* Posts by Gareth Perch

37 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Dec 2008

'Twas the night before Y2K and a grinch stole the IT department's overtime payout

Gareth Perch

I’m not exactly full of Christmas cheer after reading the stories and comments.

Where are all the stories that ended happily for the poor IT guys, or at least a good revenge / “company left themselves in the shit, forever regretting screwing their IT guys” ending.

Makes me less sad to have left my IT career though I suppose.

Boss made dirt list of minions' mistakes, kept his own rampage off it

Gareth Perch

Some of the kids at the school I worked at delighted in switching the 240/110v switch at the back - while it was off of course. They didn’t even have the satisfaction of witnessing the BANG when it was next switched on, because it usually happened next lesson. We had to glue plates over the switches in the end.

In my first week in my first job, I blindly poked around the back of a brand new, freshly unboxed Amstrad PPC with the (live) power cable, looking for the power socket and found a serial port instead. Fortunately I was alone in the room, so I plugged it in properly and innocently announced it DOA.

The Quantum of Firefox: Why is this one unlike any other Firefox?

Gareth Perch

Worth another look

Firefox used to be my browser of choice until the seemingly weekly updates made it slow and clunky, so I switched to Chrome.

Gave Firefox another go yesterday and it does seem a lot better - except in GMail and Google Sheets, bits disappear all over the place (images in my eBay emails come and go, chunks of the screen in Google Sheets go blank until you zoom in or out, or scroll the corrupt area off the screen and back again).

I will try again at some point though.

ZX Printer's American cousin still in use, 34 years after purchase

Gareth Perch

I still have all my Speccy stuff and I've collected a LOT more since (for my own "museum"). My original Timex 2040 printer worked the last time I used it and was definitely thermal, as I found out after printing a map of a game (using the Multiface 1 - graphics came out beautifully - much nicer than in the video) mounting it on a board and putting it too near to a fan heater. I've since bought a brand new boxed Alphacom 32 for my collection.

You've heard of Rollercoaster Tycoon – but we can't wait for Server Tycoon

Gareth Perch
Paris Hilton

The C64 wasn't available in 1981 and the game they're referring to seems to have been released in 1986, according to a quick Google.

Sysadmin's £100,000 revenge after sudden sacking

Gareth Perch

Re: BAU

Did anyone else hear a film noir voiceover whilst reading Jelliphiish's post?

Patent and trademark troll stung for £500k after fake renewal blitz

Gareth Perch

DVLA has scammers too

A friend paid £95 for a driving licence renewal (officially £17.50 I think), to a site that looked very similar to the real DVLA site. They'd paid Google to be top of the search results. There are still people out there that click the first link, without realising that it's usually an advert.

Apparently what they're doing is not illegal, even if it is purposely misleading.

She did get the money back from Barclays (eventually) after claiming to be a victim of fraud.

'To read this page, please turn off your ad blocker...'

Gareth Perch

Check out Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror s01e02 "Fifteen Million Merits" for the advertiser's dream future.

I would say that I don't mind Google's text only ads, but since Google don't seem to care that legitimate searches are hijacked by misleading / fraudulent outfits that try to profit from otherwise free software (e.g. charge you for VLC) or attempt to trick users into believing that their driving licence renewal site is the real government one (a friend was tricked into paying ~£90 instead of £14 at the .GOV site) I've come to realise that even they can't be trusted.

The best form of advertising is word of mouth, especially given the exponential potential of the internet (look at sales of Harry Potter books). Unfortunately that relies on you selling a decent product at a good price, so it doesn't take much working out as to why the advertisers use less palatable tactics.

I wonder if the advertisers are aware that they're widely detested, whether as a company or as an individual "in advertising"...

No, Siri – I said PAWN stars! New Apple TV gets voice, touch control

Gareth Perch

Weren't some predicting an actual Apple designed TV at some point?

Kind of like when Sir Clive promised the media an electric car and delivered the C5...

I'll stick with my two Windows PCs for the foreseeable future; projector connected playback one running Plex in direct play mode from my 30TB media server (as well as GTA V / Elite:Dangerous / iTunes / emulators / anything else that runs on a PC, when I fancy a change). I still can't rip my purchased 3D Blu-Rays for full screen 1080P 3D (not SBS) playback on the PC though, so the Blu-Ray player still gets used on occasion. My 300 or so purchased CDs are packed away, never to return, as it's all about (lossless) iTunes and instant playback now. But I won't pay good money (haven't got any!) for digital content, I'd rather buy the physical CD / Blu-Ray and make my own.

