Posts by Waderider

Volvo V60 Plug-in Hybrid: Eco, economy and diesel power

Re: 10k over the standard car ?

Please do not mix units, your response is nonsense!

NetApp's Tour de France quest falls flat

Shock story....sun rose this morning.....

No-one in their right mind would think Endura would get a wild card to Le Tour. This is a silly article promoting a possibility that even the most optimistic CEO or Marketing director would not expect to see come to pass. After the surefire Continental teams like Europecar get their wildcard I think there was in effect only one wild card left which you couldn't identify the most likely recipient for.

NetApp pay a second tier team sponsorship rate and I'm sure they get good value for money at that. Folk in the UK often underestimate just how big cycling is outside these obese car loving islands.

Metro's mother to replace defenestrated Windows boss Sinofsky

Re: Open Arms

I did a 4 year honours degree in Civil Engineering where I was forced to use the ribbon, and hadn't mastered it by the end. Office 2003 at home, thank god.

Microsoft: Don't overclock Windows 8 unless you like our new BSOD

At Nigel11...

Nigel my friend, a little knowledge is a danger thing. This:

"You might be surprised to know that most tall buildings have only one support, right in the middle. Everything else is cantilevered off this core. "

....is nonsense! Your error comes from I suppose an understandable misunderstanding. Many tall buildings are built using a shear core (often housing lift shafts, utilities etc.) that deals with horizontal loadings such as wind. The steel or reinforced concrete frame coupled to this deals with the horizontal loads, so every column with a foundation (which is to say most columns) deals with dead and imposed vertical loads in the structure, as you would expect. Cantilevering the majority of the structure from a central core is certainly not the normal way of doing things and would at the very least make foundation design a challenge, and structural stability more difficult to achieve.

You must have watched something regarding structures on Discovery Channel that confused you.

Lesser-spotted Raspberry Pi FINALLY dished up

Think I'll try one as a Mythtv front end, I'll wait till they box them though.

It's all good!

Amount of ice in Bering Sea reaches all-time record

Science brought you technology and awareness of anthromorphic climate change

These articles on Reg are a bit pathetic. Those who take an extreme side on any argument are rarely right. I mean, it's not as if the article is humorous? Maybe I'm wrong and other folk do find it funny?

Superhero oil-burping algae will save the world

The usual rubbish.........

........spouted by people without a broad education. The comments mainly, not the article. Scientific consensus is that current climate change is anthromorphic; that debate is dead amongst all but folk who are in, or candidates for the Teaparty.

The question is what are the solutions? Keep up at the back.

Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'

Lets just deal with it and stop talking about it.

Bug-Byte Manic Miner

For linux users.........

.........just install FUSE, go looking and you can get any Speccy game up and running. Best one of all is British Lowland, in my humble opinion........

Ballmer leaves investors speechless in Seattle

Clearly.........

It is obvious what happens next. Bill Gates returns as CEO. A resurrection basically. It's happened before.

Dixons' best chance? Quit the UK and move to Sweden

Gut reaction........

Good riddance to badly run companies taking advantage of the lack of knowledge of their average customer.

TiVo calls time on ageing set-tops

I think.......

.......that people who pay for PVR's instead of setting up their own Mythtv box deserve to be parted from their money i.e. time to shut up and buy again.

Mind you, it is still bad behaviour from Tivo, but par for the course.

Big new wind turbines too close together, says top boffin

Complicated.......

I'd love to see the maths. All these nice round numbers like 'twice as far apart'. Bit much for me, reeks of pseudoscience, or at best journalism dumbing down research so much that it is indigestible for someone with half a brain.

My mind boggles a bit when I think of the factors that would determine optimum rotor diameter spacing of turbine towers. Highly variable I'd say - humidy, air temperature (air density), instantaneous wind velocity, rotor speed/feathering, elevation changes between hub centres on adjacent turbines.

I think the answer is wind turbines mounted in tracks so you can shift them about. At speed, in relation to real time conditions. Maybe.

Dixons warns on crap Christmas

I'd like to think.........

........that it has nothing to do with the weather etc., but rather that the collective consciousness of the non-IT literate proles has suddenly switched on and realized they are a pretty poor outlet for everything other than convenience.

