Posts by Duncan

It's official: Journos are dumb as a bag of IE users

Really?

I am shocked that the Register think this errrr apology is acceptable? Really if anyone should have spotted it - you guys should have. A recently registered domain, statistics that even to an untrained person that seemed unbelievable?

Nope - as is so typical of journalists nowadays just copy, paste, submit - especially if someone else has broken the story. How about we back the next one up with some Wikipedia evidence for good measure?

I am pretty sure if most of the people who read this site did something similar in their job they would be quickly shown the door - I am sure I would. It's a failure to do your job pure and simple. If I sent this poor excuse of a follow up/apology to the directors I am sure they would laugh in my face and tell me to get the f*** out now. Poor all round....

Up to $650 for a .xxx domain - or to keep your name off one

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

"Or perhaps use it to host the really hardcore playmobil stuff...."

Oh yes.... you guys need to get the domain and do this! I would suggest you go and get playmobil.xxx too but I guess that goes against the grain of the article :)

Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty

In London Green means go, Yellow means go, Red means .....

"The DfT should consider carrying out trials of flashing amber lights at times when there is little traffic, which would allow drivers to proceed with caution at junctions, as is common in countries such as France and Italy. "

Do the report writers live in London? I can only say while I can imagine this working in most of the country I can assure you that in London this would not work (unless of course they have cameras watching them all) at any time of the day/night. Simply put to the average London driver green means go, yellow means go, and red means quickly get through it before anyone starts to cross..... There are loads of 2 or 3 lane roads in the middle of London and I would not be happy to cross them without a red signal. You can see this being a failure by just watching Pelican Crossings. Many drivers just ignore them and keep driving even right outside Police Stations, etc. It's not like anyone even sticks to the 30mph limit - Haymarket is like a drag strip at the weekend.

Bad idea. (and yes I do drive in London as well)

RIM BlackBerry Bold 9780 smartphone

Full stop.

"And despite the fact that everybody who has one uses it for e-mails, Research in Motion doesn’t see fit to put the @ and full stop characters – which are essential in every email address –on lower-case keys on its BlackBerry devices. True, if you’re entering such an address you can press the space bar and the software knows to translate, but it still slightly beggars belief. Never mind."

A double space changes to a full stop - which works everywhere not just in e-mail addresses. Most normal users query the full stop within an hour or so of having a device. How can a professional reviewer not have noticed??

But concur with others here - really can we not have some proper hardware reviews? Signal quality? Battery life? Just seems nowadays to be a reviewer you need to play with the device for a few minutes - retype all the "facts" provided by the manufacturer - then go to the pub.

Pensioner gets apology over S&M smut filesharing threat

I hope he keeps going....

They are clearing taking the p*** saying you can consider the matter closed without even bringing "John" back to a financially neutral point. As really that is the least they should do even before their weak worded apology.

Hes down on cash, hes down in reputation. I hope he has the time and motivation to keep going and get some real action from DL.

Good luck "John".

Storage breakthrough could bust density record

Yes agree with the quarter comments...

... as I just took the statement to mean a quarter of the current size of a DVD.

Bizarre measurement and completely unimaginable to anyone in the rest of the world.

OMFG, what have you done?

Have to agree with the fixed width complainers....

I don't know about the "Flashy Monitor" brigade mentioned above, but at £200-250 for a decent 1920x1280 resolution screen alot more people have them now. And really they are massive grey bars on each side. Surely El'Reg has shelled out a bit on some decent monitors for you guys? And surely you noticed those massive grey bars during a bit of internal UAT?

The redesign is fine, probably long overdue. Not sure it will live up to longivity of the last design - dated before its released maybe? But overall it's not too bad tho I think.

Anyway ... thumbs down from me just because of the fixed width. Need to sort that out ElReg!

Reader comments bigger legal risk than forums

Re: I wonder...

"how many comments have been blocked as people decide to see how far they can push el-reg."

