Re: Unfortunately phrased
Officers in Waltham Forest [northeast London] received an allegation of malicious communications from an MP.
I've been harassed by politicians all my life. The feckers never know when to leave well enough alone.
Posts by AndrueC
5089 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2009
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Plods probe death threat tweets to MP - but who will rid us of terrible trolls?
Planned SMUT TSUNAMI fails to wreak havoc on UK.gov email
BT's not at home to Mr Profit, but its lordly boss probably isn't too fussed
Thursday 25th July 2013 12:59 GMT 
I suspect it will be more than enough where there's a cabinet within 500m or so; arguably even 1,000m.
I agree. I think that 20Mb/s per member of the household is reasonable at the moment and probably for at least the rest of the decade. Given that the biggest bandwitdh hogging application is video and given the way codecs are developing it's hard to see why any individual would need more than 20Mb/s. I suppose the next generation of HD might push things a bit but I'm not convinced that's really going to take off.
No I think it's the premises that fall below 20Mb/s per member that need to be sorted out and sorted out fast. It's just a shame that the RoI for those locations is inevitably poor to non-existent.
Thursday 25th July 2013 12:12 GMT 
Meanwhile, 5.1 million BT customers are wired up to its broadband network via the firm's copper cabling.
Technically all but a few thousand people are using 'the firm's copper cabling' since even their FTTC roll-out relies on it. True fibre connections are still a small minority of BT's connections. Of all the things the ASA has whined about I think that allowing FTTC or even VM to use the term 'fibre broadband' was wrong. Well - that and allowing 'unlimited' to be abused.
Verizon offers Motorola mobe with 48-HOUR battery life
Wednesday 24th July 2013 07:35 GMT
Re: Question
It's called 'Power Schedule'. I preferred the older UI but this gets the job done.
Wednesday 24th July 2013 06:45 GMT
My Galaxy S3 lasts over a week on a single charge. That is with an aftermarket 4.3AH battery. I don't use it for phone calls very much but I do use it to play music for an hour each day (bluetooth headphones) while I walk and every 10 minutes it checks in with my mail server to see if any mail has arrived. Plus the usual Android related stuff. It spends most of its time within range of a usable wifi connection and I have an app that switches off all the radio stuff between 11pm and 8am.
Discharge level averages out at about 9% a day typically.
Obviously a heavy user wouldn't do as well but I think most people could get 48 hours out of it without too much difficulty.
WAR ON PORN: UK flicks switch on 'I am a pervert' web filters
ITU readies gigabit G.fast standard for copper's last wild ride
Thursday 18th July 2013 08:08 GMT 
Vectoring, vectoring! Wherefor art thou vectoring?
F'shame. No mention of vectoring in that article. Boo!
Our hopes and dreams and some more information.
It's showing a lot of promise but without it higher speeds on copper are dead in the water for most practical purposes. How can you discuss G.Fast without talking about vectoring?
Researchers seek Internet's choke points
Wednesday 17th July 2013 13:45 GMT
Although the way backhaul is handled in the UK with multiple providers and ISPs all trying to compete on price you'd think that would count against them. Perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps it actually helps. Then again it's hard to tell with only VM to compare against. That has a rep for high levels of jitter and the usage limits imply a lack of capacity but there's also a lot of people very happy with what they get.
Wednesday 17th July 2013 09:04 GMT
I've always assumed that from the DSLAM back there is no difference between cable and DSL. I can't think of any aspect of the backhaul, core or transits that would be specific to either technology. Surely the DSLAM/node takes care of 'decoding' the signal on the twisted pair/coax and both emit as Ethernet.
Hence - what else could it be but the local cabling differences?
Wednesday 17th July 2013 08:00 GMT
Their conclusion is that something about ISPs' network architecture makes cable networks more susceptible to recurrent congestion than DSL networks
Could it be because a single cable serves multiple properties - entire streets or even groups of streets? At least with DSL the connection is uncontended back to the DSLAM. I'd have hoped a technical study would already be aware of that issue though.
Pwn all the Androids, part II: Flaw in Java, hidden Trojan
How the clammy claws of Novell NetWare were torn from today's networks
Tuesday 16th July 2013 12:11 GMT
I have fond(ish) memories of NetWare file systems. NetWare 3 and 4 in particular often came to us with damaged or recreated partition sectors. It only took a little bit of maths and occasionally a 'mix and match' between the two FATs and catalogues and then you got everything back. As they were server OSes people were fairly happy to pay big bucks for us to recover their data.
