* Posts by Steve Evans

2772 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Apr 2007

Facebook offers just a week of free Android AV

Steve Evans

Re: Meh

Agreed! 7 days with mcafee would feel like a life time!

It's official: Apple will reveal 'a little more' on October 23

Steve Evans

Re: Timing is everything

And which timezone?!

MS are going to have to pull some serious wedges of cash out of their back pocket and drop it in front of many reporters to get any kind of headline coverage from the sheeple press.

Steve Evans

Re: iPod Classic

Well at the way things are going it won't be long before micro SD's exceed that... Not that you'll be looking at the fruity firm for that solution though...

Steve Evans

Re: Oh FFS

Get the Nexus 7... There is no way Apple will make a comparable device for that money. They're famous for their huge margins, and far too proud to be seen to mix it up with the great unwashed low margin tablets.

Steve Evans

How about...

Seeing as Apple blank you, why don't you do the same... "seeing as how it's sure to be bleated far and wide by a herd of helpful live-bloggers. ®"

Carphone Warehouse lauds Nexus 7 while eagerly eying iPad Mini

Steve Evans

Re: Update by following instructions above.

Looks like it! I think it heard my threat of rooting, because about 30 mins ago it popped up a notification of an update.

Yay \o/ rotation front screen :-)

Still a bit crap that it didn't arrive until 7 days after the code was release to AOSP... You wouldn't think Google would have a shortage of server capacity would you!

Steve Evans

Re: Great Device, Great OS. shame about the Apps and the App store

A little unfair to blame the tablet for bad third party apps. Most of the apps I use look and work fine, although there are a few which are nothing more than the ipad app ported over by a lazy developer who has probably never used an Android device in his life.

Skype works fine, video chat, no problem.

Flash + iPlayer... Well the latter depends on the former, and the very i-centric BBC have been incredibly slow in getting a non-flash HTML5 version out for v4+ Androids. You can however sideload flash and iPlayer. It works for me.

If you need your plants and zombie in HD, message the developers. Same goes for all the other apps. The more complaints/requests they get, the more likely they are to notice the huge market.

Steve Evans

Re: Update by following instructions above.

@DaLo.

Ummm, thanks, but I've been doing that daily since the middle of last week.

Also moved onto the flushing and terminating the Google framework too.

Still "up to date" with 4.1.1 :-(

I'm starting to worry something is broken/corrupt... To root and do it manually or not... hmmm...

Steve Evans

N7 4.1.2 update? UK? Out?

WHERE!???

I must admit I'm a little disappointed after the "Nexus devices get updates really really fast" reputation. If I had rooted and installed Cyanogenmod I would have 4.1.2 by now... Which is really defeating the whole benefit of having a Nexus device.

Anyway, back to the main story... iPad mini... It'll sell bucket loads to the usual suspects and general sheeple consumers (of which there are many).

Miniature Baumgartner jumps from 128,000ft

Steve Evans

Re: Hmmm....

True, but I think it needs clogs, tulips and a few windmills to be conclusive.

Steve Evans

Hmmm....

Are you sure that was over Holland? The advert at the end if for a Model event in Vienna, and the flag on the retrieval buggy was decidedly Austrian.

Übertroll firm bags DRM patent for 3D printing

Steve Evans

Jeez... Honestly....

The US IP system is totally screwed. Unless El Reg have glossed over some important detail and successfully trolled me, there is *nothing* new or innovative about this.

It is simply a file being encrypted and then decrypted/verified by software on a bit of hardware.

Just like Bluray players, the original iPod lock in, etc etc etc...

Boffins baffled: HUGE EYEBALL washes up on Florida beach

Steve Evans

Sure it wasn't a shark with a laser?

Steve Evans

Re: Dalek!

"Relax, Daleks are useless without their eye. More importantly, did it come alone?"

Hmmm, I'm still not going to risk going near the plunger.

Woz labels Apple 'arrogant' over iPhone size inadequacy

Steve Evans

Re: Dangerous...

Ah, I see it's care in the community day for the humour bypass patients again.

Steve Evans

Dangerous...

“I wish they had made a small and a large version of the iPhone; that would have been great for me. Keep the aspect ratio the same, horizontal and vertical the same, but just grow it in the other way,” he says.

Careful Woz... I think Samsung might have a patent on that... Note 2, S3, S3 mini....

How Nokia managed to drive its in-house Linux train off the rails

Steve Evans

Re: N900 debacle ...

I had the misfortune to own a N97. Whilst it wasn't all bad, the most annoying thing was the lack of support, and impression that Nokia had just taken the money and run.

