Posts by Spiracle
105 posts • joined Thursday 12th June 2008 15:17 GMT
Re: Ugh, more nonsense
Cambridge to Stratford is only 35 minutes on the Liverpool Street line, and there'll be a Cambridge Science Park station in 2015. Google will be at Kings Cross at the end of the other Cambridge line and may begin to form a sort of 'tech triangle'.
Might encourage Greater Anglia to upgrade their derelict rolling stock as well.
Meanwhile over at Apple...
But [Sinofsky's] problem - which ultimately became Microsoft and Windows 8's problem, was that he emphasised process over people. He built a version of Windows based on data and theory without actually understanding how people used Windows. It was no wonder people got confused and we have arrived at where we are today.
Meanwhile over at Apple hardware designer Jonny Ive has been given god-like control over software UI design.
What'll be the results of that decision, I wonder?
Have a gorilla...
Neddie: "Thank you."
FX: 'Roaring and screaming'
Neddie: "My, these gorillas are strong!"
Re: not really
Exactly. With BitCoin there's no safe failure mode. The classic example is the escalator - if it fails it becomes... a set of stairs. The value of gold may fall but you're still left with a shiny brick suitable for making non-tarnishing jewellery or conducting electricity with. If BitCoin fails you're just left with a vacuum in the information-space.
Put another way the value in a BC is similar to the value of something like, say, a Pixar movie. Pixar's product is really just an extremely long binary number (frequently stamped onto a plastic disk), but it's a number that's the result of an intensive computational process that would be almost impossible to reproduce exactly starting from scratch. The problem with a BC is that there's no corresponding utilitarian value - Pixar movies (like gold) are nice to look at. BitCoins, at the end of the day, are just bits.
Not a currency
Bitcoins are more of a commodity and should be treated, like the Winklevosses are doing, as gold bullion. They're about as much use in Sainsbury's as Krugerrands.
They're a very easily tradeable commodity though.
Le Corbusier? Really?
First I've heard of it. Influenced by, perhaps.
Re: Start Menu?
Or create a taskbar shortcut to
C:\Windows\explorer.exe shell:::{2559a1f8-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}
(Google it if you're worried)
Mitigates the pain a little with no 3rd party add-ons required.
So this is two non-overlapping windows sharing the screen like er... Windows 1 in 1983?
Some progress, I suppose.
"The guide writer's research for this seems to have extended no further than the boozer from My Fair Lady."
As their local is 'The Flying Pig' he might not be too wide of the mark.
Slightly OT but...
...anybody have a feel for how much more information you can get into 140 characters using pictograms rather than letters? You might be able to fit a reasonable chunk of a manifesto in.
Re: Access to the internet
I recently had to apply online for a benefit on behalf of a disabled family member and it was the worst designed system that I've ever come across. Fiddly text boxes that the allowed text size overflowed, illogical controls for adding records, it would forget your previous three screens if you pressed the wrong button on the fourth - I could go on.
I could have done better on my own using virtually any PHP framework and I'm not a professional in that area. I shudder to think how the people that the system was actually 'designed' for get on.
Headcount?
Was it Intel that took out the "I'm not going to stream this movie until there are a few less people in the room" patent the other week?
But what are their eBook sales?
While a 20% market share is on the face of it good news it should be remembered that it's in the sale of books rather than readers that Kobo are going to make their money. As it suports Adobe DRM there's nothing to stop buyers shopping around rather than being locked to Amazon a la Kindle. Kobo have conspicuously failed to mention the share of the ebook market that their 20% slice of the reader cake is bringing them.
Don't forget that ereader device price is dictated by the price of the Kindle - you can't be notably more expensive than the market leader and still hope to sell readers. Amazon famously sell Kindles at cost so Kobo, with smaller volumes, are probably losing money with each reader sold. Unless their book sales are going up proportionately reporting a 20% share in ereader sales is just like announcing 'hey look, we're losing even more money than we were last year'.
That .sh domain should be good for something
briti.sh?
Posted in Review: Apple iMac 21.5in late 2012
Light and easier to carry?
Nice to know that it'll be slightly less challenging for whoever took the first one to leg it over the fence with it under their arm come their next visit..
Posted in The best e-readers for Christmas
Ownership
To be fair you don't actually own the information in a copyrighted tree-book either, just the ink and cellulose. In practise it's fairly difficult to separate the two of course.
Now that the e-reader market is getting mature you can pick up a reading device on eBay for £15-20 or so. Load it up with as many of your books as you like, slap on a hard password to lock down the OS and you can lend somebody your entire library. If they don't give it back (and I've lost count of the books that I've got on 'permanent loan' with somebody or other) you can deregister it from the bookseller's system and you're only down the price of a hardback. And you can still read the books yourself.
