Posts by Jay 2

Star Wars set for 3D rehash

A few words on 3D

To quote (I think) another El-Reg commentard:

"Dross in 3D is still dross"

Crash grounds RAF Eurofighters - for Battle of Britain Day!

RE: Vulcan?

Nice idea, but as part of getting the Vulcan signed off as air worthy they had to strip out all the electronics etc that didn't have anything to do with flying. I suspect that sort of thing may have put the kybosh on doing stuff like dropping bombs.

Amazon loves LoveFilm (true)

CD MEH

I gave up on CD WOW a few years ago after they messed up on a few orders in a row. Once upon a time they were pretty good (prompt/cheap), though about the time they were being almost constantly fined for sourcing no-UK CDs etc then it all went a bit downhill. I use a combo of Play and Amazon to get stuff now.

Had a look at the LM offerings a year or so back when my girlfriend suggested it (though that would also involve dropping Sky and going Freeview) but the bang for buck didn't quite do it for me. So we stuck with Sky Movies, the odd DVD purchase and some other method of to-the-home film distribution that is popular on t'interwebs nowadays.

Apple iPod Touch 4G

I was all set to buy one...

...but the top end model is only 64GB, which for me is not enough storage. So I guess I'll have to sticj with my Classic for another year.

You don't have to be crazy to work here

The command line is the only thing you can trust when things go bang

A long time ago it was drummed into me to get used to vi, as at the time when things went wrong it was probably the only editor that you could rely on to be around when stuck in single user trying to sort something out.

Not so long ago one of my collegues would routinely do any Vertitas work (we were running various cluster and replication products as well as the usual disk stuff) from the command line as from his past experience there are times when you're going to be stuck with the command line trying to sort something out.

I took RHCE a few years ago and a large chunk of that was to sort out a broken system from the command line as they deliberately break things like network connectivity and windowing system.

To be honest until Trevor's articles I'd never even heard of Webadmin! Though even though I now know about it, I think I'd still rather stick to getting stuff done via scripts on the command line.

RIM BlackBerry Curve 3G 9300

WiFi

I hope the bods at RIM have done something about their WiFi, as on my work-supplied Curve 8900 it's virtually useless. Whilst it will claim that it's grabbed an IP from my router after a minute or so any WiFi usage goes straight out of the window and more often than not the WiFi connectivity has to be stopped and started before it'll work. Though nowadays I just can't be bothered to use WiFi on it at all. I've upgraded the OS to 5, no joy, and all the other WiFi devices in the house work fine. Bit of a pity as that aside it's not bad.

OpenSolaris spork ready for Oracle challenge

Solaris -> Linux

Yup, have seen our XETRA (something to do with Deutsche Börse) kit move from Solaris/SPARC to RedHat/x86. Similarly wheres I used to deal almost exclusively with kit running Solaris, I hardly touch it now as I spend virtually all my time looking after Linux kit.

New iPod crew: 'Phoney, futuristic, retro, doomed'

I'll hold out for the 128GB Touch

I was seriously considering getting a Touch if they'd announced a 128GB model. My current 5th gen Classic has got ~47GB on it at the moment, so with future expansion and apps/games etc I'm not entirely sure if only having ~17GB free to play with will be enough. I guess I'll have to hang on to my trusty Classic for another year...

UK ICT classes killing kids' interest in tech

The more things change...

I recall in the late 80s I wasn't allowed to take GSCE IT (or whatever it was) as it was over-subscribed and I mentioned the dreadded word 'programming' when asked why I wanted to take that course. That's from all the messing about on my Speccy. Still looks like I didn't miss anything, as I saw what they had to do, and it was boring.

Though I did take A-Level Computing which I enjoyed greatly and as well as the usual basics ended up programming in COMAL (a structured BASIC) on BBC Masters. There were a few Archemedies about at the time, but their main use was WYSIWYG word processing/DTP. So after that I thought I'd be a programmer!

So then went to do a compsci degree where I hit (mainly) Modula2 (aka Son Of Pascal) and realised I wasn't much of a programmer. Fortunately I manged to become a sys admin via my sandwhich year. Though some developers have asked if I was a developer in a past life after looking at some of my shell scripts.

In conclusion for the job I do now a heafty chunk of all the 'IT' education was mostly useless and I just learnt stuff my myself.