I'd be quite interested to see some graphs and stats! Bet they have some cracking comments stuck up on the wall in the El Reg office they couldn't publish! :)

'I've cracked Nokia S40 security', claims researcher

@AC

Do some research before claiming things that are simply not true....

"A direct debit can be cancelled at any time by the customer informing their bank or building society, usually in writing. It is also advisable to inform the supplier as well, but this is not obligatory as the bank or building society will also do it. "

From http://www.bacs.co.uk/BACS/Consumers/Direct+Debit/Your+rights/

"You can cancel a Direct Debit at any time by contacting your bank or building society. We also recommend you notify the organisation concerned."

I have cancelled several direct debits in the past.

Western Digital shrinks VelociRaptors for enterprise duty

This isn't new....

Indeed if you start googling you can see that most places say that removing the heatsink improves the drive. Apart from making it "smaller", it produces alot less noise. The "heatsink" actually generates alot of noise and doesn't cause the temperature to drop.

I suppose it does look cool, but at the cost of noise is stupid. WD should have never put in the heatsink in the first place. Unnecessary waste of resources.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article844-page1.html

Suppose WD should be congratulated on reducing some of the unnecessary waste with their products tho... maybe HP could take a leaf out of their book :)

HP shatters excessive packaging world record

Isn't it 18 boxes?

Looking at the photos isn't the "uber" box actually 2 boxes taped together? Surely they didn't go to the effort of "converting" two smaller boxes to make a big one?

Review site furious over McAfee SiteAdvisor 'false alert'

Suprised people even bother complaining....

I'm suprised that people would bother to contact any large corporation to ask them to alter or change something in a program like siteadvisor.

To me if you are losing money through sales, advertising, or goodwill (so company name/reputation) you just send them a recorded letter saying you will be starting legal action against them to recoup costs and loss of earnings.

Why bother leaving a comment on the site? It's a cheek that they expect the site owner to make a comment. Your comment will cost them no money, your call will cost them no money, but legal action could....

Stop being so green and just get used to firing off legal threats for being mistreated by large companies. It's a fact of life. If it is your site, your business, and your living how the hell can you not do something soon tech-pro? Legal action now, worry later.

Mines the coat as I'm off for a job at the RIAA after that rant :P

Virgin warns 800 punters for file-sharing

Tape to Tape evils of the 80's

When I was a kid we used to meet up at the weekends and tape-to-tape any good albums we had so we could see what we like. Plus lets face it our 40p a week pocket money didn't stretch that far on the music front.

It was evil I know - but we had no other way to enjoy or find out more about music. (Music channels? Internet? None of them existed). As it happens I turned into a proper music lover... and that includes all the random information and finding bands that go with it. It is exciting...

But as others have said there is no way I would buy a CD on the off chance that I would like it. And there is alot of music that never gets played on radio, tv, or anywhere.

So BPI.... what am I meant to do to listen to these new bands? What I am meant to do to find out what new stuff I like?

I've a whole wall of CDs all carefully categorised behind me. I also download music, yes illegally. I also keep the MP3s of bands I like as playing it around the house and on my computer/ipod is so much easier. The CD case is a trophy. It looks cool, it adds to my collection. Often I don't even take them out of the cases. Keepsakes for the future and I have mp3s so I don't need them. Ah but I suppose I did get those mp3s illegally so I should probably delete them.

Something else no one has pointed out is that many parts of the music industry have traditionally always raised far more money through live performances than their CDs/tracks. Often a popular track serves only to improve attendence at their live events. If I had not listened to the track... I wouldn't go along. Drum and Bass sort of springs to mind, or even many aspects of Electronic music. They just don't get radio exposure. The DJs get £500-4000 a night so who cares if they flog a couple of tracks. They certainly don't I've spoken to them. It's about seeing them and their music live.

If you like the breaks/beats style of music with a nice bit of guitar thrown in I suggest you might want to try searching for Ghostland Observatory.

Never heard of them 2 months ago, now have their 3 albums and hope to see them live very soon. Thank you TPB for letting me test out those songs before buying! I'm sure even if the BPI is pissed, Ghostland Observatory is happy to have another fan.

