Posts by Sooty
746 posts • joined Wednesday 26th March 2008 22:28 GMT
Flat screen tv changed things
I used to get what can only be described as blinding headaches growing up playing computer games. The issue was getting eye strain from sitting close and staring at a 50/60htz crt tv/monitor for hours on end. As soon as CRT went up to higher refresh rates it got better, and went away completely with flat screens that don't flicker.
It may not affect everyone as much, but I can actually see a 60htz monitor flickering, and its uncomfortable to even look at one now.
I fell foul of the keywork matching
When I posted my CV to a recruitment service, I mentioned that I'd done a small amount of ASP as part of my university course, among the other things on the course. It wasn't listed in my actual skills or previous jobs.
I then proceeded to be swamped with job offers looking for experienced ASP.net developers... Makes me wonder why companies bother with some recruitment agencies, as any i'd applied to would have thrown it away the moment a human actually looked at the cv. Nevermind they were all way outside of the area I'd said I was prepared to travel to.
I also did this at university
when I inevitably ran out of money a week or two before my next loan payment, it was a bit easier then though, as you clould get a cheap 'value' loaf of bread and 5-6 cans of 'value' beans for under a pound.
Re: XBOX forcing people to subscribe to its "Services"
I don't actually have a big problem with the nominal fee, it can be had for £3-4 a month, and it keeps some of the riff raff honest.
On a free acccount, if you cheat or are obnoxious to someone and you get banned, you can just create another account and do it again. At least you have something to lose with the annual fee if you do that.
Re: Kids today...
I went through all of that process, what are the prospects, money, enjoyment etc, and like a lot of people in the 90's came up with IT as the answer (software engineering in my case)
Unfortunately the IT work prior to the millennium was no reflection of the work afterwards, the panic was over an not a lot happened. Due to the sheer number of people who came to the same conclusion that IT was a good career option, and the drop off in available jobs, it wasn't a good market by the time I finished my degree. I actually did end up with a career in IT, but I don't know anyone else I work with who actually has an IT related degree.
the whole point of exams/degree/qualifications/etc
Is expressly to differentiate between people's abilities.
Everyone getting an better education is a noble goal, however everyone getting an A(A*), or everyone getting a degree defeats the entire purpose of the system. Now a degree is fairly worthless*, everyone has one, you have to have something else to stand out as a candidate. I am currently trying to get as many professional qualifications as possible through my employer, but even those are becoming industry standard, instead of something exceptional.
*that's not to say that not having one won't count against you, but actually having one won't put you ahead of the pack
Re: I would not be so sure
I'm not so sure about that. The case you list of child protection, would probably have been due to involving a child in a criminal activity, ie the kerb crawling. Not something relating directly to trying to get him laid.
sex is legal at 16 in the UK, so I'm pretty sure he could have arranged it in other ways that wouldn't have caused problems. I can't see why hiring some strippers should cause any issues if everyone there was 16+
If they weren't all 16+ though, the person who arranged it would probably be banged up and on the sex offenders register before their feet hit the ground.
Re: Religions...
"Time to remove the tax-exempt status on all religions. If because they are a deity's respresentative on earth, why does the taxman care? If because they are doing good in the world, then why are they different from other do-good organisations?"
Scientology isn't recognised as a religion in the UK, so doesn't enjoy tax exempt status.
Somehow they managed to get classified as a not-for-profit body though, so they are VAT exempt.
Posted in AMD: Star Trek holodecks within reach
Re: More likely Tad Williams Otherland*
In otherland the serious net users had their brains plugged in directly, even wirelessly for the expensive kit, which is probably a more practical way of getting a holodeck like experience. I think they've even had something similar in Star Trek calling it a poor mans holodeck.
Is it wrong
That my first thoughts when I heard this were "what scandalous story from his past has just been discovered by the press that could be broken any day?"
I recall the good old days of school computer security... Where the drives were just hidden to secure them, and creating a Shortcut to c: could get you access to them.
I don't think the IT teacher ever figured out I was using winpopup to troll the thickies, and was completely stumped as to how a group of us were playing network games of hearts in the lessons.
I was coding long before I was 11, good old Sinclair basic and computer magazines full of code listings and I learned all sorts from it. Even when I started on pcs it wasn't plain sailing. My first experience of dos was fiddling around with interrupt and dma settings in several vain attempts to try and get some sound in games. Nevermind the joys of EMS and XMS. Kids today have it far too easy to actually learn much from what they are doing.
