Posts by Archaon

Microsoft: Free Windows 10 for THIEVES and PIRATES? They can GET STUFFED

Re: Please offer an ISO + Vista upgrades

"I have friends with several computers that came with win 7 installed that work if you don't want to do anything that might stress the CPU/memory or even require much disk writing. If you do something like saving a 20 page document you can go and make the coffee and it will still be saving when you get back."

Crap computers are the fault of manufacturers who make them and the consumers who create the demand for them. Like any other software developer Microsoft publish minimum specifications - and from what you've said it sounds like it ran the OS? So Microsoft's minimum specifications are correct then, yes? Word, Acrobat or whatever is being used to open the document is not part of the OS and has it's own set of requirements.

If I went and got the old Pentium 4 out of the garage and complained that a modern Linux distro like Ubuntu 15.04 ran like a one legged dog would that be Canonical's fault just because it meets their minimum specs? Of course not - it's an old piece of junk! And if I got the poverty spec Core Solo Mac Mini out and ran a newer version of OS X on it and complain that it is slow...oh, wait, they dropped support for x86 so you can't.

The experience you described sounds more like a "Vista-ready" PC, and those normally run better when updated to Windows 7. Further to that I find Windows 8 is just as fast, if not faster, than Windows 7. The Mrs has a refurbished Fujitsu laptop (nothing fancy, I think it's a Core 2 Duo era Mobile Pentium with 2GB RAM) that came with Vista (albeit already downgraded to XP). Aside from the odd bit of graphical slowdown caused by the Start screen on some incredibly old low power integrated graphics chip it runs Windows 8 like a gem.

If your friends computers ran 7 badly then I dread to think what your friends actually bought or what crapware was running on them. I also hope your friends are technically literate enough to understand the implications of running XP. If you just put it on there without explaining the potential issues to them just on the basis that it's faster then shame on you.

Atlantis kicks its flashy upstart brethren right in the price tag

"wrong GTM strategy using price as the key differentiator. Must be really desperate."

If the company and it's stakeholders are satisfied with the profits, why is going on price the wrong strategy? The likes of Nutanix add a huge amount of cost on top of commodity hardware, and relative to the cost you don't really get a whole lot for it.

In a market full of expensive offerings I don't see "Look guys, we can do this (or 95% of this) at half the cost" as being a bad strategy. Yes it might cause the market for hyper-converged systems to become more of a commodity but the only result of that would be to screw up everyone else's margins - that's called competition.

If you want to see desperation then just wait - if it gains any traction we'll see plenty from the other vendors as they struggle to devalue the Atlantis offering and/or slash their margins to compete.

Cisco tipped to buy 'dominant' STORAGE BADBOY Nutanix

It could run on UCS...

...however they don't offer a hyper-converged box (like Nutanix, HP CS200, Dell PowerEdge C etc).

The main focus of the UCS system is the blades, but that presents a problem in that the blades don't have much storage potential - knackering the chance of putting any significant storage into the blades. UCS rack servers could be used (much like the existing Dell-Nutanix products) but they then lose the advantages of the Nutanix-style form factor.

The Supermicro hardware is most likely in the short term - and given Nutanix's pricing there shouldn't be too much of a struggle in terms of maintaining margins while using someone else hardware. That said I have no doubt that Cisco could quite easily develop their own hardware platform for it in the long term.

Google to extend Hyderabad office into first non-US campus

"Is this lack of diversity? Do they need to hire in equal amounts across all of these? Should any company do this?

What ever happened to hiring the best person for the job whomever they may be?"

Have an upvote. There is definitely strength in diversity but recruiting the wrong person to hit some arbitrary quota or appear 'fair' is ridiculous and in reality is unfair to the correct candidate.

Recruiting the correct person for the job is not discrimination against everyone else. Not recruiting the correct person because they don't fit into the correct religious/social/racial quota is discrimination.

