Posts by ElNumbre

Don't blame Honeycomb...

RE: "Annoyingly, it continues a first-generation flaw: insisting on showing the mobile (typically iPhone-optimised) version of websites."

Don't blame Honeycomb, blame the browser detection scripts that haven't been adjusted to support Android tablets. By default (on the Asus Yorkshire Transformer at least) the browser's default mode is 'tablet', which does give you the crappy mobile version on most websites. However, changing the 'User Agent String' to Desktop via the browser settings makes everything look peachy again. Just a shame that setting is 4 clicks deep so most will assume that the browser is broken and go look elsewhere.

Best Coverage So Far.

The best 'in the mix' coverage so far has been Sangat TV on Sky (Up in the 800's somewhere). Basically these guys going round Birmingham and filming events and speaking to the communities to understand what's going on.

Not sure how technically they're doing the OB, but it works well and is good. Best bit last night was them giving a copper a lift to chase down a hoodie.

Who to sue?

If a robodriver crashes the car into someone/something, who will the lawyers sue?*

*after they're all done with the patent litigation cases.

Glastonbury 2012

Glasto 2012 isn't scheduled to happen, it's their year off. So OrangeEverywhere have two years to develop something that actually works.

YMMV?

DAB and FM works alright for me guvnor. In fact, one combined DAB/FM/Interwebz 'radio' is connected via Ethernet/PLT with issues whatso ever.

I'm surprised however no-one has found that PLT causes cancer, all those bouncy radio waves flinging themselves out of the power cables into the air. Think to kill it off, the haters just need to get a piece in the DM saying how PLT is an invention by foreigners giving our hard-working families AIDS or something.

Breathe. In through the nose...

I still don't think this represents good VFM. The 'new' Sammytabs due imminiantly are not going to be much more expensive, but offer the newer tablet Android build and have the bigger screen. IMHO 7" tabs shouldn't be >£200. If this 'old' model dropped to around that price limit, I might be tempted.

Would you like eggs with that?

"O2 can see you're looking at email - Our partner Tesco would like to advise you that SPAM can be found in aisle 11".

Hmm. Tempted if you only have to 'sign-in' once and its available in lots of places. Plus, you could just register using a PAYG sim then bin that to avoid text/phonecall based o2 spazming.

Apple?

Apple - inventing new and cunning ways to screw up its equipment since 2010.

Terroristic a real word?

Well, a Google search for terroristic has shown plenty of dictionary matches - I thought it was terrorist or terrorism. Or tourism if you've got a certain accent.

Black choppers because well, that Google search will have flagged up on some govt system.

VirtualBox

I was always impressed with VirtualBox as a zero purchase price product, and am glad that it still carries on.

But when will someone bring out a type 1.5 hypervisor - a baremetal hypervisor with the ability to use and switch between virtual machines on the host machine? VMWare were promising such way back in the start of 2009 and I've get to see any marketing from them about it. I also heard that Citrix were looking at such a thing. But currently I'm stuck with booting a full OS (Linux/Winblows) then booting the virtual machine from that, whereas Id much prefer to boot a lightweight hypervisor (yes, probably Linux) that can render the virtual machines locally.

Anyway, bit of a rant over, and Paris because I've seen her box (virtually).

Prices can go up as well as down.

These sort of business antics are precisly why at the end of January, I won't be renewing my fixed term contract with my current mobile provider (t-everywhere). It doesn't seem like there are many 18month contracts left (remember when there were 12 month contracts?), and if there are, they're an expensive monthly cost (£30+) & offer either crappy phones bundled in, or offer very little discount vs a sim-free handset.

I don't need 16 gazillion free text messages or 45billion voice minutes every month, I just want a hundred texts, some minutes, and the interwebz, something which isn't catered for under the main network offerings, so I shall likely be looking at the fringe tariff offerings from the likes of tmo (30 day rolling contract) or giffgaff and saving anywhere between £10 and £15 on line rental, which I can plow back into a phone fund.

Network providers are trying to appease their revolting shareholders with increased earnings, but I think many customers are simply getting fedup with this constant wriging to shake out the last few pennies and can't see the point of upgrading to the latest iNexus when their existing phone does pretty much the same thing, only with one less bell and one less whistle.

Go back....

In GE6, you can go back to a time before Google in some area's. The History button lets you view 'archive' views. Over area's of Birmingham (UK), you can view photo's from 1945 which is pretty cool.

Efficieny Savings at El Reg.

Think El Reg need to develop an "Apple bans x application from the App Store", filled with generic text, and perhaps even an autopopulated comments board.

Apple operate their walled garden and grant/deny apps based upon a complex algorithm of their whims and which way the wind is blowing today. Nothing new, can we all move on from being shocked and outraged?

