Posts by tony72
148 posts • joined Wednesday 2nd July 2008 12:21 GMT
Re: Triple Microsoft tax bingo
Actually no, at least not according to other coverage of this issue. The same patents will only be licensed once for each device. If both FoxConn and its client have signed a licensing deal with Microsoft, it is up to them to decide who pays, but Microsoft only gets paid once.
Posted in Bitcoin prices spike on Euro woes
Re: In troubled times...
"Bitcoin might actually be safer than a Southern European bank at this point."
In that case, I think they are fucked.
Posted in New nuke could POWER WORLD UNTIL 2083
Re: Not going to happen
The British public are actually a pretty pragmatic lot, and unlike many of our foreign counterparts, we're much less likely to let an accident at an ancient design of nuclear plant built on a fault line in the world's worst earthquake zone dissuade us from building modern reactors here if it's good for our economy. Multiple polls in the last couple of years have shown that Brits like nuclear energy just fine, see e.g.
http://www.energylivenews.com/2013/02/11/uk-public-favours-nuclear-over-renewables/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14847875
And a Daily Mail article highlighting how much we could save by scrapping wind and investing in Nuclear. The reader comments don't seem to reflect your caricature of that august publication's readership;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2058415/Scrapping-wind-farms-favour-nuclear-gas-save-550.html
The real obstacle to nuclear is the typically large up-front cost, as compared to the stealth taxes which can be used to subsidize renewables.
Re: Wrong, but not ridiculous?
Another point to consider is the effect of bicycles on other traffic. I regularly find myself in a train of traffic doing 10-15mph behind a cyclist, watching my mpg figure plummet. It's very hard to calculate the overall effect of that, but I personally experience that several times a week, and in each case one bike is slowing down a lot of cars, so I suspect there might be a sigificant effect there. It's all very well in places with ample dedicated bike lanes, but that isn't the reality for most of the UK. I don't recall seeing many bike lanes, so maybe that is an issue over there too. Mr Orcutt sounds like an idiot though, regardless of whether he inadvertently has a point.
Re: Tricky balancing act
Yes, there were hand cranked radios at least as far back as World War II, so he definitely didn't invent the general concept. A cursory search on Google Patents reveals a 1942 patent for a "Spring Driven Electric Generator" by Robert Leslie Haynes et al, quote from the abstract;
"This invention relates to spring driven electric generators, such, for example, as may be employed in generating current for portable radio apparatus and the like. [...] The spring may be wound as by means of a hand crank."
It looks to me like Baylis' patent is for a pretty specific spring arrangement powering a radio, otherwise it wouldn't have been granted in the first place due to prior art. Seems like Baylis would like to be able to be granted very wide patents, covering anything similar to the original claim, almost as if he hasn't heard of the problems with patent trolls hindering innovation. If anything, we need the opposite, overly broad patents should be re-examined and invalidated much more easily.
Re: Having something that sounds like...
No they didn't. One paediatrician had anti-paedophile graffiti sprayed on her house by an unknown vandal or vandals (no reason whatsoever to believe it was a "mob", and certainly no mob was seen or reported). No one was attacked or injured. This is the story which is the grain of truth at the root of this urban legend;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/901723.stm
For half the price, you can buy an Asus Transformer Prime, or a Nexus 10 and a bluetooth keyboard case. I'm struggling to understand what this give you over those. It's got partial Office, perhaps a bit better than the solutions available on Android, but other than that, I'm coming up blank.
Re: But...
If you're going to be a pedant, you should check your maths. 56kbps = 0.056Mbps, not 0.0056Mbps, you added a zero. Admittedly 0.056Mbps is still not 0.1Mbps, but only off by a factor of less than two, rather than a factor of almost 20.
Posted in A valid use for Windows 8?
On my idea of media centre PC, the OS is somewhat irrelevant, as you probably use your HTPC software of choice for everything except setup (I use MediaPortal). Steve, it sounds like the your idea of a media centre PC is a bit less specialised than that, more of a general purpose PC that happens to be used for media applications. It's not even clear if you've got your media PC connected to a TV, or if you're operating it with a remote (you talk about clicking things, so I'm guessing mouse+keyboard). If you are using it from across the room on a TV, and operating it with a remote, I'd be interested to hear how you find those aspects of Windows 8, I did wonder if TIFKAM might be remote-friendly, but never got around to trying it.
