* Posts by ChrisPW

16 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Dec 2009

Hello, Dixons Carphone? Yep, we're ringing from a 2015 handset. Profits down 60%, eh?

ChrisPW

take three terrible stores, mix them together and ....

Dixons/Currys was always a terrible place to buy white goods, tech, etc from.

PC World was always a terrible place to buy PCs and tech from

Carphone Warehouse was a terrible place to buy a phone from (I made that mistake once ... wow was that a bad idea).

Why did anybody, including their own CEO, expect combining the three to produce anything other than a terrible shopping experience?

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

ChrisPW

Now that I'm somewhat used to the design

Day one the new design was a clusterfuck; now it is at least a usable site so I thought I'd sit back and think about what the new design has done to my usage of the site.

I think I sum sum it up like this: Previously thereg felt like a somewhat professional/technical site that threw in enough silly or trashy content to keep things light. Now it *feels* like a trashy tabloid that might have an occasional good artical, but I can't spot them with a quick glance anymore so I go elsewhere.

My visits have reduced hugely and I've realised that 90% of them now consist of me loading the frontpage, then closing the window without reading anything. I've also turned adblock back on (previously thereg was excluded), the new design combined with the adverts results in far too small a percentage of my screen actually having content (i.e. words) on it.

Any more design updates planned?

ChrisPW

Wow. Thats .... bad.

50% of my screen is still whitespace. Do you not have widescreen displays in your office??

The header is not rendered in is native size and has become nastily aliased.

25% of the content area is taken up pushing an old story (most of it an oversized image) that I read yesterday afternoon.

Top Stories: - appears to be a worse replacement of the old carousel.

Don't Miss: - I didn't, I read it yesterday, stop taking up space.

Most Read: - why is this at the top? If everybody is reading them then chances are I already have.

Why are there only about 4 colours? Much too much of a "wall of text".

At least the new content is appearing in order, shame I can only see the newest 3 without scrolling due to that massively oversized (and still old) story at the top.

Speaking in Tech: Android 5.0 Lollipop is a TRAIN WRECK

ChrisPW

Re: Updated my Nexus 4

I updated my Nexus 4, it seems faster, the battery is lasting longer and the only issue I've had was with WIFI that was fixed with a reboot and reconnecting to the network.

Google may have underestimated the dodgy cruft people have gathered since first getting their Nexus 4, I'm increasingly sure that the vast majority of problems can be cleared buy a reset and reinstall of your apps minus the up to 2 years of crud data.

Forget bonking, have ONE OFF THE WRIST with Barclaycard's bPay

ChrisPW

Re: I've got one

It is a bit smaller than two (full sized) sim cards, *might* work with a watch but not with a ring.

Confuses the poor staff in my local Tesco when I wave my phone at the tills each lunchtime, but they will have to get used to that eventually ...

ChrisPW

I've got one

the wrist strap is ugly as hell, but the card is removable.

taped to the inside of my mobile phone case it works perfectly.

David Cameron wants mobe network roaming INSIDE the UK

ChrisPW

Netflix

The netflix comparison is stupid and also demonstrates you don't understand the netflix situation.

Netflix: ISP customers have already paid for the bandwidth the ISPs are choosing not to provide.

Mobile roaming: mobile networks are not heavily built out into remote areas, the company is unable to provide service there at the moment (may be due to small customer numbers, planning issues with putting up towers, etc), the customer's handset should roam onto another network and their mobile company should pay a small usage fee to the operator who takes the load. This already happens in effect (just transparently) with some of the historical network sharing agreements.

Mt Gox's 'transaction malleability' claim rubbished by researchers

ChrisPW

Re: "Only" [19.46% malleability attacks] were successful?

19.46% is NOT the success rate of the attack. That is the rate at which the modified transaction was accepted INSTEAD of the original one. The modified transaction was of the same value (it has to be or the encryption does not work), the same amount of "wealth" was transferred, it just has different ID numbers.

The issue is down to how the exchange tracked transactions - they did not do so in a reliable enough manner, once they saw the original transaction fail they were issuing refunds without checking for a duplicate transaction going through. Other exchanges updated their software competently once the issue was noticed, MtGox didn't. MtGox have a long history of producing duff transactions that failed, rather than fixing the problem they bodged in an auto-refund system.