The N97 was the first phone I dumped before the excessively long contract had expired. It was consigned to a draw and replaced with an Android powered HTC Desire Z (yes, I like slide out keyboards) a few month before the Elop hit. I use my trusty old N95 as my backup phone when a go off doing things which might break a phone and would rather it wasn't my 'droid.

So it didn't really matter what platform Nokia went with, my disillusion was with their support, and attitude (I got moderated in their forum for disrespecting Nokia for posting a list of valid and accurate faults).

Sarah Brightman plans International Space Station gig

Steve Evans

Would I be wrong...

...to hope there'll be a terrible technical hiccup and the rocket misses the rendezvous completely and sends her barrelling off into deep space in radio silence?

LASER STRIKES against US planes on the rise

Steve Evans

Re: Several things about these stories bug me...

It's actually an even worse comparison than that. Camera flash power is rated in watt/seconds. For example my camera strobes range from 80-120 watt/seconds.

Doesn't sound like much, but when you consider that is all delivered in 1/1000th second, the brightness for that fraction of a second is equivalent to a 80,000-120,000 watt light source. Not something you can power constantly from a coin cell battery in your average laser pointer. A camera flash will take several seconds to recover from that and recharge the capacitor ready for the next 1/1000th second of brightness.

Steve Evans

Re: Which colour?

Polarising would cut out some light (from all sources), but which way is the laser pointer polarised? Most aren't.

Even if they were, which way depends how you've pulled it out of your pocket.

So polarising the screen will be no more help than tinting it, cutting out a percentage of all light making everything darker, although it might make the blues of the sky and reflections on the sea look prettier.

Steve Evans

Re: Several things about these stories bug me...

One handed from a motorcycle? Are you staring in the next bond movie or something? I assume it's your left hand too (unless you wanted the bike to slow down?).

For a start I do live near an air field, quite a few in fact. The East of England built a lot in the 1940s. One of them is rather large and called London Stansted. Whilst I'll concede that assuming you could aim and hit a moving aircraft with a pointer this would be a risk to a light aircraft, the story is written in such a way as to make you believe the treat is real to 747s, not light aircraft which don't tend to do much night flying.

The story has other inconsistencies too. The whole "power" of a laser is its small concentrated beam. We're talking about a device whos power is measured in milliwatts and run constantly from a watch battery power source for hours on end. Suddenly saying this concentrated beam lights up the entire cockpit like a flash gun, a device which is run from a bank of much larger batteries, via a fast discharge capacitor and then discharged through a zenon tube which delivers more light that a 10,000watt light source for a thousandth of a second. Yes the laser could be defused by the window, but then the inverse square law dictates the power drops to negligible.

So which is it? Does the laser surgically burn the pilots retina off, or does the cockpit light up like a Christmas tree?

Yes, a hovering helicopter would be an easier target, but tell me, what is he going to crash into in those few seconds it take to look away from the idiot with the very steady hand holding the pointer? He's hovering! He might drift a bit, but he's not going to fall from the sky! I might even knock his night vision down a peg or two, but do you know the requirements for a night pilot licence? Yup, instrument only.

I file the laser pointer threat along with the mobile phone threat. They're annoying, but hardly the "we're all gonna die" "Won't someone think of the children?" reaction we're seeing. Otherwise we'd be surrounded by twisted wreckage.

Steve Evans

Several things about these stories bug me...

1) You're hand holding a light source and trying to aim it at a point 500 feet away (try it)

2) The point you are aiming at it moving...

3) Even if you could manage 1 & 2, and had a pointer powerful enough, automatic landing systems have been in use for decades. The pilots are only there for situations where the automatic systems can't handle it (and to be honest, most pilots are too inexperienced to do anything better than the automatic systems anyway!).

Having said all that, the twats on the ground should get a good clip round the ears for even trying it.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 review

Steve Evans

"Quad core is overkill when few applications are massively multi-threaded"...

We're not running one thing at a time any more... It's called true multitasking. Something which has been baked into Android since the beginning. You can have dozens of apps running, and swap between them, not just a chosen few functions some fruity devices would lead you to believe is multitasking.

US court lifts ban on Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Steve Evans

Whilst I agree with your sentiment Shagbag, it would carry a little more weight it you actually got the model names correct. There was a 3GS, but no 4GS.

I believe you intended to say:

4 => 4S => 5.

What you've got to remember is many of the Apple faithful are tied into 24 months paying for their shiny fruit themed toy. So those buying a 5 will currently have a 4. Those with a 3GS bought the 4S.

WTF is... VoLTE

Steve Evans

Re: Bye bye battery

Coverage has a huge impact here.

I spend 99% of the time with my phone on 2G. I only switch to 3G when I need to, which is very rare as I switch on wifi first.

Where I live 3G will murder the battery. The 3G signal here is very weak (or just MIA!). 2G isn't much better, but at least it exists.