Malaysia bans 'satanic' Man Utd kit

Football Abroad

Like a fair bit of the Far East, for some reason Premier League football is very big in Malaysia. In KL you can see HUGE billboards with footballers helping to flog some product or another. Also Premier League matches are shown live over there, but as they're 9 hours ahead, then people will quite happily stay up late to watch them. When I asked about seeing some local football over there, almost everyone advised against it as they said it was terrible!

As also mentioned elsewhere, there are also quite a few places that will sell you fake stuff (among them football shirts), like Petaling Street in KL which is more-or-less entirely full of knock-off stuff. Like my cufflinks, they're Armani...

Daily Mail promotes 'the new Betamax'

MD

I had 2 MD devices, first an Aiwa and then a Sony. At the time they were ace as it allowed me to make my own compilations from existing CDs. Plus a bigger bonus was they they were read/write unlike (obviously) CD-R.

I must of had them for a few years until I picked up a CD player that would play MP3 from a data CD. I don't think that lasted as long before I picked up an iPod.

But to say that MD was a tech failure is well wide of the mark!

MS springs service pack preview of Windows 7

Blue is the colour

I also recall that XP SP2 had built-in Bluetooth which was much nicer than the 3rd part software/drivers I was using at the time which were a right nightmare!

ISPs mark disapproval of the Digital Economy Bill

OK ISP

Been with them for ages too. The only real problem was when they decided to store every email address that had ever touched their webmail system in clear text in a not completely secure database which was then hacked into and sold to spammers. On the up side (as is one of their trates) at least they 'fessed up to what happened.

Generally if you've been a customer of theirs for a while they're pretty open to doing some sort of deal when it comes to price. Also their referrals setup can get up the off quid off which is nice.

Take our home entertainment survey

Criminal

The obvious ironic thing being that as a fully paid up consumer you are forced to watch the "DON'T BE A PIRATE!" ads, but as a pirate (yarr) you strangely don't come into contact with said features.

Interestingly when I was in the cinema a few months back they had some ads of (allegedly) famous people saying thanks for coming to the cinema to watch (and paying!) opposed to sitting at home watching some cam-rip. It was a nice change from being accused of being a nasty lawbreaker. Though to be honest I'm not desparate to see anything if it's a cam-rip, something from a DVD is much better quality obviously, you just have to wait a little longer to see it!

Apple iPad run rate hits 2m units a month

Works for me

They might have got their act together now, but my girlfriend's Creative Zen V is a nasty piece of plastic user unfriendlyness.

I'll stick to my iPod which sounds good enough to my cloth ears. No Apple earphones though, as they are the work of the devil!

Ten Essential... iPad Games

Flight Control HD

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flight-control-hd/id363727129?mt=8

http://firemint.com/?page_id=1134

This was on the demo model I had my first iPad play on last week. Easy to play and very addictive.

Ten Essential World Cup Apps

Kick'n'Mix

Little puzzle game based on the logos/crests of football teams, should keep the synpanses firing.

Avaiable from AppStore/iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/app/kicknmix-world-championship/id373072990?mt=8

Discosure time: It's written by a friend of a friend.

Fedora 13 – Linux for Applephobes

Server?

One more for the Fedora-on-server = WTF? Having suffered such an environment you must be batshit insane to think about running Fedora on a server for anything more than a few months (moreso in a production situation).

Thankfully the project to upgrade all the Fedora boxes to CentOS 5.3/5.4 is coming to a close, and now we've finally impremented yum things are looking up!

Blighty to get mobe-download barcode rail tickets

Rip off

Indeed. It's also pretty stupid when it looks like Virgin uses exactly the same back end for tickets, but doesn't shaft you because you're booking online or using a credit card.

Five in slammer over iTunes/eBay card-laundry caper

Fishing expedition ahoy

"A routine car search... resulted in the seizure of a number of items from the car, including Rasool's laptop."

So under what grounds was the laptop 'searched' then? Seems to be an increasing amount of cases where Police bust someone for something and then just happen to find alleged perp's computer and then have a look to see if they can get them for something else.

RIM's BlackBerry OS 6 may be too late to fend off Apple

Wifi

I've got 5 running on my (company provided) 8900 Curve. I quite likeit and it's much better than 4. Though the wifi is still rubbish, and is flakey as anything. That's probably my only gripe. Not sure if it's drivers which could be tweaked for 6, or just a naff handset.

