Posts by AndrueC

EE 4G LTE review

Re: High Speeds?

It's true you can pack more data in than 3G but there's still a very definite and practical limit. Firstly on the available radio spectrum and secondly mast backhaul. The latter can be improved but there's nothing much you can do about radio bandwidth. In an urban area it ought to be adequate for non-streaming use but no way in hell could it replace wired connections. Not unless they install a lot more masts and that has it's own problems - cost, planning permission and frequency allocation.

Re: High Speeds?

That's why I remain sceptical about all the hype. I'm surprised this issue (along with distance from mast and obstructions) is allowed to go unchallenged. So many people think mobile broadband is going to kill off the wired market. It makes no sense to me.

Good comments apart from the bit about prioritising speed testers. I don't think that's very likely.

Nobody knows what to call Microsoft's ex-Metro UI

$20bn a year? Really?

Even if the results had been an improvement that's still a crazy amount to be spending.

'We invented Windows 8 Tiles in the 1990s', says firm suing Microsoft

> Seems a pretty weak patent. Not obvious, but not massively unique by a long way

So the case is a slam dunk, then.

Freesat downs own website after Downton quickie

Re: @The BigYin

Glad someone else thinks it was OT - even they are anonymous. I must admit I didn't like the way my post came across as an advert. But if you're in the market for a TV service then dismissing Sky as 'only sports' is wrong in my opinion. Yes most of it (maybe the sport as well) is mindless drivel but millions of people enjoy spending their time watching mindless drivel. Sky isn't cheap and I'd like to think I was doing a bit of a public service by letting Sky subscribers know that they have access to more than just sport.

And to the OP still not understanding - you've only picked one more channel. There are several dozen. Last night my box was recording from 8pm to 1:35am and for most of that it was using both tuners. I am not currently watching repeats of anything. Now fine some (maybe a lot) of what I watch is firmly in the 'mindless drivel' camp but it's all original material. To the UK at least.

Anyway: Subscribing to a TV series is silly. However we all have the right to spend our money as we see fit - just bear in mind that Sky and Virgin both offer more than just sports and movies :)

Re: Repeatedly repeating repeats

> Once you remove all the duplicates (there are over a dozen channels for C4, alone), prime/subscriptions, smut, "plus 1's", telesales, god, foreign-language and single-topic channels there are maybe 40 or 50 "proper TV" channels out of the thousand or so that a scan of Sky's satellites throws up.

No I'm not. I think you're missing the point and/or don't understand %ges. There are so many channels that even if each channel only had one new programme an evening there'd still be a dozen hours of new programming. I guarantee you that tonight every hour between 8pm and midnight you can find at least one programme (probably two between 9pm and 11pm) that have never been broadcast in the UK before. I hate watching repeats because frankly not much is worth watching twice but I typically find five or six hours of new material every evening. Right now as I said in my post I'm finding more than I can watch.

As for adverts - only a pillock watches those. Get a PVR and learn how to use it. That applies to FreeView and FreeSat as well.

Oh and Sky don't own any satellites. I think many years ago in a previous incarnation they might have held a small number of shares in one of the providers but since they've been called 'Sky' they have just rented transponders like everyone else. In fact most of the channels aren't even broadcast by Sky.

>but for those not interested in sports a Sky subscription is increasingly hard to justify

Do you think people are only paying to watch sports? What about or movies? There are also several hundred 'normal' TV channels that are only available by subscription. And I'm not talking about the crappy second rate ones that show nothing but repeats.

I don't want to appear to be a Sky advert but I do think it sad (if it's true) that a lot of Sky subscribers only watch the sports or movies channels. If you're going to cough up for a subscription you owe it to yourself to see what else is out there. Yes 80% is repeats but 20% of several hundred channels still means a lot of original content.

