Posts by Uncle Slacky
633 posts • joined Thursday 11th September 2008 19:18 GMT
Don't put it on a pedal stool either...
Re: The fall out of Win 8
Most recent versions of CorelDraw seem to work well with Wine - which one are you using?:
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=440
Re: Great for legacy systems
Check out MintPPC - it uses LXDE as its default (it's essentially Mint Debian otherwise).
Shirley you've seen the study...
...that shows that Fox News viewers are even less informed than people who watch no TV news AT ALL:
http://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5
Re: I'm sure Outlook.com has cost them a lot of users
I feel your pane...
Re: Good Bye Yellow Brick Road
In the first few months after launch, you had to be invited to join Gmail, and invites were thin on the ground. A black market in them grew until the invite limits were removed.
I was one of the first outside Google to get one (12 days after launch), as I "knew" a Googler on a mailing list I was on. I secured FirstnameLastname@gmail accounts for the whole family as a result.
Re: Mach 1.2?
XB-70 Valkyrie?
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/bomber/xb70-1_300-2.jpg
Re: Inertial? no way
You can use MEMS inertial sensors, which can withstand huge accelerations (>20,000 g) - I used to work on them.
Is our favourite Shoreditchian involved?
No doubt a certain Mr BONG! will be along shortly with more details...
Posted in Sord drawn: The story of the M5 micro
Re: 30th anniversary of every man and his dog releasing a Spectrum-basher
The CPC had the advantage of having its own display, so no fighting over the (usually) single shared TV in the house. Having said that, I now wish I'd hung on to my Speccy for another year or two and bought an ST or Amiga instead of the 6128. Still, I recently picked up an Amiga 600 at the local dump^H^H^H^Hrecycling centre for a fiver, so I got there in the end.
I was allowed access to the M5 in a local computer shop by the owner, on the pretext that I'd write some demos for it, but I wasn't really inspired by it.
Re: In other news ...
The CO2 in fizzy drinks comes directly from the atmosphere in the first place, so it's actually carbon-neutral (except for the energy required to make the drink in the first place).
Re: Stop the press
The 1990s called - they want their FUD back.
Re: utopia
Yes, it's how the world works *now* - that doesn't mean that it must always work like that. I'm not sure how it will happen, but it will change, possibly violently once things get too bad for the 99.9%.
Re: Patients?
LVT would go a fair way to paying for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
The robots would of course do the jobs that nobody wants to do - that's where this conversation started, remember?
Re: Patients?
Plenty of people are motivated to work, but this way, they would be free to do the work they enjoy, rather than, as most of us do, what we have to do to keep body & soul together.
What's the point of labour-saving devices and automation if not to give us the free time to achieve our full potential, and to work (or not) as we choose? Forcing people to work or allowing them to starve in a world of plenty is fundamentally inhumane.
Re: utopia
A lot of people already have the rest of their lives off - they're called "the unemployed". Similarly, many are on half-days - they're called "part-time workers". Unfortunately, the way things stand, these people are worse off than before, and the profits go to the business owners instead.
This is why we need a basic income sooner rather than later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
A story that springs to mind
A plausible robotic-takeover scenario: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Posted in The ten SEXIEST computers of ALL TIME
Re: you forgot!
I used to have one of those - unfortunately it was too big and heavy, so it went to the skip in about 1993.
Re: Thank goodness for right-thinking scribes!
No, removal of Fox News would be a positive benefit, given that their viewers are in fact less informed than people who watch NO NEWS AT ALL:
http://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5
Re: Nope
"My Pi is barely ever more than lukewarm from use which is very impressive and of course silent. If only it were a bit faster..."
Have you overclocked it yet?
Re: Congratulations PC makers!
I've played DVDs (in VLC) on an 800MHz Gateway desktop (Essential 800) dating from 2001, with 256Mb RAM. Granted, this was in Bodhi Linux (based on Ubuntu) but it could also run XP acceptably.
Undelete photo
You *do* know that it should be relatively trivial to undelete that photo, provided you haven't already overwritten it?
"excludes more vulnerable members of society who don't access the internet"
I thought that was the government's intention all along?
Re: Which problem is The Problem?
Wait until Little Bobby Tables makes an application...
Re: Shouldn't the rest of the world help save the world?
There is already an organisation called Spaceguard, which has tried to get international backing to track NEOs - some might remember Lembit Opik championing it a few years ago: http://www.spaceguarduk.com/
At European level: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Technology/NEO/Spaceguard_Central_Node
Re: Wouldn't happen in England...
They dropped the "both parents must be native born UK citizens" requirement a while back - however, unofficially all this means in practice is that you may get as far as the interview, but you'll never actually get a job offer...