Unfortunately though, the world isn't like that. I mean, look at the market share Windows enjoys......

Ubuntu Wayland: Shuttleworth's post-Mac makeover

Here here

Every time the kernel upgrades I'm getting a bit sick of compiling the ralink driver. How do noobs cope as it requires considerable command line fettling, netbooks are still a key 'battle' ground and this is an oversight.

Windows 7 'I'm a PC' man quits Microsoft

Windows 7 versus my computer.........

There's an 'I'm a P.C.' on U.K. television at the moment where the feature they are pushing is the ability to watch a record television.

This is very annoying as it has motivated my parents in law to question me why they can't record television on their netbook. They think I'm lying too them about needing extra hardware and probably more processing power......who is right, son in law or the omnipresent MS?

Besides, the ad is bloody lame when I'm sitting here with a free (in every sense) Mythtv home media setup - that can stream to a netbook successfully. A bit jittery in fast moving action - but the wife doesn't notice, which is all that matters.

Oh, agreed, appalling ads. Will this company die please and let P.C.'s and O.S.'s start to evolve again?

Bendy bike inventor scores design prize win

Stupid

Who is this going to appeal to?

The prize has been given for innovative thinking, but the new thinking here is patently because its a thought not worth having.

People buying bike-shaped objects (i.e. supermarket bike purchasers) won't be interested as they want something that looks like a full suspension mountain bike for £90 (i.e. a boat anchor). They won't pay a penny extra for this technology.

Enthusiast cyclists will have more than one bike and a lock to service them all. Plus frame material and performance is everything, not to mention bike weight.

I suggest the inventor finds another application.

The Reg guide to Linux, part 1: Picking a distro

What about Fartus linux?

I can't believe you didn't consider Fartus linux, it's suitable for beginners.

And why wasn't this article ten times longer, then it could have catered for all distros?

Ten free apps to install on every new PC

itunes?

Alot of the comments here are just expressing personal opinion. But itunes, you're so far of the mark it's not real. It's something I'd expect to see recommended by the BBC website tech pages.

'iPhone 4G' found on floor of bar

Definitely a cult.....

Well that's the last requirement for Crapple to definitely be a consumerist cult fulfilled then. This Roman Catholicism equivalent is the virgin mary appearing is some cow shite invested field in Ireland; the Crapple version is a shite phone appearing in a bar in the eastern seaboard of the USA.

Penguin because that's not Crapple.

Google vows to delete Chrome's unique client ID

Militant ranters

Just to echo sentiments above, railing against Google is stupid as although they take, they also give. You do have choices. Whereas Microsoft take lots of your cash, and give you crap products, which is a one sided equation.

I know what I mind less. Everything is a compromise. Except linux of course, which is perfect.

Ubisoft undone by anti-DRM DDoS storm

Lost customer

I don't exactly have my ear to the ground regarding the world of gaming.....in fact Silent Hunter 3 is the only game I play. But as my internet connection is as flaky as a snowy day, and drops every five minutes, I will be unable to play Silent Hunter 5.

So, I'm a potential customer will cannot play this new game legally.

Windows 7 RC 'buy a copy' shut downs start next month

Windows 7? No thanks!

I like to be a raving linux fanboi on occasion, but being aware this makes me unbalanced, I tried RC Build 7100 for a few months.

What a steaming pile. I find the idea people are still using it to be repulsive. XP is the future, of the past, still.

Why Bono is wrong about filesharing

Just a little point.....

My opinion is that the music industry has hung itself, should have modernised years ago.

My surprise is the recent discovery that the book publishing industry is doing the same thing. My mother in law recently got an ereader as a gift, a device I need to put the ebooks on as she is technologically challenged.

Legitimate sources either don't have the books she wants available, or the price is ridiculous. Ten quid for a paperback (James Cameron in this case)? When no raw materials are used in it's creation, no transport, no warehousing, no shop to sustain etc.? The real item is £12.

I don't encourage piracy, but all these industries need to urgently modernize and pass a decent proportion of the cost savings created by electronic forms of media or they'll have no business at all.

The pirates are on both sides with ebooks, that's for sure.

Asus confirms e-book reader trio

I want one.........

