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Comment Broken Link (Score 1) 20

Since the original link seems broken:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Alexia Sloane

Also - slightly misleading summary - from the various news articles discussing this, it appears she won a local community "Most Courageous Child" award, and as part of it was given the opportunity to go to Brussels and sit in on and interpret for an environment committee meeting - not quite sure how much of a prize that is!

Comment Old news (Score 1) 252

This is pretty much old news, this has been seen ever since Cataclysm was released.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/01/14/the-lawbringer-net-neutrality-and-mmos/

I believe the issue is mostly that the deep packet inspection kit that the ISPs use to classify and throttle/shape traffic are unable to distingush between Warcraft traffic and Bittorrent traffic since the changes made for Cataclysm, until signatures/filters/etc are updated to classify the traffic correctly, but in many cases they seem to be taking their own sweet time about doing it (or aren't capable of doing it).

Note that I don't really have a huge problem with traffic shaping as done by an ISP, as long as the customer is well informed as to exactly what is going on and why, some ISPs are better at cummunicating this than others.

I know several people who have changed ISP over this issue, but obviously this isn't an option in some areas where there isn't really much competition.

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UK Teen Banned From US Over Obscene Obama Email 555

British teenager Luke Angel has been banned from the US for sending an email to the White House calling President Obama an obscenity. The 17-year-old says he was drunk when he sent the mail and doesn't understand what the big deal is. "I don't remember exactly what I wrote as I was drunk. But I think I called Barack Obama a p***k. It was silly -- the sort of thing you do when you're a teenager and have had a few," he said. The FBI contacted local police who in turn confronted Luke and let him know that the US Department of Homeland Security didn't think his email was funny. "The police came and took my picture and told me I was banned from America forever. I don't really care but my parents aren't very happy," Angel said.

Comment Re:Monitoring traffic, not customers (Score 1) 139

I agree absolutely - from reading the article (I know - a completely unfashionable and unforgivable thing to do here on /.) I take this to be very specifically a malware checker, that checks a given site/URL for malware, either directly or uses the cached result of the last check if it was checked within the last 24 hours.

Is this not very similar to the google safe site service that's built into Firefox and other browsers?

Oh, and I love the justification for claiming that it records what customers do... "They said it doesn't record anything at all conencted to the user, but they might be lying, so sod it, lets just claim that they record absolutely everything." (That's high quality Daily Mail level journalism there...)

Comment Wrong end of stick? (Score 1) 128

My impression of this project from the media coverage over the last year or so was that it is a standardisation effort for Internet connected set-top boxes. i.e. consistent user interface, applications, widgets, hardware capabilities, etc, and a joint effort between all the UK television channels (with the notable exception of Rupert Murdoch/News Corp, who are un-surprisingly a little bit anti) and some hardware manufacturers.

i.e. it's not so much about creation of new technologies, more about making sure that manufacturers and content providers are all working from the same page?

So that we can avoid all the crap that has been seen with the many set top boxes recently where one does hulu or whatever, another does iPlayer, another does Netflix, and each one doesn't do the others, and needs a custom app for each platform.

Reading through the comments on here, no-one seems to be looking at it from that point of view - but seem to be taking the stance of 'OMG!! We don't need new IPTV protocols/containers/codecs/etc'.

I always thought that their intent is really not too disimilar to GoogleTV - standardise the platform so everyone can get on with watching stuff, or selling people stuff to watch without worrying about which versions of which devices etc.

Comment Re:Slashvertisement (Score 1) 51

If you follow the article through to the manufacturers product description page, they mention using multiple antennas and 'locking on' to the best local cell base station, presumably using some variant of phased array/beam forming/etc to minimise interference etc.

Although it's hard to tell from the pictures, the unit does look fairly large compared to a dongle, maybe about the size of a large dog food tin can? (i.e. next size up tin can from a normal size one) (But that is pure guestimation based on comparison of what looks like an ethernet socket towars the bottom).

Comment Not new - continuation of Windows Mobile 6.5 (Score 3, Informative) 179

The version of the article on engadget (here) seems a little more informative:

"We're starting to see that philosophy play out today with the introduction of Windows Embedded Handheld, which is essentially a warmed-over version of WinMo 6.5.3 with some key UI and enterprise-focused enhancements. Microsoft is specifically calling out an "extended support life-cycle" for the platform, a sign that these phones aren't for the gotta-have-it crowd -- instead, the company intends to push these things through corporate fleets where Windows Mobile has traditionally dominated, places where Windows Phone's flashy stylings and locked-down underpinnings won't have the same draw."

Mostly seems this *is* Windows Mobile 6.5 in all but name.

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