* Posts by AndrueC

5081 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2009

Universal Service Oh... forget the Obligation. BT offers to stump up £600m for 10Mbps

AndrueC Silver badge

Re: Why does it have to be BT?

If it's a piece of piss to provide rural broadband at high speeds cheaply why haven't we got a massive queue of companies willing to do it

We do have a few of them. And in some respects they have it easier. Some are not-for-profit. Others are willing to use local labour and come to local agreements over way leaves. None of them have to wholesale their network so can take 100% of the returns (BT has to share those with ISPs which is a bit of a burden). Unfortunately the truth is that some areas are just very expensive to cater for.

Anyone that doesn't currently have access to a decent service (by which I'd say 40Mb/s or higher - sod 10Mb/s) it's because there's something about your area that makes it a right sod to upgrade. BT (and other providers) would upgrade in an instant if they could. The fact it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean you're being ignored or that they all hate you. It just means the economics are that bad.

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Re: It's the apathetic nature of this 10Mbps USO. It's too little, too late.

Would you pay? or stick with what you have.

£15k for a 10Mb/s minimum - no way. I should point out that the figure there is totally pie in the sky. Also I don't personally need anything more than a couple of Mb/s (though I actually have 60Mb/s).

The problem here is 'universal service' usually comes with caveats no matter what the service is. The same holds true with mains electricity - if you live in a really remote property you will be expected to cover part of the costs. The idea that you can ask for a 'decent' internet connection and expect to have it installed absolutely anywhere in the British Isles for free is a non-starter. Human technology, engineering skill and economics mean that eventually the provider has to draw the line.

The problem is that the line right now is possibly (probably) excluding too many people. But at what point do we finally accept reality? At 0.5%? 0.1%? I suspect the answer is that most of us accept the reality of the situation when we ourselves are getting what we want.

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Sort of. In fact the voice USO does not guarantee everyone a telephone line just for asking. BT will cover the cost up to a certain level (about £4,000 I think) but after that will levy excess construction costs. A broadband USO would presumably be the same.

So the only difference it makes is that instead of BT being able to flat out refuse they have to give you a quotation and go ahead with it if you accept. So instead of 'No, can't do it' you get 'Sure thing, you'll have to pay £15,000 toward it though).

Windows Subsystem for Linux to debut in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

AndrueC Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Windows 10 Fail

Rather like those DOS boxes on OS/2

Hmmm....I suppose in the sense that DOS was at that point on the way out you're correct. However I'd posit that once they made use of 386 and higher virtualisation the OS/2 VDMs were at least ebony constructed coffins, with solid gold fastenings and lined with the very best top quality silk and and plush padding :)

Those of us still forced to develop DOS applications very much appreciated the crash protection and also the ability to multitask. I spent two or three years developing data recovery software in a VDM because that kind of work is rife with crashes due to the amount of corrupt data you have to process.

The only thing I found that the VDM didn't support was the Task File registers (later to become ATA) access to hard disks. I think there was some kind of bug there because the machine used to spin up the floppy drive when I made a request. BIOS access to disks did work however and that was what we mostly used.

So yeah - DOS was a turd by that time. But the DOS boxes - they were a technical marvel worthy of much praise.

Virgin Media's profanity warning triggered by chief exec's name

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Always good to be able to link my favourite Dilbert cartoon.

Microsoft hits new low: Threatens to axe classic Paint from Windows 10

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Re: The end

Alternatives will only replace it if they are always there when you need them.

Like Edlin. Many, many moons ago I used to rely on that when offering technical support. It was safer and simpler to guide someone over the phone using Edlin (less chance of random edits or uncertainty over where the cursor was). Or you could just create a script and have them execute it by redirecting stdin.

And it's why - despite shifting to Windows a couple of decades ago - I still have a fondness for VI. I don't even use the cursor keys with it because when I first used Unix it was on dumb terminals (Wyse-60 mainly) and you couldn't be sure that the 'clever' keys were correctly mapped. I could even use the Ex mode back in the day but concede that most of that is lost from memory now.

I have taken stick from modern IT guys for not using the cursor keys with VI but got my own back just under a year ago. A system got damaged and lost its advanced key mappings. So I got called to help sort it out because I could still navigate and edit :)

The moral of the story: Add things. Don't take them away ;)

AndrueC Silver badge
Unhappy

Noooo!

