Posts by Mark Boothroyd

Sky demonstrates 3D telly vision

@Paul Murphy - I really can't see the point.

Quote: 'What is the point of 3D? it's not going to make a difference to the program, storyline or anything like that, and aside from feeling a little more immersed in the picture I can't see why people would want to spend any money whatsoever on it.'

I suspect that people probably said exactly the same thing when sound was first introduced to moving pictures, or when colour started to replace black and white. Both would have been seen simply as gimmick at the time, not really adding much to the experience, as they too wouldn't have changed the existing story lines.

But once the techs matured, movies were created differently, storylines and screen play writtem to take better advantage of the new features. In 10 years or so movies will be out that just wouldn't work in 2D, creative people will pick up on the new possibilities, and in 20-30 years time people will look back at 2D movies and TV, in the same way we look back now on silent or black and white movies.

Online payment site hijacked by notorious crime gang

re: So, this IP address is ..

@ James,

Exactly, couldn't agree more. How can they know these are bad people, and not do anything about it?

Step one. Provide evidence to local authorities.

Step two, raid premises (home, offices etc.) and take everything and arrest everyone involved. Freeze all bank accounts.

Step three, throw all people involved in jail and throw away key. Ban all people involved from access to the internet or any companies involved in internet services, under penalty of being thrown back in jail. Take all money from frozen accounts.

If the local authorities are corrupt and/or unwilling to do anything, then surely there would be some way to globally banning these IP addresses? Remove the hosting ISP's from the Internet, remove the ISP hosting back bone providers etc.

Dodgy ISP's and Back bone provided would soon stop hosting these bad sites if they found they would loose their net access. Plus legit sites would avoid dodgy hosts, as they wouldn't want to suddenly find they lost their sites.

How about an official black list, (aka like bluetack.co.uk have). Then simply make that available to all browsers. I know this can be done yourself, (just go to bluetack and download blocklist manager and Protowall or similar). But having this done as an automatic and standard part of your OS would be better.

Sky mulls PVR software rollback

Just to confirm, it's not just modded boxes

Got a Sky +HD box here, (Thomson) still got it's seals in place since new, standard Hard Drive etc.

And yes it's been screwed by the resent update.

Failed recordings due to a clash, when nothing else was being recorded, a failed recoding initiated by me hitting the record button while watching it live, tried to watch today and it was another failed. One item on the planner still scheduled to be recorded, despite it being in the past! Very odd seemingly random behaviour!

Please fix it Sky, and top blaming other people for your lack of proper testing.

Windows 7 borrows from OS X, avoids Vista

@James Dunne - Why's it called Windows 7

The version number is based on the Windows NT versions.

Windows 3.1 was NT 3.1

Then we had NT 4.0

Windows 2000 is actually Windows NT 5.0 (2000 was just a branding thing)

Windows XP is NT version 5.1 (again more branding (and explains why Win 2000 drivers also work under XP, as it's basically the same OS, just a new UI)

Vista is NT version 6.0 (yet more branding)

So MS have just picked the next version number in line, being version 7. (no more stupid branding finally!).

The 9* and ME versions have nothing to do with the current windows line-up, as they were based on a different architecture/kernal, which was scrapped once 2000/NT 5.0 came out.

Woman sues EA over 'secret' Spore DRM

@ Tony Paulazzo

Tony Paulazzo: > If you install the purchased game, you install SecureRom, and if you install the pirate version you support terrorists and will need to be locked up for 42 days. <

Erm, bad joke or are you really this thick?

How on earth can installing a pirate game be supporting terrorists? They are free to download and install, and contain no malware etc. (as long as you download from the right places). So where's the profit? If there's no money involved, it can't be supporting anyone, let alone terrorists!

And where do you get the 42 days from? Downloading and installing pirated software is copyright infringement, which is a civil offence, not a criminal offence. You'll get a fine at most.

Paris, because even she's smarter than you are!

EA in Spore DRM climbdown

consumer protection

This is another demonstrate of why we need better consumer protection laws, that would dictate what fair usage of a game or application is. That way completely over the top DRM such as this would simply be against the law to implement, and to threaten users with revoking their accounts for simply discussing DRM would also be against the law.

