buy it at release already.
2) Got the people who were immediately went “meh” after the SGSIII got announced.
3) Got the people who were even between the two, purely due to being out already.
4) Let’s get anyone who’s umming and aahing before the SGSIII comes out with a good offer, and get a good lead up.

Got to bear in mind that there’s not really the same issue with carrier specific models in the UK, especially with retailers like Phones 4U or Carphone Warehouse. P4U will sell the same HOX on Vodafone, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Three, etc, etc.

Right, so you think that a single mobile device vendor is going to dominate global small value payment processing? This is going to go the way of the current credit card system sooner or later (with interoperability and ubiquity), and it’s those players who are going to be most likely to be involved, rather than a consumer products company who only develop for their own device. Look more to people like Streamline, SecureTrading, Sage and similar working with people like Visa and MasterCard.

Why can’t we all just pay what the cost is in one currency and pay the same price? Unless banks in for example the UK charge extra for currency calculations or something this doesn’t make sense!

Yup, that’ll be part of it. It’s not just in the UK, most credit or debit card companies will charge a Overseas Transaction Fee/Foreign Transaction Fee. It’s generally only a few percent, but it’s still a cost.

Other part you need to take into account is currency fluctuation and companies hedging with their pricing. They’re not just setting prices for what the current exchange rate is, they’re setting them for how they expect them to move. Easy way to illustrate this is to use XE.com to look at the exchange rates for EUR and GBP to USD one year ago, and apply them to the EVE monthly subscriptions.

8th May 2011 the rates were GBP:USD 1.63735, and EUR:USD 1.4306. They’re currently GBP:USD 1.55235 and EUR:USD 1.2959. So a year ago a USD denominated $14.95 monthly subscription would be £9.13 or €10.45. Now it would be £9.63 or €11.54. 5.48% increase in the case of GBP, and 10.39% increase in the case of EUR.

If the cost is denominated in your home currency, you know exactly what you’re paying for a year, and you don’t have to pay foreign currency charges.

Slight correction, think it should be “The UK-friendly monthly subscription, now priced at £9.99…” rather than “The UK-friendly monthly subscription, now priced at $9.99…”

In terms of desktop app, you just use the web browser. I’m in the UK as well, been using it for months after signing up via a proxy. You can either stream music to the phone, or make stuff available offline on the phone as well. Just need to download the APK off XDA or similar.

(APK – the file format for apps, XDA – developer forum)

It annoyed the living hell out of me, ended up in the Facebook Camera app instead of the actual Camera app a couple of times by accident, and it just looked… wrong.

If they want to include shortcuts, why not just have them called FB Camera and FB Messenger?

No particular order:

HTC One X (just gorgeous)
Sony Xperia S (weakness for the translucent strip at the base)
Nokia Lumia (especially in cyan)
HTC Legend (the metal case strip)
Motorola Milestone (possibly an odd choice, but it just looked SHARP)

“What’s the use polycarbonate body if it doesn’t have capability of insulating heat produced”

Just to pick up on this, any electronic device should not retain the heat inside the shell. It’s the absolute last thing you want to have happen. You need heat to dissipate as quickly as possible. To scale it up, think about if a PC’s fan stops working.

Seems to be pretty large majority in favour of the One X.

Got a One X and been keeping it constantly in a case till today, in case I wanted to shift it on and get the SGSIII. Definitely keeping the One X now, nothing made me go “wow” about the SGSIII really.

Providing you’re happy with root, pretty much the first thing people did with the One X on XDA was to re-assign the multi task button to be a menu button. It’s a gorgeous phone, and works well. As soon as CM9’s stable on it, I’ll be installing that, but Sense 4.0 is actually alright.

Probably is TBH. It’s things like that which make it appeal to people who don’t like the idea of things like WoW, it isn’t going to appeal to most people.

I just love reading about the meta game in EVE.

If anyone’s read Transmetropolitan, you’re probably having the same WANT reaction as me for a pair with one red circle lens, and one green rectangle lens.