I use this a lot with screen capture. Nothing graphical, mind. Mostly for just capturing textual information - the Quick Watch from Visual Studio is a common subject. But it's also a quick and easy way to stick an arrow on or draw a circle around something when I'm talking about issues with a UI.

systemd'oh! DNS lib underscore bug bites everyone's favorite init tool, blanks Netflix

AndrueC Silver badge
Thumb Up

Samsung's validation also won't accept "samsung" in email addresses.

Ah! It's possible that's the real problem then. I use DEA so any email address I suggest to Samsung will have 'samsung' in its name. If I could be bothered to finally register my phone and TV I could use 'samzung'.

Nope. Can't be bothered :)

AndrueC Silver badge
Facepalm

Ah yes, excessive validation. Another one that has never been fixed despite me pointing it out several times over the years is Samsung's email address validation when registering. It won't accept '.' on the left side of an email address. Luckily there's no particular reason to register with them for anything.

Vodafone reports sliding revenues but customers don't hate them as much

AndrueC Silver badge
Unhappy

Really? I don't hate them as much? Hmmm. It's true that I haven't had to contact them recently so perhaps that's it.

Mind you it was good to see last week that the signal around Brailles in Warwickshire is as non-existent as ever. They are consistent, you have to give them that :-/

UK regulator set to ban ads depicting bumbling manchildren

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Re: The era of pointlessness

It's not often you get Donald Trump mentioned in the same breath as Bikinis and, speaking frankly, I'm hoping that it doesn't happen again.

Set your alarms for 2.40am UTC – so you can watch Unix time hit 1,500,000,000

AndrueC Silver badge
Headmaster

Damn right. GMT and UTC can be up to 500ms different.

Sleuths unearth 'Panic Mode' in Android, set off by mashing back button

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

I thought this was going to be about a bug that causes a kernel panic if you press the back button too many times in short succession. I'm kinda disappointed.

OMG, dad, you're so embarrassing! Are you P2P file sharing again?

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Re: re: pay for the good/services

surely if you pay, you *shouldn't* be seeing adverts ????

That depends on the provider. It's up to them to decide how to balance the two revenue streams (adverts and subscription) in a way that achieves their goals. They've probably all found that a subscription high enough to offset the complete absence of advertising revenue puts off too many people. Sky is expensive enough as it is - pay to get rid of all the adverts and it would be out of reach of most people. And even those that could afford would probably not consider it worthwhile.

It's also unclear how they could get rid of all the adverts on their platform. Most of the channels are owned by other broadcasters and Ofcom prohibit Sky from interfering with those channels. There would have to be an industry-wide agreement not to show adverts and how you move everyone from an ad-based revenue stream to a shared subscription model I dread to think. It might not even be possible.

European MPs push for right to repair rules

AndrueC Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Re : "and LEDs that likewise can't be replaced"

Bring back replaceable phone batteries. Not just for longevity but also so that bigger capacities can be installed.

Dead serious: How to haunt people after you've gone... using your smartphone

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

I created a delayed email to myself when I had a CompuServe account. I think it was to congratulate myself on my 100th b'day. Sadly I no longer access that account and suspect that it's all gone anyway. But I did like that feature - I wonder how many other people used it?

London suffers from 'sub-standard' connectivity - report

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

"claiming that average speeds were low because only one-third of people choose to take up superfast broadband"

Or because

It's probably a combination of both but looking at the UK as a whole he's probably correct.

Availability remains an issue in some areas (both rural and urban) but lack of (or limited) interest in superfast broadband is keeping the UK average artificially low. Take up of FTTC where it is available is not universal. It's improving but I think it's still less than 50%. Even amongst those that have taken an FTTC based service most are opting for the lower speed packages. Some of that is because they are too far from the cabinet to benefit but even amongst those who would gain significantly from the top tier FTTC package only a very small number are bothering.

The same is true with Virgin Cable. Most people opt for the slower, cheaper packages. From time to time VM has to close the bottom tier and shunt everyone up a tier (for free).

Money talks it seems and most people with a choice seem happy with a couple of dozen Mb/s. Quite a lot still seem to be happy on a few Mb/s. The number of people that actually feel the need to go for speeds above 40Mb/s appears quite small.

More information here.

And here.

