Posts by Matt Brigden

Is it decadent that I use four different computers each day, at different times?

Landscape mode

Kindles do landscape mode . Click top of screen. Click Aa . Click layout tab. Click landscape. . Only drawback is it doesn't affect the homescreens.

Sorry Nanny, e-cigs have 'no serious side-effects' – researchers

here we go again incoming doomsayers

17 months ago I stubbed out the last analog . 40 a day to vape . Quite happy on 0.3mg of nicotine so less than a fag and also less of the other junk too . In those 17 months I have sat watching a variety of articles get bent , regurgitated in parts and twisted . Most of it is utter tosh .

Are the chemicals responsible for popcorn lung in ecigs - They were in a couple of brands of juice all of which have since removed them . What the report didnt say was the amount detected was miniscule when compared to a cigarette .

Same for the rest yes there but at a much lower amount than a cig . The only people still bleating are surprise surprise the tobacco wonks and pharma guys all of which are directly threatened by ecigs .

Stop reading the reports by the damned headlines and actually read the reports . The articles tend to twist facts . The independent research papers dont .

No ecigs are not 100% safe BUT its a huge amount safer than smoking .. And face it neither is crossing the road .

Google's first stab at control-free ROBOT car rolls off the line

No just no

Your not driving so at some point your going to fall asleep . Then the 4g signal dies and it fallsback to the onboard maps which are two years out of date because you didnt bother hooking the car up to your home wifi . You wake up

A - In a field

B - In a field in France

C - In a field although the car swears its at your local tesco .

You know I am not wrong lol

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

my eyes you idiots my eyes

Too bright you fools too bright . Do you not realise we spend more hours than you in front of screens regardless of if we are working or merely pretending too . Too much white = bad . Tone it down . I am not saying beige lord help us but not so much of the I'm going to rip out your retinas white .

Orange is the new TalkTalk of the broadband complaints league

Tell me about it.....

Had murder with them this week following a call on Monday informing me they are shutting off the second line service which is a voip line . Ok so can I port the number over to my mainline as I dont use that number . No . Right so can I port it out to a voip provider . No . So Im going to lose the number then? . Yes . But I use it for my business number! Well its going off on the 27th . Thats two days away ! . Cue raging and headbanging . Im seriously annoyed I have had that number for years .

Orange used to be great . Im now looking at moving both my broadband and mobiles away to other providers . Bunch of clowns these days .

Tech support blog removes Toshiba manuals after legal letter

from a one time tosh engineer

What a load of cobblers . The service manuals for older out of warranty machines do no harm at all . At worst they help people take old kit apart to service and fix without breaking them further . As for propriety information .... Like what how many gazillion screws hold it together . Theres no trade secrets in them that couldnt be had by say your competitor and a screwdriver .

Ghostbusters

Memories lol

I loved this game (mainly as its one of few I have managed to actually finish lol ) so thanks for the link and your copping the blame for my afternoon being written off lol .

Apple demands US ban on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus

This is getting tedious now

Dear Apple & Samsung ,

Please play nicely together there is only one ball so learn to share like nice little boys .

Sincerely

The Adults .

Colorfly Pocket Hi-Fi C4

Looks like an old star trek prop

People hankering for vinyl need a good slap . I have Dj'd for years and dropped vinyl the second cd's went mainstream . Cds went the way of the dodo when mp3 became viable . I have listened to Flac and all manner of other lossless files and unless your running it on rediculously over priced uber gear you cant hear a jot of difference . Audiophiles and Wine buffs have a lot in common .

Anyone seriously wanting to fork out £550 on a pmp that looks as naff as that does has far too much money kicking around .

Hands on with Star Wars: The Old Republic

Very promising

I spent an enjoyable time this weekend and its left me hungry for the release . As already said this review is so short as to be near meaningless . Everything gets compared to WoW and if WoW was released today then yes sure the graphics would be better but it would still lack the way this sucks you into the stories . Thanks in large to the cutscene dialogue with npcs . Will it be perfect and balanced at release , No but then again WoW was pretty bad at release as well . Given some time and patches I think we may finally see WoW lose its crown .

