Posts by J Lewter

LONDON iPHONE 5 MADNESS: 'You must be CRAZY to buy Apple'

Wow

Look at all of those people getting in line to return their Iphone 4s's!....

Apple should buy a bank and call it Apple Rock.

UK electric car funding - another subsidy for the rich say MPs

Re: Think!

They probably generate closer to £500+ PA directly.

15k£ is not "richer"... Many people on benefits are getting well in excess of that amount yearly, even the lowest on benefits get that every two years. It is also worth noting that now my £15k install can be had for about £3.5k.

I did get it to be "green", but I would not have done so unless it would have at least broken even. Do you think people "who work, and own homes" should try to be green while giving subsidy to all of the benefit-ites out there who can enjoy cheap carbon based fuel?.

No one did seem to answer the question. How many gwiz owners are actually at the top of the income tree, no one will touch that because you know it is not a car for the "rich". And to me £1,500 isnt paultry, but to someone who is deemed "rich" it will be, but perhaps those of you AC's who collect your gov money every friday cant see the difference. Everyone had (and still has) a chance to buy into this scheme. If you really want to be excluded from it then have your electricity cut off.

Think!

"It's like home solar - subsidy for the rich(er) paid for by the poor(er)."

No it is not.

Solar subsidys cost add less than 2% to each persons electricity bill. Since Jan electricity bills have gone up by about 9%. Over the past 6 years prices have gone up by about 95%. If prices double in the next 6 years then solar subsidys will cost about 1% of each persons electricity bill. I forked out £15k for solarPV because of the subsidy and it should work out to be a highly profitable investment.

If you really wish to get rid of subsidys then lets dump the £5bn or so that we give to the Gas and Oil industry.

If someone is "Rich" then it is doubtful that they are really looking to put down £10-15k to just get back a paultry £1,500 a year.

And just to be curious. Do you really think that someone earning £300,000 a year is driving a GWiz ?

EV's are not the same as Hybrids and those are not the same as Plug-In Hybrids.

The EV subsidy is abused for "Hybrids", but Plug-In Hybrids and full EV cars are different. I would like to see the subsidy move to be for 100% EV vehicles ONLY.

Disney sitcom says open source is insecure

Re: Payback? @ Greg

[Quote]

One half-assed remark by a writer who clearly doesn't know their stuff does not an indoctrination make. I grew up watching Star Trek and some seriously weird 80s/90s cartoons, but I don't currently believe that talking cats can fly jet fighters, nor have I tried to solve any server issues by dumping the rack's warp core.

[/Quote]

In Star Trek they had the PADD. Now we have an iPad (okay, ST first made one in 1996, but it didnt have a green phone icon).

What goes on in popular media does influence the views of everyone. Some studies have shown that all of the gun crime in the USA is not related to gun ownership and crazy people, but it is actually related to the fact that the news goes on about gun crime happening so much that they implant the idea into peoples head that criminals should use guns.

As far as the TV show goes, It was probably written by someone who is needing to churn out a lot of work every day and they likely have limited knowledge of such things. It is likely that the idea was that someone trying to get "free" software was stung, while it is not a big problem to appear in 1 episode of 1 show it would be worrying if it becomes a recurrant theme within any show or a set of shows.

Virgin Media nukes downloads after SuperHub 'upgrade'

Re: "they scrapped the useful usenet support groups and dumped it all on a crap web forum"

Last one I had to make ended up going through about 18 staff over 4 hours of calls.

By the time I moved up the ladder (staff member 17 or so) he said to me "You know more about how this stuff works than we do, I'll just ask your question directly to the guy above me" and when he came back his answer was "Oh, He knew what you were asking, he says it hasnt been done yet" *click*.

I moved to the forums and the 3rd Moderator eventually looked up what I wanted (and eventually became a thread that a good 30+ users latched on to so they could have the same problem fixed!... What is sad is that in those 4 hours of phone calls I was shoved over to their "Premium" line several times.

If you mention DHCP, TFTP, Configuration File, SNR, Packet Loss, DNS, or a quite a few other terms to the "Broadband Support" team you will often find that those are things they currently do not support.... *cries*....

BSkyB punches Virgin Media in ads watchdog fist fight

Re: not sure what your on

Highly oversubscribed areas do indeed suffer that bad.

Once all users are migrated onto Docsis3 network then the total utilization problems should be known. For reference I was once pushed onto a node that was oversubscribed and my 10 meg connection went down to around 2. They refused to fix it because they said it met the minimum speed requirements. I was lucky because the resegmentation was not done and I was moved back to a previous node and had rock solid connections. The DS1.1 network in my area is undersubscribed and had no real need for STM, the DS3 network in the area is oversubscribed and needs management. Once all the frequencys are put together then hopefully my area will be smooth.

