Re: Am I missing something? - no sir, well said

And to be fair to Mr. Fry he is touching on a piece of computer science esoterica - I still have nightmares about ploughing through Minsky's "Computation: Finite & Infinite Machines" as an undergrad.

There does seem to be an unhealthy backlash against Turing's legacy because there is a dispute over the matter of his persecution by the British state. The fact is that he that he stands out as a very bright light in a pantheon not short on bright lights in the theory of computation. And if Stephen Fry slightly misunderstands the technicalia in aiding the well deserved recoginition of Turing we should not really care.

Re: How is this different from other spyware?

It's different in that Gamma International will almost certainly have a cosy relationship with the British and German security services who are so keen to snoop on their own citizens with the sanction of their respective political classes...***WHHOOOOSSSSHHHHHH***...hey did you hear that? The sound of Tory & Lib Dem politicians who had previously opposed Labour's GHCQ mega-snoop legislation swiftly changing their position when they entered Downing Street. Who knew?!

Business as usual...

As a long standing domestic VM customer this is no surprise. Standard practice is:

(i) Don't admit to anything on the service status page if at all possible;

(ii) Direct support calls to overseas call centres who are not provided with relevant information about outages;

(iii) Tell customer that the problem will be investigated and they will be called back but fail to do so;

(iv) Fill the forums with employee sock puppets who tell users how great the service is.

Most of the time the service is good but on the occasions that it isn't there is a total failure to give a shit at VM.

Other Contracts Are Available...

@James 51:

SIM-free device + monthly rolling contract = stress-free life when mobile service provider f*cks-up.

Simples.

Or worse?

Some analyst sitting on a pile of Apple stock that has fallen by 30% in the past five months is worrying about how he will confinue to fund the condo, kids private education *and* his coke habit? "Hey! Let's roll out the hackneyed Android Fragmentation scare story - there's plenty of tired tech journos out there to spread some FUD!"

</cynical_wanker>

So in an open free-market ecosystem some companies make crap? *yawn* bears-trees-poop, meh.

When you can get a good SIM-free ICS smartphone (e.g. Huawei Ascend G300) and a good 7" JB tablet (e.g. Storage Options Scroll Evoke) for a little over £200 it's bleedin' obvious to all those who aren't supping the Cupertino/Redmond kool aid that Android fragmentation ain't the problem it's cracked up to be.

On and just how much quality smartphone+tablet hardware and software can you get for less than 250 notes from Apple or a Windows source?

</smug>

Re: Phone numbers

You don't have to provide Google with a phone number, doing so simply provides one method of enabling two-factor authentication and one method of regaining access to your account in the case of lost credentials. The former can be done via the Authenticator Android app (verified by a single-use activation code) and the latter via another e-mail account or single-use login codes.

Too right, Google are no angels and I doubt they really give a stuff about our privacy, but for the vast majority of people who use the net for significant aspects of their life an e-mail account is almost certainly the most important attack vector for the bad guys to pinch your identity and your money.

It's all very well to take a privacy holier than thou (or worse a lazy "it's a pain to use all the time") attitude but balancing minor privacy and inconvenience issues against your life being in the hands of some anonymous criminal is a no-brainer and that's how we should be educating lay users.

Re: OF COURSE they should've expected this.

DAMN! I am fed up of some commenters here generating hysteria around use of the word "expect"!

"Veber should have expected this response" =/= "It is perfectly OK for a small minority of idiots in the Python community to send abusive e-mails and make abusive phone calls"

Jamie Jones and others: those of us who used the word "expect" simply EXPECTED that you had the intelligence to see that we were merely pointing out that anyone with a modicum of net savvy could have seen this coming, not that it is in any way justified.

Let me guess: you're applying for a position at the Daily Wail?

</pointless_rant>

Perfectly understood...

@dotdavid: how many of us had heard of Veber before they pulled this stupid stunt? Maybe Veber is not doing so well and some bright spark there says: "Hey I have this brilliant idea to get us some free publicity! You know we own that domain python.co.uk....?" etc.

