Posts by Aldous

Hunt: I'll barcode sick Brits and rip up NHS's paper prescriptions

Re: Cue contractors

You missed a bit. Some wonk will need to be hired to rewrite the whole documentation so that it complies with ITIL,FCAPS or whatever the next fad design standard in management is.

Nine-year-old Opportunity Mars rover sets NASA distance record

Re: Lunokhod

Give Lord British (Richard Garriot) a ring he might sell you his one. Delivery will be a pain though

Wannabe hacker, you're hired: Brit bosses mull cyber-apprenticeships

Catch -22

Can't get a security job with out security clearance

Can't get security clearance without a security job

and they wonder why they are struggling to recruit

Top guns doomed as US Navy demos first carrier-launched drone

Re: look at the intervention (or lack of) in Syria.

Adam Curtis did a blog post about ghaddafi (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/hes_behind_you) which suggests that they nearly did go after Syria. He states that Syria was the prime suspect in the lockerbie bombing but once the Gulf war happened they shifted focus to Libya to prop up support for gulf war 1.

"Within months of the attack the famous Sunday Times "Insight" team had a series of scoops that revealed that the bombing on the Pan Am plane was a revenge attack by Iran for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by an American warship in the Gulf in 1988. The articles laid it all out in enormous detail - how the Iranians had paid a Palestinian terrorist group based in Syria to plant the bomb in a Toshiba cassette player. And that this had been done with the help of the Syrian authorities."

Re: Hmmm

China and the US are not stupid (most of the time). They are both nuclear powers and also have a symbiotic relationship through trade. Neither side would benefit from attacking the other either conventionally or with nukes.

If you want further proof look at the intervention (or lack of) in Syria. A nation state that has used chemical weaponry on its citizens, is bombing them from the sky and is committing war crimes on a daily basis (not that the rebels are innocent of this either). Yet where is the ground invasion to prevent chemical weapons (Iraq) or the no fly zone to prevent the murder of civilians (Libya)? Syria has a much more powerful AA system then Libya had (and even then the Israelis have snuck by it) and so there is little appetite from the west to do something as benign (in military terms) as enforce a no flyzone to stop civilians being bombed.

Now if they will not even tackle a tin pot dictator with modernish SAM's (they were getting s300's but the Russians saw sense on that) what makes you think they will go after the worlds economic superpower/factory ?

Another thing to consider is that blowing satellites up does creates debris. Too much debris and you can cause a Kessler syndrome to develop (chain reaction of debris) which messes up all sides and non participants.

This thing will be used to fly into situations like Syria where it can carry out operations without the risk of a pilot being captured/tortured/desecrated. It will be flown against country's with little air force presence and its first missions will be to destroy that presence on th ground. Any remaining birds in the air will be taken out by manned FA18/F35's for the near future.

The USN does not want to repeat Vietnam where a low tech army supplied with high tech weaponry (Soviet SAMS) can cause havoc on expensive fast jets and pilots. This aircraft will allow them to loiter over mission area's (can't do that with a tomahawk), is stealth (probably more so then an f35 due to flying wing config and size) so less likely to be detected and has longer legs then manned options available. Dogfighting is the least of their concerns

Feds stamp on cash pipeline to Mt Gox, Bitcoin's Wall Street

Re: Betting against the MAN

Exactly, Bitcoin itself is decentralized by design and would be incredibly hard to shut down (it would need blocking at an ISP level to prevent the various wallets from syncing)

MtGox is based in Japan which is why they went after Dwolla, which is US based and only for US citizens. Other exchanges are based all around the world and use various payment providers. This move has not shut down MtGox just made it a little harder for US based people to deposit to gox.

Remember there are two absolute guaranteed parts of life, Death and Taxes. If you make a profit trading Bitcoins you still have to pay tax on it just like any other asset. The state may be crap at chasing down muggers,robbers etc but if you do not pay your taxes they will come down on you with the full force available.

IT'S OFFICIAL: Hipster era is OVER – sorry, beanie boiz...

