* Posts by Jason Rivers

40 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jul 2007

World first: UK boffins print out working 3D aeroplane

Jason Rivers
Thumb Up

awesome!

being into RC flight, this is fantastic. it proves that with a 3D printer the world is your oyster!

Post Office banking collapses in computer fail

Jason Rivers
FAIL

Single point of failure

why not just turn over to the backup routes while fixing the problem :-)

'Up to' broadband claims out of control, says Ofcom

Jason Rivers
Flame

Sold as advertised.

it's under the "UP TO" speed, which is exactly as advertised, stop being a bunch of idiots and learn what "UP TO" means, I could sell you "UP TO" 100mbps, and give you 512kbps, it would still be within the advertised amount.

The only time it would be wrong would be if I sold you 101mbps, then it's over the "UP TO" amount, and thus is incorrect advertising. ISP's don't need to change what they tell people is their "up to" speed, People need to learn what "Up To" means, it means "NO MORE, But could be less"

/rant

iPhone 4, iPad mole faces 30 years' federal porridge

Jason Rivers
Thumb Down

murderers get less

nuff said.

Get your network ready for World IPv6 Day

Jason Rivers
FAIL

no IPv6?

well, I've had it for years, I'm bored of people mistaking NAT for a firewall, it just isn't. if the router supports IPv6, it also has a firewall, and will stop the traffic. the chances of anything finding you on IPv6 are so incredibly slim anyway, it's not actually a huge issue yet, anyway.

What baffles me, is ElReg putting up an article, 5 pages long about IPv6, and yet. they don't have it..... Why not ElReg, it really isn't that difficult at all! even if it's tunneled!

PC rental store hid secret spy hardware in laptop, suit says

Jason Rivers
Coat

it can be removed....

.... Just give me a big hammer :)

IPv6 uptake still slow despite looming address crunch

Jason Rivers

routers...

At work, I have IP6, Tunnelled (only because RouterBoard 4.11 doesn't support Native over PPPoE) at home, I have native IP6, using DD-WRT. I'm an IT Manager and I have no problem with this. However, How many Consumer-level ADSL routers support IP6, either Native or tunnelled. I work closely with an ISP that has IP6 available. I have asked the ISP where my colo box's are a number of times about IP6, and still they haven't delivered. I do however have a tunnelled IP6 connection on them.

I intentionally host some services only on IP6, including my web-mail. and I have worked a way to have an IP6 address on my laptop whether I'm at home, in the office, in the pub, or on a train. what actually needs to happen is consumer-grade routers need to support IP6, and the ball can then get rolling.

Pirate Bay beset by tainted ads

Jason Rivers
Linux

malware?

Guess I don't see much of that these days....

I'll get my coat

Think tank rages at NHS' £700 bill for fertility clinic porn

Jason Rivers
Thumb Up

Fluffers?

nuff said!

Windows 7 Backup gets users' backs up

Jason Rivers
Coat

hahahaha *ahem*

well... what can I say. MS backup when I had windows some many years ago. I tend to find rsync on Linux works quite well, allowing full, incremental, and if you shut down your machine and start it up, backups can continue to work and carry one from where they left off.... I wouldn't expect any less from a backup...

Facebookers condemned to Hell Lite

Jason Rivers
Coat

haha

"Facebook lite officially sucks," writes on user. "It is the worst thing to have happened on the internet ever."

I think he actually means that F*c*book is the worst thing to happen to the internet, not just this "lite" version...

Haven't used it for many years. have no intention to ever use it again.

Pirate Win 7 ruse used to build botnet

Jason Rivers

HAHAHAHA

I repeat.... HAHAHAHAHA...

serves themselves right for A) using it in the first place, and B) copying the damn thing...

all hail the penguin (or as I've just been reminded: Taz for now...)

J

No FreeRunner follow-up, says OpenMoko

Jason Rivers
Thumb Down

more problems...

i think it's great that they're going to fix this device, and I am laughing at people that really don't get open source, however there's a far bigger problem than them being slightly broken, I would have bought one of these a long time ago if it wasn't for this problem, because it's a huge one.... it's called: Stock Levels.

The thing is near impossible to find in stock, so they're not going to be shipping many of these devices until they can fix this "bug"

Microsoft cries netbook victory against Linux

Jason Rivers
Coat

I think you missed the point...

