Full Irish

Our works canteen, here in Co. Dublin, serves the Full Irish every morning with black and white pudding. People either have that or a scone. Funny.

Something to hold

I much prefer holding a magazine, book or newspaper (apart from getting grubby fingers) than my heavy iPad 3. You can read it, stuff it into your bag or pocket to read later, read it in the bath, on the beach, tear interesting bits out, give it to your mate/partner, write in the margins, whack wasps with it and probably other uses too.

So Long....

PLEASE don't make intelligent mice - look what happened last time.

Real Review

I want to know the power consumption, the expandability, the ease of drive replacement and what protocols they support, as well as the speed and price. Also the number of complaints/bugs.

Next time write a REAL review!

Yawn

Seen that already, RAF Fairford, 1983. Took the afternoon off college in Swindon to go and see it. Amazing.

Is that normal behaviour, throwing your wallet onto a table? Confused.

Shutdown Cancelled, Firefox failed to close.

EVERY time I shutdown my Mac (for serious software updates for example) I have to force close Firefox. Tedious.

I can't see ANY difference between FF9 and FF10. Can anyone enlighten me? Work on XP (yes, really, the retards) and home on Mac Lion (gradually getting used to it but still have a Vista feeling about it).

QNAP

I bought the QNAP TS-210 for around 130 quid and it's been fine. Looks awful unless you're into white plastic bricks but has all the functionality including Time Machine and NFS. Filled it with 2TB drives. I liked it so much I bought another one to back it up. Now have my stuff on at least five hard drives so fairly secure unless there's a fire or Johnny Darko incident...

I do like the look of this machine though and the drive bays are smart; but without NFS it's effing useless.

Invalid Parking Space?

Does he have the nerve not to use a number plate too? Steve was definitely a one-off CEO.

PS Gordon Crawford, 1/10. See me after class, I've read better written messages from Nigerian scammers - English teacher

Units of Measurement

To which set of measurement units does Coffee-Tin belong to? Also, exactly how large is a Coffee-Tin?

Tiny minds need to know...

Sales Of Goods Act, etc. (bit of a ramble, sorry.)

I bought a bag for my MBP from Amazon.co.uk and 15 months later a cord tensioner thingy flew apart. I sent them an e-mail and received one in return telling me to eff off. I replied stating that the bag should have been fit for purpose for more than a yea rand they should know this and next minute the telephone rings and an obsequian tells me that as my bag is only three months old he will refund me the total price. All somewhat surreal. One would have imagined that Amazon.co.uk would know the UK laws and can also see the details of their order. I have dealt with Amazon several times with regard to warranties, returning faulty or incorrect goods and they really seem to be a random shambolic act.

I agree that Apple do seem to be trying to ride roughshod over the EU two-year law at least concerning the information they publish on their website and they should be punished for not making it clear what the situation and their responsibilities in the EU are. We consumers do seem to get a bad deal when it comes to warranty and guarantee information, compounded by the ease with which we can move around within the EU. I think our EU expectations of sameness are not being matched with reality, maybe that is a high expectation but I am an optimist and hope that things will only get better.

The confusion for shoppers in the UK over the Sales Of Goods Act (www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/54), Distance Selling regulation (www.out-law.com/page-430), the EU to-year warranty (www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1677034/Two-year-warranty-EU-law.html) and what the manufacturers and suppliers inform us is really an unforgivable mess and needs to be sorted out. It is most likely a similar mess in all the other EU countries too with previous and existing laws and practices .

Apple Care

Apple UK just replaced the case, including keyboard and trackpad of my four and a half year-old MacBook, for free. Last year they gave me a new battery for it.

They replaced the motherboard of my son's G5 iMac a couple of years ago, also for no charge.

I am a content customer.

Radio DJs Too Loud!

I wish that the adverts AND the DJs on radio were not louder than the music. When will they bring in a law about that?!

Practicalities

My iPad2 is wonderful and bad at the same time. It looks and works very well but:

* I cannot do things like uploading pictures to websites, which is baffling!

* It is very difficult to hold for anything other than a short time. I would love to use it in bed but it is almost impossible as it is too heavy to hold up for long. Instead I have to prop it up somewhere, somehow, which is often not possible. This means that watching videos, playing games or reading in bed or anywhere where there isn't a surface to put it on is not feasible which sort of negates the purpose of having it.

* The lack of a handle of some sort makes it rather awkward to hold.

* Editing text is quite difficult without cursor keys, having to guess and poke and fiddle just makes hard work of something that should be simple and easy.

* I wish it had stereo speakers built in.

I guess these criticisms apply to most tablet computers though.

Solaris is a free download, they don't sell it.

Secure Communications

You should never trust telephones for secure communications.

EXCELLENT!

Excellent advice. Thank you very much for bringing a bit of sanity to the real world. My how the truth hurts the twits!

Cheers!

That would be great for me as a Brit-abroad. I am currently using a dual-SIM Samsung C5215i which is very old-fashioned but the choice is limited if you want this facility.

And where is the UK team?

Hmmmm......

I entered a couple of pwned e-mail addresses from members of my Freecycle group I am getting SPAMmed from regularly and they came up as clean. I guess 5 million isn't enough.