Don't panic as Server 2003 rushes towards end of life

Re: Vendors leaping early

I don't think a few months before the deadline is really early? Server 2003 isn't even supported on most readily available hardware...

Re: They can have my 2003 SBS.....

I wondered where all those went...

Litecoin-mining code found in BitTorrent app, freeloaders hit the roof

Different Strokes...

Making the world a better place by using your CPU cycles for F@H, SETI etc? Ok, fine (as long as they get permission of course).

Making the world a better place by using your CPU cycles to mine Litecoin for us to keep? Hold on, say what? (a) what's that got to do with helping the world and (b) just no.

Apple taxpayers swarm to stone-age iPhone 6+ purely for the bigness

Re: The bleeding edge of obviousness.

If you want your TV to snag your nadgers that's your business, but that would probably come under purchase satisfaction rather than purchase decision. ;-)

The bleeding edge of obviousness.

So...people who bought the phone with the big screen rather than the virtually identical smaller screened version bought it because it has a big screen? Wow. Next they'll be telling me crazy things like the reason that I bought a 40" TV was because I didn't want a 32" TV!

Cutting edge market research there Kantar. Well done.

Sick of Chrome vs Firefox? Check out these 3 NEW browsers

The Opera is dead, long live the Opera!

I have no issue with Opera's move to Webkit as the engine but the decisions (or lack of development time?) that led to gutting most of the features I do have an issue with. Although I enjoy the general experience that Opera is currently offering, every time I try and do something and find that it can't be done it brings me to a crushing realisation that I'm basically using Chrome in Opera's clothing.

I only moved from Opera 12 due to an increasing number of compatibility issues and the launch of bookmarks (although calling them that is generous) for Opera.

Perhaps not yet, but I will definitely be giving Vivaldi a look.

SanDisk goes nuclear with its Fusion flash card range

Re: prices?

The previous 3.2TB model cost over £20k. For 3.2TB that is insanely expensive. For 300,000+ IOPS it's actually very, very cheap. These are playing the cost vs performance game, not cost vs capacity.

If El Reg is going to have pictures at the top of every article...

...can you at least make sure the screen dumps from YouTube are cropped properly? See Paris for a good example of appropriate croppage.

Nice cards though.

The Apple Watch: Throbbing strap-on with a knurled knob

Re: Anatomically impossible?

"Or you could put the phone on a desk."

Or if you're going to have the phone out (normally a pre-requisite to putting it down) you could just, you know, use the phone...?

Subjectively objective

Article - "Apple has answered the critics who doubted a computer company could make a wearable that people wanted to wear: the hardware is objectively gorgeous"

Based on your subjective viewpoint that it is gorgeous you could assume that most people would consider it gorgeous. Nothing is objectively gorgeous.

'If you see a stylus, they BLEW it' – Steve Jobs. REMEMBER, Apple?

Re: Who wants Handwriting Recognition anyway?

"The point is, it shouldn't be necessary. A thumbprint would be a more reliable proof of identity than a signature anyway."

So you want everyone to form an orderly queue at all of their local courier depots so that we can have all of our personal and biometric details taken, thereby allowing us to 'thumb' future deliveries?

If you wish to have your biometric data stored on the rusting, insecure customer databases of lots of different companies then that is up to you - but for the sake of the rest of us please stop talking.

Booking.com smacked by EU competition bods. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Re: The trouble is...

Giving Booking.com more heavily discounted rates than other booking sites (e.g. Trivago) would not preclude a hotel selling rooms cheaper on their own website.

May not be the case or I may be misreading it, but that's how I read it.

Thinking of following Facebook and going DIY? Think again

Re: Mine's the one with Trevor's boot print on it...

Just poking fun at the bear, so to speak.

Mine's the one with Trevor's boot print on it...

"I am designing solutions for SMBs that need to screw things down to the dollar."

Screwed down like using 30GB SSDs instead of 80GB ones?

