Posts by AndrueC

Amazon buys Lovefilm

Service has always been excellent for me.

I send my two discs off on Monday or Tuesday and get the next pair before the weekend. Pretty much always have. My only complaint is the speed of their website - sometimes it runs a bit slowly. The PS3 streaming is actually quite usable which is nice. Not an alternative to having an actual disc but it's worth a gander if you're short of something to do for a couple of hours.

So yeah. I'm a happy Lovefilm customer. Have been since back when it was called VideoIsland.

If Amazon can improve on it then it'll become awesome.

BBC iPlayer in 'hugely popular at Xmas' shock

Title. A title. My posted message for a title.

I don't use iPlayer much but I had to last week. The BBC screwed up the series link for the first episode of /Silent Witness/ and my Freesat PVR didn't record the next evening's showing.

Does that count toward 'Well done BBC for providing iPlayer' or is it 'Stupid BBC arseholes can't even create reliable EPG metadata in this day and age'?

$1,000 reward offered for stolen cancer research laptop

You only do it once

One of the best things that owning a Sinclair Spectrum taught me was the value of backups. Try relying on a Compact Cassette and cheap tape recorder to store your data and you soon learn :)

California's green-leccy price system will stifle plug-in cars

Possibly quite right, too

How is most Californian energy generated? If it's mostly from fossil fuels then it's possible that electric vehicles no better (or even worse than) traditional ICE models. Their biggest benefit being to move the pollution to the countryside rather than saving scares resources.

Harder to read = easier to recall

Huh

I remember at Polytechnic where one electronics lecturer's lectures consisted of him writing the text on an OHP while we wrote it down in our notes. This was in the late 1980s and you'd think that even then a lecturer at a polytechnic offering an HND in Electronics could have worked out how to use a photocopier and used the lecture time for a decent question/answer or demonstration of principals.

Sniff

Were those the ones that came out purple? They smelled nice :)

Cable vendor slapped for unproven claims

Huh.

I was once forced by circumstance to buy a Belkin TOSLink cable. What annoyed me most (after the price) was that the blurb claimed it was gold plated to improve frequency response. Thankfully I didn't meet anyone who would recognise me :(

Assange vows to drop 'insurance' files on Rupert Murdoch

Yes

It might be excusable blackmail but it's still blackmail. But I don't - yet - see the relevance of your question. Assange is not about to be murdered. Locked up for committing a crime, perhaps. Maybe you should be asking:

'Is it blackmail if you're just trying to avoid going to prison'

..and the answer to that is a resounding 'Yes!'. Arguably that makes the offence even worse. Last I heard he claimed to want to cooperate with legal authorities to clear his name. Now you're suggesting he's using blackmail to subvert the legal process?

What rights?

Technically his rights weren't granted by the US government since he isn't a US citizen. The US government historically (esp. recent history) has shown that it does't have much respect for other countries laws. Generally it supports them right up until they become a nuisance.

T-Mobile imposes swingeing cuts on fair use data limits

Not really surprising.

Most mast contention and inadequate backhaul always meant this was on the cards. Backhaul can be upgraded but it's expensive. Mast contention can only be addressed by building more masts and that's very expensive and subject to the vagaries and hassle of planning permission.

I think the way T-Mobile has handled it is poor but that's telcos for you. I think the article title says it all.

Unfortunately T-Mobile are right about one thing:Mobile broadband does not support heavy usage. Browse on the move, email on the move. Facebook on the move. Sure. But running a wireless connection flat out for lengthy periods of time is always going to be a problem.

For sale: 50,000 compromised iTunes accounts

Damn

And the worst of it is that if own an iPod you are almost forced to give your CC details just to use it.

On the plus side two months after I did that I had my card re-issued so if my details are on that list it won't do anyone any good. Especially Apple :)

SWAT team besieges Illinois school in 'butt dialling' incident

This is NOT a title

>Haven't they got anything better to do?

That depends who you ask :)

BT confirms broadband upgrades for rotten boroughs

It's not BT

..well doesn't have to be. Change to a different ISP or package. One that isn't offering bargain basement prices would help.

Throttling occurs because an ISP doesn't have network capacity. In the case of wholesale ISPs (and that includes BT Broadband and Infinity) it's because they have chosen not to buy capacity. All you need to do is find an ISP that is prepared to buy sufficient capacity. There are some that manage it even with wholesale charges.

As for the charges for BTw products - I blame Ofcom for a large part of that. I know they have to keep an eye on BT but I think they are overdoing it. Low prices are great in the short term but they tend to stifle investment.

Not that again.