It Really IS a Good Thing

Any strong competition against Google is a Good Thing. They need to keep on their toes. It might be a bit rubbish but it must be a constant thorn and irritation in Google's side and will hopefully spur them on to better things.

My Firefox has Scroogle as the search engine.

Mac Viruses?

T'other day I succumbed to a temporary wave of fear and curiosity and installed that there Sophos free Mac anti-virus software on my MacBook I bought in 2007.

Sure enough it found three viruses. Aye.

All three were from wayback when and all were Windoze ones. I just deleted them. e-Mail attachments from Windoze users.

I have now de-installed it.

I'll install it again and re-run it in a year or two.

"examined by two government psychiatrists" I wonder what that is a euphemism for? A good beating if he's lucky, torture and death if he's not.

25% British!

According to the Beeb - good for us! Is that more than the Airbus?

Selfish Bastards

I spend a considerable amount of time and effort and money, being the IT provider and facilitator for my extended family. This is how it is supposed to be. That is what you are for. Just do it.

(I find for non-techies that Macs - used Mac Minis are the cheapest - involve the least amount of fuss, bother and call-outs. Windows never stops the grief and Linux is too baffling. YMMV. Keep backups!)

Sennheiser Contact Noise?

I've bought Sennheiser earbuds twice now, based on reviews, and have given them away afterwards due to excessive contact noise from the leads which was terrible! What are these ones like for contact noise?

Bubble Bursting (Alan Turing in America and Message stupidity [Wikipedia])

Alan Turing spent some quality time in America, meeting up with some of the brightest mathematics and physicists there such as Claude Shannon, Alonzo Church and von Neumann:

"From September 1936 to July 1938 he spent most of his time at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, studying under Alonzo Church. In addition to his purely mathematical work, he studied cryptology and also built three of four stages of an electro-mechanical binary multiplier.[21] In June 1938 he obtained his PhD from Princeton; his dissertation (Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals) introduced the concept of ordinal logic and the notion of relative computing, where Turing machines are augmented with so-called oracles, allowing a study of problems that cannot be solved by a Turing machine."

Our messaging people were just as stupid as the Germans and caused our codes to be broken too. One example:

"The B-Dienst, created in the early 1930s, had broken the most widely used British Naval code by 1935. When War came in 1939, the B-Dienst specialists had broken into enough British Naval codes that the Germans knew the positions of all British warships. They had further successes in the early stages of the War; the British were slow to change their codes. The B-Dienst could regularly read the British and Allied Merchants Ships (BAMS) code, which proved valuable for U-Boat warfare in the early phases of the Battle of the Atlantic. In February 1942, the B-Dienst broke into the code used for communication with many of the Atlantic convoys."

HF Amateur Radio would have (and does) solved the comms problem.... Goes over the horizon.

Hmm, beard is getting longer.

Patent Misuse

Patents have been misused in America for a long time, probably for the whole history of patents.

You just need to look at the patents for TV, radio and even the original triode valve that started all electronics. All these involved scams, scandals, deception and possibly fraud, both nationally and internationally. Some of them caused suicide, lasted for many decades and involved the companies and gifted individuals in large costs and also caused technology to stagnate. Patents are good for some but disastrous for others.

Looks and acts like my ex-wife - in her younger more violent days. I don't know why I always attract the nutters. Ah well.

You don't have to tell them your age or gender so their data is not reliable and therefore their results are not good.

Their groups are OK though.

The past is always simpler, cleaner, shinier and more moral and efficient than the present.

Just keep saying it. Will it be true tomorrow?

Korean War II

I believe America lost the last Korean war.

Lion!

The two most used programs on my Mac were Text Edit and Preview. Now both are broken and I really don't like using my Mac. I am trying to fins good substitutes for these programs but it's hard.

I used to love my Mac but now I'm a bit depressed about it.

Why is the Hardware Editor writing about software?

People Like and Use Windows

They use it because it came pre-installed on their computer (mysteriously) or it is on their work computer.

They like it because it is all they know.

Why would they choose to have it on a tablet? They obviously aren't. I guess this is a real test of Windows.

Even El Reg

Has Like buttons....

We are all just data resources.

Belgium

Still a great place for IT contractors!

Beer - oh yes! Most of the World's top beers come from here and are in the local supermarket.

Chocolate - oh my!

Motorbike laws are liberal (I am a biker and so is the king!).

They can't agree on a national language and so English is often used in bigger companies hence good for Brits.

Food - certainly good enough!

Fun - always something going on!

Connections - a couple of hours travel sees you in many interesting foreign places i.e. Germany, France, Holland, Luxembourg.

Weather - same as the UK so no nasty surprises.

Visiting Rels - nearer to most of the UK than Scotland.

Internet - our cable is very fast and getting faster.

Telly - BBC is free.

If you fancy somewhere abroad but not strange then Belgium is definitely good.

Amazin'

Unfortunately I spend far too much money with Amazon. I know I should look for British alternatives or whatever but Amazon are just so convenient, handy, English and cheap and and and...

I live in Brussels but work in Mons so I am never at home during the week at sensible times. Our supermarket 500ms away has a (B)PO counter and they are open until 8pm which is great.

A lot of items are free postage to Belgium which is good as there is no Belgian Amazon and if there was it would be in F and NL.

Just waiting for three more parcels to arrive....!