That and Nathan Barley. Caught the whole Hipster wankery in the bud. Do you think charlie brooker and chris morris get to go around saying "i was making fun of hipsters before it was cool" :)

i have no issues with how people want to live but do not have a superiority complex because you think your identikit personality is "superior" to anyone else's. i.e "i like x band, you have probably never heard of them" "x band used to be cool but now they are too mainstream" etc.

Also WTF is the attraction to a fixie bike other than being a moron? "yeah freewheeling technology is what the corporations use to control your mind, 19th century tech is where it is at" usually tweeted via a corporate made iPad/android slab. I can understand anachronisms, if someone wants a pocket watch on a chain then thats fine but fixie bikes are completely useless and backwards(like most hipsters when you think about it)

Your Flying Car? Delayed again, but you WILL get it, says Terrafugia

Landing horizontally

Would that not be a bit of a bugger given this thing is supposed to be self landing/flying. So it can't land in the car park you wanted so it needs to make a bee line for a normal airstrip, which will likely be a managed strip near an urban area. How is it going to get into the traffic patterns etc without causing utter chaos?

A normal Helo experiencing problems has a fully trained pilot who can radio in, get clearance etc. How is this going to work for one of these (assuming it ever gets off the ground which i doubt). Even if the flight computer can notify the airstrip surely that means the ATC's will need to be upgraded with systems to take the data?

'Liberator': Proof that you can't make a working gun in a 3D printer

FUD and Back Pats

Anti gun lobby will froth at the mouth and get this banned/pulled as a small win on the way to a wider ban

Pro gun lobby will let this get banned/pulled as a way to throw anti gun a bone. After all 3d printed guns mean no more sales for Bushmaster!

In the meantime the debate around gun control suffers another wound as both sides crank up the hype and FUD. For example there has been hype around this in the UK yet getting ammunition is not easy (without suitable licenses) and even the powder is controlled. Now in the USA where you can buy ammo at walmart or any other large store it might be a slight issue.

This thing is pathetic as the article mentions. Zip guns are deadlier, even the ones Tom Sachs (an artist) made purely to turn in and get $300 would be more dangerous. As a proof of concept it works but if you applied the FUD to this its equivalent to saying a kit aircraft is a homemade b52 because you can fly it around and drop rocks on people

Builder-in-a-hole outrage sparks Special Projects Bureau safety probe

Re: Woah there

Given PETA's track record they would "Liberate the Dogs" and then have them put down. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT LESTER? PLASMA TV NOW!!1111

New 'BLOCKBUSTER' APPLE iTHING imminent - billionaire Einhorn

Re: Or Alternatively

erm if you are going to quote you might want to read down a little bit further:

" Not Apple bashing, the premium android mob are the same. So what if it has a faster CPU/GPU when most people play angry birds or use them for mobile media stations."

There are indeed two sides to every story but this one was not Apple vs Android, It was that the innovation in the field is topping out. The difference between an iPhone 4s and 5 or a top of the line 2012 android vs 2013 model is nothing like the difference between the original iPhone/Android smartphones and the blackberrys/Nokia's everyone was using previously.

Fashion takes design skills but ultimately production can be scaled by adding a few more third worlders to sewing machines. This means it is no problem to throw out your old designs each year "That's so last year....". The smartphone companies are employing the same model except they have massive R&D and tooling cost's so it is going to end in tears. TV manufacturers have hit this one, why upgrade your HDTV for a few non important whizz bangs (3DTV in its current form, IPTV built in when most people have a console/set top box that can do it etc) when the old one is almost as good.

In Apples case this is already happening as the stock is sliding they are more exposed to this then the other players as they have a relatively small product line. Where as the likes of Samsung can continue for a bit longer as they have a wider range of products. It's not that Apple is not still selling plenty of product it is that the expectation of where they are heading has fallen.

Re: New product?