This causes a problem for the phone in that it will ramp up the radio to higher power in an attempt to contact a tower. If the tower is uncontactable (as 3G is for me most of the time), the phone remains on high power trying negotiate a 3G link.

The phone will always use the lowest power it can to talk to a mast, so having a mast it can talk to is far better than trying to contact one that just isn't there.

If you don't believe me, get on the underground (assuming your chosen line has no coverage) and see how long your battery lasts. I forgot to put my phone into flight mode once, and it was a painfully slow trip (breakdown)... Result, 50% battery gone in 40 minutes. On the surface I rarely do 50% during the entire working day.

Pirate Bay site sinks, Swedish police raid its ISP

Steve Evans

Re: Re: Re: Freedom for the corporations

As all the "naughty" sites don't actually host any of the pirate files, just links to them, akin to charging BT for the services its customers offer via a telephone, Matt could only be assisting the assisting of a criminal act.

Unfortunately if the music/movie industry have their way, such a heinous crime will be shortly punishable by several years in Guantanamo Bay and a fine which exceeds the GDP of Asia.

Bloke jailed for being unable to use BlackBerry Messenger freed

Steve Evans

Lucky

He's lucky they didn't put him on the sex offenders register too!

Common sense seems to be seriously lacking in many places these days, although I can't aim the blame totally at the judge, I think most of it should be fired in the direction of his defence lawyer who didn't mention to fact he spammed his entire contact list in the first place.

Satellite broadband rollout for all in US: But Europe just doesn't get it

Steve Evans

Re: Not Needed

Exactly what I was going to say.

If there was no other choice then I might think about it, but given the their 5Mb/s down, 1Mb/s up, for $40 has to compete with ADSL2 and now FTTC which are both faster and cheaper, their only real market are those who live in the middle of nowhere, which isn't that many.

Vote now for the ultimate bacon sandwich

Steve Evans

Re: Recipe for 'VEGETARIAN' bacon sarnie:

I have a veggi friend who has confided that the only thing which could possibly turn him is a bacon sarnie.

I eat a lot of bacon sarnies in front of him.

Oh, and BTW, don't mean to ruin the traditional blighty bacon sarnie, but have you checked where HP is made these days? It might have a picture of the houses of parliament on it, but....

Steve Evans

Re: The Guacamole Goulash

But green stuff...?

Oh, and my Hungarian friends (of which I have several) are screaming "Goulash is a soup!".

They scream that a lot over here in Blighty.

WTF is... NFC

Steve Evans

In my case it's not the lack of will on behalf of the shopper...

"the tech is already embedded in millions of UK credit cards for pay-by-pat functionality, though despite the wide scale deployment shoppers are still reluctant to embrace the technology. It's common to see NFC credit card receivers in sandwich shop chains, for example"

I've had such a credit card for over a year... It also does Oyster transactions for travel in London. Whilst it has seen excessive use on the tube and buses, I've yet to ever use the credit card side of the NFC. I guess I don't hang out in enough sandwich shops?

iPhone 5: the fab slab to grab

Steve Evans

Plus most of his examples involve stepping out of a large building with I presume only a wifi guided lock as the GPS has only had a view of the sky for a few seconds.

New I-hate-my-neighbour stickers to protect Brits' packages

Steve Evans

Re: What to do?

Is the "drop with neighbour" permission inherited?

If everyone in the road is out at work, bar the little old lady at the end, is she going to end up with a house full of boxes for the entire road (and possibly further if the delivery bod has the patience?).

Politico's locked room mystery Linux install crime solved

Steve Evans

Re: Still weak explanation!

Indeed... First the machine has to be set to boot from CD, then rebooted. Next there are dozens of selections and menu options before partitioning... And that's hardly straight forward even if you want to install it!

I say someone was told to install it, but put it on the wrong machine and is now hurriedly covering their arse.

Rumour: Asus rejects $99 Nexus 7... rumour

Steve Evans

Tightly tied to the play shop?

"hopes to make selling content through its Google Play shop to which the Nexus 7 is tightly tied."

I wouldn't say the Nexus 7 is tightly tied to anything. I installed the Amazon Appstore(tm) - *snigger* without any kind of fight, no rooting required, just check the box to say "I want to install from sources other than the Play Store".

Now the Kindle *is* tied to the Amazon Appstore.

As for trimming the N7 to make a $99 tablet, I can't see it being the success the original N7 is. Dropping the screen resolution and removing the GPS would reduce it to yet another crippled budget tablet. The screen resolution, GPS and bluetooth were the big tick boxes I'd been waiting for on a budget tablet.

