* Posts by Humpty McNumpty

68 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Sep 2011

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It’s official: Vodafone and Three to tie the knot in the UK

Humpty McNumpty

Re: This merger *will* reduce consumer choice *and* increase costs

Vodafones Smarty equivalent is Voxi, depending what exactly you need unlimited data for, it is broadly comparable.

They claim their current market share renders them incapable of competing with the scale of their two primary rivals, I could believe that given some of their financials and anecdotal evidence based on network performance. In my home town, Three has very strong signal but zero data flow on one side, they are aware of the problem and "have no plans to improve the network". Arguably between them they have some spectrum you could force them to give up, mostly the high frequency 5G Three has in excess, perhaps a new player might fancy another shot at a wireless broadband play.

Raspberry Pi production rate rising to a million a month

Humpty McNumpty

Re: A Bit Late Now

Are there tho', cheaper yes, better features in a cherry picked aspect - lots, better and cheaper, which ones are those?

AMD undercuts Nvidia's 4060 launch with a $269 GPU

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Reviews

It's an OK card for the price, but only because Nvidia is really taking the piss. It would clearly be a very strong card with a tiny bit more VRAM &/or a wider memory bus either one of which would often solve the anomalous benchmarks where previous gen cards beat it in certain workloads. How you then interpret that as a marketing whoopsie on AMDs part is entirely up to you or the reviewer, it certainly appeared to be a stinker @ $299 and OEMs may now be somewhat pissed, but they had sight of the performance numbers already so they must have had some idea this was needed, or even requested it.

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Tiers

because both of them will (probably) launch card in that series, below these card xx50s and xx30's if not in all markets.

You'll [BZZ] like Intel’s [BZZ] NUC 13 Pro once the fan [BZZ] stops blowing

Humpty McNumpty

Poor review

Most reviews of tiny overpowered little boxes like this do at least enough to establish they are thermally limited meaning you are better off running the most basic model as the full power of the higher end CPU's is simply not available. No such testing was done here by all accounts. And did they even look at the fan profiles (assuming they exist) either in BIOS or some natty intel tray app? Lots of default profiles for fan control are really really twitchy. In larger systems we don't notice because those fans are bigger slower and quieter.

Semiconductor world in for a rough ride as chip bubble bursts at the high end

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Messing with markets has consequences

Yup chronic, worse is the lead times are all bullshit, they move outwards with no warning, or randomly show up, with no warning leaving you with inventory you can't use because all the other parts are not stocked because they are still unavailable or you had no reason to believe they were yet required. Cashflow, design, shipment and features of current and future products is in constant flux making planning a complete nightmare and a never ending juggling game to keep things moving in some fashion. Being an electronics company over the last 3 years has been hell, and continues to be.

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Sounds like a good time to buy DRAM, except that...

It's also related to the complexity if timing and PCB tracking. Getting multiple SODIMM sockets of high speed memory into the very tight congested space of a notebook motherboard in is complicated, it's easier if you can go straight to the memory chips themselves. There's a new standard you can see on some Dells called CAMM that addresses this by letting modules stack, and are configured differently.

Desktop motherboards tend to state max memory capacity based on all future agreed capacities, even if they don't exist yet. Laptops used to stick with those that existed when the device was released. That often mean they can actually handle double figure quoted in a manual, I've not tested this theory on a very new device however. Look for the business orientated models designed to be provisioned in fleets and repaired like the HP 945 G9 or a Framework.. Quadruple tho' is ambitious in a 2 slot, we're at the end of DDR4 now and there are no 64GB single SODIMMS to my knowledge.

That's how we roll: OWC savagely undercuts Apple's $699 Mac Pro wheels with bargain $199 alternative

Humpty McNumpty

They should...

Dutch Gateway store was kept udder wraps for centuries until refit dug up computing history

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Cow boxes

My first PC was a Gateway, I seem to remember the adverts dominating the inside cover of my magazine of choice at the time (Practical PC??) a spot previously occupied by Fountain Highmead, they were a value choice tho' for sure, a DAN of similar spec would have cost more. A P75 with a 15"? Vivitron monitor, IIRC the monitor was an upgrade from the default unit on what was otherwise a pretty basic model at a pretty fair price. Of course this was still the era of computers coming with bundles of slightly shitty free software. I think we got Works rather than Lotus but I forget what else. The ~£800 price tag was probably less shocking than the sums spent later on what are now standard items. £130 on a sound card, £50 on pretty crap magnetically shielded speakers, another £100+ on doubling the RAM to actually handle running a soundcard

Xiaomi in the UK: Multi-eyed Mi Note 10 hits Blighty festooned with cameras and hefty battery life

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Will set you back £459

No indeed, Xiaomi phones all retail for far less than the comedic prices they list on their UK shop even if you stick to genuine UK sellers. They still want £320 for the Poco F1 FFS.