I know, I'm going. :-)

Why are enterprises being irresistibly drawn towards SSDs?

Re: @Archaon

"On Trevor's articles, the only pedantry allowed is Trevor's. Anyone else's pedantry will be mocked until either you give up or become so enraged that you lose objectivity."

That would appear to be the case. The former, that is.

Re: @Trevor_Pott Change in Flash technology to eliminate finite write lifetime?

"No, Archaon, in your non-objective, blinkered position on things you've missed the whole thrust of my argument: namely that there is no value - except in some very niche situations, including outright poverty - in recovering 10 year old drives from systems and reusing them, even if their lifespan was infinite."

What you don't seem to "grok" from your own blinkered position is that I pretty much agreed with you. Just making the point that there's alternatives. As I said, shades of grey. Not just Mr Pott's opinion and wrong.

Re: Where's the value?

I doubt the cost/benefit factor is even remotely reasonable on larger SSDs for enterprise vs. conventional HDDs.

It depends on what metric you're using. Cost per GB/TB is high on SSD, that's undeniable. On the other hand cost per IOPS is considerably lower on SSD than spinning disk.

Say for example you need 20,000 IOPS from a storage array for a VDI cluster. The main server/storage environment (domain, email, databases, whatever) is all set up on an existing virtualised cluster backed off to an existing SAN (very common) so there is not a requirement for hosting virtual servers, file data etc, so in effect the array is just storing images for the VDI sessions.

The majority of users will likely be run off of a small number of gold images so in terms of capacity the storage requirement would typically be quite small.

To exceed 20,000 IOPS out spinning disk (assuming 90% read/10% write) you need approximately 120 15k 2.5" SAS drives. To run that you need a storage array, which will likely be in a 2U/24-bay format (say £6k for a Powervault or MSA level machine). You'll then need 4 additional 2U/24-bay shelves for said storage array (say £2k each/£8k total). You then need to whack on 120 disks at £180 a pop (£22k). Now assuming you're a good little customer and buy support you not only need to purchase support for the head array but also the 4 drive shelves (say £9k for half decent cover over 3 years).

Total for that is £45k and you've got a 10U monster requiring 10 power inputs, running 120x drives that not only use around 7-8W each but also kick out a considerable amount of heat. So it's an expensive unit, it costs a lot to power, and it costs a lot to turn your air conditioning up to cope with it.

If we were to be fairly convservative and say you needed 8 SSDs to hit 20,000 IOPS. You obviously need the array head (£6k) and support (£3k as there's no shelves). And we'll go for say, half decent mainstream endurance 400GB drives (it's read intensive workload so not a huge need for the high endurance drives). 8 of those would come out to say £15k. So total for that system is £24k - over £20k cheaper up-front, uses considerably less power, less rack space and less cooling.

Yeah you end up with ~1.5TB not ~7.5TB but in this scenario you don't need the capacity, just the performance.

And ok, I know you said high capacity drives, so for the sake of argument if I ran the sums with 10x 1.6TB SSDs and it comes out at £44k. That's marginally cheaper up-front than the spinning rust, massively cheaper to run and also offers ~7.5TB storage.

And that's at a basic level (HP MSA or similar as I said) If you were to be a really good customer and buy a bigger, shinier storage array like a 3PAR you would also have to pay support and licensing costs per disk. Would you rather pay that bill for 120 drives (no word of a lie that could easily hit £50-100k just for the basic functionality) or 10?

I know, it's an extreme use-case - but it's a perfect example.

Re: Workload profiles also matter

That hasn't been true for several years now. My SSD based setups easily outrun my spinning disk by a very noticeable amount and even sequential writes tend to do better. Did you miss the point where flash has been moving to PciE because the SATA/SAS ports were too slow?

I would assume that the bod from Nimble was talking about storage arrays.