NetWare 2 FS was more awkward and NetWare 5 we never saw in the wild.
Unreal: Epic’s would-be Doom... er... Quake killer
Tuesday 16th July 2013 10:39 GMT
Unreal’s action was classic 1990s FPS, but its plot was more than a mere justification for the combat that follows: it was a tale told through the medium of play.
And there, for me, was where things started to go wrong with FPS. It's an entirely personal view point but when I play an FPS I don't really want a story. I just want to be able run around like an asshat laying waste to whatever I see without serious regard to ammo levels or health packs. I can't remember Unreal too well but the other thing I really dislike with a lot of FPS is being forced to follow a particular route through a map by debris blocking corridors behind me. I also don't really want to have to become too skilled. I'm not a soldier and I don't claim to be I just sometimes (less often as I get older) like to run around firing weapons at computer generated baddies.
Unreal did look good and it set a trend that clearly a lot of people enjoyed. I'll happily accept that it was great and worth of accolades. Sadly it and it's descendants left me behind somewhere.
Confidential Microsoft brief: 'We're TOAST if we fight Google on price'
LG's curvy telly and Samsung's Galaxy camera seen in the wild
Modern-day Frankenstein invents CURE for BEHEADING
Friday 12th July 2013 06:48 GMT
Re: So many possibilities
But... before the operation I was a man!
Not a bad book really. A bit saucy in places and the ending is slightly bizarre but worth a read.
Update: "The story takes place about 2015 AD". Wow. I didn't realise that. Adds a new poignancy to this article.
Damn. My copy doesn't have this saucy cover.. I missed all the good covers when I was a teenager.
China slips behind US in technology innovation stakes
OFFICIAL: Humans will only tolerate robots as helpful SLAVES
Tuesday 9th July 2013 12:32 GMT
Actually, robots that looked like humans were abundant on Solaria long after the Spacer worlds were thought to have perished.
Were they? Hmmmm. Is that mentioned when the expedition from Gaia returns there? I've thought about re-reading the lot recently but tbh I'm getting a bit too old to take on the entire series. And they did go a bit odd in the latter novels.
Tuesday 9th July 2013 07:56 GMT
And next week they'll read the next Asimov book and decide that robots will be accepted as equals once they look sufficiently human.
Actually robots that looked like humans never really took off in Asimov's books. The only ones humans built appear to have been prototypes. According to later books it seems they learnt how to build themselves then became the secret caretakers of humanity.
I wrote an essay on the Empire series and its ties with the Robot series when I was at college back in the 80s. Then there's the whole End of Eternity interpretation with robots using time travel to remove themselves from history.
Mines the one with the Asimov novels gathering dust in the pocket :)
EU competition inspectors RAID European telcos
BT: Ofcom's planned wholesale price cap? Just a smidge too tight
Thursday 11th July 2013 14:58 GMT
Re: Good joke
So I ask again? WHAT investment?
Someone spent a lot of money installing a cabinet near me (and customer A in your example). Someone is providing me and customer 'A' with a reliable high speed service. I'm pretty sure BT would say it was them. That's what they've told their shareholders, the business community, the government, the banks and the entire country.
If it wasn't BT who do you think it was?
Just because they aren't investing as much as you'd like or where you'd like doesn't mean there hasn't been investment at all. As for BDUK - BT won the bids. That means the councils all thought they were the cheapest and/or the best. Either every single council was bribed or else BT came up with the best offer. Yes, probably because of their position, but still the best offer. You want someone else to do it - you pay the premium.
I'm not going to downvote you because I understand your pain. However claiming that BT have not invested any money is a bit churlish.
Thursday 11th July 2013 12:01 GMT
Well that does little to encourage BT to invest in the network. And I wouldn't mind betting that VM are deliberately holding back for fear of having to comply as well. Seriously - why would anyone want to invest in the infrastructure if they can't make any money from it?
It's well and good encouraging competition in the retail sector but this is a wholesale cost. I doubt customers will see much of a reduction so all it does is line the pockets of a different set of companies while further damaging the business case for NGA.