I've had it with these motherflipping eggs on this motherflipping train

Humpty McNumpty

Huh,

OK but what do you have to do to an egg to make it genuinely stinky, rather than just an egg?

When on holiday in Egypt we took multiple trips that meant the Hotel packed us a breakfast to eat on the delightful heavily guarded convoys such trips involve, they always included a hard boiled egg, and smelt perfectly fine. In the UK I wouldn't hesitate to break out a scotch egg on a train, down the hatch what what! (In no circumstance one of those travesties you can buy in a supermarket)

There are far more irritating things than food odours you can encounter on public transport, pissed up tramps that decide you want to talk to or fight them, arseholes in your reserved seat, that twat who's keeping a seat for his bag, football fans, football fans on the phone ...

TalkTalk kept my email account active for 8 years after I left – now it's spamming my mates

Humpty McNumpty

Re: BT

A few years ago one of our customers went bankrupt and we ended up acquiring what was left. This included the account details for the supposedly defunct BT account which (for reasons best known to them) was in charge of not just their phone lines but also their email and their website hosting. To this day I can still log in to that account, edit AND register domain details seemingly charged to thin air.

Not cool, man: Dixons spanked over discount on luxury 'smart' fridge with wildly fluctuating price

Humpty McNumpty

Dyson

The two most persistent pieces of electronics with very silly "normal" high street prices I keep seeing are Dyson vacuum cleaners and the fancier electric toothbrushes, they both spend about 50% of the year at the silly price and then the rest at 30-50% off. Unlike the examples in the article they do seem to (maybe) stick to the rules as to how long it was available at the normal price but they do also compare the discount to the even more ridiculous RRP in big text and the selling prince in much smaller text. I find this almost as snakey.

If you have inner peace, it's probably 'cos your broadband works: Zen Internet least whinged-about Brit ISP – survey

Humpty McNumpty

the number thing is weird

When I switched to Vodafone I forgot to tick the "I want to keep my number box"; I realised after ordering but before it was set up. When I called to say "hang on a sec I don't don't a new number" they told me they couldn't let me keep the old one anymore as they weren't allowed to transfer it but they could cancel the whole process. I figured sod it that is a few cold callers who won't have my number...

The service itself - for months/years they refused to tell anyone how to use their own router (they had family based ussge control focus to start), the supplied router is pretty poor, and had many weird quirks including at one point not letting the LAN devices talk to the WiFi devices.

I don't get sync speeds anything like BT/Vodafones tool think I should get 41M instead of "61 minimum" but I have no idea if that is the router or the fact my house still has a twin solidcore drop not the modern multicore cable. Like any other ISP the DNS is pants but otherwise uptime has been perfectly adequate and it is cheap as chips and has got cheaper. For gaming I get pings under 40 for a decent number of servers and Netflix/Prime/iPlayer work as they should, what more do you need?

From the (terrible) forums I get the impression the support if you need it is shockingly bad and from experience if you use the online support they will take you through your security questions check your account and then tell you theres nothing they can do you have to call the sales line (all I wanted to do was renew).

Back when self install was new I used Zen (and 8IPs because old routers couldn't handle the NAT table for hefty piracy).. it was great but if you don't need the support, why pay for it

BlackBerry, Sony, Honor and LG flash their new phones for all to see

Humpty McNumpty

They all suck to some extent

...LG, one can feel as bad for them as you like about the ThinQ but updates for previous GX flagships have been sporadic at best, and that's before the various hardware issues that seem to blight each one.

I've got my hopes pinned on Android One, so while the Play looks alright, its the Nokia 7 Plus for me, which should give the Play a run for its money anyway Adreno vs Mali is rarely a fair fight.

LG's flagship arrives with <checks script> ... G7 what now?

Humpty McNumpty

Not the DAC then

sounds more like they implemented a crappy volume control to me that reduces resolution.

