* Posts by Steve Evans

2772 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Apr 2007

Three axes data-roaming fees in SEVEN countries

Steve Evans

Re: Tethering will be blocked

The whole tethering issue gets my back up.

If I have a contract with X Gig of data, what difference does it make how I consume it?

I thank Apple for this... I tethered mobile phones for years, by serial, IR etc, nobody says a thing... Then the iPhone comes along and has tethering as a paid for option... It's been downhill from there!

Steve Evans

A rather eclectic selection of countries. I was expecting to see the usual favourite destination for UK travellers of France, Spain etc...

But thinking about it for a second I realise what they've done here is grab a good headline, but without too much risk of people using the service too much!

NASA's nuclear Mars tank REBELS against human control

Steve Evans

Re: next update

Actually that does raise a question...

We're all very familiar with track maps like that here on earth, but that's because we can always tell where we are thanks to the orbiting satellites... But they're orbiting Earth, not Mars, so not much use there.

So how do they track the location of the Rover? I can only assume by dead reckoning, not exactly a million miles from a Logo turtle with left 45 forward 100... And we all know how quickly that become inaccurate!

Bradley Manning is no more. 'Call me Chelsea,' she says

Steve Evans

Re: ah-ha

Wooo, big swings of reaction there! To those with a sense of humour which hasn't been gelded from prolonged expose to political correctness, glad to be of service...

To the others....

Are there any ladies here?

No...No.. *cough* NOOOO NOOOO

</monty python>

Steve Evans

ah-ha

This explains why he blabbed so much!

Four ways the Guardian could have protected Snowden – by THE NSA

Steve Evans

Re: Be careful Chris

This is reminding me of the Kent Photographer who was held under terror laws for taking pictures of a fish and chip shop in Chatham.

They love their catch-all powers don't they.

Microsoft announces execution date for failed QR code-killer

Steve Evans

Re: NFC does make more sense

I think it might be you... I've never had a problem on the three phones I've tried it with, but then those 3 phones were all Android, and Android is rather noticeable by its absence in your list.

Bradley Manning: 'I'm sorry my actions hurt the United States'

Steve Evans

Re: Portion of time in solitary confinement ..

"That by Manning's own admission he said and acted out in a manner which caused them to extend his time on a suicide watch?"

I think you'll find that people will sign and confess to all sorts of things if you prevent them from getting some proper sleep for several months on end. It's a well known brainwashing and torture technique.

There are many other ways of preventing a prisoner from committing suicide which don't involve waking him ever 30 minutes. In fact if he had found a way to commit suicide, what use is checking every 30 minutes anyway? if he had found a means to end it all, it would be well and truly over in a few minutes.

Steve Evans

Re: Portion of time in solitary confinement ..

The US continues it "fight on terror" (tm) by continuing to abuse the rights of a prisoner and disregarding the Geneva convention whenever it feels like it.

Curious the US signed both Protocol I relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts and Protocol II relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts in 1977, but have failed to ratify either in the 30+ year since...

And there are some absolute gems in there which the US has failed to agree to be bound by...

Articles 51 and 54 outlaw indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations, and destruction of food, water, and other materials needed for survival. Indiscriminate attacks include directly attacking civilian (non-military) targets, but also using technology such as biological weapons, nuclear weapons and land mines, whose scope of destruction cannot be limited. A total war that does not distinguish between civilian and military targets is considered a war crime.

Articles 56 and 53 outlaw attacks on dams, dikes, nuclear generating stations, and places of worship. The first three are "works and installations containing dangerous forces" and may be attacked but only in ways that do not threaten to release the dangerous forces (i.e., it is permissible to attempt to capture them but not to try to destroy them).

Articles 76 and 77, 15 and 79 provide special protections for women, children, and civilian medical personnel, and provide measures of protection for journalists.

Articles 43 and 44 clarify the military status of members of guerrilla forces. Combatant and prisoner of war status is granted to members of dissident forces when under the command of a central authority. Such combatants cannot conceal their allegiance; they must be recognizable as combatants while preparing for or during an attack.

Article 35 bans weapons that "cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering," as well as means of warfare that "cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment."

Article 85 states that it is a war crime to use one of the protective emblems recognized by the Geneva Conventions to deceive the opposing forces (perfidy).

What a nice country.

They're not alone though... Iran hasn't ratified it either.

Microsoft to fund Blake's 7 return as Xbox Live exclusive

Steve Evans

Re: Nooooooo

Remakes of 80s shows are nearly always dire.

US remakes of popular UK shows always are dir.

That's dire ^2

Be afraid.

The daft thing is there are actually some good original US TV series... They could do worse than resurrect Push Daisies which got chopped before its time thanks to the writers strike, maybe Ned could touch Windows RT?