I too am on the 60 meg network and my download speed TEST hit 62/2.8 constantly. Streaming however is worse than it was on the 1.1 network (it should be better due to the fact that the DS3 modems do speed management instead of the head ends).

So, No, there may not be anything wrong with his line, yes he should call them.

VDSL can carry a contention ratio of 1:1, vs VM who doesnt publish theirs now, but it had crawled from 30:1 to 50:1 before moving up again and having the ratio's no longer being published.

And before you reply, Yes "Contention" is not what "VM" uses, they use "Utilization"... That is their choice, and they dont publish those numbers.

Virgin Media to push out nimble new broadband speeds

Uh....

the 20 and 30 are both goign to 60.

Both will need the superhub..

The only thing you managed to get is a £30 discount on a modem. One that you probably will not receive for AT LEAST another year.

Just because an area gets upgraded, it doesnt mean that all customers get new hardware to cope with it. Some of the first areas of the "Faster Uploads" upgrade we had still have old modems on it, VM havent even started contacting those customers yet!...

Seagate matches and raises WD disk warranty cuts

European Rules

Yea, I think there's several "fit for" rules, so if it failed in 18 months then you could probably argue to get a replacement. The question is, would it be worth the hassle.

It took YEARS for MSI to replace my badcap motherboard, when they offered to fix it I was no longer using that generation of product.

I can see a great reason for having no long term warranty for these products. In 5 years there will be none of them in the supply chain to swap out with. I recently purchased a sony tv with a 6 year warranty with the specific view that it's likely to fail, and the replacement for it in 4-5 years time will be a real cracker ;P

'Insatiable' Brits gobble Blu-Ray, deserve reward

Ownership

How does ownership of these "Triple" things work...

What I have wondered is if you could buy them together, and split them up to sell them. Is this a sigular lisence where you (the consumer) are not allowed to split the product?.

Cornish villagers treated to 4G trial

I think the difference is that mobile subscribers will be using regular DSL connections for the backhaul, but it should latch onto any that are open to sharing. Like the FON network..

Course, I could be wrong too :P

Email and compliance: How not to blow the storage budget?

HOT / G / Yahoo!

Have all of your staff use the free mail services, then you can delete it all...

Compliance, What compliance, it was never in our possession.

Emergency declared at second quake-wracked Japanese nuke plant

I think research shows

That areas of the world that have high levels of NATURAL raditon have lower levels of birth defects and cancer! It was a few years ago when I read the study, and who knows how well the sample data was vetted.

If the population there has a high tolerance then it's probably going to be no biggie, it all depends on how bad this gets tbh, releasing radition will be the better of the two ills if it comes to that.

Virgin Media to issue firmware update after Superhub slows to crawl

Months away

They have posted a update and said that a new firmware will roll out within the next few months, but that they would work on it to get there quicker.

If your using either the VMDG280 or VMDG480 then your best option is to turn off all security, all filtering, disable the radio(s), and set up an IP for DMZ and put your existing router to have that fixed IP for the DMZ zone.

Another big issue at the moment is that some SIP phones are being blocked!....

The tech who came to my house tried to give me one of these units ,and I begged him for a old modem.. Eventually he budged. They have been "told" that the 50meg modem (the one used for 200 meg trials) isnt good enough for the 30 meg service.

Yet something else customers should be aware of is the free "Upload" increase..

10 and 10 (medium and large) customers will NOT receive the upload increase if they are on older modems. VM will try to give you a VMDG280 if you need a new modem.

Virgin Media kills 20Mb broadband service

Headline Speeds.

I was told today by VM Tech that they can only help with speeds if it's slower than 30% of the headline speed.

So a 30 meg user will be able to get 9 meg. Nice..

It's the first time I have EVER been told by VM Support that their service is only a "Up-To" service and I shouldnt expect the headline speeds.

This is just some strange ploy to get wifi&docsis3 into everyones homes. I expect a firmware update is going to give us a new "wifi" zone company really soon!

Diary of a Not-spot: One man's heroic struggle for broadband

In the States LOL

In the states (where I go) you need to drive for about 45 misn to get to a public "wifi" spot. Your about 20 miles away from ANY cell service (pager service works because that's what the police use) and dialup is only guaranteed for something like 9600 baud.. If it hasnt been raining too much you can usually get that speed without problems.

I know that ppl think the USA is wired better than the rest of the world, but I have pals who lived in texas that couldnt get broadband, and I know of "fios" type connections around the great lakes that still has max service around 2-3 meg.

