Re: Seagate has a new 4TB 3.5in hard disk for digital video recorders

It does surpeise me that domestic PVRs aren't sold with a removable drive bay - but then again some twat would try and shove an unsuitable drive in place.

BTW, 180Mb/s in linear reads is NOT 16 streams - as soon as you try to read multiple real streams the head will start seeking like a bastard and throughput will drop down to 40-50MB/s at most.

The US has the 5th amendment

The UK has RIPA. Failing to hand over the keys is a 2 year sentence all by itself.

In other countries, refusal to hand over the keys on response to a court order is contempt of court and you'll get to sit in a cell for a week at a time until the judge gets bored, or you change your mind.

Re: I'm going

At risk of being slapped about by the mods - You might want to look at the phone.coop. While they resell other companies' LLU services you can talk directly to the techs if need be.

Re: IR is NOT a useful addition to a phone

If it saves having multiple devices kicking around then I'm happy. After all, that's why I updated a Moto A1000 to a S2 and dumped various other pieces of kit I carried around to cover the parts the Moto missed

To cover all the bases, it'd be great if the phone had a DECT module onboard, 433MHZ RF remote (power/light controls) and a rollup 10-inch screen (as seen on TekWar).

Some of that is still SF, but others are perfectly doable. My home router/PBX (FritzBox 7390) has a SIP module which works fairly well to the S2 over WiFi, but that comes with WiFi's inherent limitations when it comes to penetrating walls, etc.

Re: Recruitment agencies also ask for scans of passports

"but so far I insist on showing them my birth certificate instead (since that is sufficient)."

Birth certificates are not identity documents. Given enough information about you anyone can obtain a copy - and that is the first step for anyone who is in the business of identity fraud.

The fact that birth certificates are used as the basis for a lot of identity documentation shows how much of what you trust is really a house of cards.

Re: @Velv - (Unfortunately) you are wrong!

"Because most of the time, the cost to the bank is nothing; either the customer pays or the retailer pays."

FWIW, by the time penalty charges are levied, banks make more money from fraud than they do from legitimate transactions.

THAT is why they don't do all that much to curb card fraud,

Re: FAIL - no Credit Agreement with Apple

"Actually, for an on-line transaction where the customer is not present, the bank reserves the right to charge back to Apple in case of fraud,"

You need to rewrite that. Even for offline transactions where the customer IS present and has provided a PIN (and CCTV security footage shows that it is indeed the customer, not someone using a purloined cards), the banks can and will chargeback in case of a dispute - and hit with penalty charges which are not removed should the dispute prove groundless.

I know, because as a retailer it happened to me on multiple ocasions. It's one of the reasons for encouraging people to move to direct debits or bank transfers

Then there's the massively high cheque fees banks charge in an all-out attempt to encourage retailers to stop accepting them, or the high standing fees and surcharges attached if your card processing is below threshold numbers or average transaction values. Bank commissions can easily hit 30% on debit card payments if there are a lot of sub £10 transactions.

Basically the banks rape and pillage. Retailers were forced to swallow that until recently. I suspect Apple have gone too far, but I'm not surprised they're making these kinds of demands, given recent stories such as the guy who got mugged of his cards+ipad and documented the assailant making multiple purchases from Apple on stolen cards, then flogging 'em on Ebay - however in that particular case the mugger had enough stuff to fulfill most of the demands from Apple. I'd be going for a request to provide a photo showing face + holding up a handwritten copy of the order number, along with some other form of phptographic ID.

Re: just ban premium rate

"Saying the number is premium rate is NOT the proper answer to hijacking. The PROPER answer is to ban premium rate numbers from being used for hijack purposes."

There's already a tort on the books for this in civil courts - "Passing off". Among other things, victims using this line to go after the impersonators could fairly easily (IMO) get an order forcing the scammers to hand over their entire gross income for the number in question.

More importantly, given the tort exists, why is PPP having to do all this when the OFT should be going after the scammers with criminal charges?