My mother-in-law has just been lucky enough to have been gifted a Sony ereader Touch, which I have set up for her. I'm impressed by the concept of these devices, and will buy one.

I can't though, the price is absolutely ridiculous for them. I'd pay £100 for a touch screen model; that's when I'll jump in. I've already got a netbook and a phone, thanks.

Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

My experience so far.....

I have upgraded 3 machines so far, one print/file/mythtv server, one client laptop and one client desktop.

Firstly I should have read release notes relating to mythtv - a database upgrade on the new version of Mythtv is not backwards compatible.

Other than that no problems. The server and client desktop were upgrades, the laptop a clean install.

Lots of command line work required on the clean install though, for fstab, samba, grub* etc. New folk will most likely be doing clean installs, surely there is a lot of benefit to be reaped by giving these processes a GUI?

*grub has changed in prep for a GUI.........

Karmic Koala RC drops into the wild

To be fair.....

.......and to balance out the fact I have recently made comments pointing out I think Windows 7 is a steaming pile, I'd better reveal my Ubuntu 9.10 experience.

As an experiment I upgraded to 9.10 yesterday, on the least used PC in my home network. All went well, except it's 'broken' Mythtv; the machine is a frontend only, and launching it leads to a message that the backend database is incompatible.

So if you're a Mythtv user beware; mind you I've yet to try and solve this issue or see if a bug is filed.

Steve Ballmer's Windows 7 dance party

IT moves on......

Those who slag El Reg for being negative regarding MS are being left behind by the evolution of 'their' business. Wake up, MS is a dinosaur, a fading light. Their products are often second rate, and their zenith is long past. Market share means squat. The market is made up of sheep, and someday soon enough of the herd shall have switched to alternatives for critical mass to be reached. Where the market goes next is the hard prediction.

I ran Windows 7 Build 7100 for a few months. I only hope the final effort is better. My perception was Vista with a polish....yes, I know thousands of people have said that before, but that's an oft repeated phrase for the obvious reason. Too slow, too big, too many restrictions, not open, too expensive, not simple enough.

On a tangent, democracy astounds me because every time the electoral cycle leads to a change between Labour/Conservative people think it'll be a wonderful thing. As opposed to more of the same, which is what it is. So Joe Public forgets they once thought soapy bubbles came out of Tony Blairs behind, and then thinks David Camerons behind now issues cleaning products, in-spite of previous evidence.

I expect better from IT folk though. They're more intelligent than Joe Public. An electoral cycle is currently about 12 years. It's about three years since Vista. A lot less time to forget. At this stage of Vistas lifecycle, people where still saying it was an OS that put forth soapy bubbles. People are saying Windows 7 utilizes nanotechnology to stay clean forever (what a step forward). In three short years an intelligent proportion of society has jumped through the same mental hoops that it takes mouth breathers 12 years to jump through.

To put all that in plain English, I am disappointed with Windows 7 and am genuinely surprised that other folk are satisfied with it (so far).

Michael Dell: Netbooks go sour after 36 hours

What an eijeet.......

.......the man clearly has a vested interest in selling products that make him more coin.

I'm very happy with my netbook years down the line. And they're being rapidly adopted now by less techy students at my university, and the experience seems to be a happy, satisfying cash saving experience for them.

If there are folk out there terribly unhappy with their netbook I'd suggest they were sold the wrong product by a salesman/website, and the shortcomings weren't made clear. And that would be the fault of the folk in charge of the website/sales team; people like Mr Dell.

Reminds me of the 'rush to the bottom' statement that Sony came out with; similar tosh said for similar reasons.

Windows 7: Microsoft's three missed opportunities

@ steve 70

That is a clean install.

I'm not impressed....

....I adopted Vista early on the back of the initial hype, trusting the IT journalists. I got home premium on a modest Core 2 Duo machine, quickly upgraded to 2GB memory for the obvious reasons. Disappointed by the frankly shite performance I grabbed Windows 7 as soon as I could, and upgraded again when build 7100 came out.

On the machine outlined above it runs pretty much the same as Vista, a spastic crippled excuse of an OS. As far as I can see it is more of the same. I can find no reasons within my setup for the crap performance, all drivers etc where easily found, which I suppose is something.

