Posts by AndrueC

Re: Setup costs

If they're not providing the service they should then fuckem.

One problem with that is that the most complex and error prone part of a connection - the last mile - is often not being supplied by the ISP. Everyone except for VM customers and people living in Hull(*) are reliant on BT openreach for the physical cable. Even LLU only replaces the DSLAM and is still reliant on BTor. Even the exchange backhaul is usually BTor.

And FTTC is BTor for cable and cabinet.

It's entirely possible for an ISP to only own whatever is in their server room. And I imagine there are companies that will rent that kit as well. It could be that your ISP is nothing but support and billing staff.

Legally your ISP is still responsible but they don't always have much control over the last mile. With FTTC they can't even request a DLM reset. The disconnection charges being levied here are probably just the ISP passing on BT's charges.

(*)Oh and a handful of people on alt nets.

Re: Toolbar install

However the arrival of Windows Security Essentials was the nail in the coffin. It renders AVG pointless.

I thought MSE had been shown to be the worst AV of the lot?

Re: Point of Issue

I suspect the reality is that the "insecurity" of C has less to do with the language itself, and more to do with the underlying application code being written 10/15/20 years ago and not being looked at since

I'd say it's mostly due to the code age but a fair amount is also down to the language. Although it's true that C/C++ code is not inherently unsafe it's also true that there's not a great deal of pressure within the language to dissuade you from unsafe practice and even less to encourage you to good practice. You can improve things a bit if your compiler supports 'treat all warnings as errors' but that's a choice you have to make and reliant on the verbosity of your compiler.

The good thing about both those languages (and I'll always have a soft spot for C++) is that they trust the programmer and allow them total control.

The bad thing about both those languages is that they trust the programmer and allow them total control.

Re: No thanks - no remote control

If you need to check your car is locked just get off your fat arse, go to the window and press your lock button.

My car is left at a train station and during the day is over 50 miles from where I work. I believe that the curvature of the Earth prevents me from seeing it. Well, that and the roof of the multi-storey car park. Plus I'm still using the original batteries in my key fob so I suspect the signal won't get that far.

But I don't think I've ever wondered about the car doors so not a problem. House doors though..yeah. I ruined one Christmas holiday because I thought I'd left the front door open and flapping in the breeze. I hadn't - it was closed and locked. But that haunted me all week.

Sat in an office in Brum. one end of the office 3G, other end 2G

Here in Brindleyplace my S3 is saying 'H' so that's either H or H+ (I'm getting 5Mb/s average so impossible to know based on that).

Re: Giant golfer? Not likely.

You've never seen me golf

You, I might have seen. My ball in the rough on the other hand..natch. I play either bright yellow or bright orange and still the buggers can vanish without trace barely an inch off the fairway.

Re: Hooray

Unless you call £53 for 7 days or £88 for 15 days rental expensive ?

For the UK - yes. Granted people sometimes get into difficulty in really bad weather on the top of what we like to call mountains(*). But suggesting people should take a sat phone when they go walking around our national parks is a bit silly. The biggest communication problem we face on our small island when out enjoying the scenery is trying to get away from twitters, texters, talkers and the beeping noises that accompany them.

Now if you actually live in a remote(**) area it can be a bit of a pain but then you'll be making more use of it so investing in a proper installation might make sense.

but when your several hundred miles from the nearest person

Extremely difficult to achieve in the UK. In fact about the only way to do is it go and sit on a small rocky outcrop in the north Atlantic ;)

(*)The rest of the world call them 'rocky hills' :)

(**)Again, our definition of 'remote' is not the same as in most parts of the world.

Re: Buzzword bingo

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1998-12-27/

Maybe the new CEO is Scott Adams in disguise playing the world's biggest prank.

I loved the original. I think 2000 was okay but the more recent ones introduced micro-management and got rid of water and/or power management (I forget which). SC was always an excellent time-sink. Hours could fly by without you realising.

just a tedious procession round and round in a circle with hardly any passing

That hasn't been true for at least a couple of years now. DRS and a reduction in aero grip means that there's quite a bit of overtaking and close racing. Not as much as in closed wheel racing, true, but probably as much as there ever has been in F1. If you've ever liked F1 you'll probably like it now.

Re: Unique Passwords

I don't understand why password systems *insist* on capitals, numbers, non-alphas, etc instead of just *allowing* them

Dilbert covered this a while back.

Re: Not surprising

All I can say is thank you, Ofcom. I don't agree with all they've done but compared to what I hear about the US in these cases I think they deserve some credit. Most of us can at least choose the DSLAM or backhaul provider and when it comes to cost and customer service we all have lots of choice.

It's also quite cheap here which is nice but the flip side of that is the damage it does to the case for investment. Swings and roundabouts but I think on balance I prefer what we do. Someone stuck on a sub-2Mb/s line might not agree :-/

They've been doing that in the Exeter branch for ages and it's seriously annoying

That brings back memories from a long time ago. Is it still a large, round underground chamber? Always made me think of a dungeon when I was a sprog :)

Re: @ Simon Harris - This new stuff looks boring (Soldering iron)

I have an Onkyo 507. Not top of their line but pretty good and great for the price at the time. It has four HDMI inputs and as of last month I'm using them all. Luckily you can modify input assignments so now I have DVD/BD, Cbl/Sat, VCR (actually my Freesat box) and Port for my media server. I have one optical in for my Sky HD box (they didn't used to support 5.1 over HDMI) and the other for my Freesat box (same problem I think) with my Squeezebox Touch feeding in through coax digital.

When I first got my PS3 it sometimes didn't sync video and needed restarting but a firmware to the PS3 eventually fixed that.

Re: Footfall

Thinking about it though - perhaps the dinosaurs were space-faring and did themselves in?

There's quite a good S/F book along those lines. It's called Tool Maker koan. It's not a classic but it develops quite nicely.

contemplate the humiliating prospect

Now you're making me ashamed and that deserves an upvote. Anyway I'm spending this weekend with him so it's all good. We get on well most of the time it's just the computing stuff that can be a bit frustrating.

Re: Is this really possible?

Separating out Windows 8 and 8.1 is a little disingenuous

I agree. Things still don't look brilliant for Win 8 but no worse than I'd expect for an even numbered version. As has been noted many times MS seems to alternate good versions with bad versions when it releases an OS. I think that Win 9 will be a good release and will do well. What's odd is that (to me at least) it even sounds like a good 'un - Windows 9.

We shall see. Things have changed a lot in the desktop market and if Win 8 was a stepping stone to something Win 9 should be the full blown effort.

Re: Ancient technology

Never heard of a digital amplifier. Amps have to be analogue.

They are called Class 'D' amps. I think I used to own a 5.1 receiver that was class D. I'm not completely sure but (this was about ten years ago) it was the same size as my DVD player. Despite being vertically challenged it could deliver 100w per channel.

Ah here we go. Took a while but this is the user manual and this is the beastie in the flesh: