* Posts by Steve Evans

2772 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Apr 2007

Vodafone's cash mountain rocked by eurozone emergency

Steve Evans

I wonder how much profit their Luxembourg office made...

Apple's trial experts are 'slavish fanbois who believe in magic'

Steve Evans

lolz!

Thanks for that article, gave me and the office a right good chuckle.

Virgin Media mauls UK.gov for pumping millions into BT

Steve Evans

Re: Monopolistic?

There used to be several, but they all went to the wall from the expense of installing the cables and battling with local council bullsh*t. VM just came along and bought them and their cables.

Steve Evans

Re: Much as it pains me

<aol>Me too!</aol>

At least BT bothered to cable the entire country. I'm sick and tired about VM going on about their speeds on TV and radio announcements when as far as I know they (or the companies they bought out) haven't cabled a new area in over a decade.

Audi proposes PC-packing stunt bikes

Steve Evans

"can produce speeds of up to 50mph."

Looks like fun, but at 50mph it will instantly become classed as a motorcycle in the UK, then fail the type testing on brakes, lamps, horn, indicators, mudguards...

Ten... Qwerty mobiles

Steve Evans

The button size is certainly aimed at children. I doubt my man-sized hands could type on any of those keyboards. I certainly couldn't use a blackberry the last time I tried.

It's a pity HTC didn't continue with the landscape slide out keyboard design they had on the Desire Z. I currently own one, and can type on that quite successfully with my sausage fingers.

Unfortunately they decided to just follow the rest of the crowd and not bother making anything different, so now I have the full range of touch screen handsets from all the manufacturers to consider when I upgrade.

UK man to spend year in the clink for Facebook account hack

Steve Evans

Re: Digital equivalent of breaking and entering.

If you want to draw those comparisons, keep going...

If the password is weak, say "password", couldn't you then claim the door wasn't even locked... So you just walked in? It then become trespass, a civil, not criminal offence in the UK.

Crooks sell skint fanbois potatoes instead of iPhones

Steve Evans

Indeed...

So old there is even a common English saying which evolved from the practise.

"Letting the cat out of the bag" comes from people selling a cat in a sack and claiming it to be a pig. "Letting the cat out of the bag" came to mean "revealing a secret or deception".

I'm not sure if I should be angry at the conmen for the con, or admire their adherence to tradition. Whichever it is I have little sympathy for the victims. They're either very very gullible, or willing to buy what must flag up a few "stolen goods" alarms in their head.

Another English saying comes to mind - A fool and their money are easily parted.

NASA found filming August's Mars landing in California desert

Steve Evans

Re: Details...

Good spot!

I think I was too busy checking out the girl's arse.

Steve Evans

@Jai

Because some people round here have the down vote connected to their jerking knee and not to any neurons.

This time is was probably because OJ was on trial quite a while ago, and they thought mentioning his name was an insult to the dead.

Who knows!

Daily Mail readers get everywhere these days.

Steve Evans
Black Helicopters

Yeah yeah...

If they're not faking it, why did they plant a load of baby Martians in front of it?

BBC deletes Blue Peter from BBC One

Steve Evans

Re: Austerity Measure?

No, not more, just the episode they showed the day before in the morning... One they made earlier *ahem*

Pints under attack as Lord Howe demands metric-only UK

Steve Evans

"Lord Howe noted that he'd been responsible for the metrication programme, as minister for consumer affairs in the Edward Heath government"

So it's your fault it's in a shambles! If you'd kept you mouth shut we'd all be using a single system. Imperial.

I'm quite happy with the mix. I can talk measurements with the yanks, and the Europeans, and at my own choosing be complete incomprehensible to both!

Maybe Lord Howe should go and have some fun with the motor industry... Has he checked out the specification of tyres recently (or ever in his life)...

mm width, profile %age of width, rim size in inches.

Muwahahahaha.

Spy under your car bonnet 'worth billions by 2016'

Steve Evans

Rather apt I thought...

http://sniffpetrol.com/2012/05/10/micrarecall/

Especially the last sentence!

Steve Evans

@Ian Halsted - Re: As long as we get CHEAPER premiums for being good drivers!

Are you trying to say he drove off a cliff?

Steve Evans

Re: Speed != bad driving

I have no idea who downvoted my post of 11:09, but if he/she thinks driving in the rain at 25mph whilst arguing with the kids who are fighting on the back seat is safer to themselves and others than doing 32mph on the same road (but empty) in the dry with no distractions, then I sincerely hope they don't live or drive anywhere near me!

Steve Evans

Re: The whole speed "safety" industry is a money making con

I'm envious of anyone who can get >10mph past a school when it's emptying time!

Steve Evans

Re: Speed != bad driving

Even worse. Doing 32 mph on an empty, dry 30mph road at 3am, or doing 25mph on the same road in heavy rain at school kick out time whilst arguing with the kids who are fighting on the back seat.

Steve Evans

@JetSetJim, was Re: Before anyone says "here comes big brother"...

"i.e. if you stick to the speedo-reported 70mph, you are guaranteed not to be speeding (in a 70mph zone, anyway)."

You'll also be guaranteed to have 1/2 a mile of traffic behind you within minutes, and a [insert favourite rep car of the year here] reporting 68mph 12 inches from your boot.

Road deaths spark crackdown on jaywalking texter menace

Steve Evans

Nah, way too many vowels.

Steve Evans

Re: Darwin rules

I can't wait to see how they twist this to be God's will and part of intelligent design.

Russian upstart claims BitTorrent-killer

Steve Evans

Re: DoS?

Without signing it could be rather difficult to block.

If P-Pay connect to a tracker and get the IPs of people seeding and peers downloading, they could spoof packet to either end which appear to come from the other.

I'm not familiar enough with the BT protocol to be able to work out how they kill the torrent, but I guess there could be a sign off "I've got it all now" message from a peer to a seed which they could spoof.

Or maybe just continually spoofing packets to ask for the same block over and over would be enough. It would certainly slow things down.

Did dicky power supply silence climate-change probe Envisat?

Steve Evans

Re: Golden BB..?

Maybe the regulator was hit by an escaped super-fast neutrino from Cern?

Is that better?

Nokia dinged with shareholder lawsuit over poor Lumia sales

Steve Evans

Re: If Android was Linux

@A/C 21:01

So you're saying Android is a copy of iOS and that is why Oracle are dragging Google to court... So in your world Oracle wrote iOS?

The reason Oracle are upset is that Android phones run a Javaesque virtual machine called Davlik. This allows apps to be written once and run on lots of different hardware.

iOS and Android do have quite a few similarities, but that is because they have the same great grandfather, Unix. Android is a branch of Linux which was inspired by Unix.

iOS comes from OSX which comes from NextStep BSD which is Unix.

Yes, google does collect information, but at least there are tick boxes and warning that wifi info will be sent back. iOS did exactly the same, but didn't provide any such warning. Both do it for the same reason, to improve A-GPS.

Oh you know what, I can't be bothered to feed the flame baiting any more.

Come back when you've worked out how to be a real troll.

Ten... alternatives to Samsung's Galaxy S III

Steve Evans

10 alternatives?

I saw the HTC One X and a couple of wannabees and a shed load of vapour.

Hands on with the Samsung Galaxy S III

Steve Evans

Re: Size isn't everything

Well buy a smaller phone from a different manufacturer.

That's the beauty of the Android ecosystem. You can do that, and still take all your apps and contacts with you.

Personally was getting increasingly frustrated by manufacturers making things smaller and smaller. With my sausage fingers, and sausage finger sized pockets, I'd much rather have a big phone (with a case filled with a huge battery).

Steve Evans

Re: Ecosystem and accessories

There is further to go...

Even longer battery life.

We're still playing catchup on those old abandoned Finnish Symbian phones from several years ago which could do 2 days without trying and 3 or 4 with a little thought.

