Posts by Jan Hargreaves 178 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Oct 2007
Moka pot for me. Bought one in an Italian restaurant for under 20 quid in 2005. It's still going strong to this day and I use it on average once daily (mostly one a day in the morning, occassionally a second one in the evening or no coffee on rare occasions).
Lavazza Rossa is my coffee of choice.
Well... many reasons I can think of. It's not intuiative at all to get it to do anything. There is no start button, menu, or anything. Nor any explanation that you need to right click (I assume that is how that menu appears) to do anything. It's like when users first got to windows 8, it was almost impossible to do anything and users would sit perplexed and eventually give up.
Secondly, I doubt they could care less what tasks are running or how much processor each are using. Nor how much they have downloaded. This technical information is useful at times but it's not needed all the time. It's just extra unneeded bloat.
When you run apps how do you see what is running? There is no taskbar? Or is it transparent and nothing is running there? The thing is.. I shouldn't need to ask these questions; it needs to be obvious from the start.
So really this desktop is fine for an experienced nerd but for most people it's useless.
Finally... why are buttons, scrollbars and text so ugly in Linux?
People saying that apps should not be in the cloud really should read up on what they are talking about before making complete fools of themselves. The apps are not in the cloud, they are installed on your machine.
The subscription part is in the cloud. I've been a little low on cash lately and my payment failed. I finally had enough to top up my credit card and even after the subscription expiring I have been given an extra five days grace period to sort out my billing. You are given plenty of warning and it's only your own fault if you cannot sort out your own finances.
I love that I can pay £28 monthly and have the full creative cloud with all the bells and whistles (inc 50GB of cloud storage). I could not afford the £3000 or whatever it was for the master collection on dvd while it was still around. I thought a subscription model would be great in about 2008, at least for small businesses. And finally Adobe now provides that.
And finally, for people saying I should just use some other software... they have not heard of the killer features in the CC editions. One example is Content-Aware. I did a club flyer this week and had to clean up bits of an old newspaper. I remember doing this years ago with the cloning tool and it would take hours and still not look right. Content-Aware did it perfectly for me in about 5 seconds. Do that in GIMP......
One of my clients uses Rackspace and I am in the middle of signing up another. Can you call Google, Amazon or Microsoft? Well... yes but after being passed around several cities globally with people for which English is not their first language, you may finally get some help. Once they have taken over your computer as they can't just tell you what to do. Sometimes the wait for answering a call is an hour or more.
Rackspace have direct numbers all over the world. You phone support and within 1 or 2 rings it's picked up and answered by very polite and competent support staff. They are courteous, open and fix problems very quickly. Frankly its worth the extra expenditure and I'm sick of the lowest common denominator where as long as it's really cheap people put up with pathetic service. I applaud Rackspace for sticking to their principlies and offering an alternative. It's my favourite cloud provider currently.
I've been delighted by finally being able to subscribe to Creative Cloud. You can say what you want about it, but for me it was a godsend. I don't have $5000 to buy Master Collection. But $50 a month to have it is perfect for me. It will take me 8 years to spend the same as buying the boxed set. I would imagine that by then, there will be significant new features and upgrades that I will continue to receive as part of my subscription.
If you are in a huge company with a large budget for software, I can perfectly understand why you would prefer to have a boxed version. But surely you also want to keep up with the new features of the software? I really think that it is a great deal.
People complaining about getting cut off - well pay the bill. If your card is expiring it might be an idea to update your details before going off to work on location... There is a 30 day window for you to let the software communicate to Adobe servers, and warnings show up around a week before your subscription will expire, with periodical reminders.
And to the person who said that there haven't been any significant changes for the past 4-5 versions; you are either a troll or just totally ignorant. I cannot begin to imagine how many work hours Content-Aware has saved me. It must be in the hundreds.
"If you've been following the whole Win 8 thing for a while (your use of TIFKAM indicates you have,) then you should know the answer."
So is that anything other than... you can't? For example you want to watch a video online out of the corner of your eye while doing an email. Can't see how this is going to work in TIFKAM. What happens when somebody suddenly skype's you. It's just a complete and utter mess.
"And a lot less painfully then the generally suggested "Tell people to use Linux instead."
Photoshop under wine in Linux would really be painful. I've been saying for a long time that Linux advocates can come back to me when there is Photoshop or good enough equivalent on Linux. Still waiting...
For the record, I use Windows 7 myself. I looked at the upgrade options, including the special offer to update quickly. And quickly thought.. forget it. They are really not offering me a worthwhile upgrade.
Still...
The problem with VP8 is that it is a vastly inferior codec. It's compression looks much worse, at larger file sizes.
The fact that Google is pushing it is only holding back everyone from just getting on it with and standardising H.264.
Competition is good in certain areas.... but with some things we just want one that fits all. HTML5 is really taking ages to get going because of the squabbling over the video codec standard. Guys... H.264 is the best, get over it and move on please.
I wasn't asked to give alternatives though. And I intentionally didn't give any examples because sometimes you can end up sounding like a car salesman or employee of said company. Since you are now asking specifically though, I'll bite.
I use VoipStunt.com for sip calling. It's actually brilliant. A tenner of credit every 120 days and you get 120 days of free calls to about 30 countries. The tenner of credits is still good after that has expired. I've been using it since 2003. You used to be able to get London numbers through them, but you can pick them up for a couple of bucks a month from flynumber.com or just get an 056 number for free if you don't mind that prefix.
With SIP you only need 64kbps for a voice call, and there is no leeching of your bandwidth or CPU. I prefer a hardware device for calls so I have a phone that I can use even if my pc is shutdown. They have a crappy client, which works fine mind you, but you can use ANYTHING you want by just plugging in the settings (unlike Skype). We're even setting up a proper answering machine service on our server to handle calls for our company now.
