* Posts by AndrueC

5080 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2009

5G is looming, but network innovations are needed far more urgently

AndrueC Silver badge
Childcatcher

At this point, the world will be moving towards “life automation” with billions of interconnected smart objects, robots and sensors exchanging data in real time

Please don't, you're scaring me.

Big telco proxies go full crazy over cable box plan

AndrueC Silver badge
Stop

Re: Won't someone think of the children!

I don't know about cable, but it's strange. In the UK, there is no "renting" of set top boxes as such.

This is about cable in the UK.

You're quite right though that it's something of an anomaly. It's probably allowed to continue because there is only ever one cable provider per area in the UK. In fact there may only be one provider for the entire country - I can't remember if Hull (KCOM) has its own. Either way it means that once you cancel your cable service in the UK the box simply has no further use.

At least a Sky box will continue to offer a fair selection of channels without a subscription. All you need is a dish which you can fit yourself and away you go. A VM box is (I believe) useless without a subscription and useless without a cable connection.

Ad slinger Phorm ceases trading

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Re: Don't crack open the champagne too soon...

Yeah I'm getting Person of Interest Samaritan type vibes here.

Damn. Now you've put the image of Sarah Shahi back into my mind. That's gonna take a chunk out of my productivity, especially this late in the day.

AndrueC Silver badge

Spear phishers target gullible Brits more than anyone else – survey

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Re: top tips from Symantec on improving security,

Symantec products which will do sweet FA to keep you and your organisation safe

Oh I don't know. After you've lost a chunk of RAM and most of your CPU cycles to them there's a limit on how much trouble you can get into.

HTC 10: Flagship goes full Google – but the hardware's top notch

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Re: I have a question....

My S3 Neo currently manages over a week (typically down to 30% Sunday night when it goes on charge). Admittedly though I don't do a huge amount with it. A few texts per day, an hour of bluetooth audio streaming every day. IMAP mail which detects half a dozen mails a day. One or two phone calls a week.

No Facepalm or any other social media mind so no constant updates and pings. It does have a 4.3AH extended battery to help as well.

No idea how long it would last with a 'real' user but it provided sat-nav services on a four and a half hour journey when I failed to notice the charger plug had fallen out. It only lost about 50% of its power doing that.

Ofcom promises to have details on duct and pole access by summer

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

The details follow Ofcom's decision in February in the once-in-a-decade Digital Communications Review to open up BT's network of telegraph poles and underground tunnels to rivals so competitors can connect fibre to homes and offices.

But they already are opened up. It's not hugely popular so that suggests it needs adjustment to better suit the market but it's not a revolutionary idea. PIA has been around for several years now.

Graphene solar panels harvest energy from rain

AndrueC Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: But,

Oh it would've done well enough this year. I'm old enough (nearly half a century) to be used to the British weather but I am getting sick and tired of the rain now. I don't think we've had a week since October when there wasn't significant rain on at least one day or overnight. Almost all our local golf courses have been partially closed in the last few months and normally there's only one that suffers and that was built half on a flood plain.

Websites take control of USB devices: Googlers propose WebUSB API

AndrueC Silver badge
Stop

This just sounds like a really bad idea. I'm not sure why. It's just 30 years experience of IT is making me nervous at the prospect.

Field technicians want to grab my tool and probe my things

AndrueC Silver badge

Re: a single entendre

As the actress said to the bishop.

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Re: The Trouble is...

...that there won't be IoT repair men, there will be IoT replacement people who will come and simply take away the broken thing and replace it with a newer model at a price

So yet more business for Sky Engineers then?

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

There really is no excuse for innuendo. Someone needs to be given a talking to. A good long stiff one.

Angry Vodafone customers spark Ofcom probe after phone bill overcharge snafu

AndrueC Silver badge
Unhappy

In my case it's the SureSignal booster at home causing the problems. There's several people seeing the same thing and Vodafone haven't been very forthcoming on progress of the fault so far.

