* Posts by Steve Evans

2772 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Apr 2007

Sea eagles menace Scottish children

Steve Evans

Re: Nothing to do with grouse then?

Could be... Then again, what does Sea Eagle taste like?

Apple's ex-cop and the case of the lost iPhone 5

Steve Evans

How's that work...

"The six searched his home for the unnamed device and offered him $300 for it, but he told them he did not have it."

Apple cops: "We're looking for a thing, do you have it?"

Home Owner: "What thing?"

AC: "You know, a thingy..."

HO: "What you talking about? What do you think I have?"

AC: "Don't play dumb sonny, hand over the doodah"

HO: "I have no idea what you're talking about"

AC: "Okay, look, hand it over and we'll give you $300"

HO: "Hand over what?!"

Amazon refuses Touchpad refunds after price slash frenzy

Steve Evans

Distance selling regs...

In Europe at least, if you bought something remotely (mail order/internet) and it's a generic (non customised) item, you have 7 days after receipt of the item to say "Nope, don't want it".

So assuming you haven't wasted 10 days arguing with the seller about getting a backdated discount, you could get your big wedge of cash back. Although you then wouldn't own an HP fondle slab.

Sony Android tablets in-bound

Steve Evans

Are you sure about that price?

It almost sounds reasonable!

Don't buy your iPad in a McDonald's car park

Steve Evans

Honestly...

How stupid are some people? This con has been pulled for so many years, with so many different items, that there is even an English idiom which came from the practice "Let the cat out of the bag".

(To save looking it up, the cat is supposed to be a pig in a sack).

Last ever batch of TouchPads isn't coming to Blighty

Steve Evans

Why....

Why on earth would a company, how ever self destructive, do another production run to sell a product at a loss?

I can understand the logic of dumping the original batch cheap, warehouse space costs money, and it's better for a company's image that a dumped product is "lost" quickly, than sit unwanted in a shop window going yellow with age, but doing another run? WTF?

New UK 'leccy meters remotely run via Voda 2G

Steve Evans

1 week later?

Blimee, you're a bit slow off the mark... I'll be at it the moment the engineer shuts his van door!

I wish them good luck controlling it via 2G though. My mobile signal is weak enough when the phone is left on a window ledge, I don't fancy their chances in the cupboard under the stairs, not unless they have a 2 foot antenna!

It's odd they go to all that trouble and don't just give you a £5 discount if they can use your internet wifi.

Couple can sue service that monitored their net sex

Steve Evans

Hmmm...

I'm not a US citizen, so I don't know how vaguely phrased the wire tap laws are, but was this actually a wire tap?

As I understand it, the monitoring software allows remote access to the laptop, allowing files and screen grabs to be taken remotely. The phrase "wire tap" certainly brings to mind an interception of data which is already being transmitted.

Having said all that it's quite amusing. The teacher really should have noticed the low price and certainly the scratched off serial number. If she was a teacher at the school which owned the laptop, then she certainly should have been aware that the laptops were issued by the school and not owned by the students!

And whoever intercepted the "naughty" images really should have done a bit of editing. You only need the face of the "offender" to identify her, I doubt the police required her to drop her knickers and assume the position so they could make a positive ID!

Tony Sale, 'Colossus' crypto machine rebuilder, dies at 80

Steve Evans

RIP Tony

Although I can't help thinking SJQ would be more suitable.

One last production run for TouchPad

Steve Evans

Hmmm...

Can't believe they are actually doing another production run, which will do nothing but increase interest in an OS they have dumped, at a loss...

Something here does not add up.

Nokia dishes out $10m in developer prizes

Steve Evans

Oh dear...

"Nokia dishes out $10m in developer prizes"

Well there goes all hope of any profit this year then.

Seven lessons from the HP Touchpad fire sale

Steve Evans

No shock

No shock they became popular for that money, it really is a no brainer. Who cares if it is dead end, likely to receive zero support etc. As long as the hardware works as supplied you've got a great slab for browsing, emailing etc. I would have bought one, but they were all sold out before I saw the story.

At £400, no tablet is going to tempt me, no matter how good it is, for a media consuming device that's just too much cash. I'll stick to using my phone and just hold the small screen closer to my eyes instead.

The likes of Kogan have shown you can put a tablet together for that kind of money, now if only that was combined with a bit more quality control... Maybe Google-rola might have a plan to knock IOS off the tablet top spot...?

Sprint issues iPhone 5 gag rule to staff

Steve Evans

Preferable...

A corporate "We don't know" reply is certainly preferable to the Chinese whispers I experienced with Orange UK earlier this year.

I took to ringing up 5 time in a row to ask the same question "When or are you going to get handset XYZ?", just so I could at least pick the majority answer as guidance.

It was still bollocks though!

