* Posts by jonathanb

2530 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Aug 2009

Final preview of IE11 for Windows 7 uncanned

jonathanb Silver badge

Very few, but lots of people are running Windows 8 PCs that have been upgraded to Windows 7. A couple of them might be laptops with touch screens.

One year to go: Can Scotland really declare gov IT independence?

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: The way I see it...

The Kingdom of Scotland merged with the Kingdom of England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.

A bit later, the Kingdom of Great Britain merged with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

The "U" refers to the union between the Kingdom of Great Britain and what is left of the Kingdom of Ireland - Northern Ireland. If Scotland were to leave the Union, which it won't, then we would have the United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland. Probably they would add Wales to the name to keep them happy. Great Britain would go, but the United Kingdom would not.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Hydopowered data centres

And also, saying as it is bl**dy freezing up there most of the time, you don't need to spend so much money on cooling.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Velv If I were the councils of Carslile or Newcastle

It is PIIGS, not PIIGs. Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain; and it will become the PIIGSS when Scotland joins them.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Well, if the Scots Gov can get this IT right

In the interests of fair and balanced discussion, you should also google the #omnishambles that was the Cambridge Misguided Busway.

Official crackdown on Apple fanboi 'shanty town' ahead of London iPhone launch

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: What they should do

It is 1.8 km from Parliament Square. I'm not sure how far away you have to be from there to be allowed to stage a protest, but there is an exclusion zone.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Trin Tragula......

Other shops sell iDevices on launch day, and they don't have queues of fanbois waiting in line. They could go to one of them if they really can't wait. Carphone Warehouse for example is just round the corner in Oxford Street.

There are companies with names such as "rent a crowd" that supply people to queue for events such as this. There is however no evidence that Apple has engaged the services of one of these companies.

'British Bill Gates' Lynch laments HP's Autonomy 'botch-up'

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: >Lynch reckons there’s much that his Autonomy expats can offer young British startups

Fraud or no fraud, HP did overpay for Autonomy. The number that Autonomy published did not justify the valuation HP paid for it. Many people said so at the time, including some of the journalists in this esteemed organ.

City of Munich throws Ubuntu lifeline to Windows XP holdouts

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: I just up voted you

Windows is available in Urdu and Punjabi, but not Paschto.

Outlook.com adds IMAP, OAuth

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Re: At last!

Use the stock Android email client. Configure it as an Exchange account using the server m.hotmail.com

Username is your email address, password is the same as your password for logging into the website, domain you leave blank.

ActiveSync is better than IMAP for email on a phone, mainly because it uses less battery and bandwidth.

Microsoft announces iPad amnesty for fanbois

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: fencing

It is only of use to thieves if they can sell surfaces on eBay with a discount of less than $200 off the price when new.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: only going to cause more embarrassment ?

That would obviously be a slightly better offer, but I still won't trade in my iPad 2 for a Surface. If they took it off me for £559 cash + a Surface, then I would consider it, because the £559 would enable me to buy the equivalent iPad 4.

You thought NFC tags were Not For Consumers? Well, they're in Maplin's

jonathanb Silver badge

One use I've found for NFC

I've set up my phone so that if I tap my Oyster card on it, it loads up an app that tells me how much money is left in it. Probably it would be quicker to just tap the icon on screen though.

What I would really like to do is to be able to load my Oyster card onto the phone, and tap my phone on the gate to get in and out of the station. Apparently that will be possible at some point in the future.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: short range is good, but...

Asking a patient's name is fine if the patient is in a fit state to answer. For that reason, patients have always worn name tags in hospital, though in the past they would be hand written tags.

Apple ships new iPods in 'SPAAAAACE ... Gray'

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Anyone buys iPods anymore ?

Yes, the iPod touch is a very cheap way to get an iOS device if you don't require GPS, and don't mind having wifi as your only connectivity option.

Fancy a new iPhone 5C or 5S? READ THIS or you may not get 4G data

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: 3G is fine if its not bogged down by all those subscribers

HSPA+ is 3G, so pretty much every phone out there, except ancient and basic 2G models, and anything designed for companies like Verizon or Sprint that use obscure alternative 3G standards, will work.

jonathanb Silver badge

It does do that within for example the 800MHz band to find the various signals for the 4 mobile operators in the UK, however you need different chippery to receive the signals owned by the 3 operators that have signals in the 2.6Ghz band.

SDR means you it can find both 2G and 3G signals in the 900MHz band and both 2G and 4G signals in the 1.8GHz band with two sets of chippery rather than 4, but for different frequency bands a long distance apart, you still need separate chippery to receive the signals.

New iPhones: C certainly DOESN'T stand for 'Cheap'

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Affordability my arse

You have a faster CPU and a slightly better camera, which you get any time you get a new phone. Nothing particularly amazing there. I've never heard anyone complain that their existing iPhone 5 is too slow. The iPhone 5 camera is pretty decent, but it isn't the best, so Apple are playing catch-up here.

So you have a fingerprint sensor to replace the lock screen pin and iCloud password. Maybe it is better than some of the fingerprint sensors I've seen in the past that didn't really work. We will see, but it isn't really a compelling reason to buy a new phone.

