* Posts by Sam

18 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2007

OcUK puts £10K bounty on the heads of DDoS varmints

Sam
Pirate

OC barred me

I returned a faulty mobo, I had tested it with another CPU, another set of memory, another power supply and it was certainly the mobo. I took it back to the shop and they didn't want to replace it. They wanted to take it in for testing and then replace it a week later.

I spent the next quarter of an hour outside the front door telling potential customers my experience, with no bias giving the facts only. The shop manager called the police who told him to sort it out himself I was not doing anything illegal. I got my replacement mobo that day, but I am barred from purchasing from them.

I don't mind.

I understand why people post AC, they don't want to be blamed for the DDOS attack. I don't give a shit, they deserve it and I didn't have anything to do with it.

Jolly roger, it should be flown outside the OCUK showroom.

GM shows off production electric car

Sam
Alert

@AC (Cars suck) an @AC (Rough math)

<Rant>

--Firstly, to @AC cars suck--

I would love to travel by public transport, but It would cost me too much (Time).

To travel the 15 miles by car takes me 15-25 minutes. Cost (I drive a diesel that does 50+mpg) about £3 - £3.50 a day in fuel.

By train ignoring the 4 mile walk it would take me 40 minutes, oh and to get to work before 9am I would have to catch the 7:35am train. The cost about £6 a day, if the trains run and I walk to the station.

To travel by Bus I would have to leave my home at 6:42am to get to work by 8:52am, because I would have to change bus twice once with a half hour wait. It would also be across 2 companies so I would need two bus passes. Cost God knows not prepared to try it.

When they sort out public transport I will use it.

My wife on the other hand takes the bus into Birmingham daily as it is reliable and only £47 a month. Shame about the other passengers who are sometimes violent and generally ignore the smoking ban.

</Rant>

-- To @AC, Rough math.. --

I agree with you totally, If I could by a car that did 40 miles a day on one charge I would get one.

Electricity costs me £0.14 per Kwh,

UK Plugs can support 13A @240V roughly 3Kw, times that by 4 hour charge (In the article somewhere) equates to 12.5Kwh in a day. This is only £1.75 in electric! half my daily fuel usage today!

If we generate this electric with nuclear power the carbon is (close to) zero. If I put a 150Watt Solar panel on my roof (<£700 from Maplins) I would save another 17p a day and be even greener!

On the other hand If I charged it at work, I would get too and from work for free!

The Hadron Collider: What's it all about, then?

Sam
Joke

RE: Nice article

I think you will find that this is not a typo, "as fast as speed as possible, It is factually incorrect.

Chuck Norris can run faster than protons in the LHC.

Chrome-fed Googasm bares tech pundit futility

Sam
Linux

Google chrome not an OS but are they just testing the water

I want to start out by making one thing clear, I don't think Chrome is an OS, it is just another browser.

However, is it the beginning. Are Google planning on creating a GLinux distro that runs Chrome, nothing else just Chrome. For your average broadband enabled home user would they notice if they did not have office but had Google Docs? Would they care if they could get it on a CD in Dixons the same way you used to be able to get Freeserve disks?

I personaly would not get sucked into such a ploy but it does not mean that I can say the same for Mr Joe Luser ?

Just a though.....

PS Why no halo/horn icon for Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Microsoft starts stoking hype for Windows 7

Sam
Unhappy

Only one problem with Vista / Server 2008

I use and recommend vista at work. I have found Intel machines with XP to be unstable, the AMD processor driver seems to fix most of these issue's in XP but to be consistent I recommend Vista.

I find Vista to be relatively quick on a modern machine, and it hums along nicely as long as you have got a very fast hard disk or a RAID config and lots of RAM (4GB +). I don't understand why they bothered with a 32 bit version though its useless with its 3 1/2 Gb memory limit?

I do however have one HUGE annoyance with Vista, and it has spread to windows server 2008.

The networking stack has been written by a bunch of drunken monkeys on acid.

I regularly find that the a network connection will refuse to pick up an address from a DHCP server, and when you nail an address in place it still refuses to work, The only solution I have found is to run a virtual machine with XP or Ubuntu and bridge the network card... Yes the VM then can use the network while the host still tells you that the network is screwed..

I find I have this problem on Dell hardware, Gigabyte motherboards, Asus motherboards and one HP laptop that I have recently used. It does not always happen but when it does you bet I need it to work urgently.

I Don't hate M$ as they pay my bills but I do wish they could get the basics of an OS right before they ship it, at least the Linux guys can do it and most of them are not paid to work on it.

Microsoft running on at least 220,000 servers

Sam
Gates Horns

@stuart Thompson

We have a Dell Power edge 6800 with a single 3Ghz Xeon, 20Gb of ram and 8 internal SAS disks. I have measured its power usage and it runs most of the day between 640 and 680 watts. The most impressive thing about the system is that the power supplies are rated at 1.8Kw each. As such I can wel believe a bigger quad socket server with a proper amount of ram could use 900+watts.

Shame Microsoft don't have to run their own power station to run these buggers, if they did we could get old green peace on there case.

Brown's website is Web2.0tastic

Sam
Paris Hilton

I looked at the video section and was disapointed

I went to the site and looked at the video section. I was very disapointed, Not one video of Gordo with a pie in his face. I was hoping for a good video of him in a fight or smokin the reefa but none.

>Paris do I need to explain the video link?

Texas Memory Systems makes mighty big RAM SSD

Sam
Gates Horns

@ Theotherone

Yes it can run Crysis as long as it is on XP, put Vista on this and it will kill the flash disks

Samsung fires up 128GB SSD massive attack

Sam
Coat

OCZ drives are already out

OCZ drives can already be found on dabs and aria,

32Gb versions are around a £100.

