Posts by Neil Barnes
1185 posts • joined Wednesday 18th April 2007 10:33 GMT
Posted in Honk if the car in front is connected
Like Marvin
I'm feeling very very depressed.
If you want to drive coupled to the car in front, take the bloody train. I for one don't want my drive controlled my Mr 40mph in the middle lane. I don't want to read my emails or download entertainment from teh intarwebs or be thrown adverts or routed onto a different road.
The very most I want to know is 'this road is subject to delays because xxx'. That's it.
The scenarios illustrated in the article are fanciful at best: the amount of processing power required to uniquely and unambiguously identify every other vehicle in sight, in all conditions of temperature, visibility, and weather; to identify road conditions and braking distances and 'that bloke never had a driving lesson in his life' and that ball that just rolled onto the road is likely to have a kid following it and ooh, an ice cream van... nah. We've got a computer that can do that, and it's made with great delight and unskilled labour.
We don't need mechanisms to stop us having to think; we need educating *to* think.
meh.
Posted in Still buying CDs?
Re: I'm still a frisby buyer
I got my Masters a couple of years ago, also at the ripe old age of fifty<cough> - and related to ebooks: how to spell words that don't exist.
Much as I love paper, I have too many books that are becoming too fragile to read.
It's got to be better than Skype which of recent months has been unusable. The thing is, however it works, it has to have clients for Android, iPhone, and Windows, Apple, and Linux desktops. Otherwise it remains a curiosity.
Posted in Still buying CDs?
Won't buy music if it's not on a CD - and by that I mean a red-book CD, not some CD-shaped object with deliberate errors in it that's supposed to be unrippable. My physical CDs are rarely played and serve mostly as backup for ripped PCM (primary) or OGG/MP3 (secondary) copies.
Don't by DVDs at all - neither films nor TV series - since the one I watch live or off the PVR and the other I watch in a cinema.
I am probably the despair of the entertainment industry, but I guess I'm just not cut out to be a meeja consumer.
Re: - Educate me?
Thank you, kind people!
Educate me?
Is this thing built effectively with a separate partition in flash, on which one might install the critical operating system bits and pieces, or is it something kind of sideways upon which the disk itself will cache early-used/often used files?
That is - does it require OS knowledge of its intimate details to get the best - or indeed anything - from it, or does it work with anything, say vanilla Linux?
Posted in Twenty classic arcade games
Space invaders, yes, of course
But where was Galaxians? Space invaders that attacked you from behind - spent far too much money on that one.
And Gorf: "SOME GALACTIC COMMANDER *YOU* MAKE"
Showing my age, I know. I got bored with video games after then, never got into PC/console gaming at all.
Maybe I'm just an old Luddite
But I really really can't see one single advantage in it.
- Your data is in someone else's control and potentially in a jurisdiction which doesn't have the same legal system as your home.
- To access that data you have to have a permanent connection, either wireless or via 3G or better
- There seem to be no local applications
Yes - buy it to stick Mint on, but then you've got an expensive laptop with damn all storage. There are probably better ways to do that. I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again: if it doesn't have a compiler on board it's not a computer, it's a toy.
Meh.
Re: major incident on 2 of their 3 journeys
But - that's their *first* three journeys. How many goes did it take NASA or the Russians to get a reliable system? It could be argued that they *still* don't have one - how many times have they lost a bird?
Re: Apropos of which...
The standard 'push the right buttons and wait an hour while it builds and registers itself' thing you get with a new laptop, no installation media.
Apropos of which...
the last two laptops I purchased - both in the last three months, one W7 and one W8 - both failed to offer a browser choice.
I, for one...
welcome our mind-melded rat-king overlords!
Isn't the ISS within the Van Allen belt and thereby subject to a lot less radiation?
I'd volunteer
But I'm not sure the missus would last that long without the opportunity to buy new shoes...
Re: Plumbing
Well indeed. So you take the heat from the device that would otherwise be radiated into the room, squish it through a radiator, and, er, radiate it into the room...
I suppose you *could* use the waste heat to heat some other room in the house, but even that is still going to require extra heat where the device is. There's no net gain, I fear.
