Posts by Sandtitz
89 posts • joined Wednesday 6th October 2010 19:10 GMT
Re: Adobe Reader
Foxit Reader has one function: Display PDFs on the screen and maybe print them if you want to.
Even this (allegedly) bloat free software had a critical vuln couple of months ago.
Being alternative doesn't necessarily equal better.
@Trev - IPMI?
How does the Supermicro management compare to e.g. HP iLO? SNMP traps, virtual dvd's, and so forth. Thanks?
Promises, promises
Ever since i740 Intel has promised "amazing oomph" and each time failed to even come close to their competition in anything related with 3D (gaming or design), due to both poor performance and driver quality.
Their products are perfectly fine on regular desktop usage and I'm typing this on a machine with Intel graphics.
Intel has many times bigger workforce than AMD or Nvidia combined, they're working on bleeding edge CPU's, NAND, lithography and so forth, yet they are constantly years behind AMD/NV products if you measure the gap in pure performance. Why is this?
Re: I think that's why NEXUS have no sd card slot
EXT2/3/4? - No, you've read all the reasoning already.
Now, why don't manufacturers use UDF? It's supported by every modern (and many obsolete) operating systems, it's free to implement, and I see no real reason why any device using SD cards (for example) wouldn't work with it.
Does anyone agree with me?
Re: Yahoo Toolbar (@Mr. Anton)
Yahoo Toolbar is pretty harmless - I would consider Home as the BonziBuddy of this decade. Random ads, user spying/tracking - the wholesome FB experience, that is.
Re: Congratulations PC makers!
I have a beef with some of your comments:
- ASCII (text mode) games are not necessarily any more stupid than graphical.
- 286 and earlier had several different GUIs available, including Windows 3.1
- 386's couldn't play MP3's with ease. Not Even Close.
Literally bulletproof storage
"Can your storage array take a bullet AND LIVE?"
Sure, ask HP. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnjb1WVkhmU
Chart colours
Would be lot easier to read the charts if the manufacturers' colors didn't change between charts...
The obvious solution
TPB should relocate to Antigua.
Re: ie10 nice
Eadon, please stop promoting Safari as an alternative.
Apple has dropped all support for it - the last Windows version is 5.1.7 and that version has a total of 81 unpatched vulnerabilities!
http://www.cvedetails.com/version/130707/Apple-Safari-5.1.7.html
Posted in Microsoft brings Azure back online
Re: (@AC)x2
"Okay, first off let me ask you, AC, why hiding behind a mask?"
Eulampios, please state your full name and the company you work for.
Otherwise you are just another Anonymous Coward yourself
Posted in Microsoft brings Azure back online
Re: 20 goto 10 - MS GOTO FAIL
"Eadon, if you think Dave Cutler doesn't know how to design an operating system, or if you think Linux never fails without a lot of tweeking and patching, then I gotta wonder why you feel so passionate about a subject you don't actually know much about?"
These age old proverbs come to mind:
- Empty barrels make the most noise
- It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Blackarmor
The BlackArmor NAS systems were utter crap.
A failed fan under warranty? Seagate would only replace the whole NAS unit.
Data transfer errors with SMB or FTP? Maybe the next fw update will fix it. (never did)
One word: avoid.
same difference?
Whether the man has the suggested $400 million or say, $4 billion resting on his Cayman/Swiss account won't probably make any difference to him. Other than bragging rights of course.
Unless he plans to spend more than the $400M on ice hockey / philanthropy / anything. Which would be nice.
Posted in Review: HP Spectre XT TouchSmart
@Peter G.
There are no new 4:3 laptops AFAIK.
But the rest you can have easily. There are plenty of laptops that take 32GB's, up to 3 HDD's, heavy duty CAD graphics and so forth.
This Spectre laptop isn't mainstream even in business world, HP's most mainstream line is sold in supermarkets and those laptops are called Pavilions.
Posted in Review: HP Spectre XT TouchSmart
Re: Why do I feel so alienated by the PC manufacturers
So this particular laptop doesn't fit your usage. This is a laptop for the bosses who want to show their shiny laptops to other people
I recommend selecting a cheaper and less powerful, smaller laptop with proper aspect ratio/resolution on the matte non-touch display with an OS that is not Windows 8. Not that big of a deal.
HP et al. have a plethora of laptops catering to many tastes. Perhaps your requirements aren't mainstream.
BTW, HP's website lists Gigabit ethernet and mSSD Cache on the spec sheet.
re: Cheap'n'Nasty?
Samsung produces rather all right products on multiple IT segments. Yes, sometimes they feel cheap and plastic-y (printers for example), but their display products and SSD's are top of the pops.
