Posts by Richard Jones 1

After banning Chinese comms bogeyman, UK asks: Huawei in this mess? It was a failure of capitalism, MPs told

Devided Opinions Anyone

Not for nothing did the UK company I worked for have a 'mixed' opinion of Nortel. My area referred to them as the granny shifters who would sell you their granny if they could make a buck, but they generally had nothing useful to deliver. Even offering to sell items that they would buy in from other makers, (who told us they had no interest in making a loss to produce those devices). Other parts of the company loved their older kit, though Nortel did not always know how to make it all work reliably in field situations. GEC/ Marconi was not respected, often referred to as a bunch of old has-beens by one group. I thought that some of their offerings might have had more to them than they were given credit.

Motorola Moto G 5G Plus: It won't blow your mind, but at £300 we're struggling to find much to grumble about

Re: Thats a fairly epic price for this spec...

But, Moto is a Chinese brand; is it not part of Lenovo?

Worldpay stops turning in the UK, leaving trail of thoroughly miffed retailers and customers

Testing

Let's see, testing budget less than a tea club funds, OK customers can be testers for a day, all costs to them and their unfortunates, sorry customers. Net cost to us zero. Good, the tea club can live another day.

Shame the same cannot be said of the cowboys ruining, not running the show who earned their P45s but may now miss out on their rewards.

I was not popular in test schedule meetings when I tried to slip in a few real word uses and insist that tests were passed. During testing was when the tin cans rattled, but customer service was spared the SNAFU.

Seven 'no log' VPN providers accused of leaking – yup, you guessed it – 1.2TB of user logs onto the internet

Re: Merriam-Webster

You may have to get round their protector first and then outlive their thug masters' 'protectors'.

AMD fans forced to sit out latest Windows 10 Insiders build due to 'bug impacting overall usability of these PCs'

Not The Only Issue

Three of my PCs are not even offered 2004, due to unspecified 'issues'. One PC is an almost exact copy of the machine that did get 2004 a month ago, it was offered the package, but a day or so later it was no longer on offer but waiting to be fixed, whatever.

However, the 'advances' appear less than interesting, that I wondered why they even bother to release it all. Maybe it should be an options pack, for those who might find it has something of value

With a wave of Nokia's wand, behold as your 4G network magically becomes... 5G

Re: What G ?

While I agree that the 'G' does not matter, the lack of working service at my location does affect me. If I want service within my 4 walls it has to be wired as radio currently provides no solution. If the Nokia offers a way forward, then bring it on at a price that will come in lower than the present wired service. However, I doubt that it will reach ether the coverage, or price point that many will crave Current 5G suggestions are strictly for others to get excited about.

UK smacks Huawei with banhammer: Buying firm's 5G gear illegal from year's end, mobile networks ordered to rip out all next-gen kit by 2027

Fairly Happy

I am happy not to have the criminal CCP providing or tapping off my service. Though I should point out that at the moment mobile service is so ropey that callers foolish enough to call the mobile have to be told to call the landline. I guess nothing much will change on that front and that nothing was really expected to change either. I did see the 5G forecast charges, so no, nothing will change for me least of all that market segment.

At least Wi-Fi allows mobile data, though I seriously prefer a 23-inch screen, over a postage stamp on the mobile. Still, Wi-Fi does allow the mobile to update, frequently.

Rip and replace is such a long Huawei to go, UK telcos plead, citing 'blackouts' and 'billion pound' costs: Are Vodafone and BT playing 'Project Fear'?

Re: > we voted for brexit

@ Glen 1 for some of us, even a crappy wet string ADSL connection is better than a 'No Service' mobile non-connection. The wet string connection is shared between at least 15 wired devices connected behind a NAT router with the 'No service' mobile radio link dealing with two mobiles that mainly work tethered to the wet string via Wi-Fi rather than the 'No service' mobile network.

Frankly, a change, any change, could only be positive for some of us.

Another anti-immigrant rant goes viral in America – and this time it's by a British, er, immigrant tech CEO

Re: adults pass it down to the children

Likewise, I am in the area without light over the body term that could be termed racist.

I do remember my welcome to a Middle East where I noted that a foreman was truck driving vice the scheduled rest-day driver. He said the driver had a few days off, compassionate leave as his wife burned herself to death. Forget race, I was shocked, however, it soon became worse. I offered my shocked idea of it being terrible. The foreman said not to worry she was only the forth wife, then describing her in colour-related terms.

