Posts by Skoorb

Re: Can't come soon enough

Who's your ISP? If it's TalkTalk or Plus.net then they have very good forums that can help with this.

Otherwise just lob in a formal complaint though http://www.ispa.org.uk/consumers/complaints/ and keep pushing.

Re: Agree

Have a quick look at the Cherokee web server whilst you are at it; it's a rather interesting project.

Re: Intel Desktop Mobos

So, serious question. What would you recommend as a replacement brand of motherboard that has the next best system support and reliability?

Re: Irritatingly vague system anyway

I think the outdated information you are working from will be due to the phased introduction of compliance in the UK, the regulations only came into force EU wide on the 1st January 2012, before then there was nothing stopping banks from delaying some payments.

Re: cloudy flexibility meets touchy-feely

Yup. Even in Canada, where provincial government health insurance schemes cover everyone.

And we have one already in this country, just not for medical records: http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/ssd/prodserv/demo. Everyone who has an NHS Number is in the Exeter system, so, amongst other things, provider NHS Trusts (hospitals etc) know who to bill when they see a patient.

This type of system is even in Canada, where provincial government health insurance schemes cover everyone.

Re: The Department for Work and Pensions

Sorry, nope, that's the entire Government Secure Intranet, currently 80% of addresses in that range are in use, the remaining space is earmarked for the new Public Services Network:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/internet_protocol_ipv4_address_a

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/internet_protocol_ipv4_address_a_2

Luckily, you can disable automatic acceptance of video calls in the settings; all incoming video calls will then automatically fall back to plain voice calls.

It's really good.

Re: Oddest bit

This is the thing.

It seems that far to many programmers don't want to use available APIs or libraries when needing to do something very standard. All major operating systems come with date and time libraries, and major programming languages even come with standard APIs to do this sort of thing (or are an easily available well known library if you're going low level). There should be no need for most programmers to ever have to implement anything to do with dates or times, standard TCP/IP communications, file reads and writes, encryption and hashing etc. For dates and times if you can't explain leap years and leap seconds (yup, leap seconds are a thing on most POSIX systems by default, but not default Windows), and have a defensible argument for if you are going to implement support for them, you shouldn't be trying to do it, because you don't understand it.

Re: Shock Horror

There is actually a registry (or Group Policy) switch in Windows that jumps up system cryptography levels, but not many people know about it or use it (outside of US gov contractors anyway). It's the "System cryptography: Use FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption, hashing, and signing" setting. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811833

Though it changes a lot of encryption defaults to AES-256 and SHA1 for hashing (or triple DES on Windows XP and older) I believe you would have to change NTLM authentication separately, like has recommended at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/147706 for over 10 years... Though disabling NTLMv2 is harder to do, rather annoyingly.

Re: Lotus Approach, 1-2-3, and Word Pro

Well, they sort of are being.

IBM is currently in the process of replacing them with "Apache OpenOffice IBM Edition". As far as I can tell this means that they are lobbing some code and features into the Apache version of LibreOffice... It's been coming since January though and there is still no word on what it will actually look like or how much IBM code will be open-sourced. The code is supposedly in Apache now and will be seen in a real product shortly after OpenOffice 4.0 is released.

From their FAQ:

"Q13. When will the Apache OpenOffice the IBM Edition be available?

A13. IBM does not dictate the release of this code and works within the Apache OpenOffice community. IBM

expects Apache OpenOffice the IBM Edition to be available shortly after the final Apache OpenOffice 4.0

release is complete..." See here: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/AOO+4.0+Release+Planning

"Q22. What is going to be different between Lotus Symphony 3.0.1 and Apache OpenOffice the IBM Edition?

A22. The major differences our users should expect will be in 2 areas. Apache OpenOffice does not run on

the Lotus Expeditor platform which will change hardware requirements and startup time. Apache OpenOffice

will also operate more like Microsoft Office in that each application will launch in its own window. There will

also be slight differences in the look and feel. There will be more functions available as well with the inclusion

of the Database and Drawing applications. All content created will transition seamlessly.

The other difference is that Apache OpenOffice will not be able to be embedded in the Lotus Notes

application. It will only run in standalone mode."

Re: Useless...

Sorry. You're wrong about what you want. They are right.

See http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/10/16/meeting-the-needs-of-businesses/

Basically; bog off to a third party website, they only cover 'popular' content in summary form; you are a busy business man rushing about with a Bluetooth headset stuck in your ear and don't have time to read words!

Re: LLU win

Xilo.

You sir have hit the nail on the head.

Xilo, 'pro' up to 24Mb broadband, excluding line rental, £316.65 a year inc VAT. Including BT line rental saver (£129 per year) is £445.65 a year.

TalkTalk's package including line rental, curently on offer for £153 per year.

So, the extra £292 pays for the customer service.

Interstingly, going to TalkTalk business direct for the Homeworker package (which anyone can do and have *very* nice service from guys in the UK including geting BT engineers out within 4 hours as part of the contract if neccesary) nets you a yearly price of £352.80.

So, you pays your money and you takes your choice.

Re: Well..

"Not really a solution though is it?

You seize 3322.org, the virus dials home to 3323.org, you seize that... - what's the maximum length of a domain name?"

The notice posted from the domain name operators says that they are offering free transfers to 8866.org 2288.org 9966.org 7766.org and 6600.org.

The translation of the notice is hilarious:

"If your domain name is manslaughter, causing error resolution, please contact our customer service to verify the situation, we will help you solve."

