Posts by Simon Ward
534 posts • joined Tuesday 3rd April 2007 11:52 GMT
Re: I can feel the holistic synergy
ITYM 'leveraged' ;-)
Re: Ugh, more nonsense
Nathan Barley, white courtesy phone.
Nathan Barley to the white courtesy phone, please.
Still, on the plus side it'll keep all the hipster twats in one place ...
Re: No Google phone without data plan
WTF is google so goddamned reticent about giving users a private, maximum security vault so as to deny apps from going through our phone lists?
There's no money in it ...
Re: Lol
And Greenpeace will be after him due to a massive increase in atmospheric carbon dibaxide.
Re: @Simon Ward
Then my work here is done :-)
(admittedly, I almost barfed tea over my keyboard at 'Bungle's Finger')
Re: I predict
Also known in these parts as a 'Tibetan Blackbird' (Google for aforementioned birdie's Latin name ...)
As an AC has pointed out below, this now seems to be the standard operational procedure for tech startups:
1. Create 'product'
2. Get bought out by Google/Facebook/whoever[1]
3. Profit ... [2]
[1] - delete as applicable. Or add your own.
[2] - The 'former' owners, that is - as long as their pockets are lined, the users can go swing.
"Culture Secretary Maria Miller insisted during parliamentary questioning that the government's £680m Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) project will hit its target of bringing download speeds of at least 2Mbit/s to almost every Brit by 2015."
Presumably in much the same way that a bird hits a window ...
... also note cunning use of the word 'almost'.
Posted in The ten SEXIEST computers of ALL TIME
Re: Dyson
"Id like to see what Dyson could come up with if they set their mind to computer design."
Nah .... it'd suck.
Posted in The ten SEXIEST computers of ALL TIME
To quote the BOFH ...
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!" I blurt. "In fact, a REAL computer would have a hole in the front to push trees into and an exhaust pipe out the back for the black smoke to come out of."
None of the 'top 10' really fit the bill. OK, maybe the Cray ....
Hardly a mystery ....
As others have pointed out, it's hardly a 'mystery' given that emails pertaining to the changeover were sent out quite a while ago. On several occasions, in fact.
What's probably more annoying is the fact that I *didn't* accept the terms of the changeover, since I trust Yahoo! Mail even less than I trust GMail, yet still have access to my account. Not that this is a major issue, mind, since all it seems to attract nowadays is spam - if I lose access to it then I'm not exactly going to lose any sleep over it.
*sigh*
As someone who is at the sharp end, so to speak, developing frameworks and the like to test my employer's web-based, and other, products, the phrase that's currently presenting itself for inspection is "Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should."
Or, if you prefer the Dilbert version: "If it ain't broke, fix it until it is."
Re: God I'm getting sick of Fry
"Brian Cox actually has a proper Ph.D in particle physics, has a large number of peer reviewed papers to his name and spends a lot of time playing with data from the LHC. Frankly he is one of the most knowledgeable guys on TV, especially when it comes to talking about the universe and it's origins."
Doesn't make him any less insufferable, though - personally, the guy gets right on my wick (as does Stephen Fry, if truth be told)
<-- Flames, 'cos I did my PhD in combustion physics ...
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
Say what you like about the Star Trek movies, but 'Wrath of Khan' is a classic - much better than The Motion Picture, IMO. Also, another nod for 'First Contact'.
As others have pointed out, "Rollerball" (the 1976 version, not the godawful remake) definitely should be in there. I'd also add "A Clockwork Orange" as well, although admittedly that's probably a borderline case. Oh, and 'Stargate' - even though watching Kurt Russell gives me splinters it's still one of my favourite films.
Other than that, I must be one of the few people who thought 'Dark Star' was utter shit and that 2001 was horribly, horribly overrated.
Re: I'm a heretic
Nowt wrong with that - I often switch to herbal tea in the afternoons because I've yet to find a decaf tea that I really like (got a box of Taylors of Harrogate decaf on my desk, which is strictly OK)
As far as herbal teas go, I'm quite enjoying Lipton 'Morocco' as it contains vast quantities of cinnamon and, as any fule kno, cinnamon is pure win.
- Large mug (bonus points if capacity >= 1 pint)
- *Freshly* boiled water; even if the kettle appears to have just boiled I'll pop it on regardless. Eco-tards can kiss my behind.
- Tea: depends on how I feel - Assam or Kenyan Nilgiri for preference, but I am fond of Lapsang Souchong. Yorkshire Tea will do in a pinch.
- Milk: got to be lacto-free for me (lactose intolerant, y'see) but I often have Lapsang black.
- Sugar: none. I'm diabetic, so real sugar is a no-no - sweetener just makes the tea taste nasty.
As for brewing time: if the tea absorbs light and can float an iron bar then its ready - I'll only mash the bag if I'm in a hurry, otherwise I'll just let the tea brew 'naturally'; 4-5 minutes is usually enough, maybe a bit less for Assam.
Here endeth the lesson :-)
Re: Would this count as change in terms...
Interesting question, and one I wouldn't mind knowing the answer to.
