Posts by Brenda McViking

UK gov's smart meter dream unplugged: A 'colossal waste of cash'

Re: Bring them on....

do a search then- El Reg is a good place to start - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/16/vm_fraud/

Re: "a £265 piece of kit"

Its an industrial grade product and has to last 10 years. It is not a consumer-grade item, therefore you won't get a consumer-grade price. Besides, the government has "mandated" them, and that means that the company that makes them will suck as much blood out of that government mandate as they can possibly get away with. It's a bit like anything "military spec" - build it for market price, then move the decimal point to the right.

Finally, someone's fixed THAT Android hole. Was it your mobe network? No

It would also appear

that ReKey is having problems and causing some devices to enter a boot-loop. They say it's fixed in the latest version, but "non-destructive"? a boot-loop you can't get out of is a major implementation flaw, and almost as good as bricking your device.

I'll be waiting for a few more positive reviews before I take the plunge, personally.

D'OH! Use Tumblr on iPhone or iPad, give your password to the WORLD

Re: You mean like this web site does....

But I, like 95% of the internet, use the same password everywhere - your argument is invalid.

Are driverless cars the death knell of the motor biz?

Re: I love the idea and desperately want one but what about professional drivers

You missed the point made, as punishment you can read it again. ALL the way through.

It's simple - by removing the humans and their cost, the money which would otherwise have been spent on them doing something that they no longer need to do is available for them to do something else. Yes, they're instantaneously unemployed, but their wages are availabe to them on kickstarter (put there by evil capitalist looking for a quick buck from the profit he made by laying them off), if you want a 21st Century example. They do something else and society benefits from the auto-captioning of cats software they create, or somethng.

Capitalism is the same game it was in the 18th Century. The rules haven't changed, just the quality of life.

ARTICLES without comment boxes - Climate, CO2, Anything authored by L. Page...

ARTICLES without comment boxes - Climate, CO2, Anything authored by L. Page...

Seeing as I have no where to agree with/ vent against Messr L. Page, I've created a topic as he suggested.

CO2 CAUSES GREENING: Having long been sceptical of CO2 rising = death and Earth turning into Venus, I tend to be interested in how biological systems manage to avoid runaway feedback mechanisms, and am not suprised when things like this come up. Hurray, we're saved! (maybe)

SCOTLAND and TIDAL POWER:

Whilst the firth itself may have lower estimates of capacity, the UK has a whole has something in the region of 15-25% of the worlds easiest available tidal resource. I've worked on tidal turbines in the past, and as with any brand new tech, there are teething problems. Once again the UK has a huge advantage - we had the sea protecting us against Europe for millenia, copper and tin mines making us a world leader during the bronze age, we had loads of coal (still do) to power the industrial revolution and to develop the railways, and now, in the 21st Century, we realise that we're on one of the strongest tidal stream resources in the world.

It is never going to replace fossil fuel, but unlike wind or solar it is very predictable, and hence many times more useful for electrical utilities. As usual the biggest problems with anything that makes sense seem to be the green brigade, who are scared that whales can't avoid things which are very large and rotating, or that rising waters in estuaries will destroy bird habitats. Whilst I am not hung up at all about CO2, reducing pollution in general is a fair plan, and tidal is a clean resource, and there is much to be gained from harnessing it. If the Firth can produce a mere GW, that's half a very large power station that doesn't need to be built on land. But the government will have to underwrite the risks, as no private corporation will take a gamble of this magnitude. Green energy doesn't look like it's going anywhere soon, I'd say it would be a wise investment of my taxes to make the UK a world leader in tidal technologies.

Pirate Bay bod and pals bag $100k to craft NSA-proof mobe yammer app

Why should strict privacy be the exception? - it's none of anybody elses business what I say to other people behind closed doors. That I have "nothing to hide" doesn't mean you can invade my privacy to check. You will take me at my word until my actions prove otherwise - it's a basic right of respect, and fundamental right of innocent until proven guilty.

Just because I use tools that protect my privacy != my activities are illegal, no matter what the do-gooders say.

In a healthy society, privacy ought to be the norm, not the exception.

Universal Credit: ONLY 6 job centres to get new dole system in October

Project - sham. IDS - half a modicum of sense

It's obvious that this is a textbook government IT project. And as such, baby steps are needed to limit the damage and give the firefighters the 3 years they need to get this thing fit for purpose, which sounds like what is proposed by IDS - Get the basics right FIRST, then start adding complexity after you've fixed the initial (inevitable) problems.

Yes, it's a proposal that is due a lot of flack for not getting it right earlier, proves that the project was poorly planned and executed and isn't going to deliver on time, but compared to the alternative, it's far better than just rolling it out regardless and bringing the entire system to a standstill, specially when it affects the lives of so many of societies vulnerable people.

Don't get me wrong - it's an omnishambles, but in terms of dealing with said shambles and damage control, (and I can hardly believe I'm saying this) I think IDS is probably doing the right thing.

