* Posts by Reg Sim

116 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2007

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Laptops given to British schools came preloaded with remote-access worm

Reg Sim

I wonder what sort of machine you get for less then £200 per unit.

If you do some napkin maths on the maximum cost of the laptops, then understand that there should be a hefty proffit from that, what sort of 4Gb, Atom 32Gb HDD machines are we talking here? - do they meet the current minimum specs for Windows 10?

Anybody know what the spec of the Laptops were?, did you need to connect them to your internert router with a bit of wet string?

What's that you got there, AMD? More Ryzen chips? Yeah, OK, we could do with some of those

Reg Sim

Re: Availability?

Scan do have stock, I have been eyeing a R5 5600X to replace my R5 3600, not that I need to but both are 65W and there is a significant game improvment and support for under volting. However the R5 5600X is over priced at the moment. I am sure this will change once stock eases, its not really a Scan issue as the price is currently a little hight from all vendors with stock (at the time of writing).

Hearing about a R9 5900 being an a 65W part is no supprise, but its a tempting upgrade for my lunch box sized PC. I wonder if they will/can do an R9 5900E part to replace the 45W R7 2800E, that would give a mind bending upgrade for a 45W desktop part. (Going from Zen1+ to Zen3 with two extra cores and four extra threads in the same TDP with all the IPC yummy goodness)... not sure who needs a 45W 12 core 24 thread monster.... but AMD could always hid it under Intels bed :p

Cyberpunk 2077: There's a great game within screaming to get out, but sadly it was released 57 years too early

Reg Sim

Hmm the Young one seems strong with the force...

My rather old for a young nephew (16) has been playing it and rather happly on the PS4 (standard normal version). After the first big patch he has quite happly completed the main arc and a few side arcs, and is now looking forward to playing it seven ways to sunday again and again.

For the the cost of the game, it was a good deal time/enjoyment wise, and this will only get better has he plays more. Sure he also bought it planing to play on a shiny new PS5 some time mid next year, where he will play the game all over again, essentialy doubleing the value.

The main 'issues' the game seems to have are where cars and specificatly speed is involved as the poor old PS4 chuggs along at max 17fps, with dips and a bit of lag. Its not game breaking, it is immersion breaking and this bit/aspect of the game seems to be under the 'next console' heading. Happly there is a fast travel system so you can mostly avoid driving it it really gets on your nerves.

Still he has had it since day one and has happly lost many many hours playing it (No not losing saves). I suspect not everybody gets the same experiance on a PS4, as I am sure some are in hotter/cooler rooms, some fans have maybe been chocked up with dust, maybe a firmware or slight board diffrence so I can well belive a game that pushs every console to there limits will bump into issues that you don't see on every game.

In all honistly I was disapointed that it was comming out on the Xbox and PS4. What a waste of resorces IMO - even taking into consideration the extra day one sales. The long term support for this is going to be a nightmare (ie slow to make new content).

Should Microsoft or Sony see there sales for new consoles not be where they want them, I can see them allowing DLC for there newer consoles only. My worry (and expectation) is that updated DLC will miss out the old consoles over time and/or you will get a very limited extras.

In consideration, this is not a FPS where every FPS matters, I suspect because at its core its a roleplay game that being a bit rought performance wise is not as bad as a poor story or tiny world would of been. I am sure that if old console DLC brings nothing more than more storys and improve the 'roll play' aspect that most PC4 players will be find. I can not imagine to many complaints 24 months from now when you can pick up used PS5's as the new PS5 Slim/Pro are about.

-Cen

New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use?

Reg Sim

Re: How

"outside of work hours, I put it in airplane mode" -Pascal Monett.

I do home you choose not to let 'work out your location' even when WiFi and BT are turned off?

-P

Who among you can resist an eight-core, 2.9GHz mini-PC or thin client that drives four displays?

Reg Sim

Re: Dangerous Times For Intel

My understanding was as 10nm was a bust for Intel they got a new VP in to drive 7nm which is basicly the same spec as the 10nm but with more realistic margines. The suggestion is it would be the same as TSMC's 7nm not TSMC's 5nm. From what I can understand this Intel 7nm 'less agressive node' has still run into delays and issues.

Still who knows, all we can say is TSMC is already delivering A14 & M1 chips in quanity for Apple at 5nm, AMD's chiplet design is not that much bigger than Apples chips, so the expectation is there should be no issue for AMD's Zen 4 ramping up and having a 'good' yeld. This puts Intel upto 2 years ahead of Intel, who still need to move to and bug fix there own chiplet designs, as I belive the design tools between Intel and TSMC are not fully compatable thus requiring some redesign on Intels side even if they licensced or paid TSMC to make chips.

