Posts by Nigel R

Everything Everywhere's 4G: Why I'm sitting this one out

can anyone ediucate me on if/why 4g power consumption is symetrical for transmit and receive?

Its something that been niggle me for a while now. I have started to listen to internet radio in the car using 3, getting more than adequate, nearly dropout free service on my commute through rural low population parts of the South East.

Now, on a radio set, receiving uses little power as there's no need to transmit at the same time.

With internet radio and IP traffic, you always need to have a 2 way link going of course. Hence the high power consumption when listening to streams...

BUT the vast majority of traffic is incoming, not outgoing, packets. Was not 3g designed to be cleverly asymmetric, and only use power in proportion to packets being sent? OK perhaps not.

But 4g surely HAS been designed this way in the light of experience, and the tremendous advantage that low power consumption can have?

Apple eyes $$$ iDevice adapter bonanza

chip'n'pin

Ah but the new adapters need a decryption chip in them. Similar to the way printer cartridges went.

Just a rumour

Organic food offers basically no health benefit, boffins find

It's the sprays, stupid

The boffins clearly decided to ignore the skin of the fruit & veg. This is where all the actual minerals and vitamins are concentrated. Organic items should be spray free. Non organic will have synthetic pathogens sticking to the skin. I like to eat fruit & veg with skin.

Assange's fate to be revealed at high noon

What does Assange know that we do not about Sweden?

Surely easier for USA to claim his butt in the UK than in Sweden?

Anyway, Swedish prisons are better than UK affordable housing.

Flash Player to vanish from Android store on Wednesday

Re: BBC iPlayer and the Apple-only streams

@illiad

Um, did you read it all?

At least one thing will be fixed: When listening to iPlayer ***on Android***, when you blank the screen to save power, or even if you focus on a different window, the audio will not instantly stop!

by comparison, IOS is perfect

Lords call for the end of TV transmissions

Tarmac roads and drainage

If this nation can afford to run tarmac and drainage to within 500m of any inhabited place in the uk (or the locals can and do run their last mile) then why is it so insurmountable to run a single fibre cable? Methinks m'luds may be right.

That new 'Microsoft GCSE': We reveal what's in it

syntax

"they will fair with having to be syntactically correct"

at least get the spelling write first!!

Virgin Media cuts Pirate Bay access for millions of punters

'Cracked' DVDs

As Lovefilm puts no protection around it's DVDs, every 10th was arriving damaged. Probably due to my vertical letter box.

Did not take long to discover that there is no streaming alternative to that catalogue. Cancelled Lovefilm and still waiting for a digital service (see 2 similar posts above).

TuneIn Radio Pro

IOS best, more work to do, Tunein!

World Business Report BBC podcast :

Tunein IOS version: Works, except there is no way of preventing it moving onto the next podcast which happens to be a always repeat.

Tunein Android: Locates the podcast but fails to play it - error message.

Free version worth having, paid version? Well it would require me to sign up with the Android Market for the first time.

iPad version is lovely because of the map browsing option (not available on iPhone).

iPads seized from shelves by Chinese officials

time to move production to...

a more friendly country like North Korea?

The moment a computer crash nearly caused my car crash

"That computer has legitimately saved my life on more than one occasion"

So how plausible and accurate is the rest of the story then?

China Central TV comes to Freeview

try...

@tw@tpanda

"....live somewhere that has a decent internet service."

Try China. Where even their 3g service is vastly denser and faster than UK's!

Can the iPad save newspapers?

it's getting there...

I acquired an iPad without really planning for it and now read the Times & ST on it regularly.

Coming round to the idea of being able to zoom any image to full screen to really appreciate the photography, and also avoiding the tombstone of paper that I used to buy for the ST.

IPad is heavier than one would like, slab needs to be come a slip and will soon no doubt.

From the newspaper publisher's perspective, they can now measure the dwell time as I do/don't scam past ads not to mention the prospect of regional and demographic targeting that have not even commenced.

