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Beyond iTunes: XML boffins target sheet music

Re: The browser is the least of the problems...

And open source.

Has Voyager 1 escaped the Sun yet? Yes, but also no, say boffins

It shouldn't take any looking up to know how to spell "kHz".

O2 joins Virgin Media as member of weak crypto software club

Weak passwords

Don't forget that Virgin Media insists on both a maximum password length and no special characters. Other security howlers shouldn't come as a surprise.

Shoebox-sized satellite enters orbit packing 3Mbps radio

Re: Size isn't everything

Good example of why you need to use the "joke alert" icon I guess, Stuart 22...

Cheer up: UK mobile networks are perkier than Germany's

"Better latency than never"

Well done - you deserve a beer for that strapline.

Radio wave gun zaps drones out of the sky – and it's perfectly legal*

Re: Arms race coming?

Laser control won't help with GPS.

4K catches fire with OTT streamers, while broadcasters burn

Re: Waste of time and money, you can't break the rules of biology.

It doesn't stop Apple flogging the ultimate "Retina" display... and then next year flogging an even higher resolution display...

Do you play scrabble or something?

Because as no doubt that would look incredible at 4k, any games actually involving movement will be distinctly meh at 60fps.

3D TVs?

That was last year's fad - or maybe the year before's. Does anyone use those any more?

Re: Content is everything

@Mahatma Coat did that "proper demo material" consist of slowly moving serene mountainscapes etc, rather than fast-moving sports, for instance? They wouldn't want to show up the headline pixel count figure hides a multitude of sins such as that if you don't increase the frame rate accordingly, your pictures turn to mush as soon as they start to move.

BBC joins war against Flash, launches beta HTML5 iPlayer

Re: SD and HD

The trouble is that you might be on a connection that supports HD this moment, but the next moment you're not. That's where DASH comes into its own - Dynamic Adaptive.

You call THAT safe? Top EU legal bod says data sent to US is anything but

I don't think there is any shock that it's not worth the paper it's written on; the shock is that something might be done about it.

XcodeGhost attack tapped into dev distaste for Apple's Gatekeeper

Re: Why have these companies not had their licenses revoked?

Probably because if they revoked those developers' licences they wouldn't have many developers left...

Amazon reveals $50 Android-ish Fire tablet it will axe in two years

Given the number of adults complaining about broken iPad screens, looks like it's good for them too.

Re: Not bad at that price but...

A touch-screen keyboard developing faulty keys? That's quite surreal!

Ashley Madison keeps calm, carries on after hackers expose lives of millions of its users

No, I don't work for them

I have no connection with them at all Anonymous Coward, but must have hit home if you are accusing me of that. I was really pointing out the irony of the author making a reference to this article and then completely ignoring what the article warns about.

The reference for the lack of email verification goes to great lengths to point out that Ashley Madison is not just a website for adultery, and the damage that sensational media coverage can cause. Still the author couldn't resist describing it as an "infidelity website", "extra-marital sex hookup site", and assuming that everyone on there has a partner.

Dropbox adds USB two factor authentication for paranoid Chrome users

Re: If you are carrying an USB key for authentication.

Because it's a bit hard for others to access? The clue is in the name: "Dropbox".

Update Firefox NOW to foil FILE-STEALING vulnerability exploit, warns Mozilla

Re: Update Done

Thanks for the tips guys. Fibbles: yes, that's exactly what Firefox used to do, but didn't do it this time. It was probably preoccupied warning me about Flash. :)

Re: Update Done

@thames - in theory your update is done. In practice the updater installed a new Firefox last night, but nothing has asked me to re-start - the process has been running since 4th August (when the Ubuntu desktop last pulled its "I'll kill all the applications when coming out of suspend" trick). Not helped by Firefox telling me its version is "39.0" as mentioned elsewhere.

Update: after restarting it now says "39.0.3". Hindsight is a wonderful thing...

Oh, and is there any way to restart Firefox without it forgetting all its tabs, apart from "killall firefox" or other unorthodox ways of terminating the application?

Very useful...

