Posts by Des

Brace yourselves, fanboys. Winter is coming. And the iPhone X can't handle the cold

Quick fix

Simples... just run the YouTube app https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/13/youtube-ios-app-battery-drain-overheating-issues/

Comet 67-P farted just as Rosetta probe flew through the gas plume

Affront

Perhaps it's a secret base disguised as a comet with a load of sleeping warships hidden in hangars under the surface?

Tell us what you're doing in DevOps, Containers, and Agile

Re: agile by doing yoga

Namaste

Kubernetes has won. Docker Enterprise Edition will support rival container-wrangling tech

Re: Oh, what a surprise...

According to wikipedia...

DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); and others. It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate "Zero-click Info" boxes – grey boxes above the results that display topic summaries and related topics.

Virgin Media admits it 'fell short' in broadband speeds ahead of lashing from BBC's Watchdog

I've been a long term VM customer and suffered no end of technical issues with their broadband service; I'm currently getting 70-80 mbps on a 200 mbps connection due to over utilisation in Bristol. Surely when they go to sell the service they should know when they will exceed available capacity? We reported our issue months ago and have been advised the fix is expected in October... I assume when they anticipate at least 50% of their customers will have left owing to their poor service.

Broadband providers almost double prices after deals end

Up to 200 Mbps, getting 60 Mbps...

I'm with Virgin Media and they offer up to 200 Mbps which is great when it works, but currently only delivering 60 Mbps due to over utilisation and this won't be rectified until October! The 60 Mbps they do provide is patchy at best and unusable for many services, i.e. I had trouble using YouTube and Deezer at the weekend. They've offered us £100 compensation for the duration, but I think it's still taking the p*** when I can't even get my VPN connected.

Franken-firm DXC Technology is born today, the fun begins...

Re: God I hate that word ..

You would probably enjoy Micheal McIntyre's take on American English then... https://youtu.be/5wSw3IWRJa0

Uber wasn't to blame for robo-ride crash – or was it? Witness said car tried to 'beat the lights'

AI Vision

I drive a new BMW with speed limit recognition; the car has a camera in the rear view mirror housing which can identify some speed limit signs, including some of the variable ones on overhead gantries. Sadly it is not 100% reliable, more like 75% by my unreliable reckoning, and even though it does display the posted speed limit in the glorious head up display (providing you're not wearing polarised sunglasses) it doesn't use it as a suggested upper speed if you push the limit button.

Renault fingers three for spying

Spying on Renault?

Why?

As a previous Renault owner I will never touch another Renault in my life; we had an 3.0 V6 dCi Espace from new and it lasted less than 50,000 miles. After sending the car in for a minor water leak we got an initial estimate back for £2,500. This went up to first £6,000 and then £11,500 as Renault UK got involved. As the car was 5 years old and not worth that we were obviously not prepared to pay; my wife complained and argued with Renault over the costs. Renault ended up paying us to go away, and we switched to another brand.

Germans develop sleepy-driver car 'warning' system

Have you seen...

...Die Welle (The Wave); a german movie which recounts how students could be swept up to do whatever it takes in the name of <insert cause here> which was based on a true story that occured in the US!

Seagate's 3TB external drive

RAID can grow

RAID setups are clever enough to grow without data loss; I have a Thecus N5200 Pro with 5 x 750GB HDDs, and if/when I replace any drives I can just put in bigger drives. The only downside for my (proper) RAID 5 setup is that I won't see the benefit until all the drives have been upgraded. Having said that I have read numerous reports of problems with the drobo enclosures and they don't exactly seem like good value for money.

Jobs to iPad skeptic: 'Are you nuts?'

How can that possibly be the issue?

The iPad is supposed to run same OS as iPhone; last time I checked that had language support for more langauges than I can understand.

Drobo 'storage robot' gets integrated file sharing

Still pricey

I've not heard glowing praise for the Drobo, and think it is still way overpriced. I've been running a Thecus N5200 Pro NAS for a few years now and found it wo be very reliable and feature rich from the start, including the essential ability to be a NAS and so truely shareable.

Brits still getting bull from broadband providers

I just ditched VM

after almost 10 years I got fed up of their poor service; I now have a BT line with O2 broadband. O2 told me that I might get up to 13mbps (figures provided by BT) and I have run a couple of speed tests and got 10-11mbps, but the big plus for me is over 1mbps upload speed. That is significantly better than the upload speed I used to get with VM and the further benefits; static IP address and less than half the price mean I don't really miss VM.