Re: just ban premium rate

"and worse 070's can be (worst idea ever)"

Perhaps but I've taken advantage of the situation to get one and give it to any company wanting my phone number without a good reason. If they want to pay £1.50 to call me, so be it.

(no, I don't get any termination revenue. It's mainly a way to discourage unwanted marketing calls and 09 numbers are costly to maintain)

Re: No thanks. Still don't have a reasonable linux driver for the original one

It gets worse: Newer Intel drivers have explicitly removed support for older chipsets and will continue to do so on a rolling basis,

That's one way to avoid fixing long-standing driver issues...

Re: Wow, what an ingenious fix!

"I also thought this only happened in the old corrupt banana republic counties which are still dotted here and there."

NZ is just as bad. It's just hidden far better, or legalised.

Bear in mind that the only definition of corruption which exists under NZ law is bribery. "If it isn't illegal, it must be ok" etc. Cronyism is a major problem in the country, and anyone pointing it out becomes a target for the establishment.

Re: Deliberately misleading nonsense.

Scriptreading phone simians are scriptreading phone simians, no matter what accent they might have,

Granted, these phonemonkeysy are a bit more understandable/less frustrating than the ones from Bangalore/Makati, but they can't get things fixed any faster than those phonemonkeys.

Re: Waste of time and money

On your WINDOWS pc.

Those of us who run Linux are shit out of luck thanks to the windows-only DRM currently being used

ZFS

ZFS doesn't cluster. For that you need something to operate on top of ZFS (SAM-QFS springs to mind)

Re: Put simply - cost

Wot she said.

In some countries, text messages were charged at less than 1p each ten years ago, vs 10p/min for calls. It's fairly clear that the real cost of SMS messages is "too cheap to meter" (less than 0.001p apiece) and the telcos regard it as a major cash cow. I clearly recall when vodafoe started pushing SMS services as a business tool - and doubled the price overnight.

By way of comparison, a standard GSM voice stream is several kB/second, vs 200 bytes for a text message.

Re: What! all that functionality

I've never seen a Mico-projector, but I've tried ones with microprojectors and they're the kind of gimmick you use a few times and then give up on quickly.

Is it missing anything?

AIUI it's got a IR trasmitter on it.

Next step would be a 433MHz transmitter for various RF remotes and DECT for when the phone is at home.

(My DSL router-cum-PBX - a Fritzbox - is a Dect base station with an app to treat wifi-based smartphones as internal extensions when they're in the house, but wifi range is a bit "lacking")

Yes, but you CAN configure it how you want it.

"My personal annoyance has always been with HP: "

There's a pretty effective solution to this problem: Don't buy HP.

IPMI is bloody handy but there are still a surprising number of crappy implementations around (including what Supermicro used to flog)

It's a little worrying to me that Supermicro is rapidly becoming our "go to" manufacturer for most servers, not least among reasons being that they refuse to certify hardware ex-factory for Linux distros (Their blade shelves have a few points of major suckage too) Intel/IBM/HP/Dell seem to be sleepwalking into irrelevance.

Re: Hopefully China will continue

"(A) There is simply not enough usable[1] spectrum in a typical built-up area to give everyone gigabit links like wired/fibre can."

That is entirely dependent on how far the Gb link needs to be transported.

Before cellular technology was developed that same argument was raised against the possibility of widespread personal phones.

Re: Privacy is orthogonal here.

"MAC addresses aren't usually passed beyond the first router"

This used to be true in IPv4.

IN IPv4 the MAC is usually part of the IP address

MACs can (of course) be altered to something else via software, so fingerprinting isn't that useful. All that matters is that 2 identical MACs aren't on the same LAN.

Re: Good news

"I have just spent over three years in court arguing the merits of "prior art" that conclusively demonstrated that my technology (Stacker) pre-dated Microsoft's specious patent claim - it IS possible to beat the bastards."