Yes there is potential for an SSD to outstrip a spinning disk for sequential tasks; however on a storage array that's running mostly sequential workloads with a high capacity requirement it's massively cheaper to go down the disk route, and because the workload is sequential rather than random the benefits of SSD are considerably lower.

Re: Well...

Most companies where I've worked keep all PCs turned on. Desktop boot times don't matter if you aren't booting up that much.

If they're like most companies where I've worked then the actual company policy is to turn all PC off to save power, however staff don't do it because they're working on old junker PCs connecting to a convoluted environment (in our case in a different country) and take 20 minutes to boot up and get logged in each morning.

When someone else is footing the electricity bill most people - myself included - slip into the habit of just leaving their machine on for convenience.

Re: @Trevor_Pott Change in Flash technology to eliminate finite write lifetime?

"And I've got OS-only installs of Server 2012 R2 Standard that eat the better part of 80GB. etc"

There's shades of grey (not 50), not just black and white, you know? The question, as always, is what is correct for the customer and their environment. 30GB SSDs are not wrong. 80GB SSDs are not wrong. USB drives are not wrong. It depends.

I understand that just because I have Server 2012 R2 running at 19GB on a 30GB RAID 1 set does not mean everyone can or wants to do that. If you need 80GB, then you need 80GB, it's that simple. You should also understand the reverse is true, that if you only need 30GB there's no point paying for 80GB or 120GB, especially if the disks are going to go in the bin (or the dark corner of a cupboard) once the server is decommissioned. Call it 'spectacularly cheap' if you like, because yeah, in this instance that was the point.

What I suspect you really mean is that relative to the cost of buying a slightly larger disk it's not worth the hassle to watch over machines with small system disks and maintain them. After all the time, effort and wage/consultancy costs of IT staff are a finite resource just like anything else, and I'm sure there's better things to spend on than worrying about whether a cached Windows Update has taken one of your systems over the edge. And that's a completely understandable and completely correct/justified point of view in many organisations.

Many (not all) customers prefer redundant (i.e. RAID 1) boot drives. That kicks out USB drives but you'd get away with a RAIDed dual SD card module. Of course a USB key is fine if the customer doesn't mind.

As I said, it all depends on the customer and the environment. The point is to take a step back, look at it objectively and not be blinkered into a default position.

Re: @Trevor_Pott Change in Flash technology to eliminate finite write lifetime?

"Come back to me in a couple of years when WinSXS has eaten up the rest of that ;-)"

Oh no. The terror. You mean I have to set up a StartComponentCleanup scheduled task to run once in a blue moon? Oh no. Save me from this tragedy please. The world hath ended and the fiery gates of hell have opened to swallow me up.

Come off it.

Re: @Trevor_Pott Change in Flash technology to eliminate finite write lifetime?

"What use is a SATA 32GB SSD today ....."

Even taking frank ly's *Nix example as a given, I've got a machine with a pair of 30GB (not even 32GB) SSDs in RAID 1 which runs Server 2012 R2 Standard quite happily. Believe it typically sits at around 11GB free.

Re: Change in Flash technology to eliminate finite write lifetime?

"I would imagine that eliminating the lifetime contraints of a flash cell has to be one of the goals current and future manufacturers are striving for."

Proper enterprise SSDs are rated for 20+ full drive writes per day (DWPD) over a 5 year period. Endurance is not a problem in most, it's just a case of choosing the right SSD for the job. A good quality SSD being used for the correct task for the SSD type shouldn't hit it's endurance limit within the usable life of a system; and in terms of manufacturing defects etc I believe I'm right in saying that the failure rate of SSDs is considerably lower than of spinning disk.

If you put a consumer grade SSD (normally rated well under 1 DWPD) into a server that's constantly caching or writing small data (as per one of Trevor's examples) then yeah sure, it will murder it in short order. For the exact opposite reason you're not going to put one of those 20+ DWPD enterprise grade drives in your desktop PC because they're expensive and there's no benefit to you in doing it.