Posted in Sinclair BASIC comes to Raspberry Pi
Re: no peeks or pokes?
The Speccy indeed had peek and poke, I don't know if this port supports them. More importantly, does it support RANDOMIZE USR (probably the most cryptically named command in any flavour of BASIC)?
Re: Never mind Samsung...
I disagree. The retail price of contract-free handsets is artificially high at the behest of the telcos, who can then offer you the phone "free" or heavily subsidized as a carrot to tempt you onto a nice fat contract. That kind of market distortion is rarely good for consumers. What Google's Nexus 4 pricing might do is bring a bit of reality to contract-free handset pricing, making it more attractive to buy a handset outright than with a contract, and thus make both the handset market and the contract market a bit more transparent. Low margins and cut-throat competition deliver great value for consumers in the PC market, and as smartphones are commodity items these days, there's no reason why that market shouldn't go the same way. If a few of the existing manufacturers can't handle that, there are plenty of others that will step in.
I'm pretty sure this is the first thing Mr Orlowski has ever posted that made me LOL, top notch!
I wish we could upvote articles. I have nothing to add beyond agreeing with the article and most of the comments, but it seems a bit lame to post a comment just to say that. Maybe article authors should post a proxy comment as the first comment on the article - "upvote/downvote this if you like/dislike the article" sort of thing?
Let me paraphrase your lengthy post; "I've heard a quiet buzzing noise from power supplies, and therefore it's completely and utterly inconceivable that any power supplies anywhere could possibly buzz significantly louder that the ones I have personally experienced. The fact that people are finding the noise from their SuperHub supplies a big enough problem to complain to VM can't possibly mean that some power supplies might make a lot more noise than I have personally experienced, so therefore those people must be complaining about nothing."
I'm not going to tell you what I think of that, because I don't want to be rude, but I think it speaks for itself anyway.
Posted in Windows 8 and the ‘Dad test’ stunts
"[...] it’s important to take a lot of the more extreme criticism you come across with a pinch of salt."
Dale, I'll take everything written about Windows 8 in the next few months with a pinch of salt, including your article, thanks very much. The ratio of actual information to decidedly dubious anecdotal evidence combined with all the paid and unpaid shilling and uninformed opinion, is so low at the moment that really you've got more chance of learning something useful from an E! fluff piece on Justin Bieber than you have on any article with "Windows 8" in the title.
Posted in MYSTERIOUS GREEN GLOW seen on iPhone 5s
Halo
The green glow is obviously a halo, which is only to be expected from a hallowed object of worship such as the iPhone 5. If your iPhone is missing it's halo, you should take it to the nearest Apple temple and ask a Genius to bless it for you, otherwise it may not work properly, even if you hold it right.
I don't want to make light ....
... but I can't help wondering; did he get any positive replies from anyone?
Not surprised
I have a Windows 7 tablet (exopc), and I've tried the Windows 8 consumer and release previews on it, and both times reverted to Windows 7. Considering tablets are supposed to be where 8 shines most, that's not a good sign. The trouble is, while Metro* works great, Microsoft do not want you to use traditional desktop apps in tablet mode, so they have actually degraded the touch experience for desktop apps. E.g. in Windows 7, when you touch in a text box in an application, a popup appears next to it so you can bring up the on-screen keyboard, but in Windows 8 this is gone - you have to manually tap the icon on the taskbar to bring up the keyboard, then tap back in the text box to return focus, then manually close the keyboard when you're done typing; usability nightmare, and there appears to be no way to get the Windows 7 TIP functionality back. Windows 8 may be fine if you plan to use only Metro* apps, and it may be fine on the Surface and other hybrid devices with an integrated keyboards, but if you plan on using non-Metro* apps on a tablet without a keyboard, personally I'd think twice. And if you're not planning on running traditional desktop apps, then why would you even consider a Windows tablet?
* yes, I know
Re: Oh dear.
I was going to make exactly that point about the rate of release. The question is, since it's such a blindingly obvious point, how did Lewis fail to note it himself? Seeing as he claims he's not a climate change denier, he couldn't possibly be intentionally ignoring the obvious to put a particular spin on the research, could he?