Devil dog laughs in the face of Taser

Dogs don't start dangerous...

..... but they can quite easily become dangerous.

Funnily enough it is much like human beings. They all start cuddly - but with the right sort of prodding, encouragment, abuse, etc, etc you end up with someone like Fred West.

But hey.... all humans are nice really.... don't blame the human!

Paris as even she would have the brains to work out how stupid some of the dangerous dogs comments are on here.

Big TV flips ad blockers the bird

I'd rather block the types of adverts....

Like those bloody irritating ones El Reg has put on some pages that insist on moving all the time. Not only are they distracting - but it looks like I am browsing some non-work related site. Why oh why? The one that really gets me is that one with the bloke holding up the signs. If I could smack him one I would.

Anyway I've gone off on one .... but I'd love to be able to just block specific types.

Windows Vista has been battered, says Wall Street fan

@ the only reason I upgraded to Vista was for DX10

Read this:

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/07/11/dx10-is-do-able-on-windows-xp

Then this:

http://www.technospot.net/blogs/download-directx-10-for-windows-xp-from-alky-project/

Then have some good old fashioned fun and get it all going. Works a treat, can play new games, and on a faster OS. No views on the OS's - but where there is a will there is a way. Just start googling!

Vye mini-v S37B sub-notebook

It's really nice

I (well more specifically my money for the other half) got one of these last November back when they were around £850 to buy and the Eee's hadn't really hit the stores yet. I got one of the first 800Mhz models to get to the UK (there was a 600Mhz version but it got widely critised on speed).

For us it was an easy decision - the size and weight (the screen for the size is a very good resolution). It is also a touch screen which it has to be said makes life loads easier on a small laptop. And the keyboard is very nice to type on even with my finger size. But that said I think were it comes into its own is for women. She carries it around alot and loves that it goes in her bag and is unnoticable - no obvious laptop bag which is London is a plus. Lasts for a good 4-5 hours listen to music, running Word 2007, WiFi, MSN and browsing. Having used normal laptops the battery life really is quite amazing. It has a built in camera which is of good enough quality to capture A4 pages to be read later (such as books in libraries for research).

Get a USB 3G Modem with a few Gb a month and it makes for a great never miss a sporting event device. Just take it with you, set it up on the grass and tune in. The built in speakers are however a bit weak.

Don't get me wrong tho - its not just for women. I still get pangs of jealously when we sit in bed at the weekend and she gets it out and sits watching TV/Videos browsing the internet on her little touch screen beast.

Few pointers tho:

1) Buy a 2GB SODIMM. It's peanuts and the speed increase is considerable.

2) Follow one of the Vista speed up guides by turning off all the unnecessary services, etc. Again - it made a massive difference.

3) Reinstall it with XP - wow. Different computer :)

When buying:

Be really sure on the EXACT model you want. The model that Philip quoted above (s18pb) IS NOT THE SAME LAPTOP AS THIS. He has quoted an AMD based laptop. The S37/41 are Intel based systems. In addition the screen is smaller on the S18 - 800x480 instead of 1024x600 - but the reviews generally on UMPC sites is that the 7" 1024x600 screen is very good and a key selling point of the S37.

The XP version of the reviewed laptop is actually the Vye mini-v S37BXPP.

Overall its a fantastic device. I've seen and used an Eee and Vye next to each other. I suppose the comparison I'd make would be something like Eees are bit like Fords. Everyones got one. The Vye is more like an Audi. It's "reassuringly expensive"/bit overpriced, it's a bit more refined, got more toys to play with, and you can show it off to all you're Ford mates to induce jealousy :) Essentially tho they are different - this is a tablet PC, which has a good keyboard and can be used as a laptop. The Eee is just a laptop. Chalk and cheese.

If you missus is after a laptop for general use, and you want a toy to show off, I can't recommend enough :)

@vince

In addition to my last comment we've been able to run full screen video with no issues on it using VLC Player. Not tried iPlayer myself, but VLC streaming over WiFi from my desktop works fine.