Boris Johnson floats idea of 'London visa' to attract tech talent

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: So if I live in Barnsley

No, but there will be a passport check when you cross the M25 on the way home to make sure you are not one of the people with a London only visa.

Should Nominet ban .uk domains that use paedo and crim-friendly words?

jonathanb Silver badge

More specifically, the lack of a domain name with a single TLD ending which is .uk, and a descriptive name to the left of the .uk

childporn.com for example is a valid domain name with an A record, but the website doesn't appear to be working at the moment. If there is a valid website there, I'm guessing it is more likely to be owned by some organisation who helps victims of paedos or campaigns against them rather than someone who offers the stuff for sale.

400 million Chinese people can't speak Chinese: Official

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: sloppy

That's like saying you speak a European language, but not English. I know someone who speaks Hakka, a Chinese language. She cannot understand people speaking other Chinese languages such as Mandarin or Cantonese, because they are completely different languages.

BAN THIS SICK FILCH: Which? demands end to £1.50-per-min 'help' lines

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: So misinformed it has to be trolling from Which

Why do you think phone operators bundle minutes on calls to 01, 02 and 03 numbers but not 0845 and 0870 numbers? It is because the termination payments are higher on the latter.

0845 numbers are not local rate numbers and 0870 numbers are not national rate numbers. It is illegal to describe them as such, as well as being just pain wrong.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: So misinformed it has to be trolling from Which

Sorry, but you are completely wrong. That was the case about 20 years ago when those numbers were first introduced, but not now.

Geographical numbers cost you the same no matter where you call from within the UK. Most people have bundled minutes as part of their contract, so the marginal cost of calling a geographical number is zero. There is no such thing as local rates or national rates now.

0845 and 0870 numbers cost more to call than geographic numbers, and are called special rate numbers. They are very rarely included in bundled minutes, so it costs quite a bit to call them. Companies receive typically about 7p per minute when someone calls an 0870 number. The amount they receive for calling an 0845 number is quite a bit less, and is usually in the form of a reduction in phone charges rather than actual cash.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Rare though it be...

0345 numbers offer exactly the same features in terms of routing and so on, and are included in your bundled minutes. Anyone who has an 0845 number is entitled to the corresponding 0345 number so that only the second digit in their number changes. There is no reason, apart from the termination payments they receive when people call them, why they shouldn't change to an 0345 number.

jonathanb Silver badge

0845 has not been described as "local rate" for at least 10 years now. It is called "special rate". There is no such thing as local rate now as calls to a UK number cost the same no matter where in the UK you are calling from.

jonathanb Silver badge

It's about 30p per minute from a mobile. How many minutes do you need to spend listening to a message telling you that your call is important to them at 30p per minute before you have your 1 minute conversation with them?

Amazon DENIES launch of iPhone-killing freebie smartphone

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Free = very locked down?

The Amazon App Store has a resonable selection of apps, and for developers, it is just a case of resubmitting their existing Android app to a different store.

Want the latest Android version? Good luck with that

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: KitKat?

They got permission from both Hersheys, who own the trademark in the USA, and Nestle, who own the trademark in the rest of the world.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Windows Mobile was worse!

Can't Google release an installer for Android that will install it on any compatible hardware much like Windows (or Linux / Free BSD etc) does on PCs, then they can release updates with out the manufacturer having to do anything?

Now we know why UK spooks simply shrugged at SSL encryption

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: The code-ring on the golf course

Lets translate what they are doing into plain English.

Suppose you are sending emails at https://www.gmail.com

The NSA knows there is traffic between your computer and GMail. Because it is encrypted, they don't know what the contents of that traffic are.

Assuming that SSL is unbreakable for all practical purposes, there are two ways they can find out what you were doing on GMail.

1. They can ask you

2. They can ask Google

Sometimes they will get the rubber hose out and ask you what you were doing, but they would rather not do that because if they do, then you know that they asked you.

However, they can ask Google, and Google will tell them, and Google won't tell you that they told them, and it is almost as easy to get the information off them as it is to get it from an unencrypted browsing session at http://www.gmail.com/

Amazon to offer FREE smartphone?

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: The name's already taken.

Jaguar Land Rover has being performing much better since Tata took it over from Ford.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: If this does happen I think that both the..........

If I go to the Carphone Warehouse website and look for phones with a cost of £0, I find there are 69 of them. However the cost per month of the cheapest phone contract to go with it varies from £7 per month for the Nokia Asha 300 to £42 per month for the Sony Xperia Z1, so it isn't really free, it is just a way of paying for the phone in instalments.

Most of the people I know have a SIM only contract and buy their phones separately. It works out cheaper that way, though you do need more cash up-front.

UK investor throws £14.8m at firm that makes UNFORGEABLE 2-cent labels

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Impossible to forge? @Phil O'Sophical

You can check back to a central database with a bog standard serial number, and people do have things like that, for stuff like memory chips, hard drives, mobile phones, software and so on. There nothing to stop people copying that serial number, except that they need to make sure that people don't end up with two articles with the same serial number on them, and it is no different if you have a more fancy label with a complicated method of reading the serial number.