...that Firefox tells me in Help -> About that it's version "39.0".

Take THAT, Tesla: Another Oz energy utility will ship home batteries

Generation vs feed-in rates

Sounds like the high feed-in tariff with a low generation rate is a silly idea. In the UK for domestic installations the generation tariff is much higher than the feed-in tariff, and they don't even bother to install a meter to measure the latter - they just assume you export 50%. So to make the most of things, "make hay while the sun shines".

Virtually no one is using Apple Music even though it is utterly free

Re: Please, El Reg ...

Eh? Is that something AdBlock spares us from?

Re: ...and how much does Netflix cost a month?

Do you think if you're registered blind you can get a reduction on Netflix as with the TV Licence?

Unsubscribe

Do you think the App Store would approve an app that reminded you to unubscribe from Apple Music once the free trial was over? ;)

Hack a garage and the car inside with a child's toy and a few chips

Re: Well...

Don't all garage door openers use rolling codes now? So it's only old ones that would be susceptible to the attack described.

Think beyond the Beeb: Gov consultation is crucial for free telly

I don't see why not. It's the same thing anyway - just a load of bits. It won't be free to air any more though, as you'll need to subscribe to some sort of distribution mechanism to receive it.

Re: it's time for a change

Sorry, you didn't help, but instead appear to be terribly confused.

Of course Sky doesn't force you to subscribe to it. I never said it does. I was talking about its other income stream - the adverts which it carries - and who pays for those. Yes, believe it or not, Sky is such good value for money that it requires funding from both hefty subscriptions AND advertising.

Oh look - you do appear to have realised that - so why erect straw men to demolish? What was that you were saying earlier about moving goal posts? ;)

When you buy a product which is advertised on Sky (or substitute any other commercial broadcaster), you're forced to pay Sky a "tax" incorporated into the price of that product. You are paying Sky for programmes, whether you are watching them or not. Sound familiar? Sure, you can choose not to buy that product, but that restricts your freedom of choice and who's to say there's an alternative, especially as the free market will tend to equalise the prices of competing products?

Just watch any commercial TV for a while to see how advertising works without benefiting the consumer. A company will start to advertise a product. A competing company will panic and start to advertise their product too. These advertising wars happen again and again. Result: trebles all round for the broadcaster; prices go up for the consumer.

There are hundreds of things you have to pay for in your taxes which you don't consume. It just requires a bit more intelligence to be applied to realise this, rather than just kicking off at the licence fee all the time because it's so obvious what it funds.

Re: happy to pay the license fee

codejunky, when talking about bias earlier, you criticised me for defending the BBC by comparing it to an "extreme" example, Fox News.

I assume, therefore, that as you yourself are now comparing the BBC with Fox News on the subject of dumbing down, that you believe that the BBC has dumbed down British TV news to a similar extent to Fox in the US.

Fair's fair, after all.

Re: The simplest solution would be abolish license fee monopoly

Pretty thinly disguised "I'm not going to answer the question", codejunky. ;)

Perhaps an easier one for you then - back up your claim that the BBC is "well known to be biased". As that repeated claim is the basis of your complaint I trust you will be happy to do so.

Re: 4k

There is not yet, but should be, so much more to 4k than the extra pixels, which, let's face it, are redundant to a lot of people a lot of the time. Much more noticeable benefits could be achieved by tacking on higher frame rates (less juddery/smeary motion), higher contrast (brighter whites/deeper blacks) and a wider range of colours. The BBC is able to look at this sort of thing from the point of view of the broadcasters, e.g. by developing systems which are not radically incompatible with how programmes are made at the moment (reducing production/infrastructure costs) and promoting universal standards (opening up the broadcast equipment market and hence also reducing costs).

Re: it's time for a change

If I elect to watch programmes from the BBC only, why do I still pay for Sky's production? Advertising isn't paid for by magic fairy dust, you know.

True, but eventually multicast ought to ameliorate that.

Re: happy to pay the license fee

"And they charge you a Fox tax if you wan to watch any other channel... oh wait, no that's the BBC."