She came from a country whose nationals were despised by residents of his Middle East country. Old Gulf hands will know what I mean by that.

So yes, every race and ethnicity has its xenophobic traits, only some get modified over time.

In this case I guess the person in question was also dyslexic and misspelled his consulting company, perhaps he meant SolidHate?

When Facebook says you're not a good 'culture fit', it means you're not White or Asian enough – complaint

Crap Book, Crap Company

@Mark192 Perhaps they did not put it on bumbook oops sorry Facebook as Mark Z expected them to do.

Hats off to the brave 7%ers who dived into the Windows 10 May 2020 Update within a month of release

One Out Of Four

So far, only one PC has been offered and accepted the new version. I cannot say it has anything to offer me. Another machine with an almost identical build is still waiting for the offer. Two others are pending possibly for their own good reasons. So far I have to say it is not worth the hype. A bit like Starmer and lawyers in general, loads of ballyhoo but not a lot of point.

One year ago, Apple promised breakthrough features to help iPhone, iPad, Mac owners with disabilities. It failed them

Nokia had basic voice calling in 2007

Since that time things have gone downhill. Apple devices are of no appeal and I have never wanted one, but no one else has devices that can reliably operate in voice control mode. I am not disabled, though there are times when I really need voice control, such as after hand surgery, or when my hands are involved with such as dog walking, and other two-handed activities. I use a 4-year-old Android phone. Voice searching is only good for laughing at the stupid suggestions it comes up with when I want to call home. I suspect that someone, somewhere, possibly in a 'clean', noise free chamber has managed to get all these wonderful toys to work. In the outside world with noise, accents, imperfect acoustics and so on they are crap. Nokia had a good speaker dependant voice calling in the 2000s, others added thrills and spills, making voice no longer worth consideration for anyone. I have sympathy for those who are forced to use voice management full time. Post-operative experiences show their lives must be far more restricted than well-thought-out and implemented technology should allow. My problems affected me in the short term, theirs are life-long.

China's internet watchdog freezes 10 too-trashy online video services before they undermine socialism

Re: on the other hand..

Wow, there is danger there, bright, young, with a mind and a real presence, so a danger to the closed mind end of society wherever they are from. The same old, same old; recycling scrap in new products is fine, recycling tired old ideas into the same old tired attitudes is not.

No Wonder

It sounded more fun that the usual CCP platform of old men in tired old clothes.

Paging technology providers: £3m is on the table to replace archaic NHS comms network

Back in Time Technology Rides Again

Pagers, another shuffle down memory lane, I did not work for the NHS so my use was long, long ago. They had one advantage, not always being personal devices they used to be given to the on-call person of the moment. Batteries also lasted a long time as I remember, not just half a day.

Twitter, Reddit and pals super unhappy US visa hopefuls have to declare their online handles to Uncle Sam

I always though it was one of those lovely 'trick' questions. They if they can show some error or lie, they have got you fair and square. Watch out for:

'Such as XXX, TTT, YYY, or any other similar entity.'

Answer No and even if it was only Granny's family pictures, they have got you on a lie and nothing can stop the sky falling.

Re: Right. Never going there again.

You are doing a bit better than me, I last visited in the early 1990s for work purposes. I'm retired now and apart from not wanting to go back given what it has become under the so-called president, health insurance would be far too much of a financial challenge, even without the damned PRC's coronavirus.

So you really didn't touch the settings at all, huh? Well, this print-out from my secret backup says otherwise

Re: May I recommend rsyslog?

Back in the 1980s we had a number of items that ran outputs 24/7 going to printers. They were 'interesting' rather than ground shaking reports but their value was increased when the data could be assessed and analysed over a period of time. I captured the output to a number of PCs. A howl of protest resulted suggesting that the 'screens on the PCs would burn out too quickly'. A quick back of the envelope job suggested that the costs of paper ran to a free screen every 5 ~6 weeks and I thought that they might just last a bit longer than that. More to the point the data could at last be machine accessed and analysed revealing many previous missed aspects of the reporting machines' operation. In one case a particular component was failing (due to the loss of vacuum in a particular 'supposed to be sealed device'). The overnight data suggested an exponential failure rate that was in danger of degrading daytime performance. That event that would have far outweighed the costs of any paper, PCs or screens.

