Posts by Matthew 3

Multi-million investment hints at UK battery swap shops

future upgrades

There shouldn't be a problem with improvements in battery technology over time - the swapshop just needs to offer a 'premium service' for batteries which have a higher capacity. As long as the output voltage and the unit's size are consistent, there is no problem.

I don't hear people complaining about compatibility issues when the swap a 700mA AA battery for a 100mA one.

In fact I can see a future for the older batteries being swapped at a discount - pay half-price for an elderly battery which no longer lasts as long as a new one perhaps?

Vodafone revs up UK femtocell program

@ Bob H and Dino Saur

If the femtocell is deep inside a building - which is where the normal signal is weakest anyway - it might have trouble finding a GPS signal or other operators' towers.

It would be a major design flaw if a product like this failed to work when it can't see a UK operator's tower - isn't that the only reason why you'd buy it?!

Obviously I am aware of (and I agree) about the licensing issues and won't be trying this myself but you can bet that someone will.

Oh and (ignoring the obvious attempt to flame) BlackBerries *can* receive email over Wifi.

I'm amazed nobody has thought of this...

We have several hundred Blackberry users on Vodafone, who frequently travel to our other offices abroad. If we had a femtocell at each foreign site, connecting over our VPN back to a UK internet connection, they'd have no roaming charges.

Sounds like a bargain for fifty quid!

Google says ad blockers will save online ads

Adblocking...

I use Opera's 'block content' context menu and have gradually built up a list so exhaustive that it is rare for an advert to get in my way. The only ones which tend to slip through are text-based and frankly that doesn't bother me.

The comments above about Shell are interesting - I had to unblock a site just to see what the fuss was about!

Just as popup ads were (mostly) removed by the evolution of automatically-updated default web browsers (yes, I'm thinking of IE here) it is likely that some future version will eventually include adblocking - Microsoft don't care about enhancing Google's revenue stream after all. So even the lazy will probably get mopped up eventually.

Ringback tones outselling ring tones

Only knew about it 'cos of Martin Lewis

One of his blogs mentioned that he tried one of these and didn't realise it had worked until a colleague asked about his unprofessional selection.

Surely there should be some sort of requirement for a common tone for engaged, busy and ringing? Maybe I'm just turning into an old fart but the idea of confusing people just for the sake of it seems like a bad idea.

Spain cuts off 3m pre-pay mobiles

How will this help?

Are the Spanish seriously suggesting that terrorists will give up if they can't activate a bomb by mobile phone? I'm fairly sure that there are other methods of remotely triggering an explosive and, if I were that way inclined, can think of several effective alternatives.

It would be more sensible for the Spanish government to compel network operators to keep detailed logs showing where each unregistered phone is at all times. Hey presto, tracking information for all of those people showing their movements. If the SIM isn't in use, it'll confirm it and anyone with a suspicious pattern of movements (phone only on near terrorist targets?) would be easy to identify.

Instead, you inconvenience tourists and the procrastinators while giving the terrorists a reason to use a less-easily-tracked alternative firing mechanism...

WTF is this country called America?

<pedant>

Well technically the term 'America' isn't even specific enough to narrow the location down to a continent: it describes a very large area from Chile all the way up to this, admittedly inarticulate, individual's home in Canada.

The late, great Douglas Adams referred to this in one of his books as I recall. I can't recall the exact text but I am sure that some other Reg reader can oblige.

Windows 7 - the Reg reader verdict

Win7...

I took the opportunity to go 64bit - something that I know I could have done with XP but back then there didn't seem to be a point - and to be honest I haven't been sure whether that alone is the reason for the speed increase I've seen.

Installation: astonishingly straightforward and fast, with the least number of questions to interrupt I can remember. Full credit too for getting them all out of the way early in the install. There are none of those annoying pauses where you come back to the 'puter to see it's waiting on you to click 'yes'. With 7, come back and it's all done.

Startup: much quicker than XP with a Vista-ishness to the appearance but none of the lag.

Interface: lots of nice improvements. I love the 'recently used list' has expanded to show recent documents for each application, and have been astonished by the breadth of driver and application support. I use a lot of esoteric apps and nothing I've asked it to do has created a problem.

