Posts by Fat Jez

Hutchison will float O2 … as soon as the Three merger is done

Pre-launch, Orange were known as Hutchinson Microtel

Scotsman cools PC with IRN-BRU, dubs it the 'Aye Mac'

no radiator that I can see either

BT: Let us scrap ordinary phone lines. You've all got great internet, right?

depends on what codec they use, but GSM managed with about 13Kbps for long enough, plus over heads, so 16Kbps in total. Your line should easily manage that

Living in the middle of a big city? Your broadband may still be crap

I suspect the areas that are showing higher average speeds are being skewed by people using Virgin Media. It would be interesting to see how the averages compare across areas if it were just ADSL being compared.

Europe tickles Microsoft with €561m fine for browser choice gaffe

Re: Microsoft Security Essentials and forced browser choice

That's because it's not just your browser, it also upgrades your shell (Windows Explorer). Presumably Security Essentials hooks into certain features in Explorer that an older version does not provide.

Seagate slips out super-silent 2.5in video hard drive

I thought 1MB cache seemed a bit low, the specs say it has 16MB.

Apple resellers left to pick bones of dwindling iPad stocks

You have to balance a couple of things here. On the one hand, you need to make enough to satisfy initial demand, while factoring in the cost of updating them all to the latest stable iOS release and storing them until needed. But you don't want to tool up too much capacity to meet that initial demand, as that leads to excess capacity later when demand tails off.

I guess Apple are accepting they will disappoint a few people by not having enough stock to meet that initial demand while not having wasted excess capacity later.

HP caught with SIX Windows 8 PC packages up its sleeve

Is it not time to draw a line under 32-bit and move users over to 64?

Ex-Apple engineer emits Zevo ZFS for Mac OS

No mention that booting is not yet supported, so only really useful on data storage volumes.

Acer intros skinny 15in notebook

A great design, let down with a bog-standard 1366x768 screen once again! Come on guys, if you are going to the trouble to design a good looking machine, the screen quality and resolution needs to match it!

UK broadband speeds crippled during 'rush hour'

Feel sorry

I feel sorry for those poor people of Evesham whose speeds drop to a figure I can only dream of attaining on my own broadband under ideal circumstances!

UK shamed in high-speed broadband study

try streaming BBC HD from iPlayer and you'll realise 1Mbps isn't enough, never mind downloading the odd service pack from MS or OS X update which can take hours.

'iPhone 5' chippery captured on camera

why is it asking for activation? Would an iOS5 device not be capable of activating itself without being connected to iTunes?

Hands on with Acer's Aspire S3 Ultrabook

screen res...

... is apparently 1366 x 768, according to Tech Radar with a highly glossy screen.

Apple Mac Mini 2011

bootcamp drivers

Bootcamp drivers can be saved to a USB stick as well as burnt to DVD. But that's not to say I agree with removing the DVD drive, no matter how easy it is to hook up a USB drive as an alternative. It's a major barrier to any form of easily portable Windows gaming (e.g. LAN parties) where many games need the disk in the drive to work or a dodgy nodvd hack to get around it.

Ofcom maps state of UK broadband

results skewed slightly by Virgin's "high" speeds?

Bristol second? Where I live, any of those areas marked as the worst would be an improvement for me. However, a few streets away where Virgin have cable, I could be ticking along with 50Mbps. That's going to skew the average for my area just a bit when for those of us on ADSL, 4Mbps is something we aspire to.

Boffins fix dead satellite using 'dirty hack' in space

John Aaron

Can't beat setting SCE to Aux! ;o)

'Lion' Apple Mac OS X 10.7: Sneak Preview

call me pedantic but...

Office 2008 didn't feature the ribbon interface. 2011 does, but all the menus are still present, so you don't have to use it.

Oh and Tiger was released in 2005, Leopard in 2007 and Snow Leopard in 2009.

Intel, AMD in HP notebook smackdown

screen res

Standard screen res is 1366x768, but there is an option of 1600x900 too. Not sure what the cost is.

"15.6" diagonal LED-backlit HD anti-glare (1366 x 768); 15.6" diagonal LED-backlit HD+ WVA anti-glare (1600 x 900)"

Ten... Core i5 laptops

IPS Panel

Macbook Pro's use a TN panel, not IPS. Plus I also find the glass really annoying in terms of reflections (probably why I bought a 15" Macbook Pro with AG screen).

Fourth Euro star truck christened Albert Einstein

You can't breathe pure oxygen, it'll kill you.

Not true, on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, they used a pure oxygen atmosphere in space, but at a partial pressure of 5lb/sq in (equivalent to the same density of Oxygen on earth).

When doing a plugs out test on Apollo 1, the capsule had to be positively pressurised, therefore the pressure of the oxygen was greater than atmospheric. Under those conditions, some otherwise benign substances will burn fiercely, although the crew were in their space suits and on a different breathing loop.

Steve Ballmer window-dresses Windows 8

kernel version

They went with 6.1 instead of 7 as a lot of software that would otherwise be compatible with Windows 7 would have refused to install on a major version increase of the Kernel, i.e. it was written to check for the presence of NT6.x and not install on anything higher.

iPhone 5 design drawings spied on web

how about...

the screen is the same size and the surround has been shrunk due to adding the band around the outside? This way the overall dimensions of the phone remain the same, thereby not upsetting people who have cradles, cases, etc for the iPhone 4.