You haven't paid for a 10Mb/s service. That would be called a leased line and you're bank account would know about it if you had.

You have paid for 'up to 10Mb/s'. Everyone who signed up has been told that over and over again. Even cable services don't guarantee throughput.

The fuel analogy as you've stated is flawed because fuel in that context is a good. It's a measurable quantity. Internet access is a service. As with all services the law accepts that the customer is paying for the effort not the results. Can't get a refund from a doctor just because you weren't cured. You can't get a refund from a private detective just because they failed to find the person or evidence you wanted.

As long as you haven't been misled, haven't been overcharged and as long as the ISP followed common industry practice the law won't care.

Is there a better way to describe/market internet connections? I don't know. It's been discussed to death and beyond over the last decade and no-one has ever come up with a better way of doing it. Once a packet leaves your router /anything/ can happen to it. It's a nasty world out there for data packets :)

I agree - sorta

>Why should it always be the big town / city dwellers that always benefit? If it was the most populated exchange, they'd actually see less benefit overall than those on sparser exchanges.

Actually for FTTC I think you may have a point. Take-up where it exists has been slow and I think that's because most people can't see the point. If you already have 5Mb/s then /for most people/ that will be enough. Very few people have a real need for anything more than that. Maybe 10Mb/s if it's a family with teenage kids.

On other hand FTTC could be used to fill in not- or slow- spots. That would surely see a far bigger uptake %ge wise.

The only problem is that a higher %ge doesn't necessarily equate to more people. BT would probably rather have 5% of 10,000 than 95% of 100 :)

So it should

>Why should it always be the big town / city dwellers that always benefit? If it was the most populated exchange, they'd actually see less benefit overall than those on sparser exchanges.

Well so it should. If you have access to VM then you shouldn't need (and shouldn't get) FTTC. I ahve always thought it wrong that BT were allowed to overlap. I understand the economics of it but it seems to me that it's putting 'attacking the competition' ahead of 'serving the customer'.

Not the only option

>Also remember that BT Infinity is just BT Retail's FTTC service, as FTTC is wholesaled, any ISP can offer their own services, pricing and features which may suit you better.

And even better there are third party options that LLUOs can go for. GEA allows them to grab the traffic at the exchange and put it straight onto their own backhaul. VULA allows them to grab it a bit further back.

GEA is probably the best option from a technical point of view but VULA is probably a bit cheaper.

It remains to be seen which LLUOs will take up which option. I think TalkTalk have already signed up for VULA - Be is currently uncommitted.

It's just the way it is.

>We pay the same in the burbs for our services (those that are actually provided)

Yup but it's harder and/or more expensive to provide those services. You might as well ask why a Taxi driver charges more to get you to the town centre from an outlying village than from a housing estate within the urban boundary.

This is why human beings invented civilisation. It's much, much cheaper to provide services to a large concentrated population. Those living outside of or a long way from such concentrations have to accept either higher charges, lesser services or some compromise between the two.

Where internet connectivity is concerned the smaller or more remote exchanges (possibly most of those where LLU is not available) are being subsidised by the rest. Personally I think it's acceptable to ensure usable broadband for everyone but there are limits. I view FTTC as a luxury at the moment and I don't see why I have to pay extra for someone to get a luxury.

Called 999 recently? They've got your number

Paranoia

You're really saying you'd put your own privacy ahead of someone else' well being or the protection of their property?

With an attitude like that I'm not surprised you want to keep your life private.

Double-clicking patent takes on world

What is 'double-clicking'?

I hardly ever do that these days. At least not on computers I've configured.

Control Panel\Folder Options\General\Single Click to open an item (point to select)

I don't understand why so many Windows users still double click. It's occasionally a nuisance with file selection dialogs but not often. I bet my mice last twice as long as most people's :)

Oh and software patents are just bad, m'kay?

My version

Indeed not :)

A double-click is actually a selection click followed by a second click soon after. In other words the first click isn't actually seen as a 'potential' double-click. It's the timing of the second click (and location of the mouse pointer when it happens) that triggers the double-click event.

There isn't much you can do about this unless you invent a computer that can see into the future. Double-click timeouts can be half a second - maybe a second. Users are a pissy breed and they'd get annoyed (bless 'em) if they had to keep waiting for half a second before the computer responded to a single click.

Luckily in 99.9% of cases you /do/ want the object to be selected before performing a double-click so it all works out :)

National Identity Card holding chumps have buyer's remorse

30 quid?

For being taught to distrust government policy?

Sounds like a bargain to me.