But things are far too easy and reliable nowadays, nothing ever goes wrong so you don't get people delving into the internals to try and get things working, they may be able to do a lot more than we could, but it doesn't mean they actually know and understand what they are doing.
"Am I the only one who likes the Ribbon interface?"
No wij you're not
I like it as well, it's a good replacement for the toolbar. The only problem I have with it is that they took away the menu bar too.
Re: Slowly closing the gap with Microsoft Office?
"Then write the CMYK support, or hire someone to write it, or sponsor the project, or write the specs, or help with the testing, or the docs, or...."
Or pay a nominal sum of money to obtain commercial software that already has these features, along with support?
Of the options you mentioned, only writing it myself or hiring someone to write it will actually guarantee the specific functionality gets created. That's not going to be free to do. If I needed hundreds of copies in several months, this might be a way to go and save some money on licencing. If i need 4 copies immediately, the only sensible approach is to go out and buy something that already does it.
@TheVogon
I like your attitude!
I consider this to be useless unreliable crap... I must unload this on someone unsuspecting via eBay as soon as possible!
Re: Interesting business model
Hmm, odd that they want to exit the low to midrange market. I got my first OCZ flash drive based on them being a reasonably cheap "named" brand with decent performance and reviews. I was so pleased with it that when I upgraded my higher end systems I went for their range as well, based on them being a reasonably priced but respectable brand. I could have gone cheaper but no-name, and the randomness that comes with that, is something I refuse to gamble on nowadays, or alternatively I could have gone a lot more expensive for dubious performance gains.
Re: Limited Expansion
It's a weird one, especially as they won't cable up new builds. Some places would be a negligible amount of work to add to their network, but they absolutely refuse. Bu they can go to ridiculous lengths for their existing areas.
One of my friends moved his service to a new house, and after having the local scum cut his cable 3-4 times over a couple of months he got them to come in and dig up the pavement, road, garden, etc. to bury it all.
Personally, I've thought their cable Internet is outstanding when it works, had great experiences. But I despair of ever having another issue that requires dealing with their support.
It's not signed by Buster Paper Commercial ltd, its signed by DigiCert. However as that's a CA I've never heard of and know doesn't have root certs on any of the serious systems I'm responsible for I can't say it would worry me much. Now if Thawte or Verisign had issued it I'd be a bit more concerned!
Pretty much all of my friends own a wii, and we all fall back on the same staple games, house of the dead, for the 'light guns' and mariokart.
Both of them serve as party games for my crowd, all of whom fondly remember the snes version of mariokart. As an aside, one of my friends fired up his old snes and let his daughter have a go on mariokart, she kept crashing as the motion controls were 'broken'
@Chad H
You've hit the nail on the head, there's a lot of great stuff it could do, but isn't used for.
But Nintendo aren't the only ones, using your fallout example, xbox smartgalss, or ps3 remote play could be used to do a pipboy on your smartphone/ipod/ipad/psp/vita... a bit of sellotape to attach it to your arm :)
That could be patched into the game today and most of the game's owners could use it with no extra hardware costs over what they already own
They might have been better off providing a cheaper controller along with something more generic such as a smartphone app.
Re: Uhm, no?
Chris3
One of the supposed benefits of outsourcing is that you aren't supposed to care about that sort of thing anymore, you are paying a company to do something for you, the actual individuals involved should be irrelevant as long as the skills are there. Succession planning should be their problem, not yours.
If you have to constantly check up, and mange staff, you might as well hire someone directly and do it yourself.
Re: I think MS might be right
"I can't find a compelling laptop, even in the "ultrabook" range.
I haven't seen one device that is powerful, thin, has a large trackpad, a hi-res 13" display and nice graphics."
This is exactly the thing that keeps tempting me to get a macbook pro, no-one else seems to do anything as nice hardware wise, especially now they have the retina version. I'm not a big fan of OSX so I'd probably end up putting windows 7 on it anyway.
Re: Well...
I believe Mythbusters did indeed prove that you can polish a turd!
Re: To be honest...
"I want to buy horsemeat as it is tasty but I've never seen it for sale in the UK. I always bring some back with me when I go on holiday in France."
I'd like to try it, I had a zebra burger at a local agricultural show last year and that was really nice. I really don't understand why it's near impossible to get anything even slightly out of the ordinary in the uk. I have a local restaurant that has all sorts in its buffet, ostrich, crocodile, kangaroo, and everyone always enjoys them, but you can't really get it yourself.
One of my friends went to Thailand and managed to "lose" masses of his Facebook "friends" by posting that he'd tried dog and enjoyed it.