Times & ST apps are rather immature now, compared to where they should / will be one day, absolutely no doubt that the paper paper will be extinct in 10 years.

Chinese giant halts rare earth shipments to hike prices

contracts?

So this is a bit like the 'leccy companies that get you to switch to them by offering a low price then try to ramp it afterwards.

Aren't any of the customers of the Chinese supplier protected by a purchase contract with a delivery schedule?

Voda in 3G blackhole probe by ASA

o2 also pretty naff

Having tried to use o2's 3g network in places like Bath or Reading, not impressed at all.

I suspect that only 3 has a built for purpose 3g network, the rest have just popped 3g antennae onto their existing 2g masts and hoped for the best, while take customers' money on those expensive smartphone contracts.

UK's 3g system needs to triple it's capacity to begin to catch up with the smartphone boom.

Don't bother with that degree, say IT pros

Writing skills

"Often their communication and writing skills were usually atrocious"

..tautology?

Amazon intros $199 movie Kindle

if the 'Fire' is as heavy as an IPad 2....

then forget it!

Attention metal thieves: Buy BT, get 75 MILLION miles of copper

what is the pulp worth

of all the paper BT wastes when it still insists on delivering dead tree phone directories to me?

Amazon solves wait-at-home-for-deliveries problem

Amazon are in fact losing sales at the moment

My employer, one of the 'larger' IT companies around, bans receiving personal mail or packages in practically all offices - even including letters or DVDs. I suspect this rule a cost saving rather than a security move.

Regarding DVDs - since they were getting damaged through my home letterbox, I cancelled Lovefilm (who refuse to package inside rigid sleeves). Lovefilm will not be delivering their full range electronically any tome soon, more's the pity.

Regarding low value items - I let then arrive at home & retrieve from doorstep.

Regarding higher value items - have been visiting SHOPS again and Amazon missed several sales as a result.

However its going to be many years before all UK towns have such drop-box facilities for Amazon. Don't ever expect to see them at Tesco/Sainsburys/Asda as they wont like the competition. And what about Ebay?

TomTom fights falling satnav sales with iPad app

Tomtom won by a whisker

Only recently replaced my old Tomtom Classic with a 1005. Decision was tipped when I discovered that the nearest competitor with Europe maps built in and a must-have 5" screen did NOT have car speed related volume control (that my ancient Tomtom did - another must-have). And TT happened to be running discounts + a trade-in at this moment.

The 1005 accepts ov2 POI files as of a week ago.

Either have a phone app or have the best. But agree, TT could do so much better.

BlackBerry handsets will be able to run Android apps

this is the boat that Nokia missed

'nuff said

Average sozzled Brit sinks 5,800 pints during life

the alternative is highter taxes

Like petrol, alcohol is one hardy tax-take for govt. Isn't around 50% of the cost of drink tax?

If all that cash was not being spent on drink, the taxman would slap it on something else.

Hackers pierce network with jerry-rigged mouse

please fill in this simple questionnaire to receive your mouse...

so you stand around the trade fair with your fake Logitek uniform on, homing in on good prospects

Some simple questions

1. Which level of position do you hold in your organization?

2. Which OS do you use?

3. Which AV

4. ....

On the iPhone note, the first thing you MUST do before a new iPhone will switch on the first time (to get past the iPhones's lock screen that displays the iTunes logo) is... plug in the chunky Apple usb lead and connect to iTunes! A good quality dummy iPhone will do as once connected, it can appear to have a 'fault'.

Solar panel selling scam shown up by sting

in Japan

and increasingly in China, almost every rural house roof sports a solar water heater - a set of rooftop pipes. They store the hot water and every KWh stored replaces hot water usage in the home. I suspect this IS logical by financial and energy accounting standards.