Of course the one to watch is Apple, as they will most likely be the first on 3mn, probabley by the 3rd itteration of there 'desktop' arm chips. AMD do have Arm chip designs, and there graphics tech is what allowed Snapdragon to push ahead of its competion. So if there is a move from x86 @ home to Arm, I would expect AMD to enter the ring.

The Irony of Nvidia owning Arm with AMD licencing cpu's is most amusing (and worrying).

HP: That print-free-for-life deal we promised you? Well, now it's pay-per-month to continue using your printer ink

Reg Sim

Not to throw shade..

Not that I am about to suggest HP are not a bunch of pond surface water sucking doodle berrys, but...

.. I do think talking about the loss of 'free for life' @ 15ppm and then giving an example of one of the highest tarrifs $24.99 ($25) for 700ppm is a bit of sensationalism on the part of reporting. The most common tarrif from every one I have sold a printer to since Instant Ink launched has been the $2.99 for 50 ppm with an upto 100 ppm roll over (ie max 100ppm).

Being I live in the UK this is the £1.99/m for 50ppm which works out at £24/y with is vastly cheaper often £100's than all previus ways of getting ink (its about the price of an XL black cartrage per year with out having to pay for cleaning cycles ect.), and I would suspect is the reason Epson went with the Eco-tank model. I am sure both Epson & HP made this move due to losing ink sales to 3rd partys.

Do I think 3rd partys should have a ligitimate opportunity to produce an alternative ink product - or course. Do I think HP offering 'life time free ink' and then pulling it and auto enrolling you is a bit scummy (illegal?). Yes what a bunch of swine.

Much like I would not expect a manufacturer of a car to force me to use there air filters, I would not want my Printer maker from preventing me from using other ink. The fact that HP closed the Free Ink For Life is not a supprise to me (as I always though it was a dum idea), but then I never sold any printers on that premise in the first place.

My only beef with this artile is the talking about free, then showing something that nobody who was into free/cheep would choose as an example. Its akin to showing a parking space that 'was' free in Manchester and then compairing to the price some people pay in Central London, all but asserting that its a realistic case - [The diffrence from skim reading the first four pargaraphs was Free = $12/y VS Free = $300/y. - OMG!!!]. Whist it is a bit of a betral at least they give you some extra pages. I do appreciate the inclusion of the new price listing from HP.

Anyway, I am sure HP will sneek the tarrif up, the old 'were going to give you X ammount of extra prints per month for free!' and a few months later moving everybody onto the new higher tarrif then bring in a 'new' lower tarriff which was the original ammount. - how very Virgin Media of them if/when they do.

Microsoft ups the ante with fix-fixing patch that leaves some Windows Server 2008 machines unable to boot

Reg Sim

love that Title.

What a killer sub heading, it drew me in like an old lady that swallows flys and swallows spiders to catch 'em.

Microsoft's new hardware: eight x86 cores, 40 GPU cores

Reg Sim

"Then go look up the price of 4K monitors" - Who is thinking you will buy a monitor for this?, it will be on your 50"+ 4K TV that your parents got last year... which they now discover was an LG and has no HDMI 2.0 ports, or for most first gen 4k TV's, its got one 4k capable port which your using for your Sky/Virgin box.

Some newer gen TV's with multiple HDMI 2.0+ ports and Freesync are gona be awsome. The question I am wondering about is more to do with what are Sony cooking up, as waiting an extra 4-6 months can make a huge difference in performance and you might see the next gen PS5? using 10nm SOC. I believe AMD was quoted some ware that they can customise a chip in around 3-6 months at vastly lower cost vs over a year in older hardware thanks to Zen being fully modular, even modular between there x86 and Risk cpu's and GPU's. (they have nice fabric).

[I also note AMD are already talking 8k for future graphics products... wait up.... please wait, my wallet can't keep up...]

Put down your coffee and admire the sheer amount of data Windows 10 Creators Update will slurp from your PC

Reg Sim

"What would bother me was if my data was used to build personal profiles and then sold to advertisers. Hence I try not to use anything made by Google..."

This is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard as a defence of windows 10 mining all your data with out your explicit permission or a way to opt out. Did you also not notice the bit about allowing other people to log into your computer remotely with our your permission... I am quite sure google doesn't (at the moment).

If you want a tool to help it stop, grab Anti-beacon software from safer-networking the folks who make Spybot Search & Destroy.... and even then minor updates from Microsoft reset some of your settings to allow telemetry.