Ahahahaha. "An influx of non-Christians into teams may be to blame". What a holier-than-thou fuckwit.
Degrees of scepticism
I'm not a doctor. If I'm ill, and the vast majority of doctors say I have a particular disease and recommend a particular cure, I'm not in a position to argue; unless I'm going to go to the trouble of becoming an expert in the field myself, the only rational position is to give considerable weight to the consensus of opinion amongst those who are experts, even if I don't like the sound of it. It's not fundamentally different with climate change, although mitigating against that is the fact that climate prediction is not in the same position as medicine when it comes to being able to test the theories and models, so there is considerably more room for having a degree of scepticism. However, when the weight of that scepticism tends towards outright rejection of the science, with no real reason other than not liking what the science says, then that is not rational, and having such a degree of scepticism does indeed start to put you in the same territory as Birthers, homeopathists and such like. You sceptics will have to judge for yourselves where you stand on the scale. Personally, while I have considerable doubt over any specific long-term climate predictions, it is only better science that will guide my opinion, not the ranting of uninformed loons.
As it happens, I actually think the climate debate is actually a bit secondary. Given the accelerating price increases in fossil fuels in recent decades, with analysts predicting that the trend will continue, I really don't see the downside to weaning ourselves off them as soon as is practical, but I'm not going to go off-topic regarding what exactly that means here.
Re: Yet another fart app.
It's probably not only you, there are usually a few other luddites hanging around here for some reason, but that doesn't mean you have a point. You're obviously either a) in the camp that just wants to use their phones to make phone calls, and spurns apps entirely, or b) one of those people that has too much time on their hands, and is therefore happy to deal with purchasing apps from all sorts of different sites, dealing with all sorts of different payment mechanisms, giving your payment and contact details out all over the place etc. For everyone else though, the benefits of the app store model, with a single central portal to purchase apps from, a single payment mechanism, a single entity getting your details, a consistent installation and update mechanism etc, are just too obvious.
Pirates already get the films weeks before the actual release, so this will make zero difference to sales.
Posted in Mio Spirit 695 LM satnav review
Re: My experience is different
Maybe recent Mio devices are a step forward; technology does change and improve, you know. I have a Mio Spirit 685, which looks almost identical to the reviewed model, and it's been very good; very simple, clear interface, good big responsive touchscreen, and seems to work very well. It did not come with free lifetime map upgrades sadly, just a one-time free upgrade to the latest maps, but that worked fine. The only issue I have is that it doesn't always pick up a TMC signal; the TMC antenna is integrated into the power cable, and so can't be ideally positioned for reception, unlike my previous satnav.
Eh?
This article seems to be about the proportion of Android devices that are tablets versus smartphones. But everybody on the planet has a phone, mostly smartphones these days. Still only a small number of people have a tablet of any sort. A quick Google reveals that only 7% of UK males and 5% of women own a tablet (#1). At my workplace, about 1 in 5 has a tablet, and outside of a tech company I expect the figures are much lower. So you would expect the ratio of Android tablets to Android phones to be low, even if all tablets were Android (as it goes, at work they're about 2/3 ipads to 1/3 Android). Or am I missing something? The figures say almost 1 in 10 Android devices is a tablet, and given that they're not counting Kindle Fires or cheap non-Play tablets, I think that actually sounds quite good, all things considered.
http://www.economistgroup.com/leanback/lean-back-reading/who-are-tablet-owners-in-the-u-k-and-the-u-s/
So...
Is this likely to be much different than buying a 32GB SSD and using native ReadyBoost? Think I'll wait for some independent benchmarks, which seem to be lacking right now, before putting too much faith in those performance claims.
7 out of every 8 of those contain no other source other than the issuer of the press release
"A study of BBC science journalism last year by the BBC Trust found that 75 per cent of science stories were based on a single press release, and 7 out of every 8 of those contain no other source other than the issuer of the press release."
And the other 1 out of 8 contained factually incorrect material copy-pasted from Wikipedia. Yep, that's my license fee well spent, all right.
Electric jet
Isn't "electric jet" a bit of a contradiction in terms? Call me a nitpicker, but a jet engine to me generally involves burning fuel, and a plane described as a jet is generally powered by the aforementioned fuel-burning jet engines. Still, I like the sound of it, whatever it's called.