A part of me dies every time I see someone decide to try and be clever and save money by putting Kingston SSDNow drives* in their production servers or - god forbid - a storage array.

* No hate for Kingston, just an example of a cheap consumer drive that sprang to mind.

Scouts' downed Compass database won't be back 'til autumn

Be Prepared...

"Kids, go and camp in the woods. We'll be over here in the car trying to find out how this pencil and paper thing works."

Jawbone Up4 tapcash wristjob: Get BONKING with the latest sweaty hipster toy

"I know I'm not the only sucker who clicked on this article expecting pay by bonk to mean something else."

You're thinking of pay to bonk...

What's Meg Whitman fussing over: The fate of HP ... or the font on a DISRUPTIVE new logo?

What the actual...

Words fail me.

Wonder how many millions this rubbish cost them?

Pre-order consumergasm will leave Apple Watches out of stock for months

Re: Good on them

"Let first gen buyers saturate the market, then wait for the improved / cheaper next gen models, with acceptable features and battery life."

Apple doesn't do commodity. The entire point of the 'cool' Apple image is to keep pricing high and keep the punters willing to pay said high pricing.

Mind you, as business strategies go, it's a pretty good one and the bubble is yet to burst.

HP Stream x360: Flippable and stylish Chromebook killer

Re: system disk storage hard limits?

"Del did a range of power edge servers which unless you changed them had 80gb system virtual disks, and they suicide after about 3 years simply does to logs and windows updates."

A lack of basic system maintenance (scripted or manual) on a business-class system over a period as long as 3 years is unacceptable. It does not mean that a system has 'suicided' itself, it means that the user is incompetent.

Is this what Windows XP's death throes look like?

Re: Oh wow, John 172

"But, don't come whining about how something doesn't work when the whole philosophy of what you are whining about is that it is a hairy work in progress---if that is a problem to you you are clearly in the wrong game and do not, or will not (maybe even cannot), understand the rules of play."

LTS releases are meant to be stable releases supported over a considerable timeframe. To paraphrase Ubuntu/Canonical, aside from support length the tenets of the LTS releases are enterprise focused, hardware compatibility and improved testing.

I appreciate that in this case it's just a freak bug and these things happen (to any platform). The fact that you consider it acceptable for any 'stable' release - let alone something that's described as LTS - to be a 'hairy work in progress' suggests that it's you who doesn't understand "the play".

Messing with your own system is fair enough, seeing it's limits, breaking it, learning how to fix it? That's all good. Fair play to you. But to have you claim someone 'doesn't get it' when they're specifically using a LTS release - probably because of the reasons mentioned above - boggles my mind. Bottom line is that someone screwing about with their PC at home is all well and good, but it is not "the game". Business is the game. To think otherwise is, to quote your good self, "stupid".

Thankfully the majority of the Linux community understands that acceptance is more important than the ability to accidentally break stuff and has been consistently working to reduce the latter, resulting in a stable platform that can actually be used.

Re: Oh wow...

Keyboard and mouse aside, if you compare gaming to productivity then gaming on a console is akin to working on a 7 year old workstation. They get some leeway out of being optimised platforms running (hopefully) optimised software, rather than general purpose machines with general purpose software, but they're generally underpowered. The new and shiny consoles (Xbox One and Playstation 4) are struggling to run a lot of new "AAA" games (i.e. big budget games akin to Hollywood films) at a decent frame rate and/or 1080p resolutions.

Don't get me wrong, I do like to kick back on the sofa with a console (I have many). I'm also not ashamed to admit that I quite regularly plug a console controller into my PC because for that game it's preferable for me. But bottom line saying that you can replace a Windows gaming PC with a console is like saying you can replace your workstation with an android tablet. It does the same job to an extent, but you lose a hell of a lot in the process.

Re: Oh wow...

"(although a console might do nicely too)"

Instafail. Back in your box.