I don't know what the future is, but it's not something from Microsoft in my experience. The only time MS give me a fluid computer experience is when I'm using XP on my netbook. From where I'm sitting tech journalism is doing again what it did with Vista....hyping the next MS OS to keep the industry moving along and themselves in jobs.

UK.gov revives net cut-off threat for illegal downloaders

The real problem.......

........is unelected folk in power and government advisors that are part of the old boys network, supporting their own selfish interests. It stops the government evolving quick enough to deal with societies ills, and stops the powers that be dealing with corruption, immorality and greed. Part of the reason for this is because the power is held by immoral greedy people. Now, filesharing of copyrighted material isn't right, but it's not as bad as a talentless record exec ripping the £'s out of a musician and the musicians fans, for example. I mean, our government supports the arm industry, it's all so mad I can't get my head round it.

In my world there are far bigger issues than filesharing that are not being dealt with. Democracy is crippled. At least communism realized it failed, in the main. Our society will just implode some day. And if you think Cameron and his lot will make any difference, history really is doomed to repeat itself.

Bring on the revolution!

Apple loses students to netbooks and Windows

Linux netbooks and capability.....

...I'm studying engineering in Glasgow, using Ubuntu on an EeePC 1000H, with XP as a secondary OS. The only time I use XP/MS Office is when I get a document with mathematical symbols etc. that Open Office doesn't open correctly. Not that common a problem.

VPN works, all uni web services work, I've found lots of open source software that helps like Convertall and Qualculate; even Qcad is good enough for 2D sketch ups. I guess the only penalty is I can't run autocad when mobile (which students get free). I've got Autocad on a desktop PC instead.

I've also put other students onto netbooks, although I must admit I steer them towards XP. Which is a pain as it's an inferior OS to linux. Any student who buys a mac needs their head felt, as they say in Northern Ireland, or their daddys silver spoon removed from their mouth.

Perseid meteor shower set to dazzle disappoint

Reasonably optimistic......

I'm off to bivvy on the side on Ben Lawers munro tomorrow night. Improving weather forecast over that part of Scotland, so I must be in a good position to see something.

Microsoft under threat from Linux - it's official

Fact is,

Linux appears to be evolving to be easier to use. Microsoft appear to have passed their zenith. That doesn't mean linux will become dominant or Microsoft products will disappear from the marketplace. If anyone could see the future with confidence it'd make them rich.........

I admit to be a linux evangelist. I must have installed linux on twenty different machines with different hardware over the last three years, and it's amazing how much easier it has become. It'll be interesting to see how Windows 7 does, it will be make or break for MS. It's certainly better than Vista.

There are a lot of ill informed and wrong headed posts on El Reg these days. Maybe that's a matter of opinion and some people shall think that of me.......

The Netbook Newbie's Guide to Linux

I'm a cynical fanboi.......

Okay, I have Ubuntu on an EeePC 1000H, so different distro and hardware, but the only 'complication' I had was about four lines at the terminal to install an Eee compatible kernel. On day one, and since then everything works and I haven't needed to use the command line.

My point is the article makes it sound like the stereotyped linux faff. I think this is bad luck on the authors behalf, maybe backed up by prejudice inherited from when linux required more under the bonnet effort.

Conficker seizes city's hospital network

Madness.....

umacf24 hits the nail on the head, the dates in the story don't make sense. I just checked my in-laws Vista machine and it received the update in the first half of November.

I *want* to type things like 'use linux you fools', but of course if linux was more popular it would be as exploited, so I'd rather it stayed in the domain of the geek, server and netbook. And of course using Mav would make the NHS even more bankrupt........

Microsoft releases Vista virtualization

Virtualization within Vista.......

.......now, I can't think of a more frugal way to run an XP or 2000 compatible application! Quick, buy Vista, and the hardware capable of running both it and a virtual os.

Alternatively, realize that it's a stupid idea and stick with XP/linux/OSX.

Paris because sex sells, unlike Vista.........

Jaunty Jackalope alpha 3 spotted in wild

Nvidia drivers.........