At least one ISP - Be - has tried to compete in the wholesale market but it couldn't make it work. If BT are forced to drop their charges even further that will do nothing to encourage competition at the wholesale level and that means no help at the physical level either.
US Congress proposal: National Park will be FOUND ON MOON
Sky asks Ofcom to unlock BT cabinets
Wednesday 10th July 2013 06:31 GMT
It's an interesting request. Back when FTTC was being discussed I saw an Ofcom document that stated there was no interest in unbundled FTTC and that everyone was happy with GEA. Now it seems Sky are saying that there was interest but BT blocked the idea:
"In the early industry discussions around NGA during 2008 and 2009, Sky and other CPs advanced proposals for several possible unbundled FTTC access products. These were rejected by BT. Sky considers that with the progress made to date by BT, and experience gained by all CPs in the roll-out of BT’s FTTC, it is appropriate to reconsider access products unbundled to a greater extent than the current GEA product."
From reading that it seems Sky have two things in mind. Firstly BT's poor service record - presumably in terms of installation/maintenance rather than throughput. Secondly I think Sky might be looking to compete with BT in the local loop (they talk about not enough use of PIA).
I struggle to see how simply unbundling a cabinet the way they do exchanges would help in itself. Last I heard BT manage the cabinet to exchange backhaul perfectly well anyway and I can't see where cost savings would come from. So I reckon Sky have definite interest in moving into the local loop properly. Maybe doing their own FTTPoD?
Microsoft offloads heap of critical fixes in 'ugly' Patch Tuesday
Friday 5th July 2013 13:32 GMT
Re: @egor: Surprise!
Let's hope that the software engineers behind the space programme, nuclear power plants, ICBM's, traffic lights etc.etc. never fall into that trap
No, let's hope they include fail safes and monitoring facilities. "No software is perfect" need not be the same thing as "Our product sometimes fails" ;)
Anti-PRISM Trojan explodes over Jay-Z fans
Spending watchdog SAVAGES rural broadband push
Friday 5th July 2013 06:29 GMT
using wi fi and microwave but all BT knows is stick a cable in a pipe.
Microwave has issues with the weather, and wifi is a poor solution. Too many people sharing a single transmitter leads to contention. 'Sticking a cable in a pipe' offers the best service but yes, you have to pay a bit extra. Now if you're saying that people in not-spots would accept a second rate service then by all means go with wifi.
Is that really correct - we are paying to give BT an asset it can keep free to make cash of us, the taxpayer?
Essentially, yes but what a lot of people overlook is that whoever 'sticks a cable in a pipe' has to allow everyone else to offer a service over it - for whatever low price Ofcom thinks is appropriate. So whichever company goes to the expense of installing the service doesn't even get all the resulting profits. The cable in the ground becomes worth as much or as little as Ofcom is prepared to allow. And of course if you don't provide the extra funds you don't get the cable at all.
At the end of the day it was a bidding process. The idea behind a bidding process is usually to find the best provider (price and quality of service usually being the primary concerns). BT won. If there are companies out there can provide a better service and/or for a lower price then where are they? BT will get the job done. They've been getting the job done in Cornwall in partnership with the EU.
Anyway there's another good article on this here.
There are no easy answers. I think most of the problems stem from the basic fact that the public demands a high standard of service but doesn't want to pay much for it. Margins for ISPs are wafer thin and yet we expect someone to invest billions in improving the network.
Rest your head against a train window, hear VOICES in your SKULL
Gone
Judge nixes Microsoft SkyDrive name in BSkyB court ruling
Windows 8.1 start button appears as Microsoft's Blue wave breaks
Monday 1st July 2013 09:59 GMT
Re: Sourceforge & Classic Shell to the rescue!
It's handling of multiple desktops isn't very clever so it can be awkward sometimes to keep an application or folder view that you are monitoring visible. More often than not you ending up wasting one or more screens by having the start screen visible.
Thursday 27th June 2013 07:27 GMT
Re: @AndrueC
> Can anyone enlighten me as to what people consider a "shell" in Windows?
Good question :)
For the purpose of this discussion (ie; 'what's wrong with TIFKAM') the shell would be Explorer. That is an application that uses OS functions to render icons, menus, windows, etc. It does this in pretty much the same way any application does. So Explorer.exe on it's own would be useless. It is reliant on the GDI and USER spaces to render images on the screen.
