Posts by John Chadwick

Ofcom taps water network for next generation broadband

Let's hope it won't leak as much.

I can just see all those vital bits falling out of the broken fibre now.

More seriously, would you trust the Water Board not to sever the cables each time they dig up the mains.

Billy Bragg: Why should songwriters starve so others get rich?

@ Music is everywhere

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you'll find that these sources of Music or Film or whatever still pay for them, and the artists involved are still entitled to those royalties.

When labels give away music, and they do, it's as a loss leader to generate sales and interest, in fact, I remember NME, Rolling Stone, Melody Maker and others giving away tracks on a 7" cover single that would play a few times before being worn out. These vinyl singles were probably the thickness of a piece of paper, so if you liked what you heard, you went and bought it. Don't know about free tapes though they came along after I'd stopped reading NME. (1980 if you wondered).

Artists need to be paid for their work, and not all artists translate from albums to Wembley Stadium, why should we loose them, just because they use an easily copied media doesn't mean they should not be paid for their work.

If you want artwork you pay for it, copy or not, and the artist benefits, no one would suggest that an artist such as Damian Hirst shouldn't be paid for his embalmed livestock, so why shouldn't Billy, or any other Musician be paid for theirs.

Aussie laser-pointer dazzle attacks on airliners: Bad

@ a relatively cheap solution

I seem to remember that aircraft have green landing gear down indicators, and that three greens means that the landing gear is down and locked.

But nice try.

Why do we need these lasers anyway, surly you only need one that goes 25m. Mind you they are cheap enough for kids to buy, and it's probably kids doing it. Just think of the kudos you could get by showing little Johnny that you can tag a jumbo. My what fun!

Ofcom hits green on in-flight calling

Oh please god no!

Sometimes, just sometimes I wish someone would say why do we need this.

Mobile phone users are selfish pigs who have no regard for the people around them who get to suffer half their conversations, I look forward to being in places where I don't have to listen to them, and others don't have to listen to me.

3Km up before you can use it, b*ll*£ks, as soon as you can use them on plains, it'll be any time, as people just won't turn them off, and won't understand, any airline rules, because you can bet they'll be different on each airline, and don't the cabin crew have enough to do already? I can't see them shutting up a phone user, no matter how many people they annoy.

I suppose the only hope is that airlines will make the use of a phone, on a plane really expensive, like $10 a minute to receive, $15 to make, and texts $5.

MoD loses 11,000 ID cards

Hang on a minute

A. It isn't the MOD who has lost the card it's the people who they are issued to.

B. Are they really lost, or just not returned by leavers, or destroyed in the washing machine.

C. How does this compare to other organisations or individuals.

I probably "loose" an ID card every five years, how about the rest of you. And by loose I mean leave the company and don;t return the card, destroy it in a washing machine. 5,500 a year means earch individual loosing one about every 18 years, which is pretty good I think, even better if this covers all the other aspects of the MOD.

Google approaching world domination

Too Close to Call

Hmm, Analysts or executives, difficult one that. On balance it's probably the Analysts, as I'd expect the executives made their bonuses, having set their sights much lower.

Microsoft prints get-out-of-jail card for Vista Home

Can anybody tell me why I would want Vista?

No seriously, I run XP at home, do a bit of word processing, web surfing, and eMail and play a couple of games. The only thing it doesn't do is run domain services, which would be great. For that I need Home Server, you know the one that can't cope with being a server.

I use XP at work, for well just about the same, except the games. Now and again I do a bit of coding and systems administration. If I want to I can run just about any business application I want too on my desktop, or my laptop.

So what does Windows Vista actually give me that I don't already have, what does it give me that I actually need. To put it another way go on may mmy day what's the killer app for Vista.

By the way my next home PC will be a Mac.

E-government is working for DVLA

Not quite as good as they think it is.

The online Road Tax system has one small flaw. It can't cope with your Tax and Insurance running out at the same time, don't know about MOT because I'm not there yet but I couldn't use the service because the Insurance feed said I hadn't renewed, even though I had, so I couldn't use the service.

Now let me see, if you buy a car, then your Insurance, Tax and MOT are all going to expire around the same time aren't they?

@Great Service, yup agree, lost both my V5s and the arrive in the post 3 days later after a phone call.

@Ditch Tax By the way if you lower fuel tax and abolish car tax, other taxes will go up, government needs a certain amount a revenue to function. Tax is also not just about raising revenue, it is a mechanism to guide change and behaviour. Put up Tax on something to discourage use. Road tax for example is being used to encourage the use of some vehicles, and discourage others, though not by much to most of us. It also acts a visible sign that for most of us for at least one day of the year our vehicle was taxed, insured and roadworthy. Even if next month we can stop our insurance, and bribe a dodgy MOT garage, most of us don't.

Google turns Irish town 3D

@Marco - or a more cultural exhibition

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=chalk+giant&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

US Marines: Osprey tiltrotor doing OK in Iraq

For even more tilt rotor from yesteryear

http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/tiltrotor.html

Dixons shares spanked after profit warning

And the next story is.....

Anyone want to bet that DSGI announce a major cost cutting, brand rationalisation and refocusing of the business in order to restore shareholder confidence and restore retail margins.

Microsoft warns on Home Server bug

@Another reason to stick with "Standard"

Um, you wouldn't actually run any of the programs on a Windows server would you, but you could, so has anyone actually tried, just to make sure it won't happen on real windows server editions.

And I agree that Windows 2003 isn't that bad, and a detuned version that would support say 10 users as secure domestic server would be great. I'd love to be able to use my Windows XP Pro workstation as a domain server as well for all the other PCs I have.