What's bothering me is that Samsung support on all those segments are pretty weak and documentation is your standard far-east fare, i.e. if the product even is documented it is riddled with bad English translations and spellign mitsakes, and I have never seen any quality software come from Samsung. I fucking hate with passion Samsung's Digital Signage software (doesn't work well, documentation provided on Powerpoint files?) and don't get me started on the laptop utilities.
IBM, HP and other big houses are partly more expensive because they usually document everything ad nauseam and they support their products very well, producing bug fixes, driver/firmware updates to satisfactory levels. Samsung doesn't.
SAS limits
It's too bad that the SAS 12Gbit is already a bit late and will immediately be bandwidth limited with SSD storage units. The Standards Committee behind the development should have aimed higher than just doubling the speed time and time again. Due to the 8b10b signaling SAS/SATA 6.0Gbit is really limited to around 520MB/s, which most of the current flagship drives from all manufacturers have reached. The flash memory chips could easily handle much higher data rate as shown with the PCIe SSD cards. Excluding reading from/writing to cache, 3.0Gbit signaling is still sufficient for any current hard drive.
Re: end of PC's
I can see why you're posting as AC.
Posted in Mega launches with mega FAIL
Deduplication, how?
If all data is encrypted with different encryption keys controlled by the Mega users and not Kim&Co. (as I understood how things work here), how can they possibly use file based deduplication - efficiently, that is?
What to do with the waste?
I know several IP addresses off the top of my head:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4
several DNS servers belonging to different ISP's.
I'm all for change to IPv6 but I haven't bothered with the IPv6 equivalents of OpenDNS and Google DNS...
Re: Hardware
Windows 8 has practically the same hardware requirements as Windows 7. Check the wiki.
Office 2013 should run on any hardware that can run Windows 7/8.
"Intel chip"
The Intel chip mentioned in the rumour could very well be a bluetooth chip or some other IC that Intel also produces. Not necessarily a CPU.
Posted in Review: Kingston Hyper-X 3K 240GB SSD
Re: Great Screwdriver!
@Mr. Pott
They cost actually lot less than 5 bucks. The unit in this link costs $3.73 - and it looks exactly like the one Kingston provides, bar the color.
http://dx.com/p/precision-magnetic-screw-drivers-9-piece-set-with-internal-tip-storage-red-3548
Posted in Review: Kingston Hyper-X 3K 240GB SSD
Re: Great Screwdriver!
Well, yes - it's a good screw driver if it works. I've installed several of these same SSD kits and some of those screw drivers failed - the small magnet behind the head has fallen out (and doesn't like to stay in anymore) and without it the whole screw driver is useless.
The same or similar screw driver is available from DX for a couple of $/£/€ with more heads (torx etc) included.
@AC
"Really, then how come so many people are still on IE 7...or 8... or 9 etc"
Either you are trolling or stupid. But seeing that you actually have 3 up votes let's try to answer your question.
- If someone is still using IE7, either these people have turned the updates off, or have declined to update for reasons one cannot fathom unless they are using (internal) sites that don't work with IE8.
- If someone is still using IE8, it's either due to the same reason IE7 is still used, or people are using Win XP.
- If someone is still using IE9, it's because IE10 is only provided for Win8, and it is not yet available for Win7.
Now, you may cry foul on the reasons MS isn't providing the latest IE versions to older Windows versions, but Microsoft is still pushing out security updates for them. The difference with Chrome is that whenever Google publishes a security update for Chrome, they actually push out a whole new version of the browser which is why Chrome is already on v23. I hope you're not one of those people who rate browsers by their version numbers.
@Joseph Lord
I think you will find that when Chrome was debuted, Microsoft had been providing automatic updates to IE for a decade or so already.
Not that IE is/was any good browser, but credit where credit is due.
@mathew42
You don't know what you are talking about.
Microsoft has provided FREE Word/Excel/Powerpoint Viewers since 1999.
Wait a minute
I thought that the free-market capitalism that the GOP stands for (instead of the usual left-wing baloney the Dems here are suggesting) would cure every single market hiccups El Reg is writing about: if the current telecom infrastructure doesn't fit your use, every single Merkin is free to start their own multi-billion dollar telecom business and conquer the world.
Posted in Report says Cisco offloading Linksys
Re: Netgear, Cisco, good,,,
What's so good about Netgear? Are you seriously considering them in the same league as Cisco?
Linksys isn't really any different from SMC, Belkin, Planet Buffalo, TP-Link and the rest of the consumer stuff. The only difference is in the customer support and whether the products can be upgraded to DD-WRT.