About 5 miles from where I am goign is the nearest area DSL has rolled out to, and for 47$ a month (before phone rental and taxes) you can get the TOP service that's 768k down and something like 264k up.... Not real sure what the rates are but it's in that range, the upload isnt bad tbh... 1:3 :P... Anyhow...

In MOST of the UK your never more than 2-3 miles away from something blazing fast. The problem is ofcourse the link to people who do have the service.

If I was the guy in the story I would have PROBABLY just invested in a sat tuner and an older sat dish that he could use to direct the signal better.. Slowly adjust it and try to find the best place to be. Once he has it in place he could lock it down and take the dish turning kit off.

Woman charged with stealing nude pics of baseball star

Protecting Accounts

The biggest problem these days with protecting accounts is that you have so much information to store that it's getting difficult to remember it all...

My ISP purchased the largest web forum that was used to slate them, so my ISP got personal details of me and everything I have ever said about them, probably the private msg's on the forum were logged too, nice eh?..

And I have been put on two mailing list because of other forum/account movements from one company to another..

My school, dob, name, address, phone, and even email addresses change between nearly every site I visit, and this means I have to use a large spreadsheet to actually keep up with my accounts.

As for the person stealing pics that were once public, charge her for petty theft and let her be on her way.

Nasty IE 0day exploit hosted on Amnesty International site

websploit

Well, I visited a page last week with ie8 and my virus scanner went off the chart...

The page I visited (a popular forum, safe for work and nothing illegal) managed to change a regkey, install a proxy server, and change ie8's proxy configuration..

3 instances of the program was running, all from the temp directory, and the reg key would have seen it install another bit of software had I rebooted.. There was also a bit of script added for firefox so once it started it would have been comprimised too...

I submitted the virus for online scans and a few sites said the file was fine, so some people would have been caugh out..

DEP is enabled, but I cant rule out it loading as java or flash or something else of the ilk...

Sadly, the site I think it was doesnt seem to be installing again and I couldnt replicate it (I cleared cache and history as part of the cleaning process).

The 99p mobile phone: What's the catch?

It's about time

That we finally got another cheap, functional, useful, PHONE.....

Todays generation of kids are morons quite frankly.. My generation has tried to go from 7" super-low res to 50+ inch HD quality displays. Todays generation wants a 4" screen that they can watch a 3d film on with 7.1 audio (WTF)...

This college kid came to train with us once, and his biggest complaint was that he didnt have enough money to live off of.. He was spending more on his phone than most people spend on a mortgage, and only having 1 pack of non-branded pot noodle every day to fund the habbit... sad...

Airport screeners go for the groin

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

The main airport I use (in USA) only received bomb scanners 2 years ago...

Since we (me and fam) are "International" Travellers starting at a small crappy airport we trigger the "security team" every time we go...

Escorted to gate, 100ml drinks for us are forbidden.. while some fatass is drinking his 880ml superduper gulp cola he got from the gas station before he arrived at the airport looks at us and wonders if we are gonna blow up his plane.

What's worse is that they dump (literally) our bags out every year, swab them all, and then shovel the gear back in.. They sit on top of the baggage to get it re-sealed... I ask them every year (can you perhaps unpack it neatly and put it all back in correclty only to be met with the responce of a TSA advisory card that says for my safety they accept no responsibilty in screwing up my luggage, it's contents, delays in contents, or for giving the general population of that airport the view that I am a terrorist..

I think the airport has something like 10 carrier flights a day, and there's at least 18 TSA staff on duty at any given time.......

Since they have no body scanners, I can see that we'll be in line for feel-ups for the next 30 years.

No wonder CompSci grads are unemployed

Not only IT

The IT industry isnt the only industry that suffers with this.

I find that college/universitys often push students into these roles when they probably shouldnt be there.

I tried (in the USA) for two years to get into IT courses only to be rejected every year. The reason was quite simple, because everyone was going for these courses getting the starting courses was a lottery, with many courses getting filled before they even oficially opened.

I also seen some of these starter courses and let me tell you, they make you sick..

You learn about things such as "The Windows Button", "The reason we have an X in the corner of a program window", "Using your mouse properly".

I did manage to get into a CAD Course (Hoping it would allow me to get into some of the other courses but it didnt) and my first day In I had completed all of the coursework for the term :(..

I gave up on it and went into a industrial course where roughly 97% of people fail... The joy of being one of 2 people who graduate a course is quite high. The sad thing is that my industrial course taught me more about IT than any of my friends ever learned in college. Okay, One pal has managed to start (and burn) 3 multi-million dollar IT companys. But at least I understand assembly language for several systems.

