* Posts by jason 7

3181 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

'Maybe I'll go to Hell, but I think it's a good thing' says plastic Liberator gunsmith Cody Wilson

jason 7

I think you'd find most of the illegal guns in the UK come from two main sources.

1. The old eastern bloc.

2. Converted replicas from the far east.

I doubt we are getting that many coming over from the west. Much easier ways to get hold of guns from closer to home.

jason 7

Re: Well the good thing about these 3D guns is...

Each one comes with a pair of kevlar work gloves and safety goggles.

jason 7

Re: Re more guns, lower crime rate

If he refers to lowering home invasion type scenarios with every home having a gun, might I suggest people just try locking their doors and windows at night?

I'm more of a vaccine is better than a cure kind of guy.

When I've stayed with folks in the US I'm staggered at how many don't lock their doors. Same with their cars.

Oh no, Joe: WinPhone users already griping over 8.1 mega-update

jason 7

The dilema for MS.

Windows Phone 8 needs to be more like Android and IOS

Windows Phone 8 needs to be less like Android and IOS

Maybe they should have bought WebOS cos everyone loved that.

But then it would immediately switch to being shit, just because...

Just do your own thing MS, do your own thing.

AMD demos 'Berlin' Opteron, world's first heterogeneous system architecture server chip

jason 7

Indeed, if you look back most of the big 'pushes' over the past 10 years or more have been developed by AMD and not Intel. Sure Intel make nice powerful chips but...boringggg.

Leaked pics show EMBIGGENED iPhone 6 screen

jason 7

Re: As a Sanmsung S3 and then Note 2 user

I call iPhones, iTrinkets now.

It's so teeny tiny!

IBM was wrong to force UK workers off final salary pensions – judge

jason 7

Re: Now how many more years...

Dunno about the court awards but as an aside...

I started over paying into AVCs aged 24 so I could retire at 55. I was in an excellent final salary scheme too.

Now at age 43 my pension has been pushed back to age 70.

From at least four IFAs I've questioned hard, the real truth is most of us under 50 wont be retiring any time soon if at all.

The sh*t will hit the fan pretty soon as the figures just don't add up. Tough job finding around £35000 for every £1000 you want in annual pension.

jason 7

I must be one of those funny shareholders...

... that thinks happy and well paid employees work harder and will make more money for me. You know, they go that extra mile.

Quite how you expect to run a successful profitable company with say 80% of the workforce not giving a sh*t I don't know. I guess at that point you get rid of the 80% and replace them with £800+ a day contractors who whilst they still don't give a toss about your company, some still feel they have to give value for money.

Seagate brings out 6TB HDD, did not need NO STEENKIN' shingles

jason 7

Re: Capacity

@Tim Bates

Well 3725GB and 4000GB would look silly. Most would put 3.7TB or 4TB on the box...

jason 7

Re: Capacity

I know all about it. I understand exactly. Been toying with hard drives for over 20 years.

But how long will enough of dumb ol' Joe Public take it before they take out another class action asking where their missing 1000GB went and the Judge thinks that actually that is a fair point. Before it may have been a forgivable 5GB...

Like buying a 800 gram jar of coffee and finding 100grams is jammed solid at the bottom.

I dont see the problem with stating the actual average formatted size instead of the unobtainable. If only 5.5TB is ever usable its classed as a 5.5TB drive. Simple. Either that or as mentioned come up with a more efficient formatting solution.

I didnt mind when the amounts were within reason but give it a few years and you'll be looking at 20% or more of stated capacity.

jason 7

Re: Capacity

Yes but how long until they release say a 8TB drive...but it actually only has purely 7TB available?

They could get away with it in the olden days when you got 77GB of a 80GB HDD or 113GB of a 120GB but now the old measuring system is starting to look downright stupid when in fact you arent getting the storage of what would have been a large HDD a few years ago.

When 8TB+ drives arrive are they going to give you a free 1TB drive to make up or have to wait till they can make a 9TB drive and label it as a 8?