I suppose I have to take some of the blame for being a victim since I chose them as a provider last year. But I need a signal booster at home and at the time that seemed the only way to get one. I managed to argue them down to £50 for the cost but it still irks me. The damn thing is costing me an extra £1 a month in electricity as well.

Ironically on Monday night I was swearing at them (and the Gvt. Gateway) because I wasn't getting authentication texts. I eventually tracked that down to my phone which at some time during the day had dropped off the network without telling me and needed a reboot.

Some times it seems that technology hates you :-/

'Devastating' bug pops secure doors at airports, hospitals

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Sounds like an open and shut case.

Which keys should I press to enable the CockUp feature?

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Waaaaay back when I was at Polytechnic I discovered that ^S in text would dump the BBC computers we used as terminals back into BASIC. Even better I found the codes to change screen mode. Nothing says 'ha ha!' better than dumping some electronic engineer (programming was only a small part of the syllabus back then) into Mode 2 and BASIC.

Although if we found someone who wasn't using a password creating the files '*' and '-rf' in their home folder would eventually teach them a valuable lesson.

For the record I'd like to say that was back in the 1980s when I was young and stupid. I am no longer young :-/

Done making the big stuff better? The path to Apple's mid-life crisis

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Whatever. Jesus wasn't born on December 25, 0 A.D

Either way it seems he had to wait for 2,000 years before his mobile phone was ready.

EE most 'reliable' mobile provider for cities – Ofcom

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Re: Crowdsourcing map improvement?

RootMetrics is only marginally better. It does at least indicate that large parts of Brackley have poor coverage. However my house on the outskirts is shown inside a green hexagon albeit but not far from the border of an orange hexagon. But really it's only the difference between Ofcom's 'Everything in your town is tickety boo' to 'Careful now - some of your neighbours might have issues occasionally'. Both are a far cry from 'Without a booster your mobile phone will be useless - stick with your landline'.

It would also help if the RM website was easier to navigate. It told me there wasn't enough EE data and suggested I choose a different network but none was listed. Then randomly on the layer drop down it added O2 and Vodafone.

I'm also wondering how the apps handle signal boosters like mine? With my signal booster on my phone is typically getting signal strengths of -70 or better. If it recorded that on the map my house would appear to have fantastic service.

AndrueC Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Can we have a proper checker?

Yeah, the mobiler checker is no better. For Vodafone and EE it says I'm likely to get good voice signal. In actuality if I go out into the garden it is useable. Inside the house it's sometimes not even possible to send texts. That's why I ended up getting a SureSignal booster. Sadly that meant moving back to Vodafone which I swore never to do over a decade ago. I also had to pay £50 (discounted from £100) for the privilege of using my broadband and electricity to compensate for their crappy coverage.

I'm not even that rural. Just a small town roughly half way between Birmingham and London.

Mud sticks: Microsoft, Windows 10 and reputational damage

AndrueC Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Windows 10 is okay...ish.

First time I tried to install it on my home work machine something odd happened. I'd bought an SSD and decided to upgrade the HDD to Win10 then attach the SSD and run the manufacturer's image transfer utility. I've done this before a couple of times with other Windows versions and it's a painless solution.

Not this time.

I installed Win10 to the HDD, booted fine. All good. I attached the SSD..Win10 failed to boot the first time. So I removed the SSD. Win10 still wouldn't boot. Now I used to be a data recovery engineer so I know about HDD configuration and partition tables. So I used my old tools to dig around..and was flummoxed. The BIOS hadn't been changed and the PT and BS looked okay.

So that was that. Luckily nothing lost. So the second time I started with the SSD already in the machine and it was fine. But I wish I knew what went wrong the first time :-/

AndrueC Silver badge
Unhappy

Windows 10 would be better if they'd put back some of the context menus. Things like network configuration have not been improved by forcing users to go through 'apps'. I know that right-click is a foreign concept on touch devices but I don't see why they have to try and make it extinct across the board. An option to swap the search functionality so that it gives local results first would help new users as well.