Concorde without the cacophony: NASA thinks it's cracked quiet supersonic flight

AndrueC Silver badge

UK parliamentary email compromised after 'sustained and determined cyber attack'

AndrueC Silver badge
WTF?

Re: If it did not have 2FA or certs it was asking to be hacked

there is a constant trickle of brute force attempts in my logs.

Same here although I wonder at the intelligence of some of the script writers. A quick check shows attempts to log in to my server using the user names:

xdfrieortu

cbmoiwueu

xbvwtywefo

pjkiuyl

qwkoud

..before my server put the source IP address on the naughty step.

If they at least cycled through the character set it might make sense. But random sequences of characters? Is this some clever hacking trick I have missed?

Research suggests UK consumers find 'fibre' advertising misleading

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

The confusion was started by VM using the term 'fibre broadband'. BT referred them to the ASA and the ASA said 'fibre broadband' was okay because most of the connection was fibre. On that basis BT decided to join in since the same is true of FTTC.

It always was a poor decision by the ASA. Even with an analogue modem 99% of the data connection runs over fibre (from the exchange to/from the ISP).

The problem the ASA faces is that advertising is generally targeted at everyone. It's national. Or maybe regional. But the issues that impact quality of connection are customer specific. I can watch the same advert on TV as my neighbour. But my telephone line could be in a good state of repair whereas their junction box suffers water ingress. Same advert, different actual results.

The only real solution to this conundrum is the same as it's always been: Customers should do some basic research before signing up. ISPs have been giving out speed estimates for years now. They are pretty well tailored to your line. All anyone has ever needed to do is understand what 'up to' means and from that it becomes obvious that a personal estimate is required.

Tesco Online IT meltdown: Fails to deliver thousands of grocery orders

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

It took their servers nearly an hour to send an order change confirmation email last night. Don't know if it was related or not but it makes me wonder if they started doing some maintenance yesterday evening and today we're seeing the consequences.

'OK, everyone. Stop typing, this software is DONE,' said no one ever

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Re: Definition of Done

It's all down to your Definition of Done. i.e.. do you have one?

I'm still working on it :)

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Agreed, poor analogy.

You don't rent the shower off the plumber. Nor does the plumber operate it for you, clean it and ensure that it has electricity and water supplied to it.

A better analogy would be:

If you paid me to use my shower because you don't want to have one in your house and I choose to relocate the shower to my kitchen because it makes it more convenient for me. That's a reasonable choice and you just have to live with it or find another shower.

You wait ages for a sun, then two come along at once: All stars have twins, say astroboffins

AndrueC Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Seems difficult to accept

Who is 'Bernard' ?

The name is Barnard's Star

But it's an interesting possibility I suppose.

ICO fines Morrisons for emailing customers who didn't want to be emailed

AndrueC Silver badge
Thumb Up

Good news! I only wish it was a bigger fine. I've suspected a few companies of re-enabling opt-in after a certain amount of time has elapsed so you have to keep switching it off.

Wi-Fi Dream Home Of The Future™ gets instructions for builders

AndrueC Silver badge
Thumb Up

If it is a laptop then use a bloody cable, you will get much better throughput than sharing a wifi link with half a dozen other bits of kit.

Probably, although I was surprised to note recently that my new(ish) laptop manages around 64Mb/s using wifi just as it does using Ethernet. And there are still over a dozen competing WAPs in my neighbourhood. No idea when that changed as it used to struggle to get above 30Mb/s on wifi.

I prefer Ethernet when throughput matters but having to replace the cable every year or so because the end is cracked and falling off (ooh er missus) with the laptop being picked up and put down is a bit tedious.

Voyager 1 passes another milestone: It's now 138AU from home

AndrueC Silver badge

Re: What's that work out to?

Vogons. El Reg must have one on the forums.

Well there's me. I used to work for Vogon International many years ago. I wrote data recovery/forensic software for them. Also did a few data recoveries. Oddly enough I happen to be wearing one of the T-shirts they gave us today.

Lol! Their old website (or parts of it) are still around :)

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Voyager 1 has just ticked off another milestone: on Tuesday it reached 138 astronomical units from Earth, or about 20,600,000,000km from the planet on which you're (presumably!) reading this story.

..and is probably still wondering whether it locked the front door before it left.

