* Posts by Trev 2

149 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

UK cookie law compliance takes effect today

Trev 2

In essence all you seem to need to do currently is put up a privacy policy and state what cookies are used (including 3rd party ones) and tell people how to block cookies if they want. Or if you're more paranoid, then you could do like www.bt.com at the very bottom of their pages.

Beyond that it's pretty much a useless piece of legislation and £500,000 fines...yeah right!

Nokia dinged with shareholder lawsuit over poor Lumia sales

Trev 2

Good hardware - really crap software

Probably the biggest problem with Nokia comes when they try to go beyond standard phones into the "smartphones" as the Lumia 710 has serious problems such as not being able to end a call if it lasts more than a couple of minutes - they did actually test the phone before release!? Still awaiting the fix being released to the UK.

By the sounds of things from the US, there are even bigger testing screwups in the Lumia 900 with more simple lack of testing for simple features.

Used to be good, but software is starting to seriously let them down.

Up to 390 TalkTalk jobs face axe as Northampton site shuttered

Trev 2

They have staff in the UK...!? I'm guessing these people aren't on the call centres as all you ever get with them is India, who have obviously never been told how the UK phone system works including the little white box etc.

As for moving to Preston - yeah so if you get another job it'll pay £5K less a year, have worse conditions and it's in Preston. My advice to all those in Northampton is take the money and run, and then claim you were working in Outer Mongolia rather than for TalkTalk.

Nokia drops Lumia 900 price to $0 in response to bug outrage

Trev 2
FAIL

Perhaps by the time they release the Nokia Lumia 5000 (following the 950, 1000, 1050...) they'll actually have tested it before release!?

- My g/f has the Lumia 610 which fails on the most basic of functions like "end call" and has to be turned off if the phone call was more than a few minutes long. Nokia took at least 2 months to work out the fix then released it in India with "other areas coming as demand dictates" - it still not being offered to UK punters!

- Then there's the 800 which has serious battery life problems for many and has the above bug too although seems less frequent on that one. Would think so for a phone that can cost £500.

- Finally we come to the 900 which just fails completely at being a phone for a "small number of users". If it was a genuine small number they'd not be giving refunds and $100 so publically.

Oddly they do make good phones, just not good smart phones and whoever runs the testing lab needs hanging by painful bits outside in the middle of a Finnish Winter.

Twitter open sources MySQL enhancements

Trev 2

I am kindof surprised they're still running on MySQL, but have to admit that MySQL vs Postgre...thingy isn't a contest of which is better but simply that one is much much easier to talk to your boss about than something which sounds slightly greek.

As for MySQL releasing code - good for PR, good for MySQL users (bigger ones) and maybe one day the changes will get introduced into the core of the database for the rest of us.

TripAdvisor chucks antitrust complaint on Google's pile

Trev 2

I happened to be doing some test searches today on various travel themes (mostly UK based) and Tripadvisor was doing rather well despite having pages that break several of the Google webmaster guidelines.

Not too sure it's the best time for them to be throwing such complaints at Google else they might start looking more closely at the TA "no content" type pages and tweak the algo once more to put those pages where they should be in the results. Not good when you're as big as TA.

HP caught with SIX Windows 8 PC packages up its sleeve

Trev 2

Surely most 32 bit computers won't run Win 8?

I thought with Windows 7 they'd drawn a line with older computers so why not just draw another line to say we don't support 32 bit at all now? Would seem logical and helps their hardware partners move things along a bit too....for those nuts enough to want to upgrade for Win 8.

Not sure if this move would save money for MS, but if so then it's a nice bonus for the shareholders too.

Court claim slapped on bloke via Facebook in landmark case

Trev 2

Surely not that hard to find him via Nat Ins number?

Surely it should be possible with a little digging for the solicitors to find the person involved and give them the documents in the more standard way?

Debt collection agencies can trace people years later after they've moved several times, and councils can do it, so why not just employ one of them to find him? In an extreme case, couldn't they ask FB for the IP details and then contact his ISP (slightly more tricky with mobile internet)?