I would like to see a full investigation into MS's conduct (by the EU Data Protection Commissioner) and some hot fiery coals for them to tread so they don't try to do it again.

Reg Sim

Re: BongoJoe

DX12 Will be a requirement soon, unless you like not being able to use new hardware with your new applications/games. O'yes and newer versions of hardware are designed to be incompatible with older versions of windows (yes designed).

What Microsoft is saying, if you want control of your OS you need to buy an Enterprise version, otherwise you'll just sux it up, or you can go else were.

Its beyond comprehension that they have screwed over Pro users.... you know the business one by screwing them with the same data mining crap and removing controls.

I hope Vulkan's API does well, as I might manage the move away from Windows OS's at home atleast.

-P

Windows 10 Pro Anniversary Update tweaked to stop you disabling app promos

Reg Sim

You do pay for Windows, the OEM pays MS to licence it for your computer, and you pay the OEM. Its also not particularly cheap. If you enjoy playing games you also do not have a huge choice of good OS for games and productivity.

No I would rather like the EU data commisioner to come in and tell MS we need to beable to turn these things off, and when they are off they stay off unless we explicitly turn them back on.

The 'Free upgrades' to windows 10 are for Microsofts benefit not ours. At least Windows 10 is not a usability disaster like windows 8.0.

Apple says 'zai jian' to Foxconn, taps Pegatron for new iPhones

Reg Sim
Meh

Re: too little, too late

I am not sure I agree with the argument here. You get a phone that costs you £250 less does the same job with a more advanced ui... where is the down side?

Even if you look at contracts which change every 5 seconds. I got my phone from Three for £550 with 2 year warranty and then took a 12 month contract @15/month with millions of minutes and texts and unlimited data (I used over40GB in my first two weeks). And £5/m insurance. I saved nowt vs contract, except I don't have to find 20 more pounds a month and I can change contracts in 12 months. How ever I could of gone pay as u go, but in my case that was no use.

If however I wanted an iphone alternative (rather than the note 2) I would be very happy to have the other phone at 280, and I would consider an upgrade in 12 months to the next shiney.. and I suspect if I were to sell it I would get around £100 back.

I suppose what I am saying if the iphone 5 offers me no benefits, why on earth will I pay more for it other than for the brand.

BT cheerfully admits snooping on customer LANs

Reg Sim
FAIL

Phorm.

"we don't believe that consent is necessary where the testing is necessary to the service that we are providing" - you think they might of learned?, no!, well I was never holding my breath.

TMS launches RamSan-70 Gorilla

Reg Sim

ahh yes price...

no mention of any ball park figure. Mind you, made to order probably tells you all you need to know.

'Real' JavaScript benchmark topped by...Microsoft

Reg Sim
Alert

@Arctic fox.

Whilst he may or not be a stooge for MS, I notice that we are given a lack of information in the article presented to us. When he talks about Chrome overspecialising for particular types of code, surly they have specialised for the 'most common code'. We are also given no indication of what types of operation's his code does and in what ratios, nor is it mentioned on what basis does he believe that his 'well written' code is indicative of 'real world code'.

No your final comment "Now you can agree or disagree with what he says but his comments (or his work for that matter) cannot simply be dismissed as paid for by The Great Satan From Redmond.", draws my interest, as if IE10 did not top the list or get very high, would anybody of paid any attention to this chaps benchmark?, additionally, I suspect he often works in a corporate environment (ie his customers environment), this his tools are designed with IE in mind.

Now you could call that scepticism with out cause, however there is not enough in the article el'reg provided to tell one way or the other. It would also not be out of character for articles/benchmarks to be more 'beneficial' to one browser over another.

A deluge of diagramming add-ons

Reg Sim

WOW I am sold, I am off to buy VISIO.......

Ahh I get it, its advertising.....

Unlike the chap above I do like these type of articles and I am only really a main page whore so I would miss it if it were shifted feed. I do however like articles with maybe a bit more than here. I original expected to find the article telling me about all the different diagram tools there are (or a bunch of them anyway), and maybe recommend a few for specific jobs. You know, maybe talk about there pro's and con's.... that sorta thing.

Just my thoughts.

Firefox 4 gets yet another final test build release

Reg Sim

I do hope this firefox rox

I am looking forward to getting my hands on the final version.

Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now!

Reg Sim

Hmm, it was never a huge over ridding concern...

....for the plant going 'POP' that puts me off these plants.

My main concern about nuclear power is the waste that is produced in normal operation, decommissioning problems, running costs, and of course mis management.