Shutdown: miles faster than XP. Apps which stopped responding on XP just close properly and it's powered off in moments.

I'm quite cynical about Microsoft - the learning curve for Office 2007 for example - but I'm already evangelising Windows 7 to people because it is light-years ahead of XP and everything that Vista should have been.

If I have a criticism it is the marketing limitations that have artificially imposed restrictions to create different versions. I want to join my home domain and use the Media Centre. Why should this only be possible with the most expensive version? This use of feature-disabling to artificially create delineations should be outlawed. It leaves an uglyl scratch across an otherwise fantastic product.

UK fatties demand 'hate crime' status for lardo-baiting

Reduce your height!

This solution makes someone go from being lardy to 'normal' (because the BMI is so cretinously biased towards short-arses).

And the full disclosure says you're 6'3"? Pah! I'm 6' 6": that's a proper height!

Even my doctor agrees that at my 'ideal' BMI I'd snap in half in a high wind.

Survey: Call centre data standards 'routinely ignored'

We need someone to name and shame...

...as the bad publicity is the best way to ensure they comply with the rules quickly. If *everybody* starts asking awkward questions, and RandomVendor Ltd were named, I reckon their customer base would shrink pretty rapidly.

Nothing incentivises senior management like plummeting revenues!

Google's Postini Fail pinned on bad filter, hardware glitch

'Malformed messages'?

Now that the chocolate factory are in charge I didn't expect to hear British Rail excuses. This sounds suspiciously like one of those 'wrong kind of snow/leaves/track' type of excuses to me...

On the plus side, our Postini-handled email arrived on time and OK - but it worries me that the image of perfection is slipping a bit.

Your phone is winding me up

Gone full circle

Anyone else remember the old war films where the army had to wind up the land-line to generate enough juice to make a call?

And to add insult to injury, the technology goes by the oldies' name for it: 'wireless'!

Labour to push for broadband tax before election

Mobile then...

I only keep my landline out of inertia. I live in a remote area where ADSL coverage only occasionally tops 1Mb: I've been teetering on the verge of switching permanently to a mobile dongle for ages. My ADSL costs and line rental will pay for a lot of data traffic...

I think that there will be many thousands who will, like me, see this as an opportunity to re-evaluate whether a landline is really necessary any more. I know they're not asking for much more money right now but taxes rarely go down.

Have they budgeted for a drop in the numbers of people with fixed lines? I think not.

Startup makes thin clients look chubby

Power over ethernet?

Looks like it needs a separate power supply: another trick missed.

Shuttle offers Linux-loaded all-in-one Atom desktop

@Adam C 1

You didn't see the Gadget Show's test then? The Aspire Revo had no troubles with HD content - and, yes, it runs on an Atom processor. But IIRC it had separate graphics capability.

Windows 7 versus Snow Leopard — The poison taste test

Public Folders

Not being able to access public folders is, to be fair, going to be less of an issue as time goes on. Exchange 2007 has 'de-emphasised' Public Folders and won't offer them at all in future versions. It may be more relevant to look at how well Safari deals with Sharepoint...

Anyway, thanks for a well-balanced article.

Opera stretches vocal cords with v.10 release

Seems to be miles quicker already

Very glad to have downloaded this one. And on my stuck-out-in-the-sticks location it is finally giving my internet pages a decent lick of speed. El Reg has never loaded more quickly!

Very impressed!

Japan gets battery swapping electric taxis

"Gas powered vehicles"?

Which gas do they use? Hydrogen? LPG?

Oh, you mean 'petrol'....

Jaguar opens up about future e-car plans

@richard 69

>try bringing out a smaller more affordable car in a recession, if aston martin can't shift 'em jaguar has no chance.

Hmmm, do you not remember the X Type and how vilified Jaguar were for attempting to go for the mass market? Following Porsche's model seems much more sensible: small numbers of cars sold but with a high margin.

I will be buying one of these just as soon as that lottery win comes through...

BT names more exchanges for early fibre upgrades

1MB?!