Laptop shoots spike into owner's hand

Dodgy as hell

I have repaired computers for 20 years and have seen one case of a shattered disc in all that time . However I have never seen a laptop dvd drive do anything remotely like this . Smacks of user abuse to me . Only time I have ever seen track holders loose is when the drive has been slammed or kicked and the tray ripped out . But there is no way possible for this to happen in normal use .

A bit like the screens that crack when you turned the laptop on leaving a pen shaped crack right where the gap between the number keys and function keys sit . Or the mysterious sticky residue in the laptops that mysteriously wont turn on one morning ,

Facebook 'personal' news feed gets algorithm rejig

Thats just nasty!

What on earth where they thinking or smoking ? How about they give you two buttons "Classic" and "Awful" and let you choose which one you like .

How to... re-energise your Android smartphone's OS

re - Always Nervous

Relax install Titanium Root and backup the phone first . Then head over to DarkyRom its a specific Galaxy S Rom . Install the 10.2 Resurection Edition and use your Titanium backup to reinstall your apps and data and your good to go . It wont brick your phone if you read the instructions and follow them to the letter . Be brave its a whole new world out there :D

Galaxy S

CM7 has no stable release for the S . If you want a good Rom for the S then check out DarkyRom which is as good if not better than CM7 . Its also a lot easier to flash as all you need is access to download mode rather than having to root the phone .

http://www.darkyrom.com/community/index.php?threads/odin-darkyrom-10-2-resurrection-gt-i9000.4272/

Apple augments reality, tells you where to go

Pretty sure this is already on my sat nav app ....

Yup its called RealityView and its turned off because its bloody annoying! . Driving down the road and up comes realityview to show me the names of shops and places to eat. Now thats amazing until I had this I had to rely on reading the shop signs with my old fashioned eyeballs .

Android respawn horror: Hacker says hackers' phones hacked

This isnt a hack

Android [device] at full charged plugged in, but dropping to <50% charge once unplugged . Thats a bug present in 2.3.4 . Once charged the phone turns off the charging circuit . Battery drains while the display reads 100% and the power plug icon . Unplug and it changes to whatevers left in the battery . Not so helpful for people who use the phone as a hotspot or gps device! .

Murdoch muscles BBC out of Formula One driving seat

Thanks a lot !

I for one dont have Sky and refuse to pay to have it . So much for the beebs pledge to keep F1 accessible to everyone .

The Cube: Apple's daftest, strangest romance

I once saw

A room containing 15 cubes die one after the other out in Cannes due to heat failure so the high tech chimney wasnt their best idea to date . Was an Apple training course for the old ACSE . Was around the time the first raft of OSX appeared .

ICT classes in school should be binned – IT biz body

Sad but true

It was plain old IT when I did it . Showed me word processing,databases and spreadsheets,DTP etc . Fair enough I loved computers so it was all gravy to me . Was more shocked when doing it in college I knew more than the tutor who was oblivious to things like shortcut keys and thought the easiest way to open a file was open the application and then click file and browse for it . Very funny when you see the light of realisation dawn on someone that just double clicking the file itself is faster and they have been doing it the long way for years . Piqued my interest enough to want to go further though and get at the actual hardware underneath .

The problem now is most kids have an almost innate understanding of computers so traditional IT teaching needs to be updated to reflect this . The "This is the power button approach" wont cut it any more .

Kindle beats Apple's closed book on choice

Wouldnt buy an eBook device

I have a Galaxy S and contrary to what others have written it works perfectly well as a reader . I can read an entire book without flattening the battery . Works great in bright light and what eye strain ? Set it to night mode , black screen/white text and its all good . I use Aldiko as my reader app and run my books through Calibre eBook Manager on the pc which rapidly converts format to format which means I can get ebooks anywhere and use them regardless of format . As for drm worries just strip it out if it bothers you .