Reg man wraps head in 49-inch curved monitor

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Has anyone ever gone so far as to...

Which would be this https://symless.com/synergy looks pretty good...

Wileyfox goes TITSUP*: Smartmobe maker calls in the administrators

Humpty McNumpty

Re: A pity

Unless like me you should have added a qualifying LG in front.....

Humpty McNumpty

Re: A pity

No so much if you picked one of their less popular models, like my total flop of a G5, very sporadic updates, never moved to 7.1.1 let alone 8.

This unit as well the (always was doomed) naff "friends" modules has a number nasty glitches which as far as I can tell are pretty common, getting warm for no apparent reason, epic battery drain with no clear culprit.

Buying a "flagship" doesn't always get you what it should I'm seriously wondering about something like the Honor 9 Lite

Timeout everyone. Y'all know that Musk's $500 'flamethrower' is literally a Boring blowtorch?

Humpty McNumpty

Or simpler yet

We didn't generally bother with the bunsen burner, just lit the gas straight from the tap

Heart of darkness: Inside the Osówka underground city

Humpty McNumpty

Re: King Arthur's Labyrinth

There are further tunnels without cheesy welsh folk tales that you can visit separately http://www.corrismineexplorers.co.uk/ and of course the slate mines of Blaenau Ffestiniog https://www.llechwedd-slate-caverns.co.uk have been open to the public as an attraction longer still. (Includes this insanity https://www.zipworld.co.uk/adventure/detail/bounce-below )

Erase 2017 from your brain. Face ID never happened. The Notch is an illusion

Humpty McNumpty

Huh,

It sounds like a good idea, until you have your phone on the table, now you have pick it it up to unlock it to read that message you just received...

While it is in your hand it is more convenient as you normally have a finger there anyway, conceivably having it on the edge could be the best of both worlds...

Don't shame idiots about their idiotically weak passwords

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Frequent changing of strong passwords

Ahh Hedgehog crisps,a poorly recorded piece of History. I must say I never realised they made it into a supermarket. Growing up we bought ours in bulk from Survival Foods (no Americans that is not a place nutcases use to stock up their bunkers)

Humpty McNumpty

Re: It was Ubisoft.

You can add Gentings online casino to that, amongst others. That allows you to create a long password but then the standard login form, and mobile page tells you the maximum is 16 characters. Switch to an alternative login page (possibly the password reset one) instead of the popup and suddenly the long password is acceptable

Connected and self-driving cars are being sent to Coventry

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Is the satnav

If, as would make the sense, autonomous vehicles make extensive use of "sat nav" and mapping data, the ridiculous errors everyone likes to keep pointing should be no issue. There's absolutely no reason why a the maps can't rapidly update to exclude the tiny single track lanes, unclassified roads, and low bridges as those errors are encountered. Just as with live traffic data, road type and suitability for the vehicle in question can be rapidly learnt by what will undoubtedly be largely cloud based systems updated by millions of drones (us).

Most of the existing issues are caused by locally stored very outdated maps on primitive devices that provide little or no options for feedback. And in some case, idiots... I would expect a "smart" car to be able to spot a cliff or a river...

You know what's coming next: FBI is upset it can't get into Texas church gunman's smartphone

Humpty McNumpty

Re: FBI can't unlock smartphone

One: Well the amendment specifically says "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" which opens up all manner of possibilities/legal wrangling even while leaving that in place. Moves to extend that right still further are actually quite recent. Also the constitution can be amended if the political will exists, the threats to persons,state and property when this document was written are different to those today.

Two: In phases with amnesties much as other nations have done in the past, you start with the most ridiculous and work your way down. There are also other options to outright bans, a legal requirement to hold and use certain firearms types in designated/certified ranges for example.

Make sure your Skype is up to date because FYI there's a nasty hole in it

Humpty McNumpty

Like we get a choice

Every time Skype has an incoming update the old version suddenly becomes incredibly unstable, in fact on my system this is usually how I find out my version needs upgrading, before the program itself notifies me officially/just updates.

Three-quarters of IoT projects are failing, says Cisco

Humpty McNumpty

Oh bollocks, IOT is a buzzword for something that has existed for decades, you could phreak a connected box in the 90s and and you can attack it over a normal network now, same problems, slightly different interface. Some things are connected because they need to be or because it makes it or you SAFER. Imagine that...

