Posts by Davidoff

OpenSUSE 12.3: Proof not all Linux PCs are Um Bongo-grade bonkers

Re: The wankers at AMD decided that HD4XXX or below is now legacy...

"...and we are going to give fuck all support on a chipset that they were flogging only a year or so ago."

No, they weren't. The Radeon HD 4000 Series came out 2008 and is out of production since somewhere in 2010.

Of course that doesn't make their decision to move them to legacy support any better, which is stupid considering Nvidia still supports the Geforce 8 Series which came out 2006 and that cards like the 4870 or 4890 still play latest games at HD resolution just fine.

Who's riddling Windows PCs with gaping holes? It's your crApps

Re: The OS should be secure enough

"...to not be hijacked by Adobe Reader or a third party app going via Adobe Reader."

Yeah, right, because application vulnerabilities are no problem on other operating systems like Linux or OS X. Oh wait, they are.

I guess that all operating systems are fails then.

Official: Sky to buy O2 and BE's home broadband product in £200m deal

Effectively cost the ISP more money than they take.

"I'm fairly sure that my usage levels are way above the average (200-300GB/month), therefore effectively cost the ISP more money than they take."

No, you aren't. What costs money is installing and maintaining the network, and that is independent on the amount of traffic that runs through it. The actual traffic costs your ISP close to nothing.

BE support from hell

Was with Be for three years. They are great if everything is fine, and minor issues like a incorrect invoice or a missing modem is solved quickly, but their Czech (not Bulgarian) support staff is completely clueless when it comes to even minor technical detail, and they are rather lying to their customers than actually looking on their own network. We were lucky that our previous house had a very good line (so Be was somewhat stable), but when we moved Be was unable to solve constant connection drops and low reconnects in 6 months. They sent out Broadband Engineers, who all checked the line, and confirmed it's fine. The modems have been replaced many times, even the BT socket had been replaced, and all the engineers said the only thing that is left is to look at Be's equipment in the exchange. To make a long story short Be did everything to shift the blame away from them, it can't be, their monitoring says its fine, they said they never got the results from the engineers (which was one of their lies because I was present when the engineers talked to Be support), and when they ran out of lies they said sorry but that's all they can do.

I learned my lesson, changed to Zen, explained them the issue and said I'll move if they can gurantee me that they can find the problem. They said yes, they can, I moved, and after switching over I got a call from their support saying that the line should be fine as they found a defective line card. And the line has been stable for over a year.

And unlike Be support Zen's support team are actual engineers (not hotline workers that know nothing about the stuff they read from their scripts in broken English), and are sitting in the UK.

Psst, wanna block nuisance calls? BT'll do it... for a price

Having a voicemail feature built into machine

"Oh, this would be a nice feature on smartphones- having a voicemail feature built into machine - messages are recorded locally on the device"

I had such a cell phone, around 1993. It was made by Alcatel (can't remember the model, I think it was something with '2000') and had the keypad and display on the back of the handset and not on the front where speaker and microphone sit. It did have integrated voicemail which could record I think 30s of message per call.

It was a very nice phone for that time.

Windows Phone 8 hasn't slowed Microsoft's mobile freefall

Lumia 800 clock

"Weird, because I have a Lumia 800 and I think it's great. Only bug I have with it is that for some reason it gains 1 minute every week or so. My network doesn't appear to support time sync so have to adjust clock every few weeks. "

It's not the network that doesn't support time sync, it's your phone (and mine, having a Lumia 800 myself). The Lumia 800 does not support network time syncing, and it's a well known issue that the clock deviates quickly. A real pain in the butt Nokia could have fixed with one of the many updates, but the problem is still existing in WP 7.8.

A new Mac Pro coming this spring? 'Mais oui!'

The change from PPC to x86 has cost Apple their 'power' crown.

No, it hasn't. The later PowerPC Macs (later G4s and the G5) were in fact quite slow, even when compared to the dreadful Pentium4 with its Netburst architecture (and the XEONs which were based on the same stuff). When intel finally came out with their Core 2 processors, Apple was lost. Plain and simple.

