* Posts by bilston

24 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Feb 2009

G7 countries beat UK in worldwide broadband speed test again

bilston
Go

Sunny Spain

We live way out in the campo on a small urbanization of 80 villas which is at least at least 5 km from the nearest village in sunny Spain

About 10 years ago they fiber us up and apologized that the wireless link would only give us 300 synchronous.

Then about 2 years ago they dug the entire road up for miles and miles and we now have full fiber.

Now we get 900/900 solid all day long and the still apologize for the speed.

We pay 14.99 including 100 cable tv channels

Its amazing

Apple's latest macOS Big Sur update stops cheapo USB-C hubs bricking your machine

bilston

This is why I had to swap.

Dont get me wrong Apple offers great products and excellent software , but, and yes iI find it a massive but after 7 years, my excellent Imac wont update to the latest operating system, Yes I get the technical patches but I cant use the latest versions of my programs and I have to suffer death by a thousand cuts as new programs are frozen out.

I have also got fed up with pissing about with Apple only writing to its own disk system which wont be read by much else, perhaps it is the best disk op system but please let me get down and dirty with other systems.

Then there is the ludicrous audio codec situation, if it aint Apple lossless you cant use the the most world popular loss loss system,

Add to that the total lock down of accesories and spares and even programs, I baled out and switched Linux (Mint).

(Mint) is flawless, happy to work with anything and adaptable.

I am not short of cash I dont mind paying extra for a quality product which Apple is, but I am completely pissed off with being forced down a one way road that locks me into what it thinks is good for me, or what is clearly good for it.,

Try Linux. It is no longer the prerogative of the technical wizard, it actually lets you do what you want, POWER TO THE PEOPLE !

Germany prepares to launch COVID-19 contact-tracing app 'this week' while UK version stuck in development hell

bilston
Flame

Oh what a suprise

As one who has been involved with the shambles that is the NHS, Courts, and other government IT projects, I would have been astounded if it had been ready on time. District management (I use the word management loosely) was always utterly useless at understanding local needs (because they never spoke to the users much) and this meant a re writing of every thing when the local users discovered it didn't do what they needed. Didn't worry me I was paid by the hour.

Nineteen mysterious invaders from another Solar System spotted hanging around the outside edge of ours

bilston
Pirate

Only 16 times earth and moon distance

Surely in astronomical terms thats just hairs breadth.

BBC said it'll pull radio streams from TuneIn to slurp more of your data but nobody noticed till Amazon put its foot in it

bilston
Pirate

BBC still coming in "loud and proud" in sunny Spain.

Sonos via TuneIn still is on as is TuneIn web interface.

Google speaker still cranking it out via signed in account.

Alexa connects via sounds, play PODS as well, I initially had to log in though.

Cable system has all the BBC free to air TV and radio stations including the red button all in super HD.

Mind you I cant down load BBC sounds, its geo blocked as is the sun at mo !

Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours

bilston
Joke

Apple Air

If this was an Apple aircraft it would be called an optional reboot feature reminder, and require a trip to the Apple store.

It's 2019 and a WhatsApp call can hack a phone: Zero-day exploit infects mobes with spyware

bilston

Re: Theres a big difference here

and how do I do my banking, my local is closed, how do I buy my stuff on line, just asking

bilston
WTF?

Theres a big difference here

I can understand emails with dodgy attachments, web sites with dodgy java, I can just about control all of this.

BUT when a call which I do not answer puts a tracker on my phone, well, what chance do we stand.

Bring back the Nokia flip (yes I know they have)

London's Gatwick airport suspends all flights after 'multiple' reports of drones

bilston
Alien

Wat no fotos

Strange the media has no photos to show, is this a cover story for somthing else ?

If this post gets deleted I will worry on the other hand as you can see it ahhhhhhhhhh .

Ding dong merrily on high. In Berkeley, the bots are singeing: Self-driving college cooler droid goes up in flames

bilston
FAIL

Human Error, eh ??

Excuse me, human error in replacing a battery ?

If its so easy to get this wrong there is a fundamental design error some where.

Just saying

Openreach names 81 lucky locations to be plugged into its super-zippy Gfast pipe

bilston

Darkest rural Spain.

We live way out in the country in a tiny village of 80 villas way way out in darkest Spain. What chance high speed for us. But the local provider fibered us all up thanks to a grant from the EEC (I hear your leaving - strange?) and we now all get 500 down and 50 up steady as a rock. Plus cable TV including all free sat and Spanish local and national channels. It’s about 30 pounds a month.