Yes, but it's taken 20 years for you to get that decision. In most other long-running cases MS has won via attrition.

I hope you get the $15/copy PLUS triple damages for wilful infringement.

(I had a stac hardware card back in the day. They were a great piece of technology)

Re: Legal oddity.

A lot of stuff does get transferred for a consideration, but usually the liabilities go with it. Unencumberred transfer is rare.

Having said that, the city has just reduced its ongoing liabilities by 8 mill/year (the losses), plus had an undertaking for network completion, PLUS has dodged having to pay to upgrade infrastructure (easily another 40 mill)

Yes, there's a 3million/year odd bond repayment to deal with, but if they shut down the network tomorrow they'd still have to pay that anyway - and the way things are worded, if google walks out everything reverts back to the city - including any work Google adds to the network.

I have every confidence Google will do what it says. Had the city sold to one of the USA cablecos it's quite likely they'd have demanded a legislated local monpoly, plus money up front AND halted any further work for 20 years, as well as driving up costs substantially for endusers.

This is not a case of leveraging monopolies. The alteratives for the city were much, much worse.

fwiw RLS is closely associated as a symptom with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea, which is vastly underdiagnosed in the general population.

Re: What about VoiP?

I know Ofcom don't care. What do you expect from a bunch of public servants whose next step on the career path is telco management? They don't plan on shitting on that path.

Ofcom also said "unlimited" which wasn't was ok, etc etc

The ASA's investigators don't have vested interests in toeing the telco line and it shows. Even if Tmobile havrn't signed into the ISP agreement I have every suspicion that the fact it exists means the ASA will hold them to it.

Re: Tineye?

Not very well (it's a copyright tracing tool)

Google Image Search on the other hand, works a treat (and unlike facebook it'll continue to match after the images have been removed)

It's highly likely the tosser in question is well known to police and it's also highly likely they really just can't be arsed.

It's no wonder people take things into their own hands.

Re: It's not even that...

You think a locking device is going to stop Herbert T Drunkard? If it doesn't unplug he'll keep damging it until it does.

Re: Mainstream

"And as for hacking leccy in general--- rly? you are aware that the countryside is teeming with unguarded 11kV/LV transformers with open terminals as we speak, and the only times I ever hear of someone nicking the stuff, is when they fuck up and, briefly, become part of the network"

That's when they're stealing the copper.

Stealing electricity goes on all over the place. It's fairly trivial to bypass the meter and the kit to make it look innoculous enough to not arouse suspicion is readily available too. The whole system relies on honesty because people are (for the most part) honest.

What usually gives the game away is heat emissions - most cases of rampant power theft are for grow-houses, but meter readings falling to nearzero per month is a good indicator something's up.

I'm aware of one guy who got nicked after 10 years of bypassing the meters to power his tropical aquarium setup - that only got rumbled because the local substation distribution fuse kept blowing and the powerco started tracking juice flows along the street vs what the meters said.

Re: Mainstream

Even up to the late 1920s it wasn't uncommon to see people hauling masses of 2 gallon fuel cans around in their model Ts, as that was the only way to obtain the fuel in a lot of areas.

Compared to that, Electricity is already 90% of the way there.

Re: F**king Call Centres

And now you know why when I do get an unwanted sales call I spend as much time as possible wasting the caller's time.

The faster people realise it's a mug's game and ship out, the better - and I suggest you chat to the CAB about those "deductions" as they're highly likely to be lillegal, should you wish to cost your previous employers some money.

Re: Ouch

If UK law in this area wasn't so biased in favour of the companies, you would. Compare and contract the civl penalties available under the USA's TCPA

Re: Not paying for patents

"It seems that an update to the Statute of Monopolies is long overdue."

IIRC One of the Kings James withdrew all patents because of widespread abuse, so there is precedent.

Re: Triple Microsoft tax bingo

"The fact that there have been 19 publicly-announced royalty-bearing agreements between Android handset manufacturers and Microsoft (and other IP holders) to this point should be very obvious proof that Android has extremely serious IP issues."