The only positive thing for Apple in using PowerPCs was that they were different enough to act as a differentiator from ordinary PCs. Since Apple adopted x86, there is not much which makes a Mac different from a PC, and in the areas there still is a difference, Apple is mostly more limiting.

a new machine is 2-3x that price and for what...

"...a new machine is 2-3x that price and for what, i7 chipset , 3Ghz cores vs 2.6Ghz cores, a snappier graphics card to run the games I never buy or play?"

I don't know what you use your Mac Pro for but let me tell you that the XEON 5600 processors which are also used in the current Mac Pro run circles around the old XEON 5100/5300 or 5200/5400 series CPUS from the old Mac Pro days. And the memory performance has also improved dramatically. FB-DIMMs were a pretty stupid idea, especially for desktop computers.

Today, even a current quadcore Mac mini will most likely outperform your Mac Pro in anything except maybe graphics performance.

Mac Pro and 64bit

"The limitation with the original Mac Pros if I remember correctly was that those CPUs can't do 64-bit"

No, the CPUs do 64bit just fine when sitting in a non-Apple system (I have a Dell Precision 690 using the same intel XEON 5365 processors as the old Mac Pros, running Windows 7 x64 just fine).

The problem was with Apple's implementation (or better: crippeling) of UEFI which they used as system firmware instead of a standard BIOS. UEFI has it's advantages but Apple removed most of them for the Mac Pro. It's this firmware which prevents it from running 64bit OS X.

But then, the firsg gen Mac Pro's could only take 16GB anyways (32GB with 3rd party modules and an user accepting the risk for killing the memory because of overheating), at a time when Windows/Linux workstations a la Dell Precision 690 or HP xw8400 could already take 64GB. Without overheating.

Can you describe a Dell Optiplex 200?

Yes, I can. Anyways, the Optiplex is not a workstation anyways, it's a business PC.

Dell's workstations are called 'Precision@, and yes, they are distinctive. Much more than a wannabe-workstation in a chassis which hasn't changed for almost a decade.

And if you want something really distinctive, look up the HP z820. Designed by BMW.

Microsoft blasts PC makers: It's YOUR fault Windows 8 crash landed

I believe that even the Media Player is now an extra.

"...I believe that even the Media Player is now an extra."

Only if you buy the EU-mandated 'N' variant. The normal Windows versions all come with Windows Media Player of course, and Windows 8 adds a (quite nice) Metro audio and video player to that.

"Ultimately I just do not trust MS, they have done to many dirty deeds. Vista assumed that everyone was a criminal and ran like a dog while it checked for possible copyright infringement."

I would have thought that by now everyone even in the sticks knows that the Vista DRM nonsense (which came from wannabe-scientist Peter Gutman from NZ) was just that - a huge pile of nonsense. As apparently you never used Vista (otherwise you should have known better) I suggest you have a read here:

http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/windows_vista_drm_nonsense

"It is like BT and Phorm. Once a company crosses that bridge there is no going back, they will never convince me to support them again."

Well, in this case you should never ever use a product from Apple, any Android phone, a PS3, and many other stuff made by or supplied by companies that have an eye on their customers. In fact, these days MS is by far one of the lesser evils.

But I guess old habits (and prejudice) die hard.

Re: Professionals don't want it

"In the 1990s there was at least some professional market for Windows which by now also is largely gone. (except for companies signing in for the VBA vendor lock in)"

Yeah, that's why there's no professional software on Windows any more. Oh, wait...there is. In fact, the majority of professional applications are made for Windows.

How stupid software manufacturers are, making software for a platform that has no customers. They could have saved tons of money by just listening to you.

"And the people who care about their IT and have multiple computers at home, usually go straight to some Linux distribution..."

This narrow-minded thinking shows that your time is worth nothing and you don't have to use your home computers to a real job and earn real money. I guess IT is merely a hobby for you.

