Posts by M Gale

Re: In the next couple of years

In the next couple of years, a desktop machine will be that powerful it will make an 8 core fondleslab look shite.

Technology advances, not just on phones.

Re: no comment

Same way you regulate idiots putting race grade octane enhancers in their petrol: They tend to drive like idiots most of the time.

Of course if you happen to like the extra juice and the occasional sideways drive around a roundabout, t'ain't my place to complain.

Re: Pathetic

Unfortunately the PC is just as shite and getting worse.

If it has Steam, I'm not interested. If it's by EA, Ubisoft or Valve, I'm not interested. If it demands online "activation", I'm not interested. Basically I can walk into a shop and see absolutely NO games that are worth getting now, due to them all coming with a free helping of malware.

Fuck the lot of them and buy only games that don't pull this shit. If everyone did that the devs would change their tune. They won't though, because too many people are addicted to the shiny.

And too many people will buy the PoS 4.

Re: Florian, the voice of Microsoft

Never mind, it's all over Google with a quick search.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/ms-patent/

All I can say to that is: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA....

Re: Things are not quite what you think

Indeed. Hence why I'll not buy one, thanks.

If I end up with a wildly popular web site, it'll be because it's a popular website, not because it has ".com" on the end of it. The squatters can have .com, they'll only get the fools who don't know how to type ".co.uk" into an address bar, and I'm not interested in them.

I know someone with a .co.uk address that I made the site for. He can't get the .com version because the last people he tried to get to make a site for him basically bought the domain name then did little else, letting it expire and be grabbed up by a squatter. Funny how he's struggling to make enough stuff to meet demand, and all without the .com "cachet".

Re: I would have thought the simple answer is...

Possible, even probable grounds for dismissal?

Perhaps. However, around here, unless you're working for some fly-by-night shysters, that tends to involve tribunals. You can bring witnesses to tribunals.

My witness will be a journalist from the local rag.

(and no, I don't have a Facebonk account either)

Re: Private Cloud? Buzzword for Accountants!

I believe Eucalyptus is supposed to be compatible with Amazon EC2 and S3 services.

Whether you can use Amazon to just expand your private cloud into when overloaded, I'm not sure.

Re: Right.

With Microsoft on the other side? Kidding, right?

They've never forgiven the Chocolate Factory for doing what they never could with a mobile platform based on an OS that they are actively failing to destroy.

Re: Ahh but..

I'm pretty sure that was AOL's filtering, preventing people from Scunthorpe from being able to create accounts with them.

Of course, it could all just be an urban legend.

Vinyl

Mostly it's DJs who go for it. Much, much easier to line beats up with two spinning vinyl platters than try to nudge waveforms together on a screen or hope that some auto beat matching thingumajigger gets it right.

Also time-coded vinyl is stupidly expensive and so is the equipment and software that reads it.

Re: Well at least it's an add-on pack

Believe it or not a friend of mine actually likes that. He deliberately keeps the voice announcements on so he knows his kids haven't been arsing about and disabling things to make some "ooh free stuff" malware site work.

Though granted, I find it annoying as all hell.

ot=to

I should lern 2 press "preview".

Tempting.

The other gorillas.bas copies that Rovio do all have had major permissions creep, blamed on "the advertisers". Funny, since plenty of other app developers release ad-supported apps without asking for the moon on a stick.

I just don't know if I trust Rovio NOT to creep the permission requirements up once they have a few captive^Wpaying customers. It's thanks to the actions of developers like this that I get more and more tempted to root my phone and install a selective permission blocker.

Re: There is no such thing as "free" TV

See my other posts: businessess don't get into loss-making ventures deliberately, and would not advertise if it were losing them money.

Commercial telly is not a tax on your food supply for fuxache.

That was fun.

"You have new mail"

Followed by the email client squealing and complaining about the gutbustingly-huge content. Not sure how many lines were in it, but I know my main account's elreg-specific email address was in it.

Ho hum. Be interesting to see how many spammers/scammers actually use it. Haven't spotted any yet that have made it past my friend Mr Bayes.

Voltages.

Yup. I remember finding this out myself. Basically TTL chips like to run between 4.8 and 5.2v. I remember the tutor saying how wonderful CMOS technology was because you can run some of the chips on damn near anything from less than 3v up to 18v or so.

That said, I wouldn't want to take the chance on the phone's built-in power management being so smart. Regulator ICs are cheap and pretty efficient, and the phones are probably built in the same place as the chargers, after all!

Re: SONAR

Well, you might only need two if the beacons are just acting as locators, so long as the robot can't get to the other side of the line between them and confuse itself. I'm wondering how doable it is to have each beacon mark out the vertices of a polygon that describes the boundary of the lawn though. Stick a light on top and make them look like solar garden decorations.

If each beacon can talk to the others and they can triangulate their positions relative to each other, then they can chat with whatever system is aboard the lawnbot. Maybe even in real-time, so you can move the beacons around mid-mow and define areas where you can sit and enjoy your G&T while watching the mechanized underling beavering away in its half of the garden.

Like I said though, however you design the positioning system of this thing, I think it would be prudent to have a SONAR or RADAR system on the lawnbot itself for detecting obstacles. Nothing fancy, just a kit or COTS box that you point at something and it gives you a varying signal depending on whether it's pointing at anything and how close it is. Stick it on a stepper motor for 360 degree detection, and possibly hack it up with an MP3 player to provide random BOFHisms and threats toward whatever ankles, cats or plant pots get in the way.

Re: No decent droid handsets at £150

I think you just haven't been looking hard enough. Once you get past the sub-£80 600Mhz ARM11 almost-a-smartphones, you can pick up a decent handset running a decent, official revision of Android for much less than that price. Hell, the Sony-so-it's-expensive Xperia Mini is still being sold in Tesco for a shade under £125, if you fancy a phone with a slidey keyboard. Anything 2.x is not going to be shabby, will support the vast majority of all market apps, and you can always install Launcher 7 if you absolutely must have a launcher with mahoosive buttons^Wtiles. Pretty sure you can get some Gingerbreads for the price of a Lumia.

Or is this a ploy to get some commentards to do your shopping for you? Sneaky Spartacus, go do your own Googling.

Re: Paper is a rubbish format.

Nope.

But I can read a book without switching it on. Doesn't demand that I download the latest version of the English language either. Or become unreadable because everyone has moved to Book v3.2.

Yep, digital information is more conveniently searchable. It's hardly a good archive format though.

Re: Sod them

Indeed.

I will buy games though. Just not games with mandatory Steam registration, or by EA, or Ubisoft.

Apparently my money isn't good enough for them and they want me to create accounts? More forgettable usernames and passwords on more hackable servers, an implication that I'm a pirate and a bunch of shite installed alongside the game to go with it? It's a toy, ffs. Either you give me something that works without a load of shit installed, or I buy elsewhere.