The only thing I really give credit to Linksys is the availability of 3rd party firmwares (*WRT) due to Linksys giving out the GPL code in the first place.
I haven't worked with Linksys products for ages and if Belkin is buying it, that's the last nail in the coffin. I have made a wise decision the avoid all Belkin products that can be configured. The same policy applies to many other el-cheapo manufacturers as well that have burned me.
Re: @Eadon
...as predictably as clockwork, a Windows hater comes out of the closet with silly remarks.
1. Windows Phone 8 is a walled garden, and malware should be as prevalent as with say... IPhone - i.e. non-existant. Android has a malware problem and plenty of antivirus sw available. That's on observation, not an attack.
2&3. The AC defense does indeed sound like the usual Linux on Desktop rant.
Re: Not planned at this time @AC
Microsoft support policy for service packs:
"Support ends 24 months after the next service pack releases or at the end of the product's support lifecycle, whichever comes first."
Windows 7 is supported until 2020, which is about 2 years less than XP support. The original mainstream support for XP was until 2006 but that was extended to 2009 because Vista was late to the party and the reasoning was that companies would - quite reasonably - wait for SP1, and the XP support should overlap until that SP1.
Posted in Ten technology FAILS
Re: Zip Drives?
Zip wasn't ubiquitous tech but it wasn't a failure, I'd say. The parallel port drive was very portable between PC's, and zip disks were very reliable. (can't say that for all those click-of-death drives, though)
From a consumer point of view - at the time burning CD's was out of the question for cost reasons, and the only alternative were 1.44 floppies or transporting hard drives - which wasn't very viable option back then. When 250MB models came out the CDRW momentum was gaining ground fast and the 750MB Zip drives were pretty much obsolete when introduced.
I really hoped the 2.88M floppies would at least get a mention on this article...
What to do with the waste?
Bury it deep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
Re: Suggestion based on many years of experience.
Outlook 97 doesn't work properly in Windows 7, and even if it worked, the <2GB OST/PST limit and the inability to work with anything newer than Exchange 2003 are serious limits - Office 2000 and XP have the 2GB limit as well and they don't behave well in Win7 either. Office 2003 is fine in all respects.
I agree on the Office 2010 vs 2013 in general. If there are no new features that you need, wait for the SP1 before upgrading.
Re: Does anybody else see the humor...
Fawkes failed, but the man in the mask in the V for Vendetta film reached his goals, IIRC. The Anon seem to base their image on the film, not on Guy F.
Re: Just one question
In that "win 8 rootkit" story, the rootkit worked only if Secure Boot was turned off.
AFAIK, the Windows RT will be shipped with Secure Boot permanently on.
Why won't Apple implement equivalent technology? JailbreakMe used a security exploit in the handling of PDF's. The same exploit could have been used to install rootkit malware as well.
Just one question
If Apple really wanted to lock down their devices, why are the devices not shipped with a firmware that would enforce loading only OS kernels that have a digital signature by Apple?
After all, the same techniques that allow jailbreaking allow also rootkits to be installed.
Microsoft's Secure Boot UEFI system is supposedly hack-proof - or have I understood the Linux user rants wrong?
In plain english...
...she wants HP to make profit. If the HP gear pleases the customers' eyes at the same time - even better.
Your calculator analogy sucks:
HP bought Palm for billion dollars, then HP produced for a limited time the TouchPad - not because there was a market for it. It tanked and millions of dollars were wasted on it.
But I'm sure it was a cool idea. Just like Apotheker + board thought that $10 billion for Autonomy was a really cool idea.
Posted in Nokia Asha 311 budget smartphone review
On the contrary
I've been "grappling" with an E72 for two and a half years now.
The battery lasts a working week, Exchange and tethering work well and although it has been dropped numerous times to concrete and other hard surfaces (and it shows) it just works. Nokia Maps works well (would be a lot better with a touch screen though), the camera is all right for taking work pictures of device serial numbers, messy cabling orders behind the rack in pitch black (apart from blinkenlights) and so on. The Putty SSH client is also very handy in a qwerty phone.
The built-in web browser is pants and I used it to download Opera. The "optical navi key" was worthless as well.
To summarize - this has been a very handy tool so far.
Re: The Apple route @Coward 16:39
Dear Anonymous Coward,
I have been near on OSX machine. I have not used the App store to buy anything - yet.
Apps can be installed in all personal used computers. That is, in home, used by you only. Doesn't include kids or wife. While that itself is better than a single use license, I don't think this is that common scenario.