One thing that most shells have to do is display certain well known aspects of the Windows UI - things like Control Panel. It would be entirely possible to write your own CP but it's a lot of effort and probably further than most developers would want to go. So instead they leverage the existing .CPL libraries. If third party Windows shells are vulnerable to change this is probably where they most are. It's conceivable that MS could get rid of .CPLs in the future and then there'd be problems. Or they might change the way they are invoked.
So is the Windows 'shell' the same thing as 'X'? I think not. I'll confess I don't know much about 'X' but I believe that it includes everything right down to the 'video drivers'. In effect it's a self contained graphical environment. Explorer.exe isn't that. Explorer.exe is just an application that uses Windows to display menus and respond to use input.
Oh and yes, there's a cmd.exe which is a command prompt and might also be called a shell. That's even easier to replace.
So in my view: For the purposes of discussing TIFKAM and how to replace it - Windows has a fully supported and recognised mechanism for doing it. Period.
However it is possibly not as flexible as Unix since 99.9% of shells are going to be reliant on the OS for drawing on the screen and also most likely for rendering menus. Now resources can be changed so that menus look different so I don't know whether it matters that shells ask the OS to render their menus.
Wednesday 26th June 2013 17:05 GMT
Re: @AndrueC
designed to implement various shells as a feature, not a bolted on afterthought that is likely to break with each new revision of Windows no matter how minor
And my point is that the same is true of Windows. There is nothing new about that registry key and nothing new about replacing Explorer. According to Wikipedia that registry value came in with Windows 95:
It aint no 'bolted on afterthought'
Replacing the Windows shell has been a supported, fully documented feature for over a decade. Almost longer than Linux has existed. Now whether or not a particular replacement shell works with all versions of Windows depends - like all executables - on how it was written. But in general most Windows applications run on all version of Windows.
Tuesday 25th June 2013 17:57 GMT
Re: Sourceforge & Classic Shell to the rescue!
I'd rather not. I have Linux for an OS that separates the UI from everything else. It's designed to let you swap out a shite UI for one that you might like better.
You've always been able to replace the Windows shell. I don't really understand how you can suggest otherwise given that you yourself then go on to talk about something that does exactly what you suggest is difficult to achieve.
You've only got to write a replacement for Explorer exe then change a registry value:
It's just that most people have never felt the need to bother and don't need to indulge in flame wars with other Windows users about which shell is best.
Win 8 user? Thought that was a CAPTCHA? R is for ruh roh
Monday 1st July 2013 09:55 GMT
Re: IE8
the user has no way of knowing whether it's malware or an OS prompt.
And probably doesn't care anyway because they are sick and tired of stupid dialog boxes popping up asking them to confirm everything. Coming to a screen near you soon: "Are you sure you want to move your mouse to the right? [Yes], [No]"
Microsoft: Half of all organizations will use 'Facebook-like' tools
Wednesday 26th June 2013 07:53 GMT
Re: Yammer-schammer
We have Yammer. We are required, by company policy, to use it
Same here. Or rather we are encouraged to use it. And yes it's mostly marketing and management and is full of the kind of sycophantic crap that Americans seem particularly skilled at. How anyone can be 'excited' by a meeting is beyond me.
Samsung quits desktop PC biz, will stick to all-in-ones and portables
SURPRISE! BT bags more gov broadband cash - this time in Bucks & Herts
Monday 24th June 2013 16:50 GMT
Re: Ah, yes...
when they know damn well that from the cabinet to me is only 3Mb/s on a good day
Bloody hell you must be at the end of a long D-side. That kind of speed puts you at going on 4km from your PCP. The UK average is 500m I think - if I remember correctly the average total line length is only 3km.
Are you rural or urban?
Telly psychics fail to foresee £12k fine for peddling nonsense
John McAfee releases NSFW video on how to uninstall security code
Friday 21st June 2013 13:25 GMT
Re: Pot meet kettle
Sophos tended to be a fair bit more corporate in its trade show presentations than Dr Solomon's,
I've still got a couple of their cowboy T-shirts. When AuthenTec was moving out we accidentally took a couple of boxes with us. They were all XXL though more use as tent covers, really. Especially for me :)
Rise of the Machines: How computers took over the stock market
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
