Posts by Patrician

OnePlus 6: Perfect porridge? One has to make a smartphone that's juuuust right

And a horrible custom Samsung android skin that will prevent updates being released on time.

Openreach consults on shift of 16 MEEELLION phone lines to VoIP by 2025

Internet goes down, so does your phone line; emergency calls, how?

Google Pixel 2 XL: Like paying Apple-tier prices then saying, hey, please help yourself to my data

The person that wrote this article seemed, to me, to have an agenda; basically stated it is, Apple good Google bad!

While I fully accept that it it pretty near impossible for any human to write a completely impartial article, I would like to see at least an attempt at writing one.

US, UK cyber cops warn Russians are rooting around in your routers

Re: Better security is a must

There may be "quality routers at affordable prices" available but a lot of people have routers supplied by their ISP and are not able to make use of 3rd party equipment.

Samsung Galaxy S9: Still the Lord of All Droids

I'n afraid that, for me, the Touchwiz skin Samsung insist on putting on their devices is a deal breaker; not only is it not necessary (none of them improve Android in any way at all), but more importantly will make system updates slow to be delivered and the device will be abandoned once the S10 is released.

2001 set the standard for the next 50 years of hard (and some soft) sci-fi

Re: Taking sci-fi seriously..

I'd suggest that Star Trek was successful because of the time it came out; the Apollo program was promising to put men on the moon by the end of the decade and previous series like Lost in Space, Invaders, The Twilight Zone and films like 2001 all had whetted peoples appetites for "good Sci-Fi". Star Trek debuted towards the end of the decade and benefited from all these things; but, looking at through non-rose coloured glasses it wasn't that well written really, it's just that the viewing public was primed and ready for The Final Frontier as it were.

We put Huawei's P20 triple-lens snapper through its paces

Re: Just to be clear ...

Sorry but I disagree, the camera capability, for me, is quite an important consideration when choosing a mobile phone.

Software gremlin robs Formula 1 world champ of season's first win

Re: Why not ban pit stops when the safety car is out.

Because then tactics couldn't come into play; bottom line is Mercedes and Hamilton were out thought by Ferrari at this race. If the roles had been reversed and Mercedes/Hamilton had taken an advantage from this VSC would there be as much wringing of hands?

The really sad thing that this indecent highlights is that, due to knee-jerk reactions for Senna's death back in 1994, F1 has been smothered by the rule-book and on-track overtaking is now a rarity in F1; and that is not a good thing.

Re: Easy to blame the VSC

I believe that most of the teams have spent some time trying to reducing the size of the air intake apertures in this years car designs; it looks like they may have gone to far.

Re: Follows old adage...

Have to agree with you, I'd love to see the tams given back the freedom to innovate and try different things; in the last years we've seen triple diffusers, blown diffusers, F-Ducts and all manor of innovations banned under some grey area of the rule book. All in the name of making F1 cheaper, but F1 was never "cheap" to be a part of and it shouldn't be; it's supposed to be the pinnacle on motor sport, not just for driver ability but for innovation in engineering and design to, and at the moment it's being smothered by this drive for "cheapness".

A smartphone recession is coming and animated poo emojis can't stop it

Re: God you luddites are boring

I agree with everything you've posted but I sure hope you've got a pair of asbestos under pants for the inevitable flames that are going to come your way ....

Re: @Dave 126

Most decent sized towns will have a shop that can replace mobile phone batteries; at a cost of course.

Microsoft says 'majority' of Windows 10 use will be 'streamlined S mode'

Re: Games, anyone?

The reason most people stay with Windows is because it supports the software that they want to use, whether that is games or home/office and hey know how to use it. Linux has come on in it's support for games but it's still way behind Windows and there is no Linux equivalent of the Outlook/Word/Excel combination.

Yes, I know there is Open Office and others and they do work; just not as well or as intuitively for Joe Public I'm afraid. Top all this off with sporadic vendor hardware support and, sometimes, needing to head to console to carry out something that it Windows is just a few mouse clicks, and it's a non-started I'm afraid.

US Army warns of the potential dangers of swarming toy drones on US soldiers

Re: drones

But, if they're all flying on different flight paths could it be called a "swarm"? Generally the term is used for flying insects that are grouped together and flying as a unit on the same path, speed and height.

Samsung's Galaxy 9s debut, with not much other than new cameras

My Nexus 6P 64GB still does everything I need of it and, surprisingly, the battery is still good for a full days heavy use or a couple of days light usage.

I must admit that the S9+ does look nice but, apart from the camera, does nothing more than my 6P so I'll be keeping it for another year at least and maybe longer.

America yanked from the maws of cellphone complaint black hole

Internet Service Providers seem, the world over, to be a law unto themselves; some areas of the US seem to have really been dealt a bad hand though.

It's about time that the words "up to" are no longer legally able to be used buy ISP's, the technology today is such that they should be able to provide an reasonably accurate assessment of expected up and download speeds at any given property.

