Social media

My wife works in PR and Communications and EVERY job spec released in the last 12 months has made a big point of mentioning 'social media' as a major avenue that they need to explore and exploit. You can't ignore it: Facebook and Twitter are being heavily targeted just like any other way of advertising your company, big or small.

Lindows? MS plan of action

1) Support CentOS

2) Port Windows 7 GUI to QT

3) Port Office

:

:

6) Hey presto! Stable MS Linux

7) Convince world to pay for it

:

9) Profit

...Oh, wait...

Stop messing around and get rid of...

that bl00dy annoying download bar that is impossible to turn off, move, resize or auto-hide. At least give us the preference to be able to do with it as we like?

Whoop!

Yey! 2MB/s upload on my 20MB/s connection? Sweet! About time too! Better to me working from home sending emails and using Skype video conference and VOIP.

Bandwidth hogging P2P users to be throttled and most likely to leave to another network? There's no bad here. Let them go. Just means lower peer-contention for those that stay. Win, win.

Cost

So the LHC cost how many hundreds of millions of euros?

"[...]such that each stream has as much energy in it as a normal car going at 1000mph. Secondly, the beams are arranged in such fashion that the two streams swerve through one another occasionally, which naturally results in huge numbers of incredibly violent head-on collisions.[...]"

Why not just buy a couple of Citroen C4's and accelerate them towards each other? Must be cheaper and easier than LHC. If nothing else, we'd be rid of two more piles of subsidised Franco-autocrap!

And ignoring the opening a dimensional portal concerns, what about the possibility of creating our own big-bang and suddenly being on the outside of a rapidly expanding universe of our own making?

Questions that need answers, methinks!

Comment?

"Apple did not respond to our request for comment on this report"

Do they ever?

It's taking so long because...

all transmitters are being switched off by a single engineer and he only has a push-bike for transportation between them in these environmentally-conscious times.

Meanwhile the quango behind the switch are billing the country for a workforce of 300, each with company cars and full benefits, plus consultancy and call out fees.

Nothing to see here, just another botched attempt for Britain to catch up with our continental neighbours.

</rant>

Nice...

would love to see a real competitor to the iPhone from BlackBerry. Storm 1 was flawed. A mate of mine has one of these (works for RIM) and says it's infinitely better than the first gen and has fixed all the problems. Gonna change my phone in the new year and currently leaning towards iPhone. Hope this will be good enough to make me reconsider...

@Fihart - FlashForward

I would doubt that - for these reasons :

a) The novel of FlashForward is currently not available in and has never yet been published in UK - at least according the might of the Waterstones computer system. They (pivately) recommended trying Amazon!

b) It's on Channel 5.

Afganistan is hilly and I'm not sure that Amazon deliver there...

Err...iPhone

Doesn't seem any different to agreeing to a 24month contract for an iPhone 3GS on O2, except that with Nokia you get a proper keyboard, bigger screen and more connector ports. Ok, it's a netbook, not a phone, but you can always use Skype or a SIP client.

When I were a lad...

Our postie used to delivery before I went out to do my morning paper round. Now, I'm lucky if post is delivered before 11:00. Also only post collection is at 16:30, not the first post, the only one! And if I'm not in they don't re-deliver the next day, I have to go and collect from a depot!

New, improved, streamlined, lean, efficient service just ain't what it used to be!

Plus I've never understood unions - the only action they seem to have is to strike. IT and office workers would be sacked if we tried that to get a pay rise! (I haven't had one for 2 years).

</rant>

Same over here on O2?

I'm awaiting the outcome of scrap/media frenzy of which networks will be selling the iPhone 3GS alongside O2, in the hope of being able to upgrade to one later this year. I'm currently on O2 with a Nokia N73 and noticed that call quality, call volume, signal strength and coverage is definitely getting worse - especially over the last couple of months!

I regularly get disconnected mid-conversation, seemingly at random. It can happen at any time, whether I'm at home (full 3G in Nottingham), walking around city centres (again full 3G) driving on the M1 to and from work (junctions 26-33 using a car kit) or at work (half 3G signal). As soon as I get disconnected I look at the phone (not in the car, obviously, officer), and I've got full signal strength! What's going on?

Surely it's about time the phone companies moved to an intelligent, nearest mast auto-reconnection technology instead of desperately trying to hold on to the last mast you're connected to for as long as possible?

I used to be on Orange and got 1 minute of credited talk time automatically if I was every disconnected. Ironically, I moved to O2 back in 2005 because their coverage was better than Orange's. I've complained to O2 about being disconnected, and was told that it's basically tough, that they don't offer any guarantee of connectivity, and won't be re-compensing me! WTF!?

O2 is crap and I'm sick of paying through the nose for their poor coverage!

Oops

First I'd heard about it. Well done Reg.

A Big FAIL to Freeview for not advertising it well enough.

Will this....

... stop my mouse pointer randomly jumping around the screen and floating up the screen of it's own accord when I have and external USB mouse connected to my Dell Latitude laptop?