Assange lawyers fume over leaked rape case docs

Huh

Sounds like the kind of unfortunate, crappy upbringing that fails to instil family values and a sense of social responsibility in a child.

Oh.

Arrested v. charged

If you don't know the difference between being arrested and being charged then you, sir, ought to research your country's legal system.

No amount of leaked documents can compensate for that kind of ignorance.

Well, I Lol'd

Leaking information is bad, m'kay?

2010: The year open source went invisible

Needs clarification

>Even though many computers are still sold with Windows pre-installed, the majority of them probably runs Linux by now.

If you mean 'computing devices' then you might have a point. But I doubt that the majority of computers (meaning laptops, desktops etc) are running Linux. I think there's probably more computers running MacOS than Linux.

I'm not sure where we'd get reliable statistics from but one possibility is web browser market share. IE is still head and shoulders above any single competitor. Bearing in mind that most of the others have Windows versions it seems pretty safe to state:

'The vast majority of generic computing devices operated by human beings on planet Earth run some version of Windows'.

Although it might depend on whether you consider a smart phone to be a 'generic computing device' - I don't.

Electric forcefield space sailing-ship tech gets EU funding

Do it by starlight.

At night, of course :)

Hmmm

I don't think you can use the example of a sphere for the orbit. That only becomes relevant if the craft is going to leave the plane of the ecliptic and surely that would a Bad Thing(tm). Space is three-dimensional but pretty much everything within a solar system is on the same plane. Presumably it requires more fuel to leave the PoE than staying within it and since there's bugger all there for anyone to visit you'd be on your own. It would be like a trip from London to New York via the Moon. That might avoid issues crossing the Atlantic but if you breakdown you're a long way from help :)

As for the general idea of 'easy to miss a planet' doesn't that depend on your schedule? You might not have fuel constraints with a sail but you will presumably have time constraints. You might not have any practical choice. Sling shotting would still be a useful technique.

Lost ancient civilisation's ruins lie beneath Gulf, says boffin

Primitive societies.

>Given the early human tendency to live in lowlands/near bodies of water

You mean like most of the world's major cities? That would explain a lot about 'city folk' :)

Alan Sugar's 'cockup braindead in call centre clueless' BT row

You're wrong - Alan might be right :)

A lot of exchanges have been upgraded but not all. Mine hasn't (Brackley) even though it's a market 3 exchange and due to get FTTC this time next year. We don't get ADSL2 until February.

Well..I say it hasn't been upgraded to ADSL2 - but it's only BT who've been slow. It's a market 3 exchange so several other telcos have installed ADSL2 equipment. I've been using BeUnlimited for over three and a half years now.

So a lot of what Sir Alan twittered is true. BT are pretty useless and his exchange may indeed be in the process of being upgraded :)

Oy!

I owned two CPCs (464 and 6128) and they were bloody good. A bit late to the home computer party but they performed well enough and were well designed.

Admittedly 'his' attempts at PCs were a bit dire but not everything his company has done has been crap.

Why is Google's new Nexus S like no other smartphone?

Another month, another phone...

..and a different version of Android that won't run on any previous phone?

Just asking :)

White House forbids feds from reading WikiLeaked cables

Wow

You mean they have the right to decide who their customers are? Gosh who'd a thunk it. Next thing you know publicans will have the right to throw troublesome customers out. Wow. Where will such a novel and world shattering concept ever end?

Seems reasonable..

..if the source of the information is some self appointed leak site and if the leaks are - by and large - out of context idle gossip.

BT tests 1Gbit/s broadband

Nope.

Any ISP that wants to can piggy back BT's FTTC right now. Today. This very minute. Several already do via their wholesale service. TalkTalk have just announced a VULA offering. Other LLUOs are trialling GEA. It's not going to be cheap and for VULA/GEA it'll take a while for ISPs to get to grips with the technology.

Just don't try and make out that BT's FTTC requires you to subscribe to BT. It isn't true. The choice isn't great but that's down to the other ISPs to get their fingers out.

Not important

You're confusing the tail connection with the network. There's nothing about the tail connection that prevents static IP nor indeed any other network feature you want.

BT make the tail connection available to other providers. Any ISP can offer fixed IP addresses via WB(M)C if it wants to. To say nothing of VULA and GEA which the LLU ISPs will probably use.

Mind you - running anything except a light-weight, casual use server from the core of a network is pretty silly. The more traffic a router gets the closer to the edge it ought to be. Ideally you want your servers co-located in the same data centre as your ISP.

Herts cops 'ate the evidence' at scene of crime, court told

Packing materials

>However, what they didn't do is eat the evidence as clearly they weren't very partial to masticating packing materials.