Pretty sure these would be much more reliable ways than assuming that someone accessing an FB account is the genuine person you're after and that critically they will even read their mail.

AOL sings soothing profit lullaby to nervous investors

Trev 2

Dialup still seems to exist quite a lot in the US

From what I've been told,dialup is still popular in regions of America where they have worse telecomes companies than BT at its worst. I guess its these people who AOL can tap into, although not sure why they'd want AOL.

What baffles me is why on earth anyone would buy 5% of the company when they know it's crap!? Is this some kindof tax writeoff?

eBuyer £1 sale fail: Customers vent fury... on Facebook

Trev 2

Biggest problem with it is that there are a lot of complaints on FB about people getting through the checkout, Ebuyer taking the card details etc. and then later on in the day getting an "out of stock" message cancelling the order.

Seems either their system doesn't bother to check stock levels at the time you finish the purchase or it doesn't lock the item as sold for say 2 minutes to allow the checkout process to work correctly.

Be interesting to see whether people get charged and then how long it takes to do refunds.

As for using them - not a hope as they've never managed to get an order to our office on time and returns for faulty items is (or was last time we used them) email only and takes ages.

Google adds default end-to-end encryption to search

Trev 2
Facepalm

What will be interesting is whether the search terms still appear in Google Analytics from these

searches. Can't imagine they're going to drop that info if they can help it.

But if they do include the info, and no other analytics type package can see it (due to not being connected into big G's database) then doesn't that steer them into hot water over stifling analytics competition?

Actually pretty sure if it comes via SSL the referrer isn't sent, thus seriously breaking most analytics systems?

OnStar backs down over GPS tracking of ex-customers

Trev 2

Why need to collect anything?

There's plenty of systems out there like ones you can get in a Volvo for example which can phone the emergency services in a crash and give your co-ordinates, without needing to send the data anywhere else.

If it was one of those trackers which activate when the car is stolen I could understand it, but again why it needs to know all those details I don't know. Just location of the car is good enough. Glad it doesn't seem to exist in the UK.

Mystery data centre snag floors LiveJournal

Trev 2

Clicked the status link and then link at bottom

Status page at least is hosted by "Warped Unlimited Web Hosting" who'll host your entire site for $5. This might explain a few things if they're also hosting the rest of LJ.

PC mountain accumulates in Blighty

Trev 2

Agree with AC - Acers are crap

Had 3 of them in the last year (one was a education funded one) and all 3 broke down, were non-upgradeable and slower than my much older Dell laptop. And that's when they were actually running and not crashing.

Also know a couple of other people who've got Acer's and they say the same thing with constant problems from day dot. Maybe the world is finally realising that Acer = total garbage.

MySpace sacks more

Trev 2

3 things that say it's not improved

1) The front page can't even line up so if they can't do it, how on earth are their users ever going to create less than horrible pages?

2) When you "browse" it comes back with 3000 people and that it would seem is the userbase. Not exactly looking good on the numbers front.

3) Best of all is the "Connect with facebook" on the frontpage. If ever there was a sign of defeat. :)

Google confirms US antitrust probe

Trev 2

Maybe they could use the supermarket idea for results

One slight difference between the supermarket version by Ivan Headache and Google results is that most readers view the results only one way, ie: top to bottom. With a supermarket, you can view the results / products from two different directions, ie: depending which end of the isle you come from.

With this in mind, perhaps Google needs to change the layout of it's results, so instead of scrolling downwards they maybe go sideways with say 3 results per line and on an average 1024768 screen, maybe 3 lines per screen.

That way more of the "products" get seen including of course their own, but no one can complain that the other products are hidden.

Not sure if this would work mind you from a UI point of view, but if it does how do you trademark an idea at the US patent office before Google reads this? :)

Google Instant Pages: Search sites rendered before you click

Trev 2

Won't skew web stats of Google Analytics...

