Posts by jolly

Google to delete Street View source images

Backups

It's one thing to promise to remove confidential data or images after a certain period but I often wonder whether data retention promises/policies are also implemented upon a company's backup strategy (not just for Google but *any* company or government department).

I expect organisations could hide behind the fact that backed-up data is not easily accessible and, therefore, isn't subject to the same retention laws or policies. I'm sure backups must be covered in law but wonder just how many companies overlook their backups when it comes to implementing specific data retention periods.

Humax Foxsat-HDR Freesat HD digital video recorder

@Liam Thom

"Also satellite based digital SD signals are much better than Freeview."

This depends on the channel but for the main terrestrial channels freeview bitrates are actually higher by around 10%. So SD quality should be better over freeview than freesat in most cases but this, of course, depends on the quality of the decoder hardware.

Cisco Linksys Media Hub 500GB home NAS

Gigabit?

If it took 2 hours to transfer 20 gig of music + video that's 2.8mbyte per second. So it's actually slower than my WD NAS drive which clocks around 7mb/sec (and I thought that was slow).

Surely when they claim something's gigabit they really should mean just that.

(I'm assuming that the reviewer's computer isn't the bottleneck here)

Brits decline to 'think outside the box'

it gets dark

Whenever I hear anyone say "at the end of the day" I immediately interject with "it gets dark". I've had to do it multiple times in separate meetings but do it EVERY time I hear that phrase in the hope that people will eventually get the message that it's irritating and lazy.

My other pet hate is "it's still early doors". EARLY DOORS? What's that all about?

IBM solves world's 'paper or plastic' crisis

@Sam

"Stephen Hawking is on his way round to run you over very slowly."

First time I've laughed out loud in the office for quite some time! Thanks!

Why flying cars are better than electric ones

@david

"...give them three and I'll be staying at home."

I hope that's the home with the re-inforced concrete roof!

Ofcom pulls plug on wholesale broadband regulation

Anyone?

Anyone know how I find out which providers have their kit in my local exchange?

Brown brown-noses Google, Brin demands privacy

deep joy

"He also talked up the benefits of crime mapping"

Oh how exciting!

How much better my life will become!

I JUST CAN'T CONTAIN MY JOY! :D

Google readies for action against Dutch smut site

Intolerable!

"Jeroen Schouten, legal counsel to Google Netherlands, told Dutch newsite Webwereld that the combination of the name Google, porn, and search machine is intolerable."

I'm assuming Jeroen has safe-search switched on.

Grand Theft Auto 4 queue man stabbed in head

Keith Vaz

"Keith Vaz, a prominent British Labour MP, said that news of both incidents didn't surprise him."

Well you're government has had 11 years to make things better, Keith. And have they got better? If you're not surprised by these incidents then I presume the answer is "no".

Elpida hikes DRAM prices 20 per cent

Am I the only one wondering...

...where's the freetard angle?

PH in the absence of a "freetard?" icon.

Nvidia drivers named as lead Vista crash cause in 2007

@Don Mitchell

Couldn't agree more. A while ago I built my own [WinXP] PC and it crashed with BSOD on a regular basis. BSOD always named the same DLL (a network adapter driver if i remember correctly) but the cause was actually faulty memory. Caused a few data corruptions too :-(

Prior to building the above PC I bought a Dell precision workstation (about 9 years ago) for my main business PC and this was fitted with ECC RAM. It was expensive but I can't remember ever having the OS on this machine crash since the day it arrived [NT4, then Win2K, then WinXP]. Don't think I'll ever buy a non-ECC machine for professional use after seeing what can result.

Blu-ray 0, SDHC card 1, THX Chief Scientist predicts

Wallet wet dreams

"In the future I want to be able to carry four to five movies around with me in a wallet"

And world-peace of course!

El Reg offers cut-and-paste comments service

Pavlovian responders...

"pavtards" perhaps?

Soot almost as bad as CO₂ for global warming

@Trygve Henriksen

"Everyone likes to cuddle up in front of the fireplace, right? Did you know that a 'classic' fireplace only have a 10 - 15% efficiency, and will actually LOWER the temperature in the rest of the house? (After all, it may suck out 500cubic metres of air every hour, and that must come from somewhere)"

Did you know that many houses have an air-brick or vent fitted in the same room that an open fire or wood burning stove is located? (in the UK it's mandatory to have a sufficient vent installed before a new fire of this type is fitted - and the fitter should insist on this). So in many cases most of the air your talking about comes from the vent (as long as the other doors to the room are shut). You're right that in houses that don't have a vent in the same room the air may come in via the rest of the house although many older houses have air bricks under the level of the downstairs floorboards and where this is the case much of the air comes from under the floor. So the idea that it "will actually LOWER the temperature in the rest of the house" is wrong - it MAY lower the temperature in the rest of the house but this depends on other factors.

Biometrics plan for London Olympic builders

The last enemy

It's depressing but the more I read along these lines the more our country is starting to look like the one portrayed on the BBC's "The Last Enemy".