I really don't think they can get away with it for much longer. We need a new size system. Just tell it what it is. Usable size only please.

The IT Crowd tops BAFTA nominations with four nods

jason 7

Oh...he did want the Heat!

I don't know why but I just love the way O'Dowd delivers that line.

Puking! protester! forces! Yahoo! 'techie! scum!' to! ride! vile! bile! barf! bus! to! work!

jason 7

Re: Whining

From what I saw on CH4 news a few weeks ago the issue is a lot of people have lived in rented accommodation in those areas for years. Some of them for generations. So what you have now is many poor elderly people who were getting by, now having to move out of the place they called home for 65 years. That hurts.

One long established community is being pushed out to make way for another that could just change or disappear at the whim of some Tech CEO or public taste and trends.

jason 7

Re: "simply market forces in action"

But which community?

The original poor impoverished one or the new fluid well-paid one?

You know things have changed when you see a jar of mustard for £6.00 and increased use of French words outside of shop fronts.

How Microsoft can keep Win XP alive – and WHY: A real-world example

jason 7

Re: So does OSX and Linux...

So the long and the short of it is...that neither of them have basic/simple long term support in mind for the average joe/business past around 4-5 years.

Thanks.

jason 7

So does OSX and Linux...

...provide eternal support?

Do they still provide updates and support for software they churned out well over 10 years ago?

Just asking.

jason 7

Re: XP will only be insecure if connected

My brothers firm has to use a Windows 98 laptop connected to their lathe. They have a stockpile of abut three old laptops I bought off Ebay for like £30 each and slapped Win98 on them. They don't connect to the web so its not really an issue.

They are set for another 10+ years. Business as usual.

Don't tase me Pro: WD brings out Thunderbolt external drive

jason 7

And when the controller etc. fails...

...you think "no problem, I'll take it out of the case and pop the drive in another caddy! Worth a try!"

Then you find WD fixes non standard SATA connectors to their external drives so you can't!

Don't buy WD external HDDs. Especially the 2.5" ones.

Of course this one may be different...

Schoolkids given WORLD'S CHEAPEST TABLETS: Is it really that hard to swallow?

jason 7

There is probably still a wharehouse full of BB Playbooks...

...going cheap.

I still use mine, thanks for asking.

From corporate bod to startup star: The 10-month gig that changed everything

jason 7

Great fun and all...

...but did you actually deliver on time, on budget and most importantly...did it work?

Middle England's allotments become metric battlefield

jason 7

Re: Back to school

Hmmm what wallpaper did you cover it in?

TV sales PLUMMET. But no one's prepared to say what we all know

jason 7

At the end of the day...

...people have just got bigger things to worry about.

This changes everything: Microsoft slips WinXP holdouts $100 to buy new Windows 8 PCs

jason 7

Re: Too little, too late.

@Tom

Then you recently haven't been unlucky enough to have to use a 2001 spec PC running XP for your day to day work.

I've seen people waiting nearly 30+ seconds for a Excel spreadsheet to open, thinking that's totally normal in 2014. Now repeat many that many over the course of a day.

Mmm I love the sound of a 40GB Maxtor IDE drive in the morning...

jason 7

Re: Too little, too late.

Try using a 13 year old install of XP on a 13 year old PC and you'll find that it doesn't work...very well at all.

Trust me I see them when folks ask me to upgrade them.

If you think wasting 20 minutes a day waiting 'for something to happen' then by all means but I'm sure most of us here have better things to do.

Reg tries out Google's Chromecast: Yep, we even tested smut sites

jason 7

I think I'll wait for the...

...£50 one that works a bit better.

Other that that an interesting little toy.

Microsoft DirectX 12 pushes gaming code closer to GPU bare metal

jason 7

Re: Gamers on the whole will move anywhere and pay anything if...

Unless you have a current gen Nvidia GPU, you'll probably find those driver boosts wont affect your card.

The drivers may support 20 cards going back to say the 8800 series but those old cards are only tested to make sure the drivers still work.

The latest Crysis optimisations are strictly for the new/current cards.

jason 7

Gamers on the whole will move anywhere and pay anything if...