Revo Heritage DAB/FM radio and iPod dock

A bit pricey

A bit on the expensive side, considering the Pure Evoke Flow I got 18 months ago does most of that this can (OK no iPod dock, RJ45, USB connectivity or video stuff) and is now > £120.

Though have to agree with AC above. Not sure about the styling and what's with the single speaker?

Dell order status website suffers second server meltdown

Dell = useless

Ordered two identical servers a few weeks back. One arrived pretty sharpish, and after the expected delivery window we enquired where the other one was. We got the reply that for some reason it hadn't been built yet!

Given the grief we had when we ordered some storage last year (a similar problem of things not being built), I'm not looking forward to our next purchase. Unfortunately it's company policy that we buy Dell...

Googlephone sales top, um, 135,000

Very brave

You don't use credit cards (someone else's money) online, but you will use a debit card (your money)?

After being fleeced/skimmed/etc in a shop for £100 a few years back (refunded by bank) I don't use my debit card anywhere apart from cash machines (preferably those inside banks if possible). I now use credit cards for virtually everything, and pay it off every month.

If you don't use credit cards for moral/ideoligical/etc reasons then fair enough, but not using them for security reaons and using a debit card instead is a bit silly in my opinion.

Apple details iPad's 'breakthrough' mobile contract

Apple and batteries

The battery on my 160GB iPod (5th gen) is pretty rock solid still after 2 years so no problems there.

Though the battery on my girlfriend's MacBook (late 2007) is a different matter. In December it was almost bang on 2 years old, and the battery had less that 400 cycles, so according to most bits of info was in pretty good shape. After spending a few days away the battery was flat as a pancake and not charging. I took it into Apple who in other words said tough and get lost. Despite the fact they've designed a setup where the battery will quite happily will kill itself, their only solution was to spend £100 on a replacement battery. They referred to the documentation that said what to do if you were going to leave the laptop off for "an extended amount of time". To be honest I don't consider 7 days to be an extended amount of time.

FA launches security probe after England team bugged

Probably not NoTW

On the news last night they had some journo from The Daily Star saying they'd been offered said recordings. I would have thought that anyone wanting the big bucks would have gone to the hacks in Wapping first, as I'd put Sun/NoTW as the first port of call for such things with The Mirror next and then others.

So I don't think it'd be NoTW. I'd have thought they'd like to publish it themselves as they once again gear up to try and destroy the England football team before a major championship.

Whatever happened to the email app?

Thundewrbird, as can play on MacOS, Linux and Windows

At work still suffering with Notes 6.x (though at lot better than the evil that was 4.x). I hear we might get to 8.x in the near future!

Back when I had a PC at home I ran Outlook which was OK and talked to various things like Palm, WinCE, Nokia etc. Then got myself a netbook, threw on Linux and so put Thunderbird + Lightning + Provider Google on there.

Then I migrated to Mac. I couldn't get Mail.app (10.5) to use authenticated SMTP properly so gave up and ended up running Thunderbird + Lightning + Provider Google. Now on 10.6 and with Thunderbrid 3 and am fairly happy with everything.

Web wags stage IE 6 funeral

Goodbye IE6!

No more IE6 here as of this weekend. Now that the repaining app dependancy has been switched off we're free to upgrade to IE7! At least some of the web-based stuff I need to use will work now!

Virgin to offer 100Mb/s broadband by year's end

I'm sure I'm not going to be the only one to say this...

Such speeds are all very well and good, but not much use if you hit a usage cap in seconds, or if the the wet piece of string that connects Virgin to the rest of t'interwebs isn't upgraded.

Dell's order status website wobbles at knees

Bloody Useless

Ordered two identical servers (one for each DC) on 9th, got an email back saying that the delivery date would be "on or before" 19th. So on the 17th one of them shows up. So come the 19th where is the other one? After chasing Dell they claim that it hasn't been built, and not only that but they don't know why. We're still waiting...

Sounds strangely familar to last year when we ordered two identical storage arrays. One turned up and the other one wasn't built as the factory had allegedly run out of parts. Eventually it did turn up.

