Posts by colin79666 44 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2010
Queue a load of pitchforks from those who just managed to get a 4 after months of waiting. “ If you’re hoping a new Raspberry Pi will pear in 2023, we have bad news: Rasbposs Eben Upton says work on a Raspberry Pi 5 won’t start until the second half of the year, meaning delivery is a way off yet.”
https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/21/no_rpi_5_2023/
Remember the time the iPhone 7 failed against the FCC limits?
https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-cell-phone-radiation-testing-20190821-72qgu4nzlfda5kyuhteiieh4da-story.html
It went a bit quiet after that story…
I’d be more concerned about the watch given it is physically strapped to the body for 18 hours a day.
The reality is after 4 or 5 years in education the screen casing is beaten up, keys have been picked off and the battery can barely hold a charge so the unit needs replacing anyway. I’m sure vendors could produce better quality hardware that would last longer but the sector won’t want to pay the extra so software lifespan doesn’t really come into it as much as some seem to think.
Coop must share some of the responsibility for the issues. Too many organisations fail to invest and then expect “transformation” by making it someone else’s problem (outsourcing). Guess what? The outsourcing company sales people told you it would all be wonderful but the reality is they need to do it even cheaper than you in order for them to profit. This is often by sticking rigidity to the contract you signed, charging stupid fees for anything extra and not replacing staff as they leave (usually the good ones go quickly).
Outsourcing of boring business functions like HR and Payroll can make sense but a bank outsourcing a core banking function was never going to end well!
Hmm 30 months of support sounds like an improvement but still falls a bit short, especially for Education. By the time they have updated SCCM (plus a hotfix), the ADK and MDT you typically have already lost 3 months.
Also Education is difficult to tackle due to the number of sites (schools) and sheer numbers so the reality is mass imaging/feature updating is a summer holiday event. So by the time you are rolling out a "September" update you are already into 9-11 months of the 30 month support window. 30 months doesn't reach for another 2 summers so you are basically still stuck on a 1 year cycle of updating/imaging/replacing.
If you read their email properly it isn't their system but your password:
"Why do I need to change my passwords?
Although your password has not been stored in plain text, if it is not particularly complex then it is possible that in time, a third party could still determine your original password and could attempt to use it across other, unrelated services. As such, as a precautionary measure, we advise customers to change their password across other services where they may have re-used their WeBuy website password"
Just standard advice really although it may imply they were hashed but not salted, at least not a per user salt. It is easy for people to scoff but remember many of these accounts could be years old and md5 was once considered good enough. Yes CEX have got wrong but at least they have fessed up.
"Dave Dyson, chief exec of Three, said he wanted the biz "to lead the industry on mobile data usage."
Sorry but how does that fit with shutting unlimited data plans and launching new plans at much higher prices and with lower caps?
I'm sticking with them for now as I'm on a reasonable plan but if they try to move me off it I'll be jumping ship. Three used to be a stand out network because of their data allowances but they are now as bad as the rest and they don't have lower prices on their side now either.
I know people have (rightly) slated OCZ in the past for their build quality but I can't say I've had the same experience:
Intel 330 120GB: 14 months, bad sectors, Amazon refunded
Crucial M500 mSata 120GB: 10 months, dead, RMA'd and replaced
OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB: 4 years 4 months, dead, binned
Intel 520 180GB: 18 months, alive and kicking
Kingston SSD Now+ 120GB: 2 years 6 months, alive and kicking
Crucial M500 mSata 120GB: 6 months, alive and kicking
Kingston Hyper X 120GB: 2 years 7 months, alive and kicking
"The first is that servers tend to be be upgraded more often than PCs, because the former are cared for by knowledgeable and skilful Reg-reading types"
Erm yes the sysadmin knows it needs to be replaced but the business won't pay for it. Hence why I'm still supporting some 2000 boxes in house...
I'm quite a fan of Cloudberry Backup. The desktop edition can backup to local drives, NAS and almost all the popular cloud services. It can also do encryption before uploading to the cloud to keep the NSA out of your stuff. There is a one off cost for the app plus whatever you pay for your cloud storage. It can do block level backups so you aren't uploading the whole file when only a bit changes and it does compression to save cloud space.
We quit as soon as we could and jumped to BT infinity. It's not just Murdock. It's also the fact that they are migrating off the Be network (and no traffic shaping for legacy customers) to Sky/easynet which doesn't offer the same service levels.
Even with a years free broadband and £50 mobile credit offered we weren't going to hang on and watch the service degrade.
BT bod came round yesterday at the allotted time (phoned ahead as well when he was leaving his last job). Installed the new NTE5 socket and filter. Went to the cabinet to patch in the fibre links and came back 20 mins later to check the broadband was up and the phones were still functioning (including the extension). All in all about an hours work and done without issue.
I'm paying £10.21 for the old "premium" package - going up to £13 a month from 31st March. I'm assuming the price mentioned subscriber received didn't include the £5 o2 mobile customer discount.
Frankly this is the first (non VAT) price rise o2 have implemented and their service is top notch compared to the likes of Talk Talk or Orange so I've no complaints.
"Anyone who owns an iPhone 4, iPad or fourth-generation iPod Touch can now make use of the service by downloading a free app to a second iDevice, Apple said.
"Of course, that's as useful as tits on a bull if you only have one of these iDevices, so we hope Apple will also make the service accessible through the web, as MobileMe is."
It IS accessible at the me.com website. You have to signup on the iPhone 4/iPad/iPod Touch but after that you can track the device on the website for free.
"If you can put a form online rather than by post, you're not just saving the postal costs backwards and forwards, but you're also saving the back office processing,"
Not if you are the tax man. The HRMC way involves putting the form online but then the tax payer is expected to fill it out on their PC, print it off and post it in. Presumably someone at HMRC is then employed to either scan or type the form contents back into the tax system. Another half assed attempt at government efficiency...
The author states that Yahoo has replaced Google as the default search in Firefox.
No it hasn't http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/08/ubuntu_yahoo_google_lucid_lynx/
Been using Ubuntu 10.04 RC for a few days and its worked flawlessly with a few exceptions:
1. Had to manually drop in the Flash plugin as software center only has the 32 bit version
2. Had to edit out a line in the Grub file which caused the Plymouth splash screen to corrupt with the Nvidia drivers.
3. Had to add a script to stop the wifi light flashing with network activity
None of which were real show stoppers and 2 and 3 were only minor annoyances.
To make Ubuntu properly user friendly will require some moral/legal changes so it supports DVD playback etc out of the box. Trying to find the restricted package and running a script from the terminal is probably past those completely new to linux.
Having lost thousands of customers when they started going down the LLU path and making a right mess of it it sounds like someone at Orange has finally accepted that they simply don't have the skills or equipment to pull it off.
Perhaps this also has something to do with the impending changes to fibre. Little point trying to unbundle with tech that will soon be obsolete.
"Automatic patching would only make it better"
Yes and no. The problem is so many updates introduce new bugs. Look at the mess that occurred when SP3 was release for Windows XP. Thousands of PCs failed to boot after an Intel/AMD conflict.
Single automated patching will only be trusted if it proves to be properly tested and not used to push out nasties as "security updates" - WGA anyone?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