As opposed to the ITV/Sky/Ch4/Ch5 etc tax you are charged here if you watch any other channel, whenever you buy a product or service advertised on any of them, you mean?

Re: The simplest solution would be abolish license fee monopoly

codejunky, please tell me about these unbiased news sources that are not funded or influenced by the licence fee then. See tombo's posting below if you don't understand the relevance of that.

Re: The simplest solution would be abolish license fee monopoly

Oh yes I know about the BBC's "well-known biases" - it's criticised by everyone from all directions. Go figure! Or go and watch that well-known bastion of impartiality, Fox News, instead.

"For the life of me I can't figure out why our license fee is paying for that rubbish."

Edit: Nigel responded to the point above much more eloquently than I could have done, so I've removed my comment.

Re: The simplest solution would be abolish license fee monopoly

The licence fee (note spelling) is "a breach of human rights"? And I really thought I'd heard it all! Surely a far worse breach of human rights is the inability to access information free from the influence of either government or big business?

Re: Yikes is the final photo on page 3 really a from auntie?

The inability to spell "licence" in the caption to the picture on page 2 shows that it's some Reg sub-ed who sticks in the pictures afterwards to make it look interesting, rather than Nigel.

Want longer battery life? Avoid the New York Times and The Grauniad

Re: Try this page

FF on Linux is happy with this site and it "only" uses 200M, but then I'm running Adblock Plus and Ghostery.

Ghostery

No-one's (edit: one person has while reading the thread) mentioned Ghostery yet. Blocks these things without you having to spend 5 minutes on every page making decisions about what you want to enable. It blocks DataPoint Media, DoubleClick and Google Analytics on this page.

We forget NOTHING, the Beeb thunders at Europe

Re: Massive coincidence & How

"Also how do the BBC know which pages google omits from searches?"

Google tells them.

Re: BBC - "We forget nothing"

"My little brother had some pyjamas just that colour."

You're just showing off that you had a colour TV in 1973.

Re: Shocking

"Rather weird to have pro-EU BBC putting up links that EU forced Google to take down..."

Shocking indeed, how it undermines your simplistic blinkered view of the world.

Three's 'Home Signal' femtocells fail, restore mobile black spots

Re: Maybe I'm missing something

What are you missing? Well for a start, the fact that no-one can contact you on your mobile number, and that you can't use your included mobile minutes to make calls. You can also neither send nor receive text messages. Online banking and other services often uses text messages to provide 2FA.

Relax, it's just Ubuntu 15.04. AARGH! IT'S FULL OF SYSTEMD!!!

@Neil Barnes: adverts

"The Amazon connection doesn't strike me as The Way Things Should Be[tm] and seeing adverts for paid software in the software centre was something of a surprise, too..."

While I don't like the intrusive Amazon search, I have no problems with the Software Centre listing or advertising paid-for software (and other things such as magazines). It's both heartening to see how many vendors consider it's worth porting/building for the platform, and if it earns Canonical commission then why not? Someone has to pay for the software development and I'm sure Mark Shuttleworth's is not infinitely wealthy. I see it as a welcome step towards the mainstream.

Smile! Brit transport plods turn bodycams on travelling public

Re: Who is Kidding Who?@ Hairy Fairey

@AC: And how much is the cost of road collisions? £40bn? How many avoidable deaths are caused by air pollution due to motor traffic? The problems with obesity due to people not knowing how to walk any more? Don't be so naive.

Re: Falling at the last fence

As the ICO's website talks about "your personal information", haven't they got the perfect excuse to dismiss all complaints unless they've come from someone who's actually been filmed by one of these devices?

Re: Who is Kidding Who?

Don't forget the bright spark who decided that performance would be measured by how many trains are on time, without putting in a safeguard to stop the inevitable wheeze by the train companies of simply building in extra slack so that they're less likely to be "late". This is why Virgin trains always come into Euston early, resulting in delighted passengers... trebles all round!

Twitter's share price crashed 18% thanks to ONE LONE TWEET

I love the way

"microblabber-content advertising website Twitter." is just below a retweet button...