* Posts by There's a bee in my bot net

189 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Aug 2010

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Gmail users howl in anguish at 'disappeared' accounts

There's a bee in my bot net

Welcome to the cloud...

...where dreams and data are but vapour.

Turn your mobile phones in to a live gig speaker

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Its not in a room - its outside...

Having been to many festivals of varying sizes and varying weather and also suffering from tinnitus (probably as a result of too many festivals :-) I think this is a great idea in principle. If it is well synchronised then it could combat wind which can cause sound levels to vary greatly at outdoor events. Or you could just pop in an ear plug so you can set the volume to suit and still have conversations with your fellow festival goes, or put in both ear plugs when you don't want to listen to rowdy revellers...

Remains to be see in practice though...

Operators to get new SMS 999 obligation

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Ah but this is in the UK...

Where a special arrangement between consumer and supplier exists where the supplier charges way more than they would in the US and we suck it up.

I currently pay £10 a month for my data and voice needs (I don't use a lot of voice minutes) but if I want a new phone then I would have to pay at least £25 a month, more likely £30 or £35 for any of the top of the range android phones. I wouldn't stand a chance of using the minutes or txts they supply, but in contrast to the high number of free minutes/txt all the big uk mobile networks are cutting their data allowances down to the bone.

As an example of cost, on Tmobile uk on an average cost contract (that the pimply phone sales kid would try to push) the Samsung Galaxy S would cost £77 for the phone plus £31 a month for 24 months.

If I subtract the usual £10 a month I would pay for the service I use currently, the phone would cost £504 over 2 years, plus £77 to 'buy' the phone making a grand total of £581 for a phone that I can buy sim free for under £400.

This is just one example and there are probably better deals out there but I haven't seen any that would persuade me to sign up for another long contract.

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12 month contacts

Aw, I got all excited there at the prospect of 12 month contracts coming back into fashion. But operators will just make them financially unattractive when compared to the ice age long 24 month contracts.

Perhaps Ofcom should make operators break down the contact pricing so we can see how much of what we are paying goes to pay for the phone and the service...

How to make power conversion less sucky

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Gallium nitride diodes...

So are they are inventing Gallium Nitride Diodes that could avoid some power loss when compared to Silicon Oxide diodes?

Jacqui Smith 'shocked' to discover we're drowning in sea of porn

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exploitative relationship between the talent and the producers?

If you re-phrase that as 'exploitative relationship between the employee and the employer'

Sounds like any job to me...

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RE (untitled)

I think you mean she's actually pissed off because we paid for it on her behalf and then she got found out and we were angry...

Microsoft gives Kinect SDK to 'academics, enthusiasts'

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Learned something?

Perhaps they have seen how the PS3 hacking thing is going for Sony and decided that it is better to embrace and extend than piss people off...

A win for MS. This almost off sets Windows 7 mobile... almost.

Nissan readies ultra-low CO2 petrol engine for Micra

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Wait until all cars qualify...

When all modern car qualify for zero rated road tax, expect the government to move the goal posts and expect to start paying road tax again...

FOSS maven says $29 'Freedom Box' will kill Facebook

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I will watch this project with interest...

see title...

Freedoms Bill good for CCTV, not for privacy

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Happy

hmmm...

And there was me thinking that a coalition would be good for stopping hidden intent in bills like this.

Oh silly me for hoping the 21st century would turn out to be much more altruistic...

Sony Ericsson outs Neo, Pro smartphones

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Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!

Another 4 row keyboard! Why... why?!

D-Link Boxee Box DSM-380 media streamer

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Acer Aspire Revo?

I have been using various solutions for streaming my content for a long while now, I have tried a lot of clients and they have all be found wanting.

I was going to give the Boxee box a go but then it just never materialised.

So I bought a Acer Aspire Revo from ebuyer for a little over £200 and now I can run whatever I want. Plug in what ever I want and access my server how I want. No restrictions (other than the power of the Atom processor). It lives in a cupboard and is nearly slient. I can run the Boxee client, go to 4od, iplayer, youtube, divx mkv etc. Plug in a twin tuner usb freeview stick or two and hey presto, with Media centre you have a 2 or 4 tuner PVR as well, plus it will let you record to remote storage! All I need now is an external slimline USB Bluray drive.

I have now given up on these one trick ponies. The mini pc is the way to go...

Grief and disbelief greet Elop's Nokia revolution

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More Differentiation...