And as for his reference to Chernobyl........ yes.... have you watched any documentary's on that?, I am sure many people have significantly shorter life's stopping it being worse than it was.

Not to mention there are agricultural areas in Scotland that you still can't eat the live stock from, and the scientists were surprised by how long it stays in the ecosystem.

As it only takes ONE bad nuclear accident to do significant harm, I forever plan on staying on Nuclear Powers ass giving them grief.

Government needs to bring IT skills in-house

Reg Sim
Thumb Up

SHOCK HORROR!

Yes, outsourcing can work and does work, but you need IT people to manage it. I know certainly in local councils that a small team of experts (even just in Excel) can make a massive difference to the efficiently of every department.

Usually the big issue the council has to deal with, however it stupid massive outsourcing that restricts what they can do on there own network and what there 'allowed' to develop.

So I would suggest that most IT fails in these cases are poorly written contracts for outsourcing, combined with no in-house IT capable of service development.

I know one department under a BT contract that was quoted £10k to add a 100Gb disk to there department server. Now I understand that there are more costs involved than the simple purchase of the disk, however, the department is still getting royalty screwed. (before you ask, yes the server had the capacity for the disks, and it was not a high performance requirement).

I am quite fond of this report, because I think the 'mass' outsource of IT takes control away from the council, which makes it harder to develop services and improve service. Multiple small outsourcing contracts are significantly easier to deal with.

Anyway, these are all IMO, will this report bring changes?, well I am not optimistic.

RIM BlackBerry Bold 9780 smartphone

Reg Sim

Yea the map...

The single thing I would improve on my BB Torch, more than the annoying niggles/gliches is the freaking map features, it sux big time and if I had played with it more before I got this phone I might never of taken it. Its a shame about the lack of apps/good apps but I can live with that. Still in this case for the most part, if it aint broken don't fix it.

With that said, BB does have a very large younger market, so I would like to see them cater for them a bit more at some point.

'Blitzer' railgun already 'tactically relevant', boasts maker

Reg Sim
Grenade

I am sure it would be terminal for sombody...

"Probably just pass straight through relatively thin skinned ships. Might be nasty but not terminal."

I don't know about you, but having a 'cannon ball' punch threw one side of my cabin and out the other anywhere in the Mach numbers is gona cause me issue, from the pressure wave upto the fragments of my own hull.

I do get your point however, that something akin to a holo-point would be more effective as it would make bigger holes as it tubles around.

I wonder what a depleted uranium shell punching through the skin of a ship into its nuclear power-plant would do? - nothing good I reckon

BT tests 1Gbit/s broadband

Reg Sim
Grenade

For the love of god, just split BT and have done with it.

Split BT and make it Transco'estk, and make it a majority public owned company.

Then allocate funds from the tax payer, then it will be a level playing field for company's to sell there services over.

It really is a stupid system we have atm.

imo

PCI Express 3.0 spec sneaks out

Reg Sim

Hmm not so sure....

When I look back at the old AT ISA crap, PCI was a big step, and consider how long PCI was with us before PCIe, PCIe 2.0 came quite fast compared to that, and I think PCIe 3.0 whist delayed is still an improvement.

PCIe has always been designed for the mass market, so unlike other server only PCI variants it needs backwards compatibility. I mean even now we are only really seeing motherboards with out legacy PCI, even though PCIe has been out for ever.

And as you say things that NEED to go faster can currently connect directly to the chip set, fast things are always bleeding edge, and I consider PCIe as a mass market product and an evolution rather than revolution.

I suspect after the next PCI step we will see a new interface enter the fray, but it will be years after that till PCIe falls off motherboards. IMO

Those govt cuts - slasher horror or history-changing brilliance?

Reg Sim

Sorta.

I have to confess I found some of that rather hard to follow, being the odd jargon word.

I have to main commnets:

1."and perhaps realise that while the Green Belt is a lovely and wondrous idea, here's the cost: income tax kicks in £10k lower than it has to." - Piss off and die, its one of the most locally contentious issues, and I am all for re-developing brown field, but get the hell off our green.

2. Yes, I quite agree on the social housing, or council housing as its known. I know many people who because they at one point needed it, who now earn significantly more than me pay half the rent and can buy there house significantly below market value because I and others like me are 'giving it away'. The change to the subside coming out of Housing Benefit makes sense to me. I do not subscribe to the idea that this will cause people to move out of the area, as it will still cost more to live else were, and the damm houses are for the people who NEED them not people who quite like living there for very little. I do not believe having the social housing at 100% market would be a good idea mind, where as I think there should be no right to buy, or at the very very least no right to buy below market value.

iPhones go on gobbling mobile sales

Reg Sim
Alert

damm it, an I just got the bums rush blackberry.....