Speaking personally I don't have a Movies subscription and only watch F1 on the sports channels. I do however manage to find more original content available every evening than I can currently keep up with (it being the peak viewing season). It's also almost entirely in HD. I really hope the author of this article is mistaken and that most Sky subscribers are aware that there's more to Sky than just sports.

Virgin Media spanked for 'we've already cabled up your house' mailshot

Re: Good ol' VM

They rarely let making a profit get in the way of running a business either :)

Pre-ordered a Microsoft Surface? So SORRY it's late, have a voucher

Re: Orders are shipped using UPS

Or 'Yodel' - so called because it makes you scream.

Microsoft's 'official' Windows 8 Survival Guide leaks

Bloody brilliant!

(The article not the OS)

ESO's nine-gigapixel galactic image has 84 MILLION stars

I think I see a UFO!

Australian volcano starts to blow

> That's about as close to the middle of nowhere as it is possible to be.

But I bet you can still find someone who wants BT to provide fibre broadband there at £5 a month.

Microsoft has no plans for a second Windows 7 Service Pack

Bloody hell. They are are desperate aren't they? What next - public flogging for those still on XP?

Clearly someone at Microsoft really, really wants us to move to Win8.

Arseholes.

'Hypersensitive' Wi-Fi hater loses case against fiendish DEVICES

Re: Inquiring minds...

My pet budgie lived his nine years within two metres of a WAP and no intervening wall to reduce the signal. When I was using my laptop I was often within a metre of his cage (although he spent most of his time outside the cage). Nine years is a respectable life span for a budgie so I feel confident in saying that the idea that wifi signals are dangerous to humans is a load of old cods wallop.

And I shall downvote anyone who makes any silly jokes about him using 'tweeter'.

Amazon seeks 50,000 temporary elves to wrap up America's Xmas

> Talented individuals.

Gotta love HR adverts. Since when did putting something in a box require 'talent'? Okay so you have to know a bit about what you're doing but it's not what I'd call talent.

GIANT EYEBALL PANIC ends: Oceanic peeper identified

Eye, eye. Something fishy going on there :)

Skydiver Baumgartner in 128,000ft plunge from brink of space

Re: So that's one record still in the hands of Kittinger

Ah you must've woken up after the break in transmission. Whoever fixed that LOS decided to boost the volume while they were at it.

Metric versus imperial: Reg readers weigh in

Re: Poll

'cos it'd get no votes.

Re: Imperial Units are god's law.

> If god had meant for us to use Metric

another good reason to be an atheist then.

I'm 45 and I was also taught in metric. The only imperial measurements I use are miles and mpg. I also used stones for body weight until a decade ago then I switched my digital scales over and within a couple of days I was happy to quote my statistics as '1.8m and 75kg' :)

Imperial is still good for 'human scale' measurements though. 'A few centimetres' isn't really as good as 'a couple of inches' and 'a bit less than half a metre' isn't as helpful as 'a foot'.

But still - as soon as you need accuracy or want to talk to foreigners metric is best. I also prefer to work in decimal and avoid fractions. Oh and unit multiplier prefixes are cool although I've seen 'kilofeet' banded around a few times.

To those who think the conversion is a pain - yes. It is. So don't bother. Just switch over and be done with it. It only took me a couple of days to understand what 75kg meant and surely being an imperial luddite doesn't mean you are more mentally challenged than me :)

Hands on with BB10: Strokey dokey

> successful in their social group.

So not really a phone for geeks then.

El Reg VULTURE logo FOUND ON MARS

Re: says

> A beer to the first person to do a genuine El Reg soil mark

Black, brown or yellow?

Why is solid-state storage so flimsy?

Yes, SSDs are a bit dodgy. They can be recovered though. I work for Kroll Ontrack and share an office with a chap who's happy to get busy with soldering iron and whatever else is needed to pull the data off.

Copper-obsessed BT means UK misses out on ultrafast fibre gold

Re: Correction

Well it's partly true about the ducting. However the assertion that it's been there for 'a hundred years' doesn't really wash in my opinion. Just how many properties actually had a telephone line in 1912? And how many lines have been installed (new properties built) since BT was formed?