Not any more even the die hard Apple fans are seeing that the new iWotsits are only small iterational improvements on the old models rather then " zomgs amazing best thing since slice bread ,revolutionize the synergy" type products.

Anecdotally when the iPhone 5 was released many of the people i work with who love all things fruity just went "meh" having previously taken their kidneys/first borns to get the 4S. Similar deal with iPad, yeah its got a nicer screen and a bit more power but why junk the older one? Not Apple bashing, the premium android mob are the same. So what if it has a faster CPU/GPU when most people play angry birds or use them for mobile media stations.

Hence the whole "Peak Apple" and the stock price sliding. its not like Apple have done anything particularly wrong to make the price slide it is just people are starting to see that the company is not as innovative recently as some have made out. Jobs dieing tied in with this swing so it will be viewed as Apple loosing their visionary and going on a downward slide but really its an overpriced stock adjusting to a more realistic level.

If they are doing an iWatch i will wager that will be a flop (in Apple terms) as who wants an electronic watch (there will always be a market for quality mechanical watches) when you have smartphone/fondleslab on you anyway. IPTV is a possibility but such a pain with content rights and they have tried that one before. unless they bring out the "next big thing" the stock will continue to slide despite the company turning over decent profits and having a cash war chest.

'No discernible increase in piracy' from DRM-free e-books

Shock News - Tor treats fans with respect, Fans continue to treat Tor with respect

The key point here is Tor turned dropped DRM and sales stayed the similar, they did not fall off a cliff as any industry wonk will tell you.

I am Tor's target market, i buy lots of books primarily SF but also over area's of fiction (and loads of non-fiction) and I spend as much time reading as i do on games/tv (the other big media outlets).

When i was at uni struggling to make ends meet (despite working as well) i did pirate some of the authors whose books Tor carry. However this was often only if i could not get them from the uni library, which gives the author sod all (seriously even rowling and pratchett get a maximum of a couple of grand from this). Now i have a job and can afford it i am buying both hard copy and ebook titles of authors whose first book i tried i might have downloaded a few years ago.

People will pay for content they deem good and at a reasonable price especially in a field like SF fiction which has always been the underdog of literature (they are just jealous of our jetpacks). Those who pirate often do so because they can't afford it or are doing "extended demo's" (try a game, if its 4 hours long not bother) THEY ARE NOT LOST SALES. Had copyright infringment been punishable by death and heavily policed i simply would not have read those authors books which would have translated to lost sales further along in time.

DRM does not do anything except piss off the legit consumer. I ended up downloading the PDF's of a training course my company had legally bought (and was made by a seperate department of the same company) because locklizard was such a pain to work with. 5 minutes on google and i had the unrestricted PDF's

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Re: @TrishaD

"My impression was that his sex change was purely as a means of evading capture and re-imprisonment"

Yep after all its such an easy procedure that takes minutes to do, costs nothing and totally does not change your life in the slightest. Don't you think it would have been easier to get out of Columbia? or even having face changing plastic surgery rather than a gender swap?

Also gender identity and sexuality are not hard linked. There are MTF and FTM transsexuals who still have relationships with people of their original gender. 20 years is also a long time in surgical science, techniques change and get perfected (of course it depends how far along she was hormones+implants achieve a lot)

Watchdog: Y'know what Bitcoin really needs? A REGULATOR!

exactly. The only way they can rule it out is by making possession of a Bitcoin wallet punishable by similar terms as the above. That and blocking at the ISP level to prevent wallets syncing.

They will go after the places that exchange to regular currency's but these are based outside of the US. Sure they can ask favors from host countries to close this down but then the exchanges will just do what the gambling sites did and set up shop in Belize, The Antilles et all.

Even if they do all the above that only affects people converting into other currency's as a currency in itself it will remain unaffected.