I got it today
I was of the view it was £8.95 for professional plus so I might as well give it a try. So far it feels a bit weird, it's a different look, but I'm not sure how much of an improvement on 2010 it is yet.
It was quite odd that it didn't seem to do much of an install, it didn't even replace 2010.
@rh587
"- If you want to reduce homicides committed with illegal firearms, legislation won't do squat - they're already breaking the law by just possessing them."
That pretty much depends on where they get the illegal firearms from though doesn't it? If you can't sell them legally, you reduce the supply of illegal ones. You can't steal a gun from someone who bought it legally. You can't break into a gun shop to get them, you can't fake documentation and get them through legal suppliers etc.
Cutting off/reducing the legal supply of guns also removes a large number of the avenues for obtaining illegal guns. It's never going to stop it 100% but guns have to come from somewhere, and massively lowering the numbers in circulation, will make it a lot harder to get hold of them illegitimately.
Re: Apple a Victim of their own success
iPhones don't exactly have to rely on just imei blocking. You have to activate the things via apple, reporting it as stolen should get the imei and the serial number blocked from their networks too, leaving only jailbreaks to get around it.
In theory they should be more difficult to deal with stolen due to the walled garden of apple/iTunes. Admittedly you could use it standalone, but it relies entirely on third party tools and functionality.
As has been highlighted, this was likely not being outsourced for a good reason! Maybe nothing to do with cost. It was found during a security audit.
I am based in the uk and I've had to be vetted before to download software from America that was subject to export restrictions. There could have been very good reasons why the code wasn't being done outside of the country.
Re: Just...
Alternatively, wait for Margaret Thatcher to die and put a Dance Dance revolution type game on her grave, use the profits to pay for any work needed.
is it possible
to ask your phone company to simply drop any calls to you from outside the country, I can't imagine any situation where most of the people I know would legitimately need to recieve them.
then after the is it possible, is it free!
Posted in Which qualifications are worthwhile?
Re: MSCDEX
meh... Soundblasters were easy, if you really want a challenge you want a 'soundblaster compatible' card! A high end model like a BluePoint card :)
In all seriousness though, there are some other admin areas which underlay pretty much all companies out there. A passing knowledge of MQ admin wouldn't steer you wrong for a lot of places, although teh IBM courses and certifications are definitely in the "my company is paying for it" price range.
It's not sexy, but almost every company has some sort of messaging infrastructure holding everything together and it needs administration. It's also pretty platform independent too, distributed MQ skills are pretty transferable.
My old monitor is ageing rather well
It's older than "HD", so it is actually a decently high res, I can't see any obvious problems with it going dim/yellow, it's ridiculously thin for an older lcd panel, pretty thin for a modern one, and most importantly it's 4:3!
So useful for working on a computer rather than just watching films. The only minor issue is that it's old enough to not be HDCP compliant so my blu-ray drive doesn't like it.
What I want to know
Is why spam still exists? Who are the morons who are actually buying things from these people that make it profitable to continue?
I accept the phishing, etc emails that mimic valid ones to some extent will trick people, but really who tries to actually buy anything from the slightly less dodgy ones? If I get an email from a company I've never had dealings with, they instantly go on my 'have nothing to do with these crooks' list! Similarly with cold callers, I don't care what you are trying to sell, what sort of idiot will give their details to a stranger phoning them. All the spam is making me less likely to have anything to do with them.
I got an old window replaced last year, and the company called me several times a week afterwards to 'follow up' ie try and get me to replace all the others (about £4k). I finally shouted at them saying that I was getting the rest of them done ( I will eventually :) ) and would have used them, but there was absolutely no way I'd ever consider using them now due to all the calls. I may have used some 'colourful' language as well. Despite all the previous requests, that time they really did appear to take me off their lists.
Re: Amazon recommendations
surely the "Why are we recommending this?" link they added answers that one quite quickly
Re: +1 for analogue
Yup, Monopoly is child's play to set up compared to loads of board games. I enjoy Mansions of Madness, and that takes about an hour of careful prep, in secret, to get everything seeded and ready to play.
In Monopoly, you just hand out a bit of money and put a top hat in a corner.
Re: I watch it on permanent repeat - on my 25th watch
The problem is, like many American shows, it had great potential, but the network stepped in and canned it just as it was reaching that potential. I would imagine the problems in the initial series were network related as well.
