Posts by prefect42

Mass Sony DVR seppuku riddle: Freeview EPG update fingered

Re: Broadcast EPGs

That's just nonsense. An EPG should be trivial to standardise and extend in such a way that boxes that met the standard don't get upset by new extensions. Just basic checksumming on the EPG should be fine to cope with poor signal, as if it's got an invalid block of EPG data it can just throw it away and wait for it to be resent. If your signal's that crap, you'll be complaining about the lack of picture...

I'm a very happy humax user, and have never had any problems with EPG on either freeview or freesat. Seriously, why would you want the EPG to come from anywhere else other than inline with the content?

As for frozen update screens... That just seems to be random finger pointing, as it's not a general problem with set top boxes, and is surely unrelated to PSU issues.

Integrated storage hardware is DEAD, software firm says

Re: So everything is going to be stored in thin air is it ?

Did you just read the headline? Your comment doesn't obvious relate to the article in any way...

This supercomputing board can be yours for $99. Here's how

Re: Intel & IBM & MS

C as a language simply doesn't deal with parallel, but that's hardly unusual. I'm not really convinced Fortran has a leg up though, as the two most common ways of parallel programming in Fortran are OpenMP and MPI, both of which are equally available with C.

Google's stats show few Android tablets in use

Re: Google play is rubbish.

What? You say applications randomly stop working and need reinstalling after a few days? Get a warranty replacement, that's just not normal. At the very least you can clear the settings for an application separately from reinstalling it.

Sound via USB an issue? Why aren't you just using bluetooth A2DP? Surely you can use the 3.5mm jack at the least, so you're really not limited to the internal speakers. Bluetooth is just a more elegant solution than any wired option for a tablet.

As for play being full of junk, you're probably right, but you're free to not install things you don't like the look of.

El Reg user forum opens to public, HTML for all (mostly)

If you can't handle HTML...

...work for the reg?

A nice way to follow on from saying "If you can’t handle using simple HTML, then in our house you don’t get to use the basic formatting tools." is to put </b> and &lt/i> in the table...

2011's Best... Cars

So what you're really saying darklord is...

that rather than buy either a BMW or a Focus, you should buy a 3 year old Focus for 5k.

A base spec 116d 5dr will cost you 20k list. Your BMW is going to be way down on toys compared to the focus, as you'll get a 1.6 Titanium X (so toy-tastic) Focus for less than that base spec model BMW by the time you've haggled with both dealers.

Office 365: Can Microsoft replace Microsoft?

Exchange

2010 was a mistake? And 2007 which isn't vaguely IMAP compliant? Ahh, you must be a fan of 2003. No? Exchange was/is a mistake.

Groupon faces multitude of legal headaches in US

Laws always vary

It's no different in the UK, as there are variations in law between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Island. Let's just ignore the bigger oddities like the channel islands...

BBC Freesat tech switch zaps HD channels from 'old' boxes

even worse

This is a technological change they'd planned and documented when they introduced Freesat HD...

These are non-adopters

These people are complaining that non-Freesat HD compliant kit can't display Freesat HD content. There really isn't a case to answer here. The Humax you bought at the end of 2008 will merrily work just fine with DVB-S2. This really isn't hitting the early adopters.

That's why there's a specification

If you don't meet the spec, you might not be able to see the content. DVB-S2 was always part of the spec. It's a better encoding that'll either fit more channels in, or give the option of higher bitrate for existing channels. Don't hold back the technology because some kit is broken or non-compliant.

DVB-S tuners were cheap and DVB-S2 ones were not when I looked, so I bought neither. My FOXSAT HDR works just fine with S2. They've made noises (clearing out that group so they could move it to S2) along these lines for months and months, so it's really not like there's been no warning. People who want lots of HD content should be a fan of the change. People who are not shouldn't really mind losing the HD content...

Radioactive Tokyo tapwater HARMS BABIES ... if drunk for a year

Collective Dose

I thought we'd given up on considering any level of radiation exposure as safe in the 1960s? What should be looked at is the total release and the harm those radioisotopes do to the human population. It might only increase your risk by a tiny amount, but when several tens of millions of people are affected...

How Google taped up its email outage wounds

Wrong format

Try that again with a sensible modern format, LTO4. £20 for 800Gbytes native. Then fit them into a 48 tape loader. So you can pile >35Tb of tapes into this 4U box in your rack, and quickly swap them out with new tapes. What are you suggesting you do with disks again?

If you really do want to archive a load of this stuff offsite, or even into fire proof safes onsite, and you're doing enough that the cost of the drive isn't a big problem, ~£25/Tb doesn't sound too bad.

Interface can be SAS, which your modern server almost certainly already has.

Old drives

On the specifics you quote, my hunch would be most probably yes. Try buying a new DDS2 now (~20 year old tech) and they're not that hard to get hold of, and you'd be able to get it attached quite happily to a current PCIe SCSI card, and it'll work out of the box using generic drivers in the kernel.

But if you're serious about archiving data for the long term, you'll have to verify and transfer it or else you will be bitten as you describe, just maybe a little further down the line. But you /might/ get away with only having to do this once every couple of decades.

Anti-religious campaigners smack down census Jedis

Religion gets all the credit

We probably kill and hurt each other as much as the average pack animal.

Dell warns on spyware infected server motherboards

That's some shiny kit Jad

Newer than an R410? Newer than current?