Chip rumor-gasm: Intel to buy Altera! Samsung to buy AMD! ... or not

Re: it's the software, surely?

AMD makes graphics cards which might be quite powerful for competition, but their software is terrible. Really, awful.

The worst thing for me is the installer. It's so full of ads that the thing is huge (as in screen space). try installing it on a fairly low resolution screen (such as a 720p TV) and you'll find that the installer is bigger than the screen, meaning it's not possible to click on the buttons (or even see them).

Leads to a non-lethal (but very annoying) form of Russian Roulette with the tab key.

Re: Buy or shed? Gotta keep with the latest Wall St fashion

A chinese company buying AMD would probably be blocked by the US gov on national security grounds.

That's entirely possible, but in this instance it's worth noting that Samsung is South Korean, not Chinese.

Google gives spit n' polish to world's most expensive Chromebook

Re: If it has upgradeable memory, I'll buy one

64GB should be easy with modern chipsets.

64GB on your typical 2 DIMM laptop means using server-class 32GB LRDIMMs* which will not function on this kind of machine. They also cost around £500 each.

If it's a single DIMM machine (highly likely) then you probably don't want to know how much a 64GB LRDIMM would cost.

Good luck with that.

* Because at that level that's the only type of memory available.

Don't listen to me, I don't know what I'm talking about – a pundit speaks

Re: Umm - Is it just me or was that a bit vague?

Perhaps deliberate - that would be somewhat at odds with him being a pundit and the nature of the article. :-)

The internet IS a series of tubes. Kinda: A Reg 101 guide to cabling

Re: well timed. And Thanks Peter.

Can't get a straight answer out of anyone on how the hell we're gonna connect the damned things.

A Nexus 7000 is a big ol' beastie to buy without someone planning that! Depends on the appliance and the Nexus model but there's no doubt ways and means with the appropriate use of someone's cheque book.

Is the appliance being migrated to 10GbE or is that staying at 1GbE copper and just needs to be connected to the Nexus somehow?

So according to that table...

...a normal SFP (not SFP+) transceiver that tops out at 4Gb - bearing in mind that 4Gb implies fibre channel not ethernet anyway - can magically be used for 10GbE? Mmmhmm.

Although nothing new to many of us I'm sure the concept and effort of this article is appreciated overall nonetheless. The execution of said article? Not so much. That said some excellent points from Peter and good to see El Reg taking them on.

Microsoft's Project Spartan browser is HERE (unless you build apps or run VMs, that is)

Re: Disappointing

"They know they broke VS and Hyper-V, but were willing to distribute it anyway. This does not inspire confidence in the quality or stability of the final product."

Had they distributed it and not known, or not told anyone, that would be a problem. The fact that they''ve told a subset of users not to upgrade shows that (a) they're actually aware of it, (b) are going to patch it and (c) despite that they still want/need to test new features (including Spartan), tweaks etc.

Or would you rather they didn't release this build and as a result things like Spartan miss out on weeks/months of user testing? Then no doubt when something breaks or doesn't work or is vulnerable to attacks you would troll that they didn't do enough testing.

Samsung puts eight-core processor IN A WATCH

Re: Really!?!

"If Sammy really wanted to increase battery life why not create a new chip on the same 14nm process with, I dunno, say a dual core 1GHz? Seems like plenty for a watch. Nah. Can't slap anyone with your dick with those specs."

Because that requires the design, tooling and fabrication of a new chip. It might be more appropriate to the project but how may billions of monies would it require to actually produce it? And how big is the market for such a chip? Smart Watches are an untested niche market and phones, printers etc are already covered pretty well by all the other options available. How would you justify the viability of that project when you've already got a suitable chip?

Naturally it also grants e-peen privileges which will no doubt be appropriately leveraged by Samsung marketing, but that's just a bonus.

BBC gives naked computers to kids (hmm, code for something?)