I assume that it doesn't actually run the J/script during the rendering process and thus just downloads images, j/script etc. ready for the user? Would seem the most logical idea otherwise it'll end up slowing the browser.

If so then some web stats won't be skewed by this including Google Analytics as that's pretty much purely javascript and thus won't use any more Google resources. Any web stats on the server of course will be skewed - great!

Wonder if there'll be an opt out for web sites as really big sites like Amazon and of course Google themselves are going to get seriously slammed.

Barnsley clamps down on foul-mouthed fu*king locals

Trev 2

Who decides what's swearing?

Since pretty f***ing is pretty much an everyday word in some parts of Scotland then anyone coming down from Glasgow or Dundee and "swearing" in Barnsley might be a tad confused when they get slapped by a fine.

So who decides what is and isn't swearing? Are variations swearing such as "bi-aaatch" and Father Jack's famous "Fecking"?

If it's just when directed at someone in a hostile way, then don't the existing laws on public disorder offences and such cover it anyway thus removing the need to actually bother telling people that everyone in Barnsley apparently swears...?

Depressed Scottish file-sharing nurse gets 3 yrs probation

Trev 2

Can understand having 30,000....well...

Actually can't really understand having 30,000 songs without words, but why on earth did she need to file share them or is this more a case of not understanding that when you download them it also uploads for other people?

Were there 30,000 individual songs or just 30,000 uploads? Can imagine the same song getting uploaded countless times if people request it.

Something odd going on...

Cloud in 2011: A bright new dawn...

Trev 2

Can anyone be sure where the servers are?

One thing that often seems to panic big businesses and such is getting hacked by the Chinese, Iranians, Korea or similar for industrial espionage purposes, but if they outsource all the data storage to the "cloud", can they really be sure where the data is actually being stored, and thus who can actually read it?

For example say salesperson X comes from company Y selling this cloud concept and you'll have data stored in our cloud which is replicated in several geographically distinct locations for extra safety. If they forget to ask where these extra locations are, what's to stop the government of the country hosting the servers peaking into them and supplying the data to companies in their own country?

Amazon might be open about where they are, but not all will be especially if say the Chinese gov. starts offering discounted rates on bandwidth, data centre space and not worrying too much about all that environmental stuff.

CIX conferencing system is bought out – again

Trev 2

Was / is CIX a kindof usenet before usenet?

Don't think I ever quite got onto using it, but from what I've read it sounds like a USENET system that pre-dates that, but perhaps without the spam and such?

Google and Amazon cloud music nears judgment day

Trev 2

Isn't there an allowance for backing up your music?

Pretty sure in the UK at least your allowed to make a copy of your music for backing up purposes, so presumably this is no different to copying it to tape for use in the car, assuming of course you don't play both copies at the same time?

Maybe this doesn't apply in the US, but perhaps if not then move the service to the UK?

Also going to be fun when all data is stored "in the cloud" instead of the local hard drive if Google etc gets their way, so doesn't that mean effectively you won't be able to store your music anywhere anymore?

White Space competitors fight dirty

Trev 2

Why do they need so many databases?

If you've got multiple databases then one or more is likely to be out of date so just how long will it take them to knock out ITV in one or more regions? Hopefully the UK will have one database, then there's only one useless organisation to complain to (and wait 2 weeks for anything to be done).

David Davis: Jobless should dig trenches for fat UK pipes

Trev 2

Pick and shovel - not in Cumbria

Not sure exactly what this MP has been smoking, but BT (or company working for them) actually laid a very long fat pipe through Cumbria a couple of years ago - not sure if we ever got any benefit mind you.

However, despite the number of green fields and such, they laid most of it along the A6 digging said road up in a long and not very straight route. I really wouldn't want to put anyone who's not had the proper training behind the machine they were using as it looked pretty dangerous, especially on the bit where they were feet from a 100 foot drop!

So unfortunately doubt this pick and shovel plan will exactly work unless you include pickaxes and then that's going to take a very, very long time.