Apple vs. Samsung: next round today

Steve Evans

They're holding back the big guns...

Namely Star trek and their tablets, see next generation and deep space nice, both from the 1990s.

Worm spreads via RDP

Steve Evans

Is this the Daily Mail? Don't believe the hype.

Tut tut El reg, after reading your story I thought there was a vunerbility in RDP... Lucky I went and checked with the source.

All this worm does is scan for RDP servers on the default port, and then try a small set of easy passwords on the admin account.

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet goes on sale

Steve Evans

@Volker Hett

Indeed... Only thing I like about the ipad is the aspect ratio. Widescreen if for playing movies, not work!

Still, nice looking tablet, classic Thinkpad Business looks.

Posted from the R52 Thinkpad

Steve Evans

Re: Fn key

That's nothing! Where's the nipple that should be in the middle?

Here lies /^v.+b$/i

Steve Evans

Hayes might solves this...

+++ATH

Steve Evans

I'd certainly go for a Pascal family lanuage...

repeat

try

while fun do stuff;

except

curse(loudly);

end;

until fatal;

decompose;

Apple rumor mill predicts 'all new Mac'

Steve Evans

A-ha!

That's who bought up all the cheap HP Touchpads!

Well it's not like Apple haven't ever changed their mind about architecture before and hung an entire ecosystem out to dry before is it!

Ultra-cheap HP TouchPads to hit UK at 6pm

Steve Evans

Hmmm...

How many did they actually have? It does strike me rather odd that all the companies that discounted them have sold them all within such a short space of time... Apart from us nerds on here (and similar sites), who knew, and who would want one?

Bet they find a few more in the next couple of days, but they'll cost more.

Either that or their websites have a built in "weird sales pattern detected, shutdown" protection to cover them if somebody accidentally enters and incorrect price.

Yes, yes, I know, I have a suspicious mind!

ARM vet: The CPU's future is threatened

Steve Evans

Vortex...

Damn, beat me to it!

That page is a bit out of date now. The latest is the Vortex86mx+ which integrates the RAM and video memory, so you don't need to provide both externally, just RAM, and then the onboard VGA interface can "borrow" some of it.

Got the slightly older 86mx here, runs at a smidge under 1Ghz, onboard sound, vga, 2 serials, ethernet, USBs etc etc. The box I have also has an SD card slot. Power consumption? Well I can run it off a USB port, so total system consumption is under 2.5watts. Obviously can't do this if I start handing hard drives off the USB ports though.

Quite happily running Linux, complete with Gnome desktop with an SD friendly zero swap file.

Steve Evans

@Darryl

You lick the dashboard of the car obviously!

Steve Evans

Denisity is density...

You think the 200g bar is the fat bastard special?

So who eats the 1kg bar? Apart from me of course?

Could run a laptop for a week on one of those, just long enough for my tummy to stop feeling bad!

Omnomnomnomnom

Man builds gadget to silence annoying TV pundits

Steve Evans

Damn...

I fear this won't work in the UK since the demise of analogue TV. All the digiboxes produces the subtitles display internally and overlay it on to the video signal before it is sent to the TV. The TV has in fact become just a dumb monitor with a set of speakers.

Apple, HTC trim phone forecasts as markets tank

Steve Evans

@Arctic fox

Greetings fellow Z'er.

I wouldn't hold out much hope for the Nokiasoft. The Nokias of old managed their impressive battery life by having very low power CPUs (we're talking number crunching power, not just battery sucking power here). They could do this because they were running a very efficient OS, Symbian.

Symbian was built from the ground up in the days when mobile devices just didn't have huge powerful CPUs. Android, WinMo and IOS aren't. They're all stripped down version of big OS's.

In the world of mobile devices there are always compromises. With Symbian the compromises were almost exclusively made in favour of low power consumption, because the power just wasn't there at the time to be used! The newer OS's had the CPU power, and have used it (programmers always use everything available to them, plus a bit more). Occasionally they have actually given us something useful too.. Which we got used to, and liked.

I doubt we're going to see 3 days phones for a while, not until the "dual core" willy waving is finished and everyone calms down to let the battery technology catch up!

You can actually get quite a few days out of a DZ, I discovered this (thanks to the excessive EU data roaming charges) when I went abroad... Data off, wifi off, bluetooth off, and remember to switch into flight mode if you go into an area of no coverage (stops the radio cranking up to full power and screaming the cell equivalent of "HELLO?" all the time!). It also helps that you tend to keep phone calls short due to the roaming charges too. Best I saw was from fully charged at 6am to 92% at 9pm!

So if you just use your smartphone as a phone, everything is good... Now I just want to use the "smart" part please!

Steve Evans

@Using it more...

Indeed... I've just posted a reply making exactly that point further up the comments!