Universities teach us a thing or two about BYOD

Poor you

Students have never paid more for the higher education than they do now. The tax payer is steadily reducing the available subsidies to higher education, and has been for decades.

Student with a broken laptop? good like trying to get it repaired without shelling out for it yourself. That's the beauty of BYOD - the device is the users problem. Bandwidth? Yeah, the university pays for it through a combination of corporate R&D money and student fees, and the taxpayer benefits from the enormous pipes that university institutions have laid between them (and a few taxpayer subsidies implied - good use of money IMHO).

I wouldn't pass too much blame onto the media studies students either - they pay 9 grand same as I would if I was studying engineering. My labs and full week of lectures cost considerably more than their space in the library and their 5 hours contact time a week. I think if you look at the books, they're paying the subsidies to train engineers and doctors - you know, these people that you and society has come to take for granted.

The commercially relevant example is that BYOD is done, and done well at universities. Yeah, sysadmins have a hell of a lot more work making their systems hardened and solving new IT problems that BYOD introduces- that's why they are paid to do what they do. For the time being, executives in industry listen to their scare stories of viruses and pen drives being open gateways to the pirates in the East who will steal all IP they can get their hands on (i'm not arguing that these are false threats), but the world is changing, and corporations will have to start tackling this problem head on.

I never said it was going to be easy - but times are changing. I've often heard that brand new graduates are often the cause of the most major security breaches at corporations. When that is happening, it's time to up your game. Restrictions that work with your current employees do NOT work with my generation, we've had years in school to learn how to circumvent filters to do what we want, and to use our IT for our purposes efficiently. IT security is generally not something we take seriously, but that is your problem to solve.

And seriously, when corporate suppliers websites don't support IE6 anymore, don't you think that archaic IT is holding you back? I've got adobe acrobat reader 4 installed here, it can't open half the pdfs I throw at it. It's getting to the point where I can either obey IT policy or I can do my job, but not both. Tell me again how BYOD isn't relevant in the corporate future? It'll be keeping job security for reg readers at an all time high for the next decade if you ask me...

EU crackdown will see tougher sentences for stupid cyber-badhats

Give the toddler a bigger firearm

So far, EU cyber law enforcement includes trying to lock someone up for a joke on twitter, trying to extradite Aspergers sufferers to corrupt regimes who exercise capital punishment, trying to jail 9 year-old girls for downloading pop music, and jailing those who provide a search engine capable of throwing up allegedly copyrighted material which technically is no worse than google.

I guess if the MBTA subway hack happened here with these new laws, they'd also get the book thrown at them. National transport infrastructure - check. cyber attack - check. Automatic minimum 5 year jail-time - check. Never mind that the guys responsible were security researchers showing flaws in security for the public interest...

How about they first prove they can apply the law properly - maybe then we can trust them with stronger deterrents. Until then, this move is idiotic, and bordering on dangerous.

Hitch climate tax to the actual climate, says top economist

If temps go negative...

Then yes, the government SHOULD have to pay out - what better incentive to crush climate taxes and misinformation - an evidence based, risk:reward approach which if they prove to be wrong, end up costing the government money. If it happens then they'll do a U turn on AGW so big it will cause the milky way to spin in the opposite direction.

EE turns up speed knob EVEN FASTER on 4G spectrum

I'm on 4G in Canada

I get a 1GB allowance, and you know what? It's enough. It's nice to be able to get a decent speed - downloading app updates doesn't take forever, and when I need something sent from personal to corporate email, it goes in seconds, not half an hour. Whilst I look forward to the Singaporean phenomenon of streaming TV to your mobile on public transit on your way home, we're still not there yet, but it's where we're heading.

Competition in pricing from O2 and Vodafone ought to be felt by Christmas in the UK. I can wait.

Welsh gov beats off Canada to hand £1m to Nintendo dev

R&D hub

It's 60 jobs over the next 3 years, so even better value for money.

R&D should be encouraged, and this to me actually sounds like a far better investment than a lot of the bribes that local government/councils put up to multinational firms to get jobs into the area and start a development community. It's a seed. It needs to be embraced by others in order to flourish. They've done the first step - and like any good investment, with it comes risk - risk that Nintendo will pull out as soon as their sweeteners dissapear, but if they're there for the next 3 years, then that is time enough to build up a regional hub for this type of thing. It'll be a waste of money only if they fail to continue the momentum they've just been granted and fail to get the full reward from their initial investment.

Microsoft caves on Xbox One DRM and used-game controls

Re: <3 Competition. Still not buying an Xboner, however.

And the subscription model will be their undoing for precisely this reason, unless they manage to bend the schools over backwards to pay for the education of the masses in their software. Worked very very very well for Microsoft. Arts budgets in my schools definitely would not have stretched that far, thankfully.

But yeah - prevent your younger users from pirating your software, and a generation down the line, no one knows how to use your software. I'll give Adobe 8-10 years.

Kim Dotcom victim of 'largest data MASSACRE in history'

Re: The feds are not going to stop themselves

Nice benefits - prevention of the global free market through protectionism and pointless and artificial delays in recieving media.