Way to go, l'il fella :)

BT considers scrapping 'gold-plated' pensions in bid to plug £14bn deficit

AndrueC Silver badge
Facepalm

BT, a pension scheme with a telecommunications provider attached to it.

BA CEO blames messaging and networks for grounding

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Perhaps they've just been winging it for too long.

EU axes geo-blocking: Upsets studios, delights consumers

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Of course no one wants to upset US studios

Citation needed.

Your job might be automated within 120 years, AI experts reckon

AndrueC Silver badge
Terminator

Re: Dark days to come

Or yet another way:

"Surprise Me, Holy Void!"

Life is... pushing all the right buttons on the wrong remote control

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

I bought a Harmony Remote many years ago. Bloody expensive but it controls everything and even better it's 'activity based'. So if I get home tonight and want to watch Sky I just select 'Sky' on its screen. My receiver, TV and Sky box all switch on. The receiver input switches to Sky (TV doesn't need to change inputs as it always gets it from the receiver). The remote screen changes to show numerics and a swipe left gives me the Sky functions I use.

Now if I select 'Music' the Sky box is switched off, the TV is switched off, my Logitech Touch switches on and the receiver input changes to be the Touch.

When I'm all done I just press 'off' and whatever equipment is currently on is powered down.

I've owned three Harmony remotes now and one thing I really like is that they've all automatically programmed themselves once I connect them to my account. That was great when my first one got sabotaged by budgie excrement. And neat when I upgraded to a completely different hub based model (so now I don't even have to point the remote at anything - it uses radio to talk to the hub which then sends out the IR).

Now having come across like a Logitech groupie I have to say that they are stupidly expensive and the programming utility (when you use it) is aimed at the lowest common denominator and trying to do anything complicated is difficult. So it's not all great. Oh and the cheaper hub remote is poorly designed.

But it works and we only have one remote to hand. The rest are shut away in a drawer somewhere.

IT firms guilty of blasting customers with soul-numbing canned music

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Way back in the mists of time when I was young and stupid (I'm not young any more) Borland used to play jazz music while you waited. Apparently one of the founders played jazz but I just thought it was intended to keep the queue lengths down.

'Tabby's Star' intrigues astro-boffins with brief 'dimming event'

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

It's probably just an old, wandering AI that came in from the high beyond and will not function properly again until it gets back out there. Just watch out for spiders - they are cleverer than you think :)

Bye bye MP3: You sucked the life out of music. But vinyl is just as warped

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

But to be fair, they certainly minimised the amount of plastic being wasted on the project :)

AndrueC Silver badge
Thumb Up

Yeah, can't say I ever had any actually jump out of the groove but I do remember I had one that was off centre by at least half a centimetre and warped to the point where the stylus arm attachment point nearly hit the surface.

Anyone else remember the single of "I am The Beat" by The Look? Clever bit of mastering at the end there. For those who don't know the song didn't have a normal lead out (where the track normally veers toward the centre to trigger the head to disconnect from the disc). Instead the music just went into an infinite play of "the beat!...the beat!...the beat!"

And if you don't know The Look have released two albums since the turn of the century. They aren't bad either.

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

I know that the CD has a greater dynamic range than vinyl. That was one of its great strengths. No I'm referring to the fallout from The Loudness Wars. A lot (all?) modern pop is recorded with a fairly flat range. It's not as bad as it was but a lot of albums still sound compressed to my ears even the ones I've ripped myself.

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Or you could buy the CD, rip to some lossless format (I actually favour WMA simply because it has nearly universal support) and enjoy the quality of CD audio with the convenience of modern streaming technology.

Then again you can listen to a modern CD recording, sigh at the poor dynamic range and decide that, really, you might as well just buy the MP3 and save yourself the bother of ripping and the inconvenience of storing CDs.

But speaking of vinyl one of the most impressive recording feats I ever came across was (and I'm not saying how I came across it). A greatest hits album by Olivia Newton-John. It was nearly 100 minutes long. So nearly 45 minutes per side. Of course it was a real bugger trying to position the stylus for a particular track but whoever mastered it deserves some kind of award :)

Self-driving car devs face 6-month backlog on vital $85,000 LIDAR kit

AndrueC Silver badge
Boffin

Re: I wonder...

(Old cartoons with two guys carrying huge sheets of plate glass also spring to mind)

I suppose that depends whether LIDAR can penetrate glass or not. The answer seems to depend on the frequency. That could be quite confusing for the computer. It might (or might not) see the pane of glass just as it might (or might not) see objects inside glass fronted buildings. Hmmm.