I did actually email and browse on my N95, but only if I didn't have any choice. It did make me an Opera mini convert though.

These days I'll pick up the smartphone and check emails/reply to them, browse for stuff, even when the laptop is on standby only a few feet away.

I can't comment on iphone longevity (beyond that they die pretty well when dropped), but my Android handset will last days if I just don't use the "smart" part!

It would just be nice if the battery technology would catch up with all the eye candy we've become used to.

Steve Evans

I wouldn't just blame the economy...

All those who bought last year's uber-phone, and are still locked into a contract, aren't really going to be scratching at the doors this year for a new phone (crazed fanbois of all flavours excluded of course).

Why? Well if you have last year's iPhone4 or HTC DesireHD etc, what can't you do that this year's phone could? Ummmm... Yes, now you see the problem. Common sense has killed the sales (hence I excluded the fanbois).

There just isn't a killer feature for the new phones. So what if it can scan RFID tags, you've got to find one to scan first of all! So that's not going to do it. The webbrowser from last year still works fine, it loads up in a second, so maybe I could save 0.5seconds by spending £400 this year, then again, maybe I'll just blink instead.

I'm still happy with my Desire Z, which just sneaks into the "last year's phone" bracket. I feel no need to buy a sensation, although I have played with one, it's a nice phone, and all very pretty, but there is no "must have" extra.

In fact, barring a sudden, unexpected invention of something even Apple hasn't thought to patent, I can't see why I would need anything more than what I currently have in my pocket.

There is one big exception, it's the huge elephant in the room. The one killer feature which would make me buy a new phone... 3 days of real use from one charge... That would do it! A feat which my old Nokia N95 could do, even my N97 could do it, although that wasn't really real use, as it spent half the time crashing and rebooting!

Brits buy more e-books than other Euro readers

Steve Evans

@Uncle Slacky

My thoughts exactly...

I suspect this study was secretly written by the dept of the bleedin' obvious.

iPhone users richer, brainier, more tasteful than Android-ers

Steve Evans

Oooh...

Looks like the range of the Jobsien reality distortion field is larger than we initially thought!

Acer Aspire 5755G 15in Core i7 laptop

Steve Evans
Coat

WTF?

£900 for 1366 x 768?

Where's the Twaaaarp, *raspberry* icon?

Mines the one with the campaign for 4:3 laptop screen pin

And the 1400x1050 screened Thinkpad in the pocket

-They're huge pockets, okay?! :-p

Mozilla strokes coders with Firefox 6

Steve Evans

version numbers

It's not just software! I'm currently looking to upgrade my trusty Quad Core2 2.4Ghz box of tricks, and somewhere during the past couple of years the whole processor naming scheme has gone mad too! I have long since given up on AMD as their naming scheme stopped making sense before I even built the Quad core box. Now it looks like whilst I wasn't looking, Intel have gone mad too! (Actually, they did start to go mad when I built it, the CPU is officially called a Q6600).

What's the deal with all these i(2n+1) processors! It's enough to make me give up and stick to old faithful and just swap the hard drive for an SDD... Hmmm, there's an idea.

Mag bitchslapped in Duchess Kate digi-slimming case

Steve Evans

Good grief...

Was she not skinny enough already? Every time I see a picture of her I think she needs to be stuffed with a few more pheasants.

Injunction suspended: EU can buy Galaxy Tabs again

Steve Evans

Oh great...

So now we have courts making rulings that even they don't know if they have the authority to do!

Well it's good to know they check such things out before making huge judgements which could have multi-million Euro impacts... Oh hang on, they didn't did they.

Jeeez... Now I'm not sure what's worse, lawyers or judges.

iPhone 5 less than a month away

Steve Evans

So....

By your own admission you say the iphone5 has already received enough hype already, so why are you writing this article? We all know Apple use their annual apple-fest to launch new products.

Now go away and shut up until you have something new to add, like any kind of spec for example!

If not, you may as well just come out and do a day by down countdown, which could also lack anything resembling news.

iPhone 4 prototype journo off the hook

Steve Evans

@Bazza

In fact the sceptic in me can't help but think it did exactly the opposite, feeding the ithing media feed frenzy... They couldn't have got more column inches in the run up to the launch if they'd tried.

Said sceptic is also wondering what stunt they'll do for the next one? Start watching those bar stools people!

London rioters should 'loose all benefits'

Steve Evans

Yes...

Saw the misspelled petition... I don't think taking money away from those that have already shown they are willing to steal things they want, is really the best idea.

I'm more in favour of reintroducing stocks and pillories. You show disrespect for your local community, then let them show the feeling is mutual.

Heavily-looted mobile phone barns issue 'safety first' missives to staff

Steve Evans

Don't immobilise the phones...