These institutions are global now, and have been for decades. They need to adapt their business models, not introduce more (easily curcumventible) barriers. I welcome the day where we get global releases and global pricing, and no more artificial meddling and unnecessary restriction. The internet allows it. We have all the necessary infrastructure. All that is needed is for the dinosaurs to die out. A balance will be struck, one way or the other, but as the internet becomes the distribution system, and treats barriers as damage around which it actively heals and re-routes itself, then I don't need any convincing that the media industry as it currently stands is on the losing side.

Facebook: We now have one million real admen stalking you. Huzzah..?

Re: Guess what?

Good for you.

I on the other hand do use facebook - it has it's uses - why only last weekend, I checked in the middle of nowhere in Canada in a little town and got invited to a cruise and BBQ from a mates old school friend who happened to have a holiday home + boat not 20 miles away and saw us post up on facebook. Few cold ones, free bed for the night and a wonderful evening rather than driving 4 hours back through the wilderness on the way home.

So I find all this social networking actually does have benefits, and through that I submit to a certain amount of profiling and tracking (or a significantly reduced amount through noscript and adblock) - I mean, it's not like you are forced to pay for it now is it? It opens up lots of opportunities that previous generations have never had, and could not possibly imagine. There are hundreds of people in my past who are a click and a message away if our paths happen to cross again, and this information is facilitated by these social networks. You don't want to be a part of it? you don't have to. That's the beauty of it.

AXE-WAVING BIKER GANG SMASHES into swanky Apple UK store

Re: Correction

Yes. Then to prove it is properly robust, enter it into the Mongol rally.

Samsung plans LTE Advanced version of Galaxy S4

Just because the UK lags behind...

...doesn't mean the rest of the world hasn't found usefulness for very high mobile download speeds.

Blame Ofcom and the 3G debacle, some of us have had acess to LTE for years. Here, I can download that stupid 12MB attachment that some "reputable" *cough* big four *cough* firm sent me on my phone, remove the offending bitmap image, and then actually get it onto my corporate email account without it crashing and burning due to email size limits. In Singapore, people watch TV on the train - you guessed it, streamed through their mobile. Not going to happen with a 1Gig data limit, but 5Gig is enough.

Not that the UK mobile network is all bad - I mean at least you don't have to pay to recieve phonecalls or messages as a matter of course, and there is actually enough competition to have sub 3-yr contracts...

But yeah - maybe we should all slow back down to 14.4k dialup - should keep the loom smashers happy, eh?

I think there are 2 problems with Samsung. 1) they're trying to keep the investors and banks happy, who are reliant on exponential, infinite growth to keep up with their predictions of ever-increasing profit. Even Apple are struggling with that one, and they have lots of wealthy fanbois throwing money at them.

2) They keep announcing more variants of the S4. It's been out what, a month? and already - "btw if you wait a bit, we're doing a waterproof version" oh, and a "different coloured version other than black or white" and a "LTE-Adv version," and "a mini version which isn't really an S4, but we're calling it the S4 mini."

It's no wonder no one is buying the flagship model - you've announced that there will be better versions coming out in a short space of time - way to put off those who want the latest and greatest and want it to last more than a month. Take a lesson from apple, gulfstream, all the automotive manufacturers - and keep your development models under wraps until they're almost out the warehouse door, otherwise you harm sales.

Police 'stumped' by car thefts using electronic skeleton key

Re: Sonic Screwdriver

There is a defense - stop using security through obscurity. History has told us a thousand times over - It NEVER works. If US defense contractors have had half their secrets spilled with their security budgets, then I'm not going to be the least bit surprised if automotive manufacturers have leaks.

And get the guys creating the "secure" systems talking to those who break them. The former don't think outside the box enough, and the latter are never taken seriously enough, or worse, they're criminalised. The entire industry needs a change of mindset- quite how automotive industries expect a proprietary secret such as a key fob switching algorithm to remain secret for the lifespan of your average car (15 years or so) would be laughable, was it not so serious.

Microsoft's Windows 8.1 secrets REVEALED ... sort of

Re: FrankenSystem

We have a phrase for it in business.

"Not fit for purpose"

Thank god we've just had our IT modernisation program. We'll be using Windows 7 for at least the next 5-10 years.

Apple reveals bare bones iPod touch

Re: Planned obsolescence

I worked out a long time ago that if you pay apple any money at all, you'll get the device in question, which will work well for a year, and then they lose all interest in you whatsoever. I remember being treated incredibly rudely in an apple store after a faulty iOS update bricked my device, due to a dent being present in the casing (which obviously was absolutely nothing to do with the problem - I managed to solve it myself in the end.)

Android at least has ways and means of keeping old devices working, and paid-for apps tend to work on most available flavours. seems iOS apps just stop working every time an update to iOS happens, and sod you if your device is deemed by apple to not support the update. That's not to mention the fact that they "decide" what is good for you and what you can and can't do with what belongs to you.