There is no proof of this but at best Poultney is being disingenuous:

Poultney claims he’s only interested in the trademark on the servers. “We are not interested in the trademark on the language,” Poultney told The Reg.

Well, Mr Poultney, your IPO filing (linked to by a cynic writes... above) says otherwise. And if you want a friendly chat with PSF about this why send your lawyers to talk to them?

Frankly Poultney/Veber's behaviour has been crass and probably dishonest and he should have known better than to expose his staff to the inevitable response generated by his cynical stunt.

Re: I think it sends out a positive gender message

@Christian: all good points but this Playmobil kit is so 20th century: where's the card skimmer for the ATM??

Re: Ok, fine so far

And on my 32GB Nexus 7 I have even more free space than a 32GB iPad. And it's 3G. And it's half the price of and iPad. And it's a third of the price of a Surface Pro. And it flies like hot shit off a shovel.

</smug>

If I work hard I can see that some people for whom budget is less of an issue can justify an iPad. Surface Pro? Less so.

Re: Isn't that cute...BUT IT'S WRONG!

@AC 18:44: it may have escaped your notice but Google actually only create a few apps for Android, the overwhelming majority are 3rd party creations. Should Google compel every developer who understandably wants to create apps for Android also make a version WinPho? Oh yeah...that's gonna happen!

Re: But

Sorry but I'll have to see your lawyers before you can have a "skinny soymilk frappucino" as that is a method outlined in Apple's patent iCaff.

As for a lawsuit over this, I wonder what sort of ads Google ended up targetting at these clueless Safari users (pardon my tautology)? I'm willing to bet they were mainly for wildly over-priced brushed aluminium-clad laptops and fruity phones. Oh and trendy coffee bars where the punters cogitate deeply on what kind of cow soymilk comes from...

Re: Isn't that cute...BUT IT'S WRONG!

Agreed - and MS should not be encouraged to use the fat wedge that they have extorted via their monopoly positions in other markets to gain anything like a monopoly position in the mobile market.

Yes Google have spent quite a lot developing Android but Android is Open Source and a huge chunk of the work was already done in the form of the Linux kernel and other Open Source inputs. And yes Google are monopolistic in their own way but that is their search+ad+data slurp model, not mobile OS lock-in.

An attempt by MS to gain significant mobile market share by using WinPho8 as a loss-leader initially can only be on the premise of future monopoly per-device license fees in the future as that is almost the only significant business model they have. That would not be a good future for any of us apart from possibly MS (if they could make that succeed, which is questionable).

MS's failure to date is not that their mobile OS is too expensive, it's that it is not sufficiently superior to (or even as good as, some of us may argue...) the competition to justify the premium they need to charge to cover the cost of development and turn a profit.

Re: Canbridge postgrads aren't what they used to be (sic)

@Colin Millar & Mongo:

Who knows (or cares...) what "Canbridge" postgrads are like? But your typo is beautifully Freudian as you clearly have not bothered to put the comments in this piece in any kind of context, let alone glance at the research referred to.

The quotes are lifted from a post on the excellent Light Blue Touchpaper blog that is simply a response to the usual media/consultant-hyped scare stories about brute-force cracking. And, Colin, even the article makes clear that the quote you mistakenly attribute to the researcher was "perceived wisdom" being debunked.

If you really want a flavour of the actual research check the summary of the thesis or a more weighty LBT posting on authentication. There are boffins and there are boffins, in my experience the bunch at the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory know their stuff.

Certainly sir...

...would you like a little horse with that?

Re: True innovation

@JDX: You, sir, are a troll, though a troll with a very nice gold badge!

For once I'm going to give M$ the benefit of the doubt here: maybe there is some wag of a code monkey in the WinPho8 dev team who mocked-up this screen to be displayed on a boot failure likely to have been caused by tinkering with the standard boot image. Surely someone at M$ has a sense of humour...surely...

Re: USB3

@Euripides Pants:

Quite right - I do get fed up of Windows drones whining on about all their fab new feature that has just been quietly working in Linux for years. I mean the important shit that does useful stuff and makes systems dependable, fast & efficient, not the bollocks bling and other ephemera.