Much as we'd like to buy something else, we're not allowed as the US part of the buisness makes the rules. Though I have a sneaky feeling that next time out purchasing dept won't be going direct to Dell (a bit of o token gesture as we have to buy Dell kit, but they may get the message you never know).

Argentinians invade Falkland Islands website

Vwoosh

Yes, I read that the US gave/lent/sold some us Sidewinder missiles which proved most useful. A lot of the online blurb says the AIM-9M was the one the Harriers used. I could have sworn that I read there was something different about what we got, it's either that they were US only un until 1982 or that we were effectively testing some new tweaks.

Founding investor still believes InPhase can fly

50 years?

And how do they know that it will hold data with no probs for 50 years?

Microsoft guns for 2-for-1 sales with 'pre-installed' Office 2010 deal

When Office doesn't talk to Office, but OpenOffice does

I had some spreadsheets created in Excel (Office 2003 on PC). They worked fine when I used a little app to upload them to a remote MySQL server. Several years on I migrated to Mac. So I fire up Excel (Office:Mac 2008) and make my changes, then have to fire up XP in a VM as app in Win only and I haven't found a suitable Mac replacement. Something isn't quite right, and the upload fails miserably. So after messing about I take a copy of the original spreadsheet from the PC, edit in OpenOffice and upload... no problems at all.

HDD suppliers bound for choppy waters

Not surprised

After Seagate's recent form with firmware ("...yeah we've shipped loads of drives with firmware that will brick the drive...") and rather slow response in getting a coherent message/fix to punters I decided that from now on it's WD for me.

eBay cans free P&P requirement

So everything has to go 2nd class unrecoded then?

Haven't sold anything on fleaBay for a while, so managed to miss the "free P&P" debacle.

Once upon a time I just used to send stuff 1st calss and be done with it, until one day someone claimed they didn't get the item and I (stupidly) hadn't got proof of posting. As a result I had to take the hit. From that day on everything was sent recorded/special, I didn't give an option for normal mail.

However I seem to recall that even back that that just the postage for 1st class recorded for a CD or DVD was over £1. And jiffybags don't grow on trees!

So in order to keep to eBay's rules you're going to have to send it 2nd class, so the seller has to wait longer. The blurb doesn't mention anything about insurance, so don't know if you can only offer with insurance (ie recorded) or not.

And finally I have to point out that even if something is sent recorded Royal Mail will still stiff you over. I sent a DVD recorded, it never arrived and RM didn't know where it was. So I put in a claim for it, and all they gave me was the price of the DVD even though they had completely not fulfilled the service I'd paid them for! B'stards!

Top Gear's Stig prowls Loch Ness

Who is really The Stig?

There is no one person who is The Stig. The original (black) Stig was onetime F1 peddler Perry McCarthy. The replacement (white) Stig, for at least the track tests, is reputed to be Ben Collins who has raced GT cars quite a bit and a rather lot of testing of various cars. And for the more specialist thngs that Stiggy does, it's fair to say that someone else was behind the helmet.

The Schuey thing was a nice bit of misdirection, nothing more, northing less.

Scott McNealy signs off in style

Alas poor Yorik

I have quite a soft spot for Sun and their products (after 10+ years of looking after everything from Ultra 10s to the UE10000s), but when it comes down to it for small/mid scale stuff nowadays PenguinOS on x86/x64 seems to be able to do the same for less. Which would explain why I now find myself looking after multiple Dell pizza boxes running CentOS.

Verified by Visa bitchslapped by Cambridge researchers

I hate them!

Bloody pain the arse those things. In some cases you could just ignore them asking you, or in some cases use another card. But now I've had to give in otherwise getting hold of stuff would be a lot more difficult.

Though I agree 100% with the article, and many other previous Reg commentards, like the PIN it's just another way for the banks to shift the blame to the customer as they can't possibly be in the wrong can they?

Berserker Bing bots bring down Perl network

"...bonkers Bing bots ..."

Like it!

Rattled Red Hat battles support impostors

Depends on how much support you need

Most kit where I work is (or soon will be) CentOS, which is to say RHEL without any mention of RedHat. And as it follows RHEL, then you get all the latest bugfixes and errata (maybe after a slight wait).