People aren't replacing the default Linux on these devices because XP is better, it's because the default linux us... CRAP! I am writing this from my Eee 901, with SSD and Mint Linux. these companies making these things have to realise that you can't just stick any linux on and be done, that linux has to work, stop adding a stupid front end to it, and put a real linux on it, then we might find these results change a little.... actually, it's too late now, thay had a great opportunity to show the world what linux can do, and they blew it

BMW driver follows satnav to edge of cliff

Jason Rivers
Coat

driving AID...

I think there's a reason why thay're classed as a driving AID..... don't think of sat nav as some nagging person in the passenger seat (though you probably shouldn't listen to them either) telling you where to go, think of it like that big paper map sat in your glove box, but doesn't obstruct your windscreen while trying to drive...

Sat Nav's should come with a competence test, if you are incompetent of working out when the road you're about to go down leads to a dead end, or off the edge of a cliff, you really shouldn't be driving the car in the first place.

I generally tell my Sat nave to "Get Lost" but it never listens...

Cold-water treatment for Ballmer on Windows Mobile

Jason Rivers
Coat

big numbers...

"Ballmer fell back on how Windows Mobile devices outsold the iPhone last year."

should I point out now that the iPhone is a single device, while Windows mobile is on... How many...?

Facebook downplays eternal user data grab

Jason Rivers
Thumb Down

Facebook: Never again

I got fed up with everyone being able to see everything on facebook about a year ago... and at the time, I "tried" deleting my account... but no, you can't do that. so I went through updating everything with "blanks" and after some fighting left it with little information.

however, when you remove your account you receive a message saying "to re-enable your account just log in as normal" - oh, so my account *isn't* deleted then... this drew the line for me, and I swore I would _NEVER_ use this again, I will not be subject to a system that keeps information about me, against my will. if I ask you to remove my account, I expect you to remove it, not just set a 1 to a 0 in a database somewhere...

Leeds Council loses kids details

Jason Rivers
Flame

yet again

and yet again they lose more data, and this time it's KIDS!

every government agency / civil servant office, should yank the USB ports off the systems, take out all the CD Writers and instantly fire ANYONE that takes data offsite without reason. there's no excuse for losing data with todays levels of encryptions, oh but of course, they're still not using that despite how much public data has been lost over the past couple of years, so, you still all think this ID card is a good idea, I think they'll just have more data to lose by more morons.

GAH!

flames because they can all BURN!

Lesbos climax as lesbians lick Lesbians

Jason Rivers
Coat

bootnote...

but... what if you're a gay woman from Lesbos.... then what do you call yourself? I guess anything you want.

MobileMe offers another free bite of the Apple

Jason Rivers

not deleting

at least Apple aren't deleting all your lovely contact data and appointments.... unlike what those at Redmond did.

fresh install of Windows Vista (shiver) fresh install of Office 2007 (double shiver) - plug in my PDA (running WM6) and without asking, Vista, Office 2007 & Windows Mobile Connect" decided that the information on my PDA was actually wrong, and synced with outlook...... so I ended up with no contacts, no calender information, no tasks etc etc on my PDA....

fortunately, I do take backups, but I did hear about this happening to some other people that didn't...

these days I refuse to use Billware (TM) (or is that soon to be Steveware.... might get that mixed up with the apples though...) my Desktop runs Ubuntu, my Laptop runs Debian, and my home machine runs Gentoo, oh and my PDA runs Qtopia now....

J

Intel says 'no' to Windows Vista

Jason Rivers
Joke

Vista is better...

sorry, but Vista just is better, look:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=XP&word2=Vista

548,000,000 results for XP

563,000,000 results for Vista

so it must be better!

Heaviest Virgin Media downloaders face new daytime go-slow

Jason Rivers
Dead Vulture

too far...

as a (current) virgin customer, this actually irritates me..... alot....

if you don't have the bandwidth, don't sell it.

I know _ALL_ ISP's sell more than they have - but there's a number of users that would never use it.

I'm not with Virgin through choice I might point out - it's part of the deal with my apartment, which I'll be moving out of in the next couple of months and buying a house, do you really think I'll be on this ISP - yeah, right, did you see that flying pig too?

Think i'll be choosing 1 of 3 ISP's and it's whichever can offer me what i'm looking for at the time - Static IPv4 Address's, IPv6 (without IPv4 tunneling) good speed, low downtime and the most important, a good customer service - something Virgin are lacking.