All DRM like this does it to harm the customer experience and drive people away from the PC market, as games no longer have any resale value, unlike console games.

This seems to almost encourage piracy, as at least those versions don't have any of the DRM restrictions!

Samsung fires up 128GB SSD massive attack

@ Ken Hagan

Re: '(If it turns out to be the third case, as SSDs become more common how much longer can the HD manufacturers cling to the line that "most folks expect us to lie about capacity"?)'

HD manufacturers don't lie, they just use the standard metric type version of K, M etc. rather than the base 2 versions used for memory.

i.e.

K = 1,000

M = 1,000,000

etc.

Strictly speaking, KB = 1,000 Bytes, if you want to represent 1,024 Bytes it should be written as KiB (although most people, including myself, still tend to write KB anyway!).

So if this drive is a true 128 Giga Byte drive, it should be labelled as 128GiB rather than 128GB, that way you know it has more storage than a 128GB drive.

So

128GB = 128,000,000,000 bytes

128GiB = 137,438,953,472 bytes

As an example, if you go out and buy yourself a nice big 1TB HD drive, it's actually 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, which translates as being 931.322575 GiB.

Hence why Windows only shows it as a 931GB size drive, as Windows is actually talking about GiB (base 2), not GB (base 10).

Most OS's make the same mistake, treating hard drives which use one standard, the same as memory, which uses a different standard.

Personally I wish they'd just stick to one standard, the base 2 version, esspecially now with SSD devices, as these are rated the same as memory, so can't be directly compared to HD drives, as SSD's would actually be bigger for the same size rating!

Gate, just because I can :-)

Japanese customs reunited with lost dope

Re: Good thing

StopthePropaganda: 'that the passenger wasn't headed to Saudi Arabia or somewhere where the penalty for smuggling drugs can be death. No appeal, no chance to call anyone or to try to find where the dope came from...scary.'

They did mention it was an inbound rather than outbound passenger.

Loopy Vista pre-SP1 update fixed with pre-pre-SP1 update

mid-April?

It's already out, showed up on my windows update notifier about two weeks ago. So why to they keep saying mid-April?

US Marines: Osprey tiltrotor doing OK in Iraq

@Ashley Pomeroy

Quote: 'What happens if an engine fails? It doesn't look as if it could fly on a single engine without spinning around. I assume they have to land as quickly as possible.'

The two props are linked by a drive shaft running through the wing and so can run on a single engine. You only need the power of the two engines for take off and flying at high speed.

So if an engine did fail, you could probably just carry on flying as normal, although landing would probably be a bit on the bumpy side with the reduction in power.

Government piles filesharing pressure on UK ISPs

ISP are just being asked to bad users, not monitor them!

A lot of you don't actually seem to have read the article!

The government is talking about adding laws to force ISP's to ban users who repeatedly share copywrite material.

It is not asking the ISP's to monitor the users themselves.

The monitoring will continue to be done as it is done now, by companies employed by the record and movie industries to infiltrate p2p networks and report on who's sharing what.

So as far as I can see, no real change other than if you do get caught, you might get kicked of the net and unable to get another connection in the UK (in addition to any fine etc.)

Ransomware Trojan locks up infected PCs

@Phil

Re: So why is Windows so easily beaten? Why can't there be multiple layers of security to prevent these kind of hijacks?

All systems can be beaten if a user or application has enough access. Even Linux etc. Give an application root access under Linux via su and goodbye system. Why would Windows be any different? (and no I'm not a M$ fanboy).

Trojans by their very nature, infect a computer because the user let it in, hence the name Trojan. Normally by clicking on a link, by opening attachments in unsolicited emails etc etc. Stupid use is as stupid user does.

All people have to do is keep their anti-virus software upto date and you shouldn't get infected. And as there are perfectly good anti-virus apps out there that are completely free for home use, so there are no excuses for anyone not to have current up to date antivirus on a windowz machine. (I use Avast myself with no probs, and it's A LOT less resource hungry that Nortons etc.)

To allow an unprotected Windows based PC access to the Internet is downright irresponsible. Linux and Macs are different, as their market share is too small for anyone to bother with them, but PC's have to be protected.

As long as there is a user sat at the keyboard that can be duped into running, opening or clicking on something, the system will always be vulnerable.