Gareth Perch

Re: Have you used an Apple TV?

The bad guys in the remastered XBOX 360 Kinectable Halo shouted GRENADE! when they were about to throw one. Unfortunately it was taken as a voice command, causing me to throw one.

Is John McAfee running for US president? 'My campaign manager told me not to comment'

Gareth Perch

If you vote in a local election and forget to untick the box, will it automatically vote for McAfee in the presidential election?

Decision time: Uninstall Adobe Flash or install yet another critical patch

Gareth Perch

Why whitelist YouTube for Flash? I haven't got it installed in Firefox and all the videos I've wanted to watch work fine without it.

Mad Max: Fury Road – two hours of nonstop, utterly insane fantasy action

Gareth Perch

Much better than I expected. Incredibly intense. I can barely remember what happened in Avengers the week before, but I'll remember this one for a long time.

iPad Air 2: Vulture chews on new Apple tablet

Gareth Perch

Time to upgrade

I currently have an iPad 2 16GB, which I managed to persuade work to buy for each of my team when it first came out (and which I bought from them for £80, when I left a couple of months ago), so it doesn't owe me anything.

I'm running a fresh (not restored from backup) install of iOS 7, which keeps me waiting occasionally, particularly on my chosen database app (MyStuff2). It now takes 5 to 7 seconds just to update a field in a record from a drop down lookup list, which means 15 to 30 seconds per record (for comparison, every update is of course instantaneous in Excel on a laptop). Swiping between MyStuff2 and Safari often results in MyStuff2 reloading entirely from scratch (another 10 seconds, then you have to find where you'd left off). I assume this is due to memory constraints - I often get the same issue when switching between tabs on Safari (incredibly annoying if you're filling in a form or posting on a forum and want to reference data from another tab). Safari also sometimes crashes when there's too much going on on one tab.

It's finally time for an upgrade, with a faster processor and more memory. "Disk" space hasn't really been an issue so far - I've still got 2GB+ left after all this time and I don't use it for music, as I use my iPhone 4 (a freebie replacement for my old iPhone 3G) for that. The only video I use is for offline viewing with Plex, which doesn't happen very often (planes and trains) and doesn't take up much space for a few TV show episodes. I know that 16GB won't be enough on a retina display, so I'll be going with iPad Air 32GB (Black Friday or refurb from Apple) or Air 2 64GB on Black Friday if I can wait. I'm also looking at getting a refurb (if Apple ever get more stock - other shops don't seem to realise / care that their refurb prices are now the brand new price from Apple) 16GB iPad Mini 2 for my mum (since the Mini 3 isn't an upgrade to the Mini 2, unless you want Touch ID).

I gave away my old iPhone 3G to my friend's 7 year old daughter. The battery still lasts ages with no SIM / wifi only and they save it as a special treat for long car journeys. I expect I'll do the same with the iPad 2 (at some point between her recent 8th birthday and Christmas), as she's wanted one ever since she saw mine (even though I'd just given her a laptop!)

The battery life, (which still qualifies as "remarkable" on my iPad 2, down slightly from my original assessment of "magical" when I first got it) portability and touch display are probably the reason most people seem to prefer a tablet these days, since the iPad came out - and got it right. I haven't been blown away by Apple's incremental upgrades, but Android never really felt right for me, so I'm sticking with Apple for now. Conversely, Apple's OSX doesn't float my boat (the hardware's nice though - and equivalent spec / quality PC's aren't really any cheaper - so I build my own) so I'll be sticking with Windows 8.1 on my PCs, then I guess Windows 10 (apparently 7 ate 9?)

THUD! WD plonks down SIX TERABYTE 'consumer NAS' fatboy

Gareth Perch

Re: Reds are OK for any size NAS

What's your mobo / chassis / PSU? I managed to squeeze 12 (plus an SSD) into an Antec 1200.

Chap rebuilds BBC Micro in JavaScript

Gareth Perch

Re: Pretend MIDI Rock Band ..

I mostly played an excellent Galaga clone (Zalaga) on the school's Beeb. I did play Elite, but on my Spectrum (once I'd conquered the Lenslok, I pressed the button on my wonderful Multiface to save copies for my friends, but I had bought the original for £15 or something - still have it in fact). I only knew one person at my school whose family could afford a Beeb, but he was too intelligent to hang about with for more than a few minutes at a time and didn't seem to be quite as much fun as all my Spectrum owning friends.

PS-PHWOARRR: We review Sony’s next-gen PlayStation 4

Gareth Perch

I'll get one when they release Wipeout for it...