I am not prepared to put up with that attitude, so I exercise the only right I have - to vote with my wallet.

Oi, butterfingers! Drop your mobe in a pint? Hope it's not an iPhone

Re: Half a second?

So this is actually reasonably good news - I'm fairly sure I can extract said android phone from said pint/ toilet bowl/swimming pool, pop the back and remove the battery in this amount of time thus removing the electricity from the equation. Pop in some rice/silica gel desiccant, leave in the airing cupboard for a day or two, and fingers crossed, it'll survive the ordeal.

With an iphone, you have to remove the battery - oh wait, no, sorry - unlock it, hold down the power button, swipe, and wait for a shutdown, still waiting, oh darn, it's shorted. Back to apple it is then. Still, at least their customer service is top notch...

Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat

Re: It's £399

You're all screwed. I was contacted directly by the FBI to see if my account had been hijacked by these people promising people money turning out to be Nigerian scammers. They promised that if I donate $300 to the UN World Health Organisation's refugee orphans compensation scheme fund, they'll send Interpol out to recover the $6,500,000 money I lost. All I need to do is give them the account details - easy!

Brilliant thing is, that I never got scammed in the first place - they must have accidently thought I was one of you lot, so I donated the money this morning via Western Union and will be laughing all the way to the bank with your money when it comes through from the FBI Director General of MI5!

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

Re: Anyone who still believes that insurance drops at 25 is hopelessly deluded

My insurance premium aged 22 with 0NCB was 800 quid. The reason? actuarial spreadsheets can prefer you if you go against the norm. I bought a powerful 200HP RWD sports car rather than a fiesta. It's decreased every year since. Telemetrics would have given me 50 quid off. A tracker put 250 quid extra on - Thinking logically about things doesn't work with insurers, mostly because human beings do lots of illogical things.

I'd rather the government changed the law to insure the car, rather than the driver. Tie it in with tax, reduce complexity, watch the uninsured driver rate fall off a cliff. Fairer for all breeds of motorists without penalising young people too heavily - they need more training and experience, not higher premiums, it's hard enough to get a job as it is, much less so if you need a car and submit to being extorted before you can even apply...

Rolls-Royce climbs aboard Bloodhound SUPERSONIC car

Re: Lucky

Lucky? Rubbish. You make your own luck.

Guess what - going around begging, borrowing and insistantly bugging people for free equipment, money and hours does alienate you from certain people - that's what he does. He did it for Thrust 2, and was successful. He did it for Thurst SSC, and was successful. Now he is doing it for Bloodhound SSC.

This is a project being down on a shoestring budget of a few million pounds. Serious funding shortfall? what the hell are you expecting? a surplus?! This is entirely funded by sponsors - and each and every sponsor wants their own say in things. I've blown a million on an engineering project in less than 3 months with fewer than 3 full time engineers working on things. doing a project of this scale with virtually nothing is damn hard. Who else has the balls to go and do this - a proper, cutting edge engineering project, pushing the known boundaries of what anyone else has done, on a shoestring budget, getting as many kids involved as possible in learning about STEM subjects?

And you want humility? Please, Mr A/C 06:53GMT, what have you done that has inspired people? Did you phone me, aged 8, from the Black Rock Desert, saying "We've done it, we've broke the sound barrier?" Didn't think so. Richard Noble, on the other hand, did.

I'm an engineer now, working for a company that now sponsor Bloodhound, and let me tell you, he had a lot to do with my current career path. We need more people like Noble, not less, or people like me will say "sod engineering, I can make money in banking." Engineering NEEDS projects like this, projects that fire up the imagniations of kids, that are cool, that push the boundaries. Apollo created a generation of Engineers. It's been far too thin on the ground since, and the engineers are all retiring. So, Mr A/C 06:53, consider yourself completely alienated from the likes of me - I don't share your opinions one little bit.

Review: Samsung Galaxy S4

Re: Horses for courses, again..

No need for expandable memory - sorry, come again?

You're aware that these devices can record high definition video, right? and have 13MP cameras? I note that an awful lot of smartphone games have hundreds of megabytes to download now, but by far the best reason for having expandable memory is that you can go very very close to an apple fanboi who forked out $200 extra for the 64GB option and laugh very loudly in his face as you put in your $60 class 10 64GB uSD card to your phone... (in your head, naturally we fandroids tend to be non confrontational and just smirk inside when they see iusers being ripped off by apple, knowing full well our products are far superior)

Not to mention being apple to view your SLR photos/GoPro footage on the full HD phone screen by swapping memory cards on the road. Yes, it's pocket sized - so what? at 5", it's not far off a printed photograph you used to put in albums back in the last century. I'm aware I'm probably in the minority here with my swapping and changing, but just like 90% of car use is with 1 occupant, doesn't mean you deliberately choose to buy a car that can't take the wife and kids to the beach with the surfboards on the roof for that rare summer weekend.

