Posts by Daz555

Mo-in-law has parkinsons which rules out all the touchscreen mobiles. She'd be happy for some smartphone features but they seem to be long gone from phones with a nice clear keypad. She went for a Doro clamshell in the end. Basic but very good it is too. Battery lasts for a century.

I find it hard to criticise Sony because everything I have ever personally bought from them has been superb - Walkmans, "ghetto" blasters, Playstation, Playstation 2, PSP, TVs, amplifier, DVD players, car stereos and on....

I can't right now think of a single Sony product that I've bought which has packed up too soon either.

Hey ho, we all have our own manufacture mares to tell - just happens that none of mine are Sony.

I'm not concerned about having a TV connected to the Net - I'm not "logged in" to anything on it like Facebook or Netflix so no risk there and web browsing on a smart TV is a shambolic experience - again no risk there because I don't bother.

I would be concerned if my TV had a mic or camera though. Handily it does not. Probably because I'm too tight to spend the money on such a TV.

""The legitimate market for digital content was being “prevented from reaching its full potential” by mass piracy. "

Shall we rephrase that to something reflecting reality.

"Failure of the digital content market to meet the needs of consumers is driving many consumers to piracy."

I think Office 97 came on about 40 floppies for those not blessed with a CDROM. Fun fun fun.

Curved - looks utterly stupid unless you are sat right in centre front of it. Great for the minority with home cinema rooms I suppose but for most of us with a TV in the corner of a room and a wide range of viewing angles they make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

As for 4k. I'll buy one shortly after I get the robo eye upgrade which allows me to distinguish such small pixels from the other side of my living room.

So this OpenSSL thing could bring down COD online?

Every cloud.....

I was fairly shocked to read about this. I run OpenVPN on my home server....surely OpenVPN hasn't let me down I thought?,.........it had. Bugger.

Still at least it was an easy fix. Updated OpenVPN Access Server to latest and now I appear to be clear. Changed my openvpn and server passwords to be safe also.

And these powers do what exactly? Increasing the traffic for sites advertising proxies seems to be the only impact.

Surely TV sales just tick along nicely and every generation of tech go mad for a few years - colour, flatter squarer tube, widescreen, LCD, etc.

So we have been through the last "let's all upgrade phase" and are now all just sitting back and watching TV. This can have come as no surprise to the industry.

I have bought 3 TVs in 20 years and still have all 3 - a 22" CRT, a 32"LCD and a 40"LED. Unless one breaks I can't see me buying another one for many many years.

The CRT is kept for lightgun games for those interested!

On twitter they used the analogy of dragging a suitcase along rather than pushing it. Could it be down to unequal weight disribution? - If it is heavier at the front there is perhaps a chance it rolls smoother in reverse?

Isn't duck racing just littering - ie chucking plastic into a river?

Anyone would think these companies start up with the ver INTENTION of one day being bought out by a big player.

Oh yes, they do don't they.

Mod it.

As with the Sony PSP the Wii only really comes to life when you mod it. A hacked Wii with homebrew channel etc and a load of emulators installed is really a nice bit of kit to have under the TV.

I have to say my kids do love the Wii. The console is poweful enough for most kids games - Lego et al. So it will be more than enough for my living room until the PS4 price drops significantly.

As for the WiiU. No thanks - that PDA screen controller thing is a monstrosity. Is there a modding scene yet for the WiiU?

I get so annoyed when the cost of the BBC is brought into question. It is simply the finest broadcaster on the planet. No question.

Bloody hell, www.bbc.co.uk/everysubjectimagineableincludinghowtopassyourgcse is in itself probably worth the licence fee alone.

Please, leave the BBC alone.

I simply use OpenVPN and connect to my network directly.

Nook - great bit of kit. People do not know what they are missing. I picked the Glow up from Argos for under 50 notes, rooted it, installed a launcher, and now have a e-reader/tablet hybrid which means I'm able to install the apps from Kindle Kobo etc. Allows me to buy a book from whichever store is the cheapest at the time and play some graphically simple games from time to time like chess.

Surely a reflective surface emits new photons rather than bouncing back the originals.

Thankfully no need to worry about crappy conversions - I love firing this up on MAME from time to time. The soundtrack alone is worth it and the emulation is spot on.