The fact that VM in the UK for instance can advertise legally "up to 200MB download speeds" when they are fully aware that those speed aren't ever achievable at peak times (16:00 to 23:00 and all weekend). Laws need to be passed and enforced that make them state in their ads the *speed that can be expected at peak times* and not some pie in the sky theoretical maximum.

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

Are you sure it wasn't CONFIG.SYS they edited? I'm pretty sure I remember that trying to "Edit MSDOS.SYS" just in resulted in several beeps from the PC speaker and a few (four or five) random symbols being displayed in "EDIT"?

Use ad blockers? Mine some Monero to get access to news, says US site

Re: Ads

"...I know people will say "any site that won't let be view with my adblocker switched on i will not visit", but will they really be bothered by you not using their site and not gaining them any revenue?...."

They will become "bothered" if the "you" becomes a significant number.

Blockchain nears peak hype: UK politicos to probe crypto-coin

"...“People are becoming increasingly aware of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, but they may not be aware that they are currently unregulated in the UK, and that there is no protection for individual investors,” said committee chair Nicky Morgan."....

Translation " we need to work out how we can tax cryptocurrencies, and if we can't how we can stifle it's use"...

Australia joins the 'decrypt it or we'll legislate' club

Re: @ bazza

..And...?

Sorry but I fail to see your point, there are many things that have changed since inception, including the Royal Mail; that isn't the generally accepted practice today...

Re: @ bazza

In normal operation a citizen of, say the UK or USA, expects that anything they post will go through to the recipient unopened; they expect a degree of privacy. You're proposing that due to the possibility that bad guys *might* be using the Royal Mail to carry out terrorist attacks, and due to the fact that nobody can see what is inside an envelope or parcel, the government would be justified in passing a law that allows the Royal Mail (or equivalent) to open, photograph, copy and or record, the contents of any and every item that passes through their sorting offices.

Would you be comfortable with this happening by default? Could it be guaranteed that everybody at said sorting offices could be trusted with this responsibility? I doubt both very much.

Farts away! Plane makes unscheduled stop after man won't stop guffing

Re: How is this relevant?

We often talk sh*t here, didn't you know ...

Chrome adblockalypse will 'accelerate Google-Facebook duopoly'

I, like yourself. do no "learn about new products" through adverts; surely that is the very worst way to obtain information about new products?

Microsoft's Windows 10 Workstation adds killer feature: No Candy Crush

So, changing the UI on Windows 10 would make it not utter garbage?

From tomorrow, Google Chrome will block crud ads. Here's how it'll work

Re: Monopoly power much?

They didn't "block Amazon devices from YouTube", they blocked the FireStick and FireTV YouTube apps; both devices could access YouTube via their respective browsers. Also it is/was an easy task to sideload the standard, working, Android YouTube app on both devices. This was a direct result of Amazon refusing to sell Google devices.

The thing that really surprises me is that ad agencies really do seem to think that they provide valuable service and can't understand why we can't see that. The article in first link in this story says:

"....Ad blockers are also exploiting a real vulnerability: the erosion of stimulating consumer experiences online....."

They think that advertising can provide "stimulating consumer experiences"? Seriously? The only thing that adverts, anywhere, stimulate in me is anger. I hate that I pay more than £12.00 to go to the cinema but still have to sit through 20 to 30 minutes of inane bull sh*t ads before the film; pay more than £70 per month to VM but still have to sit through adverts; total waste of my time.

And that is the bottom line; it's not my bandwidth, it's my time they're using up and they don't ask me if they can.

UK Home Sec Amber Rudd unveils extremism blocking tool

Ah, okay, thanks. So any sites dedicated to "extremist material will not use it and not be affected; can't see this being to successful to be honest.

I'm a little bit hazy on how this "tool" will work in the real world; so it spots an "extremist item" on a website and does what? It can't take it down as it won't have access to the site to do so. So the best that could be done would be a message sent to site owners, which would/could, depending on geographical location of said website host/owner, be completely ignored surely?

Facebook gets Weed-whacked: Unilever exec may axe ads over social network's toxic posts

"Without trust, there is no data and without data there is no brand." ....

Bless him, he (Weed) really believes we "trust" adverts ....

Why aren't you being arbiters of truth? MPs scream at Facebook, YouTube, Twitter

Re: Unbriefed?

I'm wondering why he thinks he should be able to see it?

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

Re: Great Headline, Register

The original short story was The Sentinel and this was suggested as a start by Clark when Kubrik came to him with the idea of "a good science fiction film". Development of the book and film carried on, pretty much, side by side.

This is documented in the book The Lost Worlds of 2001.

A Hughes failure: Flat Earther rocketeer can't get it up yet again

Re: "Curvature" proves nuthin!

I really hope you are playing devils advocate here ...