Same with iPhone fashion victims continually bleating the myth that their extortionate hand-candy is innovative and technically superior - though I grant that from a marketing perspective it may be. Meh...

Now be fair...

...as attractive paperweights go this one is beautifully designed!

</troll>

Re: Bull

Assange is a dick.

Manning was naiive.

Leaking & publishing information about US war crimes and cynical diplomatic hypocrisy was the right thing to do.

Manning's treatment in custody is a deliberate form of pre-trial (i.e. extra-judicial) punishment and amounts to torture.

112 days remission does not make the US court martial system just and enlightened.

None of these statements are mutually exclusive.

Re: You can give me £10-15 if you like

Anyone would think I pompously held-forth without reading the article...oops!

Re: @Ian McNee Asus PA248Q

@DF118:

I lied - they are 2560x1440 - oops! Anway Scan have a few, starting with the Asus PB278Q, TFT Central review here.

Re: Asus PA248Q

Being the proud owner of an old Iiyama 24" from back in the day when 1920x1200 was more common I totally agree. However both Dell & Iiyama do a couple of reasonably priced 24" 1920x1200 IPS displays like this one at Scan: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/24-dell-u2412m-led-ips-monitor-full-hd-displayport-dvi-vga-1920x1200-8ms-300cd-m-10001-silver

However what puzzles me about this review of "affordable" monitors is including those expensive panels from Asus & Benq. When you're in the £300-350 range it's hard to imagine why someone looking for the improved colour performance that these offer would not spend a little extra for a 27" 2560x1600 IPS model seeing as there are several good options around the £450 mark.

And was it not possible to put in at least one monitor that the review felt able to recommend?? Poor show.

Re: Tripe... - and on so many levels

Fundamentally what Matt Asay misses is that where iOS is a walled garden monoculture and an attempt by Apple to completely monopolise users', Android is open and diverse encouraging a massive ecosystem of hardware, software and cloud developers.

Just because Google are monopolistic with their search/ad business it doesn't mean that Android is monopolistic. On the contrary, its openness and diversity have simply made it extremely successful, to the benefit of all of us who choose to use in whichever way works for us. Unlike Apple with iOS, Android expands the possibilities of what we can do rather than limiting them to what we are spoonfed (and spoonfed rather expensively at that).

Re: Starting figures are well out

Using this analogy I expect our thieving pals in the City would have dipped-into someone else's savings to buy half a dozen battery-farmed eggs from Tesco that they knew would not hatch, then sold 250% of the shares in each egg on the basis that on maturity each egg would become 100 plump & delicious organic free-range self-basting roasting chickens.

The rest is smoke and mirrors, just like Tim Worstall's piece. Never mind the vast omissions, what about that old turkey: "the public sector ate my breakfast"? Who do you think does all the jobs that makes life tolerable in this country? Largely low-paid public sector workers: refuse collectors that prevent us from drowning in crap, hospital cleaners who make sure that we don't die horribly from MRSA if we're injured, transport workers who keep our cities from grinding to a halt with cars, carers who look after our parents.

Yes we all know about the horror stories in these various lines of work but they are largely caused by lack of investment in the people doing the work: wages, training, supportive management. If Tim Worstall has his way less money will be spent of these things and it will be a short walk to hell.

Re: Ping Time

"24 years latency" - so, not quite as bad as Talk Talk boradband then?

Re: How humiliating

But just how humiliating? Now if Apple have patented schadenfreude...

</smug-areshole>

Re: Not 5-6 weeks for everyone

Different supplier naturally but my Nexus 7 3G that the website said would ship in 1-2 weeks last Wednesday arrived on Friday - deep joy!

Maybe I'm being cynical but perhaps the pessimistic delivery promises are part of the marketing hype? If that's so Google ought to be careful - Apple have probably patented that too...

</facetious troll>

Ditto - but at this price??

http://www.lambda-tek.com/90OK0MI1101090U-Asus-Google-Nexus-7~cs/B1490372 - just as well you get £124 cashback if you purchase with a debit card... *ahem*

Jemma: keep taking the tablets! (sorry...)