Ten... fantasy swords you wish you owned

Its not the sword that is dangerous

Its the idiot wielding it . Pretty much every report you see in the papers is some idiot chav with a £20 wallhanger that will barely cut air . Those of us who collect pay a hell of a lot more for our hobby . I own an assortment of swords and daggers . All of which in the wrong hands are lethal . But then again so is a screwdriver .

Mines thye one with the slit in the back for my katana .

Facebook to share home addresses, phone numbers

And how long

before a developer then realises it can make more money by also selling the numbers and addresses to telemarketers ?

Facebook suspends personal data-sharing feature

Bad idea whatever they do to it .

You could make it put up a fullscreen box with flashing borders and honking sirens saying "Allow me to steal your identity and burgle your house" and the idiots would still click ok ......

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

So much more to it you havent even touched on there .

I've been playing since the original game and seen the game morph into what we have now . Cataclysm is so much more than you have brushed on in your review . A lot of the donkey work for the expansion was laid out in the previous patch which gave us the new graphics and environments . The old azeroth is gone . The quests changed and 1-60 is now a whole different game . If your aim is to do 80-85 your missing an enormous chunk of the magic Blizz has worked . Old dungeons have been revamped with new bosses and mechanics .

Rather than mess about in the choked 80-85 zones I decided to wait and bit and play a worgen . I agree Gilneas is an awesome zone . But once you leave you end up in Darkshore after a brief trip to Darnassus . I have now done the quests there end to end and Im pretty sure there isnt an original quest left . I did most of them on my Gnome rogue to farm Darnassus rep for a nightsaber mount as I hate robot chickens .

The amount of care Blizz have taken on this expansion is epic they really have changed the world although I cant help feeling they may have used Deathwing to tear up the bits they didnt particularly like in the first place . What better way to sort out zones your not happy with than to get an irked off Dragon to level it for you . Farewell Auberdine and Southshore you really wont be missed :p .

Add to all this the changes to classes and Glyph changes plus the long awaited (by some) return of crowd control in dungeons and archaeology and masterys and you have an entirely new game .

If you got bored and left its time to come and take another look . WoW once again is destined to remain top of the mmorpgs for a long time to come .

World of Warcraft bot ban ticks off world of critics

You have a point but missed the obvious fun

I spent many a happy hour thwarting the bots . With good timing you could let someone elses bot do your hard work for you . Oh and lets not forget the ones left to wander in pvp areas . Had a lot of fun with those lol .

Credit cards get colour screens

Why?

Just why would you need a screen on a card? The readers have keypads and screens for a reason .... Another case in point of technology being applied to something pointless . I don't like the idea of contact less payment either . How longs it going to take for some bright spark to figure out how to trigger a payment and sit themselves down in a busy shopping centre and fleece anyone that goes near them . Pickpocketing without moving a muscle . I suspect the more techno they make card transactions the more the risk of getting fleeced will be .

Vodafone shares subscriber info with world+dog

Gah morons

I left vodafone a couple of years back and ported the number away and yes my email addy is visible . Dipsticks

Nokia's new boss is Microsoft man

Why cant Nokia see whats blindingly obvious

Add their hardware smarts to Android . Symbian is too old . Meego should go it looks awful . Get a grip Nokia please or my 5800 will be the last Nokia I own . I've had nokias my entire adult life from Analogue upto the 5800 . I had a very short foray with a motorola and hated it . The N8 looks good but the ui is so dated I wouldnt buy one . Had it come with Android I wouldnt be typing this Id be off to go get one . If my 5800 packs in today Id be buying a Galaxy S to replace it . Android powered Nokias would wipe the floor with the competition .

Home Office unveils new UK passport

Fantastic

All they need now is to do something to avoid the moronic security measures at Manchester . I suggest the idiots implementing these policies should try shuffling through a line holding your trousers up in one hand whilst trying not to tip your belt, laptop, phone, wallet, coins, lighter , cigarettes etc onto the floor as they make you put it in a pile before you even get to the bloody scanners . Correct me if Im wrong but isnt this why they have bloody xray machines ? .