@AC who quoted the BBC ("Tracking technology is being developed - a spectator will be tracked from the venue to his or her home with these tickets."). Well whenever you buy any ticket with a valid credit/debit card they can link your arrival at the venue with your address. So all they'll need to do for the olympics is insist you pay by card.

I wonder how the olympic security bods and police intend to make sure the aggregates and materials being delivered are what they say they are. And what about the electical equipment being delivered. A box of wires can do lots of things (i.e., control lighting, deliver audio to speakers, detonate a load of powder that looks like plaster but is actually something far more potent).

And assuming the people who would try to blow stuff up intend to include themselves in the body count then they're going to be entering with a valid ID anyway. So the system won't stop the terrorists getting in.

Ho hum, at least someone's making a lot of money and pushing their own agenda (of putting us all under a microscope) with the full support of the government and media.

I can only shake my head and sigh.

El Reg decimates English language

"It's official: the English language is going to hell in a handcart"

If I go to hell when I die I'd be happy to go in a handcart as it would, presumably, take a very long time to get there. Better that than, say, travelling by luxury jet.

Paris 'cause she'd definitely choose the jet.

Doctors back more tax on booze

If I ruled the world

"Doctors back more tax on booze"

I back more tax on Doctors. In fact a 10% increase in tax on Doctors would result in a 15% decrease in house prices over the next 5 years. It's true 'cause I just wrote it and it's now been published on tinternet! (which is all it takes these days for the UK media to swallow it).

Paris cause she's wearing them doctor-type specs.

OFT sends out scam texts

6 percent?

"The OFT estimates that about six per cent of all scam victims are aged between 15-24, losing money to a variety of mass-marketed scams each year."

Six percent seems very low for a demographic spanning ten years, and a demographic that uses mobile technology more [I expect] than most. So why not target a more gullible group?

Revealed: USB 3.0 jacks and sockets

@Erik

I agree, although they've also missed a chance to make a rectangular plug that can plug in both ways up (i.e., by using a number of semi-redundant contacts arranged symmetrically within the plug - for example: VBUS,D+,D-,GND,D-,D+,VBUS).

And there we have it, millions of "person-hours" of effort saved across the world, just by designing a plug that fits both ways round.

Amazing that people who can design a cable/interfact to carry n megabits per second can't design a plug that fits easily, both ways around.

Pioneer Project Kuro 'Extreme Contrast' first look

"Awesome", "Wow" and "Look at that"

Unbelievable. Black pixels. Just incredible. I don't know about you but I'm off to dance in the streets!

Oz drafts 'batter an orphaned roo' guidelines

Stone the crows!

Coat please...

PS3 sales to surpass Wii's... in four years' time

4 years from now... lol

Who cares which one will outsell the other in 2011 as by then they will all have been outsold by some other (as yet to be announced) console.

Facebook faces UK data probe

Some sort of outer join perhaps

If deleting data would mess up db integrity (if that really *is* the reason) why not just use outer joins in the SQL code. Just a thought.

Woman finds boyfriend dead in catflap

Would never happen in blighty

This would never happen here in the UK as our catflaps are, I note, considerably smaller than the one in the linked photo. The catflap in my back door, for example, is too small for anyone but the pinniest of pin-heads to get their head through.

Creative Zen media player

Bundled software - no doubt it's crap

Shame you didn't review the bundled software. If it's the same as the Zen Vision M software it will be very poor. "Synchronising" any more than a few hundred tracks will be slow and painfull (if it can be called "synchronising" - more like "try synchronising, give up, reformat Zen, push all tracks from PC to Zen for the Nth time"). Not to mention the number of times it crashes and freezes. Bah!

Is the world ready for a 1TB iPod?

Zen Vision (or lack of it)

I know Creative's software development teams weren't ready for a 60 gig Zen Vision player. My PC regularly dies trying to manage/sync "just" 25 gig of MP3s with the player.

Seems like the software needs to catch up fast with the advances in storage hardware (or at least Creative's does).

US man blasts stubborn wheelnut with shotgun

Like trying to fix a PC - only more frustrating!

I can sympathise with the bloke's situation.

Nothing has brought me closer to tears/rage/cracking than some situations where I've been working on cars. I mean even more frustrating than re-installing XP 4 times in a row only to realise that the last 100 bytes of a 1 gig memory chip were buggered.

For example, try working on the brakes of an old mini that haven't been stripped down for a few years. Every last sodding part rusted to buggery. Penetrating oil can help when undoing rusty stuff but then things will always snap off and need to be drilled out. And then half the parts that did undo properly can't be reused as they're so damn rusty they'll break under torque. And for another example try working under the bonnet on a modern car - I changed the mrs' fiesta's thermostat a few months ago and had to remove about 6 other components to get to it. Oh the pain.

I wouldn't go so far as to take a gun to a car though, admittedly. But I do know where the bloke was coming from. "Frustrating" doesn't begin to describe it.

