Posts by Ross Fleming

AT&T squeezes wannabe iPhone upgraders

Subsidy exaggerated

What I can't really comprehend is the reasoning behind the pricing of the iPhone vs the iPod Touch. 32GB Touch - £283. PAYG iPhone 3GS 32GB - £538. Does it really cost £250 to put a GSM/3G chip in there? I would argue that at MOST, the difference should be about £20. In manufacturing terms, it's probably bugger all.

Note I don't think I'm "entitled" to get out of my current O2 contract and get a 3GS without paying through the nose.

O2 are being rather disingenuous at the moment though. Their current iPhone page gives "upgrade" options to existing iPhone 3G customers - install the firmware next week, implying perhaps that this will magically turn it into a 3GS! :-)

Russian porn starlet brands DD jubs

Possible taker

Are United Artists considering a re-release of the classic Bond film, From Russia With Love?

A perfect opportunity

iPhone 3G S in the UK: what you need to know

8GB

"Internet tethering will not be available to owners of the 8GB iPhone."

Unless the tethering application (there's an app for that..) is 8.1GB in size, I can see no logic to this one.

Mind you, availability doesn't equal take-up. At these crazy prices I'd be surprised if anyone signed up - especially as it makes a mockery of "unlimited data" supposedly already included in an iPhone tarriff.

Methinks we'll see an uprising in jailbreaking to tether for free!

Apple adds 'S' to iPhone 3G

UK and software?

So, nothing about UK prices etc?

Also, how much of these new "features" are down to software only?

Never mind..

I'll get it from the horses mouth.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

Available 17th June

Man creates third-gen iPhone rumours picture

@Matthew

In fairness, Apple don't make iTrips, so no skin off their nose if they steal someone's market. It's Griffin et al who'll lose out.

Real question

How many of those "innovations" (if true) will be hardware dependent? Apart from the obvious ones of course.

Crew preps for ISS spacewalk

Procrastination

"slated to blast off on 10 November"

My word that's forward planning. I'd have put that off until at least October, and then panicked at the last minute. I'd have tided the place up, organised my papers etc as an urgent activity that couldn't possibly wait.

Unless they're just really bored up there.

iPhone apps - the 10 smartest and the 10 stupidest

@Michael Brown

-> I have both and now prefer Jaadu VNC over LogMeIn (it's a lot faster) but nothing beats LogMeIn for simplicity of setup and out of the box security (VNC is only secure over an SSH tunnel)

VNC over VPN is also secure - and the iPhone has VPN support built in. Actually reponds faster than a naked connection, presumably due to data compression, so definitely worth a try (even at a basic PPTP connection to a Windows machine)

Darth Vader tops movie misquote poll

Hello Clarice

Could claim you're quoting Hannibal (2001): "Is this Clarice? Why, hello Clarice"

But then you'd have to admit seeing that dreadful movie (though oddly more plausible than the book)

iPhone compass evidence surfaces

Compass app

Well that's gonna be confusing, given Safari's icon is already a compass

Atlantis set for Monday lift-off

Worth mentioning, but needs seeing!

Why on earth have you not included a pic like this????

http://gizmodo.com/5052814/historic-photo-shows-atlantis-and-endeavour-together-for-the-last-time

Awesome sight.

Intel playing virtual silly buggers

And the Intel response

http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2009/05/reality_check_-_windows_xp_mod.php

Posted in response to a different Reg article (among others) that already points this out.

Methinks Chris got out of bed on the wrong side judging by his other rant on hard disk platters! :-)

XP Mode is going to be a rather limited feature that won't appear on the consumer versions of Win 7. And if nothing else, a tenner says that MS revise the Virtual PC app so that it doesn't rely on these feature sets (any word on whether AMD supports AMD-V on all chips?) and defaults to software mode, using Intel VT/AMD-V as an accelerator - if there is enough demand for it, and I doubt there will be! It's x86 EMULATION after all, and could presumably be compiled for just about any target architecture.

Swedish couple demand right to name baby 'Q'

I'm so sorry, he's from Barcelona

Qué?

NASA micro-satellite eyes space bacteria

@ Richard Thomas

Never seen a TARDIS?

Pork industry in 'swine flu' tag beef

@Duncan Hothersall and Lester

Duncan - sad news is it'll probably end up more expensive as we get "government approved swine-flu-free bacon (with extra Omega 3)" and a hefty certification process.

