Posts by Andrew 25

FunnyJunk lawyer doubles down on Oatmeal Operation Bear Love

Re: Editorial bias for some reason?

"I have to say, with some sadness, that it's probably time to put the vulture out of it's misery"

My thoughts exactly (although only been reading since about 2004), I could cope with LPs buy american rants, he sometimes had a good point to make but the AO biased attack pieces and 'protected comments' do my head in - to give those guys the keys to the cupboard really is mind boggling.

I'm going to try the suggestions posted above. Hopefully I'll find something that is like The Register used to be.

Re: Disappointing coverage from El Reg so far.

Thanks for the suggestions, I've had enough of this bias and voting with my feet. Good bye El Reg, you used to be good

Menaced cartoonist raises $60,000 for copywrong

@You seem to be trolling.

oh dear

Hitchhiker shot while researching 'Kindness of America'

@Charles 9

"Nothing like the threat of getting what you give to keep some people honest."

And we came close to how many nuclear winters with that logic so far?

Sony PlayStation 4 will not be download only

Re: I disagree with everyone (not just my wife)

Kids - training, else they will grow up to scratch discs too, had to retrain the wife on that as she was brought up to simply stack discs on the side, normally shiny side down.

Dog - sharp teeth can't get at them when the discs are in a case and on the shelf.

"Apparently MW3 on XBox requires separate discs for mutliplayer & campaign"

No it doesn't. Source: I haven't changed the disc for months and played all MW3 modes

Re: I disagree with everyone (not just my wife)

If you are scratching and losing discs, may I suggest you are doing something wrong.

You can get protective cases for your discs, they quite often come with the game name on it and some artwork. If you put the disc back into the protective case and then put that on say a shelf with the spine showing, you can always find the disc by it's name and it isn't scratched!

OCZ's new Vertex 4 SSD: Faster... and slower

"in fact it is quite a bit slower at sequential reading"

Seriously? Seems a massively biased review to state that and draw graphs with non zero Y axis so to a cursory glance it looks like a 25% performance drop when 15MB/sec out of 550 is 2.7%.

I know 72% faster random reads, 3% slower sequential reads, 12% faster random writes might not sound as snappy, but this is The Register not the daily mail or metro.

So stick to the facts, put in a few funny quips and jibes when it fits but don't exagerate beyond all proportions and for goodness sake never ever repeat dodgy graphs like that

Samsung Galaxy S II punters get a lick of Ice Cream Sarnie

Asus tablet upgraded to ICS weeks ago

My Asus eee pad transformer tablet automatically prompted me to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich a few weeks ago. Asus seem to have really embraced giving Android upgrades to existing customers, I had several Honeycomb updates previously.

Only issue is I think it is crashing sometimes (come back to use it and looks off and won't power on without holding down power button for 10 seconds). Arh, just found out it is and is well known http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/asus-transformer-ics-update-leaves-tablets-unusable/2433

I've not had it that unusable myself, seems ok when I use it, Dolphin browser does hang but then I don't need to use it now the main browser is much better.

Women pick the family's mobile tech - and pay for it too

@stuart

My thoughts exactly - they should have just said that 100% of respondents said that they were either involved or not involved. But that seems to be standard practice with outfits like this isn't it? You decide the point you are going to make and then group the stats to make it look like it proves your point.

Official: File-sharing is a religion... in Sweden

@David Dawson ads complaint

flash block / ad block etc

Billion dollar telescope snaps galactic head-on

It'll probably be only $178 on Kindle

@Evan Essence

Before being a smart arse, trying making sure you are actually being smart. Hint: the photo of the 16 completed dishes shows clouds

Virus infects killer US air drone fleet

Sir, I owe you a beer

Amazon intros $199 movie Kindle

"Too funny."

you have similar phrases with different meanings too. The number of times I heard people in California the last 3 weeks on holiday say "Shut up" was ridiculous, apparently it's the new "no way" and means "I don't believe it", over here it means "stop talking" and is normally taken as very aggressive or rude.

Virgin teases with TiVo iPad app snap

author not very observant

"All we can see is a spotlights icon placed upside down:"

How about the 'Watch now' button, that seems to be a bit more intriguing than a buggy tv guide, will that stream live tv to the ipad or just act like a tv remote and change the current channel?

The 'My Shows' seems interesting too, might be easier to edit all your series link with touchscreen or mouse based device than with a remote.

But as others have said, Android please.

Ten thousand OLEDs unite in live Earth replica

Moon based Mars folk?