I am a Sky user, having just upgraded my connection to fibre on a 12 month contract. Up until now I've had absolutely no issues with their broadband offering but if they start doing boneheaded shit like this then I'm moving elsewhere.
Posted in Amazon patents digital resale market
"they’ll quit storing stuff on local devices"
Dear Jeff,
No we bloody well won't.
Love, hugs and strawberry jam etc.
I don't think it's any coincidence that Jeff Bezos bears more than a passing resemblance to Dr. Evil if you squint hard enough.
Re: James Bond
For Star Wars why don't we wait and see?
Because George Lucas has comprehensively pissed away whatever good-will was left amongst fans of Star Wars?
I'm trying to keep an open mind, but after the three piles of shite that were Eps 1-3, not to mention Lucas' interminable meddling with the original trilogy (ie. Yet Another Remastered Version with 3.1592sec of unseen footage) it's proving to be difficult.
Although, as others have pointed out, meddling notwithstanding 'Empire' stands as a crowning moment of awesome.
Oh dear ...
One can hope that it'll be more accurate than Wikitravel - it's difficult to see how it could be otherwise.
You owe me a new keyboard ... bitch
"as long as the companies are willing to honour the privacy of folks sharing content on Facebook, we'll work with them."
Yeah, right - dry that one out and you could fertilise the Sahara.
Interesting ...
Given a choice between plonking myself in front of the shit-pump or giving it six-nowt with a BFO electrickery-powered hammer I know which one I'd choose :-)
Kids, eh?
Mushroom cloud, 'cos that's invariably what would happen if I did any work on electrics ...
Sack the marketing guy ...
I don't see any synergies being leveraged.
Aaahhhh Perl ....
I once described it to someone as being the 21st century's answer to FORTH.
Granted, I don't use it as much as I used to now but if you need to process a lot of text in a hurry it's pretty difficult to beat. Ditto if you need to hack together a one-liner.
Raising a glass to the Pathalogically Eclectic Rubbish Lister :-)
Re: Toutatis?
Or Two-tatties?
Re: Niggardly?!
There's also the fact that 'n-word-ly' sounds plain dumb.
Re: Go Chinese!
Quite so.
This further reinforces my belief that when we do eventually put a man on Mars (or even revisit the Moon) they probably won't be Russian or American.
Oh dear ...
If these take off in any signficant way I expect we'll see utility companies creating gravity tariffs which will then increase on a quarterly basis as a result of 'the increasing wholesale cost of gravity' ...
Posted in Review: Mio Cyclo 300 cycling satnav
Pretty much useless for long-distance riders, then ...
10-12hr battery life might just make it through a typical weekend ride for me, whereas the integral battery means that it's damn near impossible to charge in the field compared with, say, something like a Garmin eTrex which takes a couple of AA batteries.
I imagine that the roadies and uber-commuters will love it, though.
Re: I remember Ubuntu...
Ubuntu? Isn't that the one that was the Greatest distro of all time - until they utterly lost the plot?
That'll be the one.
To be fair, Ubuntu did do quite a bit to flatten out the initial learning curve associated with learning/installing/generally dicking about with Linux. All was well in the world. Sort of.
That was, of course, until someone at Canonical decided that they wanted Ubuntu to look and behave like OS X and the net result was the unholy pile of crap we've come to know as 'Unity'. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the main reason I booted Ubuntu into touch was because Unity is a smouldering pile of fail. As a result of this, I now point folks at one of the *buntu derivatives although I'm currently in the process of downloading Mint so I can chuck it into a VM and take it for a spin.
Way ahead of him ...
I ditched Ubuntu, and stopped recommending it to others, quite a while ago.
Granted, this was more to do with the Unity clusterfuck than any 'spyware', perceived or otherwise.
For desktop use, I generally use one of the *buntu derivatives (Lubuntu at present, although Xubuntu is just as good) - I run CentOS on my servers.
Re: a couple more
This.
Interesting that Dwarf Fortress is on there but Civilization isn't - other than that, barring a couple of games that I'd not actually heard of, it's a fairly comprehensive list. Can't really argue with the list of games they plan to add, either, although the original ADVENTURE would sit rather nicely with Zork.
To my mind, there are only a couple of omissions: I'd definitely have had Wolfenstein 3D or Doom on there, since they both pretty much defined the FPS as we know it today, and I'd have Elite (BBC version, naturally ;-) ) in favour of EVE Online if we're talking about space sims. I'd also add one of the Civilization II and possibly Age of Empires II as well, thus covering turn-based and real-time strategy games.
Also interesting that weapons-grade weirdness is more-than-adequately represented by Katamari Damacy :-)
G+ has ads?!
Actually, this is a semi-serious question - I've been on G+ since the early days and one of the really great things about it was the lack of ads and whatnot compared to FacePalm. Or, to put it another way, I didn't need to dick around endlessly with AdBlock Plus filters to clean up my G+ 'experience', again in stark contrast to Facebook.
All this talk of due diligence (or the lack thereof)
If there really *was* a failure in due diligence, and it sure as hell sounds like there was, then surely HP should be taking aim at KPMG and Toilette and Douche ...