100,000+ Earthlings star in 'reality TV contest' for ONE-WAY ticket to MARS

Steve Evans

@JDX - Was Re: @Pete 2

Ah yes, whereas BB contestants have to actually fail a psychiatrists check up to ensure that as the series goes on they become more and more deranged.

Unfortunately after using all that professional skill to find these freaks, they release them back into the general population at the end! Please can't we shoot them as another planet? (landing parachutes optional).

Steve Evans

Re: They *all* sound like ideal candidates

I'm sure we could get most of the ex UK big brother candidates to sign up for a colony on the Sun.

Facebook turns tables on profile stalkers with News Feed tweak

Steve Evans

Shorely shom mistake...

"free-content"?

I'm sure you mean "content-free"

Can't agree on a coding style? Maybe the NEW YORK TIMES can help

Steve Evans

I work with guys who do that in Delphi blocks...

If condition then begin

..Stuff;

..Stuff;

end;

Really annoys me.

if condition then

begin

..stuff;

..stuff;

end;

Is far nicer. Sure they save a line, but they complain if I use

if condition then single_stuff;

So they can't claim space saving!

Is there any kind of Markdown or formatting we can use in these comments, code just gets split into paragraphs!

Steve Evans

Why write a text guide for humans to read, why not write a python script that will format the source to their standard?

I had to do this for my A-level computer science project... My tutor complained my code didn't have enough white-space. To my mind it had the perfect amount of white-space, just enough for the BBC Micro interpreter to identify token keywords from variable names.

So I wrote a program which took my code and converted it to code with more spaces.

Tutor was impressed, and asked why I hadn't written it like that before... So I loaded up the new space filled program and typed "RUN"...

"Out of memory" came the reply... :-D

KingSpec's 2TB Multicore PCI-E SSD whopper vs the rest

Steve Evans

Re: Am I missing something?

Don't forget, I'm sure the 240GB will be "decimal" 1000bytes to the K, 1000K to the M, 1000M to the G too...

So by the time that's factored in the true storage to the IT geek mind is 1.75TB.

But that's not such a good headline grabber is it!

Police probe IDIOTIC Twitter bomb threats slung at journalists

Steve Evans

Re: I wonder what these people get from threatening people

What they get is TV, Radio and www coverage.

It seems that in this day and age, the old adage of "Ignore them and they'll go away" has been completely forgotten.

Trolls and their kin exist purely from attention, so stop giving it to them then, and get back to investigating and reporting on corrupt politicians, because they certainly don't like that kind of attention.

Limbaugh: If you hate Apple then you're a lefty blog-o-twat hipster

Steve Evans

Proof read...

You might want to proof read before hitting submit... ;-)

Google Glassholes can't take long walks off short piers thanks to Merc app

Steve Evans

@Fink-Nottle Re: Best use for voice control in cars

And that will stop the US patent office from issuing a new patent how exactly?!

China Labor Watch gumshoes uncover TOP SECRET PLASTIC IPHONE

Steve Evans

Re: Plastic iPhone?

I wonder which shade of yellow it will go when it gets hot?

WikiLeaker Bradley Manning found not guilty of 'aiding the enemy'

Steve Evans

Re: Pretty remarkable "justice"

I thought the Nuremberg trials said that "Just following orders" was no defence for war crimes... So it should follow that reporting war crimes can't be a crime.

Disgusting, but unfortunately normal, service from the US legal system.

Poor bugger.

Google menaces Apple's 3-year-old toddler with its cheap stream tech

Steve Evans

Who knows, but as you can buy a RPi for £25 and install XMBC, why would you?

Plods probe death threat tweets to MP - but who will rid us of terrible trolls?

Steve Evans

but WHO will rid us of terrible trolls?

"Plod probe death threat tweets to MP - but WHO will rid us of terrible trolls?"

I'm more interested in who will rid us of these terrible MPs!

PRISM scandal: Brit spooks operated within the law, say politicos

Steve Evans

Re: They didn't operate within the law

Re the PRISM filter where they say "it's okay, we're not watching Americans", it immediately makes me think, so you leave that to GCHQ to do, and then they share the data.

I'm amazed HMGov didn't try the same con whilst acquiring the data they didn't collect from the Americans.

They're all a bunch of two faced liars, the lot of them.

Semtex, AK47, arms shipment, assassination.... Chew on that.

Steve Evans

Odd isn't it...

GCHQ operated within the law, so everything is ok.

Google obeyed the tax laws, but gets dragged in for questioning because they were "morally" naughty.

So which one is it HMGov? Letter of the law, or spirit of the law?

Pure boffinry: We peek inside Nokia's miracle cameraphone

Steve Evans

"Similarly, if space is not a serious constraint, then every camera would use optical zoom."