However, for those that use computers for real tasks and have to make money with them (so-called 'professionals') it should be pretty obvious that a computer is only a means to do the job and not a purpose in itself. And when a computer is a tool and not a hobby then it's normally pretty obvious that the choice of OS is dictated by the availability of applications to do the job and not blind fanboi-ism. Sometimes it may be Linux, sometimes it may be OS X, but in many occassions it's simply Windows. Period.

"...and used Thinkpads."

Right, because Thinkpads are nearly perfect (and all the flaws that IBM and later Lenovo has designed into the T20, T21, A20, A31, T40, T41, T61 and many other Thinkpads apparently never existed in your world).

It's the guardian of the security of the data held

Yeah, right. That's probably the reason why IE6 was still the mandated browser in many companies when the non-corporate rest of the world had long moved on, right?

If IT departments were the 'Guardians of Security' then they would implement processes to test and roll out updates quickly, they would stay on top of developments (not only in the IT security field) or start working on migration plans early on (when the successor product comes out).

The reality is that many (most?) IT departments is that it's mostly driven by cost-cutting and lazyness. That's why they are still on Windowsxp (an 11 year OS with worse security than it's three generations of successors), that's why they keep mediocre virus scanners like Sophos or McAffee deployed (which have terrible detecion rates but are simple to manage), and that's also the reason why migrations are pushed down the road until it is almost to late. Whatever makes life easy, unless of course someone who's at a level where he can make life of an IT bod quite miserable comes along and asks for a favor of course, then the sky's the limit.

It doesn't have to be done this way (I worked on a place that had a very good IT department), but the above attitude unfortunately is not an exception but the norm.

Today's antivirus apps ARE 'worse at slaying hidden threats'

This is already done...

...since Vista when MS introduced virtualized system folders. And MS has published style guides which describe how programs should be designed and where which files should go to keep everything clean and tidy.

Unfortunately MS still underestimated how crap the majority of software developers are, which happily ignore any platform style guide and work around operating system protection mechnisms, breaking the system for anything else that is installed, too.

And this crapness includes large software houses as well. Yes Google, I look at you! Whoever decided that Chrome should install in the user data directory should be shot!

Titsup Windows Phone 8 orders user to cram 'boot disc' in mobe

That is no NT error message

This is not a WindowsNT specific error message, it comes up on Windows 2000, XP and Vista (haven't tried W7 and W8) as well if the startup fixer assistant can't be launched.

The other clues that this is not a relict from WindowsNT 4.0 should be the path of the missing files (which is 'Windows', not 'Winnt' as it was the default under NT) and the fact that it refers to an EFI boot loader (which doesn't exist for WindowsNT).

Microsoft removed the requirement to match up discs and product keys in Windows 7

No, they removed that in Vista already. Any Vista DVD can be used to re-install with an OEM product key, and even cross upgrades (32bit to 64bit or vice versa) are allowed as the key does not resolve the word length.

Review: Kingston Hyper-X 3K 240GB SSD

I won't buy an SSD unless the firmware revision is in the double digits

Well, then you will probably never ever buy an SSD as rarely any model is long enough on the market to reach double digit firmware versions.

Judging a product mainly by the number of digits in its firmware version is silly. If a product is good and stable right from the beginning it won't require much updates so the version numbers will remain low, and if a product is put to market prematurely but the vendor doesn't give a shit then the version numbers will remain low as well.

Kingston SSDs

"The first and last SSD drive I bought was a Kingston, even with the latest firmware (which was supposed to stop the corruption) it still corrupted after a few months."

Let me guess, it was a V100? They were indeed horrible, but other SSDs using the same chipsets were the same. At least Kingston has exchanged many of them for the (much better) V+200 variant if the user complained enough.

The V100 is still offered and, while the firmware has improved, is still not worth buying. The V+200 and the Hyper-X SSDs however belong to the most reliable SSDs on the market.

Pong creator turns nose up at Nintendo Wii U

Every year there would be something I'd have to upgrade

"I used to be a PC gamer but every year there would be something I'd have to upgrade - graphics card, CPU, motherboard, memory. All of this of course required getting Windows to once again play ball and when I was on it every evening it was worth it."

