Posts by Andrew Davenport

Why did it take antivirus giants YEARS to drill into super-scary Regin? Symantec responds...

But is this the tip of the iceberg?

What other exceptionally good and undetectable malware have they not detected yet?

Internet of Things fridges? Pfft. So how does my milk carton know when it's empty?

My Idea

How about stopping thrusting unneeded technology on the masses and just take a look, make a list and go shopping, like our forebears have been doing for centuries. Get this, you need 1 pen and 1 piece of scrap paper!!

Smart fridge = dumbass human.

No wonder the world average IQ is sinking, we as a species no longer need to think any more.

But to be honest, how many things do we have now that have been sold as "convenience" which are now being abused to commit fraud, crime, stealing of information etc etc.

The more we subscribe to this nonsense the more vulnerable our private lives and data will be to the prying eyes of those who wish to sell us more unwanted garbage.

Reg hack hacked off by iPhone 5 repair notice

Pah

I am still waiting for them to fess up or for people to put pressure on them to recall and fix all the 4GS handsets with broken WiFi and BT courtesy of IOS 6.1.3 and later. Its either faulty hardware OR faulty software so FIX IT or replace the otherwise previously working handsets!

Not to mention the fact that since the latest IOS7 update my Home button mostly refuses to work without a great deal of cussing, swearing and repeatedly pressing it!

My next phone will NOT be an iPhone!!!

Google: Thanks for the billions in revenue, UK. Here are your taxes, that's ... £11m

Oh Goody!!

I employ people, therefore i shall stop paying tax because they pay every tax under the sun!

Oh thats right, my company is not big enough to scare the government :-(

But seriously, it is a scandal, if you do business in a country in any way you should be bound by the tax laws of that country, i would not expect to do business overseas and not have to adhere to their regulations.

Yes ok so they have a good accountant but the sums of money we are talking about are huge which does bring the morality question into play. This same tax is the tax that supports the public sector and public services that their taxed employess use.

Dominant web ad giant (Google) possibly 'weeks' away from Euro slapdown

I am for it because

Remember in the 00's when the boot was on the other foot Google, now its your turn! Also remember that BT got chopped up for similar reasons, it got too big for its boots and abused its position to give an advantage to itself over competition.

As an owner of an IT company I am sick, tired and fed up of spending time unticking boxes presented in various applications, downloads and software inviting me to install Google this and Google that, many less than tech savvy users don't understand or don't feel they have a choice.

Google IS becoming extremely intrusive in every aspect of IT and quite frankly their future plans to tie all your personal data hosted with them into their search engine is SCARY! Many people have jumped into the Google camp because they were not aware that there were other options.

Google is dominant and overly so, it is drowning the competition to force its own content, ads, maps, email, pick any Google service, in every search you do.

Time to wind you neck in Google, start paying taxes and start playing fair!!

Auntie touts e-babysitting ... and no £15,000 in-app purchase shocks

How About...

Parents getting their backsides off Candy Crush and spending some proper time with their kids playing proper games that involve talking to one another rather than pushing the responsibility onto innate devices that have ZERO educational value?

And yes I am a parent!

Half of youngsters would swap PRIVACY for... cheaper insurance

License to steal?

I personally think Car Insurance especially is a legal license to steal money from motorists, its essentially a ransom. I am 35 and for the first time ever my car insurance has gone down significantly enough to make me feel like i am not being ripped off, this is despite more than 9 years no claims.

Every year premiums go up and up with no rational explanation and every motorist is hit with rising costs.

I accept the younger generation are going to take more risks and i agree that the size of the engine in their car should be limited to a sensible size to ensure they dont have the power or the speed and acceleration to be completely stupid!

Its about time the insurance companies were investigated and examined to see how they justify the colossal premiums that everyone is charged and also why these days 3PF&T is more expensive than Comprehensive insurance.

Whilst i dont want to brand all young people the same as there are some very sensible drivers out there i feel they need to be handled more practically than to keep pushing premiums up!

Antarctic ice sheet melt 'not that unusual', latest ice core shows

Pardon my science but...

Doesn't the thawing of ice reduce the overall mass? I seem to remember from science that water expands as it freezes, so technically the sea levels should fall given that most of the ice mass is under the surface anyway?...

Penguin because they will be homeless!

Microsoft unwraps sysadmin-friendly Office 365 for biz update

Microsoft Dont Want Small Business Customers - FACT!

Ok, we deal with many small businesses, most of whom LOVE their little handy and neat (ok not without the odd quirk) SBS 2003 servers.

Now and again they will buy a new PC and a new copy of office, problem! Office Home and Business will install but Outlook 2013 wont work with Exchange 2003. No downgrade rights for Office 2010 so the customer is cornered into upgrading their server, oh look, Exchange is missing from SBS or rather the equivalent small business versions of Server 2012 so they have to buy ADDITIONAL licenses and hardware to run an on premise Exchange solution, none of which they want, nor have the budget to do!

Oh wait, there is of course an answer, buy a VLA minimum 5 credits of 5 copies of Office Standard which is a good £100 more than the Home and Small Business, cornered again.

Most of my customers are NOT happy and feel trapped, they dont want cloud as in the legal industry they have to prove security and in the cloud you dont really know where your data is and you cannot vet the security to fill out the endless compliance forms can you?!

So, its my conclusion that Microsoft no longer want these people as customers, maybe they are too small, not worth the effort.

I can see piracy on the up for copies of Office 2010 across the board and Small Businesses looking for other options.