I would hope not!

Even the most expensive optical zoom cannot compete with the image quality and "speed" of a prime lens.

All that extra glass required for the zoom absorbs precious light and introduces distortion as the different light wavelengths (colours) are bent by slightly varying degrees. In fact quite a few elements in top end zoom lenses are there purely to try to correct this chromatic aberration.

</camera geek>

Unreal: Epic’s would-be Doom... er... Quake killer

Steve Evans

Re: Descent

It was the first to make me truly dizzy and lost within the space of 5 corners!

Caterpillar B15: The Android smartphone for the building site

Steve Evans

Interesting until the killer spec missing from the front page:

"512MB of Ram"

That would be lucky to get acceptable performance out of Gingerbread, but Jellybean?

So very close to a useful phone to recommend, let down for the sake of another RAM chip. Stupid corner cutting fail.

Android sig vuln exploit SEEN IN THE WILD

Steve Evans

Re: @Reda

Manufacturer's customisations are a pain in the butt.

Network customisations are even worse!

I gave up with network customised phones many years ago. I was using Nokias at the time. The UK networks never updated their custom firmware. Eventually I unlocked, reflashed the model number to generic Euro and got back on Nokia's direct update train which turned the Orange supplied N95 dog into a very useful smartphone. I still use it as my backup (3 days+ battery life is good for things like that!).

After Nokia completely lost the plot I jumped to Android. They're all unlocked. The instant HTC failed to pass on an update for my old Desire Z it was unlocked, rooted and jumped to Cyanogenmod which had the security update rolled into its build within a week.

These days it's Nexus devices all the way.

It's swings an roundabouts. If you want a phone which you have no control over, and you can endure the shortcomings, then you can buy an iPhone and you'll be pretty much safe (just don't plug in that USB cable eh?).

If you want more choices than you can shake a stick at, then go Android, but you'll probably want to install an good AV app.

Want to have the latest updates first, get a Nexus, or vanilla version S4 etc.

Oh, almost forgot, want a novelty phone with squares all over the screen, go windows.

Help! I’m trapped inside the Chamber of Hollers

Steve Evans

Accoustic tricks...

If you want to cut down on echos you need surfaces that don't reflect (d'uh) or if you can't avoid some reflecting surfaces, stop them reflecting continually by making them a bit "pissed", that's UK pissed, not US pissed (you can try US pissed, but in my experience, casting aspersions on the marital status of the divider's parents is usually unsuccessful).

Anyway, sound bounces about like a ball (minus gravity), so making the place a bit wonky will bounce the sound off into one corner where it can die).

It's also a good way to drive arty-farty creative designer type from the building, they'll hate all the non 90 degree angles.

Add a few soft furnishings (mediaeval banqueting hall wall hangings style) and you should be good to go.

Alternatively put half a dozen cloth bags over the noisy Scot.

Apple dangles Spangles while Dabbsy's cables rankle

Steve Evans

Re: The apple tax...

And print it in badly kerned comic, just to make their arty-farty eyes bleed as a punishment.

MacBook Air now uses PCIe flash... but who'd Apple buy it from?

Steve Evans

Re: Coil

You don't actually need two of them, in fact that would hurt the transfer of magnetic flux, you want a common core with multiple windings.

Which this new pro will rapidly resemble as soon as it's got a few lightning cables tied round it!

Steve Evans

Daft design...

Apart from looking like the bass-bin from the boot of some hoody's Vauxhall Corsa, I suspect they've been so busy trying to make it look "Ahhhh", that they've repeated the cube's design flaw.

Namely that if you put anything on the top (like any of the expansions, tethered via the expensive thunderbolt cables), it'll over heat!

The old Mac Pro was a very nicely put together piece of kit, practical to work on inside, with great expansion potential (although the lack of Sata3 and OSX's terrible support for non-Apple branded video cards was/is damn annoying).

Magpie Apple plunders the competition for cosmetics, as egos run wild

Steve Evans

Re: Blackberry 10

The Blackberry 10 gave the mobile world true multitasking?

I'm sorry, what rock have you been under?

Android has had it for years, and before that, Symbian.

Interesting to see how Apple spin the multitasking side of things, given they've claimed to have that the last few versions already!

Steve Evans

Re: Give 'em skins

Yup, support for skins and end user customisation.

And then that will be it... It finally will be Android phone, but with a play store controlled by a megalomaniac.

Steve Evans

WTF?

Somehow I couldn't see those "arty-farty" icons making it past Jobs if he were still alive.