All that said, HP do have a fair amount of previous in the 'monumentally expensive fuckup' stakes (EDS and Palm, to name but two)
I just don't bother.
Call me a miserable bastard if you like, but I just don't bother with Christmas parties - potentially saves a lot of embarrassment in the long run.
It's depressing enough that I'm (usually) the sole teetotaller in a room full of people trying their very best to drink themselves into a coma is monumentally depressing, but the false bonhomie that usually accompanies Christmas parties really grates (you hate you/you hate me - why should today be any different from the other 364 in the year?)
Also, I'm not really a party person. Full stop, end of story.
Bah-bloody-humbug.
<--- Well, he looks a bit Scrooge-ish.
Re: Meh...
Maiden's "Live After Death" - end of 'best live album in the world, ever' discussion ;-)
<-- Devil, 'cos it's the closest I can find to an Eddie icon.
Re: Loudness War
Or, as I prefer to describe it, utterly butchered.
A dirty deed, indeed.
Re: Vote ME for Commissioner
A third question:
Does Joe/Jill Average actually know who they're supposed to be voting *for*? If this area is in any way representative, they'll have heard precisely bugger-all about who their prospective candidates are, much less if they're actually qualified to do the job in hand (OK, so chances are they're failed councillors who couldn't hack it at the big kid's table, but you get the idea)
The whole exercise strikes me as an example of devolution of responsibility.
Posted in Angry Birds Star Wars game review
Re: I really really really...
In that case I have no social life. Deal with it.
Posted in Angry Birds Star Wars game review
Surprisingly good fun
Admittedly, I'm a bit of an Angry Birds fanboy but I was initially a undecided about this given the propensity for a lot of Star Wars(themed) games to be complete and utter shit, albeit with a few notable exceptions.
This isn't a simple re-skin of Angry Birds - it combines the best bits of 'regular' Angry Birds and 'Angry Birds Space' (as well as the worst bits, viz. boss battles) and managed to keep it relatively fresh by modifying the birds' abilities, such as lightsabres, blasters etc. and the 'upgrade' of a bird's abilities as you progress is a nice touch too.
In the end, though, it's still a cash cow albeit a fun one and still the old 'point and fling' Angry Birds. 'Bad Piggies', on the other hand, is absolutely brilliant.
Re: Anybody else remember The Goodies...
Close, but no cigar ... it was an episode of The Young Ones ("Oil", if I remember rightly)
Pricing fail ...
£269 for the base model? They're having a giraffe .... never mind iPad Mini, it's more like an iPod Maxi.
I now eagerly await the news that the iPod Touch will be rebranded as the iPad Nano ...
Re: Dafuq?
It's a couple of steps above yer typical AVR-powered LED cube, but yeah, this sort of thing could easily be achieved with a Raspberry Pi, a bunch of LEDs and perhaps a bit of GPIO trickery.
Still, at least it looks nice, eh?
Posted in Sony Vaio T13 Ultrabook review
Double fail ...
1366x768 *and* made by Sony.
Looks like the Ultrabook market is trying to strangle itself at birth rather than let Microsoft and Intel beat it to death like they did with netbooks.
Too little, too late.
HD model notwithstanding, I suspect that most people who wanted a Kindle Fire in the UK either got one shipped from the US and/or bought a Nexus 7 and installed the Kindle app on it.
Hell, some of them might have bought an iPad and entered Zombie Steve's Walled Garden.
Too little, too late, especially if the rumours of a 3G Nexus 7 and forthcoming 'Nexus 10' have any truth to them.
It's nearly here ...
Obviously they're talking about the granting of their patent on the use of numbers.
Anyone fancy a Kindle Fire 2?
No thanks, I've got a Nexus 7 with the Kindle app installed.
Had the original Fire been released over here I'd probably have bought one, but it wasn't so I couldn't.
Amazon's loss is Google's gain.
Posted in Neil Armstrong dies aged 82
Reluctant or not ...
... the man was a hero long before the term was worn to paper-thinness. Indeed, not just a hero of his time but for all time.
If there is an afterlife, then I reckon that there could be some interesting conversations between Armstrong and Gagarin.
Rest In Peace.
"Meanwhile, Facebook fans with Android-loaded handsets will continue to have to play the waiting game as the dominant social network is yet to update that version of its app."
Really? I've had updates for my HTC Desire and Nexus 7 over the past day or two.
The app's still a load of shit, though.
Re: Erm... exactly why do we need PLT anyway?
Maybe you've never had to deploy a network in a multi-floor building built at a time when builders used proper bricks and mortar rather than the mix of plasterboard, snot and sawdust that prevails nowadays.
My last place of work was in an Edwardian-era building with limited ability to lay additional Cat-5 (listed building, meaning there were some fairly strict restrictions on what could be done inside and out)
- We wanted to lay more Cat-5. We couldn't (see above)
- There was too much attenuation between floors for a single WiFi access point to be of any use (for a variety of reasons said access point would have to live on the ground floor)
The best solution was wireless access points on each floor connected to the network backbone via powerline networking kit.
Don't knock it. It worked.