Re: Pretty nice machine
The Amstrad CPC6128 (and the PCWs, I think) also used 64k bank switching to achieve 128kb RAM - nothing unusual about that.
The keyboard was a bit better than the Amstrad's - similar to the Electron's IIRC.
Emulators
Looks like there's only one - PALE (Pete's Lynx Emulator) here: http://heraclion.users.btopenworld.com/palelynx.htm
or here:
http://www.heraclion.co.uk/darkside.htm (both blocked from where I am - dunno if they work)
or possibly CamLynx here: (again, dunno if the link works)
http://www.emu-france.com/?page=fichiers&idMachine=93
Always fancied one of these...
Technically, it was much more advanced than anything I'd seen up to that point. I remember playing with one in Laskys in Birmingham city centre - I'd only recently managed to get my parents to buy me a Spectrum so there was little chance of upgrading so soon.
Posted in Paying a TV tax makes you happy - BBC
Re: I want to like the BBC
They did announce something similar about a year ago called "Project Barcelona" - it's supposed to be a kind of iTunes arrangement: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/15/bbc_director_general_confirms_project_barcelona_apple_itunes_rival/
Before that ISTR GReg Dyke wanted a free archive of all old BBC material made available for download, but when he left it seemed to go quiet.
Re: Researcher mistake #1 ...
Porn.
Re: Been using iGoogle for similar
I switched to Netvibes (netvibes.com) when the iGoogle closure was announced. At the moment there's a banner on the site warning of latency, presumably due to the exodus of Reader users.
Need to rethink whole economy
A good dystopian description of where this could lead is described here: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Ideally, however, there would be some kind of basic income guarantee for everyone, so that nobody would *need* to work (though they could choose to, and thus supplement their income, if they wanted to): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
But this is unlikely to happen in the plutocracy/neofeudalism currently in favour, and would be rejected by the PTB as filthy pinko socialist talk.
Wot no Matrix?
Shame they never made any sequels, though...
Re: Thanks Andrew...
Sounds a lot like the Victorian idea of the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor you're talking about there. Are you in the Cabinet, by any chance?
There will always be some small amount of fraud in any such system, the only way to avoid it would be to have NO welfare system at all.
In any case, the actual amount of benefit fraud is tiny, around 2% of the total, whereas public perception is that 1 in 5 people believe a majority of claims are false, while 14% believe a majority of claims are fraudulent. (All stats sourced from links here: http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6348/economics/cost-of-benefit-fraud-v-tax-evasion-in-uk/ ).
Re: There is no shortage !!
There's only a shortage of people willing to work for the pittances they're being offered....
Re: Thanks Andrew...
Taxes are the price you pay for living in a civilised society.
Alternatively, Somalia is that way --v
Re: Life in Mars
Cool story, bro.
Re: Semi-tech
Slimmed-down *buntus include Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Peppermint and Bodhi. Not sure which is best for the Pro, but Bodhi is probably the best for memory usage and power saving.
Re: 5 part series "Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle"
...and still a better love story than Twilight...
Apparently it's based on the cut his grandfather (Kim Il-Sung) had, so it's presumably reserved exclusively for the family of the Great/Dear/Whatever Leader.
Re: It says a lot
South Park did it best: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/104274/what-scientologist-actually-believe
Re: Dark matter
"galaxies behave as if embedded in a larger ephemeral cloud of dark matter."
You could also say that the planets of the Solar System behave as if they were embedded in transparent, ethereal spheres moving in epicycles...
Posted in AMD: Star Trek holodecks within reach
Re: end of the human race
It's *Scott* Adams, and it was also explored by Red Dwarf's total immersion video game "Better Than Life".
Posted in Any storm in a port
Re: I used to have the same problem
Having recently acquired an old Blueberry PowerPC iMac, I noticed that their USB ports are mounted upside-down (at least, by modern standards). I put it down to lack of standardisation at the time rather than Apple "thinking dfifferent", though.
Posted in Any storm in a port
Also, Ethernet sockets & USB ports...
...are almost exactly the same width, as my young daughter discovered.
Re: Non Freesat FTA channels on Freesat boxes
Sky News is now on the Freesat EPG (channel 202), along with PICK TV (used to be Sky 3) and the 5 USA & 5 star channels.
Re: EPG, SchmeePG
You can, with Sky at least, by defining which channels are your "Favourites", then you can skip through them on-screen using the blue button. Also, when in the EPG, pressing the blue button will display only the programme listings for your favourites.
Re: eee 4G
Why not just run Debian & Streamtuner if you want to use it for internet radio? That's what I do on my Raspberry Pi (with VLC as a player).
Re: Battery near ear
It loks a little lopsided (weight-wise, at least). Wouldn't it be better to have a small battery on each side to balance it out?