And Lester, shame on you! How dare you let common sense get in the way of a good old fashioned mass panic! Though oddly, this time round it's not being used in the "you still need us" approach from our HM gov, but more in a "our government is failing us and doing nothing!!"

Thank goodness they protected us from SARS, bird flu and so on. I am grateful for that.

€25k for an old Nokia handset?

Money in the penny jar

"We put these technical issues to Ultrascan who told us that they "did not investigate [the technical] part", but are hoping to get hold of a '1100 for testing in the next few days to see what is possible."

Better start saving up then, Ultrascan... unless you've got €25k sitting in the penny jar already

Can the iPhone save NFC?

@Barry Tabrah

"If product tagging within supermarkets (one of the many lauded applications for RFID) took off, consumers could pull up nutrition information, allergy warnings, supermarket price comparisons,"

Or they could just read the back of the packet (admittedly I'm ignoring the price comparisons comment for satirical effect) :-D

"God I miss Tommorow's World!"

I miss Flippa Forrester. Mmmmm....

Olympic champ's mom sues Google for dead blogger's post

@Corrine

"I have to agree with both sides here, if the post is defamatory, the plaintiff has no choice but to go after Google in the absence of the blogger"

True, but as Dan pointed out in the article, the blogger is referring to an unchallenged news report:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/davis-does-it-his-way-to-capture-historic-gold-medal/2006/02/19/1140283948849.html

Jacob Lipman has defined libel quite well - I think it's clear that the blogger made his comments on a source that he validly assumed to be true. I'm sure there are plenty of bloggers that have commented on facts that were later turned out to be erroneous. I imagine he was one step away from complete immunity - referencing the source article and leaving it for them to correct.

For a 3+ year old blog that very few people would have seen, it's strikes me as a very silly way to get your name up in lights... She doesn't appear to have a problem with theage's article, but does take issue with someone getting indignant about it ?

Google throws secret auto-updater to open sorcerers

Standalone?

Sure there's a standalone version that you can install (pendrive compatible for example).

Disabling the service and removing the Windows Scheduler entry seems to work though with no adverse effects.

SandForce's revolutionary SSD controller

Pipeline

Not sure if this is already done, but surely the simplest way to get around the delays waiting for erases is to introduce a pipeline structure. i.e. erase the next cell at the same time as writing the previous?

Mind you - I don't fancy this whole compression on the fly thing. Once stung by DoubleSpace, always wary...

Trekkies enjoy surprise Star Trek premiere

New trailer??

Get off. It's the second trailer that was released donkey's ago with a small clip of Nimoy living long and prospering bolted on to the end. No doubt doing a slingshot round the Sun to appear in the film.

BT still struggling to fix Olympic problems

Overpass

BT are talking about "below street level" and everyone else is talking about "below the surface". Perhaps there was an old overpass about 22m up that's no longer there. Or a rather big hill that's been bulldozed.

Either way, I think the sorry tale can be explained here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/25/bofh_2005_episode_7/

The Pirate Bay punts BitTorrent cloaking device

Virtual ISP?

Won't this make TPB a sort of Virtual ISP and therefore fall under the same laws they're trying to avoid?

Atlantis finally go for Hubble mission

A great Endeavour

When does Endeavour roll out to 39B? Seeing two shuttles side by side is going to have me haunted by memories of Armageddon - noone wants that.

Is it still even Endeavour?

BMW driver follows satnav to edge of cliff

Missing the beauty

Bravo to the Beemer/satnav! It clearly recognised the lesser mind behind the wheel and tried to do something about it. It almost, ALMOST succeeded.

I for one welcome our human killing mechanical (r)overlords.

Newfangled rootkits survive hard disk wiping

RE: 1985 rang...

Assuming you mean the Chernobyl (CIH) virus? In fairness to the bods that came up with this one, CIH only every wiped the BIOS.

Though I am surprised it took 20+ years to take it to the next level...

Hardwired "read only" please mobo manufacturers, with jumpers to modify.

El Reg Street View snappers caught on camera

@Ian F and Jeremy

The blurring of the Google logo has clearly occurred because the Google datacentre considers itself a person - it has become self-aware people!! Head for the hills!!