Still at least I am not locked into iTunes :) ... only a 24m contract... Ahhhhhhh... DOOM!!!!

I would be interested to see the uptake of contracts, in particular if people are genearly put off upgrading to a smart phone because all the contracts sux at the moment unless you want to splurg £100-200 to keep your contract leanth down.

Disk drive industry appoints roadmap reading committee

Reg Sim
Pint

@Teoh Han Hui

There talking about hitting the wall of 1TB per sq in around 2014-2015, which is around 4 to 5 years, because they will be late ;p

It is only around that point that they will start moving beyond 1TB per sq in, so that will be 'around' 2015-2016, and you can bet with the new process the costs per unit will be quite staggering at the beginning.

I can imagine that very large data centres will be crying out for these massive density drives, and as I know I am already exponentially using more storage space on my own home PC. However for me, I would quite happily buy a power efficient massive storage drive in the full hight 5.25" size for bulk storage and pay less and use SDD's as my primary drives.

For most people I suspect the increasing size of SDD (which currently seems to be increasing faster than HDDs) will reach a point and cost where SDD's will become common for 'basic' computers, at that point your volume sales which would allow you to reduce the cost per unit might not be sufficient in the mass market, leaving 'mid sized' drives or RAID (which is surprisingly common on retail PC's) using a few 'small' SSD's are a better more cost effective method.

Which ever happens I will of course be happy, after all, more space/speed and lower power consumption are all good as far as I am concerned regardless of which technology gets me there first.

On a side note, most SSD's seem to be 2.5" in configuration, I have no problem with 3.5" sizes if it means I can get more storage per drive with out significant increase in cost.

I also note that 960Gb SDD's in 2.5" form factors are now around (albeit at £X,000), it does not feel all that long ago I was stunned by the 4Gb EeePC, and you could'nt get an SSD above 16Gb for love nor money. It feels like in the same time HDD's @3.5" have only gone from around 750Gb's to 2Tb's. More importantly, SDD's with there lower price (for the smaller ones anyway) are beginning to sell in larger numbers, which can only be good as far as price is concerned.

Anyway, all hail the future!!

Adobe AIR 2.5 adds Flash to Android, TV and RIM tablets

Reg Sim
Grenade

Whilst I agree to a point...

Yes I believe Macro-media was getting a bit slack with flash, I think its more thanks to competition from the likes of silver-light that has got them get there act together a bit better.

I have no love what so ever for Apples store and lock-in crap, so whilst I like adobe (as it is now) getting grief and crapping them self s, I do wish them luck since I use Flash products quite a bit

There rather easy to use for the novice, so its got a nice gentle entry level, which is also good for the 'little man'.

Also, there is a balance between cross platform and speed. If you make it cross platform, you tend to find folk will make there platforms run it faster as that will be how there products are compared in the end. Take the current crop of browsers all trying to provide the fastest Java Script performance. It give you apples to apples comparisons (pun intended).

Firefox 4 beta 7 hits 'spectacular list of crashes' roadblock

Reg Sim
Welcome

Ummm....

... Is it just me or is it just 'the beta has bugs'? that this article is telling me?

Its interesting to know the RC is delayed right enough, and that quite a few Add-on's will not be available. However I suspect that many add-on's get abandoned shortly after there made, so I would only expect popular or active add-on makers to have V4 stuff ready for prime time.

That is fine by me, as I don't want to wade though a huge pile of 'left overs'. I mean I use the flags Add-on, noscript, WOT and spell checker... and that funky Lazzerus form recovery. But I would use FF with out them in the knowledge they will come along in due time.

What I do want is graphics acceleration, HTML5 support and any other new toys that make JS faster. I can't remember them all but there was other features that I am looking forward to as well, the nicer way of organising my damm bookmarks is one of them, and makes FF much better for ppl on touch screens. With that said even if its not there on release, at least I can just wait and do a small revision update to get it l8er, and I look forward to a new generation of plug-ins that expand that type of UI.

And no I will not be using FF4 until I am prompted by FF3 to upgrade. I do understand business are different, however I suspect if you have already configured FF3 to the way you like it, FF3 to 4 is gona be easier than it was going to FF in the first place, all-be it with quite a few months of lag.

Just my 20c.

Espionage app updated for Windows phones

Reg Sim
Paris Hilton

I suspect...