We'd like to differentiate ourselves by installing a crap OS.

Really? That's your strategy? I would agree with AC on building better cheaper handsets...

Protection of Freedoms Bill is released

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Fingers crossed...

...that this is genuine and gets through.

Italian white van man nudges sound barrier

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New unit of measurement?

Irony <= 2ac but is that per hour, per minute or per second?

Patent judge hits out at legal tactics used against file-sharers

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Digital Economy Act

I thought the Digital Economy Act removed the need to bother with all that tiresome legal wrangling, and that an accusation (or three) was all that was needed to have 'technical measures' taken against the internet connection used in the alleged offence.

Six... budget Blu-ray Disc players

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Twonky NAS

The Sony supports DLNA, and so should the Twonky device. So yes it is possible. I have done it with the DLNA Server that is part of Windows Media Player. The caveat is that not all DLNA devices are compatible with each other. It is a bit 'suck it and see'.

Before anyone asks, I'm not pushing the Sony box, I just happen to have one and so, can answer these questions with some authority. I was going to buy the Techinka Bluray but at the time the Sony was on special offer at £20 more...

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Upscaling?

I would have thought they all did up-scaling. I can say for certain that the BDP-S370 does. I got one from Tesco for £90 a while back.

Playing back on a 720p DLP projector the difference between HD and DVD isn't massive, but it is clear to see. DVDs appear softer and the detail isn't there. That said there seems to be a huge difference in the quality of HD films, with low detail in some scenes, I am often left wondering if I am actually watching a bluray or DVD version, The quality, detail and sharpness, when its there is really nice - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo stands out as a particularly well shot HD film.

Gatwick Airport security swoops on 3-inch rifle

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Funny?

That was a pretty realistic and well made model. I'm glad he wasn't a real terrorist, wielding that on a plane. Can you imagine the horror you would feel having that pointed in your direction...

I'm laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, but inside I'm quietly weeping for the loss of common sense.

Gov unveils plans to reduce employment tribunal claims

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Conservatisim at its best?

"A critical element of the government's growth strategy is to create the conditions which allow businesses, especially smaller businesses, to flourish and expand, by reducing regulation and maintaining a flexible and dynamic labour market," said Cameron.

In other words "We are going to make it easier for you to fuck your work force about, to suit your own needs"

Small businesses seem to have odd ways of doing things because they are usually run by one or two individuals whose character traits lead them to set-up on their own in the first place. Once their businesses are established and growing those character traits are more often than not, not great for dealing with their own staff.

In the past I have seen staff side lined just because the boss is in a bad mood. They either leave or are pushed.

2 years is a long time in today's job market...

UK cops arrest five in Anonymous attacks probe

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That made me lol

I know it shouldn't, but it did... Soz

MP: Googlepoly hurts British business

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Invent rather than innovate?

We don't ask car manufacturers to reinvent the wheel every-time they design a new car do we?

The fact that many of the technologies that google have acquired would probably be floundering now in obscurity if they were still in the hands of their originators doesn't seem to factor.

Also Multimaps (and others) was god awful to use. Google maps is a pleasure.

While I like to maintain a healthy air of suspicion and scepticism when it comes to Google, I can't fault many of their products or services.

If they do turn overwhelmingly evil then I am confident that another search engine will take its place and the whole thing will start again.

UK tech retailers are rubbish

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It's a joke...

...to you and me. But a fool and their money are soon parted.

http://www.technama.com/2010/worlds-10-most-expensive-gadgets/

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Except...

When I worked as a shelf stacker in PC World I knew more about their products than any of the sales staff.

I didn't want to work in sales. I would rather have sold my soul than swallow the sales bull that went on. I was happy lugging boxes around for some extra cash. On the rare occasion I was asked for help by customers I told them what they wanted to know, including comparing prices with the local and on-line retailers. I would have had a 90% conversion rate if I was actually working in sales.

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You needed a comsumer report to tell you that?

I would imagine that the majority of Reg readers have had similar experiences from the half wits that populate most of the big electrical chains.

Once of my pet hates is Monster cables, made worse by the introduction of HDMI cables. I once bought a £25 upscaling DVD player from Comet and the pimply faced youth tried to sell me an HDMI cable that was almost 4 times the price. He tried to tell me that the picture quality would be better with a monster cable. I tried to explain the concept of differential digital signals and bit error rates, signal reconstruction and that all this is part and parcel of the HDMI spec and is good for up to 15 meters on all but the nastiest of cables and that I would be much happier paying £1.99 for a 0.5 meter cable from ASDA. And that I really didn't need my calbe to be able to support 4096×2160p24 as I'm not likely to be buying such a screen for at least 10 years.