Broadband big boys waiting on data pimping

The issue...

... alot of talk all over this but surely the issue pure and simple is that they have not asked. Isn't it always that? Really you'd have thought someone somewhere in some marketing department would have twigged that the same thing happens everytime if you don't ask? Maybe a bit of revenue sharing with the users?

Anyway.... I'd not sign up even with that but I think thats the main problem here.

On the e-petition is there one somewhere? Link or create soon I feel :)

From scouting around I have to say that Phorm looks pretty dodgy to me, but maybe just maybe I'm missing something... :P

UK bank blames fraudsters for World of Warcraft ban

No comment?

"Blizzard representatives didn't reply to emails requesting comment."

If you played the game that is sort of like a statement of the bleeding obvious!

They never reply quickly.... give it a few weeks.

Knock, knock: Cisco is banging at your door

Upgrades

And lets all wait for the day they realise their policy of making owners of their equipment (users, businesses, or personal) pay for upgrades to cover faults in their own firmware won't wash in the living room.

Might be good for businesses to sort of the mess of unpatch IOS's and other bits. I think as good as Cisco might think they are - they have all the "consumer savvy" of a brick.

Consumers just are not as "forgiving" or tolerant of that cr*p compared with businesses.

Looks like a good way to destroy your own name if you are not careful.

Daring Register raid snatches key government URL

Rumbled...

"Hiya, Jayenne. (-:"

Someone's been rumbled. As the Polygonsoup site says "Creative Communication"? Or a good dose of damage limitation going on here?

Good story!

Software maker releases the hounds on security vuln reporter

It is all in the wording....

... but just look at that correspondence.

You'd think that they would have some common sense in a modern world. Sad thing is you have to wonder is how on earth they expected this not to come out.

I really hope Secunia continue to do their job, which they do very well, with the impartiality deserved. The day any legal threat like this is treated as companies such as Autonomy wanted - will be a sad and very dark day for the future of security in computing.

As has already been said - such openess from Autonomy will make me make sure that I will not be using any of their products in future. If you can't trust the company, you can never trust their software.

123-Reg takes weekend off

Take my misfortune and don't go there!

Here is a copy/pasted "technical support" thread. (newest first.. so read from bottom up).

Funnily enough I renewed a domain June and had an identical situation which was due to Eurid.org apparently. Having suffered far worse this time I some how doubt it now.

If they even responded it would be good.... but 17 days for the FIRST response while my whole website was down. When I did get a response I am told that my site will be back "within 48hours" .... well yippee - thats only 19 days late for a mistake THEY made!! Not even a proper apology!

Just don't go there....

Response (Farhan S) 21/10/2007 11:55

Hi Duncan

Thanks for your email, dated: 16/10/07

123-reg would like to apologise for the delay in responding to your support query, this has been caused by an unprecedented amount of contacts to our support team

I do apologise for the inconvenience caused. I have asked my manger to get this domain reactivated will be in your control panel with in 48 hours thanks.

Regards,

Farhan S

Customer (Duncan xxxxxxx) 16/10/2007 14:28

4 days on and still nothing at all.

Suprise suprise...

Customer (Duncan xxxxxxx) 12/10/2007 13:07

Oh and yet again if I try to call you - which frankly is probably be the only way to get this addressed - AGAIN - I have to wait 20 minutes, paying 10p a minute.

So in the space of 6 months I will have spent £4 on phone calls because you are incapable of even REPLYING to your technical support queries.

I mean these are all written? Do you not look at them? Not even a "oh its a bit busy but we will do it xxxx".

I have PAID YOU to renew a domain name. It has now been 8 days without a response.

I've not been able to access the site for 10 days. This is simply NOT ACCEPTABLE.

The fact that this is a CARBON COPY of last time when you assured me to was an issue with EurID and the fact you were bringing new technical support people up to speed.

Why are we here again?

Customer (Duncan xxxxxxx) 12/10/2007 12:57

You think 8 days is acceptable?

AGAIN?

