Posts by Dick Emery

Lets can NASA altogether

We can barely afford to run a car these days.

Like any good idea...

...if it means the government lose money they will find a way to screw it up.

Not working anymore

Looks like Amazon have already stopped it from working. Well I don't see any download for free links anyhow. Just testing for purely scientific purposes of course.

Meh! That's nothing.

I have to put up with chronic tinnitus 23 hours a day 7 days a week. A constant hissing and buzzing noise in my ears. This would also prove inefective for me as I have high frequency hearing loss anyhow.

As a Simpson character says...

Ha-Ha!

The less crApple I see the better.

Thumbs up, because everyone is thumbs down.

Crease?

I wonder if it will leave a nasty crease in the middle of the screen and how log before eventually wear and tear would make it unusable. Paris because she knows all about used goods.

F*ck em

Resist at every turn. I will NEVER pay for their crap! In this day and age why are people FORCED to prop up an 'entertainment' medium? WTF happened to freedom of choice?

When you get the letters either ignore them or send them back return to sender marked 'spam' or 'no longer occupied' signed 'Landlord'. Or if you are a shitty scared child buy a black and white licence. They can't prove you have colour! :P

Hitler

I kept reading Hillier as Hitler. Hmm.

Online scanner

The OneCare free online scanner has saved my butt a couple of times. Probably why it failed. Why provide the free online scanner and try to sell you something else?

Kaspersky offers an online scanning service but does not fix all the problems it finds. They want to sell you the software. MS gave it all away for free so nobody needed the software.

Can't stand he heat...

...get a new ISP. Simple. Why stay there and moan about it when you can just go to a better ISP?

Hash changes

Hmm. I am surprised there is no program that automates the changing of a files hash. For image MPEG/JPG etc this should be no real problem as the format is robust enough to withstand it and to the naked eye/ear is usually invisible/inaudible. Unlike files that need to stand exactly the same such as zip files and exe's.

Price fixing happens

Price fixing happens in every sector of IT manufacturing. Nothing new here. They just got caught this time. Many others get away with it consistently.

People will always pay a premium for in demand items. If they sold iPhones at $100 without contract my guess is Apple would not be able to make them fast enough.

These things balance out. In one way it's a good thing as we are already buying and throwing away technology too fast which has adverse effects on the enviroment etc.

Paris knows all about throwing things away.

Muzak to my ears?

I just bought a 13 quid Asonic box for my laptop. Mainly so I could hook up a TOS link cable for digital surround sound when playing HD movies on my parents HDTV and surround sound receiver when I stay over.

But wireless would be handy. That's if I could also send AC3, DTS, TrueHD, HDMI etc. Oh but they want several hundred quid for those.

Re: Why???

"So game manufacturers deliberately stop selling them for PC or topload them with crappy DRM that they know nobody wants and then we're supposed to be shocked when sales fall?

Games manufacturers are trying to kill off the PC games market. It's that simple. The question is why?"

Ome word. Support. With consoles game makers don't tneed to give much support as the games will pretty much play out of the box. On PC's you have a multitude of issues to deal with like Windows and DirectX etc. Paris because she prefers easy.

No C4 HD

Still no C4 HD though.

WTF!

It lacks PC syncing, Exchange support, a headphone jack, and stereo Bluetooth.

Pretty much useless then.

Cloud AV

The only thing I can think of right now that interests me about cloud computing is using it as an AV and spyware scanner so it's killed before it even gets to my connection.

Pedo trap!

Seriously only a vulgar mind would think such a thing. No wait...

Crashy Washy

I installed it and could not load any pages in it 'Aw, snap!'

Uninstalled and tried to reinstall. Got an installation error. GoogleUpdate.exe locked up in Task Manager.

Killed process. Wiped folder where it's settings reside. Installed some Windows updates and rebooted. Reinstalled Chrome. Yaaay! It connects and loads it's default webpage. Then promptly crashes (No crash tabs for me the entire thing dies). Try again It crashes again. Try again and it loads and does not crash. But by this time I got bored and went back to FF3.

Ads?

I see no ads. Stylish and AdBlock FTW.

Sometimes...

...shit blows up. It's not rocket science you know. No wait.

I read it

So flad Be are not throttling. They just need to fix their damned DNS servers and all will be right in the world!

And for the UK?

Probably 95% ;)

Paris because she knows all about insecurity.

LOLWUT?

People still use that pile of poop?

Waves photo of Real's offices with grafitti that says 'Buffering...'

I'd like to see them identify...

...a compressed archive.

uTorrent tip

For anyone using uTorrent on public trackers. In order to minimize your chances of being caught. Go into preferences, queueing, set ratio to 0.001 then make sure the box underneath is ticked where it says about what to do once seeding has finished. Set the amount to 0 (which means stop once seeding limit is reached).