Re: WTF?
I believe you can now get Electric Monks to do your believing for you too...
Me, I find the best way to deal with the internet of things is to leave them in the shop. It turns out that the timer on the heating works really really well, and after only thirty-two years working for the BBC I've finally located the remote control for the telly.
That should work well
for those who don't use facebook...
Re: One question I have always asked myself
It's obvious that extracting kinetic energy from a moving fluid is going to slow that fluid down. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good grant application?
btw - will people *please* stop with this fallacy of the proverbial butterfly wing? Its flapping doesn't *cause* the hurricane, it just buggers up the calculations which would otherwise have allowed the hurricane to be forecast (in the absence of all the other flutterbyes, of course!).
Yes, I *know* you all knew that. But I felt the need for a rant.
'Right-minded'
equals, presumably, 'people who think like me'?
You have to wonder
Whether she'd be facing the same penalty had she booked, say, a shooting range for a day...
people who live in the cloud
Please tell me I'm dreaming.
Or have the lunatics finally taken over the asylum?
Re: But does it work for local PDFs?
My concern would be the opposite: is it still possible to use an external viewer in preference to the Firefox one for online PDFs? I am allergic to opening pretty much anything within a browser, if it can be at all avoided.
We just don’t see a world where nobody uses the keyboard anymore
That'll be the difference between the creators and the consumers, then...
Re: Oh, well...
And perhaps another bath.
You're never alone with a rubber duck.
Re: "What is the UK's take on a drone camera?"
I wonder if they'll have to be removed from paragliders and hangies, too? I'm tempted to buy one (I seem to be the only paraglider pilot out there who doesn't use such a camera) just to annoy...
Well, it would certainly kill
any US-based Lohan shenanigans, would it not?
Hmm...
In the NASA pics you can *clearly* see the alien craft separate and go into stealth mode... look close to the double object in the first frame, and a little above it in the second...
I'll just my tin-foil hat...
Apropos of aluminium
While the extra 'i' is of course the epitome of British style, taste, and good manners... the sad news is that Humphrey Davey originally named it alumium and then aluminum. The ium spelling seems to have come about a few years later when it was thought (correctly: it was Victorian English Scientists[tm] who thought it) that it sounded better; more classical, and it matched other ium endings.
But our left-pondian cousins, poor benighted folk, chose to stay with the original and far less elegant spelling.
I'll get you for that, Lester...
Just you wait!
And for those of us lucky enough to have worked in the BBC
Since Producer Choice came along, we had to ask ourselves every month or so 'just what are we called this week?'
Still, in spite of everything, the Beeb still churns out some excellent stuff - BBC2, BBC4, and Radio 4 for me, but your mileage may vary. And oddly enough, there are still people out there with attention spans long enough to stare at a screen on a wall *at the time the programme is broadcast*, or to listen to a radio in real time.
Reminds me, I must go and pay my license.
Wasn't Pluto named by Tonbough's daughter for the Disney character?
In which case, Mickey and Minnie seem logical...
Re: From recent experience...
Interesting - see my post upthread about Mint.
The only issue I had was that Ubuntu and Mint both initially booted in UEFI mode with the backlight turned right off, and I only discovered this by chance...
Re: Fail
@Tom Dial - requiring the ability to allow the owner to disable secure boot would not, I think, preclude the only method of doing that to be, for example, a windows-only application.
For the record: the Acer V3-771 allows the secure function to be turned off, and Mint 14.1 works nicely with it.
Posted in El Reg contemplates the ultimate cuppa
Re: Coffee for staying awake at work, tea for relaxing at home
I'm not convinced there's actually a need at all for coffee. Smells wonderful, tastes revolting. Even my Brazilian wife - and I have it on good authority that there's a million tons of the stuff in Brazil - won't touch it.
Posted in El Reg contemplates the ultimate cuppa
Re: Lapsang Souchong, dammit
Dried leaves [yes]
Boiling water [yes]
Juice squirted out of a cow [NO]
Re: It takes a great man...
I'm not convinced the ability to use Latin is a sign of intelligence; just a sign of training (or of having a team of translators on standby).