..until I get a MS smart phone, I will not bother with AV, in fact, if I get one of them that does not have an SD slot, how does this work?.

I will consider AV protection for my smart phone (which ever type I get) when the nasty stuff starts coming from on-line rather than somebody manually sticking it on my dog-n-bone.

I wonder if we will see the return of diallers, the like of which I have not seen since I switched from modems to broadband. Now that would pose an issue depending on your data plan.

I suppose technically this 'tool' is a dialler. I wonder if you can get it to silently phone a premium rate number? or sux up all your months data allowance by being a zombie and doing DOS attacks whilst your in the park playing with your dog?

- ahh yes, the old 'zombie-in-you-pocket'.

Paris, because I just don't know.

Texan smut baron spanked over UK schoolgirl snap

Reg Sim
Grenade

All I have to say is...

WTF were they not screwed by local law enforcement or regulation for having a 14 year old on the cover? - but then I suppose they may not of known her original age.

Anybody seen the DVD? any good?

Sussex police try new tactic to relieve snappers of pics

Reg Sim
Grenade

AC; yes good idea, how much will that cost for the causual observer?

I bet you are a popular sales person for the mobile company's trying to pimp data at an extortionate rate.

The best solution is for them to just stop doing this. I noticed in the article it does not say how long they plan to hold the 'evidence' before release (or duplication).

Micron intros SSD speed king

Reg Sim

Should it not read a little diffrent.

"The write speed is pretty close to the 355MB/sec of the Micron consumer RealSSD C300 6gig SATA product sold under the Crucial brand. That product's write speed tops out at 215MB/sec so the enterprise product is appreciably better."

Should that not be:

The *READ* speed is pretty close to the 355MB/sec of the Micron consumer RealSSD C300 6gig SATA product sold under the Crucial brand. That product's write speed tops out at 215MB/sec so the enterprise product is appreciably better.

Just wondering because a write speed of 355MB/sec would kick this ones arse otherwise.

Battle joined for future of open source IPS

Reg Sim
Thumb Up

I presume

the connection is security? US and high performance ;p

Intresting topic, I would of missed it, if it had been lower down ye auld list.

IBM's zEnterprise 196 CPU: Cache is king

Reg Sim

RE: Captain Thyratron....

Quote "and it'll probably break and have to be taken down for maintenance. It probably doesn't have things like hot-swappable memory and processors."

I belive higher end X86 servers, and I suspect some lower end ones do have hot swapable Memory and HDD's. and I remember playing with a £40,000 Compac one well over 10 years ago that I belive did have a hot swap CPU. It was way ahead of our SPARC's at the time for the price.

(used Pentium Pro's if I remember right).

Anyway, who wants hot swap Mem & CPU when you can just turn it off and pass the traffic to an identical system? (don't bother answering)

Drupal looks beyond open source zealots

Reg Sim

yep.

"The man responsible for turning one of the most usable sites on the web to a utter fuck up of massive proportions is leading the way.

Well Drupal, you are truely shafted."

I am not sure what the BBC's website was like before, but trying to use it now is not my fav experiance.

Kodak ESP 7

Reg Sim
Grenade

Not really sure about the quality of this review.

Why worry about cost per page if you are going to ignore the base cost of the printer?

A quick example is Commet were doing the ESP7 (when I bought mine) for under £100.

Your listed price is around £130 for it, which is fine I suppose, but then it gets marked down for them skipping FAX...., yet you comment the HP @ £200 for having fax, yet bugger all inbuit display which is only good for 'buisness' use.

Are we getting a review for a home all in one or a small home buisness? I am sure if I wanted Fax I could of coffed up the extra £70.

As it happens when I got my ESP 7, I also got buy one get one 1/2 price on printer ink, so I picked up a bunch of black and colour inks.

Now I do not think the ESP should of won the award, but there was no mention that I noticed of setup, in particular for wireless and wired. (wireless being a bit of a pain on the ESP, and I know from experiance I had to wait a few months for drivers to be updated to get the network scanning to work right).

However my biggest grip is the size of the drivers and the interface thing Kodak make you use. I would of found this article more intresting if these topics were tackled as well as some comments around features and cost per page.

All in all, there was some text written on the page and some pictures of printers and some 'intresting' charts..... (ok so the information on printer noise might of made me buy a diffrent printer than the ESP7 as by god its a noisy beast, in particular if your sharing a house and its in the hall, or maybe you have kidds asleep).

< The noble handgrenade.

Ofcom: Mobe numbers to be ported within a working day

Reg Sim

Yea, now all they need to do is..