MtGox and their rubbish software were the problem, there was not a large network-wide issue.

Reg tries out Google's Chromecast: Yep, we even tested smut sites

ChrisPW

I've had two for the past few months

Mostly I've been using mine with youtube and plex, with some google music mixed in.

The Plex support was the main reason I went for it and generally it works very well, with most of the problems I have (e.g. freezing if I skip around the video a few times) appearing to be a Plex problem rather than a Chromecast problem.

Youtube support works well and gets a regular work out, google music is also good and I don't think you need to pay £10/pm unless you want access to the general catalogue (I do pay it, replaced my Spotify a while back).

PHWOAR! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, Prime Minister

ChrisPW
FAIL

> Right now an O2 customer on a 3G network, at 2.1GHz, can't access pornography

Wrong. Right now an O2 customer on a 3G network can't access SOME pornography and lots of other sites/services that are in no way pronographic. Getting access to boobs will take all of about 30 seconds of google time. The current mobile implementation of blocking is actually a perfect illustration of why it is a stupid idea.

UK 4G auction kicks off in total silence

ChrisPW
FAIL

> the cost of data will have to increase (Americans already pay a good deal more than Brits, as does most of the world)

In what way does the rest of the world getting shafted worse than us mean we should get shafted more??

Stupidly small caps followed by utterly daft £perMB charges are just stupid but the only alternative the providers seem to understand is "unlimited" deals that they then lose money on. Why can't anybody seem to put together a £perGB deal at a sensible price??

Kobo Glo illuminated e-reader review

ChrisPW
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you do not need to activiate via a PC of use Kobo's software

> you’re forced to connect it to a computer onto which you’ve downloaded Kobo’s library software before you can use it.

No, you are not, I activiated one yesterday via WiFi and it worked perfectly, I've not got the Kobo library software installed at all (I'm using calibre).

Top Brit authors turn flamethrowers on barmy IPO

ChrisPW

Re: The book business has no intention of making the same mistakes as the music business

They may not be making exactly the same mistakes as the music biz, but they are still making some bloody stupid ones.

It is ridiculous that several years after the release of a book the ebook prices will often still remain at the launch (hardback or sometimes more) pricing, I've seen cases where an electronic copy of a book costs over double the cost of the paperback, even taking shipping into account! Seems fairly hard to justify that one to me ...

Tevatron refines Higgs boson picture

ChrisPW

Re: yeah, but so what

It is unlikely to directly take us anywhere, but that isn't the point, the important thing is what we will be able to do with the knowledge later.

Although we have use amounts of information about the properties of elements we are still regularly making discoveries that we can't explain (e.g. why does X go super-conductive in a magnetic field when at pressure?? Y & Z don't ...), understanding the building blocks will help us understand why and hopefully help us correctly predict those properties with a greater degree of accuracy. Then we can reduce the amount of "poke it and see what happens" science that is currently done because we will be able to predict with a high degree of confidence what will happen!

Orange San Francisco 2

ChrisPW
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head over to modaco for unlock info

http://android.modaco.com/forum/578-zte-crescent-crescentmodacocom/

I flashed a new ROM onto mine on day 1 & repartitioned it to allow for more app space.

I'm happily running an ARMv6 version of flash also, can't remember where I got it from now but likely on the modaco forum somewhere.

2009's Top E-book Readers

ChrisPW

@hammarbtyp

I upgraded from the PRS-500 (which I imported) shortly after the PRS-600 came out - I think the touch screen interface works very well but i do take your point on it degrading the readability. It's still a very readable screen but noticeably less sharp than the PRS-500/505, but in my opinion the new interface, search, dictionary, and faster refresh offset that.

You can do multiple bookmarks but Sony have broken the functionality vs the PRS-500/505, but I personally don't worry about book marks now that I can use the search to jump back to the nearest chapter or directly to the passage if I can remember enough of it.

Try using the alternative Calibre software instead of the usual Sony crap and avoid the music player (thats what ipods are for) to preserve your battery.

Personally - I'm happy with it, been reading several books a week on it since I bought it and not tired of it yet.