Chrome turns five, gains new 'desktop apps'

jonathanb Silver badge

I find they get Chrome because they get the browserchoice.eu thing, and they select "Google" as their internet.

HDMI 2.0 spec arrives ... 1.0 years late

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: 4K is not needed

My 27" TV that I use as a monitor could benefit from some extra pixels in the same way that retina displays from Apple another manufacturers benefit from it.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: I cant wait to see the price of a Monster HDMI 2.0 cable

I got a £15 HDMI cable from Apple for my laptop bag for that reason, and also because the connectors are much smaller than other cables, and the cable a bit thinner, so it takes a little less room in my bag.

However, for desktop PC to monitor, you very rarely move the cables, so it doesn't really matter.

jonathanb Silver badge
Joke

Re: Cat 2 Cables

£40? Pah. You need a Monster ISR(R) 2000HD Hyper Speed HDMI cable. An absolute bargain at only £159.99. A £40 cable will give you washed out colours and poor contrast.

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-dvd-blu-ray/tv-accessories/cables-accessories/monster-isf-2000hd-hyper-speed-hdmi-cable-3-6m-21417584-pdt.html

At least that's what the PFY in Currys | PC World told me.

I got the £4.49 Currys essentials cable

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-dvd-blu-ray/tv-accessories/cables-accessories/essentials-coo3mhd13-hdmi-cable-3m-21359620-pdt.html

Seems to work absolutely fine. Yes I probably could have got something cheaper on-line, but I CBA to wait in for it to be delivered for a very small potential saving.

Universal Credit CRUNCHED: Dole handouts IT system to be rebuilt

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Re:

That is what Universal Credit aims to do. You can still claim some benefits while working, but it gets tapered off as you earn more. You file your accounts online with HMRC every month, and they use that to calculate your benefits.

Unfortunately, they can't also use that to calculate your tax bill, because profits for benefits purposes are calculated using different rules to profits calculated for tax purposes.

jonathanb Silver badge

There were more jobs created between 1997 and 2007 than there were unemployed people in 1997 who could have taken those jobs. Back then, if you didn't have a job, there was something wrong with you. There were, nevertheless, people who didn't have a job back then, because there was something wrong with them.

New jobs are being created very slowly, but there is no point in doing that if you have to bring people in from other countries to do the jobs, because the natives are either too lazy, or won't take them because they end up with less money or much the same money as they do for staying in bed.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Blame the dead guy.....nice

They are not blaming the dead guy. They are blaming the fact that he is no longer around to finish what he started.

UK fraud office hauls Olympus into court over accounting scandal

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Interesting in Japan they committed fraud to cover *lossess*

Does Polly Peck or BCCI count as British companies?

Enron, MCI, Stamford International Bank, Bernie Madoff and many others obviously aren't Brittish, but actually most fraud is committed to cover losses.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: More information...

What about HSBC's slap on the wrists for laundering $70 trillion of cash for Mexican drug cartels?

Three used cheap deal to lure me into buying expensive slab, chap tells ASA

jonathanb Silver badge

That's not the point.

You phone up someone expecting to be able to buy a super-cheap fondleslab. When they tell you that you can't have a super-cheap slab and try and sell you an expensive one instead, it is very annoying, and a waste of your time.

Microsoft - do you really think you can take on Google with Nokia?

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Microsoft will never be able to challenge Google.

Many people said the same thing about DOS and Windows back in the early days. And thy were right.

It doesn't matter. Android has critical mass, Windows Phone does not. It doesn't matter how good Windows Phone, Blackberry OS for that matter is, they are not going anywhere.

Give us a break: Next Android version to be called 'KitKat'

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: The Nestle Kit-Kat Chocolate is far too sweet

There is only one place in the world to go for decent chocolate, and that is Belgium. Nowhere else is any good.

Storage vendors: You're next over the cliff after the server salesmen

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: we are beginning to see a shift ... to move from drive arrays

More importantly, if you are a car dealer, it doesn't matter if people are moving towards cars with a different type of fuel, they still need someone to sell them.

New EU rules: Telco only SOMETIMES has to tell you it spaffed your data

jonathanb Silver badge

EBG 13 vf cerggl havagryyvtvoyr. Vg fubhyq zrrg gur erdhverzragf jvgubhg nal ceboyrzf.

Snowden journo's boyfriend 'had crypto key for thumb-drive files written down' - cops

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Highly sensitive UK documents? Really?

And 98% of El Reg is from teenage boys who have grown up. Doesn't really tell you anything other than they are about 50% female.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Highly sensitive UK documents? Really?

GCHQ and the NSA aren't allowed to spy on their own citizens, so they spy on each other's citizens and exchange the information they receive. That's why the top secret uk documents would be on the NSA server.

Facebook strips away a bit more of your privacy – but won't say why

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Hang on...

I think they do read that. It is usually written in big enough letters. Whether or not they answer it truthfully is another matter.