I'd say they would be better off making the 3G version which was rumoured a while back. Although for me that is not an issue. Plenty of wifi points for me to access, with very occasional tethering when required have kept mine happily fed with data since the 4th of August.

Samsung slaps swift patch over phone-wiping Galaxy S III vuln

Steve Evans

Re: Not a (just) Touchwiz problem

It's not just an HTC/Samsung add-on issue. I just tested on CyanogenMod 7.2, and it brought up my IMEI without me having to press dial.

I'm on the verge of going back to 7.1 anyway (7.2 seems to eat all the memory and bring the phone to a grinding halt within an hour or two of being turned on). This might be just the push I need to revert to my previously saved CM7.1 nandroid image.

Vandals break into congressman's office, install Linux on PCs

Steve Evans

Re: Non-story

"a "police source" tells the New York Daily News that it "appears that a campaign staffer wiped the hard drives accidentally after mistakenly inserting a Linux system disc into a Windows machine.""

Accidentally inserted the disk, rebooted the machine, clicked OK, YES, Continue a dozen times each...

Yes... a total accident.

Steve Evans

Re: Or-

Don't be silly.

If they were iOS6 fans they would have never found the office.

NZ bloke gets eel stuck up jacksie

Steve Evans

Re: Nobody tell Noel Fielding about this.

That ain't no jelly mate, so be careful.

Samsung slams Apple patent jury, wants new trial in US

Steve Evans

Re: Well, DUH!

I'm not sure Wall Street has done much good recently!

As for "I'm taking my ball back"... We'll have the world wide web (Thanks for that Sir Tim) and how about all the ARM microprocessors... Enjoy your Apple door stops ;-)

Brave copper single-handedly chases 'suspicious' Moon

Steve Evans

I'm sure....

I'm sure the moon's continual motion has been accepted as resisting arrest, and a warrant issued.

Christian footie match ends in almighty brawl

Steve Evans

Re: Christian football...

A well judged check of the anonymous box there...

Don't worry, we'll find you... One day...

Steve Evans

Re: Of course

Indeed... No religious people ever caused violence.

May the footballers had seen the news that Jesus had a wife and found it so inflammatory they decided to kick off in a completely unrelated location?

Apple scrambled to hire iOS 6 maps engineers DAYS before launch

Steve Evans

Too little too late!

- The Register notes that Apple has hired 15 peeps into the maps team this year, starting on 5 July with a call for a "maps engineering project manager, iOS SW".

- Since 11 September Apple has posted six job vacancies for iOS software engineers in the maps division.

Looks like they sacked almost half the team when they saw the sh*t they'd produced!

Pity they didn't postpone the launch or issue the maps change as an update in 6 months time.

Samsung chips evicted from iPhone 5, autopsy reveals

Steve Evans

@A/C 12:15 GMT was Re: Relativity

I remember watching my brother update his iPhone once (backup, update, restore)... Two words came to mind... F*CKING SLOW!

That's why people skip backups.

Plus there is the other issue with backing it up and sending it off... What exactly are you supposed to use for a phone whilst the "genius" is dribbling over your phone whilst replacing the battery?

Final issue, for a Li-ion battery to be reduced to the required <50% capacity within 12 months is very very unlikely. Two or three years down the line is far more like it... Now what are you going to do (assuming you're not a good fanboy and didn't instantly upgrade your phone as soon as you were able).

Microsoft drives German patent tank into Google's front room

Steve Evans

Welcome to software patents - we tried to warn them...

'Apple's iOS 6 maps app is SHOCKING, rushed and half-baked'

Steve Evans

Re: Meh ...

It will probably get better - it damn well needs to - but releasing beta software and making you pay for it? No thanks.

They said Siri was in its early days too... That was a year ago... Does it work properly outside the USA yet? I asked my Iphone4S owning brother last night. His reply "Oh God it's so annoying, I don't use it".

Swiss railways ticked off at iOS clock knock-off

Steve Evans

@TRT - was Re: It's similar but not the same.

Similar but not the same... You mean like Samsung phones?

Apple did rather open this Pandora's box, so this story does make me smile. The rash of over litigious companies is not good for progress, with lawyers (and BMW dealerships) coming out on top.

Google's Android celebrates fourth birthday

Steve Evans

Re: Inquiring Minds Want To Know

LOLZ!

Just to be boring and serious for a second, the alphabetic confectionery names start with Cupcake. The previous version was known as "Petit Four".

Who queues for an iPhone 5? Protesters, hipsters and the jobless

Steve Evans

Re: Waiting for

Oooh, idea...

Did you hear they've just found some old bit of paper which mentions Jesus having a wife?

Well I'm deeply offended by the blasphemy, and was looking for a completely unrelated location in which to stage a violent protest.

I think I've just hit two birds with one stone!