Then again, since when did Apple care about change the design?

Mole points to April iOS 5.0 outing

Re: 3G

I'd expect them to drop support for the 3G in iOS5. Based on their track record, only the new model and previous year's model (iPhone 4 in this case) have had full functionality from the new OS, the year before that (3GS) has had limited functionality improvements and support for the year before that has been dropped.

I'm basing this on them dropping support for the original iPhone in iOS4 and the 3G only having limited enhancements.

Ofcom demands ISPs close 'upto' gap

xDSL kit deployed

1) Depends on whether we are talking contention speed or sync rate. I was referring to sync rate.

2) That's only true if the exchange is unbundled. My exchange serves a population of around 20,000 people and several large businesses and the only unbundled ISPs we have are Orange (since their HQ is located here), C&W and Talk Talk. Pretty poor choice really.

Ofcom blaming the wrong people?

I can accept Ofcom having a go at the ISPs over their advertising terms, but I think it's a bit unfair for them to have a go at them over the actual speeds achievable. Only two companies have any control over that - Virgin if you are on cable and BT if you are on ADSL. Since they seem to be bashing the ADSL ISPs more for their poor connection speeds, it strikes me that Ofcom are aiming at the wrong target and should be beating up BT over sticking with ancient copper wires to the home.

Apple to launch queue-jumping service for little people

Surely...

... it's ingenious ;o)

Apple brands Intel 'Light Peak' as Thunderbolt

Light

I think it was intended that Lightpeak would be optical longer term.

Massive US rocket sends top-secret cargo into space

polar orbit

The launches from Vandenberg were intended to be into polar orbit and are typically spy satellites, as the Earth rotates underneath the orbiting satellite - the idea being a spy satellite in such an orbit would eventually cover the entire Earth's surface.

A polar orbit launch would end up over the Pacific Ocean, as the launch vehicle heads north/south while the earth continues to rotate underneath. This is the reason the shuttle needed such large wings - in case it to abort from a Californian launch, it would need cross-range ability to get back to an American runway to land. Less commercially sensitive launches from Florida were less of an issue, as the shuttle would be intended to land in Europe.

US woman @theashes stumped by cricketing tweets

rugby

Equally relevant for the Rugby Wold Cup in New Zealand next year :o)

Sophos debuts freebie antivirus scanner for Macs

not the first free av

clamxav is free, for example.

Apple releases iOS 4.1 into the wild

next/prev track

If it helps, I can skip forwards and backwards through tracks using the controls on my car stereo. My iPhone 4 is connected via bluetooth. Pretty sure that didn't work before 4.1

Superslim iPhone 4 enough to fend off Android?

re megapixels - dead horse

Absolutely. As long as the quality of the lenses on any of the current mobile phones remains as it is, there is no point in increasing the megapixel count.

Windows 3.0 turns 20

Workbench aspect ratio

In defence of the aspect ratio used for Workbench, it was designed to be used with a TV as a monitor, not a dedicated monitor. All the icons could be replaced with versions in the correct aspect ratio and it could then be run at 640x480, which looked fine (see MagicWB and Newicons for examples of icon replacement). Workbenches prior to 2 looked pretty bad, with a very garish colour scheme, but 2.0 onwards could look pretty darn nice with a decent monitor and some tweaking.

Missing Soviet nuclear electrocar FOUND ON MOON

call me pedantic but...

...Apollo 14 didn't have a lunar rover, just a handcart to carry their tools in. Apollo 15 was the first mission to have a lunar rover (or moon buggy if you prefer).

Pinhead Mac Trojan sticks it to fanbois

wrong term used?

"Considering one can essentially disprove security through obscurity"

[pedantic] Security through obscurity is a term that applies to closed source environments (e.g. Windows). I think you mean security through minority, where the market share isn't worth targetting with malware.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity [/pedantic]

try looking on the Apps disc that comes with every mac

"Odd you say that, mine and my old man's did come with it, but when I installed 10.6 from scratch, iPhoto had magically vanished."

iPhoto is not on the OSX install disc, it comes on the second DVD that you should have received with your Mac.

Mozilla betas Flash flak jacket with 'Lorentz'

also available on OSX

as title.

Ubisoft undone by anti-DRM DDoS storm

Re: Another

I'm assuming your comment was not directed at me, since I DID buy my copy of SH5. £27.99 from Tesco.

Re: wow

Not forgetting the lovely bugs that make firing a torpedo more miss than hit, since the TDC seems to not work very well...

T-Orange merger approved

Re: Spectrum costs

It's not 3G spectrum they are handing back, it's 2G, at 1800MHz. The over-priced 3G spectrum they seem to be allowed to keep, which is surprising!

Virgin to offer 100Mb/s broadband by year's end

network port speeds

Anyone know what speed the ethernet port on the back of a Virgin cable modem is capable of? If it's not 1Gbps, then you're never going to see 100Mbps broadband sppeds anyway, as the network just can't work that fast. Ditto the network port on the back of the computer.

Vodafone Ireland admits pocketing dormant PAYG cash

@Why

Because each mobile operator has a finite amount of HLR capacity and it costs money to run kit that's only being used for dormant accounts (support costs, air conditioning, floor space, electricity, etc). Then there's the cost of buying capacity for new customers (which typically amounts to hardware and then a license fee on top for each customer provisioned).

Why pay all that when you can turf people off the network after 9 months of inactivity and re-use the space gained?