"what our planet would look like to martians on the moon"

1. Why would Martians be on the moon instead of Mars?

2. Even if they were to visit the moon, how do we know they would see light the same way as us?

Why not just say 'what our planet looks like from the moon (by human astronauts presumably)'

'Leccy price hike: Greens to blame as well as energy biz

Do not feed the trolls

Wow, you've now thrown in some Latin for good measure to go with your 'calculations', clearly your intellect is vastly superior. All hail Pypes our overlord

investment is not subject to the whim of the politicians

"So it's basically like a £15K bond - but you have to keep the money locked up for 10 years before it starts to payout."

ish, it starts to payout immediately so you get the £15K stake back over the first 10 years then for the next 15 years it continues to payout (possibly slightly less due to panel performance drop, but the payout is index linked).

With the FIT as an investment, you put £14K (in my case) in and each year they give you back more than 10% of your initial investment over 25 years. So ignoring inflation (index linked should sort out inflation), that £14K will get you at least £35K in todays money so £21K profit (plus smaller electric bills since you won't be paying for electric to run the lawnmower).

"And any payback is entirely subject to the whim of politicians."

No. As it's now installed it is a 25 year contract with a large electricity company (there are no tie-ins to an electricity provider as the FIT provider and your electricity provider don't have to be the same).

For new installations they could change the law in a flash (current rules are that new entrants will get 8% less per year, but once you are installed you get locked in at that rate (plus index linking).

To stop farmers milking solar panels instead of cows they are already changing the larger system tariffs.

@Pypes again

"I struggle to see the point you're trying to make."

My point was to give people real figures instead of your fag packet calculations. Also 14K is not a second mortgage, most people would think nothing of buying a car on finance but seem to struggle with something that will actually pay back and some (yes only due to FIT, I never said I wasn't making a profit without FIT)

"subsidise tin pot environmental statements on middle class rooftops"

Ultimately I'm not doing it for the environmental reason, it was a pure financial decision. As for that class statement, I merely see it as a way to get back some of my tax from the benefit class who are burning electric during the working week on their 50 inch plasmas and game consoles *ducks and awaits the flames and down votes*

My other point about light levels was because someone corrected you and then you went ape on their arse telling them their figures weren't worth shit when yours were the ones plucked out of your arse

@ChilliKwok

sorry for the multiple posts, only just seen another one of your bizarre figures.

"These have a MTBF of 7 years - and cost £2000 to replace."

no no no, they are supposed to last at least 10 years, mine has a 6 year manufacturer warranty and mine (4KW with 2 MPP trackers - because my array is split 12/10 panels on 2nd and 1st floor roofs) cost in the region of £1200-1400.

In doing my figures I assumed replacing the inverter once with a brand new one and ignored electricity savings so only used the FIT income against cost of install plus one replacement inverter. Payback doing that was 10 years, and if I was unlucky and had to replace the inverter twice then that would just wipe out less than a years FIT income.

@ChilliKwok

"I was quoted £17K installation for a plain 3.5KW roof array."

As someone else said, look for another installer, my 4kWp static roof array was £14k

"The only people profiting from this scam are the PV companies. "

No you are wrong. I will be making money thanks, the whole scheme has been designed to give 7-8% ROI over 25 years for house holders installing solar under the FIT subsidy.

@ChilliKwok

"3.5KW PV array, was 3000KWH per year = 8.2KWH per day on average."

Yearly total looks ok, but you then tried to make a comparison between an average and a single clear day in summer. I got > 26kWh a couple of days ago on 4kWp system. A good day in the peak of Winter will be more like 2kWh

@Pypes @M31

Michael 31 is correct, panels may be rated using 1000 W/m^2 however in the real world it is sometimes higher than that. Ultimately the peak light level is irrelevant since without a tracking system you won't hit peak for large portions of the morning and afternoon.

All that matters is the yearly output for 1 kWp of panels. Even Lewis admitted for london that was 800kWh / kWp (it's actually nearer 850 but I'll let him of that one)

@Pypes

"If you are of the opinion you can afford 28.6 m^2 of PV without taking out a 2nd mortgage on your home then go for it"

You need to spend less time with theory and more with real examples. Those 28.6 m^2 of panels you say require a 2nd mortgage is actually the panels I bought for my house, the whole system cost less than most brand new cars and with the FIT subsidy has a pay back of less than 10 years and will run for 25+.

So using my system lets go for a real world example instead of your theory

- 22 x 180Watt Sharp panels (each panel having dimensions 1m x 1.3m), so 3.96kWp

- 1 x SMA SunnyBoy 4000HF inverter

- Installation, wiring etc

- Sunny Beam display (a little gadget to tell me current power output, daily money made etc, just couldn't resist)

- My council being scumbags and wanting to make money out of me so insisting on their own inspections, fully chargeable of course (despite installer being competent body scheme, MCS certified etc), making me get structural engineer roof loadings -> councils in Devon don't try to extract money in this way and just let you get on with it.