*GRRRRRNNAAAGGGHHH!!!*

</rant>

Lexmark printers

Will all the people complaining about how Lexmark printers / multi-functions aren't supported in Linux please just stop whinging and do the sensible thing :

Ditch that pile of crap and get a HP / Canon / Epson that IS supported. You get a hell of a lot of printer for < £100 these days!

It'll never be sold in the UK

Despite all the government's posturing about reducing the carbon footprint, they'll never give up the millions they make in tax from petrol and diesel sales. Add to that the fact that this car (if it is made available to the public) will cost upwards of £100,000, and the future doesn't look so green.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for quiet, cheap to run, torquey, electric futuristic cars!

I guess this is why there's talk of per mile tax on toll roads or tracking everyone's movements, eh?

ARM netbook please!

Yes please, I'll take one. As long as the hardware spec isn't limited like on WIntel netbooks.

12" LED screen at 1280x800

1/2/4 GB of upgradable Ram

HDD and SSD options

nVidia graphics

Wireless G/N

2+ USB2

HDMI out

(mini?)DVI/DisplayPort out

1.3MP+ Webcam

8+ hours battery

Ubuntu

Nice!

Argh! A giant bird

Any chance of a Ray Harryhausen style stop-motion Playmobile recreation video?

lamp?

...So, Disney /AREN'T/ selling webservers, then?

@ThaRobster

Read the title of the web page in big text on the picture...

Excellent

More! More! This is the kind of useful and informative reporting that the Reg should be bringing us all the time.

Hurrah for number crunching boffins!

Advertising

Perhaps if Dell where to start "Recommending Ubuntu" on it's PCs instead of Windows Vista, people would buy more of them? It's very difficult (IMO) to find any reference to Linux or Ubuntu on the Dell website...

History today?

"... resolving the long-running boffinry deathmatch between Professor Higgs, proposer of the boson's existence, and his eminent rival, renowned wheelchair robovoice brainbox Stephen Hawking."

Please, please, please, let's see an "History Today" style Playmobile recreation of this argument...

Higgs: With me today is my renowned colleague, Emiratus Professor Stephen Hawking, as we discuss the existence of the God particle.

Hawking: See that puddle of scum on the floor?

Higgs: I'm aware of it's presence.

Hawking: That's you, that is. That's your doctoral thesis...

etc. etc.

Systems analysis?

There's no point computerising something if you're just going to recreating the existing procedures. It's the procedures that are inefficient, probably bogged down in bureaucracy and keeping overpaid numpties in their jobs. Look at the procedures, and optimise them for the benefit of everyone!

Twaddle!

Ignore this wheel based rubbish - James bond had an amphibious car in 1980. Where's my ground-repulsion hover-car thingummy (R)? Didn't the Americans test one of these in the Tunisian desert in the 70's? Should be mature enough tech for consumption by the general public by now...

Dear Mozilla

Dear Mozilla

Please stop pi55ing around and wasting time on the way Firefox looks. Instead, please spend your time plugging security holes, stopping memory leaks, speeding up the browsing process, lightening the load on the host system, making it start much faster and be totally compliant with standards. If I want it to look different to standard, I will add a theme.

In addition, please build in the following add-ons as standard functionality:

- AdBlock Plus

- X-Marks

- NoScript

Thanks

Everyone.

Hybrid Schmybrid

Want ecomony? Buy a diesel. Hybrid sucks. Where's the hydrogen fuel cell already?

That's it!

I've had enough and I'm bricking up my intertubes right... no... <carrier lost>

Measurements

I'm having trouble understading how deep that trench is. Can someone work it out in football pitches please?

Orgasmic!

I've been waiting for just the right moment to rate a story as Orgasmic...

...I'll get my coat.

Low spec Linux - WHY?

Why do all PC manufacturers spec their Linux installed boxes lower than the equivilent Windoze offering, then only shave a few pounds off the price? Why can't we just have the same HW spec as Windoze?

Sure, Linux might run better on lower spec HW than Windoze, but that doesn't mean it has to be limited by it? How about more disk space for all that data, and more memory to help the O/S out?

Or are they ALL tied in to some non-MS hardware performance tax?

And, why is it so SO hard to find a Linux box on manufactuers on-line stores? - anyone followed the link from the OpenSolaris website to check out the spec of Toshiba laptops with OpenSolaris pre-installed? The Tosh website claims ignorance!

Cable?

If Ofcom were to allow Sky One to be broadcast over Freeview (albeit on subscription) wouldn't that set a precedent for Sky having to allow VirginMedia to carry Sky One as well?

If a channel is available to most ^H^H^H^H a large percentage of UK via the aerial, where does that leave me in my flat with only cable or a crappy internal aerial available?

I just wanna be able to watch Lost, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

Q?

I can't wait to see what Shuts comes up with for 12.10!

NB: That'll be Q________ Q________

All bets are currently on "Quick" for the first word.

Replace him

.

.

With Sir Stephen Fry!

Bob.

Best Reg headline...

this week!