Street View snooptrike stalks Siena

@anonymous coward

I totally agree that its pointless, not to mention that i am sure if Joe Public decided to go snapping all and sundry around our streets we would end up with a pretty quick injuction slapped upon us.

Just because its Google does not make it right or justifiable, i am all for being able to live with a degree of anonymity but this kind of thing just keeps pushing towards intrusion into everyones daily lives!

Paris because she likes a bit of intrusion now and again... allegedly

Why the iPhone's megapixelage alone won't matter

Camera on a phone?

Surely Apple should realise that its pretty bloody pointless when there is no MMS function with which to send the photos in the first place!!

I was shocked to discover this when i got my iPhone.

NHS orders mass keyboard clean-up

Bloody Hell!!

We used to fit piss covers to keyboards for nursing homes for £5.00 each, they could be removed, cleaned and put back on again. Lots cheaper than £133.00 per keyboard!!

Carphone Warehouse stares down BPI and UK.gov on three strikes

Simple....

Give people in the UK a fair deal on CD's DVD's etc in line with the US etc and people will buy more ligitimate products.

Keep shafting us with excessively high prices and we will go where it is cheapest/free.

I also would have less of a problem if it wasnt the record labels creaming it all too.

Vista SP1 on track for mid-March release?

@ AC Buying HP Laptops

You need to go in the bios and switch the SATA mode from native to something else, then XP can see the hard drive.

Dont understand why this would make a difference and i note HP dont supply the SATA drivers for XP for the F6 function.

HP Printers are getting worse, the amount of time i have to go through a server registry switching the print monitor back to the default to stop the spooler crashing and get the things printing is beyond me!

As for Vista SP1, i consider going from Vista to XP an upgrade, instant performance, responsive interface and intuitive layout (no where did that control panel applet go?? NO I DONT WANT YOU ASKING IF I AM SURE, NO I DONT WANT YOU ASKING IF I AM SURE I AM SURE EITHER - damn UAC)

The 'green' car tax grabs that don't add up

Arent people missing the point?

Why do these people not realise what in my mind are two very important points..

a) people will carry on driving anyway, they will either save somewhere else and use the money to fund the car or just buy smaller cars (i know this in part will help but its a minor point)

b) no matter how much and how hard you tax producers of CO2 you cannot buy back a cooler climate or fresher air. How can you throw money at a problem that is not tangible in the sense that you cannot add or subtract to it?

I think its high time the government grew some balls and forced the manufacturers of cars and those creating pollution to use green methods, you dont for one minute think that the car manufacturers have not already got viable alternatives (which reminds me of the spark plug that burnt 90% of the fuel in the cylinder, the product was bought out by shell and shelved and this was something that was invented over 10 years ago!).

Stop making the consumer clean up and make the people that make the filth responsible!

HMRC blows £1.4m on two-word slogan

Have they lost it?!

Once again we see government bodies wasting our hard earned cash for which we already pay too much tax, it seems the harder you work and the more you succeed the more screwed you get for it and then something like this pops up!

Well how about investing money so you dont lose my $*$*$*$ tax returns in the first place, i have been hit with 4 penalties so far even though i can prove it was delivered, bastards!

I think also the blame should be split to the people who get off on charging public sector this kind of money, hey look, its a public sector job, lets quadruple our prices!

Its about time the government were forced to undergo an audit and release statutory annual accounts like the rest of us, oh but no, because johnny taxpayer would realise where all the bloody money is going!

Met used 'dum-dum' ammo on de Menezes

Wrong Time, Wrong Place

Sorry but i am tired of hearing the media harping on about the actions of the MET that day and the poor way in which the entire event was handled.

If Mr Mendezes had followed the rules surrounding his presence in the UK, i.e. left when his Visa had expired rather than taking the piss like to many other illigals the MET would have had to take no action in the first place.

Yes the MET shot someone who was later proven to NOT be a terrorist, but he was challenged and decided to run at a VERY bad time.

He should never have been there.

ISP blows the whistle on router chip 'fault'

More than just the AR7!

I have had a customer of mine recently start upgrading their lines for the benefit of higher speeds, they were using the Netgear DG632.

Despite their support site clearly stating that the latest firmware will allow these to run at ADSL2+ speeds up to 24Mb the devices crash very regularly.

BT have repeatedly checked the line and said all is ok.

We tried the device on our line (100% stable with a DM111P up to 8Mb) and it crashed on that too, which to me ruled out the line and BT.

We sent the DG632 off to Netgear and they came back saying it would not crash but their test labs could only test up to 2Mb!!!!

How are they supposed to truly validate a device up to its maximum potential speed without the equipment needed to test it?

So, in this case i think Netgear know there it a problem with the DG632 and wont do anything about it, they are not offering a refund or an exchange. Fair enough the device is out of warranty but they have not removed the statement on their site about supporting ADSL2+ up to 24Mb.

So, what's the first rule of Reg Club?

The First Rule Of The Reg Club Is.....

.....Dont upset the BOFH!

You have been warned!

Microsoft versus BlackBerry versus, er, BlackBerry?

Exchange and Blackberry

Being an IT consultancy we have customers who are on both sides of the fence. We do however have one customer who has recently made the move from BB to Handheld HP Ipaq devices on the basis of ease of use, nice size screen, additional apps and extras and the fact that it relies on no extra software or hardware to work.

The feedback from the people using the devices has been nothing but positive in favour of the Ipaqs.

From and operational perspective i find the BES system somewhat cumbersome especially when you look at the setup requirements, the need for certain files to be certain versions before it will work and the amount of log files it generates on top of your existing email solution.