His response "I can assure you SIR that it does make a difference to the picture quality". Clearly I had been bested by the highly qualified shop assistant. It seems my engineering degree in comms was a waste of my time!

The only real advantage I could see was that for your £90 odd quid, Monster would replace the cable every time the spec changed for life. Or perhaps that was just the shop assistant making it up.

Thank god they weren't selling these ( http://www.russandrews.com/product.asp?lookup=1&region=UK&currency=GBP&pf_id=1558&customer_id=PAA1237014111701KYWGGSXPYLGKRJPJ ) or I might have hit him.

My other pet hate. Mobile phone sales assistants insisting that I MUST charge the battery for 24HRS! I no longer try to explain about BMS and that it is impossible to charge most phones for more than a few hours before they stop the charging themselves...

Mitsubishi commuter e-car goes on sale

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R.e. What do you think traction means?

Forgive me for being sceptical of the marketing departments and for not having heard the term used outside of fork lifts and milk floats (a traction battery is a deep cycle lead acid battery. Something Li-ion or derivatives are not capable of. Deep cycle a Li-ion and you will likely kill it - hence why Li-ion have BMS). I thought perhaps they were including a separate battery that could be used to provide the initial kick start to avoid hammering the Li-ion cells so prolonging their life and that the marketing department were shifting the warranty to this battery instead of the main battery pack, as Li-ion batteries rarely last more than 3 years...

So no one has any idea what a replacement battery costs?

I ride e-bikes and the battery packs cost between 30 & 60% of the cost of the bike.

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Batteries?

What's the deal with the batteries?

How long will they last? (The warranty is 67,000 miles or 3 + 2 years and covers the 'traction battery' whatever that is - probably not the main li-ion battery).

What is the cost of a replacement battery pack?

Single complaint sparks police raid and total ban on rental movie

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Do Blockbusters trade in Scotland?

"We have a close relationship with the law enforcement agencies who keep us abreast of what is likely to fall foul of the law" - except perhaps in Scotland where they would prefer you guess at the boundaries of the law...

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/25/ignorance_of_scottish_pr0n_law_no_defence/

Oracle retains open source dictatorship

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Woo yah!

Go Oracle! Show them crazy open sourcers how its done!

T-Mobile imposes swingeing cuts on fair use data limits

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PAC Code in hand Giff Gaff sims in the post

Just got off the phone after talking to a pot noodle miner who works for T-Mobile.

He assured me that the changes wouldn't affect my connection "you won't see any changes to be honest". When quizzed about the effect the download & streaming restrictions after 500MB would have on Spotify (p2p & streaming) and also on RDP, VNC and SSH he still insisted it wouldn't have any affect and that I should do that from home as 'that's what most people do anyway" and "people don't really watch videos or telly on their mobiles"

He also said that the plus bolt on would be restricted at 1GB and the standard internet bolt on @ 500MB though I'm not sure I believe him after some of the uninformed comments. As the notifications don't say anything like that.

http://support.t-mobile.co.uk/help-and-support/index?page=home&cat=DATA_CHANGES

http://support.t-mobile.co.uk/discussions/index?page=forums&topic=801038d04a790012d528dce9d0057cf

Console games 'hack' reseller gets community service order

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This type of crime...

I couldn't help reading 'Bull added: "This type of crime is becoming more common and is a serious threat to legitimate businesses."' as the manufacturers killing off products they had sold to consumers as the crime in question...

NoTW editor suspended as phone-hacking stink persists

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Analogy...

I'm not sure I understand the analogy. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a trekker.

Are you trying to suggest that from an outside perspective that this is just semantics and that it is all hacking/cracking?

My main concern is that calling something a hack, that, when it boils down to it is just a massive user failure, brought about by bad default settings (blame the manufacturer) and lazy users (blame the users/trekkies/trekkers) and is as easy to 'exploit' as knowing how to get your voicemail remotely and a few default pin numbers. All that is accomplished is to fuel the media fear driven perception that hackers/crackers are evil and must be stopped at all cost (usually our liberty) when it would be more helpful to explain what actually happened.

I'm not defending hackers/crackers - sometimes they can be a right pain in the arse, when they hack a server through an unpatched exploit in an old customer application. But these journos are not hackers and hacked nothing.