For chat I use Pidgin.im - again there are plenty of alternatives and I have several accounts of several protocols running there (different clients use different protocols).
Skype is the horsemeat equivalent of a juicy aussie steak.
You act like skype is the only thing in the world that makes calls. You are trolling or what?
There are PLENTY of programs/alternatives that offer what it does. It seems to do everything it attempts very badly. Can't think why anyone would defend it honestly.
Those two (Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis) have been responsible for some awful software over the years... Anyone remember the failure that was Joost? Kazaa was equally awful.
Wish Skype would just die. It's horrible.
- The call/video qaulity is pathetic (epecially for the bandwith it uses).
- The rates are extortionate.
- The application GUI is disgusting. You can't even exit the program from the menu (how stupid is that).
- It eats your connection and makes browsing, VOIP calls, and other uses slow or unusable.
- Oh and it's responsible for killing MSN messenger on Friday (except in China).
DIE!
I really don't get the hate for Flash at all. When used right, it's bloody fantastic.
When used wrong (or when you could achieve the same results without using it), yes it is awful and horrible.
So shouldn't all you flash haters be calling for the banning of every other language/ development engine because if it's used badly it's horrible... so therefore let's make it extinct. We would have nothing left....
Honestly.. Chrome is far worse than IE at not following standards. I really cannot fathom why people in the tech community love it so much.
I build websites for a living, and Firefox, IE, Safari all tend to behave and do what I want. It's ALWAYS &#)(%@$ Chrome that has problems.
Or maybe it's just me? haha
What happens if you pull out the hard drives on your system? I bet it goes tits up. Pull the drives out of a mac pro and the desktop still functions, mouse and menus and clicking on stuff. Slide the drives back in and away you go.
It's a wonderful piece of kit that lasts for a decade or more. There are many good things about it, and the case is a lot better than any case you can buy anywhere else. If you don't like OSX then fair enough, that's your opinion.
It's just like an iPad is a bit more expensive than your bog standard chinese android tablet, but all the useability tests say it is miles ahead. 80% or more of the mobile browsing usage is on apple products. You pay a little bit more and you get better quality.
If you want to build your own machine then go ahead, it is a lot of fun, and you can mix, match and change everything that you want. A Mac Pro is obviously not for you.
Whoops, you got me. 0.65 cents per play it is.
As you said, though, even then... this is way more than they actually pay. I was also wondering whether they sold the branding of his song's page for an extortionate amount. Still don't believe the final figure. It's propaganda.
Regardless... it's still misleading, to paint a picture that Google is helping artists. They are worse than the record companies.
Now... if the label/artist did receive 0.65 cents per play... that would really help the music industry. Anyone have any idea how much Google charges the advertister for each play? You know.. they only made $50 BEEELION last year.
65 cents per play? Is this guy for real? I work for a company that has a large catalogue in YouTube and from the last month of sales figures available, our highest earning track on YouTube earned $3.84 with 19,997 plays = 0.000192 cents per play.
Must be the same propaganda machine that Spotify uses...?
That would be why most of YouTube is still H.264 then??
Also, VP8 is inferior to H.264 in every way. It's a larger file, it's a lower quality picture, it's a format that doesn't play on servers without extra configuration, and no support for hardware acceleration. Pretty lame....
Also video has nothing to do with this story so not sure what bandwagon you are on. If I have been caught by excellent trolling then my hat goes off to you sir.
Yup I bet all the traders for goldman sachs are using 4 iPads or Nexus' hooked up to each other...
Oh... wait....
Tablets are okay for a bit of work on the go but if you want to do anything serious you need a proper machine.
Goldman Sachs... they took all our money five years ago.. why should we listen to these fraudsters. They've probably just shorted a load of Microsoft stock before releasing this "report"
When a number of ISPs are giving you full untouched access to SpeedTest (and other speed testing sites), but then throttling/ downsizing/ cutting your capability everywhere else it starts to not become a very accurate guage anymore.
(FAIL for the ISPs doing this)
Looking at the pictures the author has posted, I can see every reason why they used a PROPER camera to make the shots for the advertising. The shots he has posted are grainy, fuzzy, lots of noise, just poor overall. But I guess most people now accept this level of picture. Laziness to carry 2 devices is all I can think of as a reason.
Can you imagine the ads if they used the actual pictures taken by the phone? They would be a laughing stock of tech world. Which wouldn't be so bad, but for the fact that the camera is supposed to be the most impressive feature of the phone... oh dear... the rest of it must be awful.
I do find it slightly strange how the review starts off really positively, but then this doesn't work... this crashes... this is not as good as the rival... etc etc
I'm glad some people like the tiles home screen.. .I just haven't met any of them yet. It's big, ugly, a waste of space, and as the author stresses - counter intuiative.
You may be paying for 30 Mbps but what are you actually getting?
That said, I wholeheartedly agree. Crappy voice quality like talking through wall socks, stuttering video like a 10 year old camera phone, and why is it that Skype wants to use all of my bandwidth when not on a video call, while my SIP only needs 64 kbps. Go figure. Have subsequently configured my router to only allow skype 200 kbps. Personally I never run the piece of crap... but other people in the house.....
Obviously has no idea how windows upgrades work. You miss out every other release. Is there one person in the world who thought Vista was a "mandatory" upgrade?
This guy is a bit clueless. Then again... he is a salesman. He creates nothing. He just makes money off other people's products. He can do his "work" with a tablet. Well... whoopdeedoo. CIOs have many choices today which is a good thing. And they can select the appropriate hardware and software to best do the job required.
Is he seriously suggesting that people will go to work, then do all their work for the whole day, sat at their desk... on a smartphone?
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