How many have noticed the "optimal coding" employed back in the day. To save memory the sprites of the car as it goes left and right are simply mirror images of each other - you can see the Ferrari badge flip back and forth as you turn.

Their motive is money. They know snooping is bad for business. As far as they are concerned snooping on their customers should be limited only to themselves in support of extracting more money from them via accurate consumer profiling.

Legacy systems? Show me the money. Stay current always. Nothing however beats being one of the few guys who knows something about that mission-critical piece of crap no-one dares even to reboot.

Seriously? We are going to lose backwards compatibility for the sake of turning a cable the right way round? Kids today..........

I watched Stephen King's "Maximum Overdrive" last night in honour of the late Ison. RIP.

Xbone and PS4 will be around for a decade. I'll wait for a couple of minor revisions before I leap into the next gen.

20% of drives dead at 4 years? Sorry Mr Drive Makers, but that is simply not good enough.

Virgin's policy is in black and white and has been since they started traffic management. I don't get the drama. I mean what sort of idiot bases their purchasing decisions on advertising campaigns featuring Usain Bolt and Doctor Who - surely we should always look at the detail before chucking away our money?

Anyway, I signed up for Virgin broadband 512Kbps about 12 or 13 years ago. I now find myself on 60Mbps having not actually ever asked for an upgrade - which is odd, but there you go. During that time my broadband connection has only once been unavailable to me (for about 3 hours). Yes that might be just down to blind luck - but I can't criticise Blueyonder/Telewest/Virgin's provision of my broadband in all those years.

As for the top 3% of users who get hit regularly by the throttle and find that the Game of Thrones Series 2 1080P torrent takes an hour longer to download - so what - have a cup of tea and stop moaning - or go find another ISP.

DAB is laughably bad. Aside form the large number of channels (which often cannot be received) I can't think of a single redeeming feature.

The only good thing about DAB is that as a result of the hype I bought a Pure receiver. Thankfully is also does FM and Internet radio - saving me from the horrifying stuttery mess of DAB.

21 URLs blocked. Another 1021 new ones to choose from.

Genius.

At the very least the block list lets us know which torrent sites are probablty quite good - and therefore we know which ones are worth finding proxies for.

Dear "The Man". Thanks for the heads up.

It's not great. Still the best on the market though.

Organisations with money can simply arrange for a custom support agreement with Microsoft - and their lovely ancient XP workstations will remain patched for a good while yet.

Surely I won't need to be a great 3D modeller. There will eventually be loads available on torrent sites I expect.....

Hardly surpsing. DAB is a terrible standard and a backwards step in terms of audio quality in comparison to FM.

I fell into being a buy-to-let landlord a few years ago because I needed to move house (baby on the way) but could not sell the one I lived in - no-one would buy it.

So it seems I'm now to be the wall against which all others are shot, come the revolution. Now, does this mean I end up being shot or not? Answers on a post card.

Since being a landlord however I'm astonished at the demand for houses - you stick it on Gumtree for 5 mins and 10 people want to come round and look straight away. Not quite right that.

This is one reason to keep the odd old handset here and there. My 5yr old get to use my old Desire HD - running a custom ROM, minus a SIM and requiring my password for any purchases. Problem solved. If I'm honest I really don't want his grubby fingers all over my latest shiney gadget so my old one is just fine.

I'll listen out for any offensive whistling but I have to say that since getting my superhub as part of my 20 to 60Mbps upgrade (replacing my old motorola modem) about a month ago, my connection has been rock solid. It is running in modem mode.

Time to bring these big companies into line - regardless of tax loopholes. Pay up or get out of our economy - we won't miss you as someone will simply step up to replace you.

Apple hae surely already conceded the high-end of the mobile market to Android? As for iPad - again soon to be surpassed by uber-specced Windows 8 tabs? Yes, No?

Cheap SSD drives are so small that I really don't need to worry much about backup - all my data is shoved onto my RAID 1 NAS. Complete loss of my SSD would really only be an inconvenience (perhaps lose the odd game save or internet favourite).

I have a feeling that this will destroy our own superior (yes still flawed) patent system. US system is a disgrace.

The low power x86 chipsets make Windows RT a complete irrelevance imo.....unless they end up being far more expensive. I'm not interested in having i5 or i7 power in a Windows tablet, but I DO want x86.

There is no doubt that the iPhone 5 is one of the best mid-range handsets on the market.