Posts by AndrueC

Re: "Teach children to understand themselves better and have empathy for others"

Easy to say, very hard to to do, and even harder to obtain results - especially since usually most "successful" people around are exactly narcissistic jerks - in any field, including philosophical arts.

And perhaps that's why they exist. If we eradicated that particular personality 'feature' from our species maybe on average people would be less successful.

Re: "Set it up for POP as I want to work locally and store emails locally"

I definitely don't enjoy performing edge-of-the-seat pucker-factor-eleven acrobatics just so I can keep doing exactly what I used to do, only imperceptibly differently and with one more sword hanging precariously above my head.

As another poster wrote I'm referring to the difference between POP3 and IMAP. With POP you have to restore data to regain access to old emails. With IMAP you don't have to do anything other than enter your server credentials.

Re: "Set it up for POP as I want to work locally and store emails locally"

It also means that if you have to replace a computer (like I had to replace a laptop I broke) your email client is up to date almost instantly. No need to recover anything from the defunct machine.

Re: email is so last century

I still use Thunderturd and POP3 via my own domain. Tried Gmail but it was a pain in the arse.

I use a combination these days. Android seems determined to Doze no matter what I do and IMAP just isn't Doze compatible. I managed to get it working most of the time but never completely reliably. And when IMAP timed out that was it until I manually restart it. My attempts didn't really work and my phone barely lasted two days between charges.

I now have my mail server set up to treat my GMail account as an assistant that gets copies of all my emails and have stopped my phone trying to keep up to date with my server. GMail still isn't always instant but at least it eventually notices new emails regardless of how long it's been Dozing.

And now that I'm allowing Doze to do what it wants my battery only drops .5% an hour and easily lasts five days (currently on day four with 62% charge left).

So sadly Google wins that battle. But the war is not over, yet :)

My phone is a Samsung S7 Edge.

Re: email is so last century

TheBat! is still being developed. Things were a bit quiet last year but in the last two months there have been three updates. Sadly their IMAP engine has a bug that means it occasionally refuses to pull the body down and they've investigated and said they can't fix it. But other than that it works well and it's what I eventually settled on after many years of trying alternatives.

Re: FoD (not FUD)

The cost of FTTPoD is going to change significantly this month. It doesn't look like it'll save much money but is supposed to make it a lot more attractive for groups of people to order together (or for a CP to order for multiple people in the same area) to spread the cost.

Re: Legal Right to Broadband !?

Nobody because the legal right will include some kind of provider cost cap. You'll have the legal right to ask for broadband and the provider will have the legal right to ask you to chip in.

If you choose not to pay £10k in excess construction charges the law will consider that you have made your choice and there is no case to answer.

Re: Where?

Business owners can get a leased line installed. There's almost nowhere in the UK that can't have a leased line. It can be expensive, yes. But hey if you're running a business you should be prepared to pay for the resources you need to operate effectively.

Re: Uptake

Any how many of those 95% have actually decided to have it? ~20%, IIRC.

No, it's higher than that. I think it's approaching 40% now. The problem with the original roll-out is that it targeted areas that were most valuable which is/was exactly what all CPs do. As a result those areas already had a lot of choice so take-up was relatively low. Now that BDUK has extended the reach into the less valuable areas take up rates are improving. Last I heard they were over 34% and heading toward 40%.

Was it a good use of taxpayer money? Dunno. Taxpayer money being usefully used is a pretty rare thing anyway. I think I'd be happy to say that it was one of the better things that's been done with it. On the other hand it took a long time to get started whereas the BT+EU endeavour in Cornwall went much more smoothly and I believe was ahead of schedule.

Re: Dark Matter cancelled

Cancelling something is how they advertise the good stuff to non-mainstream audiences.

Can I drop in a mention of Better off Ted and Dead Like Me at this point?

Both sorely missed - and US comedy that I like is rare as hens teeth :-/

Personally, I'm going to stick to my old faithful Z80

Speaking of Z80s and retpoline..

