Posts by Nick

G20 Summit: All the action caught on camera

heh

Good stuff!

BT names first 29 exchanges for fibre rollout

Manchester..

Well, they may be rolling it out for those in the suburbs, but those of us who live in the city centre get naff-all. No cable here, and I'm stuck with ADSL that pretends to be ~6mbit, runs at about 4, gives me huge latency spikes and generally drops out entirely once or twice per night!

Prof pooh-poohed in pig-v-whale hippo genealogy brouhaha

Title competition

May as well close entries now, I think this one's won it. Nice work (although I did spit some pasty out)!

Rogue Facebook app creates malign buzz

The issue..

.. here was that this application managed to circumvent the 'Allow this application access..?' page which is normally displayed. I knew from the bad grammar that it was fishy, but as the warning page usually includes a link to the facebook application page I thought I'd sniff out a few more details.

No warning; as soon as I clicked a notification link it added itself to my applications.

Should this be possible? I was under the impression it wasn't.

2008's top three netbooks

NC10

Likewise... I've got a Samsung NC10 and it's absolutely superb!

El Reg celebrates 10th birthday

Cheers!

Here's to another 10 years of the light-deprived ugly-bastard parade that we know and love as El Reg!

BOFH: The London Underground vending machine conspiracy

Good stuff as ever!

Perhaps they can visit a few people on my behalf, too...

1&1 says sorry to one in ten

RE: AC

Not at all. But if they are able to email me a PDF invoice (for a not-particularly-tiny sum) every month, why can't they achieve simple email notifications?

They had contact telephone numbers too, but they didn't use those. Perhaps they only ever require such information for marketing purposes - and sod the actual services you pay for?

Enough..

.. is enough. I'm one of the "lucky" dedicated server customers. I've had one with them for the best part of 4 years, and recently, for the third time, their control panel lost my payment details. They didn't email me, or warn me.. just disconnected my server (sending a letter to a previous address).

So, I'm pleased to say, this month is my last ever with 1and1!

Japanese to launch paper plane from ISS

@ martin

.. Space Stationary.. bwahahah hahahaha!

Good show :D

UK gov scraps '£1bn' prisoner tracking system

It's a start..

It's actually quite nice to see the government can an IT project due to being way over budget. They usually seem to plough ahead anyway.

Now all we need to do is stop them going for these projects (which are guaranteed to go over) in the first place!

BOFH: Spreading the festive cheer

Ahhh

That's the BOFH I know.

I'm making a few notes for Christmas this year..

1and1's dedicated servers go titsup

Server

I've had a dedicated server with 1&1 for the last 3 years. I've found them to be fantastic - as long as there isn't a problem. In that 3 years, I've had maybe 2 hours downtime in total including one major connectivity issue which was fixed fairly promptly. However, do not expect great customer service. If you have the misfortune of needing to contact them, you're in trouble.

However, if you persist and know which numbers to call, you can actually get through to either level3 or the onsite datacentre staff. Which is handy.

So, if you know your server management well and can resolve 99% of problems yourself you're sorted. If you're a newbie needing cheap hosting, give them a wide berth.

Google's proposed global privacy standard slammed

Crikey!

What a surprise - Google backing lax international privacy policy - I wonder what end that could serve?

Cynic, me?

BT aims to make UK a Wi-Fi kibbutz

RE: security

The idea revolves around the use of something called 'BT HomeHub' - a linux based router system supplied by BT to their broadband customers. Whilst I'm not saying that they'll make it secure, I expect they'll separate BT Fon WiFi traffic from users' internal networks with a HomeHub update. I'm making uninformed presumptions here ;) but I very much doubt BT Fon will utilise third party wireless routers and access points.

Arsonists target Cornish housing developments

St. Austell

@Vulpes Vulpes: Quite why he'd venture into aforementioned drinking den is beyond me. Aside from the fact you only have two now that you lack a town centre, Truro is clearly superior. Skinners ftw :D

Yahoo!'s pink liberation army a threat to America's youth

Darn

So, we've been had. Otto is a false persona invented for satire. Fair enough, but that doesn't really excuse the content of the article. By utilising a persona, it quite probably just indicates that the true author holds these views and wants to hide behind a veil of anonymity.

Stunning

I'm not usually one to go as far as voicing an opinion on a story where the author is exercising their right to free speech. No, not normally.

I've been reading The Register for years, and have always enjoyed the irreverent humour and spin on the [mostly] journalistically valuable stories you put out. Today, however, I read your correspondents article on homosexuals & Yahoo! [see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/23/otto_yahoo_pink/]. Is this the same Register I've known all these years? Who was responsible for allowing this narrow-minded bigoted diatribe on to your pages?

I know ElReg is international, but come on. We're not all bible-bashing creationists looking for the "Moral High Ground" according to God's bible (for ever after, Amen). Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, but allowing this sort of unadulterated tripe on to the hallowed pages of ElReg is beyond astounding.

I'll be suprised if you should ever allow said "Journalist" to syndicate his pitiful rhetoric here again!

BOFH: Printer cartridge? What printer cartridge?

Ahhh..

Service as normal has resumed. I did think they were going a bit easy on him...!

About that TV service, Mr Branson...

NTL/Virgin Media

Hmm. I don't have the cable TV, but I've got their 10mbit service. Had it for about a year, and it's bloody good (in my experience, at least). I never fail to download at between 550kib/s and 1.1mib/s, with the 550 as a worst case!

Perhaps I've escaped stuff so far, but no traffic shaping here. However, they did send a letter saying they're upping connections to £20 so are charging £2 more. Fair enough, I thought, until I realised that my area won't get 20mbit for nigh-on a year. So I'm paying extra for you lot to get your traffic-shaped double XXL packages :P

Sky's gone out the window this month - ditched for my new HTPC with dual DVB. Much funkier, much faster, less on - but generally the bits of Sky you don't get on freeview are crap anyway (Discovery, on the whole, the exception).

I stopped watching Sky One and its ilk nearly a year ago. Re-run after re-run after re-run. VM hasn't lost much by parting from their BSkyB partnership!

Beeb's iPlayer service gets greenlight

UK only

Yes, the service will be UK-only. Apparently this applies to anything which is currently UK-only; services available worldwide will continue to be made so. (As far as I can ascertain from the PDF below!).

http://www.bbcgovernorsarchive.co.uk/docs/iplayer_summary.pdf

Rookie plumber torches £5m mansion

Hmm..

One might go as far as to suggest the poor lad was 'Gutted'.