It's inevitable
These thieves are bound to come to a sticky end.
Don't know why all the downvotes, the fanbois must have got to you first, the fact is you're right. If, like many people I know, you find yourself carrying around an iPad and an ultrabook or netbook, because you, know their functionality doesn't entirely overlap, then you may well find one of these devices is perfect. Hard to say until you can play with them, but snarky dismissal based solely on the fact that they're not limited-functionality, fruity-badged toys is not too clever.
Posted in Ten movies inspired by video games
Re: I kinda liked...
Maybe that is indeed the key. I liked Hitman, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill, but I haven't played any of the corresponding games. I think I'm with you on Wing Commander, but my brain seems to have mostly wiped it from my memory for some reason.
Liked Amy...
...didn't like Rory. Changed the whole Doctor-assistant dynamic, having him around, made the whole thing seem more teen soap than anything else, so I stopped watching after about five or six episodes. I might give it another shot with the new assistant.
Re: Make something better
I agree. It takes someone like Apple to design something like the MacBook Air, then someone like Intel to do R&D and produce and promote reference designs, before the Acers et al can produce something comparable. Left to their own devices, all they'll come up with is endless mediocre me-too products, while cutting as many corners as possible to maintain their margins.
Perhaps Microsoft should license the Surface design to OEMs, or let them produce clones (with very strict rules to make sure they don't f*#k up the design). The current plan seems to be to hope that the OEMs will take a lead from the Surface and come up with good designs of their own to compete, but I'm not entirely convinced that that will happen.
Re: Wrong numbers
I disagree. For this scheme to work, it really has to be a self-contained unit, so your assumption of being able to do piecemeal integration with the other ICE kit is not necessarily valid at all.
Also, once something gets that government-mandated, must-be-fitted, approved-suppliers-only tag, it is practically guaranteed to cost a lot more than it needs to, so your assumption that the price will drop is also probably invalid.
No HDMI. No built-in DVB tuners. Expensive phone app. Lame.
Posted in Ten... dual-band wireless routers
+1 for Asus RT-N56U
I bought one maybe six months ago to replace an ailing Linksys at home, and it's been rock solid, and good performance with all my devices. I saw some moanings online about the stock firmware when I bought it, but I haven't felt the need to change it. And it does actually look good in the flesh, not as tacky as the photo in the article makes it seem.
RealPlayer
The Mozilla workaround linked in the article involves disabling the RealPlayer Browser Record extension. Without wanting to point fingers, RealPlayer has been banned from my Windows PCs for over a decade, IMHO for good reason, so possibly it's not entirely Adobe's fault this time.
Loony
The Windows folks at MS have completely lost it, haven't they? Taking a UI metaphor from the one-foreground-task-at-a-time environment on a phone where it kind of works, and applying it to a many-windowed desktop environment, where it patently doesn't. Of course, we already know that they don't want us using the legacy desktop in Windows 8, they want us to do everything in Metro, with one, or sort of two windows at most open. So maybe the desktop is supposed to be unpleasant.
Misnomer
They're not really self-driving are they, any more than the carriages of a train are self driving. At least, "following the vehicle in front" is a pretty specific sub-set of "driving".
And same as Lockwood, I'm wondering what happens when the vehicle you're following leaves the route you want to be on. I'm sure they've thought of that, but no details in the article. I think this tech would be best used as an adjunct to proper Google-style self-driving tech, i.e. the self-driving cars automatically platoon to save fuel and improve traffic flow, but are fully capable of navigating autonomously when not platooning, or when the lead vehicleis leaving the desired route.
Posted in Max Payne 3
Looking forward to the PC version
I pre-ordered the PC version on Steam last weekend, since they're throwing in MP1 and 2 as well, all for £29.99. I haven't played the first two in ages, so I think that will make a nice appetizer while we wait for 3. Hopefully the PC version will be even better than the console version.
Happy times. I did the first year or two of university using my speccy 128 for word processing and stuff - Tasword 2, +D interface, and an Epson dot matrix printer; it wasn't all playing Bomb Jack and Thrust 2. It has to be said, it wasn't work or games that made speccy obsolete for me, it was porn. Sam Fox Strip Poker on the speccy just did not cut it once I got an Amiga with 4096 colours.