Leeds cops issue appeal for man-sized todger

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Are they going balls-out to find the man?

While Microsoft griped about NSA exploit stockpiles, it stockpiled patches: Friday's WinXP fix was built in February

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Fixing this programming blunder in the Windows codebase would be been easy to back port from Windows 8 to XP.

An experienced programmer knows that there's no such thing as 'an easy back port'. Nor indeed even an 'easy fix'. Just like golfers know that there's no such thing as 'an easy tap in'.

It's possible that the patch was built in February as part of the general build process but not pushed through QA because it was unsupported code. Or perhaps it was only available to those paying for extended cover but MS chose to make it publicly available because the attack was severe. Dealing with legacy 'unsupported' products is a minefield of complicated decisions. Personally on this occasion I'm prepared to give MS the benefit of the doubt and even a little praise for choosing to push the fix.

DSL inventor's latest science project: terabit speeds over copper

AndrueC Silver badge
Boffin

Interesting stuff. I wonder if it fits in with the document that Ofcom published a couple of years ago? I think it was a (very theoretical) review of how far twisted pair could be taken in the future.

Italian F-35 facility rolls out its first STOVL stealth fighter

AndrueC Silver badge
Coat

Re: Judgemental

But you can judge a population by how easily they roll over and let nut jobs seize power.

So, on that front how are we doing? Or should I ask again in June?

Mine's the one with the emergency passport in the pocket.

Virgin Media scales back Project Lightning target in first quarter results

AndrueC Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Smoke and Mirrors

Bandwidth may not be the problem, or not in the 'expected' sense. Cable is also often limited by the number of properties that a particular cable services. If a cable happens to pass a lot of properties or several of the properties it passes are particularly heavy users it will adversely impact the performance of all the properties on that cable. The only solution in that instance is to split the cable by installing additional nodes. Unfortunately that requires relatively costly civils so cable companies don't rush to do that.

Cable was originally intended for multicast use - TV services. As such its topography is ideal because just one TV signal can feed multiple properties. But internet use requires unicast and there cable suffers somewhat. A single coax cable has way more bandwidth than a single twisted-pair telephone cable. But a telephone cable only has to service one property. Sometimes (not often) that can lead to a good FTTC connection offering a better experience than a cable connection at peak times.

The biggest issue though is in upstream speeds. Cable has to use TDM to synchronise the user modems. This causes various issues that together explain why cable upload speeds are often a bit poor compared to xDSL.

Is Britain really worse at 4G than Peru?

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

If true, it would be quite allaming.

ISPs must ensure half of punters get advertised max speeds

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Re: @Lee D, re: price.

I like the $/MiBps concept

The trouble is it doesn't reflect the ISP's costs. Although there is a charge per MiB/s it is always 'chunked' - you buy it in fixed amounts. Furthermore you don't get a discount based on how much you use it. If you're paying for a 1Gb/s link it will cost you the same 24/7. That's one of the big dilemmas of an ISP. If they have enough capacity for peak hours it means that most of the time they have spare capacity which is wasted money.

Residential ISPs are all about sharing. Fitting as many people down a single pipe as possible. That's why they love web browsing. It's bursty and short lived. While I'm digesting a web page you can be downloading one. It's why they hate downloaders because while they are running their connection flat out no-one else can use that bandwidth.

A faster connection all else being equal tends to mean more bursty usage. For a typical user it's hard to fully utilise a 100Mb/s connection for any length of time. Hence why an ISP will prefer a 100Mb/s user to a 20Mb/s user.

They could advertise "up to" all they want after that, but if all they ever deliver is far less than advertised

Not really. You'd first have to prove that they were the slow link. You can't blame your ISP if the problem is with the remote site's host. The internet is one giant game of pass-the-parcel. It is not technically feasible for anyone to guarantee the speed between any two points.

If you did a speed test to my FTP server you'd find that it was slow. 2Mb/s at best. But who's fault is that? Your ISP? One of your ISP's partners? One of your ISP's partners, partner's? LINX (the London internet exchange? One of my ISP's partner's, my ISP? BT who operate the backhaul?

Actually no. It's just that I've configured it with a 2Mb/s throttle :)