Still I prefer Unix for real severs, better still VMS.

Office update disables MS files

What about our archives!

Aside from the fact, as has been said, home users buy one version and use it for years. I can think of many companies, government departments, solicitors and so on who hold documents in old formats. You can't upgrade these documents, either because upgrading would have legal significance, or because it would cost a fortune to do it. I can think of many sorts of document that might be written, but then not looked at again for years, when something goes wrong.

You can't actually tell, just by looking at file extentions and files dates which documents are supported and which aren't. I've written over 100 separate office documents in the last year, probably less than many, but my personal archives contain several thousands of documents in Word formats alone, I dread to think how long it would take to go through them all. Oh, and yes many document over 10 years old would still be significant today.

Perhaps the answer is for Microsoft to produce a document reader that can only read document text and then convert if required. Why they could sell it for £500 a pop as Word Archive Pro 2008.

Dell parks itself in PC superstores across Europe

@If only you shopped in Pc World

The one thing Adam & Co need to remember is that it takes effort to build customer confidence and satisfaction, and seconds to loose it.

Stopped using PC world when one of their store managers was extremely rude to me. I've never had a problem with the stores I used, but then I work in computing, and know what I want, and how most everything works.

The core problem for DSG is not that the staff are poor, my experience is they mostly try their best, but know less about their products that they should, and sometimes don't even know where they are in the store.

The problem with DSG is that it doesn't value its staff, it's the same across the whole group. I now buy most of my retail items from John Lewis, whose customer service, warrenty terms and just about everythin else,is in my experiance is a whole lot better.

Oh and one other thing, PCWorld is used by many of my colleagues, not because it is good, or even cheap, but because it's across the road. They pretty much despise the service, but the I'll bet the Manager of the store has never bothered to check how many major IT companies have offices within 500 meters of his store (4), and upped his game to increase his sales, a rude and disinterested staff member who doesn't know where the components, Blank DVDs etc are.

I go to Maplin or Rymans by the way, it's a few hundred meters further, but the staff are nicer.

419er fears unsolicited intergalactic email

Lets hope it wasn't a premium rate number then.

And, anyone want to bet when it will be.

Mayor Ken buys hydrogen buses for London

Isn't this an experiment then?

Quite appart from the fact that hydrogen power currently is far more thermodynamically inefficient than any other method of portable energy propultion. I'd guess that the reason there are only 10 busses on order is because LRT want to find out how viable they are to use, are they really going to be a sensible alternative to say - bio-diesel, trams and trollys.

I think a big point is DfT seems to think Fuel Cells are they way forward as a cheap source of power, and Ken and other Politicians seem to think so too, to the extent that DfT are using this, very young an immature technology as an excuse not to invest in Electricly powerd public transport which is Capital intensive, it costs money to put up wires, but once they are up, it doesn't matter how you generate the electricity, the vehicles all use it just the same way. It's also relatively efficient to transport along wires.

The transport press has been banging on about the stupidity of Hydrogen Cells as a method of propultion for public transport for some time.

If we want independently powered vehicles, then Hydrogen Cells are one method that might apply, and it should be investigated, and LRT are the right people to do it, it just isn't the whole answer.

Man wrongly detained for 50 days has ISP to thank

Personally I blame TV

Most of us who use the register know a thing or two about technology, sadly the world doesn't. Policeman are part of that world, and lets face it the reality that we get show of flawless technology on CSI, NCIS, Spooks and many others is a long way from reality.

TV tells us it always works, so we believe it, no matter who we are, so an ISP gives you a name and address based on an IP address, who are we to disagree, it came from a computer, it must be right.

Congestion charge dodgers register Bentleys as minicabs

A whole new meaning to private hire

I doubt it will matter what Tfl do here, as yes ok, they might stop some of the more ridiculous cars, but, what's to stop groups of people banding together and running private, private hire for the school run, got three families with big cars taking the nipper to school, well then, register them all as private hire cars under a shell company, "Notting Grove School Cars" that specializes in delivering your child safely to the school gates. Register each school run as a journey, and your trip to Waitrose, lots of people use taxi's to do that in London.

I think asking to see the vehicle insurance might be a bit more fun, as mini-cab driving is excluded on most normal policies, but then again, it's probably cheaper than £25 a day, in fact £8 a day to insure yourself as a mini-cab.

£25 a day sounds great as a way of making people downsize their cars, but the practicalities are that it now makes it more beneficial to find ways round the charge. Aren't vehicles with more a certain number of seats exempt anyway, Defender Safari's were at one point.

Irish man rescued after falling for 419 scam

419 Snails

Me too, I sent mine to the Barcelona Police and asked if they would like to collect it for me as the return address was just round the corner for them.

Google nabs patent for Sun's Project Blackbox?

Lets bring Patents into even more dis-repute.

Haven't Sungard offered this kind of service for years. Loose your data centre and we'll ship a new one on the back of a truck that you can put in the car park until you rebuild.

I'm sure they offered this service to me in 2002 when I was doing a DR plan.

So what does putting it in a container add, ah yes vertical scalability.

Next you know some one will try and patent putting things in boxes, after all that's all a container is.

AMD updates Phenom timetable

What's a core amongst friends

Odd numbers of cores, now that'll upset a few licensing models, still if IBM can do it why not AMD. But don't be too surprised when you find that you land up paying for 4 cores worth of licenses.

Home market only, I suspect, and who'll be the first to hack the other core for a 3.5 core CPU. ;-)

McLaren fined $100m for spying

Can't win one way win another

$100 Million, just how much money is there in an F1 team. Is this a case of Ferrari making sure they win next year as well by bankrupting McLaren.

And who gets the $100 Million.