Posts by greg

Virgin Media stops the rot

What are you all moaning about?

I've been using NTL/Virgin since it's inception as an ISP (back in the dial-up days). I switched straight to it's 512k BB on launch and never looked back. It's fast, reliable and I have only recently started to see any kind of traffic shaping come into play.

I'm on 20mb, which gives me a full 20mb pretty much constantly unless I've been hammering it with overnight uploads/downloads.

@transparent proxies - NAT doesn't cause any of those problems. You seem to be talkin out your arse mainly. You get real-world IP addresses, not NAT assigned. Christ, if it was an enclosed NAT address, how the hell have I been remoting on to my machine all this time and using it for all kinds of servers?

@bambi - what century BC did you get your modem/NIC card? They haven't been 10mb since BNC Coaxial networking was abolished.

And they can use the unlimited download ploy - since you are getting unlimited downloads. Just not at the line capacity you expect 24/7.

Flying cow destroys minivan

Falling cow sign?

They obviously didn't see the sign...

http://www.yoclan.com/images/Misc/falling_cow.jpeg

Hitachi halves hard drive head size

@Chris

Spintronics is something already in development! Controlling the spin of an electron with a magnetic field to store either a 1 or a 0. Long way off production yet though.

US teacher fired for non-literal bible reading

If you think this is funny...

You lot should check out the flat earth society. Now there we have a real bunch of weird fu**ers.

http://theflatearthsociety.org/

Free-market think tank urges EU to unbundle Windows

This won't be as simple as it seems

I'm all for unbundling Windows and creating some better competition in the OS market. However, some serious thinking would need to be done from the point of view of the PC stores (which for places like PC World, would be a first!).

They (PC highstores and manufacturers) will have to come up with some suitable alternative packages. They already know their market, so they'd need to spec something up around what the needs are. For example, You can get a Windows Media PC, which has the media centre verison of Windows on and all the necessary stuff like WMP, TV tuner and preinstalled drivers and software. The same thing should be done of Linux distributions. You can't just leave it up to the user, as 99% of people that use PC world are computer iliterate.

So if someone walks in and says "I want a media PC", the salesperson can offer a Windows solution which would cost more, or a cheaper (and likely less annoying/more stable) Linux option.

And don't get me wrong here, I dont even use Linux. If all my PC Games worked on it without a detremental effect on PC performace, I'd switch at the drop of a hat though. I hate Windows.

PC superstore suffers breakdown over Linux notebook

@cor

You should apply as headline editor for el Reg!

Hardly surprising!

This is coming from a shop that shamelessly sell kettle leads for £10 each. You can also try buying a 1m patch cable from there if you're willing to spend £14 - ONE WHOLE METRE! I find little shock in this, yet it goes to further show how much of a farce PC World really is.

Oh another thing that makes me sad is that they make people buy Norton, with the premise it will secure their computer. They don't mention that Norton doesn't really work, whilst hogging 90% of your computers resources (yes I exaggerate, but it drives me nuts, especially when I have to go and fix someone's PC cos they bought it from the most cliche shop ever).

Euro consumers favour plasma over LCD

60hz & 100hz LCDs?

Someone needs to get their technology knowledge right! LCD's dont have a refresh rate thats measurable in Hz. They work on response times (measurments of which vary with manufacturer), contrast ratio and brightness.

And plasma for gaming? Correct me if I am wrong, but they dont make plasma displays for PC's, and plasmas have this thing called burn-in, which occurs after a couple of years due to fast-changing colours (i.e. lots of movement on screen).

LCD is a better all round technology compared to plasma, althouth plasma still has it's perks, which remain solely in the consumer TV market.

CIOs pooh-pooh the iPhone

Lock-ins?

Locked in with MS and RIM? Last I saw, Apple were most famous for lockins and incompatibility... you try using music from iTunes on anything other than an iPod, or try upgrading your Mac computer for a reasonable price. Fact is, Apple are the ringleaders when it comes to lock-ins, and the iPhone is no exception.

At least MS are trying to make some of their stuff standardised and inter-compatible. More than anyone can say for Apple.

Killer Wi-Fi panics London's chattering classes

Radiators

Radiators radiate heat, which then creates a convection effect in the air.

Audiable router, continued further

I used to suffer from something similar with TV's and the like.

I heard or read somewhere that we humans are able to hear a larger range of high-pitched sound when we are born. Normally most people's hearing will lose this ability at a young age, but it has been known to remain in some (perhaps those that aren't overexposed to high-pitched sounds).

Of course that could be a load of boll*cks!

The media scare tactics are quite shocking sometimes. Boils my blood when I see people believeing every word that comes from journalists mouths and not bothering to look up anything themselves.

"Lacking the intellecutal tools" as someone put it.

ET fires laser weapon on Google Maps

oddness

looks like a les flare. on closer inspection you can just about make out what looks like a watermark or small areas of text around the beam from top to bottom.

iGoogle launch fingered in user data loss furore

Aaaah

That explains why I lost my personalised home page and all my tabs :(

Ah well, they needed cleaning up anyway.

Honda to debut hydrogen fuel-cell car in 2008

@ Andrew

Andrew said that hydrogen doesn't exist in significant quantity in nature...

I beg to differ... It is the most adbundant natural element in the universe! That fact aside, sadly there isnt much in the way of the stuff on this planet.