And god only knows what happened with the finale, shafting the whole premiss and even royally p-ing off all the cast
Re: I liked
The number of times somebody walked in on another's holodeck program in TNG & voyager always made me wonder why they never seemed to have a decent way of locking the door!
I agree with you
Especially on the suspension of disbelief thing...
In the pilot, ds9 is a backwater posting for a burt out captain. It was a way of avoiding the embarrassment of firing him. It's overseeing the recovery of a relatively primitive ( I can't recall it ever being made clear if Bajor was actually warp capable on their own) civilisation after a brutal occupation. It wasn't exactly a military outpost to start with, it was essentially a refinery... The station was a wreck and had relatively little value, but it doesn't seem to improve very quickly once it's moved to the wormhole.
Finding the wormhole turned it into a pivotal strategic military and political asset, but it was never treated as such, it was left with the burnout captain (he gets better) and supplied very little aid and support. It should definitely have had some better defences right off the bat, at least with a couple of real starships permanently stationed there, although it did finally get properly upgraded when the dominion became a threat, able to defend itself against an entire fleet.
Shirley
The best quality cinema copies are created by the cinema staff themselves, a good camera setup in the projection booth and audio captured directly from the sound system. I assumed they were done in less copyright conscious countries though.
I liked
That it was the first Trek to openly acknowledge what holodecks would really be used for, although there were a few subtle mentions in TNG
Although the cleaning of them leads to a kind of horror if you really think it through!
Re: Yuck, 2 year contracts
"While your principal is some what true, a great many of us can't afford up to £500 for a new handset."
Some schools of thought would suggest that if you can't afford a £500 phone, then you shouldn't be getting one! You can get a phone for next to nothing, if you don't want the latest and greatest fashion accessory smartphone
I bought my Samsung galaxy 2s upfront and have a 1 month, very cheap, sim only contract. Overall much, much cheaper than getting one "free" on a contract. in future, when i come to upgrade my phone, I'll just buy the phone... it's one of the benefits of having a decent tech job with plenty of overtime opportunities.
Re: Ordinarily, I'd be inclined to agree
"Removing minutes and texts doesn't gain the network anything. The infrastructure is largely paid for and the data transmission isn't really costing them anything. "
Surely then they could offer more minutes/texts in compensation for the price rise, although changing the price pretty much defeats the purpose of signing a contract in the first place.
Posted in 2012: The year that netbooks DIED
My netbook
Has been relegated to the position of a server, I saved a fortune in electricity from using that over having my standard desktop on 24/7. A slightly fancier NAS than i have would likely eliminate the need altogether though.
I had high hopes for it, but as stated in the article its just too small and with a rubbish screen. It's pretty much been replaced as my portable machine by a thinkpad x61 I picked up off eBay, better screen, better keyboard, better processor and about half the price.
Posted in Help-desk hell
@TeeCee
It's hard to lay that one on the user... If you have to explain to someone over the phone what to type the absolute last thing you should tell them is to log in as root and use rm -rf
its never going to end well.
We script up the noddiest of things and tell them to just run the script.
This highlights a general problem with user reviews, people are pretty lazy... If they get ok, even good service they probably won't bother to go online and write about it. If something goes wrong though, they are motivated to mention it, whatever it is.
This unfortunately means you do legitimately get people mostly giving 5 star or 1 star reviews, with most of the people saying negative things.
Re: What, no "swordfish"?
Sadly too common on tv
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish
Re: Shame
while they may not be a particularly nice company, I have to give them credit for their poker game. Pretty much all of the real money on-line poker games aren't a patch on their client.
It'd be nice to be able to play a real money game on my ipad, and with a half decent experience.
I'm at the stage now, where it's about the games. I don't really care about the hardware, that's what my pc is for.
If the next generation of consoles are not backwards compatible with my xbox/360/psone/ps2/ps3 games, I'm not chucking them all, and I've run out of hdmi connections on my tv, so i'll probably not bother.
There'd have to be some spectacular game to encourage me to upgrade
Was it a usb charger, or the full UK 3 pin jobbie... teary eyed people would like to know
Posted in Assault on battery
Re: Back in reality
clickyness... Ahh the good old days. The first keyboard i ever got has to be by far the best I've ever come across. It costs an absolute fortune to get one like it now. If only i'd kept it and got a ps2 to usb converter...
Solid, heavy, very clicky keys, nice feel and feedback, shame they are all cheap nasty plastic nowadays.
Posted in Amazon Kindle Paperwhite review
Kindle came first, of course
Did it?
Maybe in the US they were, but certainly not in the UK.