...if they ever do, now that Sony has closed Studio Liverpool.

And an XBox One, when they release Halo for it. So I'll probably just end up with an XBox One this generation.

I don't really play any other games on my PS3 or XBox 360 (or PC - but I'm looking forward to Elite: Dangerous - I expect I'll treat my PC to a new graphics card for that)

Boffins have constructed a new LIGHT SABRE. Their skills are complete

Gareth Perch
FAIL

Use The Force, Lukin

Seriously - no Star Wars reference to the guy's surname in the title / subtitle / article?

Google chap reverse engineers Sinclair Scientific Calculator

Gareth Perch

For those that, like me, have just woken up and are a bit confused: "Shirriff retells the story of the calculator's genesis by *noting*"

Apple builds flagship store on top of PLAGUE HOSPITAL

Gareth Perch

Polt-i-geist

"You son of a bitch - you moved the cemetery but you left the bodies didn't ya?!"

WarGames IMSAI machine for sale (again)

Gareth Perch
Pint

Re: Damn

Perhaps WOPR would make a better bar than side table?

Ofcom: Parents, here's how to keep grubby tots from buying Smurfberries

Gareth Perch
Black Helicopters

It's a Brave New World - just take your soma and be on your way

It's not in the phone company's (and apparently - at least in the case of my iPhone - in the phone manufacturer's) interest to allow users to block receiving calls from known spammers, never mind block outgoing calls. How hard would it be for the phone's software to block all numbers starting with 0843410 for example (a fair few that I've allocated to my "SPAM" contact start with that). I think you can if you JailBreak - but I don't want to update / slow down my phone by JailBreaking to the latest iOS.

Even the government doesn't seem to want to do anything about unsolicited phone calls. I've unplugged my landline now and on the very rare occasion it's plugged in, I just get spam phone calls. The amount of spam calls I've been personally asked about (including one where I was present) from someone in India, claiming to be from "Windows" is remarkable - and it doesn't seem as though you can do anything about those either.

Some years ago, my girlfriend at the time was on PAYG and every time she added credit it disappeared within ten minutes. It turned out that she'd unknowingly signed up to one of those spam services who, when faced with lack of credit on her phone, waited until there was credit to nab the money.

I seem to remember that when the first premium rate number (0898) first came out, there was uproar from parents who were getting huge phone bills because their kids were dialling numbers from adverts specifically aimed at them. BT actually stopped premium rate numbers altogether for a while. They soon came back - and with a vengeance.

Until one phone manufacturer or mobile operator goes against the trend and allows their customers some level of control (and makes it a selling point), it'll just keep going the way it is unfortunately.

I've demo'd some great apps and then bought the full versions - all but one (£17.99 for LogMeIn) for well under a fiver and I haven't regretted any of my purchases (well, perhaps one!), but I particularly resent those companies that try to trick children into in-app purchases.

Since leaving my television (and licence) behind and going blu-ray and projector, I've developed a very low tolerance (even a hatred) for advertising, advertisers and their blatant lies. Sadly some sales people will do anything to get their commission and apparently have no morals at all, but I can't see that segment of society being curtailed, never mind eradicated in my lifetime. There's too much protection of "big" business at the expense of us "little" consumers. It's no wonder many of us don't trust the government to represent our interests.

Sorry - what was the question again?

;o)

Minicam movie pirate gets record-breaking five years in prison

Gareth Perch

I heard (from someone that used to work as a projectionist) that cinema's make very little, if anything from the ticket prices, which is why the food and drink costs so much.

My home setup is far better than the last Odeon I visited. I complained and got free tickets (although I haven't been back since to use them) because the room was uncomfortably cold (the air con was broken), the bass speakers had blown (distorted sound), you could see the shadow of the fixings holding the screen up through the screen, there was banging going on during the film (they were fixing the air con) and there was the standard problem of bleed through of the bass from the screen next door. Couple that with the usual games of chance: will there be idiots on mobile phones or other disrespectful people spoiling it for others and along with the cost, hassle to get there and back and the fact that the blu-ray release isn't far behind these days means I haven't been to the cinema for years. I wait for the blu-ray and buy that instead. I considered The Hobbit to check out the new technology (I'll only consider IMAX these days, as the higher price usually means a better experience and less idiots in the audience) but at this rate I'll probably end up waiting for the blu-ray of that too. The only film that I feel may have been worthy of the full cinema experience that I waited (and waited) for the home release of was Prometheus.