I know your game - you're aiming for FotW! A bit more random capitalisation and typing errors and you'll be there. And for the record I'm just about to order my Android seven-incher and wouldn't touch an iPhad with a barge pole (even if I could afford one).

Re. Testing with Linux

Totally agree with Troy - even if the tester ins't a Linux geek it's nice to see that they make the effort to see how a major Linux distro runs on a system: thanks Alun!

Re: Microsoft have been clever

Mark: correct yourself - it's obvious that I'm referring to tablet market share where Apple have about 50%: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/11/05/apple_tablets_decrease/

Re: Microsoft have been clever

I think you're missing something here: M$ will have been clever if they can sell a shitload of these. I'm no fan of Apple, far from it, but they continue to sell lots and lots of iPhads. It has take the Android slab makers a couple of years to even begin putting a dent into Apple's market share even with a wide range of quality product from the likes of Asus and Samsung.

You only need to look at M$ efforts in the mobile market: WinPho 7.x was going to clean up and the response to 8 has been muted praise at best. Their sales are still virtually flatlined at the bottom of the graph. So an over-priced high-margin slab is going to reel in the profits for Redmond? You'd have to offer me very big odds to bet on that.

The maths is simple: modest sales x high margin = tiny profits compared to Apple.

Re: End of life - comment bait or...

...Gavin didn't read the note properly on the M$ website that he included a link to:

"Support ends 24 months after the next service pack releases or at the end of the product's support lifecycle, whichever comes first."

As there is not (yet...) a next Win7 SP then it's the same as the Mainstream/Extended Support End Dates for Win7 generally (2015 and 2020 respectively).

Re: Clearly

I've never seen one before. No one has, but...

Re: Mine does this, and has done since day one

Agreed, we can use modem mode but that still means we have paid for this lump of electronic crap. VM may say is comes free when you upgrade beyond a 20Mb/s service (the limit of the old Motorola cable modems) but we still had to pay for it to be "activated" even if we installed & configured it ourselves and there will be something factored into our bills to cover the cost as well.

With the TV service VM give us the option to having a simple digital STB or paying extra for a Tivo so for our broadband give us the option of a small-footprint low-power modem that will run at 100Mb/s+ or paying extra for an all-in-one modem-router-switch-ap.

Assuming the rumours are correct that VM execs are mulling this over does anyone know the best place to comment to have a small chance of influencing this decision?

Re: Well, you haters can hate

You Sir are a facetious sh*t and I upvote you for it!

Indeed...

And why no comparison between the free and pay-for versions from companies like AVG, Avast and Avira? Also as other have said the failure to test products with widely-used non-MS browsers is a big gap.

Re: apple gimmick?

pete: you're a bloke and you're saying you DON'T ball touch??

Unfortunately it seems that Apple might be doing it again: getting us to part with our hard-earned for something that we don't really need as there is already a perfectly good (and free in this case) non-electronic method of achieving the same result, i.e. a satisfying ball-scratch.

Conflation part II: GM =/= mutation/evolution in the wild

You are right to separate out the different issues in the whole GM Pandora's box but you do so selectively, are guilty of your own conflation and ignore the interaction of these issues..

The first poster, asdf points out that there are proven links between obesity and cancer (and many other serious health epidemics in wealthy countries), not the simplistic assertion that "GM causes cancer." And you suggest that creating GMOs is no different from random genetic mutation in the wild which is frankly utter bollocks. On the one hand random genetic mutation leads to small incremental changes over time in the context of an ecosystem in which all organisms are evolving. On the other hand lab-created GMOs are specifically designed to out-compete organisms in the wider ecosystem and thus have a far greater potential for unpredictable consequences when released in the wild.

Finally it is precisely amoral profit-driven semi-monopolies like Monsanto that are creating these GMOs and lobbying to have them released into the wild. Do you trust them to do due diligence with regard to large parts of the planet's ecosystem with their track record so far? I certainly don't.

Re: Virginmedia has routing problem...

Indeed. And I'd be willing to bet that their service status page says something like: Everything is DANDY! Don't you just LURVE having the best broadband in the GALAXY??

Fortunately I seem to be unaffected by this particular VM f*ck-up.