My 3 choices for those interested in the better ISP's are (in no particular order):

Andrews and Arnold

KeConnect

Zen

I'm not getting what I (or my landlord) pays for, I'd rather have a service that costs a little more, but the results are ALOT more.

French punters offered petite Eee PC rival

Jason Rivers

YUK!

yep, that is one ugly machine.....

also, it wasn't the size that drew me to my recent Eee 900 purchase, it was the SSD, offering me a machine that has the old Eee701 screensize/resolution, and a non SSD Hard disk, AND something that looks THAT ugly, it's no competition, I'll spend the extra and get the Eee-900 :)

oh and by the way, the Eee-900 is REALLY nice ;) - you should all get one - err.. black for the guys, white for the girls.... (mines also the 20GB Linux version - wouldn't have it any other way)

O2: We didn't know we were capping 3G data speeds

Jason Rivers
Coat

@ pctechxp

that's simple - to use it as a bluetooth modem for your laptop when you're away from home.

I guess you don't travel much, huh?

The missing five-minute Linux manual for morons

Jason Rivers

Thanks for a great read!

Thank you Verity, again, for a wonderful read.

Your sense of humor is excellent, your thoughts are really great, and if there was 1 IT columnist I could meet it would be you! (Yes I even have the best of... book)

I also have to thank Dan Haworth, for saving me asking the same questions about this anonymous idiot that seems convinced that Linux is still as it was 10 years ago.

Damn Billware fans....

J

BOFH: Vampires!

Jason Rivers

@ Fred

RE: Pub This evening-

yep, I'll be in Silchester - with a pint.....

I do enjoy these at a friday lunchtime....

Jason

Faster broadband through bonding

Jason Rivers
Alert

taken a while

It's taken them a while to let people know about this.

I went for a job interview at their Ipswich office about a year ago - decided it wasn't really what I wanted to do, though that said, I'd have loved to be the engineer behind it all instead of programming CGI / PHP pages. But even then, they were talking to me about "Multiple ISP Bonding" though were very vague when I asked questions on it, I couldn't work out if that was because i didn't work for them and everything was a little "hush hush" or if the guy wasn't really sure of what the technical people were doing in the basement.

anyway - nice to see that they're finally doing something with it. But I think I'll stick to my single ISP bonded line and failover backup line for now.

J

Germany flicks off-switch on DAB

Jason Rivers
Thumb Down

it would have worked if the technology was better.

for it to work the consumer has to have no choices. if I go out an buy a radio, I'll buy a Radio, I won't think "ooo it must have DAB" - because that's not true, if they said they were turning analog radio off, then I might change.

we're told analog tv will be turned off in the next few years (before 2012) will I get a digital picture before then?

I'm in Basingstoke, infact, I'm in the center of Basingstoke.and I get no digital picture. my nearest antenna is Hannington. that's about 8 miles "As the crow flies" - 8 miles is hardly a big distance.

My Girlfriends house is a mere 3 miles, infact from her window I can see the antena. she can't get any BBC Channel most of the time, apart from BBC Parliment, and she gets E4+1 but not E4.

I know the TV and the Radio streams are a little different, but they're all broadcast from the same place, they're both using the same technology, and quite frankly, it's shite.

I'm now paying Branson £30 / month so I can watch his Virgin TV. when some people get "Freeview".... but at least the virgin TV does work.....sort of.

Messenger skims past Mercury

Jason Rivers

this is great...

...it shows the technology they're using to link to the upload "within a few seconds" but if they can do that, why can I not get a TV signal when I have line of sight to the tower sending me the streams, it's about 3 miles due north from me, the areal is direct in-line, nothing is in the way atall, yet I can only get E4+1 and BBC Parliment....

oh well, back to the topic, is this still in an attempt to use resources from other planets as we've almost depleted our own?

J

Hackers turn Cleveland into malware server

Jason Rivers
Happy

what about us...

...bearded linux users.... they didn't think of that :)

now, if you'd all be so kind as to leave MS in the distance behind, the world can be a better place for all.

Beer set to hit four quid a pint

Jason Rivers
Alert

no smoking causes higher prices

this, i'm actually sure, is partly to do with the fact that we're no longer allowed to smoke in the pubs, I know of 3 pubs that have gone bankrupt since the smoking ban, all 3 were pretty packed before hand. As a result of people not going to the bars, there pushing less barrels, and there fore they have to compensate.