BoJo buckles: UK govt to cut Huawei 5G kit use 'to zero by 2023' after pressure from Tory MPs, Uncle Sam

Re: So...

There is no accounting for the brain-dead stupid lot who think (or perhaps cannot think at all) a virus comes out of radios. So they go round threatening cable layers and setting fire to any masts they can find, just to prove how stupid they are.

I am happy never to buy any more Chinese junk until they have cleaned up their foul act; it is called justice.

We won't CU later: New Ofcom broadband proposals mull killing off old copper network

Re: Spare a copper?

@ Cleaverhouse, while the mobile works outside my house, if I get a call on the hopeless thing, the first thing I have to say is please call the landline.

On the second (landline call) call, the callers says, 'Oh that is much better' and the calls continues.

Sadly, radio is not reliable, it will fail during a problem, e.g. a doctor call. We have been there, done that, got the tee shirt.

What's worse than an annoying internet filter? How about one with a pre-auth remote-command execution hole and there's no patch?

Re: It wouldn't make the slightest difference.

@ Prst. V.Jeltz, I think you mean a damp squib, a sqib is a sort of firework that should go bang, however, when damp it fails to do anything.

Cisco UCS servers slugged by 'This SSD will self-destruct in 40,000 hours' firmware farrago

Re: Kind of Hertz

I have a single-hole tap with separate flow managers. They operate either as singletons or together to produce a mixed flow. Other sinks also allow either hot, cold or mixed with one handle and no stupid twirling of the controls.

I agree that the isolation valves are worth their weight in anything negotiable for a whole range of reasons. The type of mixer taps you wrote about were no doubt specified as they 'looked good' but were utter crap for the users to 'enjoy'

Baby, I swear it's déjà vu: TalkTalk customers unable to opt out of ISP's ad-jacking DNS – just like six years ago

Waiting For Tal-Talk

Make sure you have a good supply of books, coffee, and all other refreshment facilities before locking into a wait position for Talk-Talk to come back. Probably your message will take till after the Coronavirus is a distant memory to get through. It is perhaps a shame they do not really know how to run the technical side of the business. Though the rest has not always been that hot either!

Vodafone chief speaks out after 5G conspiracy nuts torch phone mast serving Nightingale Hospital in Brum

Mother of Your Children

Is something as warped as that seen as a fit and proper person to clean toilet bowls, let alone look after any living thing?

Stop us if you've heard this before: Boeing's working on 737 Max software fixes for autopilot, stabilization bugs

@ Giovani Tapinini

Or one that has such a love affair with the ground that it gets lonely when not in very intimate contact?

Capita inks deal with NHS to 'bring back staff': Workers get an hour of training to recruit and vet retired doctors, nurses

@Hans 1, just how would anyone get 'simply drafted'? Some retirees will have died or moved onto other addresses, lost their skill or interest. Who would do the drafting, Oh I know we could use nurses and doctors from the NHS as they would know the back ground of those they were trying to draft back in so no need for any messy vetting. Never mind patient care.

Hello, support? What do I click if I want some cash?

Re: Barclays don't dogfood their IT

I guess that it must be one of those wonderful UK banks that 18 months after the due date still cannot provide confirmation of payee? Until they put their house in order they cannot complain about anyone else's security practices.

Off colour banking in the UK is only for the very strong-willed and hearted.

Huawei to the danger zone: Now Uncle Sam slaps it with 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, money laundering, theft of robot arm and source code

Re: Since the 1990s...

We ended up banning one of the staff from MCI (USA) for the same fraud efforts back in the 1980s. He went round questioning staff and turning papers over when the staff were not there. We were not impressed.

Things I learned from Y2K (pt 87): How to swap a mainframe for Microsoft Access

Re: dBase III?

I used Quick Basic to capture stream data and format it into DBase data base files. Then Clipper to assemble that into a stream of activity reports back in the days before integrated Office suites. In some cases Lotus 123 was invoked, only to draw graphs, which then loaded word-processing for automatically written letters to be sent to international correspondents. Programs were loaded, used and dropped when down returning control to the main program. This was all back in the times of DOS 3 or thereabouts. In fact some PCs were used to take live data from more than one serial port source, process each stream into reports and send them on their merry way to different operational areas. One was a staffing report that analysed work demands and produced draft 24 hour staffing schemes. You could do a lot of work with a 8088 PC working in 640k of memory.