A flat earther will say that the curvature you observed while on Concorde (so jealous by the way) was due to the curved windows distorting the view outside.

UK PM Theresa May orders review of online abuse laws in suffrage centenary speech

So says the person aiding and abetting those that are creating the hate and causing the fracturing of our society.

Zombie … in SPAAACE: Amateur gets chatty with 'dead' satellite

Re: I wonder ...

Have a pint for the Granny Weatherwax reference ...

Aut-doh!-pilot: Driver jams 65mph Tesla Model S under fire truck, walks away from crash

Re: Where's the Elon Musk Attack Brigade today?

"Trouble is, if you call a spade a spade, most people will assume that it is a spade. Autopilot is a contraction of Automatic Pilot which by definition is "a device for keeping an aircraft on a set course without the intervention of the pilot". Most people know what an Autopilot is, so when Tesla call their glorified cruise control "Autopilot" the tool (as you call him/her) that is behind the wheel quite logically and reasonably thinks that this is akin to an aircraft's autopilot."

I'm pretty sure that even when an aircraft is on auto-pilot a human being is expected to be monitoring the aircraft systems and radar/instruments at all times; I don't think that anyone believes that auto-pilot can be engaged and the flight crew pop off to bed for a "solid eight hours" leaving the flight-deck unmanned.

'WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON?' Linus Torvalds explodes at Intel spinning Spectre fix as a security feature

The problem that I see with the BIOS/Firmware flash for Spectre/Meldown is that 90% of end users, once they've got their PC, never look for a BIOS/firmware update and wouldn't even know what such a thing is. So how do we make sure all those PC's out there patched (all owned by people like my neighbour who doesn't even understand how to log onto his router), once it is stable of course?

Meltdown/Spectre week three: World still knee-deep in something nasty

Re: A tactical mitigation/solution...?

"One certain old-school AMD chip was even "hard-locked", but this could be unlocked/overclocked if you shorted 2 pins."

With a pencil if memory serves ....

Who's using 2FA? Sweet FA. Less than 10% of Gmail users enable two-factor authentication

Considering the IT illiteracy there is amongst the general public I'm surprised it's as high as that; the general reaction from friends and acquaintances is "whats two factor authentication"?

OK, Google: Why does Chromecast clobber Wi-Fi connections?

Have two Chromecasts and an Nvidia Shield TV (Chromecast built in) with VM SuperHub3 and have never, in the three years I had both Chromcasts (first year was with SuperHub2), experienced this issue.

All three devices are powered up 24/7 too, so it looks to me more like a router issue than a Chromecast issue.

Cortana. Whatever happened to world domination?

The issue with Cortana is/was that the only time a "digital assistant is of any use is on a mobile phone or maybe a tablet; why they though anyone would want to talk to their PC rather than use the perfectly good keyboard that is attached to it boggles my mind. Can you imagine the cacophony of an office full of people trying to use Cortana at the same time?

Once Windows Phone was dead so was Cortana.

Here come the lawyers! Intel slapped with three Meltdown bug lawsuits

Re: We have only ourselves to blame

"....Prove Intel's bad faith...". ...

Intel knew about both issues back in June last year but carried on selling CPU's with that flaws since then; there is Intel's "bad faith".....

At Christmas, do you give peas a chance? Go cold turkey? What is the perfect festive feast?

Re: Goose

Agreed, no Yorkshire Puddings at Christmas; as you say, they take up too much room.

What will drive our cars when the combustion engine dies?

Re: Sigh

If you had to pay the full installation cost of you solar panels, with no subsidy, it would take you many more years to recoup the cost; and I am surprised that even with a subsidy you will recoup the costs in that short a time. I have a friend that has solar panels across one side of his roof and reckons to recoup the cost in around ten years.

...."It’s the end of the road for the internal combustion engine, right? Volvo will only make electric and hybrid vehicles after 2019 "...

Hybrid vehicles still use an internal combustion engine as a part of their power train; so hardly "the end of the road".

Hey girl, what's that behind your Windows task bar? Looks like a hidden crypto-miner...

Re: Business model?

I would immediately close the browser window and never go back to that site.

Amazon to make multiple Lord of the Rings prequel TV series

There is plenty of scope for good story telling outside of The Hobbit and LoTR books themselves; my reactions are tempered somewhat, however, by the fact that it is Amazon that has done this deal.

I would feel more confidence if Netflix was involved as they have produced some pretty good programmes, The Marvel series, Travellers, Stranger Things and The Santa Clarita Diet are all pretty good programmes. Amazon on the other hand has Man in a High Castle and, .... errm???

Why are we disappointed with the best streaming media box on the market?

The reviewer left out the best streaming media box; the Nvidia Shield TV. Does everything the Roku does but without a "skinned" Android; except for a few apps it's pretty much pure Android TV, is more powerful than the Roku and comes with a built-in Plex server.