Carbonite tells Promise: You're toast

@Bassey

No they're saying that a RAID setup is not intended to be a back-up solution, it's a mitigation against hard drive failure that can *seem* like it's taking care of your back-up. However really all your doing is moving the single point of failure from the disk to the controller. The chances of lost data reduce, but not to zero.

To file a suit against a company claiming their hardware lost them data, well fill yer boots guys. I bet Promise's lawyers are already filling out their expense claims and rubbing their hands with glee, while every other IT company are sitting back with their popcorn to watch Carbonite make fools of themselves (I certainly am). They'll be suing Seagate for a failing drive next.

@Reg - please PLEASE follow this story to completion, even if it takes years. It'll be an absolute circus and hugely entertaining.

(Sits back and waits for the counter-suit of "you didn't follow the manual to the letter - prove otherwise please")

Apple proves: It pays to be late

re: gasp

I remember it Andrew, and agree with pretty much everything you've had to say.

But you can understand my surprise given some of the other articles that just pan it :-)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/18/iphone_version_3/ I'm sure there are others if I could be @rsed to find them

Agreed Mail is slow. I've found proxying everything over VPN works rather well due to the inherent compression that comes with it (and I have a funny feeling the DNS servers leave a lot to be desired with O2, causing most of the slow down).

Gasp

Good God, a balanced iPhone article on el reg - do my eyes deceive me??

Enjoyable read - nice one. :-)

Philips 42in Ambilight LED array TV

Bravia dynamic contrast = fail

My Bravia has this as well, think it's called dynamic contrast. Although good on slow moving images, I found it was atrocious at reacting to fast motion and had to turn it off (i.e. quarter of image goes dark, dynamic backlight catches up half a second later) as it was distracting.

Any comments on how well this one does?

Pioneer BDP-51FD Blu-ray Disc player

re: Cometh the PS3 fanboyz

sigh... iPhone and PS3 bashing in a single week. Feels like 2007.

No, what some people are suggesting is that if you're considering spending ~£300 on a BD player, you may as well get a games console thrown in for free. What they're missing is that this device is aimed at media buffs who recognise the difference in quality by (as Tony has just pointed out) throwing better DACs, picture processing algorithms etc etc at the solution.

To the PS3 boys comparing the prices, yes they are both BD players, yes they're the same price, no they were not created equal.

Disclaimer, yes I own a PS3, yes I use it as a BD player, no I don't think its BD picture quality is as good as this kit. Much like I've got Sony separates instead of a Bush all-in-one hifi that's mostly air.

However I think BD Live is a bit of a gimmick and not why you'd choose one format over the other. I'd be unlikely to network a standalone BD player and so the lack of Ethernet is moot really. Tony, you're right that the majority of folks won't burn a firmware image to upgrade the firmware, but they'd be equally unlikely to upgrade the firmware over t'internet either. Hell, even DVB-T OTA updates are seldom applied cos no-one knows to set their box/TV to look for them and are not automatically switched on.

Flame-proof one please.

British International Motor Show cancelled

@John Scott

I think the atrocity that was the Honda Dreamscape Live Action Show deserves an honorary mention as witness for the prosecution for why it should never happen again.

Still, the remote control car racing was fun.

iPhone 3.0 adds cut-and-paste, search, new dev toys

Woohoo!

Turn-by-turn sat nav. All I've been waiting for. The rest I could live without. I guess it won't be a problem for Tom Tom et al for licensing maps

Posted from my iPhone :-)

Ethernet — a networking protocol name for the ages

@A J Stiles

Ah, love that description of networks - takes me back to my school days. You might want to add the "if two people next to each other fall out, nobody gets to talk" for the token ring analogy!

But as the BOFH once said, "show me an ethernet collision and I'll show you a network that could do with one user fewer"

Apple restyles iPod Shuffle

@Stuart Gray

If I remember right, the 3.5mm headphone socket on Shuffles are also USB ports - comes with an adapter.

Court rules airline secret security list is stupid

Even stupider - Club World

I'm sure we've all seen the perspex boxes that have the demonstration knife and fork in it as a reminder you're not allowed metal cutlery, and hence the reason they give you plastic cutlery on the plane.