Perhaps he'd appreciate a farewell gift: maybe one of those t-shirts with the inscription 'Stand back: I'm going to try science.'
Ah, that's where it comes from.
I know it as 'never assume conspiracy when stupidity will do'.
Occam's razor, I suppose.
Re: twisted Pair...
But at least with Ether you didn't have to crawl around the floor later sweeping up the tokens that had fallen out...
Re: This could be the beginning of the end...
"So you'll just have to go along with them because you don't have much of choice."
And therein the problem. Some people are shouting and screaming for new glitz and eye candy; some are shouting for what they've learned and are used to, and see no need for new toys. But because the UI is so deeply tied into the OS, with Windows you simply have no option. And because MS refuse to supply a choice of OS - once a new one is released, and the pre-loaded images on existing new PCs are all gone, you will get the latest and allegedly greatest whether you want it or not.
I'll say again - if Windows works for you, that's fine. These days, any antipathy is largely reflex or a matter of taste - and the current UI is most definitely not to my taste. Perhaps they'll change it when the new SP comes along, perhaps they won't. But I predict that what *won't* happen is a decoupling of the UI from the kernel, that the user won't be able to have W8 with a choice of user interfaces, and that there will be the people who both love and hate the new updates.
Posted in El Reg contemplates the ultimate cuppa
What? No-one has so far mentioned...
Lapsang Souchong - prince of teas?
Half a teaspoon of leaves in the mug, add *boiling* water, no milk, no sugar, relax in smoky goodness.
Gunpowder teas are acceptable; green teas or even Earl Grey in a pinch - all with no milk or sugar, thank you, but don't even mention fruit 'teas', 'tisanes' or any other of this modern rubbish. If it's not built out of camelia sinensis it's not proper tea. (I shan't repeat the ethical Marxist joke.)
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Not a part time commissioner, it seems.
Is there any actual evidence that these intrusive and offensive objects have ever done anything to prevent a crime occurring? Or indeed, done anything except taught miscreants to wear hoodies?
Re: Contempt!
@JDX - by all means offer new products; but to bet the company on it? A little tick box on the web page when you buy a new computer offering the choice of what the user is used to or something new will tell them whether people want it or not... restricting new computers to only this choice that it seems few want is not the way to make friends and influence people.
Bold moves, yes; only bold moves, no. As you said - it has to be *right*.
Contempt!
Our chief weapon is contempt!
Contempt, and an inability to listen to the customer!
Er, our two chief weapons are contempt, an inability to listen to the customer, and knowing best!
Er, our three chief weapons are contempt, an inability to listen to the customer, knowing best, and refusing to sell the OS the customer wants!
MS hurries out and comes in again.
Among our chief weapons are...
You can see our house from up there!
Just... it's in that blob of light just to the left as the M1 leaves the frame... probably in the topmost row of pixels!
Posted in Amazon patents digital resale market
Re: Oliver Twist
Indeed. Though, in the case of books, my main requirement, most of what is on alternative channels requires so much proof-reading and correction it's sometimes faster to start with the original scan.
If I own the physical media, I don't see the use of alternative channels to provide digital forms immoral. And significantly, neither do a number of authors with whom I have communicated on this subject.
Posted in Amazon patents digital resale market
Oliver Twist
I am so pleased that the human race invented printing before it invented intellectual property rights...
While I have every hope that writers (and other IP producers, of course) will continue to be paid for their work, their income from me will continue to be in the form of payments for physical media: books, CDs, and so on; such will be scanned or ripped if I need/want them in digital form.
I am certainly shooting myself in the foot in terms of ease of use - while the supplier exists to authorise my use - but I believe that having bought something, it is mine to do with as I will. If I wish to transfer it to someone else, either as a loan, a gift, or a sale, I simply pick it up and give it to them; there is no need for a third party to become involved.
After all this time
Learning my way around the Gnome code in C...
Meh
Re: A nice lady rang me up the other day...
It's a virgin coax delivery to the house. The terminating cabinet for the area is at the end of the garden - all of ten metres.
