Posts by Matthew

Talking v-e-ry s-l-o-w-l-y

Unless, as suggested above, the warning is made before charging, there is a huge incentive to delay the hapless punter with an excessively slow message. in fact I seem to remember an episode of The Simpsons featured Homer dialling a premium rate number and getting annoyed at the v-e-ry s-l-o-w speech.

By the way, there was a great story of a guy who sued a sex line for misrepresentation: the line was advertised 'hear me moan' and featured a woman complaining... The judge said he got what he deserved.

How to get one...

According to Mr Negroponte, there are plans to offer the OLPC to Western consumers on a 'buy 2 get one' basis. The second machine is given to a Third World country and you get a warm glow from your charitable efforts.

It will also help make anyone who puts one on ebay seem like an uncharitable schmuck...

Been reading the Policeman's Blog?

Your source's reference seems suspiciously similar to it... Proper credit where it's due!

Tragic.

These liberationists are too stupid to even spell their name in Cornish. It's just some losers who feel it's a good reason to burn things.

RE: We ARE causing climate change this time

OK, it is happening, and OK we *could* be responsible. But people *have* to get to work and often don't have alternatives. Fact: nobody chooses to drive into central London in the rush hour if there is a similarly-priced faster alternative. Environmentalism rarely comes into the top five reasons for such decisions.

'The 'sceptic lobby' are mostly realists: we don't see why the targets aren't the big numbers first. What about a regime change in China to force closure of those new-twice-weekly coal fired power stations for example? Or perhaps you can think of other big-polluting three letter countries with a don't-care attitude?

The view seems to be "Hey look! I've stopped a few Europeans from exceeding 100mph! And that's saved a negligible amount of CO2 which is totally negated by the actions of countries who couldn't care less."

There is no point in arsing about claiming to be 'saving the planet' unless the *global* effect is an improvement.

Perhaps your disregard for sceptics could be backed up with definitive proof as to how the actions of a few cars restricted to below 100mph might save the world, when the worst polluting nations are responsible for thousands of times more CO2 (and ever-increasing) than would ever be saved.

Blame 'Desperate Housewives'...

I saw someone on that keep a dead body in the freezer... Must be a copycat attack.

Wonder if this guy had also included a UPS for the inevitable power-cut?

Integrated FM...

I'm waiting for TomTom to integrate one of the newly-legalised micro FM transmitters that broadcasts the instructions as an RDS 'traffic announcement'.

It would interrupt your music, tell you which way to go (through decent speakers rather than a tnny in-built one) and then allow the music to resume playing.

Maybe I should be off to the patent office with this equally obvious idea...

Double-decker buses...

...were the traditional British measurement I always seem to see. And a lot more meaningful to every day life than something I only ever see on a TV screen (briefly before I change channels).

How many double-decker buses could park on an area that size?

Date error...

Most important of all, will this follow the ever-creeping Americanisation and be known as 6/29?

Even the BBC have started doing this referring to dates as 'July 2nd' instead of '2nd July'. I blame 11/9...

Can only be good news...

Anything that eccourages other operators to ditch the deliberate crippling of features in tied handsets must be good news.

Abbreviation?

I was interested to see that you referred to the RIAA as the Recording Industry Ass. of America". I think you should remove the full stop as it makes it look like 'ass' is an abbreviation of 'association'...

How about a different angle?

I've also given up on Vista after a brief trial - when (guess what?) my wireless network driver refused to work with it... But the hardware I had to upgrade has done wonders for XP's performance!

But surely, with all of El Reg's vast readership and an ever-increasing base of users running Vista, there must be someone somewhere who likes it.

So I lay down the gauntlet to those people: speak up and tell us! Or is it (as I suspect) that there isn't actually anyone who has a good word for Vista?

Humax PVR 9200

I bought one of these last Christmas and can confirm it is the best of its kind on the market. The (very few) limitations of the product have gradually been ironed out with over-the-air updates and it supports TopUp TV and a USB link to archive off items to a PC with a DVD burner. It was a 'best buy' from 'Which?' too.

My four year old daughter can't understand why other people can't pause live TV while she has her dinner or rewind it if you missed something.

And the best bit? The EPG doesn't have Sky's dire music playing - instead, you can still watch a programme in a corner of the screen.

Ouraged doctors? Get real!

These are presumably the same doctors who invented the case-note acronym 'tube' to amuse their colleagues.

(For the uninitiated it stands for Totally Unnecessary Breast Examination but a quick google will turn up all of the other infantile variations...)

Over a tonne more CO2 before it arrives...

The BBC's Top Gear magazine calculated that just to ship a Prius from Japan would (at a conservative estimate) create over one tonne of CO2.

Buy a locally-produced car and you've saved 5% of your car's total lifetime CO2 in one go!

Got to stay British!

I've been a loyal Reg fan for donkey's years - and value its Britishness. It tells the world to expect the correct spelling (it was our language first after all), British humour, and those world-famous Grauniad-style typographical errors.

To go all dotcom on us doesn't really matter, I suppose, but even if not percieved as American, it will stop you being seen as definitively British. That would be a shame.

OK, you caught me...

I can't believe I was evangelising Nildram in a comment on another article barely 24 hours ago and then find out about this. I've rated Nildram very highly for the last five years and am frankly horrified at this NTL-style customer service.

I blame Pipex for spending time with the Hoff. Maybe he's been selecting management's beverages recently?

I'll try not to recommend anything else in case it goes titsup or crap too.

Go Freeview!

I hate satellite dishes and live waaaaay to far out in the sticks to get cable. So I've been with Freeview since the ONDigital days and it has *always* worked well and been consistently reliable. Plus the guide doesn't have Sky's obnoxious muzak...

My Freeview DVR (Humax Duovisio PVR-9200T) offers all Sky+ functions but series link which is being added later, and I don't miss anything Sky can offer.

My ADSL is through Nildram and speed is *always* as good as I can expect (1.5 MB due to remoteness) with genuinely helpful helpdesk staff who don't treat you like a numpty. They have clearly defined policies and an online chart to see how close you are to your limit, chosen based on what you choose to pay.

The stuff I can't get through Freeview comes from scheduled torrents in the early hours (outside my download allowance). As to the legality, if a programme has been publicly broadcast and isn't being sold on a prosecution would be difficult. Programmes like 'Lost' can be downloaded free from the makers anyway if you have an apparently American IP address: easy to arrange or use AOL if you really must...

I think the trick is never just to go for a headline price: I used ADSLGuide's ratings to pick a broadband supplier, and Which for my Freeview 'Sky+' box. It's not like NTL/Telewest/Virgin have ever had a good reputation: why on Earth did you expect a different experience to thousands of unhappy punters?

Despite the cynics this might still be a breakthrough

Sascha seems to be forgetting that a power station is many times more efficient at producing energy than a car because it's done on such a large scale. By the time the technology has evolved and a distribution network established it will inevitably be cheaper. The delivery vehicles can also return the waste alumina instead of driving back empty - another win.

If you factor in oil exploration, drilling, transporting, refining and everything else oil is nowhere near an efficient alternative. It is just what we are familiar with. To allow existing cars a relatively simple route to indirectly running on electricity saves us all from replacing our cars and a huge leap forward environmentally.

Cost? We're paying significantly over £4 a gallon ($8) in the UK because gasoline is taxed so heavily: the $3 cost quoted doesn't scare me as much as the politician's take on it...