Posts by Mark Allen

Re: I think the quality ....

You should "name and shame" your ISP. I sit here on Virgin broadband in a city and laugh at how well it works. The last time I saw stutters was when I was on the older 10Mbps modem in 2012. Since updating to the newer 60 Mbps service I have laughed at how smooth iPlayer is. (Whilst also hammering the network downloading ISOs from the PC at the same time)

The biggest problem with iPlayer are people like yourself and those who live in the countryside. When broadband is still sub 5Mbps it is incredibly unfair when attempting to watch something. I hope the "pause and buffer" trick will still work for you. There needs to be real subsidies into the countryside to lift average broadband speeds outside of the cities. I find it incredibly unfair that BT got cash to flood fibre into the city where I live where we already had insanely fast broadband available from Virgin. Also unfair as BT will soon make money from people hooking up due to the density of population.

Meanwhile, barely five miles away in the countryside, broadband barely hits 2Mbps. THAT is where the grant money should have been put.

Back to iPlayer... I am all for the idea of allowing non-UK people to pay for access to iPlayer. great idea. But I bet it will be killed off by people like Murdoch claiming "unfair" and by the daft rules on which areas a show can appear in. Nothing more annoying than the bizarre rules on programs like Match of the Day where if you miss it live you have to wait a random number of days before watching it.

Re: Is this laptops as well?

The Apple troll is just too obvious. I enjoy supporting Apple kit as I get more support calls for it. The random email problems, the strange downgrades of their software.

It was interesting last month playing with a brand new Sony laptop and comparing it to the Apple Mac. The Sony was just so much better in many ways. Looks, design, styling. Just little things like how the speakers were setup in the hinge.

Or the way they get round the lack of Ethernet port. On a Mac they just assume you will use Wireless. Hardluck if you are in a room without a WiFi signal. With the Sony they had added a tiny WiFi Access point in the box. This tiny Access Point just clipped to the laptop's power brick and then connected to Ethernet. Such a nice, simple, elegant solution.

And the guy down there bashing the support... I guess I was just lucky. Emails replied to, and phone calls to a Dutchman who not only knew his stuff but also phoned me back and paid for the call.

So... back to the drawing board for the people with excess cash... Samsung is certainly part of the thoughts, but again with the bloatware... I wish these PC guys would stop that.

Re: So, Mozilla...

Well, there is a simple answer to that. Mozilla presents itself as a "community" based browser. It would be happier if we all forgot that it is funded by the Gorilla that is Google.

Re: Hopefully it'll block the Daily Mail and their noncebait sidebar of shame

At least Porn is honest about what it is. The Daily Mail and its nonceing sidebar is stunning for the way it can have a "Think Of The Children" article on the page with its nonceing links on the side bar. Certainly need it added to the banned list. Along with Mumsnet as there are plenty of threads in their forums of an extreme sexual nature.

Re: Harvard need to reassess their admission policies?

Why even go into the coffee shop and sit in front of cameras? Surely it would be simpler to do from the street outside? Accessing the wifi from outside of the building and away from camera range. That way you also have the excuse to wear that thick coat and scarf.

Re: wait

That 7726 number has been around for years. I've been forwarding SMS spam to if for five to eight years or so. (Can't remember exactly). I have noticed that in the past couple of years I am getting replies thanking me for passing it on, and asking for the phone number the spam was sent from.

It is nice to see something gets done with this information now. I certainly notice less repeats of spam messages compared with spam in past years.

As to fines... yeah... £100 per SMS sent out should be a better scale. A fine that should be paid by the directors of the company. Otherwise stuff like this just gets written off as a company expense.

Re: Gimmick ahoy!

Lots of photos of the insides of pockets then...

Re: Pffft, can anything on google maps these days :D

@Khaptain: They must have been some very stoned hippies then as the "Woodstock" you're thinking of is in the States, not Oxfordshire.

Re: Wonder how

Black tape doesn't stop the mic from working.

Re: Bootnote

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/30/esa_retires_herschel/

Re: People still use ISP mailboxes ?

Simple. Get a email service with an alternate mail port other than 25. I expect even outlook.com will do this. Especially if you use SSL email. I know you can do it with GMAIL and even YAHOO mail.

Even better, if you are on El'Reg you should know how to sign up to a decent email hosting company with proper SMTP support. Shouldn't cost you much. Then it is all under YOUR control without any advertising mess.

Re: UMA is excellent

So hope they have the sense to use UMA. Trouble is I assume they need to bung licensing cash at someone. Which means, as you say, a bodged mess that doesn't work as well.

I've only really experienced the Bold using UMA so can't tell what other devices are like. One of my clients did see my UMA in use in his house but decided to go for an Android phone instead. Turns out that is done via an app - and the app was only available if you had bought the phone direct from Orange. He paid for his phone outright from a different source and there was no way to put that Orange app onto the phone. There was no sense in Orange making that restriction... but they did.

So bad implementations using an app already exist. Complete with stupid lock-downs.

Whereas the Blackberry "just works". What amazes me is how many different wireless access points handle this without thought. I see dozens of clients with all kinds of cheap and nasty WiFi kit and it "just works".

Bad news that it isn't in the Z10 yet. That stops me upgrading. Can't seem me letting go of this 9780 for a while as it does all I need for now.

Re: RDS

Radio 5 got Radio 2's old AM slot. I know this as the radio I listen to in my bedroom is 25+ years old and still has the little stickers on it when they shuffled the channel numbers around back in the 1970s or 80s.

I listen to huge amounts of Radio 5. Especially for the sport. That selection of old radios - from bedside clock radio to car stereo via a tiny pocket sized radio for walking around town. It would cost me a lot of cash and endless batteries to replace that little lot. Not very "Green" is it?

And don't say I should be using my mobile phone's data connection instead. That is plain daft. Why would I want to pay to eat up my data quota on the phone? Or risk flattening the battery of my phone while listening to the radio? That is not progress or convenient.

I have introduced a problem into my house now. As noted above, there is something wrong with CE testing. I have a nice new 50" Plasma from Panasonic. And the moment I fire up that screen, it adds a nasty buzz to my AM radios. Frustrating as I prefer the Radio commentary to live footie matches.

Long live AM Radio!!

Re: you are clearly a shill

(Where's the edit button?) I meant to add that there were no problems over the weekend for me on the general browsing and downloading side. The only trouble I've had is the ISP mailservers run by Google are playing up. Normal mail is unaffected, but trying to use any ntlworld.com addresses are having login problems. Swapping back and forth between smtp.ntlworld.com and smtp.virginmedia.com seemed to get round it on Sunday. Now it just seems to have given up hope.