I travel a lot. Removable storage media and batteries are an absolute necessity for me, and I'm extremely angry that Nexus and HTC are going the route they are (made my purchasing decision very easy though). The S4 is a pleasure to own, and aside from the official samsung flip case covering the volume button, I have found nothing that I don't get along with in my 2 weeks of ownership. That's a first, in my experience.

And finally, unlike an iPhone user, I don't care that you can't tell the difference between the S4 and the S3. Because my life doesn't consist of getting everyones approval for my purchasing decisions. Harsh generalisation? How do you know an iPhone 5 user walked into the room? Because they'll tell you...

Rules, shmules: Fliers leaving devices switched on in droves

Re: Surprise surprise

"I once went on a flight and left my mobile on, and we didn't crash. Therefore mobiles don't cause plane crashes." - Flawed logic.

I work with aero-control systems as an electronic engineer, and to be honest, if I can't be certain that they *cannot* be interefered with by mobiles, then there is no way you can. Not forgetting that the vast majority of fleet aircraft are decades old, and mobile radio standards have changed several times in that timeframe.

If you've got a lot of radio and wireless communication that the plane needs in order to function safely, then having a shed load more transmission devices enabled on board which don't need to be there presents you with some risk.

I'm not saying its a big risk, but just like switching on your hoover made your TV channel go funny, or hearing the bip-beddy-bip-bip through a speaker when your mobile is too close to it and receiving a text message, if you're telling me that mobiles cannot interfere with flight systems then I'm going to disagree with you until it has been demonstrably proven otherwise. Aircraft are not necessarily hardened against this stuff - it's an incredibly expensive process to upgrade them, and airlines operate on the edge of profitability for the most part anyway, so they're not going to "just-in-case." Would you go an a flight that was 99.999% safe? because we in the industry would consider that completely unacceptable in terms of risk.

picture it: ATC reads a takeoff clearance. The pilot reads it back, but some fuckwit in the back receives a text message close to the pilots radio transmission antenna, and the clearance is read back wrongly, with a bip-beedy-bip-bip in it just in the right place that ATC doesn't cotton on. Pilot rolls out onto the runway just as another flight lands thinking he's cleared, killing every passenger in both aircraft.

Air accidents occur when errors are compounded, and everything happens *just* in the right sequence for it to end in disaster. The mobile not being turned off was only a contributing factor in the accident, but perhaps the accident *WOULD NOT* have occurred had the guy turned his phone off like he was told. So next time, turn your phone off - much as most passengers I've met don't want to believe it, there IS a reason you're told to do it.

'Liberator': Proof that you can't make a working gun in a 3D printer

*whooooooosh.*

Your sarcasm filter needs recalibrating.

BlackBerry CEO: Tablets will be dead in 5 years

Har Har

sell sell sell that RIM stock then... One to go down in the list of greats:

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, 1977

“We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” — Bill Gates

“There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service.” — T. Craven, 1961

“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, 1878

“The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most.” — IBM, 1959

“Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.” - Thomas Edison 1889

“Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan.” - Mary Somerville 1948

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates (maybe)

And by far my favourite

“Home Taping Is Killing Music” - BPI, 1980s

Pirates scoff at games dev sim's in-game piracy lesson

To be fair

214 sales 1 day after release (read their blog) is pretty good going for a developer that no-one has even heard of until today. I'd be willing to bet that with the free advertising that this controversy is stirring up that they're getting a lot more on board. Yes - pirates are going to download it more - because it's easy and you have nothing to lose. If something is free, I might take it even if I only have a 5% chance of playing it later. You make me pay and guess what - I'll realise that I probably don't really have the time to play it anyway and it would be a waste of money. Difference is I won't be tempted later.

This game, which I heard about yesterday, ticks ALL the right boxes for me. No DRM - check. Free demo - check. Reasonable price - check. Reasonable use (3PCs/Devices per purchase) - check. Actively trying to support their product in a different way to bring pirates around rather than fighting them- check.

The only thing I don't like is their confusion of "piracy" and "stealing," but you know what - they passed all the other tests which is far better than the majority of developers - so guess what. I'm buying this - hell, it's the price of a (rather expensive) beer, which I'll happily donate to someone doing sensible in the crusade of finding a mutually convenient solution for gamers, pirates and developers alike. I don't mind supporting the game industry (sans EA) as generally, they don't get their kicks from sueing 9 year olds. Yes, they've made horrendous mistakes with DRM in the past, but they've been an awful lot quicker at finding solutions and learning than the dinosaurs representing the film and music industries, who really can fall off a cliff for all I care.

The pirates complaining that the game doesn't work is pretty funny, too.

iPhone 5 totters at the top as Samsung thrusts up UK mobe chart

Re: HTC One Black - no stock

Exactly the same here. Promised upgrade to a HTC HD2 from WinPho 6.5 to 7 that never materialised. Had to root to install android, which was great, but it was an annoyance everytime it needed a reset.

As a result, neither Microsoft nor HTC are getting a look in for my next "upgrade." Also, the HTC One, whilst shiny, is an awful flagship - no removable battery or uSD card? they're my main gripes with the flippin iPhone, for goodness sake.