Steve Evans

S Voice

"The big question is, does it too require an internet connnection to work. Again, that's one for the full review to answer - Samsung wasn't saying."

That means it does. They'd be shouting it from roof tops if it didn't.

Samsung shows 'designed for humans' handset

Steve Evans

Re: Depending on battery life...

Battery life is a major consideration for me too.

For Samsung I'd also have to add "has a message/missed call notification LED?"... I'm almost too scared to check this one out... They couldn't have missed out that basic feature for the 3rd generation running could they?

NFC is a complete "meh". I've had an NFC credit card for ages. It looks like it will be expiring before it ever gets waved.

Very similar reaction to the contact-less charging feature too. Will be nice once everything has got it, but right now I have a cable which will fit it almost anywhere I sit.

GCHQ's spy death riddle shines light on UK hacker war

Steve Evans

Wait for it...

Headline tomorrow:

"Williams killed by evil hackers"

Next weeks headline:

"HM Government reintroduce hanging for hackers"

Kaspersky: Apple security is like Microsoft's in 2002

Steve Evans

@Frank Bough - Re: made me laugh

It depends what version you were on.

My other half was running Leopard. We wanted an install CD to install a completely fresh OSX Lion onto a new drive (Leopard was grinding and acting very slugging - especially for a twin xeon machine with 14gig of ram!). We visited the crApple store and were told we could get a USB stick for £55... We had to pay for the update to Snow Leopard and then the next step to Lion or something like that.

It sounded like a load of bollox to be honest and I wished we'd said we were on Snow Leopard but didn't have an internet connection instead. As did the explanation from one of the geniuses about which graphics card was supported was down to the motherboard she had, not the drivers built into the OS when I was asking if an ATI HD 5750 was supported.

Steve Evans

Re: made me laugh

Or even updates to protect against Fakeflash for anyone who dares to not be running OSX Lion.

Praise for slick six's entries in dirty snaps compo

Steve Evans

Well done!

Thank you, most of those predate me, so I feel very young and bouncy today.

Well done you bunch of old f*rts!

ARM creators Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber

Steve Evans

Re: Star Designer

If you put a Beeb OS ROM into one of the sideways ROM slots (you'll need another OS ROM to get the machine to boot of course) and have a look at the area which is mapped out to the I/O ports when it is in it's usual memory location, you'll see a huge block of ASCII crediting all those involved.

HTC peeves punters with One X woes

Steve Evans

Re: yep, indeed

This would be my main concern with HTC. Their after sales support is terrible.

When I got my Desire Z I discovered a software bug. I did a bit of digging and found it was a known issue with the version of Froyo they had.

I reported it to hopefully get them to release an update... Instead I was told by the guy on support that the problem must be a faulty microSD card. He asked if I had another to try. I didn't. He said they would send one out to me.

Weeks turned into months. Every time I messaged them they said they were out of stock of microSDs... An item so common I could buy one from half a dozen shops in the nearest highstreet.

Their big problem is that every support reply they make has "We trust this has resolved your problem. Please open a new bug if it does not". So all their bugs are resolved in 48 hours (the time it takes to get a reply).

This makes their stats look great, but the end user experience terrible.

If I tried this stunt at work I would get shot! If a resolution doesn't fix a bug, the bug is reopened, you don't get a brand new one. So the boss can see bugs which have been unresolved for a long period of time and shout at us!

I never did get the microSD card. I resolved the problem myself with Cyanogenmod.

So to anyone who has an HTC One with a fault, I say don't bother with their support. If you can, use the EU distance selling regulations and just send it straight back.

Terrorists 'build secure VoIP over GPRS network'

Steve Evans

Re: Missiles (was Here we go again..)

Yes, but they will both have to be made of rubber for safety reasons.

Nympho hauled to loon-cooler after serial bonkathon brutality

Steve Evans

Re: appropriate Workers equipment on *hard* Labor Day

"Arbeit Macht Frei" - errr... bit distasteful.

Textgram

Steve Evans

Re: Simply....