Apple's next iPhone planned for September, says report

that Apple UI is just great when you don't want to use your brain

I have a bedside iPod Touch 2nd gen for radio/iPlayer & sleepy emails (in its time is was the best device avail for this). Despite the well documented limitations of iOS, I always have to admire the dumb simplicity and consistency of the UI. Looks like the missus will be getting an iPhone 4 too - but the September release with better camera is now a delaying factor as she does like to take fussy pics. For 'the ladies' who don't mind paying a premium for fashion, the iPhone really is ideal.

Siemens fixes SCADA holes found by hacker

what about the comms bus as an attack point?

Up to now it is being assumed that there are just 2 attack vectors:

- Via the PC (probably Windows based) that compiles/uploads the logic to the PLC - and into that PC in the first place via a USB stick assuming the PC was not net--connected.

- Directly via the internet in a net connected SCADA.

What about vulnerabilities in the communications bus itself? The protocols are usually proprietary rather than TCP/IP BUT any remote sensing/actuator device is a potential point of entry into the bus. These remote points are of necessity... remote and often outdoors. Oil pipelines anyone? Any device could be hot-swapped for a doctored one... to introduce stack overflows via some weakness or to pretend it is a control node.

Chinese army: We really need to get into cyber warfare

Reverse phishing engineering?

If so much is already known or suspected on who the originators of these types of attacks are, the equally, there can be some very ingenious attempts to lace the things that the phishers will find with

a) Stealth tell-me-who-and-where-you-are beacons and

b) Custom trojans of your own.

I guess the real goods on this are just too classified currently. Maybe in 10 years' time some journo will assemble the real facts and produce decent history of what really happened.

Using the internet in the People's Republic of China

silver linings

when I was in China recently, the near seamless full signal 3g service indoors, outdoors and in transport made up for Great Firewall drawbacks. BBC iPlayer (radio) fully functional too. Podcasts of any nature very unpredictable with downloading speed though. What's all this about Gmail? Using POP, Web and iPod Touch Gmail daily in China with no issues.

Amazon US offers gift cards, free shipment for your e-junk

People who disposed of this item...

also disposed of....

How bin Laden thwarted US electronic surveillance

Its all a conspiracy

if I were US intelligence I'd be de-emphasising any mention of a 'big haul' of info gained. The fact that the haul is being trumpeted so much is suspicious in itself.

Behind Apple's record sales are signs of desperation

just a good repackager?

The UI bits that Apple is claiming infringement of could have been thought up by a creative group of 6th formers with the right leadership. It is the difficult deep tech technologies where Apple has few claims but Samsung more. Is Apple just a very smart repackager of other co's tech and a great UI designer?

Channel Islands VAT loophole shut, petrol prices cut

that famly word again

"Osborne said the price of petrol has become an increasing problem for families and businesses"

...I very very rarely see a family in a car and never on the daily commute.

How to slay a cellphone with a single text

erm... so the carries don't perform even the most rudimentary checks first?

no clean-up done then by the carriers, prior to relaying SMS messages?

erm... so the carriers don't perform even the most rudimentary checks first?

no clean-up done then by he carriers, prior to relaying SMS messages?

Eurofighter Typhoon: It's EVEN WORSE than we thought

Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs

For a compact and enjoyable (if a little dated) synopses of how the UK taxpayer funds some of the biggest Offence oops I meant Defence spending waste in the whole world, on a GDP per capita basis, look no further than

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lions-Donkeys-Dinosaurs-Lewis-Page/dp/0434013897

who needs a dictatorship if you have an electorate as docile as the UK's?

Google whacks link farms

what about paysites and synthetic pages?

I would love Google to block or demote experts-exchange.com as the key part of any page found in the results is behind a paywall - and a genuine answer is always to be found in a different search result anyway.

Also could Google at last find a way to deal with 'generated' web pages, that seem to be a faux custom result page just based on search keywords?

Brits luv broadband. True

So it's just the right time...

for Virgin Media to put it prices up by an inflation-busting 7.5%, then?