Still waiting for the 'Deaf Förever' model.
If only there was some sort of reality augmentation device that could correct spelling and grammar between the screen and my eyes.
Shouldn't the headline read 'Rare for child abuse cases not to involve tech'.
Currently it suggests that plod should be arresting anyone that owns an iPhone.
Another 'proof'
He forgot "ideally earthquake-proof". SF & LA are in California, aren't they?
Re: Excellent
Though their insurers may be cancelling the Christmas party.
Posted in Motörheadphönes ears-in review
Congratulations for avoiding the obvious 'IronFist/velvet glove' refererence there. I just hope that their next round of product includes 'Orgasmatron' or 'Deaf Forever' lines.
Posted in E-books get Brits reading more
Re: how
As it said in one of the papers complaining that 'Fifty Shades' is badly written is about as constructive as complaining about the ingredients of a Greggs pasty.
Re: Immersion reading...
And combination expensive. You have to buy both the audio and text version in order to do this.
I bet Tim Berners-Lee feels a bit awkward about tweeting 'This is for Everyone' to a billion people now.
Posted in Microsoft dumps Metro from Windows 8
So the phone version is no longer the Mini Metro interface. Disappointing.
Posted in Welcome, friend, to Metroland
In full on YouTube
Betjeman's 1973 'Metroland' BBC docu.
http://youtu.be/LhIZlJgFgWk
That's lunchtime sorted.
Re: Is it really Chrome?
Yep, it uses Safari WebKit, and no Nitro so Javascript based pages may load slower.
Posted in The Beatles Yellow Submarine restored
Re: re 'Yellow Submarine' performed in a Hanna-Barbera style
Sorry, that should have been 'CHAMPIONNNNNNNNNNNNNN THE WONNNNNNNNNNDERRRRRRHOOOOOORSSSSSSE'
Posted in The Beatles Yellow Submarine restored
Re: re 'Yellow Submarine' performed in a Hanna-Barbera style
I remember now - it was during one summer's 'Champion the Wonderhorse' /'Whirlybirds' slot on the BBC. I'm guessing '72.
Posted in The Beatles Yellow Submarine restored
I remember the animated series screening in the UK sometime in the early seventies, though god-knows where. Having just woken up to their music during the beardy-psychadelic years (I was born in '63) I remember that seeing 'Baby's in Black' performed in a Hanna-Barbera style by the mop-tops as being a little confusing.
Posted in Apple MacBook Air 11in 2012
Re: No Ethernet
"Apple make consumer devices... "
What are the chances of them renaming the MacBook Pro the MacBook Con?
If Facebook do buy Opera it'll be purely for Mini and it's tempting mobile ad channel.
Posted in Colour Kindle incoming says mole
Graphic novels
After all they're just movies with a very low frame-rate. And subtitles.
Pity they're not going Mirasol though.
Re: TU To ME...
I think that we can assume that the marketing genius that came up with the name was Spanish. My teenage kids (presumably the target market) are pouring scorn onto this already.
Missing a trick
Couldn't have just given one prototype to Damien Hirst, bunged it in White Cube and split the proceeds?
Re: RE: pedant alert
Since the aforementioned bottom-dweller is a scum sucker a suitably long scum-tube would enable them to maintain their benthic lifestyle whilst feeding.
Well I've just been thumbing through it for an hour or so with no problems. I should check your DNS.
Chrome?
Hasn't flash been updated automatically through Chrome for some time now?
Re: Incalculable?
Thank you. I now know never to Google 'busy beaver function' at work.
Incalculable?
“[Turing's] contribution to computer science, and hence to the life of the nation and the world, is incalculable."
He might want to sit down and think about what he's just said there.
Re: Sadly, this new scheme was
Have you just invented 6 degrees of Francis Bacon?
Posted in Apple iPad 3 packs LAPTOP battery
Re: Overnight charge only?
So the battery lasts the same as the iPad2, but only if you have twice as long to charge it? I can see that this might be a problem in the field.
Posted in Apple iPad 3 packs LAPTOP battery
Overnight charge only?
Does this mean a longer full recharge cycle time compared with the '2'?
Point of order
The Virgin Oceanic is a single-beardy machine.
Re: "We encourage IT professionals to begin using it...."
You mean those on the ME-Win2k-Vista-Win8 'antiphase' upgrade path? Poor souls.
Leap year
Hmmm... cert error on Feb 29th? Should have been Office 366.
Posted in Cineworld flaunts '4D' movies
Do they mean 5d?
We've already got breadth, depth, height and time don't we?
Re: What is the brand worth?
The thing with Windows Metro UI is that it doesn't have many er... Windows in it, it has 'Tiles' instead.
If they can't rebrand it now they never will.