No, it's just proof that it's cheaper to pay Microsoft to go away than to spend years in court getting questionable patents invalidated (and the one does not prevent the latter. There have been several cases where royalties paid on patents have been clawed back when the patents were invalidated - a thought which must have MS shitting housebricks)

The fact that MS turned tail when B&N not only stood up to them, but published the list of alleged patents says more about their true view of those patents than any agreements entered into (and now those patents are in the open, it's easier to pick them apart)

Court cases of this kind are mostly about who has deeper pockets and greater determination. The usual pattern is to shake down the smaller players first, then to use the monies gained to finance going after bigger fish - which works until the fish in question turns out to have a formidable set of offences and defences as well as a serious toxin load.

Note well that MS are not going directly after Google - if they did that the game would be up very quickly.

Re: …And we still have no idea what these patents are

Have you tried to NOT use FAT on an android device (especially Samsung)?

Seriously, the devices actively resist using ext4 or f2fs-formatted storage.

Re: Mmmmmm...

Cut the head off the corpse and fill the mouth with holy wafers, then drive a stake through the heart and pickle in holy water. When finished, burn and sprinkle the ashes over seawater on a bright sunny morning.

And yet, it will STILL come back, somehow.

Re: What about VoiP?

According to the ISP code of practice (Which tmobile refuse to sign) applying blanket restrictions like that would preclude them from selling it as an "Internet" service _at all_

I have a regular contract. Not tried FTP, but SIP is definitely 100% blocked. It's impossible to even sign into a server using port 5060. Switch to wifi and it goes like dambusters.

Just sent a complain to the ASA about it. Perhaps of a bunch of commentards here all do that they might find they can't call what they're selling "Internet", let alone "unlimited"

Re: Worries me too

Moving to unleaded fuel meant fitting hardened valves/valve seats in older vehicles or the engines would clap out.

Moving to E10 is likely to result in vehicle fires. It's hell on rubber components.

Biodiesel users face the same issue but diesel tends not to burn at room temperature unless given a lot of provokation.

Re: Are biofuels Europe's sh*ttiest idea ever?

"*IF* biofuels are produced by processing existing agricultural waste (and a lot of interesting research is being done on how the woody leftovers can be efficiently processed), by re-processing food waste(chip fat) or by growing interesting new crops on land that cannot be effectively used for other food production then it's an excellent idea - carbon neutral and using resources which would otherwise be wasted."

It's only an excellent idea if the fuel produced is significantly more than the fuel used to produce it.

Otherwise you're far better off putting that "waste biomass" back into the ground, as crop fertilizer. Stripping of arable land nutrients is a fast way of making a dust bowl.

Re: to answer the headline question

In most cases, the production of USA transport ethanol uses significantly MORE fossil fuel (in the farm equipment and added transportation) than it replaces.

I haven't seen european stats but I wouldn't be suprised to see similar figures.

That's in addion to the issues raised in the article.

Re: I need help...

"Unless NZ turned into a police state while my back was turned, we still have some rights. Such as not having your private communications intercepted without a judge's order."

Back in the 1990s, someone noticed that some panes of glass in the windows of the building facing the trades union hall (police headquarters) were mismatched.

Several infrared photos later, it was clear that the police had setup surveillance cameras watching not only the entrances, but also pointing into the windows of every single floor of the building. Unsurprisingly they were behind the (as it turned out, infrared-transparent) mismatched window panes.

This is the same NZ police whose chief repeatedly called protesters against various issues "Subversives" in national media during the 1980s and 1990s

You were saying?

Re: I need help...

Do you really think John Key didn't know?

This is the same prime minister who announced his intention to move offshore if he fails relection - to a gated community in Hawaii.

What makes you think he has any care about the long term future of New Zealand?

Re: We got it free

I did this and that was exactly their response. Hence the complaint.