I think you have to be a barista is appreciate it. So I'll join you in the chorus of "meh".

I wonder how many of the skinny jean brigade as going to get a shock at the end of the month because they didn't realise MMS weren't included on their free text allowance?

Seriously El Reg, is that the best app you could find for Android?

Google's latest webspam crusade 'breaks' search results

Steve Evans

Its spider isn't much better...

A drupal run blog I am involved with was suffering from 5+ hours of load per day from Google spiders. After much poking about it was discovered the spider was wandering on and going round and round in circles munching bandwidth and CPU and never leaving! Luckily the connection isn't metered or there really would have been problems.

As it is it has just been bogging the site down.

Brutal application of robots.txt excludes has brought it down to a far more manageable 15 minutes a day.

Freed Facebook hack Brit vents fury at $200k cleanup claim

Steve Evans

Re: Looking him up on web...

Or just change his name by deed poll. Change it to something common like "John Smith", or "Steve Evans" is great for stopping nosy google searches.

Steve Evans

"Land of the free"....

It hasn't been that for many many years.

Lenovo U300s Ultrabook

Steve Evans

Re: But the screen

More VERTICAL pixels!

Thanks

This message sponsored by the campaign for 4:3 laptops.

Steve Evans

Re: Screen

You said it.

Ditch the glossy screen finish too. Looks great in iShops, but in real life, when the sun comes out, you end up looking at a reflection of your shirt. St Jobs didn't wear that black turtle-neck by accident you know!

James May 'hologram' raves about old tech at Science Museum

Steve Evans

Re: First laser?

Not only that... A prism splits light into its component parts, and although it would look very pretty, a lighthouse beaming a rainbow across the sea wouldn't be very helpful.

It's simply a different kind of lens, called a Fresnel lens. In essence it is a standard lens cut into concentric circles with the "dead" block of square glass with parallel sides removed from the middle. This leaves just the inner and outer curves, which are the parts which provide the light bending effect for a lens.

MIT boffins play BUILDING-SIZED Tetris

Steve Evans

Indeed!

Will someone please show me the man who invented the phone video record mode and decided people didn't need any basic instructions such as "Try to hold it steady" and "Waving the camera about like a drunken fool will make your viewers want to vomit".

Even the incredibly obvious "Try to keep the camera pointed at the subject" would have been a start.

Barclaycard site falls over, web payments impossible

Steve Evans

Re: Non-Available system Fee

And don't forget to bill them £12 every time you inform them.

Basic instinct: how we used to code

Steve Evans

Re: BBC Basic

You remember correctly. BBC Basic was probably the best of the bunch, and an astonishing piece of work to fit into 16K.

REPEAT UNTIL, PROCEDURE, FUNCTION, long variable names, all there.

You could write "real" programs that didn't contain a single goto.

IIRC, assembly language was just a case of dimming some space and the opening a square bracket in the basic code...

10 DIM code (200)

11 P%=code

20 [

30 LDA #9:CLC:ADC #1

40 RET

50 ]

Or something like that... Blimee that caused some creaking in my brain... Time to break out the old girl and see if the 5.25" floppy image of Exmon still works!

Steve Evans

Re: Yay for the orange manual!

The Beeb manual was also spiral bound, and over an inch thick.

I had an advanced user guide too, I think it's still about in a box somewhere. That had loads of low down info and a complete circuit diagram - much fun with that!

These days you're lucky if you actually get a copy of the OS on removable media, let alone any kind of manual or welcome tape.

Look back in Ascii: Computing in the 1980s

Steve Evans

The Amiga and Atari ST were a late arrival towards the end of the era of completely incompatible machines.

Also, as you mention, the Amiga wasn't used for much more than a games console (yes, I know the Speccy wasn't much better), but my fond memories of the time involve lids off and hacking about with the inside. My Beeb started life as a model A, got a DIY upgrade, sideways RAM, dual controller floppy interface and all the toys added by me with a soldering iron.

To me a computer isn't "real" until you take it to bits and modify it. :-)