If he thinks Cumbria is hard, imagine what happens when you hit the granite rock in Scotland!

ICO issues half-baked cookies guidance

Trev 2

Two switches in every browser

For many years, every web browser I've used has had various options related to cookies, but the most useful as the one that says "Don't set cookies", "Ask me..." and "Always set cookies".

Slightly more recently most of them have added options to say "Don't set cookies for these domains...".

I did hear that browsers are coming with even more options now to satisfy this law in all it's stupidity, thus getting around the need for web sites to ask permission to set cookies. Of course whether that will satisfy the bods in Brussels is anyone's guess.

An analogy to this might be that they're trying to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted, met another horse (alt gender), raised 4 generations of baby horses and retired to a farm somewhere in Sussex.

Cisco rolls out data center pods

Trev 2

12 weeks for disaster recovery?

"as well as for disaster recovery when the primary data center is knocked out" but then later says it takes at least 12 weeks to get one of these up and running. Does sound rather a long time to wait when your data centre is knocked out, albeit a little quicker than building a brand new data centre.

The one thing which always baffles me about mobile data centres is security. Reading this seems to suggest you can put the mobile box in a place where you can't build a data centre, but it also appears to be seriously lacking the security of a proper data centre, unless you build a very big electricified fence around it with moat and crocs?

Apple confirms white iPhone 4 on sale tomorrow

Trev 2

But when's it coming in pink?

I know of two people who are flatly refusing to buy one until it comes out in pink (ideally bright pink), so all this "only in black" and now "ok, so you can have white too" is still losing them sales. Admittedly, I can think of better things to do with the weekly DHSS cheque, but...

@Turk - a combination of El Reg + Apple + useless announcement + we're bored I suspect gives the answer to your question.

German prangs dad's £275k supercar

Trev 2

Did the door actually fly 100 feet?

Need to know if the door actually flew 100' down the road in which case a high speed crash would perhaps be likely, or did it actually fall off, someone nicked it and then dropped it after realising it's gonna look pretty stupid on their banged up Ford Fiesta?

Opera embraces Google's open source JPEG killer

Trev 2

Slightly confused

Not entirely sure there's much point in Opera announcing support for WebP images until several years down the line when people, might, possibly, just about consider using it. A bit like PNG vs GIF - it was better and had no licence fee, but still very few images use PNG on the web.

Speed Dial looks remarkably similar to what Chrome does when you open a new tab, unless there's some difference I've not seen?

Would also be nice if Google would do a proxy thing for Chrome, like Opera is doing. Can forsee it being useful in Opera, but could also forsee it bankrupting them if the browser ever took a large market share.

Don't dislike Opera, but just not sure if it has any real purpose vs IE, Chrome or FF?

Named: Ten towns with slowest mobile broadband

Trev 2

Too many metal buildings in MK?

Am wondering if the Milton Keynes problem might be the amount of concrete and reinforced steel in all the buildings surrounding pretty much anywhere you want a mobile signal?

Ran into this problem recently when moving into a new house and waiting for BT. Away from the house we can get it, but there's a coal slag heap behind it which of course contains lots of iron ore and bang goes any chance of a decent (or sometimes any) mobile broadband signal. Tried almost every network too.

BT reveals fibre-to-the-cabinet plans for 156 exchanges

Trev 2

Does this mean upto 20Mb/s will actually exist?

Since ISPs have been rather slapped for their "up to 20Mbs" offerings so far, will this FTTC mean they can actually offer their customers something a little closer to that?

Spanish cops rush to cuff 'webcam killer'

Trev 2

Amazingly fast response time

Wonder if Interpol were involved in this to get the problem translated to the Spanish police, or if there just happened to be someone in the police station who could speak Spanish.

Or is there some kindof European police quick lookup system these days?

Time-wasting twits survey scam hits Twitter

Trev 2

Should be simple to combat for Twitter

Should be very easy for Twitter to combat this as I assume the service uses API keys, so simply zap the key and the app won't have access to anything. Won't stop the next one, but that's why they (in theory) have a security team watching this stuff.