Ukrainian eBay scam turns Down Syndrome man into cash machine

An easy e-bay rule/message for auctions closing over £x

I don't understand why ebay can't have a rule stating something along the lines of "if you buy an item without a credit card for more than £x (say, £2000) the seller must meet you to complete the transaction and exchange the payment for the goods being auctioned". At least then sellers couldn't use a non-credit card payment option for goods being sold overseas and buyers would be protected from sellers who insist on lots of money without first producing the actual goods.

Why anyone would send lots of money for something they haven't seen is beyond me but a simple system where ebay emails both the buyer and seller of an auction that closes with a high sale price reminding them not to give cash or cheques for goods unseen/undelivered can't be that hard to implement.

Google's gives the world (another) Linux phone OS

Overhyped new technologies as far as the eye can see

I've been consistently unimpressed with post 1990(ish) phone technology. Apart from talking and sending texts mobile phone tecnhology has been a gimmicky load of rubbish. Rubbish UI, rubbish cameras, rubbish web browsers, rubbish MP3 players. Oh and GPS is rubbish too (either on a phone or on a GPS only device) - I'd rather have a map or be lost. The only thing I think might be useful in this new fangled era of massive over-complexity for little reward is the idea of VOIP and SMS via WLANs to give us free calls and texts. Otherwise you can keep your new-fangled mobile O/S and your polyfilla ringtones and your colour 1 inch TV screens (all of which are utter utter utter utter rubbish).</rant>

Royal Navy presses IT Crowd for nuclear missile 'servers'

"Keeping busy ging?" - tee hee

Can't believe noone's commented on the fact that the bloke he calls "ging" in the ad isn't actually ginger. Ah how I laughed. Reminds me of that bloke in ZZ top called "beard" who doesn't actually have a beard. You couldn't make it up! <sigh>

How to get colour composite-video from an Apple TV

Sounds like a lot of fannying around to me

This will score a 0/10 on the WAF (wife acceptance factor).

Does everything apple makes have to be tinkered with to get it to do something that other manufacturers build in as standard? I've never bought anything made by apple as everything, at least from my "outsider's" point of view, seems to be tied down by limiting software.

MPs slam criminal assets recovery IT 'mess'

£300,000 for a staff time recording system?

"The agency also decided against spending £300,000 on a staff time recording system"

Good for them! But this does beg the question why didn't they shop around and find a solution that they could afford. £300,000 LOL

BT cranks VoIP & BlackBerry Enigma machine

This must be the pride before the fall

I seem to remember MS shouting loudly about the US govt. giving windows NT4 some great security rating back in the 90s (just before tinternet took off and it's sift-like protective shield started to leak profusely!)

Boffins chill chip with ion wind

Ozone removal cost & effort?

They forget to mention the cost (i.e., power and effort) of removing the ozone generated as a byproduct of the ionization process. Unless of course the designers don't care about ozone in the locality of a computer using their newfangled technology.

Perhaps they could design some sort of liquid cooling system. It would be simpler, cheaper, already available off the shelf, doh!

Power gadget set to cut electricity bills

Standby - where do I start?

So let me get this right, this newfangled contraption switches stuff off but keeps itself on standby. And on standby it uses 1W. So it's still not as good as switching everything off at the wall or via an inline switch. It also uses batteries for the remote and is YET ANOTHER REMOTE CONTROL to clutter up my living room.

The manufacturers are selling this as green but it's just another way of leaving stuff switched on 24x7.

Any while I'm ranting I'd also like to point out that my TV and DVD player, when on standby, use 0.3 watts total (according to a fine digital usage meter I bought from maplin). So if I use this remote standby contraption it will increase my "standby" power usage by over 200% ; great! :(

Linkedin spurns bug bounty hunter

Re: Blackmail is how business is done

"nearly every bit of insurance especially vehicle insurance is blackmail actually"

No, blackmail would be an insurer calling you and telling you if you don't insure with them they'll come round and smash in your car. Which, they don't. So, no it's not blackmail. Should we allow people to drive their cars without insurance? As a driver, cyclist, and pedestrian I would prefer not.

Oh and what's with the double spaced lines?

Microsoft rigs Live Search traffic

Who's cheating exactly?

"Hacker types have developed bots that can rack up points on Live Search Club - and search results - on their own, but comScore claims such cheating doesn't play into its studies."

A bit rich to call it "cheating" when MS' whole method of increasing the number of search hits is, for want of a better word, cheating.

On a more general note surely this kind of advertising will just decrease the "sales / ads" ratio, making the MS search facility less attractive to advertisers. Once again MS underestimates the intelligence of its audience.

Microsoft Windows patent will spy for advertisers

MS' arrogance

Microsoft shows an increasingly indifferent attitude towards the opinions of its customers. It's like a government that's been in power for a long time who thinks it can treat the voters poorly and still get elected time and time again. MS should remember that people can vote with their wallets and, if pushed into a corner, will do so. This will become more and more apparent as Vista take-up remains poor and people crave for their new PCs to be shipped with XP (or any other alternative that keeps their PC under *their own* control). I never thought I'd say this but after XP I don't think I'll be installing another MS O/S if they keep heading down this road. My only problem now is "where do I go after XP?"...