Peak txt: 1.5 billion more chat app msgs sent than SMSes a day

Put simply - cost

Why are these more popular than text? because they're not artifically constrained in the same way texts are by cost. Sure, in recent years, you get many more texts for your money, but considering a text is just a 512 byte chunk of data, yet getting "unlimited" (fair use of around 5,000/month) is still paying way over the odds, even if your tarriff allows you to add that on for 5 quid, when you can get 500MB of internet for around the same.

"Why do we need so many" I hear you decry - well, I can tell you that organising an event/night down the pub/something to do with friends over a messaging service is much easier when everyone can see what everyone else is saying. This will also vastly inflate the numbers of messages "sent" seeing as if I ask 10 friends if they want to go out tonight and they all reply yes, thats not 20 SMS messages (Me ask everyone, everyone reply), but 100, as everyone else sees everyone else's replies as well. Couple a discussion over which pub has decent ale on tap this week and you've got a few 1000 messages, and a far better turnout, which helps the (decent) brewer du jour - so with messaging services, everyone wins.

SMS isn't going to die though, for one it works on GSM, and 3G data is still very much lacking once you're out of an urban area, (yes, GPRS can work but is flaky in my experience), and besides, teaching whatsapp to your mum is just asking for trouble, but she *has* worked out how to do this newfangled texting thing so that is reason enough for it to stay. BUT, the networks must make a killing from SMS and no doubt aren't too keen to watch that revenue stream dry up, despite IM just being a far better solution. But that's their domain, so they can do what they like, so long as they don't resort to suing 9 year olds for piracy.

Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

I have some beats, yes I was ripped off (and knew it, but the airport had no other noise canx headsets and I had 24 hours of flying ahead of me)

They're around the same quality as my Sennheisers which are probably 90 quid RRP (if anyone ever pays RRP?) so Beats are overpriced by factor of 3.

Equally, lots of fake Sennheisers around, in VERY convincing packaging, accessories and all, particularly if you buy online.

Sure, Beats are a fashion accessory, but like the fanbois buying up iPhones for the same reason, it is quite nice to have a lot of people with too much money reducing the cost of technology for the benefit of the rest of us. Beats may not be highly rated in audiophile circles, but they so much better than the crap HMV used to sell in packaging with "neodynium magnets" plastered all over it 5 years ago. Once people have heard music with half-decent earphones, they don't go back - and that can only be good news for the audiophiles. (unless they like being loners)

Reg hack to starve on £1 a day for science

3:00pm Sundays

In the supermarket- last chance for them to remove their perishable stocks before closing at 4. I used to hate doing "reductions" at this time on the 'floor because people act like vultures.

That said, I knocked EVERYTHING in fruit and veg that was packaged to 10p (full sacks of potatoes, bags of fruit, mother's day boquets, the lot), and half of the items would be fine for a week, the other half might want to be eaten within a day or two. You had to be quick - people would literally snatch items out of my hands once the sticker was on them.

It's luck of the draw though - at least one of my colleagues used the "reccommended reduction" button on the printer which knocked 10-15% off - resulting in a much larger loss for the store as we didn't sell it and had to pay for disposal, storage and the faster perishing of other food stocks sat close to them. Fine for use during the week, rubbish when you have 1 hour to move a quarter-tonne of produce.

Can't find your motor? Apple patents solve car park conundrums

Re: optional

Yeah, it's almost like if you mugged me now - I have 3 items in my pockets. Key fob, wallet and phone. What kind of opportunistic theif isn't going to take the lot?

"Oh you know what? business is good right now, I think I'll just take the wallet - you can keep the phone and keys..."

...said no robber, ever.

That said, of those 3 items, the only one that isn't tracked is the wallet...

Mobes' pay-by-bonk just isn't cool enough, sniffs Tesco bod

Re: Cards yes, phones no

Yes, at the moment cards I would agree are easier to use than phones, but I'd far rather have just one thing to look out for than 2 or 3, and that would be my phone. If I empty my pockets now, I have 3 things on me - a wallet with my house keycard (NFC) credit card (NFC) and cash, my car fob (wassat then? radio? NFC? it's one of these crazy keyless entry things...) and my mobile.

Why do I need to take this lot out with me? an NFC mobile phone can pretty much replace the lot. Yes, if I'm mugged, I'd probably lose the lot - just like if I was mugged right now. Battery life is also used as an argument against - but a mobile phone NFC can work without power. The most useful device that I'm always carrying regardless is the mobile. If I could do away with the wallet with all the cards, I would.

They should go further - smart tags on quick grab products. bonk phone against it, it's yours. No till / bored PFY / queue / time wasting required. Could even have a reciept on screen to shove into the face of a security guard / NFC for ski-resort-style gates at store exit.

Ten Windows 8 Ultrabooks

Re: No battery life listed?