Lister to Red Dwarf...

Is it just me, or does the first picture look a bit like the engine used on the Red Dwarf? Only a little less 60w bulb and a little more mains halogen GU10 style?

We'll be SMEEEEGing up the universe before we know it.

Can't wait...

I can't wait until they pull google.co.uk, because the domain is being used to support criminal activity.

Others to be investigated:

direct.gov.uk

hsbc.co.uk

tesco.co.uk

and so on and so forth...

Job Descriptions

Long have I pushed for a change to my job description that lists what I am expected to do. I haved asked it to simply be changed to 'IT Guy', because although I don't work for a SME, I still cover a wide base of IT disciplines from coding a web-app through to swapping failed disks in our servers.

Better paid subject 'experts' have come and gone, but my jack of all trades, master of none approach has thus far worked well.

Squidgy

Interesting stuff - I'd always thought after seeing pictures of Aerogels on the Interwebz that they were as soft as cotton wool and not 'dense' enough to be a good insulator. But what a great idea! I have a 1930's terrace without any kind of cavity wall insulation, so have been toying with the idea of having a second internal wall built with insulation sandwiched between.

I too am interested in the condensation issue as mentioned above, look forward to see some updates. Its a shame you've not got before/after temperature stats.

Refreshing...

This is refreshing from a provider that they'll dangle their brass monkeys in the wind when something goes wrong. My ADSL provider does something similar and its nice to be able to see a message saying "we're onto this mufu", even if it takes a while to sort.

Much better than other providers who try (and fail) jedi 'we are not the cause of the fault you are looking for' mind tricks.

My favorite line:-

"Unfortunately, we will not be able to reactivate this account for any reason. This decision is final."

Then they reactivate it.

Who?

Who do they think they are, BT?

Good ISPs have self healing networks with routers which can failover automagically, if not seamlessly, then at least within a couple of minutes.

Can't see the balloons?

Cisco not having over-inflated ego's? Perhaps not in their darkened private engineering labs, but the public facing engineers, plus the S&M people (Sales and Marketing) that I've ever met do good impressions of Bobble head characters.

Say Hello Mr Chips... He's Waving!!!

Sounds like Google Wave with an email address to me.

If they build it...

...what will it run?

Whilst I've seen arm builds of linux kernels, I have no idea if these are designed for server usage (I've seen builds for PDA's). Are there any cloud ready OSs out there that can exploit this CPU, or will server houses be required to recompile for this new target?

I do hope that this does succeed, but I can't help feeling that they've invented the infernal combustion engine before they've developed a fuel. I'm sure the knowledgeable reg readership will not hesitate to bring me upto speed however.

Just doesn't work...

As a fairly competant technical bod, I can get most things working after a bit of tinkering, but still can't get it working properly/reliably. I've been looking for a long time to be able to stream from my Linux file server to my Xbox360. TVersity works OK, but you need a decent Windows machine to run it on to do transcoding in real-time for the various devices that only support formats a,b,f and h, but not c,d, or e that your video's are in.

There doesn't appear to be a decent & reliable linux DLNA/UPNP server, unless someone can suggest here. Mediatomb runs OK, but doesn't seem to handle large media playlists well, nor show up on the Xbox. Twonky isn't well documented in Linux, and seems to be unstable, crashing after a short amount of time.

If you can get them to show up, MP3's & WMAs are OK on the 360, but forget ogg/flac et al. XBMC, Boxee & MythTV seem to act as UPNP clients quite well, but if I'm having to have a media-pc by my telly, I'm as well ensuring compatibility by accessing the media files from the local disk, or streaming them from file shares on the network using SAMBA than I am relying on UPNP to do the job. Promises so much, delivers very very little. In fact, I've resorted to sneakernet before now when I've wanted to get a film playing, because its easier to copy it onto a USB stick than it is to trust that UPNP/DLNA will do its job.

Cunning Alternative.

I hope to receive updates on the Olympics via an invention that all the youfs have been talking about. I think its called an Interwebs and apparently its like some kind of electromonical newspaper that can be updated regularly, rather than relying on print schedules. I understand that by 2012, we should have telephones without wires that can be taken anywhere AND have the interwebs copied onto them. Imagine that?

Frogs

Interesting - Ribbit (backed by BT) have started rolling out their very similar service in Beta form in the UK over the last few days. Interesting to see who wins - the GPO or Google. Suspect it may go the same route as the war between hardmail and email.

However, we'll still be needing our expensive bit of wire from BT for a few years to come, unless big G go into fibre/wireless rollouts in the UK as well.

Key Sentence for me...

The key piece of information is that there is no basic input verification. So if it blindly accepts data, does that mean that it is potentially vulnerable to buffer overflow or code injection style attacks? Interesting, but so far, not the end of the world.