From what I've seen, the sort of people that are content with a cam copy would definitely not have paid to see it at the cinema. It's hard to believe that people still accept that level of quality. I'd blame the (lossy) MP3 generation, but (from what I've seen at least) it's often their parents, especially those who are poorer and less technically savvy that find this method of delivery acceptable. Then they claim the movie is rubbish because (unsurprisingly) the fuzzy copy they saw didn't show off the $100,000,000 special effects. On the other hand, perhaps that makes for a levelling of the playing field, requiring a decent story (something quite rare in Hollywood, where proven revenue streams and sequels are king).

Perhaps Kickstarter for movies is the future - I'm looking forward to Elite: Dangerous in 2014. That's where a fair chunk of my cinema money has gone (and on blu-rays, once the price is acceptable - early adopters are burned for double dips and extortionate over pricing e.g. the Alien box set, The LoTR theatrical set - I've learned my lesson and will wait from now on). Have I deprived Hollywood of a sale?!

Ten four-bay NAS boxes

Gareth Perch
Stop

I don't get NAS boxes...

...unless it *really* needs to be that small - but when you need more bays, you have to go out and buy another one.

Very little room for expandability - I've got 12x (mostly 2TB and all Samsung) HD, 1x optical and 1x OCZ SSD in my tower case. Three are in a hot swap bay that takes up two of the three optical drive bays. There are big, slow, quiet fans in front of all the quiet, low heat, low power hard drives.

Why not build a Win 7 / Win 8 PC with shared libraries, running full Windows software for downloading / web sharing / managing your files, that's upgradable by something much more flexible than firmware and that won't leave you unsupported in a year or two, requiring you to buy the new version? That's what I did:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/1085092-mulvaneys-14-5tb-win-7-media-server.html

I've updated it since then though, it's about 20TB now and I'm about to put in a Core i3, more RAM and Win 8. I'm lucky enough to be in a position to upgrade cheaply and often, due to buying / selling / repairing PCs in my spare time (I manage a 1500 user, 500 PC, 200 laptop network for my main job).

I'm still waiting for 3TB drives to come down to £70 and 4TB to £100. Then I might wait until 4TB are £70 - I've got plenty of space for now.

Windows 8: Never mind Office, it's for GAMING

Gareth Perch

I had a play on the free Bubble game from the Win 8 store the other night. I thought it was a bit poor for a modern game. Unfortunately I thought the same 4 hours later, when I was still playing it. It must be in the playability (something I'm very familiar with, as I had (still have) a Sinclair ZX Spectrum) I've completed the free bits, but the next bit wants me to pay. I already detest Microsoft Points on the XBox - it seems a bit cynical that you can only buy them in chunks incompatible with the cost of things, leaving you with "loose change" that you have to spend on things that you shouldn't have to pay for in the first place, like screensavers. That and the fact that the more points you buy, the cheaper it *doesn't* get.

iPhone 5: skinny li'l fella with better display, camera, software

Gareth Perch

My 3G (not even S) is finally starting to fall apart (a cracked back, dead pixels measuring a third of the screen width by a few rows / the rubber seal coming out / most recently the silent switch broke, so I can't go silent), so I was hoping for another revolution like the original iPhone (well, the 3G one anyway) not this evolution.

Underwhelmed.

So it's a case of:

1: Stick with my iPhone 3G until it actually does literally fall apart (or until something else impresses me). I have dropped it (a lot) and the o/s is so slow it's not even funny any more - unless I want to use the basic phone functions, which are also pretty slow. If I didn't have the iPad 2 I'd probably have updated it by now.

2: iPhone 5 (or an older / cheaper model)

3: Windows Phone 8

4: Android / Samsung

It's time to burn the schedules and seize control of OUR TVs

Gareth Perch
Pirate

TV in my youth was a nightmare - waiting what seemed like forever for pretty much the only watchable TV programme on a Saturday, which wasn't even that great (The Pink Panther cartoon) which was surrounded by news and sports programs (hours upon hours of teletyped results). I don't even like sports.

I haven't had a TV or TV licence for years, since I bought a projector, which I replaced with a full 1080P 3D one nearly a year ago. I appreciate I'm in the minority (most people probably like to have the curtains open during the day).

I don't have to suffer adverts any more - if I'm at someone else's house, the blatant lies oozed at the viewers just serve to annoy, and the 10 minutes of film followed by 10 minutes of ads is just a joke. I even find the news distasteful (see Charlie Brooker's excellent Newswipe to see how all the news channels and newspapers do exactly what the psychologists and experts say not to do, if they want to avoid sensationalising the news and nurturing copycats).