Not much a problem today. Due to the technological stagnation in most games due the limitations of consoles a decent 4+ year old computer can run most games just fine. The situations where upgrades are necessary are less common than in the old days.

Buy a £250 console and you get 4-5 years of life out of it...

"and are still able to play the latest games with the same user experience as everyone else. Try that with a PC and most (note, not ALL) modern games and you'll be lucky if it's even going to work in noddy graphics mode 3 years down the line."

Well, no. While this was true maybe 7+ years ago, today a midrange PC from 2006/2007 can still run latest games at full HD resolution and with high details. Since consoles have become the main development target many multi-platform titles run just fine on an older rig.

One of my PC is quite old, with a CPU comparable to a Core 2 Quad @ 2.6GHz and a Radeon 4870. Still runs latest games like Skyrim, Max Payne 3 or Borderlands 2 with better graphics than my Xbox 360.

It used to be when a console was launched ...

"... it was ahead of the PC for a few years"

The last time this has been true was when the PSX (the original Playstation) came out. Subsequent consoles have always trailed what was available on PCs at the day the console came out.

HDMI hitch hounds Mac Mini holders

You make it sound like this level of warranty service from HP is normal,, and it's not.

It is. Many HP computers, laptops and workstations come with 3 year onsite Next Business Day warranty cover included in the price. In fact, every laptop, desktop PC and workstation I bought in the last >10 years came with 3 years NBD.

And for the few models that only come with 1 year warranty the upgrade to 3 years NBD is usually inexpensive (way less than AppleCare).

Oh, and for the record: Apple can't provide this kind of service. Some products like the Mac Pro can be covered by some onsite service but that is day and night (in a negative sense) from what you get from HP.

But then, Apple only makes consumer kit.

Know of anyone with a better track record for production quality?

Really? So which phone manufacturer other than Apple delivers their phones pre-scratched? Or their computers with broken glass screen? Apple isn't better in producing quality than most other manufacturers.

But that doesn't really matter here as this issue is not about production quality, it's about design flaws. And Apple has a very long history of selling products which come broken by design straight from the factory, from defective chipsets, noisy power supplies to overheating logic boards.

Oh, and as for the argument that all consumer kit is made in the same Chinese factories: This is certainly true, however what falls from the end of the production line is decided by no small part by the specifications of the factories' customer.

Survey: Win8 only HALF as popular as Win7 among IT bosses

Re: It was the same with Windows XP

When Windows XP came out, many businesses were still in the process of migrating to Windows 2000, and the uptake of Windows XP was much smaller than for its predecessor.

If this shows one thing then that businesses are more or less running behind current developments in technology.

KDE 'annoys the hell of' Linus Torvalds

Windows suffers as well

Not really. Windows 8 is actually limiting the amount of customization that doesn't require hacks or 3rd party software, and one of the main complaints about WP in general was that it is less customizable than other phones including Windows Mobile ones.

Files aren’t property, says US government

You buy a DVD you buy the disc and the right to play it under certain, stipulated conditions

Not in Europe where if you buy a DVD you own the DVD and the copy of the content on that DVD. Despite common belief there is no licensing (to the DVD owner) involved, and there also is no legal contract between the copyright holder and the buyer of that DVD (the only contract is between the buyer and the seller, i.e. the shop that sold the DVD to its customer).The same of course is true for books and even for most software sales (at least to consumers). Your right to do whatever you want to do with the DVD you bought is only limited by copyright (which prevents you from making and selling copies of it) and current laws preventing you from circumventing copy protection (to prevent you to make copies for yourself). However, electronic downloads are generally licensed and not sold, with all implications.

This is a very important difference to the US where almost everything is licensed and every sale of things like DVDs also create a legal contract between the buyer and the copyright holder.

Sony Xperia T Android smartphone review

The camera is second only to Nokias pureview cameras.