Ford Focus 2011

cost per year of design life?

with the typical car becoming economically unfeasible to run (due to the repair costs of complex systems and parts availability) after 7 years, and this car with some of the gizmos costing £20k, this is strictly for the (business expense charging) birds.

Bold as brass metal thieves disrupt rail, comms, electric

Wot no metal detector?

Perhaps under very fibre manhole should be a cheap metal detector, like the ones used to detect wiring in wall Let the crims satisfy themselves, no copper here!

The cost of not deduping

1984

When Winston was working at his terminal re-writing history by 'correcting' specific newspaper articles, I though the technology to do this was too fanciful. With perfect de-duping in place across the nation, now I see it.

Archos 43 16GB Android PMP

um, what about standard docks?

Already have a Touch and a Nano both share a nice little dock/speakers and I'm now looking at a Bose dock for the living room. What do people do about docks if they jump ship to another brand of PMP?

EMC employee filched $1m worth of hardware

been done before... Johnny Cash's take

This is not a new idea, Johnny Cash sang about the principle of it in 1976:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Piece_at_a_Time

and the whole song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1-zzJnKtDg

China announces Skype ban to protect telco revenues

it has started already

Skype program usage is already being blocked in China for users who had been happily using the service, some had even bought Skype Out credits that they now cannot use. The block is coming in region by region and isp by isp. Some boards are pointing people to different (Chinese based) chat/voip software.

In the meantime, what will happen if there are a million users in China stuck with a bad Skype version that are now blocked from doing an update? (see "50% of the userbase on a flawed version caused a cascade failure" in recent El Reg).

Also on the boards in China are humorous comments like "will China now ban email to protect the Chinese Post Office" and "will electricity be banned to protect the Chinese candle industry".

This move will knock back a lot of small businesses that depend on cheap international comms - for example, a whole industry of teaching Chinese to foreigners in the West via Video-conferencing had grown up, this will go up in puff of smoke.

US iPad to get BBC pay app - with 'handcrafted British feel'

corners like a good 'un actually

The Reliant van of my student days cornered stunningly - esp with a sack of cement on the rear floor

Ransomware Trojan is back and badder than ever

unintended consequence

So I did my backup... and found I'd overwritten all my backup files with identically named encrypted ones that can only be opened if I pay the kidnappers. That's the LAST time I take advice from The Reg comments threads!

Content producers should chip in for mobile internet costs

not

Eerrm... It's like asking Ford, Vauxhall etc asking US to pay THEM for the roads our cars use.

Humax HDR-Fox T2 Freeview HD DVR

still waiting...

...for a box with built in WiFi together with a credible media browser for iPlayer and Youtube.

I know everyone says that Homeplugs are better than WiFi but I have resolved not to add one more cable or gizmo, and only plan to dip into the online media on occasions.

And again, in a quest to reduce box count I want a Sat receiver AND Freeview hard disk recorder in ONE box - there will never be full free coverage of SD and HD on one box alone.

Meanwhile my ancient Humax 9200 PVR (with latest fixed-all firmware) is keeping me happy enough not to buy anything new for foreseeable future.

IT engineer fights spider with improvised flamethrower

Try suck instead of blow

A while back I bought a Black & Decker Dustbuster rechargeable hand held vacuum cleaner. Among its many uses I have discovered I can quickly pluck any kind of insect out of the air or off a wall/ceiling - leaving no mess!

Tesco touts budget textaholic SIM-only deal

but thanks for the ad anyway

erm.. GiffGaff "Unlimited Internet"... until October that is.

Jobsian remote access app comes to Android

Logmein for iPhone not cheap - try this free app first

If $30 seems a bit much just to try out your proof of concept, try http://remotedesktoprdp.com/ instead. Provides control of a PC or Mac from iPod Touch or iPhone. I use it as a remote control when the lappy is connected to the TV. Allows control from another computer also, but Free limits you to 2 controlled computers.

Hint: Reboot the PC to be controlled after installing the app on it.