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Not Hacking...

Please stop calling this hacking or even cracking.

Reading the manual until you find out you need to press # and then enter the default pin code (i.e. 0000, 1111, 1234 etc) during the answer phone greeting is not hacking...

Why did my server just die?

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Resource caps?

It isn't a killer as this was a test server and the other testers should just man up and wait till the servers are running again. But the burning question on my mind is did you not have resource caps on the test VM to stop any one VM hogging all the hosts resources?

Small biz calls for end date on enhanced 17.5% VAT

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Banks?

I would suggest that the government starts selling RBS shares but then who would buy £80bn worth of RBS shares... are Bradford and Bingley still going? They owe £40bn odd don't they?

Standard smartphone charger to dominate in two years

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Micro usb?

Oh great. So that means I have to throw away all those mini USB chargers. A standard on which I settled several years ago. Any phone I have bought since has had mini usb...

New UN committee could hand governments internet control

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The end game for THIS internet maybe.

Will someone please explain to these idiots how the internet works.

Once they have 'control' of the popular, mainstream internet - most of us will just move to another net within the net...

Everything Everywhere ponders discrimination by packet

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So we will all end up using VPN then?

I hate to say it but I have been paying plusnet a small premium for years so they don't fuck with my traffic (or as they call it 'prioritise') based on the type of traffic and time of day.

I never know what I will be using my connection for and I don't want to a) have to remember what traffic is crippled or b) spend time trying to figure out that some traffic is crippled.

It was only a matter of time for the mobile networks who all seem to be taking a backward step, offering less and less as time goes on.

Call of Duty DDoS attack police arrest teen

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Its just a game right?

Wow - sounds like some people are taking their on-line gaming a little too seriously...

In the days of Quake and Team Fortress, if someone was cheating then they became the focus of everyone's attention and got hounded out of the game. If the server was slow or laggy, you found another one or started your own.

Diary of a server failure

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Wow you really put yourself out there... (for a kicking)

It sounds like you are building your own servers (please tell me I'm wrong).

Buy off the shelf with hardware support (4hr response on site isn't very expensive). Don't use SATA unless it's for a server providing an ancillary service that no one will really notice too much when it disappears. And I personally would never add more than 4 (Hot) SATA drives to a raid 5.

Try vMA and Ghetto VCB to backup your VMs to a (low cost) NAS with big disks. If you are really paranoid, periodically backup the NAS with cheap massive USB disks...

Worst case is if your array is trashed you can boot ESXi from flash and run the VMs (albeit a bit slower) from the NAS (using NFS to mount it as a datastore or most provide iSCSI these days so you could do it that way) while you rebuild the array...

vMA and Ghetto VCB can backup a 300GB VM in 15mins...

Acer outs skinny dual-core desktop

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Rip the screen of a laptop...

...and charge twice the price?

CNN flashes gay todger over interwebs

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Rush Limbo

I wonder how long the reg will persist with the reprisals aimed at Rush... it is most amusing.

WinPho7 jailbreak kit locked down by Redmond 'dev mojo' man

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Lame

Anyone else wonder why companies are still spending money trying to lock down their hardware/software?

Someone somewhere will find a way round the restrictions eventually. Often for the better of the device.

Case in point, my Android G1 last official update was little over a year after it came out and the official line was that it couldn't run anything above 1.6 (or was it 1.5?).

Thanks to Cyanogenmod I am running 2.2 and keeping the phone alive.

Or take Motorola's hardware locking. That only lasted a few months before it was circumvented.

WP7 vs Android: a struggle for supremacy

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WP7

Anyone else read that as Word Perfect 7?

Monarchist marks fall for faux royal wedding ticket site

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And this is why...

the internet is being regulated. Not because of the nasty people running scams, but due to the idiots that are now merrily skipping through the internet as though it was happy land... won't someone think of the children!

Police to get greater web censorship powers

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There... fixed that for you.

"Our politicians are complicit in encouraging their excesses, and accepting of these abuses"

Axl Rose sues Activision

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Yeaaaahhhhhh!!!

ROCK'n'ROLL BABY!!!

Apple throws a wobbly over Steve Jobs dolly

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Beat me to it.

I was gonna say they could just collect up some dog turds, varnish them, stick on some wire frame glasses and sell them instead!

MP wants age verification for net smut

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Won't somebody think of the children!

Here we go again...

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