The "Ultrabook" as defined by Intel, must have a battery life of at least 5 hours for the previous 2 platforms (Huron River and Chief River). The next platform (due mid-2013), Shark Bay, must have at least 9 hours.

There is absolutely no way in hell that *any* ultrabook will only last a short commute, unless you consider transatlantic your commute. Hell, I could play GTA IV on my 40 minute commute with it and still have enough juice left over to run word for an hour when I get to work.

My Ultrabook is quoted at 8 hours, and real-life use is around 5.5 hours (films/internet/music/photo editing)

Gaming will drain it in around an hour (my knees won't last that long with the heat the Kepler GPU pumps out).

RE:screen res, 1366x768 might be low for todays panels, but in the real world, I've yet to really think "you know what, Skyrim would look better at 1080p on low settings rather than 1366x768 on high." I thought I'd regret it when buying it, but actually, I've barely noticed. Note - this is not an excuse for laptop makers to stop improving screen res, but by all means let apple fanbois subsidise 2K panels for the rest of us for a while - I'm happy for them to pay the early adopters tax rather than me.

More Brits ditch Apple tablets for Amazon, Google, Samsung kit

Re: Jump through hoops, on IOS?

way to miss the point.

He was talking about doing stuff on an iPad which apple doesn't want you to do, which is far too much. I too have to jump through hoops all the time to get around the artifical (and pointless) limitations that apple apply to their technology.

For instance, I'll throw the oldest gripe in the book - getting music OFF the iDevice onto a windows PC. Why is that disallowed? On android, guess what - IT JUST WORKS.

If you want more examples, I can rant all day...

Samsung vs Apple: which smartphone do Reg readers prefer?

Re: Xperia s?

Get a cheap phone for £5 a month (n.b. demand the ability to be able to play snake) and spend the remaining £15x24 months = £360 on an SLR - you might even get a mid range Sony alpha for that. If the camera has to be on your phone I reccomend duct tape, but beware, you might look like an idiot when taking calls.

Re: Support

And this is exactly why I still reccomend apple products to my friends, even though I'd never buy one myself as I don't wish to bear the exorbitant cost of this level of service.

Me? I want a well specc'd device which I don't have to compromise on. I've had a camera on my phone since they came out, GPS since it came out, I require a removable battery, expandable memory, and a charge that lasts a full day of moderate use (though preferrably a week...) I like a phone with a party piece too - my current one does 3D without glasses for instance, but above all, my biggest gripe is that I do NOT want to wait for months for software upgrades as they come out.

Apple is completely out as you can't share stuff device to device and the restrictions drive me nuts. I have an ipod touch which I won in a raffle- it's nice, I understand the "just works" mentality, but I'm not sold.

HTC (HD2) wasn't bad, until they broke software upgrade promises (that and Windows phone 6.5- never WinPhone EVER again)

LG (Optimus 3D) have been utterly atrocious. Great design, loads of promise, let down by a company who half implements a UI and then runs off 1 month after it's released to work on something new. Then releases an "upgrade" (a year late) to gingerbread which sometimes PREVENTS THE PHONE FROM RECIEVING A CALL PROPERLY. I mean, seriously guys - lets look at the first rule in the book, shall we? No? okay. good luck ever seeing me as a customer again.

So what next? Apple out, HTC in the bad books, LG never going to recieve another penny from me as long as I live - the answer would appear to be Samsung. Contract just up and the S4 announced - what is not to like? I would have considered a Nexus, before it tried to copy the worst design features of the iphone - i.e. the battery & microSD slot. Or rather the lack thereof.

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

Re: Lack of Logic Lewis

He IS the editor.

proof: http://www.theregister.co.uk/about/company/contact/

Half of US smartphone owners have no idea which mobe to buy next

Re: I had these discussions with my Palm Treo 650

Yeah, I've found that "upgrade" generally means something worse, I mean, last upgrade I took, the price went up, and the specs were barely improved (but I really, really couldn't stand Windows Mobile 6.5, even if the HTC HD2 was actually a cracking piece of kit. HTC failed, in that they promised an option to upgrade to Andorid/WiPho 7)

Fast forward to my next phone, the LG Optimus 3D - again, cracking hardware, should be nice and fast and a decent party trick with the stereoscopic lenses and glasses-free 3D screen(yeah, yeah, gimmick but it never fails to wow someone the first time they see it). Utterly and completly trashed by LG and their forks of android which can only be described as a half-completed abortion which they've given up on. Ghost calling for goodness sake - when your phone DOESNT RING when someone calls it. Known issue for over 12 months?! Not a problem according to LG. bye bye!

So yeah - my biggest gripe, and the only thing that is making me "upgrade" each time, is the promise of a phone that has a UI that works to take advantage of the hardware beneath. For that, my next phone is likely to be a Samsung, having been burnt by the incompetence of both HTC and LG.

Hold on! Degrees for all doesn't mean great jobs for all, say profs

Re: Kids today...