This is standard issue financial FUD "don't worry we are totally looking into it, once we figured out this new fangled internet thing the kids are on about"

Politically-correct 'Fairphone' goes on pre-sale next week

Re: I say fraud

Not to mention the price is small considering they won't be able to use most of the COTS hardware around. After all a lot of it will have rare earth's and things from the likes of DR Congo and other warzones. Then again they may make wishy washy claims like:

"The war lord we bought it from says he totally owns the mine and does not use child soldiers, he pinky sweared it"

"But $4 a day is a really good wage in Burma so its totally ethical"

A small normal phone start up would struggle to deliver at those prices in that volume let alone one that would need to police a supply chain a mile long (not an easy job at the best of times)

VTOL hybrid flying car promises the skies

1 MW Electric - What about the Batterys

Whilst having the tilt rotors electric makes them mechanically simpler won't that mean that the thing has to lift a load of battery weight? would not IC based one be better sharing the same fuel tank as the main rear drive.

Also have they cured the battery aging? hate to see the results after 3 years when those VTOL engines run out of juice a lot quicker.

Still good luck to them!

Flat mobe battery? Just light a fire

Not if your phone has a non replaceable battery

Scramjet X-51 finally goes to HYPER SPEED above Pacific

Re: hmm

The Annie Jacobson "Area 51" book has quite a good history of the development of the U2/A12/SR71 with info gathered from the test pilots et all (until she wanders off into unsubstantiated fruit loop territory). The A12's were faster iirc just like the CIA spec U2's went higher then the USAF spec ones (due to USAF ones being painted and other little things)

Truly an amazing plane for its time. The 50 years is a moot point though, we could have scramjet airliners now but there is no demand so little money(relative to project size) gets spent on research. After concord no one was going to invest in fast travel and it was not a useful military option until the end of the cold war.

Climate change forces women into prostitution - US politicians

Re: The USA was responsible

Yep, Pre Iraq war their was no such thing as prostitues. Now they are every where! To make matters worse they are all immigrants and they try to take your guns as well!

Damn gubbermint

Fanbois vs fandroids: Punters display 'tribal loyalty'

Re: Pfft

1) Most non Fruity phones have replaceable batteries. My Chinese samsung (star n9770) clone ones cost 4 quid so i never have issues on long flights

2) Android (unlike iOS/Windows) is open source so in theory could continue being developed for 20 years.failing that other OSes such as Cynagen could be loaded.

20 years though should mean the protocols are obselete but hey people still hack things together (there is a web page hosted on a c64 ffs)

Not a fan boy for any camp but for me personally a big screen, non walled garden and replaceable batteries were my phone priority's (as it is used less as a phone and more for other things). Apple won't let you fiddle with anything and windows phones were too expensive.

Now if Apple addressed my points above (which they won't) i would have no issue with switching. What this report reflects is the growing trend of "you are what you buy". So people feel the need to fight to the death over which phone/console/gfx card etc they buy when most perform similar functions.

Personally i'd rather be thought of based on what i do/ think but then maybe thats because i can't afford the newest shineys

Huawei boss: Next CEO won't be member of my family

Re: Communist Party

except the "information security group" don't usually require brown envelopes full of money to approve new projects/deals. of course Beer, Curry and cattle prods usually help

Student falsely IDed by Reddit as Boston bomber found dead

Re: I'll get my baseball bat

a young man with a history of depression gets falsely accused of a highly emotive crime to Americans and ends up being found dead (suicide?) and that is better as they did not go out with pitchforks?

Why do people feel the need to DO SOMETHING when i don't see people volunteering so quickly to help out trawling CCTV for missing persons or mass googling for old folks to find there long lost relative but ZOMGZ TERRORISM TO ARMS!

In the book (and later tv show) "homicide" David Simon mentions that one of the worst things people can do to a murder investigation is to stick a reward for information as it brings out every crazy and crackpot around. These bombings have done exactly the same, from the Reddit amateur sleuths to the usual retarded "that guys not lost his legs he is an actor just like in sandy hook"

Nick Clegg: Snooper's Charter 'isn't going to happen'

Nice one Clegg!