No, it isn't. It also comes second to its predecessor Xperia S which wasn't exactly stellar in its camera performance and which didn't even come close to what a 2 year old Nokia N8 delivers. But then the N8 doesn't use a tiny crap sensor and shoddy optics as Sony does.

"75% for this phone is an insult."

No, it's not. I had the chance to play with an Xperia T over a weekend, and in my opinion the 75% rating is quite adequate. It's a ice handset but has its shortfalls, not only in the camera area.

Paid secur-o-ware is generally better than free, but not always by a lot

This test should be taken with more than a grain of salt!

Aside from the fact that Dennis Labs is a nobody in the computer security field, people should be very careful to take their test results as facts.

Dennis Labs says on their website:

"Dennis Technology Labs started testing for vendors in 2008 and has been conducting tests for magazines, including the UK's leading IT title Computer Shopper, since 2002."

The 'UK's leading IT title Computer Shopper' is what is usually called 'infomercial' (advertising which should look like independent information), paid for by their advertisement customers. Computer Shopper is published by Dennis Publishing Ltd. If the name sounds familiar: yes, Dennis Publishing Ltd also owns Dennis Labs.

Aside from the very strange test environment (unpatched XP SP3 system with outdated software) this 'test' is very likely rigged to favour their advertising customers.

Why this is worth of an El Reg article is beyond me. There are much better and well established independent sources for evaluating computer security products like av-test.org. Their results also contradict Denis Labs' conclusion that any 3rd party product is better than Microsoft Security Essential.

from the company that gave you the problem in the first place

"Umm, don't you think it's a tad naive to expect sterling performance from the company that gave you the problem in the first place?"

What a stupid statement. MS doesn't create malware, so how can they have given him the problem in the first place?

"Microsoft has been using anti-virus as a band aid to cover up their security model deficiencies since Windows 95."

Yeah, right, since only Windows can get malware.

Windows 8 pricing details announced as preorders begin

That pretty much screws people who build their own PCs.

Only in the US and maybe a few other countries outside Europe.

For most European consumers, the EULA is usually NIL and void, at least if you don't buy their copy directly from MS.

Apple files disappearing-feature iPhone patent

Name one single phone that has a sensor covered by a shutter to hide it.

Sony Ericsson P990i (around 2006, camera covered by a shutter). And this wasn't the only one, others like the K750i had something similar.

November election sends chill down Valley shareholders' necks

Every Nation Has The Government It Deserves

That's what you get from the a two-party system which isn't far off from the a communist one-party system like in China, and that's what you voted for. Obama certainly wasn't a stellar president but considering the utter mess left over by it's predecessor Bush, an ex-alcoholic who found god through booze and who the American public considered to be a good representative of their country for two consecutive terms.

The problem is not what happens if Obama is elected. The problem is what happens if Romney is elected. The frightening thing is not that a dimwit millionaire ex-bankster with open disdain for a majority of voters and a fanatic religious zealot are setup as contenders for the highest service of the country, what's really frightening is that such a large part of the American public is actually supporting them. Which in my opinion says a lot about American values.

HP says Gartner's wrong, IDC's right, on PC sales data

Re: HP Invent?

"Lenovo, not bad for their 27,000 employees, a tenth of HP's and Lenovo's market cap of 8+ Billion, versus HP's of ~ 28 Billion.."

Yeah, well, Lenovo is just that - a PC manufacturer. It doesn't have a large server business, it doesn't have a storage business, it doesn't have large UNIX servers (HP Integrity), it doesn't have mission-critical high availability systems (HP NonStop), it doesn't have a large software business, and it lacks most of the other areas HP is active in one form or another.

HP: PC industry has forgotten how to innovate

Re: The Libretto wasn't all that new an idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio

But actually neither Libretto nor Portfolio are in the same category as Netbooks, since none of them have been designed for the low cost market (especially the Librettos were really expensive) but ultra portability..

Just how good is Nokia's PureView 41Mp camera tech?

But I guess unsurprisingly it turned into an anti-Symbian whine.