Scots slam Germans for 'tight-arsed' slur

@LuMan - Beer for Breakfast

LuMan is quite correct; Bavarians do drink beer for breakfast! I've had Wurst und Weißbier a few times with my Bavarian wife, but the difference is they don't drink beer for the hell of it (unless it's Oktoberfest), but rather as food, beer has it's place as part of a meal.

As someone else pointed out, Germans do have a sense of humour and they don't reserve their racial stereo-typing for the Scots. I remember finding the advert for a ready-meal of fish and chips advertised as "Very British", and having no problem with that whatsoever.

Moto Android 2.0 smartphone revealed

Hmmm, you is ugly!

I agree that it looks ugly, but I can't wait to end my iPhone contract and try a bit of Andriod. Maybe not this phone, but in 6-8 months something better is bound to come along. Things have come a long way since WM5, but I'm not sure it has always been in the right direction. iPhone may be the current sweetheart, but it'll never last.

Windows Mobile 7 feature details mined

@Sooty - Video Calling

I have used it... once or twice... not recently though as my iPhone doesn't support it. I had a WinMo phone and made the video call to a colleague with a Nokia. Shame was his Nokia only had one camera so whilst he was looking at my pixelated face I got a great view of the pixelated pavement.

Paris - cos she knows which end of the camera does what!

iPhone taught to edit Office 2007 docs, sheets

Business apps?

Of course, you're not allowed to use it as a genuine business app as that would go against the terms and conditions as pointed out in previously articles featured on this site. I have an iPhone 3G; moved to it after years of mediocre performance on WinMo's, will probably move back to WinMo's when this contract expires. Nice try Apple, but must stop raving about exciting new features; cut & paste, video, etc.

OCZ pitches 'best value' SLC SSD

How fast?

That's a great transfer rate; I just rebuilt my PC at home using two 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black (7200rpm and 32MB cache) in RAID0 and I short-stroked them (created a 256GB partition) and get 175MB/s. Plus I bet my access time of 9.3ms gets blown away by the SSD; I only have a USB flash ReadyBoost flash drive, but that manages 0.5ms!

Apple admits iPhone apps not suitable for business

RE: @lolcat

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Paris, because when she uses the iPhone for business she wants it to delete all her data.

Samsung gets 'stupid fast' in gaming grab

Stupid Fast?

Or just... Stupid Expensive?

Drobos flying off the shelves

I love my Thecus

I bought a Thecus N5200 pro (for home use) and stuck in 5 x 750GB drives in RAID 5 config. It's great, it does all I need and more with only one exception (something to do with 4GB files). It has a built in print server too (if you need one) and 2 network ports (there is a 5 port model). It supports eSATA and iSCSI as well as USB. I've had mine for 18 months and it is still the best data storage device I've owned.

Office 2010 tech preview: Expect the expected

@@Am I the only person to hate the ribbon? #

Forgot to mention... if you're stuck on Office 2003, the leap [sic] to Office 2007 could be bridged with the aid of the Interactive: Word 2003 to Word 2007 command reference guide http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100744321033.aspx

Of course this is based on the assumption that you've already made the bold step of installing Adobe Flash Player 7.0 or later... :O

@Am I the only person to hate the ribbon? #

Are you sure you work in IT? Don't take it too personally, but spending an hour searching the ribbon to make some "simple changes" to a document seems a bit excessive. After all, the Ribbon is just a menu that looks a bit different and AFAIK shortcuts still work; CTRL-B, CTRL-U, etc.

If you're really struggling to adapt to the Ribbon you could download Search Commands http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx # start typing what it is you want to do and it'll display matching and related commands.

I for one welcome our Ribbon Overlords

Samsung smartphone keyboard takes wing

I'm with JMiles Posted Thursday 9th July 2009 01:09 GMT

I had a Psion Series 5 and it was without doubt the best compact keyboard I ever typed on. Nothing has come close to it in terms of phone/pdas. I also have a wireless mini Logitech keyboard (for my media center pc) that fails because its just that little bit too small.

The Psion 3G would get my vote!!!

Girls Aloud net obscenity case falls at first hurdle

I'm starting a list

I'm concerned that my children might become exposed to these dangerous stories so I'm starting a list of books that are not suitable (and presumably illegal)...