Intel Atom chips have been dying for at least 18 months – only now is truth coming to light

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Maybe everyone from Pentium FDIV bug days has retired?

For something more recent, how about the Sandybridge chipset, in that instance an issue that according to them was fairly unlikely to manifest itself in the working life of the product was deemed sufficiently serious to recall and rework every motherboard that (barely launched) chipset was on. A stark contrast between their approach to a fault they became aware of while the product was in production and this.

Humpty McNumpty

Re: If they're using an Atom..

Pretty much every NAS shipping with an Atom is sold as the faster more powerful version of a cheaper ARM powered version, so one assumes that ARM processors with comparable grunt are either hard to get or overpriced.

Busted Windows 8, 10 update blamed for breaking Brits' DHCP

Humpty McNumpty

Re: andy265

I've encountered this on 2 machines at work this week. Our ISP is BT but we use our own Draytek ADSL router.

Some Windows 10 Anniversary Update: SSD freeze

Humpty McNumpty

Huh,

There are technically ways to do this by customising the install but it is still a total kludge, a seamless storage system like Linux/Unix has but without the quirky fractured historical structure would be great . There is also the issue of the C:\ProgramData, a folder you never get to choose the location of that Visual Studio (and others?) insist on copying what appear to be vast portions of their setup files to and are apparently incapable of uninstalling/updating if that folder is removed/unintentionally altered. I guess they might argue that they would be designing a feature into Win10 that could be irrelevant in 12-18 months, an affordable 2TB SSD and the issue is gone for me.

PM resigns as Britain votes to leave EU

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Mission creep

Economic unions are political, else they could not function, much of the mission creep was inevitable. The mistake was to appear to extend beyond simply creating a level playing field with fair rules. Poor communication from MEPs and other parts of the EU Administration has resulted in widespread distrust and a lack of understanding of any of the work they do.

Somewhat ironically we will now start to negotiate all over again with multiple nations and bodies to establish our new place in the world, there will be wins and concessions and the body of this work will be carried out by non-elected, faceless civil servants.

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Error in report

Well they're all off their heads on Ketamine in Clun, they probably have no idea how they voted.

Telegram crammed: Hackers find way to send massive messages

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Telegram?!

There is nothing tasty about a granny smith..

EU blocks O2/Three merger

Humpty McNumpty

So presumably, if they had got there first 3/O2 would have been just fine and Orange/Tmobile->BT would have been blocked.

To my mind EE should never have been allowed, that made something altogether too big, by contrast I have real issues with BT (or maybe Openreach splitting off cleanly and owning a cell network with BT and others being an MVNO on top of that) owning a Cell network, it makes sense in terms of product offerings and many consumers like getting everything in one place.

However 3 networks on one piddly island that loves to use mobiles should not have a real problem being competitive. If it proves to be, I guess we could just sell some of their spectrum to a new entrant.

Web backup biz Monster Cloud monstered after monster price hike

Humpty McNumpty

How about Jungledisk

While its a shame it only seems to have a US base which can make uploads slow, it does provide us with a fairly effective offsite backup that we find more convenient and reliable than taking home some kind of rolling incremental tape/drive backup.

When I have looked at alternatives they are usually very expensive, to the point where you might as well just go back to taking a disk home, running Owncloud or perhaps rsyncing to a NAS/HP Miniserver at a remote location.

I would love The Reg to do a summary review of this kind of service at some point or perhaps suggestions in here folks? Brownie points for services that don't require you to generate and debug scripts to get it all setup and aren't soley tied to MS Server OS' AD or any of that other bling.

Data-thirsty mobile owners burn through 5GB a month

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Poor Web Development

Don't large slow pages hurt a sites Google ranking due to not being mobile friendly? Its certainly the impression I got from articles on here and indeed the "Google Webmaster" tools themselves.

Humpty McNumpty

Prepaid

So go prepaid instead and plan a little. Long term it is quite hard to get true value from a phone contract,few of us have usage patterns that fixed and repeatable so we buy data and minutes we might need for those rare occasions. Buying your own phone and going prepay allows you to shop around for the handset you want unlocked meaning you can switch it out abroad, change providers when you please and sell it easily when you trade up. That said at the cheaper end of the scale prepay is less appealing than it used to be.