Well, I guess if you haven't used a modern Android, iPhone or even WP7.5 device then you may see it this way. However, reality is that for anyone used to a modern phone OS using Symbian is like a step back into 2009, and it's general flexibility is simply irrelevant if the functionality you want is not available on Symbian.

Re: PureView and Windows Phone

"True the images are processed directly by dedicated hardware but the OS has to be able to use the dedicated hardware and allow things such as passing the huge volume of data directly from the camera processing on the dedicated chip to the screen graphics without passing it through layers of software."

That's wishful thinking, sorry. Almost anything that in regard to a captured picture (including image manipulation) is done inside the imaging processor. What you get on the phone screen has been vastly downscaled before by (yes, you guessed it!) the imaging processor, so the amount of data that leaves towards the GPU is tiny anyways.

And yes, even on Symbian there are a dozen or so software layers between most of these stages as there are on any modern phone OS. And that is no problem whatsoever.

They key is in the imaging hardware, not in the OS. And we will most certainly see similar hardware on a Nokia WP8 phone sooner or later (better sooner if Nokia wants my money).

This latest version of Symbian could well have kept Nokia in the game

No, it couldn't. Even the latest Nokia Belle is stuck at a level comparable somewhere at Android 1.6 and 2.1. It's not Symbian's fault, it's Nokia's. Converting S60 (which was designed for non-touch devices) into a touch interface didn't work well, there are just too many oddities that other phone OSes which were designed for touch from the onset haven't. Nokia never had a proper roadmap, updates have always been delayed for months, and often instead of fixing problems just introduced new problems and took away functionality. Nokia is, plain simply, crap at doing software.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter that Symbian had apps and something like app stores years before the first iPhone came out (my SE P990i had an app store, and with UIQ also a GUI that was designed for touch screens from the start, unlike any Nokia Symbian phone). Symbian was certainly a great OS, but due to Nokia's incompetence it's development had stagnated for more than three years, which was more than enough time for other mobile platforms not only to catch up but to leave Symbian behind.

I like my N8 (which is at the latest Belle Refresh), but having used other modern cell phones (I have a HTC WP7.5 work phone and also two Android handsets running 2.3.7 and 4.0.4) I can't omit that the N8 feels terribly outdated and underperforming (camera aside).

There are no Windows phone GPU's that can handle the resolution

No, there aren't. There also aren't any for Symbian phones (the Broadcom BCM2763 that's in the PV808 maxes out at 20MPx). That's why the PV808 has a dedicated imaging processor. Which can be used with Windows Phone, too. Or any other modern advanced phone OS.

It may also be worth remembering that the reasons why the PV808 was running Symbian and not Windows Phone 7 are that the development started before Nokia adopted WP and because they had more flexibility in the hardware as on WP8 (where MS dictates what's in the box).

PureView and Windows Phone

"They've done the typical thing. Produced an amazing camera on an OS which is able to support such massive changes to the entire way the camera and the graphics functions. They have given this a name and then applied that same name to an OS which can NOT do the same"

What a load of fanboy bullcrap. Of course Windows Phone can do the same, in fact any modern phone OS can do the same as the reason why the PV808 can process such large amounts of imaging data is *not* because of the OS but because the PV808 has dedicated processing hardware.

As the owner of a Nokia N8 (12MPx with large sensor) I am, too, disappointed that the new Lumia 920 comes with a measly 8Mpx snapper and where the 'PureView' branding has been applied to a mechanical stabilizer and a litlle bit better low light performance, but I don't have to lie to myself to make Symbian aka Nokia Belle looking like the best thing since sliced bread. From a user perspective, it's at a level with Android of 2009, and as good as Symbian is technically as an OS, Nokia always has had the by far worst implementation of it (non-touch phones running S60 when other Symbian phone makers were putting out touchscreen phones which already had true touch interfaces like UIQ). And some of the updates for what was Symbian^3 even made bugs worse or removed functionality that has been in there before.

The best thing in Nokia going for Windows Phone is that the software is made by someone else. Nokia can make great hardware, but they almost always screw everything up when it comes to software.