Well, the PC I'm posting this from runs Ubuntu 8.10, and the only difficulty during the install was a screen resolution issue caused by the 'free' Nvidia driver. I had to use the propriety driver, so I'll be sticking with 8.10 for a while then.

I of course blame Nvidia not Ubuntu. For the last couple of years all my hardware purchases have been made with an eye on linux compatibility. Who knows, maybe the Nvidia card will die so I can justify replacement?!

EU says Microsoft violated law with IE on Windows

Another dimension?

Does Windows not update through IE, and only IE due to their shoddy standards?!

Another reason this is stupid then, millions more unpatched PC's ripe for infection if MS did unbundle IE.

But of course they won't, everything shall carry on as normal, which is why this is nearly a non story.......

UFO damages Lincolnshire wind turbine

One word........

Well, okay a phrase, ice loading. Nothing to see here move along...........

(...the cynical might say that the last thing wind farm owners want people thinking is that 'natural' causes can cause mechanically violent occurrences to wind turbines).

Microsoft disables automatic IE 8 downloads

Auto Updates

Unlike Michael, I have the sense to have auto updates switched on for my Windows machines. And I also have the ability to have made the migration to gnu/linux on other machines.......not just kept the idea a pipe dream due to technological ineptitude.

Shuttleworth on Ubuntu: It ain't about the money

@ argumentative children

Being a fairly balanced user of both Windows and Linux, for public benefit I first removed and installed Firefox from Ubuntu.

Open terminal.

sudo apt-get install firefox.

Return.

Easy as. Take this post as experimental evidence it works. And so what if linux gets more complicated sometimes, sometimes Windows can be even more frustrating as you can't get under the bonnet when it goes tits up.

Royal Bank of Scotland takes three weeks to squash nasty Worldpay bug

Yes but remember......

......dedicated software companies often take longer than three weeks to fix vulnerabilities. And who's to say anyones account was accessed fraudulently through this? To get annoyed at this is probably just a symptom of the annoying facts you have to use a bank in modern society and they always manage to extract a few of your hard earned pounds.

Anyhow, are some of you guys living in an IT induced fug that makes you think we live in some sort of computing and financial utopia, where things get done in real time?

(Can't believe I'm defending a bank.....immoral trade in my opinion....)

At the risk of making a serious comment....

....I posted this to a friend who works as an accountant at RBS in Edinburgh. Not to belittle the security lapse he pointed out that any losses through fraud are covered by the bank, so no need to stuff your money in mattresses yet.

And remember, accountants control everything, the cost of fixing this quickly almost certainly exceeded the potential monetary risk faced by the bank between discovery and correction.

Scottish Government scuppers Lewis wind farm plan

Good news....

Definitely the right decision. It was the most stupid, short sighted planning application ever that actually could have gone ahead.

Vista SP1 downloaders bite back

I'm a dolt then

So it's my fault that SP1 hasn't installed as per some very biased comments above. How come in the last three months I've learnt from scratch how to have a far less painful (so far) experience with linux? When that OS is allegedly harder to use?

Some people are too entrenched with their attitudes. Microsoft has to do better than other operating systems. They've got the resources and the economies of scale to produce brilliant software, but something is wrong.

And if you've had the luck of a smooth install, please do the rest of us the grace of not preaching crap like it is the users fault.

Microsoft rolls out Vista SP1

Linux a heap of crap?

Oh the irony.

My Vista Home Premium installation ran SP1 update this evening. On rebooting it said "Service Pack did not install. Reverting changes. Do not turn off your computer."

With an error message like that I of course can pin point the problem and resolve. Brilliant.

On the other hand, three months ago I started my linux learning curve. Mandriva dual boot with Vista and Ubuntu on my second PC. I'm not a techie, it's been quite a pleasant experience so far and Microsofts days are numbered in this house.

Greenies give IT industry a black eye

Greenpeace isn't the issue

It's a pity some folk don't appear to have the wisdom to see that it's not about how one environmental organisation conduct themselves. It's about making a commitment towards a more sustainable consumer culture. If Greenpeace isn't a mover in this sphere are you going to take on the role yourself and force electronic good manufacturers to produce more environmentally friendly goods? For example by making environmental criteria part of what you consider when making a purchase?

Or are you so out of touch that you can't see such things are worth considering?