Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Wednesday 12 September 2007, 11:30 AM
Sony loses privacy complaint
Ofcom has dismissed Sony's claims that its privacy was breached by a Channel 4 documentary on childhood obesity.
Viewers of Ian Wright's Unfit Kids saw Wrighty using some choice language about the Japanese megacorp after it failed to sponsor his afterschool fitness club. The point being made was that games consoles like the PlayStation lure youngsters away from activities of the non-virtual variety.
But the best bit of this has to be Sony whining that the programme showing its logo and offices without permission amounts to a breach of privacy. Diddums! Would this be the same company that tried to spread around all that I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Spyware on its CDs a couple of years back? Complaining about privacy?
Can a corporation actually claim breach of privacy in any case? Answers on a rootkitted postcard please...
Tuesday 11 September 2007, 4:33 PM
One day son, all this will be solid state
The days of whirring, fragile hard disks are surely numbered, now that we're seeing a stonking 416GB of SSD goodness stuffed into a 2.5" form factor.
As Engadget points out, we're probably talking some serious money for this marvel, but it's a good sign for things to come...
Friday 7 September 2007, 2:23 PM
Wanna watch a laptop burn?
Once upon a time we used to write stories about notebooks bursting into flame, but these days it's a well-documented - if very occasional - part of the wonderful world of computer batteries.
Still, we like a good pyromaniacal photo spread, so click here to see some very entertaining office/Dell/fire shots courtesy of the Chinese-language site hi-pda.com...
Friday 7 September 2007, 9:51 AM
How big was Orange's outage?
We're getting some conflicting reports here about a service outage that affected Orange customers on Wednesday evening.
On the one hand, we have Modaco talking about a 4-hour-plus outage cutting off 1.5m customers. On the other we have Orange itself, denying those times (not, interestingly, the 1.5m figure though) and issuing this statement:
"Some of our customers may have experienced problems making calls, sending messages or using Orange data services between the hours of 7pm and 9pm on Wednesday night. Service has been fully restored and we apologise for any inconvenience caused."
Were you affected? What went on?
Thursday 6 September 2007, 3:19 PM
The lowdown on Asus' Eee PC
I must admit I got rather excited when Asus announced it was making a super-portable, low cost notebook, the Eee PC (stupid name, but there you go). As a reporter, it seems just the ticket for running around expos and such without shoulder cramp.
And now I can reveal some more details about it, such as price and UK availability! The full specs etc will come out early next week (don't worry, we're on it), but it seems certain that you'll be able to buy one from the middle of October, at the price of £199 for a 10GB-solid-state-drive-sporting model.
Just to recap, the LED-backlit screen measures 7", it has Wi-Fi and a webcam, it runs Linux (a special version worked out between Asus and Intel, no less), it comes with OpenOffice, FireFox and other open-saucy goodness preinstalled, and it also lets the user choose between skins that oddly enough resemble Windows XP, OSX and so on. Startup time is about 5 seconds and - get this - the battery life is a whopping 10 hours.
Asus' rep has told me the Eee has no direct target market as such, but is sort of the "consumer version" of Intel's fabled $100 laptop-for-developing-countries project thingy. The way I look at it, we're talking a piece of kit that can be marketed to the iPod crowd, and after its initial white-only launch we may very well be looking at multicoloured flavours. There are also whispers of a future version with built-in 3G!
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