Way back in the mists of time I used to reverse engineer games to get myself infinite lives and occasionally a mention in a magazine tips section. I remember one time being thwarted by this gem:

PUSH AF

RET

That was one of those 'Put the debugger down and slowly walk away' moments :)

Re: +1,000,000

In the last 18 months, I haven't found a single hotel, museum, or train station in my Citroens "POI" database. Which is also very patchy when it comes to speed limits.

My Honda reads them as it drives past them. Does a fairly good job of it as well. But it's not perfect. On the A55 heading east past Halkyn it reads the limits from the road running alongside. Apparently there's a few places that happens and if you have (daft idea) enabled the speed limiter function it will indeed apply the brakes for you. Not very clever since that road has a 40mph limit and the A55 is 70mph :-/

Re: Give me a car with

Theres only 1 bit of electronic trickery I would liek in a car - automatically keeping the clock accurate.

Honda already - sorta - has that. The infotainment unit is built on Android(*) and if connected to a Bluetooth device like a phone it will correct its clock. Sorta. What it won't do (which pisses me off a lot) is automatically handle DST switching. There's an option to tell it what timezone you're in so why the *bleep* doesn't it handle DST?

Mind you it's not the only stupid bit of engineering it suffers from. I've mentioned before that when you turn the engine on you get a message on the screen asking you to click [Ok] to confirm that you accept liability if something goes wrong. If you ignore the message the screen goes black. Unfortunately that's almost the only place the time is shown. It can also be shown in the driver's information display if you turn cruise control off but most people are happy just to disable CC rather than actually turn it off. To compound the idiocy the time will actually still be visible on the screen..but only just. In its normal position (top right) just dimly visible.

If it at least left the time at normal brightness it would be helpful. Or even better instead of blanking the screen replace it with a full size digital clock. But apparently whoever implemented Honda's current infotainment unit was a pillock. I think I read somewhere they got Pioneer to do it :-/

(*) v4.1 I think. Maybe 4.4. Either way not too clever for a vehicle that first went on sale in 2016 :-/

Re: End Openreach, BT, Monopoly

Further changes to Openreach, perhaps yes, but you're not going to find many industry pundits that think going back to the GPO would be a good idea. Nor indeed many people over the age of 40. The GPO employed some clever people who came up with some good kit. But the government was unwilling to provide the funds needed to effectively exploit that kit and the result was not good.

It shocks, saddens and amazes me that anyone who has heard of the GPO (or indeed any other large organisation owned by the government) thinks that it would be a good idea to hand back control of the UK's telecommunications network. The BT group has its faults but the end-user experience is way better than what the GPO managed.

Re: So Openreach get to pick up the bill?

Is it right to make a dominant provider more dominant by tying rural locations down to one supplier?

This proposed legislation doesn't actually do that. The legislation is only defining the USO framework, not who should provide it. Of course BT are certain to put their hat into the ring (or might be forced to) but in theory at least any CP could choose become a provider if they wanted to. Don't all rush at once :-/

"That is unless they go the Indian route and string fiber over the existing telegraph poles"

That assumes there is space on the poles and that they can carry the extra weight. I honestly don't know how likely that is.

Re: Other than 'grudgingly',

Just ignore it, say they're working as hard as they possibly can, and swallow any fines that arrive?

No. As I pointed out in my earlier reply - this is not forcing BT to install a decent connection everywhere. It is only preventing them refusing point blank. If it goes through it just means they have to give a price.

So instead of "No, don't want to" they can just say "Sure. That's going to cost £30,000 but don't worry we cover the first £4,000". Please make your cheque payable to...

As much as I would want this to go through - It's very likely to get pushed back upon on the grounds that it's fundamentally impossible without billions in investment.

Maybe, maybe not. El Reg has neglected to mention is that there is a cost threshold. Above this amount, the customer has to chip in. The only cost to the taxpayer or other CPs will be whatever the basic cost is. The same scheme has been in place for voice lines for a long time. Openreach swallow the first £4k then the customer pays the rest (called excess construction charges).

So the only difference is that when you demand high speed internet instead of being able to say 'No, sod off!' Openreach will have to say 'Certainly, that'll be £20,000 please'.

What's going to matter is the base charge. I haven't seen any indication yet of what that's going to be. £4k is probably too low (leaving too much to the customer) but as you say, make it a reasonable amount and it becomes a burden on the CP.