Downloading accounts data out of the IBM mainframe reformatting it and auto-loading it into online customer service systems was fun and far faster than a two person manual team achieved. They took 2 weeks and made errors, the machine brought that down to just over two hours, reporting every odd event it found. Those old systems managed what felt like miracles at the time. Of course, they look like rubbish now.

There are already Chinese components in your pocket – so why fret about 5G gear?

The history of UK telecommunications equipment makers s is a well known history of missed chances and following blind avenues. Our equipment was built to GPO standards that largely if not totally ignored the rest of the world's domestic needs. While the standards were robust, they were rearward looking. GEC built up a handsome cash pile from their various enterprises under Weinstock, but perhaps became over concerned at not spending anything. Later cash was splashed about but not to any great benefit and, when it was gone there was not a lot to play with or play for. Plessey joined with GEC in 1988 but it was essentially two corpses aiming for a joint funeral, which then happened after their name change to Marconi. Attempts to purchase UK equipment for use in overseas locations was not a success and when the need moved onto more complex and future facing kit the field was rapidly reducing. For a while the Japanese offered good value, generally reliable kit, but they too were left behind. Ericsson filled the gap, Nokia's hardware division also offered useful kit but the new runners from the Far East, China and Korea were also there. Nortel were once in the market, but marketing wagged the dog rather than producing market leading capabilities they produced unbelievable stories and proposals that suggested they had not read the specifications. Where they had read them, they objected to some deliverables. That was not what most customers wanted to hear. Since the greatest proportion of 5G patents are now held by Chinese companies it is no surprise they have a leading position, demonstrating the presence of high quality brain power coupled with advanced, low cost manufacturing, no doubt in part paid for by profits from all those Chinese made mobiles, such as iPhones and computer parts and idiotic IOT crap that the rest of the world laps up.

You're not Boeing to believe this: Yet another show-stopping software bug found in ill-fated 737 Max airplanes

Re: Isn't THIS why we've got to teach 2nd-graders how to "code", rather than how to think?

@Muscleguy, I am unable to understand the thoughts of your down voter, but they have given no idea of what they were thinking. If someone cannot think enough to understand what they are working on, then the prospect of a solution is reduced possibly to zero. To be able to think a problem through, you need the information pertaining to the problem. The systems analysts should have done the analysis and that they must provide an accurate definition of the problems to be resolved. Safety critical products are in one sense the most challenging, but should all code not be as good as possible? That does take educated, critical thinkers who see and remove as many problems as possible before the systems reach integration and testing. Acceptance testing can never be replaced by best guess previous stages, it is an essential final phase and test plans should ideally combine both critical thinkers and where practical, those with a desire to find faults via intent and those with no clue as to how the final product should work. The latter test the fail-safe, (or not) capabilities of the product.

Microsoft's on Edge and you could be, too: Chromium-based browser exits beta – with teething problems

Re: I could also

To date, I thought that Edge was the highway to hell! It was hard go get it to go anywhere else except on edge, was that how it gained its name?

UK data watchdog kicks £280m British Airways and Marriott GDPR fines into legal long grass

Re: What's the point?

ICO have a mailing list, perhaps some providing information about the sloppy ways of BA and that Marriott, and advice to avoid might be wise. Bullying bullies should always be fun.

I am on the ICO mailing list but have already noted that both outfits are to be avoided.

Google scolded for depriving the poor of privacy as Chinese malware bundled on phones for hard-up Americans

Re: I feel fortunate

I suspect that he was hinting at the effects of the law of unintended consequences. I am not sure how accurately it applies in this case.

The current hoo-ha might encourage a few not to get suckered into buying such phones, though if they are low-rent items, I am not sure what value, if any the makers were hoping to extract from their users. While I carry my mobile with me much of the time, mostly in the house, a string of medical visits and very rare shopping trips along with details of some short dog walks are unlikely to set anyone's world on fire. It is a lower cost item, from a known make, now nearly 4 years old. My use of it for the internet or email is somewhere below minimal and close to zero. I find it a too painful an experience. Perhaps I could muzzle the problems with suitable software, but there are easier ways for me to enjoy life than fighting with a mobile.

We’ve had enough of your beach-blocking shenanigans, California tells stubborn Sun co-founder: Kiss our lawsuit

Re: He sounds like...

As has been pointed out before cunts are useful. They are the leather sheaths use protect the shaped sharpening stone, (I believe called the prick) used to sharpen harvesting equipment.

In no known sense was the prat to be called useful.