Customer (Duncan xxxxxxx) 04/10/2007 16:28

I renewed a domain name - xxxxxxxx.eu - this morning and as yet it has not been updated in the root DNS servers at eurid.org.

As this is exactly what happened with my last two .EU domains, please ensure that the domain is taken out of Quarrantine ASAP. I do not want the downtime I endured when they were updated.

It has been paid.

Vodafone responds to iPhone rip-off

not vodaphone...

It is VodaFONE. At least they spelt it right :)

Tumbleweeds outnumber punters, as iPhone's First Night flops

Title

"However, everyone is comparing the..."

So I will make the same comparison without justification as well.

Court junks $11m judgment against Spamhaus

Ummm, forgive me but...

Why is everyone assuming that they (e360) have a *right* to send e-mail to my server? Ignoring the ISP comments (if you don't like it then "walk" as others have said) no one has the right to send mail to my server unless I "agree".

I've decided that I trust Spamhaus's opinion.

I block mail based on that trust.

On the note about country domain/IP filters and whitelisting/greylisting. We are about to implement this as from studying our logs most spam does originate from those (far east) countries *for us*. We don't deal internationally so we have nothing to lose. If there is a legitamate reason for mail from servers - say we did want mail from a customers chinese server - we will add an exclusion for it.

I think us IT peeps have been calling it "Least Priviledges" for many years. Why do people jump up and down when applying it to e-mail?

Sending mail to my users is our choice. Not e360's right. Period.

Beavis and Butthead in London jihad

True but...

While I agree with your overall argument – it’s really nothing after all on what the IRA used to do - I suspect you don't live in Central London, nor pass through that area very often.

There are 2 big bus stops there, and tiger tiger is less than a few meters with huge windows. It's a really busy area right through until 4/5am. I've stood at the bus stop 15m down from there often.

The Terrorist links and Hysteria yes are bad. But it never affected us for the last 25 years so I don't see why it should now.

Are people right to fear getting blown up - even those "few fatalities" you just seem to brush under the carpet as not that important? Of course, I am concerned. But I know life does and will go on. And I'll look out for suspicious things while walking around.

Yes the finger pointing towards all those "nasty terrorist and insert political reasons" are bad. I hate it and agree that that is stupid. But equally there was a bomb, and it could have hurt me if I had been standing there like many times before.

Yup - stiff British upper lip - but it’s what has always been a good thing about the UK. Am I anymore afraid to go there today? No... but to mock the "few casualties" if it had gone off... that just undermines your point.

British steam car aims for landspeed record

Past and present techies unite :)

How can you not want to support such a great cause? Especially for so little money! And you will be on the car when it (ofc it will - it is built by British engineers :P ) breaks the record and gets sent to Beaulieu....

... but El Reg... as has already been commented you look like a bunch of tight fisted ..... :o)

Hope they do it, best of luck :)

US 'war czar' to attack internet safe havens

Oh yeah....

"If the IP address is in the west":

Assuming:

IP address is logged especially if it is DHCP - if this is released to authorities, and even if the ISP actually holds onto the data for very long (xs4all is good!)

If the Internet Cafe keeps records of who uses computers (I've been in several in london and handed over no more than my money to sit down).

Here is a good one:

Someone robs a bank and uses a legal hand gun - leaves it at the scene. What are the chances that the hand gun was actually theirs? Oh thats right - criminals - that is the people we are trying to catch here - hide their tracks.

IP address are pointless. Bot networks, bouncers, free dial up internet (0845)... it easy to make yourself anonymous if you are trying to.

Bit like those pesky ID cards - watch out for the Criminal robbing the bank with his ID card incase he gets stop..... oh yeah right.

What conditions disqualify you from donating blood?

blood.co.uk Q12

Surely they can't actually say that Q12 on the website?

Is it ok for oral sex between a woman and a man (even with a condom) but not for a man and a man? I'm sorry I'm not even gay and I find that statement completely shocking.

What difference does it make? Maybe they should have one that says "do you spit or swallow"?