Humpty McNumpty

Flaky

I don't travel a great deal but I've found roaming flaky. On a recent trip to Switzerland it connected to a network called Salt and I go the welcome message etc and small batch of Facebook/Whatsapp notifications (over what I have no idea). However the phone was telling me there was no data available, further into the mountains Salt vanished and instead my phone could see Swisscomm or OrangeCH but it didn't think I was allowed to connect to them, until 3 days later at which point suddenly OrangeCH was an acceptable network but data only triggered after I toggled it on and off (phone reboot didn't have the desired effect).Youtube certainly didn't work but Facebook did and so did uploading my photos to the googly cloud.

I'm pretty certain I had a similar experience in Belgium a few years ago with the stubborness about joining certain networks and lack of data.

As to contracts, I have a fairly old 3Pay SIM, Three's website states they promise to never take this tariff away. That gets you the ability to add 2Gb of data for £5 of your credit. Now admittedly this is nowhere near the apparent usage they claim people are up to these days, but when you have WiFi at work, at home and quite possibly several places in between how are these people burning through so much and would they be doing so if the allowance was lower?

Windows XP spotted on Royal Navy's spanking new aircraft carrier

Humpty McNumpty

Re: XP or wallpaper? And.. uhm, so?

I'm pretty sure I recall a similar article right here on El Reg describing the newest US ships (Destroyers IIRC) as running Windows 2000 so I wouldn't count on the US being any more agile. This was several years ago however and I cannot be bothered to find it,

VDI comes to the Raspberry Pi

Humpty McNumpty

Woot

I never understood why "thin clients" seemed to cost more than a basic drone compatible SFF business desktop.

Sysadmin's former boss claims five years FREE support or off to court

Humpty McNumpty

Re: @Voland ...This does not happen just to sysadmin

It also seems to be pretty standard with sales reps, handing in your notice = instant garden leave. As if should the oportunity have existed you woudn't have already pilfered client data while you were job hunting.

In the context of Sales it makes LinkedIn/Social Media use somewhat dangerous, you already have all the relevant contacts and relationships parcelled up to take with you. If you are any good you already know what you sell them with reference to records.

Hands on with Google's Nexus 5X, 6P Android Marshmallow mobes

Humpty McNumpty

Re: LG G4

Interesting, that would be pretty useless in Shropshire then and a little Googling appears to back up your slating.

Found this interesting link regarding signal strength on some current models http://www.androidauthority.com/best-4g-galaxy-s6-v-huawei-p8-v-lg-g4-612827/

Humpty McNumpty

LG G4

As a nexus 5 owner I was somewhat unexcited about last years Nexus 6 but it didn't really matter all that much as the 5 is plenty good enough. However at 2 years old battery life is now pretty poor so I was keen to see what the rumoured 5X had to offer.

The answer seems to be pretty much exactly what we were expecting but perhaps these days that is no longer enough.

The LG G4 has the same CPU, more RAM (meh), Higher Res Screen, (again, meh) , removable storage (good), removable battery (also good), apparently takes nice pictures (I don't get nice pictures out of the Nexus) and I suspect is about to get quite a bit cheaper inside of 6 months.

The LG G3 may not be quite as powerful but it is a perfectly good minor upgrade from the original Nexus 5 and it is cheap.

Tape thrives at the margin as shipped capacity breaks record

Humpty McNumpty

Re: "15-20 kilowatts per hour"

Damn, someone beat me to it.

Affirmative wrist action: Pebble Time raises 20 MEELLION BUCKS on Kickstarter

Humpty McNumpty

Re: hmmm...

Unlock your phone and your house with an NFC Ring perhaps? Another successful kickstarter project that actually seems to ship.

Audi TT: It's NOT a hairdresser-mobile, the dash is too flash

Humpty McNumpty

Re: not too disturbing

Everyone thinks that about the handbrake and then they soon get used to it and then you realize some of the things it makes easier.

Humpty McNumpty

Lexus

Pretty sure you can spec a Lexus to have a HUD. And I seem to recall Top Gear featuring a £50k Pontiac with one too.

Oi. APPLE fanboi! You with the $10k and pocket on fire! Fancy a WATCH?

Humpty McNumpty

Re: Hmm...$10,000...

GW3500B, aesthetics did play at least some part in the choice however. I do also have an F1 TAG but resent the absolute fortune required to change the battery and still have a waterproof watch at the end of it (£60) so it is flat.

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