So its not going to happen? Great! Just like when you held firm on the tuition fee rises...... oh bugger

Google's teeny UK tax bill 'just not right', thunders senior MP

how did Google fleece those companies of 2.5 billion? Google is not a mandated charge you find on most businesses ledger.

The tax laws are the way they are. Don't like it, change it (Protest, vote based on it etc). If people felt strongly enough they would get the law changed quickly like have done with pedophiles or terror laws.

This is just a typical case of "Rabble Rabble Rabble" moving from Banks (because that got no where) to tech. Then everyone gets bored and moves on to the next target/celebutard wedding.

Facebook to plonk $1.5bn data centre in Iowa - report

Profit usually works

Harassed Oracle employee wins case, cops huge legal bill

Re: Uhh... @Sorry

so i take it you are quite happy with your Ford Pinto?

DDOS strikes BitCoin exchange Mt.Gox

Verification queue is not transactions

Come on el reg its right there in the title of the post you linked. Its the queue for a fully verified account (more deposit options etc) and nothing to do with the trading engine

US to hand out wads of green (cards) in bid to staff tech industry

We need skilled workers with education AND experience there are none in this country so lets import them. I wonder why there are not more people coming through the ranks of IT from entry level upwards........

Wanted: Entry level I.T Person for our offices in downtown expensiveville to clean the crap out of the servers and perform occasional external HDD installs.

Must have advanced PhD in complex modeling of the human brain and quantitative finance. Must have 10+ years experience with Android/iOS development (Xbox 360 development an advantage) and should also have a working knowledge of Mandarin, Russian and Swahili.

You will be rewarded with a competitive package that includes a salary of 5 magic beans and have the privileged of being beaten with a broken bottle at the end of each day (once you have completed the extra 5 hours of totally not compulsory overtime,honest guv)

Cutting CO2 too difficult? Try these 4 simple tricks instead

Not working on CO2? LIES!

Don't you read the press/listen to the news? CO2 is everything. Its the one universal measure so we can all focus on it.

Now I am off to eat my five a day as that will counteract the deep fried battered lard sandwich with extra mayo i had, after all thats another SINGLE POINT OF FOCUS so it must be true! Plus i got out of breath walking to Bobs Greasy Emporium and thats good for you too. Yay Science!

Bitcoins: A GIANT BUBBLE? Maybe, but currency could still be worthwhile

Re: Worthwhile for Whom?

Thats why you don't have your exchange in the US same as you don't have a gambling site in the US. Last i checked there are still quite a few sports books around. In non "land of the free's" they can even be on the stock exchange.

Anyone that says bitcoin is ideal for buying your grocerys etc is in lala land, as a currency for online transactions? thats a diffrent matter

Re: Gold is mined out of the ground.

Nvidia GPU's are crap for bitcoin/altcoin mining even the largest EC2 instance struggles to keep up with a desktop and ATI cards

Winklevoss twins claim to have enormo $11m Bitcoin stash

Re: Why is ElReg being so reluctant to call MtGox by its proper name?

why dont commentards do some research. The domain name was bought with the intent to setup a MTG trading site but that never happened as they moved to bitcoins.

hurr durr its nerd card exchange not financial derp a herp!

IT salaries: Why you are a clapped-out Ferrari

Re: What's next?

1. whatever they feel comfortable doing and pays enougth for the qaulity of life they expect. go do media studies(if you like it) if you are prepared for minimum wage afterwards but don't moan if you expect a massive salary afterwards.

Likewise don't do something you hate because it has good money as chances are you will get through uni/training and a few years before you either quit it or settle for a lower level due to people who genuinly love the field (and more likely to do stuff towards furthering career) being better then you.

IT subjects in uni (Comp sci, networking,game design, comp sec) are stuffed to the gills in the first year and then come down to a handful in the final as many people get bored as it is not what they want to do.

2. Make yourself useful and learn. it outstands me when i was temping talking to people at a car plant that was due to close who's attitude was "i have screwed the same 4 bolts into a car for 10 years i can't do anything else, ever". does not even have to be technical, language skills are good, you could even retrain completly one guy i knew from said car plant became a music teacher and is making more then he did before doing what he loves.