1. Little Red Riding Hood - people getting eaten, attempts to lure a child into a situation where she is in mortal ldanger, etc.

2. Sleeping Beauty - attempted poisoning

3. Hansel and Gretel - cannibalism

4. Peter Pan - various attempts at murder and kidnapping

The list could go on... :O

Paris: Because even she knows fiction

Double jeopardy my arse!

In case you missed it the law on double jeopardy has been changed http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4406129.stm so now you CAN be charged twice for the same crime! :O

Windows 7 RC downloads to end 15 August

Win 7 looks good to me

I donwloaded WIn 7 Beta and ran it in a VM and wasn't impressed at all, but the RC is actually quite good. I have a PC with 3.3GHz CPU (with Hyper Threading) and 2GB RAM which I use to run Media Center in my lounge. With Vista Ultimate it was always a bit slow, but I installed the Win 7 RC on it yesterday and I have to say it's significantly better. Startup seems significantly quicker and the Media Center experience is much improved. I have a DVD library on a seperate NAS and Vista MC would typically take 2-3 minutes to find the library and display the DVDs (in gallery mode), whereas Win 7 MC does exactly the same job in about 20-30 secs.

I don't use the PC for much else than browsing the web or as a MC, but the installation was really easy and there were no compatibility issues (not the case with Vista).

So for me the experience is a positive one and on top of that it looks pretty too.

People just not that into Blu-ray

Media Centre with DVD Library for me

I can't be bothered with Blu Ray, up-scaled DVDs look great on my 46" HD LCD TV, Media Centre works (albeit slowly) and my 3.5TB RAID 5 NAS has more than enough space for my movie collection when trimmed of all the trailers and other junk they think we will pay extra for? Who actually watches the extras on DVD?

Apple wilts under iPhone upgrade strain

Installation wasn't a problem for me...

I got the upgrade installed within half an hour of it going live and had no issues whatsoever with the install; my wife's iPhone was a little more awkward, but a few retries sorted that out too.

I can understand the desire to be first with the upgrade, but for me the reason was I wanted to see if I could use my Jabra BT620s headphones. I am able to report that I can listen to stereo music and make calls using the Bluetooth headphones, but the track selection (next/previous track) don't work so it's not 100% success. I still have the same intermittent connectivity issues, but I had that with WinMo too, but at least next/previous track worked with WinMo.

My overall impression is that the iPhone 3G now runs a bit slower, but I guess it's doing more? I wouldn't want to revert to the previous OS, but now my iPhones gone from having a great UI to being just a bit better than the WinMo UI on my XDA Stellar/HTC TyTN II.

iPhone 3.0 - born on schedule...

Bluetooth? Almost

I moved from WinMo6 to iPhone back in February and even though I found the device restrictive.... everything just works. I was really looking forward to the OS 3.0 rollout when I heard that Bluetooth support for stereo headphones would be added as I hate wires and have a pair of Jabra BT620s that I used to use with my WinMo phone. Sadly the iPhone support doesn't go so far as to include the track selection controls, but otherwise not too bad. Maybe they can add full support in the next update?

Israel to test ducted-fan robot air jeep 'within two months'

@GeorgeTuk

"A real advantage?

By GeorgeTuk Posted Tuesday 16th June 2009 13:24 GMT

Its really difficult to see what true advantage this could have over the traditional helicopter other than straight line speed."

Not even that as the helicopter speed record belongs to the Westland Lynx (albeit a souped up version) set about 20 years ago. The speed limit for helicopter being the point at which the rotors travel supersonically.

Paris because...

WD drops 4TB whopper

4TB Backup device

I prefer to use RAID 5 in my NAS (and my PC come to that); 5 x 750GB may only give me about 3TB, but I can hot-swap out failed drives and replace without data loss, and should I choose to replace the 750GB drives with something bigger the NAS can grow my RAID to fill all the available capacity. Sure this comes at a cost, but then peace of mind is priceless!

Paris? Because for it to work it should be simple.

DARPA killer AI robots to 'participate in own construction'

Judgement Day

John Connor: No, you shouldn't exist. We took out Cyberdyne over ten years ago. We stopped Judgment Day.

Terminator: You only postponed it. Judgment Day is inevitable.

Pirate Bay prosecutor argues for one year prison terms

It's the end of the world as we know it

TPB is a torrent index, a torrent in itself is metadata, TPB doesn't host the shared files, so how can what they do be considered illegal?