However... fly Club World or First on BA (other airlines are available) and you get nice shiny metal cutlery to eat with. It turns out that terrorists are poor and will obviously never fly in the more expensive seats on their way to paradise with 72 Star Trek fans..

Won't be long until the self-loading cargo will not be allowed carry-on at all. In fact I give it 2 years before we're all flying in the buff. Unless you're in first class that is.

Samsung launches not-2TB drive

Another advocate here

Just love 'em. Have 4 x 1TB drives - 2 Seagates, 2 Samsungs. The noise the Seagates kick out is ridiculously intrusive, Samsungs are blissfully quiet (presumably the 3/4 platter difference).

Stargazers spy elusive binary black hole system

Nearest star

As mentioned, 'what we commonly call "the Sun"' - perhaps if they meant the Sun, they'd have called it the Sun. I think we know they mean Alpha Centauri or Proxima Centauri. Distance to that? About 1.3parsecs. To the nearest parsec? 1.

Not to mention Lester doesn't provide this handy hint out of his own fair skull, he merely quotes from the scientific journal - your beef is with them.

Polish Spitfire shoots down BNP

Shooting down the Poles

'The last major example of the Polish coming over here and taking our jobs was, as the Telegraph notes, during the aforementioned Battle of Britain when their pilots accounted for 203 Luftwaffe aircraft - roughly "12 per cent of total German losses".'

It would be very easy to read this as "Polish pilots were flying 203 Luftwaffe aircraft, but were rubbish and accounted for 12% of the total German losses" - unless that was their plan and they were all undercover agents.

LG Super Multi Blue BE06-LU10

re: hold on

Sort of agree with you Squits, but they have to compare it to other technologies - the price doesn't stack up when you can get 64GB+ usb devices for less.

However the thing came out in Q3 2008, a bit slow off the mark aren't we? And the "I don't want to spend 7 quid on a disc to test it" - how hard is the recession biting at Reg Towers?? :-)

Brit nuke subs exposed on Google Earth

@David Edwards

"I really would think more than twice about raiding an SAS base"

You've missed the point!! The Sun has told me that they might be asleep sometimes!! Then what? Eh? Eh?

Once you've sat back and thought of the children for a bit, I think you'll find yourself looking a bit silly m'laddo!

The Sun are absolutely bang on. Blur the pictures on Google Earth. Not only that, cover the buildings in a big dome of frosted glass so you can't see them properly when you're outside it. It's the only way to be sure...

Sharp UK intros 108in monster telly

"Costs less than £1000 per inch"

Do you work for Sharp's marketing dept? That's brilliant spin! :-)

NASA CO₂ scan satellite launch fails

"derailed"

Well that was their first mistake, using a train to put a satelite in orbit

Gigabyte passively cooled Radeon 4850 card

Why why why

Although it's a magnificent feat of engineering, I can't help but be scared by the temps this thing throws out. Unless you have very good airflow in the case it seems that it'll burn out within a week - especially as it'll be summer soon which will make the situation worse!

The fact the reviewer had to beef up the case fans rather defeats the point - why not just have a fan directly on the card?

Operators and handset vendors plug standard charger

@Rik Hemsley

"UNCOMPRESSED requires 332Mbps data rate. Are mobile phones likely to be pumping this out soon?"

Probably not, cos they'd be idiots - why would you even consider not compressing it?

Bear in mind that the low-end of HD vid could be carried out by a sub-1MP CCD. All that's left is an x264 hardware encoder to be small enough.

But that'll never happen - 640K will be enough for everyone, 56kbps will be the fastest we can get on our phone lines... :-D

Satellites crash over Siberia: Iridium bird destroyed

@Stuart Van Onselen

"If you keep lobbing those peanuts, 100 times a day (figure dragged from a handy orifice), for 40 years (roughly how long we've had artificial satellites) they're going to connect eventually."

Much like if you have 1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters, shut them in a room for a 1000 years and you get.... 1000 dead monkeys

@Mark Wills

They might be "weightless", but not mass-less.

Red Dwarf touches down in Coronation Street

@Lionel Baden

http://www.tvcatchup.com/

Fill yer boots mate! Any difficulties from foreign shores, get a UK based mate to sign you up.

OpenDNS rolls out Conficker tracking, blocking

No-one realised yet?

This botnet that's silently growing - it's Skynet!! Run for the hills!!