Blame of thrones: Those viral vids of PC monitors going blank when people stand up? Static electricity from chairs

Re: For extra fun ...

I had heard of such problems in the past, but less so recently. Then I suspected that it was down to a complex mix of variables involving a bit of better engineering to be more tolerant, changes of dress styles, perhaps through fashions and perhaps even of personal traits. Once some stories started to circulate everything was put down to e.g. clothing or some such, even though in some memorable cases it was down to faulty fixing of flooring. Above or below a certain weight the floor flexed pinching or releasing cables and so on. The chair issue is very much more specific, though once more I do wonder how the conductivity of clothings, the weight of the user and the way in different people move on and off chairs affects the issue. I am very aware that being (a) heavier than I desire to be and a darned sight more awkward due to spinal issues, my 'technique' or lack of same would involve very different moves than someone lighter and more agile who could just spring off.

As a footnote, while doing factory acceptance testing in about 1980, during the first week I only had to look at the equipment to produce a system failure, later as the bugs were removed I had to approach closer to 'apparently achieve' the same effect. In fact, the problems were caused by faulty punched cards used to program the device.

A Notepad nightmare leaves sysadmin with something totally unprintable

Re: He'd lost several months of work

A slightly different but still cautionary tale. Back in the 1980s in one semi secured area I ran a number of small PCs acting as terminals that collected volumes of process data, reducing it down to key aspects before it this was then aggregated by a 286 based device. Several programs were chained together allowing the machine to draw graphs, write letters embedding the graphs and prepared them for dispatch to international carriers in many countries. A delightfully automatic system that was best left with no human intervention. It was all housed in a walled off area. Then a clerk wanted to complete some work using Lotus 123 which was one of the chained programs on the 286 machine. Seizing his chance he crept in a clutching his floppy disk of data and started up Lotus. A bad move for him; as he existed Lotus it was set up to dump some very specific records to the floppy disk, neatly removing his several months of work and data before replacing it with the latest production run results.

Tesla has a smashing weekend: Model 3 on Autopilot whacks cop cars, Elon's Cybertruck demolishes part of LA

Re: Unfortunately adaptive cruise control radar doesn't work like that

The Wired article link clearly explains a situation that had me puzzled for a while. It confirms that current systems are only assistance tools. Whether they can develop to allow identifying obstructions appears doubtful. Despite the Musk rambling autonomous vehicles are a pipe dream.

Irish eyes aren't smiling after govt blows €1m on mega-printer too big for parliament's doors

Re: 3.1 metres in height

The classic error when checking sizes is that things often come in some sort of packing case which adds size above, to the sides and below the basic device measurements. Then you need to have a device to lift and move the darned thing, which at 7.38 metres long is hardly something you could pick up on a standard pallet mover. It might well come as several parts, but given the length would be rather less than bendy to pass through a twisty access route. Clearance sizes need to be thought about very seriously. A survey would have been a wise, make that a very wise move, before the order was inked.

Bon sang! French hospital contracts 6,000 PC-locking ransomware infection

I Might Be Out Of Step But

I suggest that the French played it right, meaning that in this case Ransom attempts did not pay. Strengthening defences, finding out how it happened and doing more to stop things spreading internally must be in order. Hell it might even mean training staff and building better infrastructure. That might cost a bit off any efficiency savings in the early years, but then payback rather well.

'Big Bang': Great for creating the universe, but not as an approach to IT migration, TSB told

Had They Never Cut Over A System Before

I suspect that anyone who has ever cut over a system or been remotely involved with a cut over of a system would have been aware that testing is absolutely vital. Not only that but testing the assumptions on which forecasts were built is essential. The stimulus of a new system upon customer demand for services is very often woefully forecast or understood. The only good thing in this case, was that those customers who set out to see what breaks, were spoilt for choice; they did not know that the system was already broken and untested in so many areas that they were bound to have some fun.

So the fraudsters had a party time.

Many years ago I tested what would happen when the demand rush really started. I simulated the effect and listened to fuses blow. When working with a supplier I questioned some 'example data', believing it was for demonstration purposes. Sadly, it was real planning data from an unnamed customer. I predicted the go live failure. Their customer had forecast less than 10% of the actual user impact; ouch.

Can't you hear me knocking? But I installed a smart knocker

Re: There is of course a new approach here

Chineseium sound a bit more upmarket and PC, when I was a lot younger it was called monkey metal. It generally fell apart during use, especially when the tool was a spanner. Plasters needed to be kept handy in the event of an assured need.