The ones on dabs claim 120MB/s read and 80MB/s write (Mega Bytes) with a seek time of 0.35ms (Milli seconds)

In Reg standard units thats a read speed of about 32*10^7 Librearian reading bits a second and about 18*10^7 Math teacher writing a second.

With a seek time of about 1/4 of a welsh woolly blink seek time.

- Ill get my coat.

T-Mobile not alone in spinning price hikes

Sam
Coat

My two cents

Firstly try this site to find the 01 / 02 number behind the premium rate number.

http://www.saynoto0870.com/

really annoys them when you don't use the 0845 / 0870 number to ring them because they don't recoup any of the money spent staffing the call centre.

Secondly

Ofcom are introducing 03 numbers that are non geographic but charged at local rates.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5222876.stm

Other than that VoIP all the way.....

....Mines the jacket with the Snom logo on the back.

PS3 sale price spurs costs Sony dear

Sam
Flame

I droped my PC off at work

I spent £650 last march upgrading my PC so it would run Supreme commander, I played lots of other games on it until I bought my PS3.

Then I found that I didn't have to upgrade my video card every 6 months (£200+ down the drain) I didn't have to spend £300 on a new windows licence every few years (cant play DX10 on win xp).

The final boot for PC gaming was when I bought Forged Alliance pack for Supreme commander, and found that even though I had 4Gb ram, 3 SATA2 disks in a RAID 5 config and a £200 video card (when I bought it 1950XTX) I still had to run it at mid settings and accept the stutter while playing.

No more, I buy a game for my PS3 and it works... No messing it just works and any game that comes out for the next few years will Just work.

Now my PC lives in my office, I run Virtual Machines on it, only thing its good for now.

PS I Still have my laptop at home to browse the net, PS3 is good but the browsers not a match for Fire fox/Oprea.

Sony confirms major PS3 firmware update features

Sam

Loading times

GTA4 loads quite quickly on the PS3... I get the loading pictures and music for 40 seconds when I start the game a black screen with Loading - $Level name$ when it loads my save game and thats it. No loading between islands or anything. and the viewing distance is huge. (shadows have a habit of popping into existance in really fast cars but I don't care too much)..

As far as in game XMB, I can't wait. Want to be able to chat with my mates while they are playing GT5.

Trophies not really my thing though.

Trend, Sophos and McAfee flunk Vista SP1 anti-virus tests

Sam
Dead Vulture

@Dave Harris and @Gordon Fecyk

DON'T block port 25, how will anyone send any legitimate email?

I have to ask my customers to change there home broadband provider so that they can reach our mail server because some ISP's already do this.

Also It would drive me mad to think that I couldn't run my own Mail server at home on my home broadband, Thats how I got into the game while at Uni? how can you learn if you cant use tools for home users to prepare for the real world.

In my opinion the problem is that not enough people are educated in using anti virus software and windows updates.

As for Gordon Fecyk, if you have a pc receiving email your will receive viruses, our mail server updates its definitions every hour and we still get the odd new virus through (about once a quarter) which then gets onto a customers machine and before you know it they have opened it up in outlook and become infected, I wouldn't know about these rouge viruses unless they had anti virus software that caught the sods on the next update cycle (again once an hour). Oh and as a tip use different anti virus manufactures in different places as then if one doesn't catch it the other software might. IE use Kaspersky for your email server and Symantec for client desktop systems.

ps Gordon If you think that by not running a virus checker you as safe then be my guest but I think your mad.

Has your shifty foreign neighbour got 16 mobes?

Sam
Paris Hilton

I heard this on the radio and thought .....

There is a guy up the road from me who buys huge quantities of fertiliser, and diesel. You know who he is, the one driving the dirty land rover, wares a flat cap (tweed I think) has a tractor and lots of land.The address is something like cherry hill farm can't remember the rest. but I bet he is making bombs.

Should I phone them???? No f**king way. This advert and all the ones like it are just a way for the government to scare us into relinquishing our rights....

Paris because Brown must think we are all blonde.

French motorwonk savages hybrid cars

Sam
Flame

I want electric car

I drive 15 miles each way to work ( I can't afford to live any closer to work due to house prices ) Its all motor way miles.

If i could get an electric car to do the journey I would, As it is I have just bought a Skoda Fabia VRS (effectively a VW Polo with a different badge) its a sensible 1.9 turbo diesel (with a 130hp and 405nm of torque) which on my journey to work retuns 57MPG over a tank.

Tell me can I get a hybrid that does this well? Can I find an all electric car that can drive on the motorways?

And why is everyone so sure about little French cars, the German diesels are far better (performance/reliability/economic) having just replaced my old Xsara.

Flame Icon for anyone who loves their French cars.

Virgin Media stops the rot

Sam
Alien

Virgin customer

I am a virgin customer and I do not see any traffic shaping?

I hammer my line quite frequently downloading stuff on my PS3 ect, I only get throttled if I use a silly amount of bandwidth ( I have 4Mb and if i use 100% for more than 12 hours I see a 25-50% reduction in throughput in the evenings )

At least I don't have a silly cap of 40Gb on my connection as I have done more than that already this month!

Google, Yahoo! and Amazon sued over email patent

Sam

My latest patent,

I am going to try patenting this one,

A process where by an entity be it biological or mechanical that draws a gas or liquid from its environment or stored tank changes the chemistry of the gas and then expels the gas.

What you think? do you think i will get the patent?

When will this madness end?

Open sourcers rattle EU sabre at BBC on demand player

Sam

What about Linux

I use Linux on my machine at home, if the BBC follows this path then i will no longer be able to use their site.

I can understand using WMP and Realplayer as they do currently for the streams but cutting off those of us who choose not to pay the M$ tax is anti competitive.