As for waste of time - could be, but then again is reading The Reg constructive when we could all be out solving world hunger or summut equally "moral".

Cornish pasties awarded protected status

Trev 2

How about - "Pasty formerly known as Cornish"?

Would it be allowed to call it a "Pasty formerly known as Cornish" since that accurately describes exactly what it is and lessens the confusion?

As for quality - never had a decent one down there and Ginsters are just peppered rubbish but Gregg's do a pretty decent one that's mashed up inside but that makes it a lot more edible than something with great wads of chewy meat in it.

Oddjob Trojan keeps banking sessions open after victims log out

Trev 2

Not sure it'd have that much of an effect

I'd assume most banking systems now implement some form of serious security when making payments to another non-customer owned account? Eg: Lloyds TSB auto phones you up, then you enter a code given on the screen into the phone and after 2 days you can initiate the transfer.

Assuming all other banks do something similar, the open session is rather useless for transferring money out to Eastern Europe.

Hang on...maybe the trojan uses the same mind control techniques as shown by the ZX Spectrum with those wavy lines on the "loading" screen and gets you to authorise the transaction manually, eg: walk down to the bank? Clever things computers...

Need a Clive Sinclair with horns icon!

Top execs fly from Alibaba after supplier frauds

Trev 2

Good idea but treat site with caution

I've always suspected that much of what you find on there will be counterfeit anyway considering where it's coming from, but interesting to see them resigning over this - assuming they don't just come back in "consultancy" roles like they would over here.

Letting your sales people determine whether a site or supplier is legit is absolutely asking for trouble as they want their commission.

If someone could create an Ebay system but for mass supply of goods then it might work, albeit with the same problems as Ebay and Paypal admittedly.

Supermarket blows £70m on kid-commerce site

Trev 2

Are they buying the shop too?

If they're buying the web site and that generates 80% of business, does that mean they're also buying the shop or are the original owners keeping 20% turnover for themselves?

I know setting up an ecommerce web site would cost a bit, but are they absolutely sure it's worth spending £70m on an existing site? Don't see Tesco's doing that - when they want to do something they just seem to set it up themselves, like Tesco Direct. Noteably, they seem to make a lot more money than Morrisons.

AOL fails to suck up ad revs in Q4 results

Trev 2

Perhaps there is hope yet....for no more AOL

It's going to take longer than planned, but if they lose 1/4 of all subscribers per year then they should be gone in maybe 5 years tops (given that a few might hang on at the end).

The figures do make me wonder - if they've increased profits to $66m that presumably means they fired a lot of people, so why is it still costing them a fortune to run? Presumably the profit is after tax, but even so when you discount that plus servers, bandwidth and such it still sounds like the operation is costing them a small fortune to run.

Reg readers offered discount tickets to internet future

Trev 2

Wonder if this means .xxx will finally arrive?

Not sure what the latest is, but the .xxx TLD seemed to have a lot of trouble getting approval so does this mean it'll finally arrive or will ICANN stop it again?

All this sounds like a great way for ICANN and no doubt various consultants to make some money as there'll almost certainly be an application fee, but beyond that, really not sure about the point.

Those above are right when they say users have enough confusion - many can't even get the idea of .co.uk and insist it must be .com.uk as the internet is .com, isn't it....mind you, the web is the internet apparently and Google translated from Hebrew means "God". :)

Think I'll keep my $400, plus air fare, hotel bill, hire car, etc.

Orange blames switch for data problems

Trev 2

Words that instantly say "we're useless"

Why is it that company PR depts can never come up with anything more than a template response to a problem and absolutely insist on using phrases like "[company_name] is committed to delivering the best customer service...".

They only ever say that when they've royally mucked up.

Google algorithm change squashes code geek 'webspam'

Trev 2

Re experts exchange

Think sites like that tended to vanish after Google looked for hidden content and feeding Googlebot one thing where the user got something else. They eventually stopped doing that and you simply jumped to the bottom of the page for the real content (ignoring the "register" links).