HP's Whitman: 'I will turn this company around – by 2016'

Sure, they'll sell you an OOB management card

" — but you wanted to actually use it? That'll be extra."

'OOB Management card'? Have you been in a coma for the last decade? Because that's around the time when OOB was still on separate cards. All HP ProLiants except the (soon to be replaced) ML150 G6 come with integrated iLO, and (aside from the 100 Series of entry level servers) has been that way for many years. The same is true btw for the Integrity servers.

iLO works out of the box. You only pay extra if you need certain functionality like KVM which makes sense as most data centers use their own KVM implementations anyways.

Now lets compare that with Dell PowerEdge servers where even on the 11G models (not 100% sure about the 12G but it appears that it's still the same!) even basic iDRAC (Dell's OOB solution) was an option (and not a cheap one!) on most PE models. And to get the full functionality (for which with HP you only pay for a license code) on a Poweredge this means paying for the standard iDRAC module plus paying for the iDRAC Enterprise module (yes, you really need two hardware modules!). And if you didn't order your server with iDRAC in the first place try asking Dell how much the upgrade is (if it is available for your PE model at all).

"Pay for a RAID card, and again for a license code to actually turn it on."

Nonsense. The current Smart Array cards work fine without any license code (as did their predecessors). The optional Advanced license is for RAID6 plus some other features only which aren't relevant for most users anyways.

Fuming fanbois flood 'flimsy iPhone 5 Wi-Fi' forum

but its not completely ridiculous either.

No, it's absolutely stupid. MAC filtering is useless as *any* means of security , as the MAC is always broadcasted in clear and easy to spoof.

It's as valuabel to network security as hiding your SSID. Soaking your router in holy water would probably be more effective.

Most of the current wireless APs use the unfinished 'N' standard

Nope. 802.11n has been ratified quite a while ago (and most Draft n devices got a firmware update).

"causing compatibility issues with future hardware "

Utter nonsense. If a new device claims compatibility with 11n then it has to work with 11n, period. If it doesn't then it's defective.

"just like it seems happened in this case."

Seems you have no f*****g clue what you're talking about.

New I-hate-my-neighbour stickers to protect Brits' packages

Re: What if...?

"If the rules now allow the PostOffice to deem the delivery complete when it is signed fo by a neighbour then you could have the situation where the person waiting for the goods is told that as it has been delivered to the neighbour then they only have a claim against their neighbour."

Nope. This would only affect the contract between the supplier and RM, the person who ordered the item still has a contract with the supplier for delivery to the address given at the time of ordering. Which rarely is the address of the neighbor. So it's the supplier who will have a claim against the neigbor.

GiffGaff: We've got no iPhones, but here's how to cut down your SIM

3 doesn't seem to have a problem with large monthly traffic

I'm using all-you-can-eat (PAYG) on Three for quite a while and apparently they don't care much about the around 50GB a month I'm using.

"To be honest, too many horror stories on The Reg front page alone over the past year for me to even touch them."

Same here, especially since the stories from friends are the same. They may be ok if reliability is not of concern and if 'unlimited' means less than say maybe 4GB a month or so but other than that I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole.

The mind boggles

"I can't fathom how someone using a smart phone could manage to download that much data legally."

It's actually pretty easy if your phone is a tool rather than just a toy. For example, most days I get between 50 to 90 MBs per day in the form of emails with large attachments (sometimes even more than that), totaling to around 1.5GB. Many of these attachments have to be forwarded to other people so they go through the pipe again, which means each month I use something in the region of 2.5GB for email alone. For my work I often have to download manuals and software (patch sets), which on average I would say make around 50GB a month. In addition, there are other things like a bit of web radio, some occasional video streaming (Youtube), the odd update for the satnav software and other bits I haven't listed. All fully legal. And yes, all on my smartphone.

"The mind boggles"

Maybe, but as I said not everyone uses his phone as a toy which is used for a bit of Facebook and Twitter.