Re: Copper is the current technology

Yes but copper wasn't laid in the ground all in one go. Nor were power cables. Nor were the railway lines. Nor were roads. You have to start somewhere and you have to stay within some kind of budget. FTTC is a reasonable compromise that can over time (will be when the product is released) a stepping stone to FTTH.

The only real shame here is that BT is unable to fund a 100% roll-out of FTTC and that the government's solution - BDUK - is such a screw up. Amusingly the BT/EU partnership is going really well and giving Cornwall a big uplift. If I was a regional council I'd be telling UK government where to stuff it and just going to Brussels. They seem much faster to come up with the funding.

Re: False Economy

What do you mean 'again'? 75% of the country is being done at BT's expense with BT's money.

BDUK is the government's idea for covering those parts of the country BT can't do by itself. BT didn't 'beg' anyone. It's the politicians and customers who do the begging. BT just said "Nah, can't do there" and was happy to forget about it. The BDUK money is being made available to anyone that thinks they can cover those areas and I think it says a lot that only one company has won the bids so far. No-one else is apparently capable of using those funds to come up with a bid that anyone wants.

Re: FTTH is a waste of time

You might want to try it wired sometimes. In a typical urban setting wifi doesn't have enough free channels to do justice to FTTC. On wifi I only get around 30Mb/s. Switch to wired and it jumps to 77Mb/s :)

Re: FTTH is a waste of time

I think your estimate is woefully pessimistic. I live 500 metres away from my cabinet and get 77 down, 17 up. Based on walking around my town I'd say that distance was fairly typical. On that basis I reckon most people will get at least 60Mb/s. Cabinets are going to be close to the properties they serve otherwise there'd be no point having them. Brackley has around 2,000 residential properties and at least 35 PCPs. Checking on Google maps shows that the average distance between my three nearest cabinets is 315m. Now geographical location is not necessarily an indication of line length but clearly they are quite densely packed around a typical town.

I think the only people seeing 20Mb/s or less from FTTC are going to be remote properties or those on aluminium cable. I reckon well over 75% will see 50MB/s or better.

Re: Correction

A company daring to make a profit? Shock, horror. Whatever next. I guess you're too young to remember telephony before BT was created. PO control was not pleasant. We all know the problems with the Post Office at the moment - it was much the same kind of lackadaisical over priced naff service running on old technology when they ran the phone system. But you'll be pleased to know they didn't make a profit.

Re: Errm...

Sometimes reality intrudes. When I bought my first house it was a mid-terraced two bedroom property. Probably like most people. I now live in a detached, three bed property with garage. There are times when you have to be sensible and prudent and go for what you can afford rather than the best available.

This is one of those times.

I think it's rather sad that after five years of the worst recession the country has ever known (within living memory certainly) people are still advocating spending money they don't have to achieve something with intangible benefits over a cheaper and perfectly capable solution.

BT have already said that very soon now anyone on an FTTC enabled exchange can order fibre if they want it. Based on current take-up for NGA broadband I doubt many people will bother because, frankly, most people can barely see the need for FTTC speeds let alone fibre speeds.

Facebook says it's LOSING money in the UK ... pays hardly any tax

Re: Of course its tax avoidance

> tax loopholes open up creative accounting and tax avoidance via the double Irish system

I'd call that a win for the corporations but I'm struggling to consider it a win for Ireland.

Re: Of course its tax avoidance

> It's a win for the company and for Ireland.

Ireland is winning, now? Last I heard it needed a huge bail-out and it's banks and economy were in the crapper.

>Facebook's UK operation plunged to a £13.9m pre-tax loss in 2011, compared with a £1.1m profit a year

> earlier, accounts filed with Companies House revealed.

So probably only worth paying a couple of hundred million for now, then?