He'd be bellowing "What the f*ck is that? What does that look like to you? It looks like crap, that's what it looks like"

*phone whizzes past ear*

I do believe it is the beginning of the end. The designers have taken over, with little input from engineers or end users. The new Mac Pro is a case in point. The moment you start using it and wanting to expand things, you end up with a pile of external devices and expensive thunderbolt cables all over the place. Basically a mess.

Apple at WWDC: Sleek new iOS, death of the big cats, pint-sized Mac Pro

Steve Evans

"Apple came out swinging"

If that's how you swing, you'd get beaten up by a blind-folded, one-armed eight year old.

<mental image>The Family guy British episode fight with the chicken/pheasant</mental image>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSr4-q6VLeY

Reseller Computacenter LITERALLY smokes out squatters from offices

Steve Evans

Bosses then ran into the building...

I seriously doubt that!

They were probably standing about outside, if not sitting at home on the sofa.

Their poor underlings would have had to do all the running!

CRUNCH: 'Drunk' chap cuffed in high-speed car nookie prang rumpus

Steve Evans

She wasn't driving. They've charged him with driving offences.

I imagine they could charge her with indecent behaviour or something, but they're minor charges compared to his. Probably couldn't be bothered with the paperwork.

As for refusing to give a blood sample, I imagine there wasn't much left to sample, they should have just collected it off the cactus!

Bobbies need broadband-enabled gear, insist 4G LTE fans

Steve Evans

You want to rely on 4G for critical systems?

Ha! You fool!

Customers may have "access" to 4G, but it is seriously limited by the small print (not available everywhere, won't work where you want it, no chance at your house, no chance at work either. You might be lucky and catch it in one corner of the pub once. Only once. It will never be seen again, and nobody will ever believe you).

Let's hope an emergency network 4G has somewhat better coverage... Although hearing continual "hello?", "repeat please", "A what?" on Police Camera Stop Accident Crash Action would be rather amusing.

First bricks of Great Firewall of TAIWAN are being laid, netizens fear

Steve Evans

They already have... Have you tried accessing TPB recently?

Although in typical government fashion it's a harf-arsed solution, probably proposed by an IT consultant who's only qualification is he once wrote "Hello World" on the PC's at Dixons, and he went to School with "Dave"'s cousin.

Woolwich beheading sparks call to REVIVE UK Snoopers' Charter

Steve Evans

Knew it...

Right from the moment the incident happened I was unhappy with the rapid "terrorist" labeling.

I thought Ms May will be out saying "We warned you" any moment now.

Resurrecting the snoopers charter would be pointless, they'd already snooped on at least one of the "men" involved and not deemed him a threat.

The bunker at the end of the world - in Essex

Steve Evans

And get yourself spray painted Orange.

On the bright side... The word on the high street is the owner of the sugar hut wishes to break his ties with the Orange vacuous ones, so with any luck TOWIE will be moving!

(Also very proud to be an Essex boy!)

Stephen Hawking nixes Intel voice upgrade plan

Steve Evans

Re: I know that voice! @dgharmon

The hardware one was based on the tones of BBC News reader Kenneth Kendle.

Currant Bun erects £2 paywall: Wraps digi-paper around free footie

Steve Evans

Re: "The Daily Telegraph introduced a subscription last month, with the first 20 articles free"

As staggering as the graudian's grammar and spell check?

Borked your iDevice? Pay EVEN MORE to have it fixed by Applecare

Steve Evans

"This move is likely to be welcomed by eco-warriors, as there is less waste involved, and customers too, because they may be able to keep their phone's contents."

Given the sheer pain involved in doing a backup and restore of an iPhone (I've sat and watched with disbelief at how slow and painful it truly was when my Brother had to have his iphone4 replaced twice) this can only be good news.

I'll stick with my little green robot thanks all the same.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield's Space Oddity ends in Kazakhstan

Steve Evans

Given what passes for a celebrity these days, I can't argue with you!

The IT Crowd returns to Channel 4 for a final episode

Steve Evans

Matt Berry

Matt Berry is the voice of pretty much every jingle and promo on Absolute radio.

Never fails to make me smile.

'Liberator': Proof that you can't make a working gun in a 3D printer

Steve Evans

Re: All very true, but..

"a device that throws a projectile" - Merriam-Webster

Like a catapult.

Or my arm?

Review: Crucial M500 960GB SSD

Steve Evans

Re: I'll give it a pass

The only failures I've experienced on spinning platter drives in the past ten years have been of the total death variety. Usually the spin controller.

Result, zero data, completely screwed. Luckily, in all but one of these cases the drive was part of a RAID.

The one that wasn't was in a laptop which was being used at the time... Just went BSOD, and that was that.

So in that respect an SSD with it's degrading of cells and not centrally crucial, and mechanically based, function like the motor controller, is a far nicer way to find your drive is on the way out.