High Court dismisses nameless Google Right To Be Forgotten sueball man... yes, again

Re: He has also clearly caused significant costs to be incurred by the defendant.

Can Google and the courts apply for their costs against the person?

They sound increasingly like someone many people would not like to have dealing with any aspect of their affairs.

I thought that people who acted like this used to be called a vexatious litigant.

Weird flex but OK... Motorola's comeback is a $1,500 Razr flip-phone with folding 6.2" screen

@Steve Button

The point of advertising is to sell or upsell an item. The point of revues is to clarify and amplify the advantages or disadvantages of a new item. This Reg revue achieved its aims of clarifying and amplifying the advantages to my satisfaction so well done The Reg. However, the presentation was not enough to overcome the prices disadvantage. As for the car showroom reference, since showrooms are few and far between and since both family cars have done well under 6000 miles, my need to visit car sales points is not so clear. This may not stop me from reading a car revue, though perhaps not of a Ferrari or similar, where both my wife and I would face access issues and for us, reliability counts for far more than image.

At £150 perhaps I would consider it, at £1,500 for 'just a mobile', no thank you. I guess I am just not in the target demographic since I am a very marginal user of even my present three-year old Motorola device.

Japanese hotel chain sorry that hackers may have watched guests through bedside robots

Humans Not Optional?

No human anywhere has ever done anything of this sort, oh wait, it required a human to trigger this issue. Still, it was shoddy programming to allow simple cracking and rotten acceptance testing to allow problems to roam free.

I wonder if the robots enjoyed their illicit viewing.

Mandatory electronic prescriptions was the easy bit in NHS paperless plans

Today's Experience

I saw the local GP surgery today had immediate instructions for a blood test with a paper form printed out. The pills to be collected from the pharmacy of choice in about half an hour, meanwhile have an urgent blood test plus a paperless x-ray ASAP. Arrived at the hospital 25 minutes later where I was the second person in the phlebotomy queue . Five minutes later blood testing was done, then paperless to the x-ray department, gave my details and had an x-ray. I picked up the pills on the way home, so two our of three transactions were paperless and all done within two hours from the get go. It worked well for me.

Medic! Uncle Sam warns hospitals not to use outdated IPnet freely on their networks

Re: Make these a federal crime.

I am not sure that the issue is of vendors insisting on using only XP, but I suspect that items with long amortisation lives run past the point of software life expiry. Not only that, but in many cases the parts used to build systems may come from different sources, some of whom are no longer in business. There my well be a future in building or applying special techniques to multi million piles of currency worth devices that are not yet time expired, e.g. NOT connecting them to networks directly? There are ways to link output from a device into other database set-ups that do not rely on last century's level security direct connections.

That said, what is the betting that it was either sloppy email habits or careless browsing that did the damage? Bluntly, the problem lay outside the keyboard interface.

Multitasking is a myth: It means doing lots of things equally badly

Re: The English language includes support for lists

You beat me to that point, I thought he was starting a moan about prostate troubles. My relief came a few lines into the article.

As sales crash, Gartner wonders who can rescue the smartphone market ... Aha, it is I! 5G Man!

Subscriptions Not Really For Me

One of my adult children has started a course, so I decided that it was time to think about upgrading from a mixture of old editions of Office ranging from 2003 through to the modern version we own 2010 to Office 365 for less than £60 for three users, with 3 users still available for other family members. So far it is on 5 machines, all PCs of various ages but none less than 8 years old. I understand that I can buy another year or two at the same price and stack it on. Should our needs reduce than I can and will drop out of the rental market and fall back on whatever is one offer at the time. I receive suggestions that I could even put 365 on mobiles, though that does sound like a nightmare suggestion to me. Having some (any?) reliable mobile signal would be lovely. Currently, I suspect there is better reception in the Gobi Desert than within 30 miles of central London. The last time I watched any 'subscription TV' was after a couple of operations when I was confined to the house, just searching the catalogue nearly drove me nuts. I hated it and never went back, the 'subscription' is an unpaid for add-on, I would never wish to subscribe for real money. Murdock Vision killed that idea for once and for all time.

Using the web on a mobile is not for me, if Ido get a signal, within seconds I find out just how much crap advertisers have that no one would ever want - otherwise why would they push the crap so hard?