Posts by Steve

HTC Vodafone Magic

@ Anonymous Coward - 8:55 GMT

Yes, it has niggles, but lets get a few things straight.

-If your comparing it against an IPhone, the camera is generally better. Almost all cameraphones are beaten by a bottom-in-class compact digicam. The sensor is so small focusing doesn't really matter much anyway, so being able to jab your finger at what you want to focus on seems a bit of a pointless gimick.

-Yes, the usb headphone is annoying, but its really not the end of the world. An adaptor off ebay and bobs your uncle. If its the same kit as the G1, its a handsfree cable with a 3.5mm jack at the end - so if you want to have handsfree it works better than the equiv iphone connector. Its not a music oriented phone, not everybody wants that. On the plus side the music organisation is really nice, No iTunes, just make sure your music is tagged correctly and copy it over to the memory card.

And if you compare against say, the sony walkman phone, they've also got their own jacks - far more annoying ones which pop out all the time.

- Battery life is pisspoor on the G1, but its also piss poor on the iphone. I have a G1, my friend has an iphone. We both used it more or less exactly the same for a long day and both had flat batterys by the time we got the train home. Big touchscreens, 3g, gps and assorted bells and whistles eat battery.

- Yes, not being able to store apps to memory cards is annoying, but you 192mb is a fairly decent number of apps - infact the interface will clutter up far before your memory. When you think about it, the iphone has a built in flash which can't be removed. What happens if you remove the flash from the g1 when its got apps on it? Nasty things will happen (Crash I suspect) - so you'd have that as a complaint in the review instead. Should the G1 have a huge internal flash? Maybe, but personally the included 2gb is fine, if i want to expand, its cheap and easy. Why make people pay more for a phone with flash they don't want or need?

Ah, but can you SSH like the G1

To me the killer app of the G1 was a thoroughly useable SSH app and decent keyboard. The compact terminal geeks have been after for ages!

I don't feel any real regrets from buying the G1, The magic reduces size somewhat, but that was predictable as it was widely publicised having removed the keyboard. Pretty much all of the improvements in the firmware will come to the G1 when the firmware updates - UK users are seeing a slow rollout now (Probably a better idea than a big bang approach).

None the less a good thing for the less geeky who want something a bit more compact with only a few feature comprimises.

Boffins bust web authentication with game consoles

@Equifax

"I don't think it's much of a shock that some certificates approved by Equifax might be worthless - who do you think signed off on the credit approval for all those mortgages that went south?"

Think the point is using a "Gold Plated" CA for your own certs does not give you any additional protection against this attack. Its the client that needs updating,

Bank robber leaves pay stub at scene of blag

That stupid?

FBI spokesman Ross Rice admitted: "It's fairly unusual that we see something that specifically stupid."

Seems strange, this is america after all

US Navy's robot stealth carrier plane unveiled

Hmm, Stealth Drone

Hope they get the electronics spot on, Can you imagine them "Loosing" it!

Nuke plant reborn as 'green' data center

Re: Renewable energy sources

"Hello 1&1 support"

"Hi, my servers down"

"Oh, sorry, we've had to switch that one off because the winds not blowing very hard today and we promised to use only renewable resources"

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing! Just because you "buy" x,000 KWH of energy generated by wind over the year doesn't mean your totally renewably powered!

Sainsbury's and HP buddy up on recycling jamboree

And yet HP still provide throw away printers

If they're so green, why do they make printers which are cheaper to throw away than to buy new cartridges for, and why do they produce printers built to last 12-18 months.

Orange to bundle free Eee with HSDPA modem, airtime

@Roy

XPs a sensible choice, The Ikon 225 requires hacks to work under Linux. Fine for geeks, but they're not selling to geeks. (And if your a geek I'm sure you can slap a linux distro on there)

@ AC - alternatively

@ AC - alternatively: Think your being a little unfair there, its not charging dramatically over the odds. £20 "Profit" is penuts on a £600 deal, and probably wouldn't cover cost of credit if you bought an EEE and paid it off over the next 24 months - which is effectively what your doing...

@ Good deal - Good Deal: You won't be torrenting very effectively anyway - Orange internet everywhere gives you a 10.x.x.x address range and nats you out, so you don't get control over inbound ports. This also scuppers any online gaming you might try (Although obviously there would be lag issues anyway) and makes some VPN a bit of a pain in the bum.

Would be nice to see one of the companys make an effort to get an intergrated HSDPA card into the EEE.

Petrol stations deploy anti-theft stingers

Moved the problem 1/2 mile down the road

Well, it works to an extent, but they're just going to do a drive away at the petrol station half mile down the road.

Until theres mass adoption we won't really know how much it will change things (IE if the petrol thieves put bauld tyres and fill them with puncture agent before they do a runaway?)

MoD loses 11,000 ID cards

Making political hay out of nothing

Oh come on, its REALLY the governments fault that soldiers loose their ID cards. What the hell does this have to do with the ID card scheme?

How many credit cards have been replaced this year due to loss / theft?

Biggest non-story ever.

Porsche to challenge London CO₂ penalty in court

Re: Robert Hill

The answer is for greenpeace or some other bunch of hippies to cover random 4x4's in the street with cow sh**. If they drive in conditions that justify a 4x4, its unlikely that the owner will be fussed. If not, there will of course be plenty of publicity.

Motor titans crowd aboard 'green' bandwagon

Charging a car on Economy 7

Granted running an electric car is ultimately inefficent because of loss over the grid and charging the battery, Couldn't you charge your car overnight, using the "excess" capacity on the grid at that time. (Especially if we do go for another generation of nuclear in this country, which you can't just turn off at night as you would with gas turbines)?

If such an excess still exists, would this not effectively allow the car to be charged without creating additional CO2?

Nato secrets USB stick lost in Swedish library

Secret information on a USB Flash disk?

To be honest, I hope the guy gets thrown out of their job and banged up for this one.

Its pretty bleeding obvious you shouldn't be putting NATO Secret data onto a flash drive...

ISP bosses told to get real on broadband speeds

@Chris Miller

100mbit switched ethernet should give you wirespeed. Somethings very wrong if your not getting that! (Less TCP overheads of course, but you should expect 12mbyte / sec out of a theoretrical 12.5, providing you use an efficent protocol, not SMB.

54mbit wireless, is, of course, a different kettle of fish