Teachers get earful of racy XXX chat in Capita IT cock-up

Re: yeah, whatever...teachers' best excuse yet

Only if you hold it right.

SpaceX Falcon 9 flameout leaves commercial satellite in wrong orbit

Re: Excellent

Oh dear. What a shame. Never mind.

Astroboffins to search for mega-massive alien power plants

It's a helluva leap from building bagless vacuum, cleaners to putting an entire sphere around a star. Way to go Mr Dyson!

:D

New science: seas will rise due to CO2 ... but not for centuries

Re: Fusion

Unlimited energy means unlimited heat. More global warming! Oh well - perhaps we'll just have to learn how move the planet a bit further out. I'm sure we can do that before it becomes a major problem.

Credit to Larry Niven for the idea :)

It's based on the assumption that as time goes on humans get better and better at dealing with problems and improving their lives. Looking at the last 10,000 years on average that seems a reasonable assumption.

Rapper rips up Microsoft's Atlanta store during performance

Racey... :)

Those error messages certainly do add a touch of modernity to Windows 8.

Top admen beg Microsoft to switch off 'Do Not Track' in IE 10

Re: I see no ad's

I prefer to have a cow munch mine but yeah - if you don't want to see adverts you don't have to :)

'Leaked' doc shock: BT denies inflating prices for rural broadband rollout

Surely the 'BT haters' would like to see BT inflate its figures. That way the competitors would have room to undercut it. The fact that BT appears to be the sole survivor of the BDUK process surely makes it unlikely that they inflated their costs?

Boffins suggest orbital dust-up to combat climate change

Re: "Useful"

We can get to most places within our Solar system with current technology if we want to. Most scientists now think that most of the useful resources on Earth actually came from space and that without that input Earth would be just another lifeless rock. There are way more resources to be exploited out beyond Earth's atmosphere. Grab a convenient comet and you've got a bonanza. The second advantage is that it doesn't matter how you do it. If you want to build a nuclear reactor then fine. Build it. No real need to worry about shielding and if it throws a wobbler just kick it away and build another one.

If we can do all that why not use the expertise and resources to build a proper space station or a base on the moon. Planets are useful nurseries but the future of an intelligent tool using species is space where the only limitations are your imagination :)

Microsoft releases JavaScript alternative

Re: @AndrueC - Standards

Not to mention the classic 'Come back to the fold then depart from it' strategy. Or the 'Invite everyone into the fold but hide a few things from them' strategy.

There was a sweet spot about five to ten years ago when everything seemed to just work - at least on the Windows platform. A golden age of 'Download, install, run, win'. Now we seem to be re-entering the world of 'Download, faff around, download the right thing, install, faff around, download something else, faff around, run, get annoyed.'. Hopefully it's just another IT cycle and in ten years we'll be back to smooth sailing.

Oink oink, flap flap.

Re: because JavaScript was never intended for the roles it has found itself serving today

When I was young and carefree I thought it'd be great if everyone used the same OS to ensure cross platform compatibility. Even at that tender age with experience of Sinclair Spectrums and CP/M I could see that it would need a hardware abstraction layer to cater for different hardware and an easily replaceable front-end to cater for different users. But clear one OS across the board would be great for users and business.

Then I discovered that MSDOS allowed you to change the front-end and use any command interpreter and I was pleased.

A few years later I found that Windows NT used something called HAL and I was nearly overjoyed.

I'm now old(er) and jaded. I wonder why :-/

I'm so glad the IT industry has learnt to standardise and work together after the nightmare of mismatching 'standards' of the 1990s.

Nominet mulls killing off the .co from .co.uk

Meanwhile presumably they'll leave '.me.uk' alone?

Climate change threatens to SHRINK FISH AND CHIP SUPPERS

So the rumours say. On the other hand:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-18646660

and debunking some recent newspaper stories:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19755695

So as ever it depends who you ask but the extinction of Cod appears to have been exaggerated..at least recently.