Sadly, like the it bods, I have horrid grammatical skills ;P..

Mozilla man accuses Jobs of 'bypass the web' scheme

Apple Webpages

I have to admit, The apple webpages over the past couple of years seem to never work great for me unless I am using an iPod or iPhone to browse the sites..

At first I thought that this might be a pc issue at first, but when I purchased a new laptop and then another, and then built two new desktops.. I soon realised that it wasnt my pc, it was just the apple website.

Strange enough.. If I go back to a p4 system with windows2000.. the iTunes movie site seems to work well... I am not saying that they are intentionally coding something to not work in windows environments.. Just that (for me) out of 5 pc's (all core2duo or better) none of them can browse the movie pages without some part of it locking up.

Google robo cars drive selves on public streets

So now we know why they "Gmaped" us

Not sure if we should be worried here or not..

I have no doubt this will be made into a movie in 10 years and they will receive the credit for self-driving cars... I mean.. before Greenspan(I mean Zuckerberg) was around there never existed social networking.. So I am sure that the idea of self driving cars has never happened..

There is one upside tho.. If cars start driving themselves they can provide calibration data on roads and maps should become a lot more precise.

Youth jailed for not handing over encryption password

Child Porn

Wow, I have never seen so many people defend someone who was found downloading child porn..

While I do not subscribe to the idea that the state should control every aspect of our lives, I also dont subscribe to the idea that some pervert should be allowed to encrypt his illegal porn just to keep it from being used as evidence.

If I was to kill and chop up someone, cook them in a stir-fry and serve them up at my local chinease resturant.. Does that exclude me from being charged with murder?

Virgin Media introduces P2P throttling

Moving

You can port your number from Cable to any other Telco..

You can also port numbers from any mobile operator to another.

Not sure why you think this isnt the case?...

Moving from BT to Tiscal = Install charges, possibly new modem, and transfer of phone number

Moving from Virgin to BT = Install charges, def new modem, and transfer of phone number

Your argument is that VM isnt having to share their network with other operators.

If you would even try to paritally understand the differences between HFCN's and DSL configurations you would see that for "Cable" to share would mean that any operator on the line would change the performance of everyone else on that line. So if O2 had users that were pegging the line 100% of the time 24-7 then other users could suffer.. Then the only isp's that would be "picked" would be the ones who had no traffic limits, thus screwing over everyone else.

Do a little bit of research and thinking before you just jump in and start crying fowl..

If they are refusing to port your number then you have an argument, otherwise.. FAIL.

HABITABLE ALIEN WORLD discovered 20 light-years away!

New Life and New Civilizations

I can see how this is going to go!!!!

"

With knowledge and love of GOD we will go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before to spread the word and the gospel of our king.

As long as we restrict communications to White American Christianity make sure no Islam extremist terrorist make are able to commuincate with the new planet then we'll be okay.

"

I know that one day life on another planet will be found, and this will either bolster relegion or end it. I fear both, One will bring out the extreme nature on both sides and we'll see the church trying to block access like they have done in the past, the other will see people take a loss of faith and come to terms that there may be no afterlife so they can do whatever they want. In essence, when we find new life I rekon there's a larger chance we'll kill ourselves long before we ever get to actually travel to the planet.

Car wrecks rise after texting bans imposed

Louisiana

As I am from Louisiana I can say that no texting or phone ban will work..

The coverage is so poor that you usually need to get out of the car and climb a tree to get a good signal.. Perhaps the increase in accidents is now due to people spending more time in cars and less time in trees?

The recent natural gas boom in louisiana has also enabled a lot of people to buy insurance for the first time (I Know where I am from that there are more vehicles WITHOUT insurance than with). So it could just be that they can finally afford to have insurance to make fraudulant claims ;P...

Organ banks on horizon as boffins prep tissue-freeze tech

bleh

It would depend on how much genetic testing has been done on the Weta in the past, If the mapping and research is far enough behind they could spend 10 years just getting the basics down.. Fly's and Worms have been science fodder for years and it's probably much easier for them to "tinker" with the genetic sequences.

iPhone users get more sex than Android fans

Another Title for this research....

"Non-Apple Smartphone users can find stable relationships"

Ballmer's 'lost generation' note finds resonance

Ehh, Been there, Lobby'd that.

In the late 80's, MacClones were dealt a heavy blow due to pressure from the USGov. Seeing how large apple is now, and how Ipads were passed around Gov head offices on lauch day then there's probably a good chance that they have little to worry about when it comes to the regulators.