Sort out all the other crap they have been letting folk off with. Like separating BT, kicking ass when it comes to data provision via 3G networks, kicking ass for broadband descriptions....

Really the list of where they still fail is long, however I will give them a pat on the back for this one, it seems quite reasnoble.

However, I would like some sorta idea what happens if they 'fail' to provide this faster service, some sorta big stick that the customer can expect them to be hit with.

-cen

'Unlimited' ads are dumb and misleading, says 3

Reg Sim
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In yer example:

They could simply say 'unlimited for private use', thus when they lop ya off when you have called more than 500 diffrent numbers in a month or called more than 24 hours in a day... I presume you can hax the live box to call more than one person at a time, or to conferance call.

the latter would be done though the agreement, ie you will not hax our boxes or curcumvent our products or you be deleted or more simply conferance calls are not allowed. Would fall under the banner 'Unlimited private calls'.

In this way you stay true to your slogan, ie your not lying and at the same time your not opening your self to abuse.

The products that do my head in are were there is bandwith factoring, where they alter your bandwith depending what your doing with it. Screw them you paid for the bandwith at 'upto XXX speed'. And I also think its about time they gave you a garanteed minium speed. (or that they are only allowed to advertise the 'minimum speed'. rather than the max.)

Anyway like most people here I am sure like me they could rant about this stuff for hours, although I would like to think if you stuck most of us in a room we would come out with a nice solid mandate :)

Microsoft goes AC/DC with Instaload battery tech

Reg Sim
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It is so simple...but

but I suppose nobody have though of it. It will not work for every device, as any device that has batterys in a row will not benefit.

But yes this seems like a worth while thing. Well done MS, lets just hope there not charging a gazzilion quid for the licence.

there is the link again to look at the hardware if you missed i above (like I did)

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/licensing/instaloadoverview.mspx

US $250m superbomber 'almost as good' as $8m robot

Reg Sim
Happy

You may well question the supersonic bit but...

I suppose if your flying half way around the world to drop some bomes, it means you also need to fly back. Whilse I will grant you it may be a sitting duck at speeds sub Mach3, however usualy misions are time critical, in which case I susepct most of the world will not try to shoot you down if you are sub M3 at high altitude. So you can fly there fast, drop yer load and bugger off him in time for doc who (or what ever them yankys watch).

Hybrid hard drives: what's not to like?

Reg Sim
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4Gb is just to little.

Awsome concept, might be alright for a linux box, but screwed for windows.

XP currently takes up an arm and a legg of space by the time you install all the damm patches, and whilst I have cut XP down before to get it on a 4GB drive with office, it was quite an effort.

Now I know you are suggesting you keep apps such as office on the normal HDD parts, but still, Windows 7 is not small and in a couple of years with updates, bolt-ons and patches with gona be fighting for space.

If they kicked off with 8Gb's over 4Gb's I would say they have got it about right and covered almost all low end needs and allowed one or two primary applications to share the speed bump.

Anyway, screw this for a laptop, I want this option in a 3.5" desktop drive.

Windows 7 Backup gets users' backs up

Reg Sim
Joke

Backup are for the week.

I keep all my important data right along side my OS, as its on faster raid 0 disks. Why would I need to make a copy of my data?, nothing ever goes wrong with hard drives these days, and even if one dies I am sure I can get my data back from the other....

BCS trustee threatens rebels with libel action

Reg Sim
Stop

I am a member of the BCS, have been before I got my IT degree and still am.

O'yea and it stands for British Computer Society.

I have been a member for quite a few years now (MBCS encase your wondering), and I have on the whole found it a useful organisation.

The most irritating thing was there rubbish website, which is now significantly improved, and there massive hike in membership costs, which did make me think long and hard about the value of membership.

However since I started using the BCS, I have found they have two things I find very important.

The first, is the number of variety of forums, talks, introductions and presentations you have free access to as a member (and you can also usually take a non-member mate with you). At these things you get to network with other IT folk/organisations, get a handle on new technologies, historical information and get to ask questions. If you have an active interest in IT, there very good and very good value for money.

The second, relates to ethics training mentioned above. What it essentially means to be an MBCS member is that you have a formal approach to resolving issues of ethics, and a formal manner in which to deal with (in most cases) your employer. Should this fail, you have the backing of your professional body and its much easier should it become necessary too defend your self if you have followed a formal method endorsed by your own professional body.

Now regardless if these two points interest you or not, essentially I am very glad this article was here, as it caught my attention and having read the 'rebel' link, which I have to say is significantly more useful than the 'BCS links' to them I am going to support the EGM.