Confused by crypto? Here's what that password hashing stuff means in English

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Digital certificates are all about trust: basically the CA is vouching for the identity of the Web site

Although the level of proof varies. For my own domain (a .me.uk) I was required to add a record to my DNS. I did this by emailing my registrar who always do anything I ask regarding my domain even if I accidentally use my work email account and thus have no obvious link to it. As it happens they were a bit slow in responding and GoDaddy eventually accepted my certificate before my registrar made the change.

So I apparently got a certificate from GoDaddy just because I paid them £40 on a credit card.

Oh well. Hopefully .com and .co.uk require more careful vetting :-/

Microsoft did Nazi that coming: Teen girl chatbot turns into Hitler-loving sex troll in hours

AndrueC Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: The first mistake

I wouldn't know. I only hang out in General Discussion because..er..damn. I've lost the moral high ground haven't I?

AndrueC Silver badge
Terminator

Re: The first mistake

There's a poster called 'liam_spade' on Digital Spy that a lot of us suspect may be a bot.

Either that or they are on some damn' good shit.

Govt: Citizens, we know you want 10Mbps. This is the last broadband scheme for that

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Re: RE: subsidy

The £3,500 (actually it's £3,400 - my bad) is the maximum cost that BT will currently 'swallow' for a new telephone line being provided under the terms of their existing USO. You can see this in the 'Exemptions' section of the document I linked to or alternatively it's mentioned here as well:

"Where installation of a new line costs £3400 or less, BT sets a standard charge. Where installation will cost over £3400, BT requires the customer to pay the excess costs (plus its standard connection charge)."

My assumption is that Ofcom will allow BT to operate a similar threshold system for the broadband USO. I suppose it depends how the USO is worded but there seems little point in introducing it if it only applies for new telephone lines. Especally since Ofcom is now pushing for all new builds to be fibre-by-default. Then again governments and government agencies aren't always sensible and being seen to be doing something (the revised USO) without it actually costing anything (because hardly anyone has to order a new telephone line these days) is the kind of sneaky thing they'd love.

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

We have to encourage the market towards ubiquitous ultrafast services but balance the additional benefits of increasing speed against the costs today of providing the infrastructure.

The markets have always been doing that. I don't think many sensible people believe that BT or VM decline to offer certain services in an area simply because they hate the residents. It has always been about the cost v. return. Even when governments are picking up the tab it still comes down to cost v. return. It's just that governments often don't care as much about the money (because it's not theirs) as they do about the the votes they can buy with it.

As for this USO, let's be careful here. It is only the right to ask for 10Mb/s. CP's will still be allowed to levy excess construction charges. So as I pointed out in a post a while back, all that changes is that instead of this conversation:

You to CP> I want a 10Mb/s internet connection at my house.

CP> No, can't do it.

Things change to:

You to CP> I want a 10Mb/s internet connection at my house.

CP> Sure. It'll cost you £15,000. Don't worry though, we're covering the first £3,500.

Samsung Galaxy S7: Big brand Android flagship champ

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Re: no removable battery

NO SALE

Same here. I've currently got a 4.3aH battery in my S3 Neo and it lasts over a week between charges (thanks in part to buying a signal booster for home). I also don't like the fact that it's only had one firmware update and seems unlikely to ever get another one.

I suppose Samsung can take some comfort from the fact that I was never in the market anyway. My Neo does everything I need it to so as long as it continues working and remains compatible with my provider's network I'm unlikely to change it.

For me mobile phones became like digital watches a couple of years ago. You know - back in the 80s everyone thought digital watches were cool and fab and whizzy. Now they aren't and as far as I'm concerned neither are phones. Just one cycnical codger's view point :)

Hands on with the BBC's Micro:Bit computer. You know, for kids

AndrueC Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: The Model A of when?

Sadly I know 1981 is more than 15 years ago. Seeing as I was born that year.

You think you have it bad? 1983 was when I first started programming, on a rubber thump Spectrum. The only computer we had at school was an Apple II and I never even got to see it because only the maths swots were allowed into the hallowed room :-/

Didn't stop me developing what has become a 35-year-and-counting programming career though :)

Ofcom wants to crack down on pisspoor BT Openreach biz lines

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

It was taking too bloody long three years ago when I helped organise installation of a leased line at my old offices, nice to see Ofcom finally acting. 'course whether it will have any affect or not is another matter.