If any other phone would have had the poor reception complaints that the IPhone 4 had, then they would have seen officials in the media saying (we think xx company should do the proper thing and replace those bad handsets)... Instead we get see Whoopee, and EllenDegenerate going a bit ape and then offering public apologys afterwards.

Hah

Yes they do, American research has shown it to be true..

Besides, My Geography teacher gave us this question on a test once..

"Why does 99% of the world speak English"

a) Because America is so great and that everyone wants to be like us

b) Because of some other reason..

Needless to say, I missed the question, due to the fact that I said "I think that the ENGLISH actually spread the ENGLISH language around the world."....

Glad She show'd me the err's of my Socalistic ways.

UK supermarket starts contactless payments

The Fault with

Chip and Pin was because the magnetic strip has still not been removed from the cards, thus making them usable in ATM's..

DSG, Halfords, and many other large companys still refuse to use the chip and pin devices, in favor of scanning the strip in the till (that has a chip reader at the end).

The strip needs to get dumped, and we need to go fully chip & pin OR..... Have 2 pin codes, one for Magstripe, one for Chip.

Data for 100m Facebook accounts published to BitTorrent

Search it wut?...

If you scan it all in so you can "search by number" then your breaking UK law..

Reverse directory lookup in the UK isnt permitted.

Kaspersky blocks BBC News over false phishing fears

I agree, Block the site!

The new site is pants...

Perhaps it's good for "Mobile, Table, Pad, iPod" users, but they could have detected this and laid out .mobi pages on their own.

now I only have volesoft.com, rogister, and inq... Inq is soon to get dumped too if they revamp the subpages ;P...

BT and TalkTalk threaten court to kill Mandybill

RSNA-CCNP

"Since WPA-TKIP was dealt a serious blow late last year by those two Japanese people, and most consumer equipment can't reliably handle WPA-AES ... there is a whole lot of trouble and pain waiting for us."

Not sure if it's just the weather right now or what, but a few days ago I was able to pick up about 15 wifi signals here.

2 - WEP

1 - WPA-TKIP

Rest were RSNA-CCNP (WPA2-PSK AES)

I tracked down one of the WEP Users, they have since changed it to TKIP (not good enough, but I'll approach them again :P)..

As For hardware not being able to support it, Any router than cant cope with AES style encryption will probably have WAN speeds between 10 and 20 meg, my 2003 WRT54G supports AES Just fine, and it was a Draft-G product at the time.

From either late this year, or early next year, all 11n equipment will be set defaulted to WPA2 encryption to try and stem people setting weak encryption. It is also impossible for a 11n device to run in 11n mode without WPA2-AES Encryption enabled (this is defined in the standard).

If you use an Appple PC, Or a Linux based PC then AES is possible (software has to support it). If you use Windows2k, WindowsXP, or any of the earlier MicrosoftVariants they have disabled AES to give users "help" on making the choice of changing OS.

Osborne hands out tax cuts - for companies

OH BOOOTS!

Wow, I never knew low income workers were spending 10k£ PA on Boots and Clothing....

VHMUWAHAAT

And the upside, is that they'll only need to drop vat 12.5% to recover that 14.3% increase!!

Ofcom sides with mobile operators on 0845

bleh

Progressive income tax doesnt work the same way as BT is charging, taxation happens at each level, it's not "OhNo I just earned £37,401, now I have to pay 40% of everything I have made"... It's "OhNo, I just earned £37,401, now every 1£ over that I have to pay 40 pence out as tax (Until I reach £150,001)"...

The Americans have a hard time understanding this and they think that if they make $68,001 a year instead of $67,999 that they'll pay an extra $6,800 in tax when in reality, they'll only pay an extra £0.40 in tax.

BT's method means that we would have seen most companys locking calls in at 12.49, 17.49, 22.49, 27.49, or 32.49 pence per min.

The key thing that people should take home here is that we could have had these calls at around 5.5ppm during the day, and 3.9ppm at all other times for operators to make a profit.

Ofcom smites silent callers

eh

Some countrys have "accept" terms and conditions when any key is pressed.. Agreed that once outside the USA it's not as common. But still It's probably best not to be pressing keys on these silent calls.

What's worse is that some companys (like the ones Debenhams uses for delivery of large products) have staff that use a mixed sales call centre and delivery centre. This means that no delivery agent can call you if "TPS has marketing calls blocked"..

Getting a 0845 inbound number (in the UK) will stop a lot of the cold calls (and if you pick a good supplier you could possibly make money when they phone you)

Data loss fines hit £500K from today

Folds

I think 100 fold is a little larger than 100 times.

If the new fine was 6,338,253,001,141,147,007,483,516,026,880,000 per offence then it would be 100 fold.

I think the current increase is about 6.65 fold..