The kicker is, as an AC says above, that many products specify that you must use RHEL. Even though CentOS is virtually identical and would work just as well. And as long as you stick to the packages in the normal distro then everything should be fine, as that's the entire point of RHEL; everything they provide should work together. Though to be honest that's easier said than done when some developer insists that whatever version of something RHEL/CentOS has isn't sufficient and they want the latest and greatest.

So generally we have a mix/match situation. Some of the more important stuff with a bit more vendor lock-in runs RHEL and the rest is (or will be) on CentOS.

Monty buffs MySQL cuckoo egg

Spork

I always think of CentOS as RHEL, but without RedHat.

Most things here are now (or will be soon) CentOS, which is a definate move forward from Fedora (don't ask). Though in some places we still use RHEL as it's a lot easier to pay for the support rather than get shafted later when someone as anal as Oracle/Dell/etc find out that you're not actually running RHEL, but CentOS.

HMRC fraud warning emails baited by phishers

Chance would be a fine thing

HMRC have got an email address of mine, but I don't think they've ever been bothered to use it this year. I could have sworn that the other year I got a mail to say I'd completed my returm, but nothing this year.

Steve Wozniak, your time is up

Nobody's perfect

The author obviously has been slighted by Woz in some way... OK so maybe in the commercial world Woz hasn't been a complete success post Apple, but I don't think he's worthy of an article like this.

So a slight tweak on a well known saying; "Those who can do, those who can't just write jealous bollocks articles about those that can (and have)".

Vodafone struggles to get iPhones out

CityLink = Shite

No more needs to be said...

Integrated tube tickets not on the Olympic menu

Free Travel?

So vistors to "the games" get free travel do they? That's nice for them. Do us Londoners who are actually paying for all this get free travel too if we go to watch stuff?

Vodafone to start selling iPhone on 14 January

Wouldn't have been interested even if I could

I was waiting to see what the Voda offering was, but without a PAYG option then I'm not interested. Though I wonder if Apple will now just sell an 'unlocked' handset? Plan B would be whatever Android based handset HTC bring out next.

However it's all a bit academic for me now as the other week my boss asked me to consider having a crackberry full time (apparently the answer "no" was the wrong one), so have now got a Curve 8900.

UK etailer calls self 'the last place you want to go'

JL never want my money

Every time I've tried to spend a fair amount of money with JL they manage to get me to shop elsewhere. Like the time they said they don't stock TVs that cost more than £2k, when several meters away was one priced at £3k! Mind you they didn't have the model I wanted for a few months after I purchased elsewhere, and even then it was more expensive. And then another time they wouldn't price match a DVD/HDD recorder against an in-store only offer at a shop about a mile away.

Fasthosts in day-long email FAIL

Boing

Hmm, can't say I noticed any mail problems yesterday. However for the past two weeks or so I've been getting bounced messages when I send a mail to a certain address. Though I could have sworn the other day that one got through. Fasthosts deny there's a problem, but no other mail (work, Gmail, etc) is having the same problem.

Users howl as Fedora 12 gives root to unwashed masses

Why, why, why would anyone run Fedora as an enterprise server?

"Although Fedora is mostly known as a desktop OS, it's not unheard of for enterprises to use it to run servers. That's always been a questionable practice, but given the implications of Fedora 12's new feature, the security implications have never been higher."

Indeed. Am currently in the process of rebuilding/upgrading Fedora boxes to CentOS after a thankful change of policy/tack. I have no idea why someone thought using an OS that changes every 6-9 months whilst obsoliting previous versions was a go-er. Trying to find certain RPMs when someone has blown away an old Fedora install share is just a can of worms...

Pre-order page reveals Sony Ericsson Android arrival date

Interesting

My aged 2nd hand N73 is really starting to show its age (esp compared to my girlfriend's C905), so am on the lookout for a sexy new handset. Much as I'd like an iPhone, I have a sneaky feeling that even when Voda start selling getting hold of a kosher SIM free (or even Voda PAYG) will be a bit too expensive for me.

And so I've been having a look at all things Android, and am fairly impressed so far. From what I can work out the OS (and various tweked front ends) are pretty much sorted, but the hardware is slightly lacking. On that basis I'd like to think that the next lot of handsets coming out will have just enough oomph.

I'm looking to buy in March/April so knowing S-E intend to shift this in Feb is a good sign. I'd prefer something from HTC to be honest as I trust them slightly more with updates that some of the big boys.