'Ich bin ein storyteller', says UK taxman

Ja bitte

Könnte ich eine deutschsprachige Kinder-CD wenden Sie sich bitte?

Canadian runs up $85,000 mobe bill

Immigration Application?

...maybe he can move to the US now he's passed the IQ test?

Boeing announces 'Laser Gunship' completion

@Mr Larrington

I don't think you need to worry about Jacqui Smith's Arrest-O-Bots just at the moment ;)

Need a new set of b*llocks? Try Argos

Don't forget...

the 14 day money back guarantee if your new bollocks fail to satisfy.

Shocked Shatner shunted from Star Trek XI

@I'll see your Space 1999

Battlestar Galactica ripped off the shaky camera work from Firefly - a surprisingly good series that was prematurely canned just as it was getting into it's stride. Such a shame as the cast had really started to gel.

Battlestar Galactica's script just doesn't do anything for me - all my sympathy lies with the Cylons.

LEDs replace hands in bonkers Japanese watches

@None of them are what I want

Not exactly what you're after, but Seiko do a Kinetic watch with perpetual calendar http://www.seikowatches.com/technology/kinetic/kinetic_p.html only lacking the digital display.

Ofcom: no comeback for TV on analogue spectrum

Updates to HD TV built-in decoders

I've been told (but confess to not really knowing much about the subject) that the latest HD TVs with built-in decoders are capable of receiving updates over the air? If this is so, can't they be updated to receive new HD FTA transmissions?

Shooting stars to dazzle in September...

What night?

I'm confused, the story says that we can watch the spectacle on Sunday night, but that is the 2nd of September and the date mentioned earlier in the article is 1st September. So come on, which night is it; 1st September (Saturday) or Sunday (2nd September)?

O2 updates Orbit to WM6

Still waiting...

...are we there yet?

Nokia offers assistance for unresponsive GPS phones

Initial GPS lock

The delay in initial GPS lock is because the GPS receiver has to receive an almanac from the satellite that tells the GPS receiver where every satellite should be at any given time. A-GPS simply provides the almanac via an alternative method meaning that the GPS receiver in the phone can get a proper fix much more quickly. That's why GPS receivers re-acquisition time is always much quicker than initial acquisition.

Xbox 360 Elite to raid Europe next month

How much?

That's less than I paid for my Premium XBOX 360 earlier this year :(

Oh well; I'm still having a blast. I am a bit of a M$ fan, but this XBOX kicks ass - the games are great (well, they suit my tastes) and the graphics are the best thing to hit my 46" HD TV.

I must admit the HDMI and extra big HDD are tempting; maybe I can sneak one in without the wife noticing?

Chinese netizens prevent 800-cat stir-fry

RE: Eating carnivores

Surely eating a few carnivores would improve overall efficiency as there would be less carnivores left to go eating the omnivores?

Red ring of Xbox death costs Microsoft $1bn

Touch wood

No red lights/ring of death yet and no complaints either.

I applaude M$ for finally extending the warranty period and I'm sure there are plenty of people who will benefit from this. They still have a way to go, but fingers crossed I won't have to make use of their bad customer service and in the meantime continue to enjoy the gaming I get from my XBOX 360.

I've tried Playstation and it just doesn't cut it for me - I guess I'm just a M$ fan holding my breath for Halo 3.

1 satisfied customer (gamertag: Gen Klinkerofen)

Microsoft tells Ultimate Extras fans to 'hang on'

Runs on my old PC

I've been running Vista Ultimate on an old 1.3GHz PC with 1GB RAM (and unsupported 32MB Graphics card) and it works fine, nice and stable too. OK, so I don't actually use the PC as anything other than a Media Center for serving WMV files to my XBOX 360, but every time I switch on the monitor and shake the mouse it responds immediately.

I did try Vista on my more powerful desktop PC (3.6GHz P4 with HT, 2GB RAM, 128MB Vista compatible Graphics), but once I'd stuck all my apps (the ones that would work on Vista that is) on it it ran like a dog with no legs. Funny that, but I couldn't be bothered to figure out why, so I rolled back to good old reliable XP Pro.

TomTom files patent for camera sat nav

to Karim Bourouba

The BMW M5 has a HUD and you can have it display limited info of your choice including simple navigational information - like the simplified info Tom Tom displays above certain speeds.