Now I think they've gone back to the original system and they seem to have vanished mostly from the results again. So in some ways Google is making things better, but it causes headaches for more legit sites using things like show/hide text.

Tory MP accidentally endorses... German pr0n site

Trev 2

His auto news feeder could get him into more trouble

It's still there on the Henry Smith page, alongside the link to this article, but it does open the question of how they get that auto news feed. It's rather ripe for creating "alternative stories" about said MP and having them all appear down the side of his page... :-)

Somehow I think the web designers are going to be getting a phone call in the morning about that.

Pavement hogging Segway rider convicted

Trev 2

Unemployed and employed...

With ref. to the last AC - quite common on many estates where most of the population are "unemployed" and employed at the same time....just DHSS don't know about the latter. How'd you think they afford Segways and 42" plasma TVs.

With regards a Segway, I am wondering whether they should be classified the same as those motability scooters that try to mow everyone down. Drive it on the side of the road at your own risk and great fun to watch as two of them come head to head.

Genes Reunited server storm dumps pile of emails on mailing list

Trev 2

It's unfortunately very easy to do

Once sent one person around 2000 copies of an email from a tiny script change even though it was meant to be sending all tests to me. Tiny coding error can do it or as in this case the server just doing what it "thinks" is helpful.

With LawLess on that nervy hand shaking above the enter button. :)

Fire safety gaffe knocks out Webfusion data centre

Trev 2

Forgot to pull the fuse?

I guess in essence whoever was doing the checks forgot to pull the fuse before pressing the "on" button. Wouldn't want to be going into the office tomorrow to see the boss who's just been faxed the bill for all this.

PHP apps plagued by Mark of the Beast bug

Trev 2

Doesn't affect 64 bit machines?

If this doesn't affect 64bit servers then I'd imagine the majority of anything half decently new and running non-Windows OS is likely to be unaffected...?

@asdf - like Python, C#, Java, Ruby, Perl, ASP, .NET stuff and pretty much everything else out there it's got bugs but then real programming languages don't have bugs, do they...err.

MySpace employees face uncertain 2011

Trev 2

Agree with Richard

Got to agree with Richard when he questions what the 1100 people actually do? Can't be 2 tech bods and 1098 telesales like a lot of companies.

Also wonder how they saved money by giving the employees an extra week off? They using that much electricity for lighting and such?

BT fibre-up-your-exchange poll in 6-way Mugabe style pileup

Trev 2
FAIL

Web site made a major mistake - trusting cookies

The web site running this was obviously written by someone on a rainy Sunday afternoon as it used cookies to work out whether you'd already registered your interest for XYZ postcode.

Clear the cookie and you could vote for all your neighbours and as long as you know the correct details (eg: read the phone book), you could just vote and vote. No checks on IP address limits etc.

I know because I registered 3 addresses although they were parents house, my house and office.

LG uncloaks six-foot 3D TV

Trev 2

Is the "jump out" effect relative to TV size?

The general theory with large TVs is you need to sit further and further back so you don't see the pixels, but I'm wondering - with 3D TV, does the width of the TV affect how much the 3D elements "jump out" of the screen? Not seen this mentioned in any reg articles yet.

Cambridge boffins rebuff banking industry take down request

Trev 2

Banks are like any other stupid corporate

@The FunkeyGibbon - unfortunately banks are a bit like most corporates. They spend a fortune on PR and still make an unholy mess of PR due to letting the legal dept. do things without first consulting marketting.

In relation to this, I saw on Yahoo a claim that UK card fraud had dropped by 20% from 2009 to 2010, but that does beg the question - was this due to chip n pin and if so, are the banks just getting more stubborn about refunding customers? This is before someone starts using this new system.

From what I've seen of the technical details however, it would be a bit tricky to do without arousing suspicion of the person at the till, unless of course this is being done with their help a bit like those petrol stations which were using cloned card machines.