Posts by david bates

Re: If you've got a TV big enough for this to make any difference,

What do you plan to DO with the wall when you're not projecting on it? Presumably the addition of art, shelves etc would detract from the projected media.

Re: Consider me baffled

Perhaps you should....

If people did manufacturers might improve things. In this day and age there is no excuse for wireless networking to be problematic.

Mind you, only 2 years ago Acer sold me a Linux powered Revo with NO wireless driver at all! It had the hardware, and Ubuntu had no issues whatsoever, but Acer couldn't be bothered. £80 less than the Windows version, but still unforgivable.

Re: Low end?

7" screen means I can put it in a pocket. 10" would be too big for me....

Re: Cheaper Nexus 7

Backcountry Navigator Pro gives you all the OS maps (courtesy of Multimap) for a £8.00. Search isn't perfect, but its better than you get on paper maps.

Re: TVL

A loud, angry letter worked for me, and bought me a groveling apology. ..

Re: Toasted marshmellow

S 20203002 tang billy?

Re: This will not end well? Legacy?

But its a Windows Tablet, so its portable and the kids will be able to play all their Steam games on it, wont they?

Re: Palm Pilot

I can still Graffiti faster than I can swype or type on a virtual keyboard...

Lets see....

Bioshock plays nicely under Play on Linux - I dont game that much so have not tried may others from the list - or indeed tried tweaking any others for Wine.

How commercial do you want?

Re: Bit late to the game

Play on Linux is based on WINE :)

I suspect video drivers are going to more of an issue, although my rig copes despite having a pretty anemic graphics card. Mind you I've never played anything never than Bioshock on it.

Re: gov.uk

They might struggle to drive Rovers sadly but I see no reason at all why Cheshire East PCs are swanning about in Hyundais when Vauxhall is nailing Astras together in Ellesmere Port and Toyota and rolling stuff out two counties over in Derby.

Likewise why are we having BMW motorways vehicles when depending on model JLR can supply from Halewood or Birmingham?

Re: what? why?

I too have an ancient boiler, with an ancient controller (two on, two off in a 24hr period - thats it). I dont trust Combi boilers as they seem to be very fragile...but thats by the by. The timer is now set to be on 24hrs a day, and plugs into a cheap digital 7-day plug timer. The digital timer switches on and energises the old mechanical timer and the heating system. The digital timer switches off and everything powers down.

Digital timers are so cheap I even have a second one programmed for winter use and I just swap them over.

Re: Eviscerated?

What are you DOING to your PCs?

I only ditched my 7 year old (entry level) Acer lappy last year as it was getting slow and I didnt really have enough room on the (no longer easily sourceable) IDE HD to dual boot. Apart from that its fine.

My six year old desktop is on original parts, was a refurb when I got it and is a Packard Bell, so nothing special. Still runs Linux Mint and XP perfectly well for everything except gaming though.

Re: Natwest should do some research

Interestingly I've just moved over to FirstDirect (NFC on the card, cannot disable it, but thats another gripe...). The chap I was speaking to told me they only had an iPhone app, but consensus was that they had missed a trick not getting an Android one together - one is on the way.

Mind you, the chances of me using an app on my phone to do my banking? Nil.

Re: Personally i'm happy

I find a stroppy and ill-tempered letter directly to the chap who signs the bullying missives they send out brings a fauning apology and no further hassle...

Re: Hmm...

Those energy meters ARE worthless...I've had two.

You switch off everything you can, and you're still using energy. And then the fridge kicks in and throws your efforts to see how much power your house is burning in its 'standby' state. And then a month later the display runs out of batteries. The second or third time you realise that the display is actually eating its way through more batteries than anything else in your house and you pop it in the bin.

Its probably saved a lot less carbon than was spent during its manufacture and distribution.

Re: Decades of road safety research

Actually, for reasons I cant fathom, the M6 seems more accident/tailback heavy in the good conditions of the summer than the bad conditions of winter.

Re: Corks (was Works with Bics too)

Bear would also filter the smaller glass shards out with his kidneys though.

I've got an Nexus One as well...

Never had ANY trouble with either of the SD cards I've had in it (I upgraded to a bigger one), either using the stock ROM or one of Cyanogens.

What on earth were you doing to the poor thing?

I had to

read that 3 times until I got it into my head it was Windows Phone and not Word Perfect...

You might want to revisit Radio 4...

...because believing it plays 'music for the retired' just makes you sound stupid.

From Wikipedia:

BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history

Thats a bit of a fail actually...

I thought that very thing...I tried to use an old-ish laptop thinking that OnlIve would be a killer app, but it needed (IIRC) Shader Model 2 (or something)

Not only that...

they collect filthy water in the tray under where your hands go and then dribble it down the side of the unit onto the floor (or, hilariously, onto the power socket that feeds the thing if you happen to work here I do).

Then the groove round the yellow fancy trim at the top starts to fill up with mankyness. I do not lke them.

Being Medion...

I wouldn't touch it at any price. I've some some decent stuff of theirs in the past but recently any Medion/Tevion stuff I've tried has been rubbish.

They're the new Amstrad .

Google

LRX and Evoque...

In that case

an iPad is NOT a PC...it does what Steve wants it to do.

A tablet from anothe company, however...

But it is...

Its Microsoft on a phone. People who were plagued by earlier iterations are not going to know nor care how different 7 is from the previous offerings. They'll just stay away.

Not seen EFI yet...

but supporting PCs for about half a dozen friends and family the very last thing I want is a user friendly version of BIOS. I want text based. I REALLY want command line based. I want it to scare the crap out of them if they stumble into it.

That way they dont play. They break Windows...I dont want them breaking the BIOS (sic) as well...

Mine disappeared...

completely.

I foolishly let Kubuntu update itself...back to the command line :(

Luckily that machine is basically used as a network device, so I'll reinstall Maverick rather than fiddle about.

Primeval...

Mind you I still watch on a CRT so what do I know?

None of which means..

that people will actually bother to USE the 3D. My telly has a tuner, but Ive not used that bit of it in 3 years.

Talking of Straw Men...

"It's like messing around with the engine management software in your car to circumvent that annoying reverse collision detection system system you don't like 'because it is your hardware' . The result is a less safe car, and in addition to voiding the warranty and your insurance you should also be liable if you reverse over someone"

Ford will not care if I do something like that - they may decline to honor the warrentee, but they won't care. Likewise, as long as I inform my insurance company they can up my premiums, or decide they no longer want to cover me, but beyond that they won't give a damn.

Real world, tech example. Nexus One. When I unlocked the bootloader Google explicitly told me that if I went ahead my warrentee would be void. They did nothing to stop me. Likewise they did nothing to stop me rooting. I might have lost root with one update, but it was trivial to root again. They might not warrentee my hardware any more, but they dont care enough to stop me using their services or stop sending me OTA updates.

THAT is how its done.

Missing the point...

If you only want to commute and wanted to be environmentally friendly whyw would you drive a Bloated Parody, instead of something lighter, nippier and properly Mini?