Now when you have finished downloading a torrent instead of it seeding all the time (Say you went to bed for instance and left a torrent downloading) it will stop seeding as soon as the ratio gets to 0.001 which on small files is usually instantaneous. Don't try this on private trackers though of you will be screwed ;)

Now spell 'abomination'

Is this some 'Speak and spell' reincarnation? Go back to school designers!

Isn't it about time...

...that Paypal and Ebay were investigated for duopoly and being in cahoots with each other?

I can sell you a nice coat but you have to Paypal it.

iTouch myself at night.

Seriously. I don't understand the mentality of people who have to be the first with a new toy. In fact Apple and others rely on this as a marketing trick. Have limited stock on day of launch and create a sellout. Thus ensuring it appears as desirable as possible to other potential purchasers.

Don't believe the hype I say. I'll grab one when they are a year old on PAYG.

Ah...

...those heady days of using Trumper winsock to connect to the interwibble. How I miss them. NOT!

Bollocks!

Seriously. There are so many factors involved that I laugh at some of the comments above. Especially from those people who think they know how everything really works. Do not forget the money talks and bullshit walks. The music industry (and movie industry) were made HUUUUUGE by you and me. They did not get to be so large and powerful by accident. Unfortunately us plebs (Or rather spotty teens with pocket money) were not aware of what we were doing. We made the big name artists big, spoiled them with 50 mil record deals and lapped it all up. We spent cash to put them there. We put MORE cash in the big QUOTE 'Megacorps' coffers.

Remeber this 'industry' has only existed for the last what? 100 or so years? If you go back far enough you will find that before the phonogram there was the pianola and the record industry back then forced that out of existence through bullying tactics. This same industry amongst others has continued to pressure politicians (Backhanded) into passing bills that extended copyright beyond it's real usefullness (100 years like the US for instance is a joke and was turned down in this country but don't be in any doubt they will keep pushing for longer copyrights) and denied the public domain of what it rightfully should have.

Then we have the fact that BECAUSE the copyrights are held for so long there is a SHITLOAD of back catalogue that NEVER see's the light of day again all on the basis that something 'might' come back into fashion and they can re-release it again for extra profit.

Then you have to look at how much money the smaller artists earn. It's OK if you are Robbie the 'fatboy' who wants to 'entertain' you because he earns so much from deals, promotions, merchandise, mall openings and wotnot that the bit of money he does get from the record industry on record sales does not bother him much anyhow. But for smaller artist they earn a pittance and have shitty retainer fee's on equipment and studio time that they have to pay back to the record companies.

All of this is background information and it runs deeper still with mechanil copyrights, royalties, songwriters fee's etc etc ad nauseam.

Now we have the internet come along and they are 'oh shit the sky is falling they are stealing our copyrights! Let sue everyone!' instead of offering a proper service doing some 'work' for a change.

Even when they DO eventually get arm twisted into offering a service through Apple it's all tied up in DRM and you can only play it on an iPoo and MUST install bloated failware in order to even access the 'service'. Then they even have the 'gall' to sell it at highly inflated prices in a LOSSY format with NO fucking case, sleave, liner notes or anything. You don't even get the CD quality you would get if you were to purchase a physical format. Then they eventually through pressure say you can have a DRM free file if you pay EXTRA.

There's even more I could say on this but it needs a fucking 500 page book to go through it all. Heck there are entire websites setup to detail all of this crap.

The truth is there is more to this than just the music industry wanting to sue some spotty teen who likes to get his latest popcorn crap for free. Look at the way the world is turning right now. Our privacy is being wittled away all the time. The governments (and corporations that pay them) don't want us having control over the media. They don't want freedom of information. They want the genie back in the bottle. They want to 'control' what we say and do online.

Virgin Media's CEO even said in a speech that he thinks net neutrality is a load of old bollocks! They want to have fast and slow lanes on the internet where the little website guys are slow as shit because they can't pay for the bandwidth and the big megacorps get the fast lanes (Video on demand etc).

People out there I implore you to *THINK* for a change and do your fucking research! Otherwise give it a few more years and you'll be taking it up the arse from an internet 'Big Brother'. You don't think that's happening? Think again. Read between the lines. ISP's already are going to have to retain information about your surfing habits for a year and the government wants it all on a big ol' database so they can peek into what you naughty people are doing. Because everyone is a crim right? Also we know how great the government are at keeping our sensitive data safe now don't we?

I'll stop here as it's turning into an essay. I just think there is more to this than picking out a few naughty music downloaders.

Plugins

Amazingly most of mine work when using the compatibility addon. The only addons that are pretty much broke Noia skin and TorButton. Hoping they update that soon! As for speed. Seems a bit sluggish on some operations, like saving an image file for instance (Have to wait a while before I can hit return to save it as it just ignores it otherwise). Otherwise I think I like it.

BTW nice addon if you like some eye candy is Personas. I actually like the simplistic skin of FF3. I cut down on most toolbars too so there is more webpage space.

If you don't like it of course then don't use it!

Maybe...

...they got a wiff of all the ex-Bulldog users running for the hills after it's anouncement that they were being 'moved' over to Tiscali's kit and billing.