This could be very painful for BT. Dropping the cost of high speed broadband, and leased lines and giving better access to its dark fibre. Part of me feels like doing a Nelson. Another part of me is wondering where the finance for the next generation of BT's network is supposed to come from.

Web ads are reading my keystrokes and I can’t even spel propperlie

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Is there a filter for 'I is an innocent old codger wot is trying to grow some cabbages?'

:D

:

AndrueC Silver badge
WTF?

Google's search engine has me a bit puzzled. I like to do a bit of gardening and grow my own fruit or vegetables. Not on an industrial scale but it's nice to have a patch in the garden. Anyway with spring approaching I decided to search for some advice on some new seedlings I am trying that seem to be struggling.

Almost every page Google offered me for "seedling wilting" related to marijuana.

I don't do drugs (excluding alcohol) and I certainly have no interest in growing the stuff.

Irish shun beer, whiskey in favour of … wine

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Re: Alcohol Action Ireland

Okay then. Here is a Citation.

Your unpatchable, insecure Android mobe will feel right at home in the Internet of Stuff era

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

Re: Sorry, but we are far beyond that

Or sweeping problems under the carpet.

Steve Jobs, MS Office, Israel, and a basic feature Microsoft took 13 years to install

AndrueC Silver badge
Boffin

I once had to deal with RTL text in one of our apps. We had to associate the visual text with the underlying bytes (it was for a forensic application) for highlighting and marking purposes.

Thus it was that I encountered the wonderous GetCharacterPlacement() API function and it's lovely GCP_RESULTS structure.

Still 'n all - it only took me a couple of days to get it all working. I will always remember the joy of dragging the mouse left to right and seeing the text in Arabic being marked right to left.

AdBlock replaced blocked ads with ads for Amnesty International

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Re: Ditch it! Use a better alternative.

There's also uBlock (no Origin) and there's some fork drama there

Splitters!

UK plans robo-car tests on motorways in 2017

AndrueC Silver badge
Thumb Down

A boost for the non-existent british automobile industry?

Non-existant?

"In 2008 the UK automotive manufacturing sector had a turnover of £52.5 billion, generated £26.6 billion of exports and produced around 1.45 million passenger vehicles and 203,000 commercial vehicles"

"In 2014, more than 1.5 million cars were produced, the highest since 2007"

It'd be nice if people didn't bad mouth the industry we still have left in this country. It could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Britain does still 'make stuff'.

Nest: It's no longer all about you. Now it can recognize your kids, too

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Re: Already doing this

So if you head home early one day, it's knows to turn on the heat sooner

The value probably depends on how early you leave and how cold the day is. If you leave work half an hour early on a cold winter's day the heating will likely already have been on for a while anyway. There's nothing most heating systems can do at that point. But granted if you decide to take the afternoon off or if it's a fairly mild day then you should see some benefit.

It also works out how quickly it takes to get the house up to temperature, from it's current (unheated) temperature

So does my decade old controller, though. It's called 'optimum start'.

But on a cold day it likely puts the heating on a couple of hours before the target time. If it's started work at around 1600 in order to get the house up to temp for 1800 then nothing I do after 1600 will impact the heating system.

So I do accept there is some value in these systems but I don't think it's worth the cost, security risks nor the possibility raised by another commentard of obsolescence.

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Re: What is the obsession

with frobnicating your thermostat from a distance?

For most people it's probably useless. Most houses take an hour or two to get up to temperature on a cold day. Relying on remote control to tell the heating to come on when you're on your way back from work or the shops is usually a none-starter. Luckily most people lead such predictable lives that a timer oriented approach (like the one most homes have had for at least half a century) works well.

Still, for some people it might have advantages. Being linked to a calendar app could be quite handy for those few people living 'random' lives. And I suppose that if your calendar app is in fact how you organise everything in your life then a system that can control the heating based off it might be useful.