You were lucky! In my day, all we had was a 2400baud modem and had to work 26 hours a day down t'pit...

</Python>

Vulture Central unleashes RegPad™

those bloody grey bars...

Nice to see even you guys find them annoying...

Schneier says he was 'probably wrong' on masked passwords

...( . ) ( . )...tit...le

I agree that I have far more respect for someone who admits to a mistake than someone who tries to blag their way out of it.

But let me be the first to say even Microsoft have used the 'tick here to unmask' password on Vista (when entering a WPA key, since you didn't ask).

And possibly the most secure option is that used by my bank: it asks for three random digits from within the password. It doesn't matter how many shoulder-surfers watch me, all they'd get is, say, the third, seventh and twelfth digits. Maybe, just maybe, if someone watched me logon twenty times, then perhaps they'd collect all the digits... But I reckon I could get most people's passwords watching them type them three times, asterisks or not. Most people pointedly look away when a colleague is entering a password to show that they're not doing this.

Daily Mail launches McKinnon campaign

Why did they wait?

It does look suspiciously like the UK authorities were leaned on *not* to prosecute until the one-sided extradition legislation came into force.

So now he can be extradited because the Merkins want to (we have to prove probable cause to get one of them over here) and the old get-out of saying 'he's already been tried' won't count.

Sounds very fishy to me whether it is in the Daily Mail or not.

Conficker left Manchester unable to issue traffic tickets

Hmmm...

"...in the event of an emergency those key systems..."

I bet they're only really worried about the ones that generate revenue for them. What's the betting that the bus-lane cameras will be fixed first next time there is an outage?

Titsup airport express lane biz may pawn flyer data

@Richard_L._Kent

Well I find people who append 'esq' to their names to be offensive.

I occasionally deign to overlook such behaviour in the young and/or ignorant so Bill S Preston needn't worry...

Panasonic patches cameras to block rivals' batteries

Why the secrecy?

I have no problem with Panasonic making this decision *IF* they are also fully open about it: if the download page says clearly, right next to the download link 'This update may disable third-party batteries'.

But to put that detail elsewhere seems like they're trying to *appear* open while actually being secretive. This breeds distrust in the user community and means that future updates will be treated with suspicion. Sony learnt the hard way that undocumented functionality can lead to a serious backlash later, especially when it seems it is for the manufacturer's benefit.

Disney punts hetero luuurv to wide-eyed kiddies

NORM!

With all this talk of norms, am I really the only one here to be thinking of a bar full of people all shouting 'Norm!' as a fat guy comes into the bar and parks himself on his usual barstool?

Designer pitches flat-pack power plug

@Glen Turner 1

You are clearly not from the UK or you'd know that you're wrong:

- The UK plug's earth pin *is* longer than the others precisely to ensure that it connects *first*.

Stop the 'connects simultaneously' bollocks and check your facts first!

- No UK plug would come out of a socket under gravity alone. And if the design was 'weak in the corners' I think you'd see sockets failing from this all the time, instead of never.

- The fuse may well be redundant now that we have RCD circuit breakers but it does allow UK products to blow a fuse at more than just one level of current. A fuse for a low-power device like a lamp is usually 3A: the power is cut if some cretin replaces a blown bulb with a too-large alternative.

NASA takes stick over feet and inches

@Ed Blackshaw

If you have milk delivered by a milkman, it still comes in pint bottles. It's only those pesky supermarkets that have gone over to the dark side.

Unit silliness

I still don't understand why care tyres (Yank: 'tires') are sized with the diameter in inches and the width of the tyre in millimetres:

For example a 195/55 R16 tyre is 195mm wide on a 16" wheel. If we can't even be consistent on these things I think it is a bit unfair to pick on someone else...

Green GT motors through trial run

Schumacher?!

Nah, he's been out of the sport waaaay too long, looking at the way he 'drove' the reasonably priced car.

Tube Deluxe 3.1

Exit mapping?

i used to have an app on WinMo which identified which carriage to get into to have the shortest walk to the exit when you got off the train.

This seemed pretty useful: rather than finding you have to walk the length of the train to get out, you can walk to the right place while you're having to wait for a train. Add this function too!