Some Apps outside App Store have volume/site/family licenses - just like in Windows. Duh!
Re: The Apple route @the-it-slayer
You are mistaken. Proof me wrong if you can.
First of all, Service Packs do bring "any NEW features" besides being just a bundle of security updates and. Support for USB2, IPv6, Bluetooth, WPA have come with XP Service Packs. Know the difference indeed...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_4.0#Service_Packs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Service_packs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Service_packs
Regarding App Store:
Apple and Linux distro's in general are miles better with the central repo thing, there's no denying in that. But if you are stating that software for Mac is generally cheaper than the same software for Windows, PLEASE show some proof that shows that to be true.
Also, if I want stable apps, I should not use App Store? :-)
Apple has left the door wide open to Safari attacks on OS X 10.6 and older. Safari 5 has multiple open vulnerabilities, and Safari 6 is limited to OS X 10.7 & .8
Your take on XP support cycle is inane. You are comparing a consumer grade OS with a professional OS.
Apple doesn't specify their support policies for OS X anywhere. It is just "given" that the latest-1 OS is supported. The older versions, well - Apple couldn't care less.
You are free to compare this to Microsoft's support cycles. XP gets 12+ years of support (up from original due to the Vista mistake) but you make this sound like something unheard of in computing. Windows 2000 had 10 years of support, Windows 7 support ends in 2020, even Windows 3.1 support lasted 9 years and that was released 2 decades ago. The same 10 year support cycle includes Office products as well.
Re: Very strange behaviour indeed
His will excludes the usage of his music in ADVERTISING.
Beastie Boys' music has been included in multiple films (Star Trek, Iron Man 2, etc), and will most likely be used in the future as well.
There's also the constant revenue from record sales, songs played in radio, music videos played in TV and so on. I'm sure his family don't have to worry about money.
Re: The Apple route @AC 09:25
You fail to mention that the £14 pound OS update was practically mandatory because Apple has now abandoned Snow Leopard with it being what, less than 3 years old OS already?
In Windows those kind of upgrades are called Service Packs and they cost nothing.
You also fail in your 'cracking freeware' example because those Office packages are available on Linux and Windows as well. 'Software at reasonable prices' is equally laughable point because commercial software on OS X doesn't seem to be any cheaper than on the other platforms.
Re: Why buy new?
The difference between you and me is that I'm just an IT geek - I can't service my car and I'm not even interested in it.
Why buy new?
If you can afford a new car, I see no problem buying a brand new car.
If you can afford a new laptop, I see no problem buying a brand new laptop.
If you can afford a new mobile phone, I see no problem buying a brand new mobile phone.
What's the difference?
I can see a lot of value in a new car: Warranty, no MOT tests for the first years, A/C standard, known history, they're safer (eg. passenger/side airbags, isofix mountings), and of course the luxury of the new car smell. :-)
If you still truly see no value in a new car, your reality distortion field is working very well!
Your yearly vehicle tax is £220 whereas a new diesel Mondeo has a tax of £30 to £125 depending on engine size. And the mileage is better too. Factor that into your calculations too.
Posted in Judge: Oracle must remain on Itanic
Re: Oh?
"All HP have achieved in doing is sending their customers a message that Oracle on other platforms is going to be significantly better than it will be on Itanic. It's almost free advertising for HP's rivals."
If Oracle had won this round, they would be flogging the court result to HP's customers. Same difference.
Except that Oracle at least has to offer some sort of product updates for Itanium which they previously declined to do at all. They could theoretically assign less professional people to give crappy support and updates but the court could find Oracle to be in contempt of the court order and/or Oracle would dilute the perception of their product/support quality. I'm sure that Oracle is still raking money on the Itanium platform even if they continued software development.
The next logical step for Oracle is to drop support for RH, SLES and other distributions and to offer support only for Oracle Linux users. Just you wait...
Posted in Job ad seeks 'mediocre' developers
Re: Never answer a job ad with "guru" or "expert" in it,..
What about Sumo coders then?
Re: Matt Bryant
"Thirdly, even the simple nukes the Iranians are trying to produce will be much more refined and deadly than Little Boy or Fat Man, and will used on civillian targets simply because the Iranians don't have the tech to make targeted strikes."
Well, after Iran has the nukes finished, let's hope they create ballistic missiles of the same caliber as US and others have created so that they can be used against armed forces only. I sure hope their accuracy is better than the US & Allied Forces' bombing accuracy against non-civilians.
New Coke again
1. Introduce a new, silly company policy and wait for the backlash
2. Reverse the policy, bask in glory and wait for the herds.
3. Profit!