As a recently graduated "Kid of today" I'd like to add my tuppence to this (As I was taught I had the right to an opinion... haha). Throughout school, we were told what we should do, at every turn. The first choice I made about my future was which GCSE options I chose - and even then, the majority were automatically chosen for me. Then came A-Levels, and we were told to go with our highest GCSE grades, and which subjects we enjoyed.

Throughout A-Levels, we were consistently told that we were destined for university. If you didn't want to go to university, then you were met with a "Why not?" and given no further help in deciphering your options. I appreciate the need for having to work it out yourself, but seeing as you are not given that freedom AT ALL at school, then it's hardly surpising when people are at a loss of what to do - so they follow the flow, which leads to university.

Then you have the unenviable task of choosing your "future," which bearing in mind you probably have no life experience up to this point other than school, is rather a difficult situation to be put into. Throughout school, you're told to follow what you're told. If you ask too many questions, the answer you recieve is "it's not in the national curriculum. You don't need to know." Teachers themselves are usually straight out of university, and have no life experience either - something I have only just come to realise. Those who do have experience are a rare thing - and I am where I am today because of them, and grateful beyond words toward them.

Is it any suprise then, that we get huge amounts of students whose only task in life thus far has been to get into university, then 3-4 years later realising that the course they did is actually of very little use in the real world? We were told and promised that this was the way to get a good job. "work hard, go to university, and get a degree," "Graduates earn more over their lifetimes than non-graduates, government research shows." I'm sorry, but as a child who has been given no responsiblity, and even had responsibilities actively taken away by the H&S brigade over the last decade, what the hell were we supposed to do other than go with the flow? The education system is the one that is wrong, together with the current values of society that children are to be protected from making their own mistakes.

I was lucky. My "flow" led to engineering, and I did land a graduate job, having got off my behind during the first weeks of university (while my compatriates were getting inebriated) to get sponsorship from a company for my impending 4 year degree. I landed on my feet. My school friends weren't nearly so lucky, and a lot are languishing in the catch 22 of being overqualified with no experience - and in a slow jobs market, who is going to take on the risk of a recent graduate who might not be able to get out of bed in the morning and might be useless? They're working in sales, most of them, preferring that to the dole, which is their other option. Quelle suprise?

But whilst I accept that managing your own destiny is an individual responsibility, I question why we were never told this during our education, impressionable as we were, and I cannot accept that we are to bear the full blame for this. It's not like we had a vote in how we were educated, was it? Your good selves, on the other hand...

Regardless of blame, it is a problem which doesn't seem to be being solved, and that, for me, is the worrying part.

Oi, Microsoft, where's my effin' toolbar gone?

Conspiracy

This EXACT thing happened to me yesterday, only in excel 2007. at work. Entire ribbon greyed out, no icons, no menus, nothing. Coincidence?

*dons tin-foil hat*

SanDisk cops to malfunctioning Micro SDs in Galaxy S3s

Happened to me

I had a 64GB mobile ultra (class 10) microSD in a GoPro Hero 3 - just suddenly stopped working, card around 2 months old. Showed up as a single 30.6MB RAW partition following that. Didn't bother with retailer as I'm in Canada (card bought in UK), but I sent it of to Sandisk US for about 50p and they replaced quickly - even offered to recover data I had on the card so fair play to them. Replacement is up and working in the same camera, will see how it works over the next few months.

Didn't think it was the device - just a dodgy card, but I guess I was one of the "few %"

Buzz: iPhone 5 arrives September 21, demand 'unprecedented'

Standard connectors...

...are not 19 pin for a smartphone. They're a micro-usb socket. Time for the EU to start a new campaign to make apple trump up the cash to right all the environmental wrongs they have and are continuing to cause by using proprietary, non standard connectors which directly contribute to the needless build up of electrical waste, and constantly annoy anyone who doesn't have the right plug when their battery is depleted around a friend's house.

As an engineer, it's my duty to ensure that products I work on have the highest possible environmental standards. Having a "converter" or whatever as they do currently is absolute rubbish, and flies in the face of the spirit of the environmental responsibility which created the need for standardised ports and chargers in the first place.

Yet another black mark for apple right there. If you're continuing the survey, no, I'm not buying one.

Max Payne 3

Re: Yet another game made for console and badly ported to a much better platform - the PC

Really? And you'd know, would you? Seeing as it isn't even available on PC yet?

I COMPLETELY agree that console ports are akin to squeezing out your eyeballs and crushing them in a nutcracker before putting them back in your face when it comes to playing them on a PC, but I'm hoping that the game's PC roots are going to remain in MP#3, otherwise Rockstar will join EA in the list of developers/publishers from which I will never buy another game.

However, Rockstar have categorically stated that the PC version will *NOT* be a console port (google it). I'll make up my own mind when I play the game when it is available. Until then, excuse me while I ignore your argument, unless of course you've already had early access to the PC version. If so, let me know, and I'll cancel my pre-order.

(I know Rockstar's GTA4 was a bad console port to PC, but the GTA series have generally been console games first and foremost. Not so with the Max Payne series.)