Total cost: just under £14,000

According to pvgis (and I have checked those figures against other systems that have been running for a full year and they seem close), I'll generate > 3300 kWh. Since 1st April it's been 43.3p / kWh and without an export meter you get an assumed 50% exported at 3.1p / kWh. So that's 44.85 p / kWh which give me a FIT payment of £1480 a year index linked for the next 25 years (went up 4.8% this year).

Since install in March I have generated more than 1,400kWh.

If you can't afford 14k then do get a loan over 10 years, it'll payback the interest on the loan and you'll have 15 years of no loan and money coming in. Or get a smaller system, I went for the sweet spot of 4kWp, if you go over that then the tariff drops so you need to go over 4kWp by a significant amount.

@Pypes

actually for me just north of london, it'll be 118 kWh / M^2 / year, for a roof on a 3 bed semi (28.6 m^2) that equals 3375 kWh which isn't as small as you were trying to make out with your per area figures. My figures are not only based on pvgis but on actual real systems over a full year, no air mass calculations were required to make it look like I was being accurate.

I was what I thought was a heavy user of electric (cooker, tv, computers, tumble dryer) and used ~ 3600kWh a year so almost generate what I consume (obviously too much in summer and not enough in winter) but no one said solar was to meet 100% of our needs. But from your figures of 6000 kWh some people must be running a lot of electric heaters

unfortunately inaccurate

"Who's paying for your neighbour's solar panels?" You are -> yes you are and I thank you kindly ;)

Some of Lewis's mistakes had to be pointed out.

1. Prices - since I paid less than £3.5K per kwp you can stick those ridicules figures up your backside where I suspect you got them

2. My sharp panels have a 25 guarantee for 80% performance from Sharp and there are many (obviously older tech) systems out there that have been running for 30 years already

"The solar panels would never pay for themselves normally in the UK's climate" - stop peddling this uk weather is so bad for solar myth, don't confuse pissing it down a lot with lack of sun power over the course of a year; we have the same solar irradiation in the south east as northern Germany.

I'll grant you that payback without FIT with today's energy prices would be a struggle but as you point out prices will keep going up and soon even without FIT they will break even on their own.

£600 in feed in tariff since March, thanks for your money Lewis.

another effing assumption about british weather and solar

Try some facts - solar irradiation maps and pv estimation in europe:

http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/apps4/pvest.php#

Motorola Xoom

Couple of corrections

1. As pointed out by AC at 12:27, it will run 720p at full resolution - the controls are at the bottom only so not sure why you decided to perform dubious maths on the width

2. The controls always taking screen space at bottom would be a Google Android 3.0 thing not Motorola specific since it seems to be on all Honeycomb tablets, albeit some like the Asus Eee pad have had the buttons changed to nicer looking ones.

3. The Asus Eee pad was difficult to buy but as I've had my fingers on mine since Tuesday, it clearly isn't impossible (it's £100-119 cheaper but 16GB instead of 32GB storage - but then it does have a working micro SD slot)

Virgin unwraps three-tuner über set-top

Bright lights?

But will it light up brighter than a Christmas tree even when in standby. My v+ box has more bright lights on it when in standby than not, all the way around the play/ff buttons on the front of it. I resorted to putting black tape around the buttons just so I can watch a DVD without getting sun spots in the edges of my eyeball.

Talking of lights, why has consumer tech decided to put bright leds on everything, why do I need a flashing bright blue led on my router just to tell me the wifi is on? again, black tape on that too else the poor dog would think he was in a disco all night.

Android rebellion: How to tame your stupid smartphone

To the nah sayers of this article

No I don't have nor do I wish to own an iPhone, I am listing my personal experience with this as there appear to be many nah sayers about this article. I would like an Android one myself but am stuck carrying a work non smart mobile 24/7.

Wife has a HTC wildfire and I remember the market place failing to download problems only too well. It happened 2 days after getting the phone, for the first 2 days I downloaded plenty of free apps then the problem happened. Doing all the work arounds with clearing data (google, google talk etc) as per many forums discussing this issue didn't help at all.

Resetting the phone to factory, configuring the phone from brand new again would allow one of two apps to download, then the problem would occur, rince and repeat, it was heavily reproducible. It all proved that there was an issue in the cloud with my account and google marketplace.

I finally got it to work by converting the googlemail account to a gmail one and resetting the phone one more time, its now been a couple of months since then and no sign of this horrible bug.

@MobiFan - simple search (which I had to do when I had this problem) so the sources

search terms: android market place download hang

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android%20Market/thread?tid=52a229dd53c17551&hl=en

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=71b498c23af08300&hl=en&start=80

http://www.google.co.uk/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=57333ad3f9a8d554&hl=en

Think before you post