My old local used to be very busy, went in there last week, there were 4 people in there. apparently they're surviving because of their poker evenings, but even that isn't going to hold them for long.

bring back smoking, and we might just see the reserection.

New emails address you by name, then try to hose your PC

Jason Rivers

they could try...

I love people that try and install this stuff on my system, being a linux user, they don't really get very far. I like the fact that the majority use windows, it means there's less viri for me :)

How HMRC gave away the UK's national identity

Jason Rivers

quite funny...

"customers can have peace of mind that they enjoy protection under the Banking Code" - yes this is very very enjoyable that the banking code have put things in place, I'm not sure it's an enjoyable experience dealing with it, especially as you now have to go through the bank, the police are not interested in ID Theft, or others fraudulently taking money from your account, probably because they have too many people smoking cigarettes while driving to pull over.

BOFH: Workplace accidents = 0

Jason Rivers
Thumb Up

a soft spot...

so it would appear the CEO *DOES* Have a soft sport for Simon and his PFY afterall!

this one made my laugh to the extent of some of my sandwich ending up on my monitor. Keep it up Simon!

AT&T turns screws on iPhone unlocker

Jason Rivers

@ Ogdru

so... Where do you work at Apple then? :-)

Comcast throttles BitTorrent users

Jason Rivers

here's where it starts

I feel sorry for you people, I really do.

There are a few games I play over the internet, they are free open source games, and they use the Torrent network to distribute the files, because when you're running something that's free, you save the money where you can.

This is a real shame that ISP's are going to this measure. the minute my ISP starts doing that, I'll go else where, contract or not, because if I'm not getting the service they stated, then the contract is void - right?

/J

Lenovo to ship Linux laptops

Jason Rivers

@ Morely Dotes:- it's still not the UK...

I have found the Ubuntu systems on the US site, but they won't ship to the UK, so that still leaves my unable to get them over here.

it's a real shame.

Jason Rivers

I know nothing...

How can people like Acer say "the market in the UK is not there" They haven't asked me, or anyone I know for that matter, so where do those stats come from?

Do they ask *Existing* customers - meaning those that weren't too worried about the windows in the first place, and not those that went else where because they didn't do Linux on laptops (like me) - I went else where, and got my self a nice laptop with Linux, I like Acer, but they wouldn't let me have a laptop without paying the Microsoft Tax (tm)

I've never seen a survey asking what O/S I want on a laptop and going to Dells website and actually trying to find their systems with Linux on is actually a headache, A Manufacturer should offer the OS across the whole range, not just on 1 model.

I hope Lenovo will do this across the range, and not offer 1 particular laptop with it but nothing else.

Maybe one day I'll see a survey asking me what O/S I want, and i'll be sure to pass it on to as many people as I know.

J

Teachers vote to ban internet

Jason Rivers

not another WiFi Baff...

"These include loss of concentration, fatigue, reduced memory and headaches."

I had that when I was at school, Technology has nothing to do with it, I was lucky if I got to play space invaders on a BBC Micra!

Actually, you were lucky to find me concentrating atall at school, it wasn't anything to do with technology, it was simply the fact that I didn't want to be there, I figured sitting at home writing another game on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum was much more intuative, as it turns out, now working for a programming company, it probably was!

I find my headaches are less around this "infected WiFi" space. It's quite nice! =)

/J

Spamford Wallace banished from MySpace

Jason Rivers

spam the spammer...

I know spam is one of the most annoying things in the world, everytime I check my emails, 80% of it is spam, causing me to spend £600 / year on a spam filter for Exchange at the office.

I think what would entertain me the most, is printing it all of, and sending every one in a seperate envelope through snail mail to the sender. and then if everyone was to do that every day, they'd probably soon stop, I know I get in excess of 50 spam emails per day offering me a larger penis, some viagra so I can "stay up all night" - not that I need this, I rarely sleep anyway and "h0t chikz" i'm guessing for after i've taken the viagra. These of course are the emails that annoy me the most, opening my inbox to find emails like this, I find degrading and insulting. sending them all 1 by 1 back to the senders physical address through snail mail, would probably make me happy! ( though if any one does that, make sure you don't put a reply address on the letter )

J