It is unlimited at the moment

No, it isn't. I have a few friends on Giffgaff and between 18 to 20GB seems to be the current maximum of what they consider 'unlimited', and apparently they consider everyone who uses more than say 10GB/month to be tethering (and before you ask: yes, that can easily be reached without tethering on a smartphone, maybe not an iPhone, though; I'm using around 20-60GB a month on my cell phone alone but I am with 3 so that's not a problem as unlike GG they do have a network that can support data properly).

"It's just idiots have abused it as they always do."

It's just idiots who still believe the old excuse used providers who simply oversold their network capacity (and Giffgaff does that for quite some time!) saying 'unlimited' is not really unlimited because the top 1%/5% downloaders are ruining it for everyone. If they can't deliver 'unlimited' then they should have said so in the first place instead of making promises they can't keep, period.

Don't blame the users that they are taking GG by their word.

Intel CEO thinks Windows 8 isn't ready, insider claims

I would qualify as one of Microsoft's "Preview participants"

Maybe, but not as a useful one. It also seems you don't quite get what a beta program is for and why using workarounds at this stage makes you worthless as a tester or contributor. At the end of the day, it's very obvious that all you did was trying to make Win8 to look like Win7, wich is doomed to fail (if you want a Win 7 lookalike then stay with Wind 7. Simples).

I also have been with WIndows 9 since the very early previews, but unlike you I have somewhat forced myself to actually use Metro (which at the end of the day is nothing but a large start menu) and actually tried to understand the way all this new stuff works, and after a very short period (a few hours) the new interface started to actually make sense, and I could see many of the improvements that I now miss when using a Windows 7, Vista or XP computer.

The reason people are resorting to workarounds

"Your logic could not be more flawed. The reason people are resorting to workarounds is because they allow them to work more efficently."

No. People are resorting to workarounds because they are generally hesitant to changes. This is the same reason why many users cling to the old, bland and primitive Win95 start menue, or with every new Windows version claim the previous version was the best one ever (except for Vista which due to FUD spread by some wanna-by scientist and the press has cemented its image as wrst-ever Windows no matter what).

BTW: using workarounds during a beta program doesn't make a useful tester.

All you need to know about nano SIMs - before they are EXTERMINATED

Re: You Apple haters don't get it

"Why does it have to be a physical SIM? If there was a "SIM management" app on iPhone and Android that let you transfer it locally (bluetooth, NFC, wifi, whatever was available on both ends to communicate) or let you connect to the carrier to do it (deactivate on one and activate on the other) how would that be any more difficult than popping it out physically? "

Yeah, well, that most certainly works great if the phone with the virtual SIM on it has died, doesn't it?

Profs: Massive use of wind turbines won't destroy the environment

Germany and nuclear power

"!The ditching of Nuclear Plants was a stupid Idea of our Government."

No, it wasn't, It actually was a great idea, and probably the single good thing this and the previous government has done. Around 35% of electricity in Germany now comes from "green" sources, and this percentage is increasing. All the scaremongering by the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear activists about the lights going out in Germany because of the lack of electrictity has turned out to be utter BS. In fact, it has turned out that the nuclear plants weren't even needed, as even them Germany produces a lot of excess energy which is regularly bought buy neighbouring countries like France.

"In reality getting rid of them has nice side effects for us: France is building Nuclear Plants near the Rhein, the High-Tech-Fortress that is Poland is getting excited about Nuclear power and may even start building Nuclear Plants also (near the German border of course, so exporting is as cheap as possible and when something should blow up, the winds carry the radiation to Germany)"

So you think abandoning nuclear by the German government was bad because other countries are building power plants close to the German border (which they probably would have done anyways even in Germany had kept nuclear)? What a stupid argument. As Chernobyl has demonstrated clearly, it doesn't really matter that much where on the continent a power plant is going bang, it will always have a drastic effect on Germany (as it has on other countries).

Actually, one of the main reason nuclear has been abandoned was that if something goes wrong, a huge area is affected. This and the fact that the nuclear industry has clearly proven on every occasion to be completely dishonest with borderline on being criminal, and have a complete lack of regard for public safety.