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pubyun.com%2Fp%2Fnotice%2F

Re: It's not bad

"It's quick and accurate to find information I need even if it then links back to Directgov for the content. "

That's designed to go away. Their <a href=”https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples#second”>Second design principle</a> (click "show examples") makes clear that they want this to be as content-free as they can possibly get away with, and only have it covering topics that noone else could ever cover and are of mass interest.

Re: I wonder... Compiled JAVA?

Of course. It's similar to how Android works with it's Dalvik version of Java (java bytecode is compiled closer to machine code on package installation).

And it's easy to do yourself anywhere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Compiler_for_Java

But the GNU version a bit on the flakey side, and cannot compile everything. There is a 'commercial' option that works more relaibly, but it costs: http://www.excelsior-usa.com/jet.html

Also, be aware that compiling to machine code in advance can actually *decrease* execution speed, since the JVM watches how the code is executed to gather information on how methods should be compiled for optimal efficiency, especially when the JVM is run in 'server' mode using the -server flag to enable way more aggressive optimization.

But none of these options will have any effect on the bugs in this article, since they all appear to only have any effect on 'sandboxed' applications run in a web browser. Applications run directly are not placed in a sandbox, just as straight machine code isn't.

Re: Retrieval Fees

Well, make sure you read the 'peak' bit of the calculation. That's the rate that is multiplied over the number of hours in the month... I worked it out as getting on $400 to download 1TB if you have 1TB stored, assuming 80Mbps. You also have the fun of data only being available for download for 24 hours (from 3-5 hours after you ask for it), and not getting any filenames back, just random strings.

Though as another commenter pointed out, you can always pay them to post you some discs ($80 per disc plus $2.50 per hour of data writing time), it actually seems to work out cheaper if they don't charge the 'retrieval fee'. If they do charge the 'retrieval fee' (which isn't made clear), then the charge is dependant on the speed of the network within their datacentre!

I would love some real world examples of how to actually go about getting large chunks of data out of this thing and how much the various methods will cost. At the moment it's just too ridiculous for words.

Go get it done by 'proper' surgeons then

Lets not forget that the best surgeons (of any discipline) in the UK tend to work for the NHS in one form or another. So, why not go get it done by them?

See http://www.cmft.nhs.uk/royal-eye/our-services/laser-vision-correction.aspx for example. This eye hospital is one of the biggest in Europe and is one of the leading research centres in the world and is more than happy to take your money at rather competitive rates.

Re: "can do 50 full drive writes a day for five years"

Right. I've dug around their website a bit. Most of the stuff is very light on details, the best I can get is from a whitepaper (http://www.smartstoragesys.com/pdfs/WP003_Guardian_Technology.pdf), which, when you get past all the snazzy graphs going upwards, has a few important things in:

- It includes a "Redundant Array of Memory Elements", so yes, there is a lot of redundancy.

- They "treat each cell individually thereby maximizing the effects of stronger flash elements (i.e. those that exhibit higher performance capability) while minimizing the effects of weaker elements". How they know what is 'strong' and 'weak' though I have no idea.

- A job lot of statistical error correction on reads.

- Lots of cache to reduce writes, with some chunky capacitors for when the power fails.

Most importantly though is that they will (to a certain extent) put their money where their mouth is: they give a 5 year guarantee for up to 25 full drive capacity‐writes/day.

So interesting, but I would like more technical information on how they go about this.

Re: Mail without a mail client

Off to Opera Mail for me I guess then.

Re: Talk-Talk Bottom? Same old, same old.

You don't have to ring an 0870 number from your mobile, their number is 0203 441 5550 (see http://help.talktalk.co.uk/app/answers/detail/a_id/2064).

CacheCheck

If you want to know what DNS results appear to different parts of the world, try https://www.opendns.com/support/cache/

Re: Already in use

Yup. I'm currently jammed in O2's mobile "whitelist" mode somehow. This means I cannot access websites like, say, www.talktalk.co.uk, http://www.national-lottery.co.uk or www.theregister.co.uk, but can access O2's own internal sites and the BBC.

I cannot remove it myself (just get an "internal error" message) reporting as a fault did nothing, re-reporting it and getting it sent to the "escalations team" has also done nothing.

I'm going to have to write them a complaint letter now asking them to remove the filter! I have no other idea what to do.

It depends on the Ambulance Trust which in vehicle computer system they buy, but basically it is NOT a sat nav, it's a multi purpose computer. The computer links to the control centre and displays information about the patient as well as directions and other stuff.

Also, the ambulances are in radio contact with a dispatcher in the control room, the call taker you speak to when you dial 999 is on the other side of the room to the person controlling the ambulance, so there's no delay, they can even listen into the call if the need more information whilst rerouting the ambulance. The control centre normally has manual control of routes if the need to, is updated on road closures by the police when they happen, and if all else fails can tell them where to go by radio whilst staring at a big OS map on a screen in front of them (dispatchers normally have at least three screens, one ALWAYS displaying a map with caller and vehicle locations).

The control centre staff can also do everything by paper if the computers go down; they have big maps, books, wipe off cards and flowcharts etc in their desks and there should be at least two backup control centres in different locations, though the last backup is normally the police or fire service. In North West England for example there is a control centre in Preston, Manchester and Liverpool, each with about 100 control staff.

A big problem with routing is callers not knowing where they are - if you call from a mobile or from behind some badly configured corporate switchboard that actually connects the call to the telco at a different address, then the dispatcher tends to be looking at a big red X over a mobile cell tower; they can still send an ambulance racing towards it, but if the call taker can't locate you from what you're saying it can take a while to find you.

In this case though it does look like a computer failure of some kind, as otherwise the first rapid car responder wouldn't have made it straight there.