I download movies and music and if I like them, I buy them on blu ray / CD - although sometimes I have to wait to do that, because of artificial delays to maximise the publisher's profit. I'd be happy to pay for TV shows on blu, but not £37 for 12 episodes - even of the excellent Dexter. On blu - perhaps £1 per episode while it's current, 50p if it's already been on TV but it's just come out on blu, or less when it's older than that. Most of the TV shows I watch are US (Dexter / Castle / Chuck / House / Greys and lots of others) and if I discover a new show (recommended by a friend or a random download of a s01e01) then I get to watch them in bulk, which is great when the show's really good and has been running for a number of seasons. Waiting for it to make it over the pond and watching the ads is not the way it should happen. Unfortunately, rights holders are (naturally?) tight with their IP, so would rather lose sales to downloaders than make it available everywhere at once.

It's a shame that the downloaders get a better experience than the legitimate purchasers (no ads, no piracy warnings, works on any kit, watch it when you like, watch it again years later, transfer to any device).

I don't believe that downloaded content in its current form has much value in itself - probably because there are ways to get it for free (sorry). If there is value added to the downloaded content (for example a 24bit studio master that is better than the CD) then I'm happy to pay for a download, but not for a poor quality MP3, which (unfortunately) a lot of people are happy with (I expect due to the poor quality hardware they're playing it on).

I have over 90 blu-rays, loads of DVDs and even laserdiscs, as well as 300 CDs (most of the music bought in the last century - not due to piracy but due to only about one CD a year that's worth buying) so at least I've made some sort of contribution.

Like I said in a forum years ago, charge me one monthly price (I think I said £30 at the time, maybe £50 now) for me to consume what I like ("stream" any music, any film, any newspaper, any magazine, any book, any game, any image, from any era), when I like, and split the money to pass to the relevant parties according to how much I used each item - and I'll buy into that scheme. Sadly, because so many companies own the rights to all this stuff, that'll never happen. Apart from that, it seems that you'd be lucky to get even all that Sky offers for £50 a month, never mind the other stuff.

I paid for a month of LoveFilm and for a month of Netflix, but because the alternative (downloading) offers so much more choice, it all seemed a bit limited. Even the shows they did have didn't have all the seasons. Logging on to either service in the US offered much more choice, which I'm afraid is a situation I won't pay to prolong.

I appreciate that if everyone did what I did, they wouldn't produce the content any more, as there wouldn't be any profit in it, unless you care to multiply all the stuff I've actually bought by all the people that buy even less than I do...

"You wouldn't steal a car" - no, but I'd drive it through a device that makes a perfect copy of it, that has no detrimental effect on the original.

Revealed at last: Universe's intergalactic dark matter skeleton

Gareth Perch

"The rest? There's dark matter and dark energy, but exactly what those dark enigmas are ... well, as Geoffrey Rush's Philip Henslowe was wont to say in Shakespeare in Love, "It's a mystery.""

Did he say that in "Shakespeare in Love"? He certainly said it in "Shine" (1996).

William Shatner confirms Devon town actually prostitute free

Gareth Perch
Thumb Up

Denny Crane.

Absinthe 2 lifts iOS 5.1.1 gadgets over garden wall

Gareth Perch

2JB or not 2JB?

If it wasn't for AppLocker (and Locktopus before that), I probably wouldn't have bothered. I'd already paid for my most expensive app (LogMeIn Ignition) and most other stuff is 69p. If an app's only going to cost you as much as half a can of Red Bull (and last longer) then it's hardly fair to pirate it.

If Apple sort out individual app locking, or a facility to switch between "home" and "work" profiles, I'll happily "un-JailBreak" my iPad.

What's copying your music really worth to you?

Gareth Perch

Pay again - as long as there's value added?

The film industry gets consumers to "double dip" by adding material to a new release or even by releasing it in a new *better quality* format like blu-ray. Unfortunately they'll also hold back "full" versions of films to try to force the double dipping, like with LOTR.

The home cinema market appears to be of a different generation to the majority of music purchasers. Unfortunately, many of the music buying public, most of which are probably younger than me, seem happy with a (relatively) poor quality MP3, often played at full volume through poor quality mobile phone speakers, further distorting the sound. It's a shame really, when you consider that at that age, your ears are so much better than at mine.

I only buy a handful of albums a year these days, Britpop was my era and this generation seems to be about RnB, which isn't generally to my taste, although there have been a few with high production values and funky 8bit computer samples in the last few years that I didn't mind so much. The stuff I hear on the radio that I actually like is played often enough that I don't feel the need to buy it.