UK ICT classes killing kids' interest in tech

Any surprise they get bored

When unless your in an extremely well funded school or college your taught on out of date hardware and software pensioned off years back . Its about time the big names woke upto the fact that if they supplied schools with the latest and greatest then the pupils are more likely to go on and use that equipment and software brands themselves . I adored gcse IT becuase our school had the then brand new rm nimbus machines running the cutting edge windows 3.1 and the two most energetic and enthusiastic teachers I have ever met . We were taught how to really use those machines and how to get the best out of it all . Had I spent that time on word I would of been bored rigid . The entire school system needs an overhaul tbh .

Samsung Galaxy S

Meh

Friend has had one of these for over a week and shes still confused as hell by it . Whose clever idea was it to make it automatically delete pictures from mms messages unless you save the entire message . Solved by downloading an app but come on why should you need apps to do basic things the damn phone should do all by itself . Oh and its uberly nice screen is fragile . One drop from about 2ft onto grass and it cracked like an egg . So all in all not overly impressed but hey at least its not an iPhone flaw lol .

Revealed: Government blows thousands on iPhone apps

This is taking the mick now

If your unemployed wtf are you doing with a bloody iphone . And what an unbelievable waste of public money developing apps nobody really needs. Most of the iphone apps make me laugh designed for the terminally lazy who cant be bothered to use google . If you need pictures to change a bleeding tyre should you really be driving a car to start with ? .

Nokia: digital SLRs are doomed

Dear Nokia

Please produce a cameraphone that can take a good quality picture in what us people that live in the real world call normal conditions . That is without the benefit of perfect lighting . I detest using my phones camera indoors for just that reason . Maybe you would be better off trying to make a decent camera make calls ? Surely that would be easier ......

Facebook faces Home Sec over lack of 'panic button'

we need a what now ?

Whats wrong with the report link already there? . How retarded is this country becoming that theres such a huge need for nanny buttons everywhere . Simple answer if you don't want your kids in trouble online then sit next to them . Your judgement is always going to be better than some idiot button .

A lot of parents are lulled by the fact the kids have net access at school so its ok . What they fail to realise is the school has a high grade filter sat between little johnny and the interwibble . If he types pussy into google he gets fluffy kittens . Little johnny comes home fires up the pc and types pussy into google your going to end up explaining bukkake to an 8 year old .

I have several pcs here . All bar one are password protected so the kids cant get on them . The kids pc is in the living room and is locked to parental controls that mean they get access to Cbeebies and a few kid sites . No google,facebook nada . If they have school work requiring google searches they sit next to me on my pc and I help them . I may be deluded but isnt that called responsible parenting ?

QLogic sues over video of chip frying egg

Just see the funny side....

Dodgy physics be damned its still pretty funny . Yes it was a lawsuit waiting to happen but as geek jokes go its pretty cool .

Google's Android code deleted from Linux kernel

It may be 3am but ....

Im usually pretty tech savvy but this one went way over my head . Makes no forking sense to me at all . Thank you and goodnight !

Orange serves up Monkey's brains to advertisers

So you want to send me more sms spam?

hell bloody no !! I already get a deluge of you havent topped us this week bullshit and congratulations you have won 4mb of free internet use which as I topped up by £10 to get free internet anyway is pretty frickin pointless ! . Someone tell me how to opt out of those as well please ! . At 3am I dont want to bloody know !

TomTom Start

A lA ot of the problems people have with sat nav

Is they use them for things like going to the shops etc and then bitch they could get there easier without it . A satnav will never out navigate local knowledge of an area . If however your driving in an unfamiliar part of town or going places you have never been then the satnav will win every time . I use satnav to get to gigs at places I have never been to and its a lifesaver . Go anywhere the wifes been and its bloody murder .

Digital River makes total hash of Windows 7 upgrade offer

Hmmm

I purchased the update for 64bit . Downloaded fast and it unpacked into a folder it was in no way a disk image . To get that you had to download the Win7 AIK (Another gb odd of data) which comes with no instructions . A quick google can get you the command line to turn the unusable folder into an iso . Then burn and install .

