Posts by jahill

Slack threatened to delete nonprofit coding club’s data if it didn’t pay $50k in a week

Re: Slack should ..

I’ve seen this a few times. One was a large UK company storing data for a government body. When it came to transferring the data away, their reply was ‘no, we own the data’.

There was another incident reported by The Register a while ago. The company went insolvent, and customers were told to pay £xxxxx now or lose the data on the servers rented to you.

Sadly, it’s not confined to software and servers. We received a notification from TalkTalk a couple of years ago stating that our leased line would be changed mid-contract from a fixed-fee to whatever they decided to charge. They gave customers 30 calendar days to quit their contract, or be tied into the new contract for the remainder of the agreement, knowing full well that it’s almost impossible to get a leased line installed from anywhere else in that time. Their charges have increased by around 50% since.

You're not imagining things – USB memory sticks are getting worse

Re: Simple solution?

In the UK, the seller is liable for a faulty product, not the manufacturer. Seems to work here (much as Amazon would like to claim that it doesn't apply to them after three months, even when they're the seller).

ICANN proposes creating .INTERNAL domain to do the same job as 192.168.x.x

Re: It Isn’t Just 192.168

Whoever thought this was a good idea should be shot!

The endless pain caused by zombie ethernet cards thinking they have an IP address and all is good with the world...

Apple whispers farewell to macOS Server

Many years ago, I remember replacing a gaggle of Microsloth email servers with a single Mac Pro (which happily dealt with email an order of magnitude faster).

While, from my perspective, this is a sad demise, it was perhaps an inevitable one given the price of a machine running Linux (which can also be had with redundant power supplies).

Logitech: We're gonna brick your Harmony Link gizmos next year

I can't help but feel that anyone who bought the device in the UK going back over the last three to five years would indeed have a valid claim under what was the Sale of Goods Act (I believe this is now the Consumer Rights Act).

I also wonder whether deliberately bricking a device (as opposed to merely dropping cloud support) would fall under either the Computer Misuse Act or Criminal Damage (and I'm sure there are similar laws elsewhere in the world). Wasn't there a USB->serial port chip manufacturer who did this to cloned devices and realised pretty quickly they had to stop?

O2 admits to throttling network bandwidth for EU data roamers

I'm pretty sure that this has been going on for a while and became much worse once free roaming started being offered. I've tried using Three and Vodafone abroad with connection speeds often as low as a few 100kB's.

The first few of web pages usually work fine, beyond which it's like swimming through treacle. Switch to another device and all is fine, until you hit the throttling again. It's not consistently bad, but when it's bad, it's very, very bad.

Blighty bloke: PC World lost my Mac Mini – and trolled my blog!

Back when this outfit was called Dixons, I made the mistake of allowing these guys to 'fix' a brand-new Walkman.

Every time it went away, it was gone for four weeks and came back (still) broken. Eventually (after seven months without the unit), I decided I'd had enough and asked for my money back - to which the store had the cheek of offering me half its new value on the basis 'it was now second-hand and more than half a year old''!!!

After a discussion with the store manager, I did eventually get all my money back. I think they have improved since then, although this article suggests this is not always the case.

Exploding femtocells: No need for a full recall, says Vodafone

WiFi calling works on some Vodafone tariffs too, the catch is you can't send or receive text messages while outside of their cellular signal, which can be a bit of an issue.

I hate to burst Vodafone's PR bubble, but I'm not convinced that all the failures happen in the way they describe.

I've had four units fail, each one with the lights remaining on. Each unit also burning hot to touch. When restarted, the lights *then* wouldn't appear, which suggests a more complex fault than just the MOV failing.

Let Europeans sue America for slurping their data – US Senate

I can imagine the conversation went something along the lines of: 'I know. We'll tell them that their citizens can sue us through our courts, with our rules to protect the data that they won't even know we've stolen. That'll do. I bet those European idiots will buy this.'

I can't help but feel suspicious that the 'powers that be' are on the side of the Americans and simply want to find a way around the 'inconvenient' decision that the previous arrangement was illegal.

Apple relents, doubles EU warranty (sort of)

They are keeping the change very quiet: A quick call to Apple today showed that they are still only honouring a one year warranty, unless extended (and paid for).

New iPad: Crack open your wallets, fanbois, here's what it'll cost

Re: Mates' rates

Surely add in the UK's VAT rate at 20% leaves a price difference of just 5%?

Arcam Solo rDac wireless digital-to-analogue converter

I still say cleaner air is the way forward

but platinum sata cables would make for an interesting review!

You're right, it won't...

But don't tell anyone!

It's a bit like the 'sound enhancing SATA cables' nonsense. And Kate Middleton wearing plastic wrist bands to help balance her life... as for me, I'm off to buy some magic beans.

It's all down to the quality of the interconnects...

'Swapping the rWave dongle for a USB cable didn't have any noticeable impact on sound quality'

That does surprise me. Especially when you consider that the sound quality would be adversely affected by the quality of the air you are using.

For future tests, might I suggest you try using cleaner air? 'Air dusters' that 'dust' the air for you can be bought from places like Maplin. Expensive, but well worth the cost IMO.