Posts by Rik Hemsley
226 posts • joined Monday 2nd April 2007 16:06 GMT
FFS
Almost tempted to wipe OS X and stick W7 on. But not quite yet.
Posted in Seagate to whip out 1TB 2.5-incher
Been waiting for this.
I'll take two - one for the laptop, one for the backup drive.
They don't sell these here.
We have to make do with Porn Flakes, Honey Smut Loops and Golden Shower Grahams.
But
Who in their right minds would buy a Sony or Fujitsu branded computer?
Fire?
Just wondering if they burn easily.
Posted in Amazon prices up Zune HD
HD?
480 x 272... that's a couple of pixels off Full HD, isn't it?
Posted in Google polishes another Chrome beta
Mac
It's available for Mac too. Running it quite happily.
@Anonymous
That's right anon, you immigrate [sic].
Posted in Now Apple expands time
RAID != backup
If you drop your little RAID box, or it gets fried from a mains surge because that cheap "surge protector" you bought doesn't protect like it should, or you're unlucky and a second drive dies before you get around to swapping out the one you should have, or you delete an important file...
Then you realise that RAID isn't backup. It's a live duplicate of your data - and it's stored right next to the data itself.
Posted in ISPs scorn government net snoop plan
@Si
"Or are the terrorists just being used as a scapegoat again to make it easier for the government to spy on us?"
Yes.
Posted in 12 of the best... travel gadgets
So if we take all of these with us...
... we can be the saddest, most paranoid geeks at the festival?
@James Dunmore
Yes I have my mail set up that way and just tried your suggestion. It works perfectly, thanks!
Massive white space
Will it have the massive white space around it too? Is that paper, so you can fold it up in itself to hide it from prying eyes?
Sounds good
Only one problem: MP3. I'll stick with the streaming service (which I'm happy to pay for, as it's brilliant) until they do lossless downloads.
Posted in WD unfurls 1TB Scorpio
Excellent
Only one question: Will it fit in laptops, or will it be too tall?
Posted in Microsoft airbrushes anti-Apple ad
Not again
Time to have the debate again.
MacBooks do, at some price points, cost more money than 'equivalently specced' generic x64 laptops which comes with Windows installed. Here are some the things you get with a MacBook:
* A light, solid case that doesn't bend and cause damage to your components, nor crack after being 'lived with' for some time.
* Well designed and implemented cooling, so your fan doesn't come on so often, at such a high speed, or sound so annoying.
* A keyboard that's a joy to use. Unless you're on a MacBook, 'business' HP or ThinkPad, you're probably getting a pretty nasty keyboard, with spongy keys, lots of flex, and poor reliability.
* An incredible touchpad. Touchpads are rubbish in general. I have to use an external mouse to be at all productive - except on ThinkPads (trackpoint) or MacBooks.
* A very nice LED backlit display. Beats most laptop displays I've seen.
* Very good battery life.
* Magsafe power connector. Yes there are stories of people breaking these, but they seem to be idiots who yank the thing around by its cord. IME it's brilliant.
* Last but definitely not least: A copy of, and a guarantee of compatibility with, OS X. If you don't like it or need it, fair enough, but lots of people swear by it.
Of course, how much you care about your OS depends on what you do with it, but some things are likely common to Windows and OS X users. Here are a few of the obvious differences, off the top of my head:
* When you resume Windows by opening the laptop lid, it takes ages for it to be usable again. This is getting better, but it's still not like in OS X where the thing is ready instantly.
* When you resume WIndows, it takes ages for the thing to be connected to a wireless network again. In OS X, it's ready to use by the time you try to use it.
* You don't need 'malware' protection. This may change in the future, but for now, it's nice to not have to bother with such crap.
* Built in search works, is incredibly fast, and you don't notice it slowing your machine down, unlike Windows Search.
Having said all this, I really like Windows since Vista SP1 / Server 2008 and especially like W7, which I use all through the work day. I find the W7 taskbar much more usable than the OS X dock and task switching, which I find uncomfortable and clunky.
Apology not accepted
Never buying a Kindle.
Advising everyone I know to steer well clear.
Damage done.
Posted in Acer Tempo M900
Fashion
"Stick either in an inside suit jacket pocket and it looks like your mother dressed you, so it’s just as well Acer bundles a rather fine leather belt clip."
Because wearing a 'phone on your belt doesn't make you look like your mother dresses you?
Posted in Sony Cybershot DSC-HX1
Versus DSLR?
Considering the entry level DSLRs from Canon and Nikon are available for less, why would anyone buy one of these?
Metaphor
Are they just a metaphor for the human race?
Posted in Masked passwords must go
I'm with Nielsen
Most of the replies to this article seem to be by those sure that hiding a password /must/ be more secure than showing it. It's obvious, right?
Security measures require careful consideration.
If you make it inconvenient for people to use security measures, they will try to make them more convenient for themselves, thus degrading security. It's easy to end up with less security that you might have had before adding 'enhancements', such as obscuring passwords as they're typed.
Unfortunately reality doesn't care what you believe. It is what it is.
Disagreement with received wisdom. I'll get my coat.
Posted in Facebook knuckle-raps Intel, AMD
Idea
If MySQL can only run 4 threads to speed itself up, surely to take advantage of more cores per box, they would run multiple copies of MySQL per server?
Does the writer believe that they _aren't_ doing that, for some reason?