...if it gives them an extra 10fps.

That's the real enthusiasts and if you get them to move then so will a large portion of the gaming community.

Remember these are the people that will spend a week tweaking their RAM settings to get their FPS from 134fps to 134.6fps. If they will pay £600 every 8 months for new graphics cards then £80 for a new copy of Windows every three years is no hardship.

8/8.1 is still evolving and being tweaked for performance improvements. Windows 7 in comparison, while a fine OS is a dead stick. That's not getting gaming performance love any time soon.

Star Wars movie to start shooting in UK this summer

jason 7

You know...

...I really really just don't give a shit anymore.

Is no browser safe? Security bods poke holes in Chrome, Safari, IE, Firefox and earn $1m

jason 7

Re: So what happened to the...

Ahhh...

"The largest single prize not awarded was the $150,000 for successful demonstration of the grand-prize Exploit Unicorn, a triple-play puzzle specifically designed to provide the greatest challenge for researchers. Though no entrants made that attempt, the record-setting number of entrants and the diverse and creative approaches taken to crafting attacks made this a Pwn2Own for the ages."

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-Security-Research-Blog/Pwn2Own-s-New-Exploit-Unicorn-Prize-Additional-Background-for/ba-p/6357753

jason 7

So what happened to the...

windows 8.1 running EMET challenge?

Windows hits the skids, Mac OS X on the rise

jason 7

Re: But do all Macs run OSX?

In my experience of folks that have moved over to Macs they pretty much all run Windows 7 on them most of the time.

As the known IT guy I do get annoyed when friends who have just spent £XXXX on a MacBook Pro call me up all cagey trying to scrounge a 'free' copy of Windows 7 off me. Yeah right, I'm just drowning in free give away licenses.

BT caught in data gaffe drama: Whistleblower squeals over alleged email fail

jason 7

This has been going on for ages.

I have a customer who has had their BT email account hacked at least 5 times in the past two years.

He won't give it up, though I have moved him to a new email service to use as well. I think the last two times we reset the account with complex 20+ digit passwords but still they got round it. So I guess the previous post mentioning that all the security data questions have been slurped rings true.

Edit: In fact just logged into my BT email account (I dont use it, ISP provided) and in the settings I clicked on Edit Security details. It then came up with a window saying the content and location isn't trusted.

It's 2014 and Microsoft Windows PCs can still be owned by a JPEG

jason 7

Re: rollocks

What I read was the original Vista code was going badly. Then the Head of the Vista Project found a small team using a very clean version of Server 2003 and they decided to switch to that.

Hence the delays.

Satisfy my scroll: El Reg gets claws on Windows 8.1 spring update

jason 7

When humans evolve...

...grease free fingers then Touch will be truly ready.

jason 7

I just uninstall the Modern Apps on any Windows 8/8.1 machine.

Its the simplest solution. If people are complaining about them then just get rid of them.

You don't need them if non-touch. Then you just stay Desktop forever.

Plusnet shunts blame for dodgy DNS traffic onto customers' routers

jason 7

I had a BT Business customer hit with this last week.

As Plusnet are a part of BT.

It was a TP-Link router but it didn't have the default password active or for that matter any remote admin access.

Neil Young touts MP3 player that's no Piece of Crap

jason 7

Re: Is it that time already?

24bit has anything to do with human hearing? I thought it was the number of samples a second, not something directly related to human hearing/perception.

jason 7

Re: Audiophiles...

No its not jealousy at all. I used to class myself as an audiophile. I had a huge Meridian setup but when you get a bunch of such people together you find all they talk and obsess over is the kit. Music hardly gets a mention.

I then realised that the music had merely become the equivalent of petrol in a sports car.

I wasn't actually enjoying the music just trying to listen to the hardware. I have mentioned this to other kit obsessives and they often admit that's closer to the truth than they would like to openly admit.

Thats all wrong. The Meridian kit has now all been passed on and now I just listen to Spotify. It's made me far happier and far more into the music. I feel so free that I now enjoy music on whatever its played. I don't feel I need to put the plasterer's radio on spikes when he comes round.