'North Korea Has Launched a Missile' tweet sent by mistake

Re: Why?

it was more like:

Oh they're building an army? knock it off we are watching

They're invading countries they used to own? (In public) stop it, peace in our time etc (in private)oh crap we better start modernising our forces too

Oh they invaded poland... war declared by britain, france etc

they have been telling the norks to knock it off for a while its just china has been in the background. like the classic school kid with the big brother, no one has been saying "thats fine". There isn't much more you can do when one of the worlds biggest economys complete with nukes and a large (albiet outdated) milatary tells you to stop pushing its mate.

Iraq and Libya had no freinds even among its middle eastern neighbors and look how much contreversy there was (Syria on the other hand does and we have not "police actioned" there and are unlikely too)

Free online Uni courses pressure vendors to drop training costs

part time courses

one day the uni's will relise that having part time course still take place during working hours mon-fri is ridiculous. First one to switch a major uni course to part time evenings/weekends only will see a huge influx.

You can do most things via the OU but the sciences are hard, for example chemistry can not really be learned without a proper lab enviroment and safety kit

Maggie Thatcher: The Iron Lady who saved us from drab Post Office mobes

Re: Sadly, the under 40s

going on 1.5 months now waiting for a phone line to be connected (and on an estate) so things have not changed all that much

BT boss barks at TalkTalk for being 'copper Luddites'

Openreach has a monopoly and guess who they are a part of?

Any provider i go for has to have openreach do the pysical install (no vm). Openreach so far have taken longer then 6 weeks to tie two cables together (but the bloke that normal does new sites was on holiday!) and we can not change provider as they would all use fscking open reach!

Pyongyang to unleash NUKULAR horsemen of the Norkocalypse?

The US Cancelled a Missile Test

With that and whatever they do for glorious pork chop i mean leaders birthday will be the end of it as the yankee imperials have backed down all hail kim jong bacon!

How I nearly sold rocket windows to the crazy North Koreans

Air Power

The south may have a large army of malnourished soldiers with ak-47's and soviet surplus machinery but when it comes down to it modern state vs state (not "police actions")wars are decided in the air. They may have some Mig-29's but i'd bet that the bulk of the KPAF's planes are unfit for service (frame/engine hours too high, no parts etc) and are left on airfields to be seen by spy sats.

If the Norks tried to march south the RKAF would have a field day, their pilots are much higher trained and kit much more recent (and functional). Anything that could fly would be scrambled (and damn the budget). B52/B2/B1b's would also arrive on the scene fairly quickly and leave the north with no usuable airstrips. Without air cover it would be a turkey shoot. The JASDF would also be involved even in a passive capacity (air base use etc)

This is not included all the tomahawks that would be flying in from the subs the US and others will have positioned in theatre or any US air carrier groups (which is practically a small airforce in its own right)

SAM's may pose a threat but again these are old soviet designs, i'm sure the RKAF might be getting a few ECM updates soon under the table if they havn't already.Iraq also had a huge army/airforce but was hammered in Gulf war 1 after only invading kuwait (which was a cake walk) any conventional war from the Norks would look identical

This is all bluster and chest puffing but it serves the west as well as the norks, look how cameron is using it to back trident.i'm sure other armed forces will be using it as an example of why they need to keep carriers/nukes/low orbit ion cannons.

Bitcoin exchange: Greedy traders to blame for DDoS attack

Re: Or perhaps America is the source of the DDOS

The governments of the world can barely keep their stuff together as is. Bitcoin is definitely in the small fry league at least until the cartels start using it and then you may see some traction. The various bodies looking at financial issues can't keep up with all the normal financial fraud. I'm sure if the U.S wanted to kill BC they would use some of the SHA-256 ASIC's they almost certainly have and crash the market (look at the history of DES).