Posted in Fifty Quid Bloke, meet Spotify's 14p man
Love for Spotify
The Spotify client is excellent. It's incredibly smooth and light in feel, it's easy to navigate, it's pretty intuitive and streaming has never paused for me - nor has it ever taken a noticeable amount of time to begin.
The service itself is also excellent. There's a huge amount of music on it and I've been really enjoying finding other releases by artists I already know - and exploring new stuff, including via links to tracks/albums/artists/playlists that people create. It's also great being able to send people a link to one of the above.
Where I've liked albums, I've gone out (or rather gone to a website) and bought the CD so that I can rip a FLAC copy. If Spotify provided a 'buy this as FLAC files' for the same price as the CD normally sells for, I'd be using that instantly.
I am paying for the premium version because: 1. I want to support the artists. 2. I hate adverts.
Spotify is a portent of the future of music distribution. It may not turn out to be the actual shape of what comes, but it's a step in the (IMO right) direction.
Posted in LG XD2 500GB
Macs
But A. Coward, don't you know that Macs are bad? Who in their right minds, apart from someone who liked stuff to work, would buy one of those monstrous contraptions?
Icon aimed at my sarcastic self.
Not for me.
I'm not squatting next to the power outlet holding the plug in while it charges.
500GB drives
Laptop drives hit 500GB some time ago. When I bought my MacBook, I bought a 500GB drive to go with it. It's easily user-replaceable. I paid less than £100 for it. Apple charge £160.
I paid the slight premium for their RAM to get it upgraded to 4GB, but I wouldn't have paid an extra 60% for a drive upgrade - that's just silly.
@Steve Foster
This site talks about IT, it doesn't necessarily know about IT.
Too late...
... for Pryzbylewski :(
Sorry
My previous comment, which you censored, suggested that you should not have used the term 'caves in', as this was pointlessly anti-Google. I now realise that I was in error, and that adding support for a competing file format is not a brilliant piece of work, it's caving in. To something.
Actually, no, your headline is pointlessly anti-Google.
So where's the
screenshot?
Posted in KOffice 2.0 available for early adopters
@Charles
What is this perfectly good word processor? I'd love to use it. I haven't ever used a half-decent one.
Posted in Street View forced to reshoot Japan
@Stu
'Surely if its a "street-view" thing, then it should be set to average eye level'
Except that wouldn't work too well when it's got cars either side.
Sorry
My mind wandered half way through the article.
Posted in Street View forced to reshoot Japan
Snooping?
"following a Data Protection Authority ban on further snooping"
Taking pictures in a public place is not snooping.
Poking cameras through people's letter boxes would be snooping.
Posted in iRiver P7 8GB portable media player
AAC
What kind of lunatic even considers releasing a hardware player which won't play the stuff people have downloaded from the iTunes store or ripped using iTunes?
So...
How is this not just a helping hand?
You failed to explain.
Also, insisting on referring to Google as the "Mountain View Chocolate Factory" is just childish.
Posted in Intel playing virtual silly buggers
Guess
Did Chris Mellor just try to play with XP mode and find his computer didn't support VT?
Posted in Unicode bloat blights SAP upgrades
UTF-32?
"Macro4 SAP product specialist Markus Fehr told The Reg that Unicode requires four bytes of memory per character"
It does, if you use UTF-32, which is an odd choice, as most Unicode based systems use UCS-2 or UTF-8. Perhaps SAP needs to support Old Persian and Mahjong tiles?
Posted in Nikon Coolpix P90 bridge camera
Do what?
"Instead of lugging around a DSLR camera and a stack of lenses, you can stick a massive zoom onto a camera that’s a little smaller than your average DSLR and simply carry that around."
Because doing that will give you comparable picture quality as buying the DSLR and the lenses, right? They've managed to make just one, cheap, lens which is not only practically free of distortion and chromatic aberration, it's also incredibly sharp and super fast, meaning that the amazing AF sensor has to do little work.
I'll take two, plus whatever the reviewer's smoking.
Posted in Edifier Luna 2 desktop speaker set
Class D amp?
"The upsides of this are improved sound quality [...]"
Er, no. Class D amps are shit. Copying the article text from the back of the box again?
So...
Still waiting to hear any actual privacy concerns beyond the rather vague mumbling about having a privacy concern - but providing no further information. Any chance of spelling some out for me? I'm genuinely at a loss as to what concerns people about Street View. I believe people are entitled to privacy, so I'd love to be against it. Please help me out!
Military fuckwits
"[...] cause collateral damage - deaths, injuries and destruction - which may wipe out any gains achieved by killing the target"
Right, because what's important is getting the right balance of deaths and injuries.
Nice
I'll take one.
Pounds per what?
"The total cost to UK farmers - the biggest bloc of sheep keepers in the Union- is expected to be in the region of £65m."
So this is a one-off? Or is this how much it'll cost before they cancel it?
Posted in State-owned RBS to axe 9,500 workers
Bonus
Saving the bank this much money deserves a bonus!
Posted in Wi-Fi Beeb viewing may break law
Joke
This is getting beyond a joke.
Personal subscriptions, please. Ones that can use wherever we are. The sort we tap into devices to authenticate with the BBC. Yes, the system will be abused, but so is the current piss poor system. At least people will be able to use the licence they paid for wherever they want to, including outside the UK. And the BBC will be able to sell subscriptions to non-Brits, too.
Figures
40,000? Sounds like a plausible number for a single web spider working on behalf of a search engine. Or is that unique IPs? If so, that's a bit scary and the papers are right about paedos being everywhere. Not too sure I can believe it though.