Re: teach some fun little Vb projects

"Fun little Vb projects? What might they be? Most importantly, does your definition of fun, whether involving Vb or not, match up with the definitions of fun applicable to (currently) non IT-literate kids? I'm pretty sure "Vb projects" wont be on their list ... but perhaps a project - in Vb or not Vb - involving flashing lights might. Or, as the article stated, projects involving sensors."

I don't know, which is one of many, many reasons why I'm not a teacher or writing syllabuses. My point was that in my opinion if you want to teaching coding/programming/development you don't need trinkets to do it.

I did see someone else mention that there is more coding in the syllabus now, which is genuinely great to hear. You'll have to forgive me if I'm a little cynical towards IT in schools, because the first time I did any coding courtesy of an educational institute was at University.

The hardware isn't a problem...

...nor are the teachers, really. A lot of the time IT teachers are also the network manager, so although they may not be god's gift to either IT or teaching the chances are they know enough about both to teach children about IT.

The problem is the fecking useless syllabus that's been taught in this country for the past 10 (?) years that - as far as I could work out at the time - only teaches people how to be secretaries and admin monkeys. The closest we got to programming with using Frontpage to design a website. My school didn't even offer ICT at GCSE level because it was seen as pointless, and at A-Level they offered the ECDL courses and exams for those who wanted to take them as an additional subject.

Anyone who thinks the decline in ICT skills over the last X number of years can be resolved by a little circuit board with some LEDs is off their bleeding rocker. Rather than cock about with hugely expensive initiatives like this when you could, you know, put it on the syllabus that use one of those dusty old fashioned PC thingymagunks* sat in the corner to teach some fun little Vb projects?

Leaked Windows 10 build hints at peer-to-peer patching

Not a bad idea...

Well, in part.

Download updates once and share them between my own machines automatically so they don't have to be downloaded multiple times? Happy days, sign me up for some of that.

Download updates from random PCs on the internet? Not on your life.

Salesforce straps sales analytics to Apple Watch

Good way to sell the more expensive ones...

...Because what businessperson (or company employing said businessperson) will want to be seen walking around with the rubber strapped sports model?

In other news, nearly beer o'clock!!!

Google MURDERS Google Code, orders everyone out to GitHub and co

???

10 months does not sound like 'effective immediately' to me?

BBC: We'll give FREE subpar-Raspberry-Pis to a million Brit schoolkids

TV Licensing

I appreciate that the BBC has ventures to help fund itself (e.g. sale of programmes overseas and whatnot) but if they have enough money to spaff on a million computers (albeit small ones) surely the TV licence fee should go down? They may not be funding it directly from the licence payer; but irrespective of that if their profits are so high surely that means the income is too high?

Schools have plenty of money to purchase this kind of thing by themselves, if they wanted to. They can certainly burn plenty of cash on fecking useless iPads. That's not an Apple bash, before anyone starts. But seriously what's the value in having ICT suites, trolleys full of laptops and iPads and the tens of thousands of pounds worth of wireless infrastructure needed to support it all.

What does all that contribute that we couldn't do with a teacher, a board and a couple of hours a week in the computer rooms (either for 'IT' classes, music classes, coursework, whatever). This is not a "back in my day" rant, but I believe kids need to be taught not dumped in front of a shiny screen. Bringing us back to the original topic, that's what Cbeebies is for.

Panda antivirus labels itself as malware, then borks EVERYTHING

Pandamonium

The first time I installed Panda was back in the times of demo CDs on the front of PC magazines. I installed Panda to give it a go. On the obligatory reboot for installing pretty much anything under Windows 98SE it completely bricked my OS resulting in a lovely afternoon of restoring to factory settings.

Yes, I know it was 15 years ago, get over it etc etc. Unfortunately for Panda there's a lot of AV vendors that would have to really piss me off before I'd consider going near a Panda product again; and that was before it started confusing itself with bamboo and having a munch.