My laptop had Win7 RC1 32bit Ult on it , Custom install and format then the upgrade went straight in . No prompting for previous versions or anything . So unless it detected the Vista restore files in the hidden partition I have no idea why it worked at all .

Whole thing would of been a lot less painful with a straight up iso to begin with . Then again if they made it easy you wouldnt bother buying the backup disk now would you .....

PC tune-up software: does it really work?

Just proves what 99% of techs know already

More ram is a good idea . I've reinstalled thousands of units over the years and the amount of times the problems are down to damage caused by these "utilities" is unreal . If your machine is running sluggish then get your data off it and have it wiped and reinstalled .

Dixons blames PC World for falling sales

Easy reasons they are losing sales

The staff are as clued up on the gear as chimps . The stock is never in the right places on shelves and always mispriced . If you want parts your stuffed as they are never in stock or the parts available are woeful . If I want to buy a big screen tv I can though ..... Our local branch puts repackaged used kit in tatty boxes in with the new stock at same price. And Dsgi wonder why I go anywhere other than there .

Virgin hijacks empty pages

Havent looked to hard have you then lol

Orange have been doing this for ages .

Faster broadband for free?

Wiring mod

For a complete wiring mod all you need to do is disconnect the Orange/White stripe & White/Orange stripe wires . This should leave you a White/Blue stripe and a Blue/White stripe wire . Those two are all you need . If you run a PABX system DONT disconnect the White/Orange stripe wire as PABX uses it as earth .

The iplate must filter more than just the bellwire as with this mod it shouldn't make any difference to my adsl but as posted earlier it did improve my line stability .

Also increases line stability

I have had an iplate fitted since they became available . Whilst it didn't increase my line speed which is already as high as its likely to go 6.5mbps I was suffering periodic disconnects which neither the ISP or BT could find any reason for .

Since fitting these have gone . I was skeptical as I had already cut the bell wire and disconnected the other spare wires . Whatever these other filters are they work . My line is now rock solid .

McKinnon loses judicial review

sodding liberals

Can we put him on a plane now please? . You know they will appeal again . He has spent so many years dodging the sentence he undoubtedly would of been out and back by now had he just faced it down at the start .

Average UK broadband just over half advertised speed

lol

Even ofcom are incapable of doing the figures . I'm on Orange and part of the sam knows hardware monitoring project. My speed 6.5mbps . My line sync is 8096kbps from a possible 10368kbps . Not too shabby for a non Adsl2+ line really .

The problem is the lines used for adsl are too old and susceptible to all sorts of interference. Fibre optic is better well now theres a shocker ......

Whats seriously out of kilter is peoples perceptions . Most people failed to notice the "upto" bit usually written in a tiny font when they signed up so when their 8mbps line only gives them 3mbps or less they get peeved .

Caveat Emptor - Always check what you are likely to get first . Then you won't have a hissy fit later .

NHS Direct gets to be number one, one, one

You dont need the number

All you need is to write this down "If it gets any worse or you feel no better in the morning then go and see your own Gp"

All they ever say when you ring them for anything . And they wonder why people say ok thanks and go up to A&E .

Amazon cuts cost of Kindle

Easy way to broaden its appeal......

Release it in the uk you muppets .

Apple patents karaoke lessons

If Apple had a brain ....

Then they would know like most of us Kj's that all karaoke scoring systems suck and can be easily skewed . Theres only one way to gauge a song and thats front and centre with a mic in your hand . Now if they produced an auto turret that automatically identified and gunned down anyone that uses singstar as a practice aid then Id be buying my first Apple product lol .

Ofcom works out why Wi-Fi doesn't work

Wifi just isnt the magic wand people think it is

Anything on 2.4 will interfere and thats a huge range of things . Add the fact that wifi abhors walls , floors etc and most users have no clue how to set it up and its a pretty good lame duck .

Id rather use cable and just not worry about it . Homeplug is a great alternative but again that has its problems .

People looking for any form of quick fix are going to be disappointed . Radio frequencies are finite and whatever standard its going to break down as soon as it gets popular .