These morons are obviously a few sandwiches short of a picnic, so just let them charge the phones and use them... Then you'll know exactly where they, and their moronic friends, are each night.

Apple blocks sale of Samsung's Android fondleslab across EU

Steve Evans

Yeah...

Blatant Apple rip off... No removable storage, weird drivers required to interface to PC...

Hackers breach chocolate recipe on Hershey website

Steve Evans

Oh please...

Please let them change the production recipe.... Anything has to be better than the muck they pass off as chocolate these days.

Columbia debris emerges from Texas lake

Steve Evans

ummm...

"One of the guys had been here more than 30 years and recognized it, and said, 'That's one of the tanks"...

So are you saying that more recently employed engineers couldn't recognise bits of a space craft design which was operational until the other week?

Worrying!

Dragon Bannatyne threatens to break arms of 'Russian' bloke

Steve Evans

re: Re: As a father, I totally support him.

Given the threats made to his daughter, I doubt it would be in the public interest for the CPS to drag him before the beak, although they've done dafter things in the past.

All he'd have to do is opt for crown court trial and I don't think there is a jury in the land who wouldn't say he was justified in saying what he did.

It's official: IE users are dumb as a bag of hammers

Steve Evans

Re: Nooo!

Would the humourless down-voter please stand up and make himself known... Or do you have something against Spry Mosaic?

Microsoft man saves drowning woman

Steve Evans

I know I'm going to sound really old...

...but the volume some of today's youth have their personal stereos (told you I was going to sound really old) set to is unbelievable.

Often it is so loud that I can identify the track from several seats along in a moving train. If they're near me, and I recognise the tune, I will start silently mouthing the words. This has even succeeded in getting the volume turned down a few times.

There was a girl the other day who couldn't have been out of her teens who was sitting next to me on the train. The volume sounded perfect if the ear buds had been in my ears, but they weren't, they were in hers! She's going to be deaf as a post before she's 30, if she's not already.

Although the annoyance of loud headphones is nothing compared to those who sit on a train listening to music on their phone via the speaker! With all the frequencies from 500Hz to 3Khz rendered perfectly, and the others lost to the world! Is their hearing that bad that they can't hear how terrible music from an 8mm speaker sounds?

And it's always complete crap too!

Nokia ditches letters for all-number names

Steve Evans

Well...

Perfect time for Nokia to change everything about. It's not like anyone is watching anything they do anymore is it!

Steve Evans

*cough*

You must live right under a cell tower so the phone's radio is running on minimal power (they ramp up their output as the mast gets further away) plus not having to deal with 3G is always a bonus on the power front.

It's always a shock when you turn off the 3G data, wifi and all the other bells and whistles when you roam outside of the country (avoiding horrendous roaming charges) and see what happens to the battery life. I went for a day in Paris earlier in the year (from the UK). Turned the radio off in the tunnel (see previous comment about output power to reach distant cell), turned it back on once in France and had a lovely day. On the way back 12 hours later I check the battery level. 93%!

If only those bells and whistles weren't so thirsty.

Nokia N9 joins next month's mobile match

Steve Evans

re: These are good days

Agreed. Although my experience with the N97 (and the treatment of customers in the forum) had pretty much got them onto my ignore list a few months earlier. The announcement of bending over and taking it from Redmond just confirmed what those who had seen the previous lack of support were already starting to suspect.

I've now got an HTC Desire Z, and although HTC don't seem to be much good at communicating with customers, they have finally managed to get the Gingerbread update out of the door.

I did pick u and play with a Nokia (something, didn't pay much attention) in a 3 store the other day and it just felt old and sluggish. Pity, Symbian is a good OS, my old N95 was a very reliable phone and the battery life was great. Unfortunately Nokia just aren't worthy of being left in charge of an OS. Their front end patchwork on the N97 was just dire. It just felt like it was developed by 12 different teams, who never communicated! Amazing given the reputation Nokia have for liking meetings!

Oh well, onwards and upwards as they say. I'm very happy with Android now. Good luck to Nokia with their mission to be unique running WM7, along with all the other unique WM7 platforms that are already out there...

Maemo, such promise, what a sad sad end.

Steve Evans

re: Are those icons????

I don't know about all your points, but Symbian phones have had copy and paste since before Apple started making their mini-fondle slabs, and maybe before they even started making their fondle-walkmans.

Not that that would stop the US patent office from granting such a patent to Apple of course!

Steve Evans

re: so you call this a "decent" spec? I guess you're cutting poor Nokia extra slack..

"That is last year's spec..."

That didn't stop the iPhone1 when it came out did it. The spec/feature sheet was pathetic. It just had a nice user interface, and the rest as they say is history.

iPhone 5 now set for October launch

Steve Evans

So much column space

About a product which has no specs.

Please come back when you have some real information.