Sheep

I've come to the conclusion that most people are deaf and don't care anyhow. Enjoy your hearing loss and tinnitus.

Crippled cards too

Don't forget they removed Video Mirroring because of DRM on all 8xxx series cards and above. Thanks Nvidia. You really know how to fuck over your customers.

No longer wanted

Waiting for the Acer. £199 better be correct because if it is it is MUCH more attractive an option.

Coat, because Asus is trying their luck.

Hang on...

...wasn't this already discussed in the HGTTG? They proved God did not exist and thus he vanished in a puff of his own logic from what I recall.

Anyhow. Most God(s) fearing humans are a product of their own social background and upbringing. The family is religious therefore it's more likely that their progeny will be religious too, and so forth. They often form larger social groups and communities which enhances their belief. My bet is you will find that there are many more loners out there with high IQ's and thus non-believers.

The hicks will breed like rabbits, stick together, have their 'faith' in their 'God' and ultimately will overpower the less well organised boffins. Logic be damned!

Paris knows all about logic.

astalaVista.box.sk

"@Dick Emery...

By Herby

Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 01:01 GMT

Your Spanish is bad, it is:

Hasta la Vista, Baby!

Or if you had the dubbed Spanish version:

"The world famous phrase "Hasta la Vista, Baby" is translated to "Sayonara, Baby" in the Spanish version of the film." (see IMdB)"

Sorry Mr Pedant. I guess I used to visit a certain well known crack site too often and the misspelling - stuck.

My only thought on those 'few' people who are using Vista and had no problems are those who either had it preinstalled on their new PC/laptop or wiped their hard disk (Or at least installed as a new install rather than an 'upgrade') before installation.

Furry pipes

Surely not just plain water? Well not the stuff that flows from my pipes at any rate unless you want a severe case of limescale.

Watchout!

I have a few around my area and nearly all are residential. I don't know about you but I find that next to useless as most are houses in streets. Good luck sitting outside someone's house in you car surfing the net. That is until my bluetit hat comes along and asks your to accompany him to the local nesting box.

Pirate icon because ARRR me hearties! You all be crims 'n' terrists of teh open wifi networks.

Buyouts

Also buyouts of ISP's should have some regulation on affecting customer service. I am about to jump ship back to BT then Be, because Bulldog is being screwed with by Tiscali who are (I think) being bought out by Vodaphone. Bulldog was itself a buyout of another company but it is becoming ever clearer that we the customer base are being used as a football for interested parties.

Ignore the spin

Call me back when the hardware is for sale at £50 or less in Teco's and movies cost £15 or less a pop. Then I might agree.

Joe 6 pack

The problem you have here is Joe 6 pack. They enjoy having a bigger thinner screen for the same price as an old CRT was. But the HD? I bet they don't give a toss really. More likely this will have to happen. BD players/recorders and media will have to end up in the budget priced section of a large chain store before they start buying it en masse. Look at how DVD took off. Initially it was the price that stopped many people from buying into it. But now we are at saturation point whereby you can buy one for less that £30 at your local Tesco's that plays most everything (Well maybe not MKV but that's besides the point).

Joe 6 pack will decide the outcome of this.

It's because...

...of what is happening with hardware these days. You now don't need the biggest and fastest system to handle 'most' activities including playing back high definition video. The top of the range systems are aimed squarely at power users. People who need that extra speed for intensive calculations, video editing and encoding or gaming.

For everyone else a bog standard PC is perfectly adequate and runs XP at a useable speed. Why do we need a new bloaty OS when the one we have works just fine? Until I see something groundbreaking enough to warrant an upgrade I see no reason to 'upgrade' to Vista.

Why HDD?

The entire point of the original eeePC was to make a cheap and portable system that does not rely on a slow, power hungry and liable to knocks and bumps HDD PC. So that model is off my list for starters. We don't need HUGE amounts of space for this. Just a bigger screen! This would run fine on 8GB or less. I was looking forward to a version with similar specs to the 701 and a bigger screen with only a slight increase in the pricetag.

Coat because this seems all about cashing in rather than innovation.

The little places get hit hardest

Me and my family just took a short break on the Isle of White. At on small station the price of diesel was 139.99 per liter with unleaded not far behind it. I kid you not.

All this does is...

...drive more and more people into using encryption and obfuscating techniques. They dig their own holes.

Can we have an icon of Brown with a dumb hat on?

I call MP3's and videos...

...on my hard disks 'Time Shifting' which is perfectly legal :)

Fat chance

The tax does not legitimize infringement of copyright over the internet. This is clearly a case of the music industry wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Likewise if they were to introduce an 'all you can eat' fee for filesharing at the ISP level you have the same problem. People who do not fileshare would be penalized for those that do.

The solution is simple. Revisit the entire copyright system and make it fair again. But that would lose the music and movie industry too much money now wouldn't it? Which is why they continue pouring money into politicians coffers (At least in the US) to fiddle with the laws in order to make them (The laws) work on their behalf.