By the way, if the bastard who borrowed my Interface 1 and microdrive at school and never gave it back is reading this, I still hate you.
Posted in Battlefield Earth ruled worst film EVER
Suckiest poll ever?
Most of the actual worst films ever made, most of us obviously and fortunately haven't seen. The poll might have made more sense if it was for e.g. the "worst movie costing more than x million dollars to make", for example. Without such a qualification however, what we ended up with was a bunch of movies that are mostly there because some significant group of people found them particularly disappointing in some way, e.g. Hitchhikers Guide purists who can recite the entire book from memory hating on the movie because it doesn't quite live up to their lofty expectations, when in reality it was a fairly fun adaptation which most objective viewers found pretty decent. The reality is that not even Highlander 2 is anywhere near the worst movie ever. Most of us probably have gems on the shelf that are way worse than anything on that list, for example I found my DVD of New Rose Hotel the other day, and while even that isn't the worst I've seen, it's definitely the worst I've paid for, and I'd easily put it up against anything in that poll.
Posted in Vote now for the WORST movie EVER
Re: Zoolander?
For some of us, "stupid funny" just isn't funny. I would personally rather have red hot pokers used to beat a drum-roll on my testicles than watch any more of Zoolander than the five minutes or so I've seen of it.
Posted in So, what IS the worst film ever made?
Sucker Punch
Nobody mentioned Sucker Punch? Is that because nobody here was dumb enough to watch it, or did you people actually like it? It may not be the absolute worst movie in history, but I'm pretty sure it's the worst per dollar spent making it.
Re: Nexus S
FWIW, I'm running ICS 4.0.3 on my Nexus S (I9020) with no problems for a month or so. I couldn't figure out whether the reported problems affected all handsets and variants or what, so I decided to man up and try it, so far so good.
Posted in TuneIn Radio Pro
Great app
Been using TuneIn free version for ages, it's great. Thanks for mentioning the 20p deal, seemed like an excellent time to buy the Pro version, even though I can't see myself using the record function much. My main gripe with it (and it may be an Android gripe rather than a TuneIn one) is that when using it as an alarm, both on my Archos tablet and my Nexus S it doesn't always seem to wait long enough for the wi-fi connection to come up, giving up with a connection error, so I can't dependably use it as an internet radio alarm. The "shake for related" also seems a bit sensitive, I kept accidentally changing stations, so I had to turn that off. And you can't sort your presets, at least in the free version, at first glance it looks the same in the Pro version. Other than that it's awesome.
Posted in Hey Commentard! - or is that Commenter?
Jimmy Somerville
This raises a highly important question; Commentard is to commenter, as Communard is to ....? Was "Communard" offensive to someone (other than musically, I mean)?
Posted in Mythbusters cannonball ‘myth-fires’
Ahh, Mythbusters
Ahh, Mythbusters, and their decreasingly rigorous testing of decreasingly mythical myths. It was good once upon a time, but they're really scraping the barrel these days in therms of the "myths" they take on. At least putting lives in danger adds a bit of an edge of excitement to things, so I hope this isn't the last time they do it. Explosions and Kari in a tight t-shirt are the only reason to watch that show now.
RE Memory footprint counts for something
Yes, memory footprint counts for something. And if people would stop posting crap that hasn't been true for ages, they'd know that Firefox has a comparable if not lower memory footprint than Chrome. Couple of links below for those who haven't been keeping up, but you know how to Google. Both those links refer to Firefox 7, and there have been more memory and performance improvements in Firefox 8.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-7-web-browser,3037-14.html
http://techpp.com/2011/09/28/chrome-14-vs-firefox-7-memory-footprint-comparison/
Posted in Ebuyer knocked out by own £1 deals site
Crap sales
I buy most of my computer stuff from eBuyer, they have reasonable prices and in general I have no problems with them, used them for years. But the one thing they do really badly are their sales; I know it's normal to highlight the biggest savings in the adverts for a sale, while the stuff anyone actually wants to buy is not discounted much, but eBuyer really take the piss on that. I hope they lose more money from their servers being down than they make from flogging their unwanted tat, maybe they'll learn.
By the way, I just got on there, and they have Hayes Accura 56k PC card analog modems for £27.76. Try not to knock anyone down in the stampede, people.
