Re: Why?!

More systems equals more accuracy. GPS is more accurate over the US, and GLONASS has most of it's satellite coverage over northern latitudes, so adding Galileo (and Beidou, the upcoming Chinese system) means you're more likely to be able get a fix in a particular place.

The encryption is presumably there to claw back some of your taxes that have been poured into the whole system, through licensing deals.

Re: apple gimmick?

That's right Pete, you should do more than just touch your balls, you should have a regular check for testicular cancer.

/publicserviceannouncement

we now return you to your regularly scheduled snark.

Re: The other lot...

The 'easy' way with Windows licenses is to stump up for one Data Center license per box, that gives you unlimited VMs for that box.

You start breaking even once you have about 8 copies of Windows Server per host I think.

Re: bugger the bail

And HM's taxpayers don't have to foot the bill, even better!

(except of course, we are paying the overtime for the bobbies stood outside, still, perhaps we can bill Ecuador for guard services?)

Re: clue

I see where you're coming from, but it's about as curious a twist as the US supporting the Taliban, or indeed Iran it's self back in the 80s.

There is no political marriage of convenience dubious enough to place it outside the realms of possibility.

Re: Assange is my enemy and it's great that my government has declared him "enemy of the state"

They tickle a bit but mostly they itch like buggery*.

* poor choice of swearword there I suppose.

Re: A rather small collection

Don't forget the marine life, eg various kinds of whales, seals etc Plus there's got to be some bird life.

Re: Hard as I try

Also, us Brits have had the land speed record since 1983 (and at many times before that), which pisses off certain yanks no end.

And that's why it's worth doing :)

Re: 4G? I barely use 3G!

Same here, not to mention, with a 500Mb/month data cap there's added incentive to NOT use any data when away from wireless.

Re: Paging Dr

Hanlon's razor: Always assume incompetence rather than malice.

ie, it's more likely that they fucked up, rather than some script kiddy managed to hack them, AND they managed to successfully cover that up.

Re: Bundaberg...

Is that the same Bundaberg brewery that make rum? Good stuff that, especially for those tough paint removal jobs.

Re: Software RAID is a mess on any OS but worse on Microsoft

It's not really a rip-off of ZFS (although it does use some of the same ideas), it's more of a rip-off of Drobo.

Re: Cruise?

Some researchers have just managed to get a location using a re-purposed DVB dongle and a software radio:

http://hackaday.com/2012/08/19/real-time-gps-decoding-with-software-defined-radio/

Still early days of course.

Ah come on, a piece of software counts as a product.

Even if you're giving it way for free.

And it doesn't do anything new or revolutionary.

It's still a product, it's just a worthless one.

Re: Vane in vain?

If the wind is gusty, then there will be periods of differential flow, ie when the balloon + is moving at x m/s, but the wind gusts to x+y m/s.

Re: PPTP???

We used it in my old job, because as far as I could tell, anything else that was built into windows required fucking about with certificates, which was a bit heavyweight for a small business.

I suppose I should mention this to my old boss.

Re: SuperCrud

Yeah, our superhub has rubbish wireless, but we're all using wired connections anyway, and if I cared that much I'd pick up a decent wireless router and stick the hub in modem mode.

As for the customer service, it's been ok for us. Not as good as Be*, but ok., and at the end of the day, it's faster than anything else we can get here.

* when I used to use them a few years ago, dunno what they're like now

*lone

Re: "Simon"?

You know that Bob Howard*'s middle names are Oliver, Francis?

Re: Battery warmer idea.

It's almost like you didn't bother reading the article at all...

Re: TXTS is c**p

Depending on your phone/network, you should be able to find out when a text was sent, and I have a program that takes the texts on my android phone and backs them up to my gmail.

I generally use email as well, but I still have a large proportion of friends who either don't have/want email on their phone, or live in an area with such crap signal that texts are the only reliable method of communication (ie poor/non-existent data or voice coverage).

At the end of the day there's some people I usually talk face to face with, some I phone, some I text and some I email.

Re: Let me clear it up for you.

"whether or not people can or cannot take criticism isn't Facebook's responsibility"

No it's not, but it might affect their bottom line, and that they *do* care about.

Re: Ribbon

Two weeks after a forced upgrade to 2007, and all our users complaints about the ribbon had disappeared, and 3 years on, I think it would take a crowbar to get them to go back to all those bloody buttons.

People don't like change basically, but it doesn't take long before the horrid nasty changed thing becomes a known, reliable quantity.

Re: The MS1-3D rips CDs as 320kb MP3s

"I believe there are plenty of people who can't [hear the difference between mp3 and wav] and I don't think those people enjoy music any less than I do"

I think I probably enjoy it more mate, because I almost never spend any time thinking "I wish this was better encoded", and just enjoy the music instead. My £60 set of logitech speakers plugged into the onboard sound out of my motherboard does me proud :)

Re: How long

There's also:

http://www.writetothem.com/

Which will let you email your MP directly. I recommend doing this every once in a while just so they don't forget who they're supposed to be representing.

Re: Shooting themselves in the foot

This is the intended use for Technet products, ie testing, so that you can then sell your customer full price licenses.

They're not trying to stop you doing this, they're trying to stop you using your test licenses for you customer, whilst still charging the customer full price and pocketing the difference.

Re: Dads are amazing

My dad (and mum) was a teacher, in some ways I'm glad there's no real pressure on me to be massively successful.

Re: Dear MS

"You were arrogant in assuming people wanted skype."

Well, to receive the update they had to have Skype selected in the products section, and the only way that could happen without someone explicitly clicking the checkbox, would be if they had already selected All Products, which will leave your WSUS server downloading bloody everything, including the Bing bar, and the Zune software.

WSUS is for server admins, and if you didn't put any thoughts into which products you have selected then you only have your self to blame.

(not to mention you have to have Auto approve updates switched on, which is also daft.)

Re: I'm fed up with gear without mechanical switches.

I think he means "I never run check disk so none of my files have ever been marked as corrupted"

Re: Old laptops

I hadn't realised that you can run it on other hardware. I was wondering what I was going to do about the old D610 my dad uses (XP is running like a dog). given that he mainly only uses it to listen to iplayer, and occasionally use gmail, it'll be the perfect choice, with less maintenance for me to do.

As a warning to the rest of us, which UPS manufacturer are we talking about?

Re: One off the top of my head....

UK Apple keyboards don't seem to have a key for #, which makes logging in difficult if you have one in your password.

And speaking of non English keyboards, Turkish keyboards have a selection of letters which look like, but aren't, English characters, which also makes typing in passwords difficult, should one be trying to check ones gmail from a hotel.

I think the Wario thing has morphed into Mario Strikers (something like that), on the Wii. I've not really played much myself but I watched my flatmate and his mates try for hours to beat the league in co-op mode, they never quite made it...

Re: @AC: Embrace, Extend, Extract money.

"I want something I can upgrade myself"

Then you don't really want to buy an Apple, so why are you reading, and commenting on an article about a new apple laptop?

Wait a minute, I build my own PC, why am I commenting?

Re: eh?

Ah, but if he can arrange matters so he can leave the pub *before* he gets there, then he should be sober for the drive home right?

Of course, he might end up getting the hangover the day before, which wouldn't be pleasant.

Re: the true arrogance

Out of interest, who controls the gpg signing mechanisms for apt/yum etc?