UK Ministry of Justice secure email system browns out

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Re: POP3

IMAP is too new a protocol?

IMAP is better for the end user but on a badly spec'd or badly a configured system it can be resource hog. And since this is government IT it probably is badly configured and running on a questionable platform.

First important rule with IMAP: Do not configure every folder as 'push' ;)

Where's the 'careful now' icon?

London cops hunt chimpanzee in top hat

AndrueC Silver badge
Joke

If it's well dressed monkeys they are looking for, have they tried the Houses of Parliament?

Google-backed British startup ‘stole our code’, says US marketing firm

AndrueC Silver badge
Mushroom

predicting when a user will leave (or “bounce off”) a site, triggering inducements to stay.

That nearly made me barf my lunch. Bastards.

Google splats more bad Android security bugs with patches your mobe will probably never see

AndrueC Silver badge
Unhappy

Yeah it's a great 'eco system' aint' it? I've had my phone a year. Okay so it's an S3 Neo but that isn't 'ancient'. It's running Kitkat 4.4.2. According to this 4.4.4 was released 18 months ago.

So I do a check for updates 'You are running the latest version'..

Great.

I guess I could through the faff of manually updating but I shouldn't have to.

McAfee gaffe a quick AV kill for enterprising staff

AndrueC Silver badge

Re: responsibility

..and if you must have admin rights then at least enable UAC so that you only activate them when needed. Okay so UAC was extremely annoying in Vista but it got a lot better in Win7. I always run with it and the only time it prompts me is when there's a good reason to be prompted.

The trick is not to just click 'Ok' when prompted. For extra safety don't run as an administrator enabled user anyway and just accept that you'll have to enter credentials to get the rights. That can be confusing though if you're installing software as you won't be installing to your normal user account.

Intravenous hangover clinics don't work, could land you in hospital

AndrueC Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Not quite

Not so easy to charge money for though.

Oh I don't know. Have you seen the number of different brands of bottled water in your local supermarket? And in the UK at least it's no better that what comes out of most people's taps at home.

Official: Toshiba pulls out of European consumer PC market

AndrueC Silver badge

Re: What to buy?

I've been using Acer laptops for some years, and like them a lot.

Same here. Currently typing this on an Aspire 5732Z. I replaced the HDD with an SSD. The webcam has stopped working but then I never used it anyway. It's just that now I get random USB warnings from it. But at nigh-on five years old the laptop is going well. Only other issue is sourcing replacement batteries (I think most have now been sat on a shelf for a while by the time they ship) but I mostly use it on the mains anyway so I can live with that.

My previous Acer developed a dicky power switch but it was easy enough to replace.

How will Ofcom reduce our reliance on BT if it won't break them up?

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Re: Access? Not a problem in VietNam!

Not with GPON fiber to premise

True, but they didn't have that option. FTTC is a compromise derived from the realities of the situation. Have you not read that Thinkbroadband article? If BT had gone straight to FTTP they'd be nowhere near finished yet. Forget arguing over the last 5% in 2016. I doubt we'd even be at 50% coverage yet.

AndrueC Silver badge
Meh

Re: Access? Not a problem in VietNam!

BT has code powers in the UK but they are still subject to planning consent from local councils. Another problem they face is getting power to their cabinets. That can involve considerable expense and lengthy delays while waiting for the local grid operator to wire the cab up.

The biggest problem BT faces is the existing network. I'm sure most of us as readers of this site are aware of the cost and hassle of dealing with legacy systems. Well BT is dealing with a huge nation-wide legacy system. Even worse the legacy system does a damn' good job at what it was designed for and a not-too-bad job at what we now want from it. Scrapping or deprecating the UK's copper local loop just doesn't make financial sense. It is still a huge asset. It's like that wonderful VMS server in the basement that just keeps chugging along day after day, year after year doing what is asked of it. You'll never get the CFO to sign off on replacing it.

AndrueC Silver badge
Happy

Ofcom says it will open up BT’s ducts, but that was supposed to happen in 2009

And it did happen. It goes by the amusingly ironic name of PIA.