Clearly not otherwise they'd have gone to MacDonalds :)

Leslie Nielsen dead at 84

Strange to say..

..I first saw him in Forbidden planet. I stayed up late one night as a kid to watch it. It wasn't until several years later that I saw him in a comic role.

R.I.P.

Ofcom slaps down ham botherer

Confusion

Maybe he's been plagued by spam and got the wrong end of the stick when someone explained what spam was :)

Blu-ray barely better than DVD

It's not just about quality though

BluRay is about capacity and access speed.

Most people assume that means transferring a large of amount of data in a short time meaning more information on screen aka 'high definition'.

But it doesn't have to.

BluRay discs can run at slower speed and transfer a large amount of data over a longer time. That allows them to hold more 'stuff'.

So:2 hours of very high def or five or six hours of standard def.

But frankly in my experience it doesn't matter for most viewers. A lot of them sit too far from their screen. Others have dodgy eyesight. Most of them just don't really care.

It's like music. Look how popular MP3 is. Most people can't tell the difference between MP3 and a CD. Even fewer care.

Brits blow millions on over-priced ink

I save even more

..by almost never printing anything :)

Google 'Instant Previews' hit Google Analytics with fake traffic

Yeah, what is the point?

I suppose if you're looking purely for images it might have some value but you can't read the text so what's the point in preview? All it's doing for me is eating up scarce bandwidth at the office where we only have a flaky 4Mb/s connection.

Windows hits 25

Claptrap

'Microsucks'?

Their family of operating systems and their applications almost single-handedly launched then supported the growth of personal computing from a hobbyist/corporate niche to something that is almost as ubiquitous as the Television.

It and its offspring has faults but they still account for far away the largest majority of software running on personal computers. Despite all the years and hype of Linux. Despite even the fact that its free - it's still only a minority OS.

If you're trying to be an advocate for penguin land I suggest you stop with the name calling and learn what 'sucks' mean. It does not apply to one of the biggest and most successful companies in the world.

Poor old OS/2

Did a little too much, a little too early. Creativity stifled by IBM and starved by MS as their best developers went to Windows.

I still have a soft spot for PM. It was a pain until they introduced multiple message queues but I still miss having an object oriented desktop.

And there I was playing GP3 (or was it GP2?) while downloading messages from Compuserve using the excellent multi-threaded Golden Compass over a 9600 modem. I doubt the Windows competition at the time could do that. Heck - I doubt even Win98 could do it.

But it's an old story. The best technology doesn't always win. Maybe doesn't often. It's marketing and timing that count.

I'll down a drink to OS/2 :)

I miss it - but I still have it.

I have a VM of an old development machine and it's a joy to use. The desktop does what I want, only what I want and only when I need it. During startup I can navigate the start menu without fear of it vanishing just before I go to click on an icon. Focus stays where ever I last put it. If I click on a text box it just puts the cursor where I clicked instead of selecting the entire contents.

Anything later than Win2k (basically Active Desktop as it was called) just gets in the way. Seems like I spend half my time fighting the computer.

So true

I remember my first network - I had to install it. Ten Base T. After you'd loaded all the TSRs and drivers you had about 100kB left. Even those days it was pitifully small - I remember the MD pressuring me to try and work out how to get WordStar to run in that :)

Why Microsoft is Acorn and Symbian is the new CP/M

What goes around comes around.

I learnt this a long time ago. The person who interviewed me for my second job back in 1991 was an ex-IBM employee. He showed me that most of what the PC industry was going through had already happened to the mainframe industry.

Only the details of the technology change. The overall trends just come and go so if you wait around long enough your expertise will be back in vogue.

Virgin demands ISPs end broadband speed 'con'

The sky is blue

..and advertisers fib. This is still news to people?

I suspect that the reason the '*' trick is allowed is because the law knows that adverts are so full of horseshit from beginning to end that there's no point getting too pissy about them.

Correction?

I wasn't trying to defend VM. Really just pointing out that nothing they suggest is going to make any difference. It's all immeasurable twaddle anyway. The best thing is to ignore the advertising and do your own research. There's plenty of sites around (www.thinkbroadband.com is one of the best in my opinion). Ask their users (past and present) and even better educate yourself about the technology. That way you stand a reasonable chance of getting what you expect.

Brits say 'no, no, no' to 3D TV

Get a PVR

Record everything. Skip the adverts.

I've hardly ever watched TV 'live' since I got my Sky+ several years ago. I watch what I want when I want and don't see more than a few seconds of adverts per show.