Creaky systems 'cost lives': Health secretary Matt Hancock pledges to solve NHS IT woes

bilston

NHS IT hopeless candidate

I live in Spain.

The spanish systems all work extremely well.

Appointments : The system is open 24/7 fully automatic via phone or computer

Hospital visit test results are available the next day at doctors or on line for patient (they hide nothing tell all)

Every one entitled to free medical service has a medical card, the card is swiped and checked every time you need any thing. If you dont have a valid medical card you will get no service unless you are insured or have a working credit card. Even the ambulances check.

We use the same card for prescriptions.

The card of course point to all your medical info which is all on line

The medical centre is open 24 hours as is the chemist and the hospital is modern, clean, evem the food is great.

The local medical centre is the responsibility of the Mayor, we all know him, if any thing starts to go wrong he knows he will get it in neck every where he goes. Its not run by some nameless committee of which no one knows

Its a question of accountability that the difference

A decade on, Apple and Google's 30% app store cut looks pretty cheesy

bilston

Margins to high

If I got 30% mark up as a retail buyer in the mass electrical store business ide be hailed a god (which sadly I’m not) average margins about 12% and of course they don’t hold any stock to look after deliver or repair. Looks like a gap in the market for a discount download store. Let’s crowd fund one sounds like fun

Ex-UK comms minister's constituents plagued by wonky broadband over ... wireless radio link?

bilston
Coffee/keyboard

Never mind all that....

Whats the fab radio, Normende perhaps

Microsoft tweaks WinPhone YouTube app to fix Google gripes

bilston
Paris Hilton

Lovers spat surely ?

Perhaps not

Dell blames staff for malware infection

bilston
FAIL

What chance do we stand ?

What chance do we stand if new hardware arrives pre loaded with viruses?

Also, it appears from the article that Dell is hardly being very forthcoming about how this happened.

Perhaps they need to take a leaf from Apple on how to handle P.R.

On second thoughts, perhaps not...

DVLA off-road system seriously off-message

bilston
Go

Sensible and thoughtful ruling.

This is why the judicial system must be kept separate from the government.

Disconnection phone scam targets UK consumers

bilston
Stop

Cant believe they havnt fixed this

In the good old days of mechanical exchanges I can understand why the line does not drop until the caller hangs up, thus blocking the line.

But come on now, we are all digital now, if I hang up on a call it should drop the call, its my line not the callers!

Brute-force attacks target two-year hole in Yahoo! Mail

bilston
Paris Hilton

OMG

If they cant get this correct what chance do the rest of us stand !!!!

Paris because of the entry method

'Non-compulsory' ID cards poised for a makeover?

bilston

Here's a funny thing.

In Spain we all have ID cards and have to carry them.

Recently the rules were changed and foreigners can no longer obtain a Spanish ID card even if they live permanantly in Spain.

The cards are so useful that nearly all the ex pat brits are going nuts because they cant have one!

How about that for a turn arround!

'Get cameraphones out of nurseries' plea

bilston

Brown paper bags

Brown paper bags be worn by all children when out and about.

All pianos should have there legs covered.

Swimming pools, beaches, and TV channels should be segregated by sex.

All cameras, oil paintings, sketches etc should have the faces obscured for all people and animals, especially sheep.

Antivirus giants fined over automatic renewals

bilston
Pirate

Pleased its been stopped

Had to renew a Symantic anti virus for a friend.

Having taken the credit card details the b*****ds calmly informed me that this would be an automatic renewal, and that you cant change this now, you need to log back in, and then jump through a lot of hoops to re set it back to non automatic. Not even a box to tick pre set to yes!

Thats assuming Norton does not frig the whole thing up any way.

What a way to treat customers, it almost seems they don't care.

Google cloud told to encrypt itself

bilston
Go

https and igoogle

Https does work perfectly in Googles Chrome browser though, and the browser is quite good also.

NASA talks little green men with Vatican

bilston
Go

Its very easy to prove life exists elsewhere.

We exist here, proving life can evolve.

The univererse is virtually never ending.

Thus in a virtually never ending universe other life will exist some where.

And dont be blinkered by believing life can only exist on a planet such as ours.

We exist on this planet because we evolved to live in this enviroment, life on other planets or even in space will evolve to fit that enviroment.

It will may be that we fail to recognise another life form because it is so different from us.