I mostly listen to my old losslessly ripped original CD's on my nice hifi at home, losslessly on my old iPhone with decent headphones on the move and new music on the radio at work. I won't pay for anything that's less than CD quality lossless, so when I was looking to buy the Gotye album, I was pleased to find it on their official site (hopefully cutting out as many middle men as is possible these days) in a 24bit digital master copy with JPG / PDF album art, which I bought (my first non-physical paid-for album download and my first at higher than CD quality).

Perhaps that's one way of adding value to a purchase, particularly for those that appreciate quality - on my setup the difference really is noticeable and more important than printed album art (perhaps the best of both worlds would be to release 24bit albums on a physical medium like blu-ray with album art).

Computer nostalgia is 10 PRINT 'BOLLOCKS'

Gareth Perch

Re: Add a ; for fun

The prompt became whatever the last command was (usually RUN, but GOTO 10 also appeared if that's what you used)

Happy Days

:o)

Glasgow cammer not thrown in slammer

Gareth Perch
FAIL

Double standards

They're quick enough to stop someone using a mobile phone to record the film, but if anyone's messing with their phone (talking loudly, texting with big bright screens, not even watching the film, spoiling it for others) there's not an official to be seen.

How to choose the right screen size

Gareth Perch

Beamer

My projector screen's 100" (2.5m) and I watch it from just under 4m away. I don't need a TV, just a PC and pj - I can watch all the (mostly US) TV shows I like on that.

I saw a post somewhere that had a BluRay 720p image blown up to 1080p dimensions, vs an actual 1080p native image from a BluRay and I could barely tell the difference, and although my eyesight's not great, this was from close up.

Perhaps I'd be able to tell the difference on an actual BluRay disc if my pj was 1080P (it's an Infocus 7210 which has the DarkChip 3 technology, which was pretty good a few years ago when I bought it and is still going strong).

Last chance to vote to cut phone termination rates

Gareth Perch
Thumb Down

let it be

I don't fancy paying to receive calls, it was bad enough that my boss cost me my last £5 on my pay as you go mobile on my last visit to Australia, simply by phoning me for a few minutes. Goodness knows how much the call cost him from Blighty. I ended up buying a SIM for while I was over there - much better value - plus the boss didn't know the new number ;o)

Some people hate the fact that I no longer use a landline (and I've recently had to cancel the "free" caller ID because they decided to charge me £7.50 a month for it, because my bills aren't big enough) and are "forced" to call my mobile, but they usually want something (IT support probably!) so if it's that important... Anyway, my iPhone's on the £45 a month contract (although a mate got it me for < £31 a month) and I get 20 hours to any phone / mobile / network / any time within that monthly cost. I don't use anywhere near that much, so I've let (some) people know that if they let it ring once or twice I'll phone them back, so it doesn't cost them a bean.

I'd rather they petition to force companies to provide an alternative to 0870 etc. I don't see why companies should profit from a phone call unless it's a competition or whatever. http://www.saynoto0870.com goes some way towards alleviating that. Either that or charge me double - but out of my free minutes.

One fifth of humanity deprived of Milky Way

Gareth Perch

Dark times

Half way between Adelaide and Melbourne, with no man made lights to be seen anywhere in the flat, hugely expansive vista*, I saw the most beautiful night sky I'd ever seen. I had to stop and look. It was the highlight of my (altogether fantastic) holiday.

If anyone knows anywhere in England that allows such a clear view of the stars, I'd love to know.

The "lights out" time to contemplate the sky would be great, except the scum types would all come out to mug you during the dark times.

Dark times indeed.

*not the MS kind

Be Broadband doubles down on ADSL to catch cable

Gareth Perch

How about getting the rest of the country up to speed before increasing the speed of the lucky few?

"The Virgin Media cable network covers about 12.6 million premises and no expansion is planned. Be Broadband's coverage is limited only by which BT exchanges it installs equipment inside. According to Samknows it currently covers about 17.6m premises. ®"

... and you can bet that 12.6 million of Be's premises are the ones already covered by Virgin. It's frustrating to see more numerous, better and faster services introduced in the next town (a mile away), leaving my locality increasingly in the technological dark ages. How about ADDING 17.6 million Be exchanges to the 12.6 million Virgin Media ones, thus giving 30.2 million premises access to faster internet, rather than doubling up? Competition should be welcomed, but not until national coverage is sorted.