A good tune is good whatever you listen to it on.

jason 7

Buy NAIM

equipment and then you'll be constantly told -

"Oh it won't sound right until you buy the £700 xyz power supply to go with it!"

I've always felt if you've paid say £3000 for a CD player it should sound right with or without extra boxes plugged in.

Lovely marketing strategy, fill your customers with constant doubt that the £XXXX box they bought maybe doesn't sound as good as it should without extra bits that cost almost as much as the original box.

Listening to the equipment...

jason 7

Audiophiles...

...don't actually listen to the music, they listen to the equipment.

They always argue they are the highest of music lovers but they are not. It's not the music they love.

Dell thuds down low-cost lap workstation for cheap frugal creatives or engineers

jason 7

As a lesser mortal...

...may I just ask what anyone does that requires more than 16GB of ram that doesnt involve running 8VMs on a laptop?

Just curious.

Windows 8.1 Update 1 spewed online a MONTH early – by Microsoft

jason 7

Thank God!

It's a service pack in all but name rather than a complete OS upgrade.

Dell charges £16 TO INSTALL FIREFOX on PCs – Mozilla is miffed

jason 7

Re: I need to re-think my charging!

James,

Don't think for a minute I'd put those on my PC or your PC. No, its what the average Joe expects and wants. Trust me I do this a lot.

In my head I'm screaming "WHY? WHYYYYY?" Trust me.

jason 7

I need to re-think my charging!

Genius, charge for a rebuild on a per software install.

Let me see an average home build -

Firefox

Chrome

Adobe Reader

VLC

Google Earth

Libre Office

Spotify

iTunes

MS Security Essentials

Skype

Flash

Picasa

Thats just for starters at £195.00!

Perfect.

Psssst. Don't tell the Bride, but BBC Three is about to be jilted

jason 7

Thank You BBC Three

But I have watched every episode of Family Guy 19 times. Your job is done.

Hey doc, what's the PC's prognosis? A. Long-term growth below zero

jason 7

Re: It's always puzzled me.

Thats always the issue for me. It seems 'younger' folks are content with a picture shown as a 640x480 placement on a webpage.

"Looks great!" they all say!

Then you take those smartphone 8MP files and look at them full size and its noise city. I really dont know why everyone still craves higher MP on these things when my 2004 3.2MP Nikon still produces better pictures than even the 12MP+ smartphone monsters.

jason 7

Re: PCs are now workstations?

My 2008 Dell Precision T5400 with twin quad core 3Ghz Xeons will Wprime in 7 seconds. How much faster do I need to go?

I guess I could go on Ebay and buy a couple of slightly faster Xeons for £60 and get it down to 6 but in reality the times those 8 cores go over 50% usage are pretty rare.

I also must have regions of that 16GB of ram that have never been touched, maybe whole banks even.

Get the picture?

German freemail firms defend AdBlock-nobbling campaign

jason 7
Happy

Re: Useful

Try ninite.com if you havent already.

One of the best sites on the web.

Labour calls for BIG OVERHAUL of UK super-snoop powers in 'new digital world'

jason 7

Re: Okay so this will work like the last election.

Yes do you not remember the Conservartives stating that they were against a load of extra anti-privacy/legal/interrogation laws that Labour wanted to bring in.

Even put it in their manifesto.

Then after they were elected...they conveniently forgot all about it.

The Conservatives don't care either. This is Labour trying to win back the corporate overlords to ressure them they are for their agenda.

jason 7

Okay so this will work like the last election.

Pre Election

Insert any Party name here - "Oh this is terrible! If you vote for us we will get rid of this draconian legislation!"

Post Election

Insert any Party name here - "Thanks for putting us in Government, hmm actually that draconian legislation looks very sensible now, in fact we think it doesn't go far enough!"

C'mon people at the next election do the decent thing and "Vote for anyone but the incumbent" that way we vote the lot of them out just to show who really holds the power of democracy.