DDoS such an unrefined weapon its like claiming government assassination for everything when it is much easier and less attention getting to ruin someone or jail them. Look at Litvinenko vs the oligharchs thrown in jail for media coverage. This does not apply to tinpot dictators and China ( who don't need to even do it state sponsered just let the "patriots" do it! ala Jester on a massive scale)

FYI: Long term miner who has made a lot of profit off of BC so not anti, just realistic.

RAF graduates first class of new groundbased 'pilots'

Re: Landings and takeoffs are controlled from within the theatre of operations

Tradition and fear "its too hard for a machine and i am king of the air no machine can replace me"

Also a rougth forward airstrip might not have ILS and all the other things that make auto pilot landings so easy (no doubt the big ones in afghanistan do though)

Rocket boffinry in pictures: Gulp the Devil's venom and light a match

Re: I aim for the stars @ Graeme

More suprising the Black Knight/Arrow was launched for peanuts compared to what other nations of the time were spending.

I am NOT a PC repair man. I will NOT get your iPad working

Re: Community?

A Medic can save a life in situations like above where every minute counts. They also take an oath to help regardless of other factors.

None of this applies to IT. Not being able to check your email because your 10 year old machine has ground to a halt under the 20 "antivirus scanners" is not life threating or time critical.

Now if a neighbou banged on my door and said " Help the machine that runs my daughters life support has blue screened" i would be much more inclined to help.

Chinese game addict MURDERS girlfriend after she leaves him

Re: Game or Pub

or you could decide to spend your life with someone who is accepting of your hobbies? wild idea i know!

my partner and i have wildly diffrent hobbies and intrests and we do not begrudge the other when they want to spend time on one. we spend time together, we spend time apart. you do not need to spend every waking second with your partner doing the exact same thing.

Why so many people seem to settle down and have kids with a partner they seem to spend every waking second trying to get away from is beyond me.

Not got 4G? There's a reason we aren't called 'Four', sniffs Three

Re: Tethered to Three in rurual Warwickshire...

i was only supposed to be without landline for 1 week now going on to 4 (with no resolution in sight)due to openreachs incompetence (1 guy on holiday the whole thing stops) so was not worth getting a contract. Will do now but get the monthly rolling one

Re: Tethered to Three in rurual Warwickshire...

how are you getting8gb on PAYG? just curious as relying on three whilst openreach take 6 weeks to attach house to trunk and cheapest payg i can see near that amount is 7gb/£25?

In forest of dean and three is lightning fast where as giff gaff (o2) is gsm only and slow as treacle

Inside Adastral: BT's Belgium-sized broadband boffinry base

Fibre to 2/3rds

yeah right, BT openreach are taking over 6 weeks to connect a single copper joint on the new build estate i am in. Sending the guy to wire the house before it was connected at the trunk end was also a smart move and it can't be sorted because the usual bloke who does this is on holiday!

iPads in education: Not actually evil, but pretty close

erm laptops?

For a few quid more you can equip them with laptops which can be used for virtually anything (art, comp sci etc) and for even more cash you can get toughbooks etc that can be run over by a tank and as an added bonus don't look cool so less nickable. If you really want to save money and stop them installing (without using wine etc) games stick on linux of some description.

Wait, not shiny, not sci-fi future cool. Never mind nothing to see here.....

Apple share-price-off-a-cliff: Told you that would happen

Overhyped bubbles normally burst

The Apple price rode so high because of the near religious fever around Jobs and the iPhone/Pad. When Jobs died Apple stuff was already moving from "must sell kidney to own" to "its a nice shiney maybe i will get the next one"

The stock price was rocketing before then as everyone could not shut up about how wonderful Apple were at every single thing (not just on their products, from the way most IT people i met spoke, you would think every single piece of technology from the 60's to today was created by apple). Now after all those years of hype the stock (and people's expectations) are adjusting back down to a more sensible level.

See also: Every single dotcom company between 1998-2001. Some died, some survived and the ones that did had their stock price stay much lower then the bubble high