Essentially this EGM is about Trust. Regardless of the direction of the BCS, the directors have not released documents asked for by the council, such as showing due diligence in a number of areas, specifically in pressing ahead with a £5m plan. Even now the EGM has been called (a year after they were originally challenged) this information is still not forth coming.

So regardless of the future of the BCS, I think the future of the directors and board of trustee's is the door. What disgusts me more than anything else is the tone of the BCS has changed significantly since I have joined. Putting 'quick vote' options onto voting forms, and there choices of words and counter resolutions. I suspect even with out the issues of clarity, I would have little trust. The top level of the BCS seem to of been Bushed or Blair’ed, time for a flush I think.

I also feel a slightly longer article would, or at least one that touch’s on the main points of contention would of been valuable for us reg readers.

Apple Mac Mini 2010

Reg Sim
FAIL

I stopped reading about here...

"I’ll admit up front that I’ve always liked the Mac Mini. I used one as my main office computer for a couple of years before retiring it to my living room where it’s hooked up to my HD TV and makes a terrific little media centre."

Yup, I know fine and well that the old Mini Mac of a 'couple of years ago' had the graphics power of an asthmatic ant, and would jump and cause issues with 'HD' youtube content, as was just fast enough to play DVD's. So pluging it into an HD telly suggests you used it for HD content, which would of been rubish as opposed to 'a terrific little media centre'.

I for one would not be happy with a media centre that can not play HD content on my HD telly, regardless of how pritty it looks when I read my mail on a 42" OLED 3D screen.

Anyway I am sure the rest of the article is intresting, but I am using the FAIL symbol for this, as it starts out with a big fat lie.

[Don't get me wrong I love the mini for what it 'was', but I would never recomend it as a media centre in its old form, and certainly not when presumably they want HD content]

Terror data handover seriously flawed

Reg Sim
Grenade

and boy can you feel the difference.

"Tell me, does the US also supply the vaseline - or do we have to pay for that ourselves too?

Starting to understand how the rest of the world feels about US foreign policy - it feels like we are on the periphery now rather than bosom buddies, and boy can you feel the difference."

Well of course we can feel the diffrence, before they would of paid for the vaseline. I belive its 29p a pot.

Critical and unpatched, Windows XP bug is under attack

Reg Sim
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Danki

"For individual users, the easiest way to do this is to use the online “Fixit” application Microsoft has provided here. ®"

It would be intresting to know more about what he was tweeting or rather the meat behind the tweet.

Intel delays USB 3.0 chipset until 2012

Reg Sim
Jobs Halo

Add in.

Hmm this of couse does not prevent sombody using a usb3.0 chip on an intel board, much like the motherboard makes have used other chips on intel boards before intel supported them.

I am intrested to know where AMD is with this however, as Intel will get it in the neck if Intel PC makers have to pay the extra for an additional motherboard chip/add on board just so they can have the USB 3.0 logo on there boxes because AMD boxes have it.

Just a though.

BTW "the reg" that stupid ad to get me to fill in a questionare that pops on your site for a US based firm gets old very fast. Not to mention as its US based its not subject to UK rules regarding data protection. (good old firefox plug-ins "flag-fox").

Microsoft Tag emerges from beta

Reg Sim
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I remember....

I think for Microsoft the initial driver behind Microsoft Tab's was a project with the internal code name Milan. I have put a link to a handy source with a video of project Milan in action, also known as the interactive coffie table or Microsoft Surface.

When you watch the video (which has an irritating ad, bear with it), it will show you items like camera's, phones and cups interacting with the table. These i belive use Microsoft's Tab tech. There is another video kicking around that shows you this in more detail, however I don't feel like looking for it. Enjoy the video link below, and read the article that its embeded in if you want more info on the MS Surface.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/4217348

Techies slap Go Daddy with class action lawsuit

Reg Sim
Go

This reminds me of...

"We are proud to have been honored year after year by numerous third-party organizations, and our own employees, as an ethical, generous employer." - I wonder how many empoyers have said that followed by a court forced apology?

Jobs drops hint on Google open video codec

Reg Sim
Grenade

Like MS and Mac matter?

"Google's adoption of VP8 plus its decision to open source it " - ano.

I suspect when Google starts encoding youtube using this codec, it will not matter a damm if MS or Mac don't install VP8 as a default, because almost every developer will know everybody and there dog will have VP8 installed, where as this will not be true of h264 i suspect.

I also note that VP8 might not be the end, google might put the $$ in to develop VP9 or some other sweet codex.

Not that I am a massive fan of google, but roll on with this :)

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