Posts by Oliver Smith

Case cut-outs connote iPad 2 SD, HDMI connectivity

iPad to TV direct instead of AppleTV?

You can already connect an iPad to a TV directly using a composite/component cable, so I don't expect them to limit it's TV connectivity in the next version..

Car immobilisers easily circumvented by crafty carjackers

Six hours the first time, or six hours every time?

Now he's cracked it, can he now defeat the algorithm an awful lot quicker the next time?

How I built a zero energy cost, zero carbon home server

PogoPlug here

Same architecture as the SheevaPlug, but with less memory. I've wiped the PogoPlug custom firmware off mine and am now running the PlugBox flavour of ArchLinux on it.

I also encountered occasional errors with USB storage - usually it'd produce a handful of USB-related error messages in the system log, then pretty much lock up all access to the drive 'til I either pulled the USB cable or reset the box. However, since kernel 2.6.35 (where there were some patches to the orion-ehci USB driver that the sheeva platform uses), I've had no trouble whatsoever with the USB storage.

Steve Jobs death-grips iPhone 4 reality

iPhone 4 is to the Register as Lady Di is to the Mirror

New material much?

The DoD's very cloudy thinking over Gmail

Shocked that the DoD use email at all?

I'd be very surprised if ANY classified material leaves DoD by email at all, regardless of which mail server forwards it.

E-mail has no guarantees of security or privacy thanks to its distributed nature and its roots in the 1970s and the DoD are well aware of that fact.

MoD pays quadruple in money + blood for Afghan helicopters

Not quite as clear cut as Lewis says...

The Blackhawk is almost as old as the Puma (less than a decade in it, I believe), and the Puma is in use by 30ish national air forces around the world. Hardly the massive difference in age and usage that Lewis was implying...

Apple MacBook Air June 2009

@Anonymous Coward

The niche of people who are fed up of lugging a heavy fully-featured laptop everywhere and need something they can actually work on when they reach their destination, rather than a £200 toy laptop with no performance, no storage and a screen the size of a postage stamp.

Back when I was spending my life travelling around the country on the train visiting various research associates, I would've given my left leg for an Air rather than the weapons-grade Dell that I'd been lumbered with...

Apple 2G iPod Touch

Sound reproduction

Are we seriously getting upset about the finer points of sound quality on a piece of equipment that's designed to play back audio compressed using a lossy codec?

The 'Stanza' application, available in the App Store, is a free eBook reader for the iPhone / iTouch.

O2 buckles under 3G iPhone demand

Worked for me

I went down to the O2 Cardiff store at about 8.30am - I was about 60th in the queue at that point. I think it was taking about 20 minutes a piece for each customer to get signed up and given their box. I finally got out at about 11.15. My iPhone is happily sat here using my old SIM, and will migrate on to the iPhone contract sometime in the next day or two when the paperwork gets processed by the store...

eBayer offers carbon fibre-clad Eee PC

Stick-on carbon fibre?

Looks awfully like somebody's taken an ordinary eee and added some tacky carbon fibre effect stick-on vinyl.

Apple ships Air

@James

The US price doesn't include any sales tax, the UK price includes VAT.

That takes up the majority of the price difference between the two, and I suspect other import duties and associated rip-off Britain costs are responsible for the rest of the price differences.

Apple MacBook Air

@all those whining at the price

If the MacBook Air price doesn't sit well with you, you can always go out and buy the nearest equivalent machine, a Sony VAIO TZ, which is bigger, slower and err.. more expensive, starting at £1500ish (but for that £300 premium you do get an optical drive).

Canon PowerShot A460 compact camera

How does it compare...

.. to the current batch of 'top of the range' camera phones?

The reason I've been holding off spending the extra money on / putting up with the extra bulk of one of those mobiles is because I've never seen them produce results that get anywhere near rivalling the most basic of budget digital cameras.