Re: Crikey...
This is great, it reminds me of when I was 12.
Posts by Horridbloke
439 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2007
Black-eyed Pies reel from BeagleBoard's $45 Linux micro blow
Who's a Siri boy, then? Apple hoards your voices for TWO years
Facebook struggling to find 'immersive' Home on Apple's iPhone
63 TRILLION maths ops a second - in 5 inches? Mm, show me
Dragon capsule makes fiery entrance, safe splashdown
Fukushima switchboard defeated by rat
Holly(oaks) talking head is FUTURE of face messaging, claims prof
Virgin Mobile coughs to choking its customers
Tuesday 5th March 2013 14:43 GMT 
It isn't even unlimited...
I'm using one of Virgin's 30-day rolling contract deals. The "unlimited" internet deal is, if I remember correctly, currently subject to a 3GB / month "fair use" policy, with vague threats about something perhaps happening should you go over that limit.
The only time I've breached one Gigabyte on my phone was the month I drove eight hundred miles with Google Navigator displaying the aerial photography overlay - being a pillock in other words. The infrastructure isn't there for everyone to stagger around perpetually streaming high definition video, and probably never will be. Accept it and cheer up.
Health pros: Alcohol is EVIL – raise its price, ban its ads
Tito's Mars mission to use HUMAN WASTE as radiation shield
UK distie boss: My brush with death in rapper's drive-by killing
Google reveals Glass details in patent application
Microsoft: Office 2013 license is for just one PC, FOREVER
Time to rid ourselves of the tech channel zombies
Tuesday 12th February 2013 16:22 GMT 
Computer misselling
I'd like to take a pop at high street computer retailers. For years innocent members of the public have been punted PCs and related tech by the same shops that sell TVs, videos, stereos and toasters. This has been the wrong model, as demonstrated by the large number of confused and disappointed PC owners who resort to bothering people like us to keep their contraptions running.
The ownership and costs model for a typical PC is probably closer to that of a car than a telly : the owner suffers massive depreciation, unexpected running costs that nobody told you about and either have to be an expert or know an expert or pay an expert to massage it back to functionality when things inevitably go awry. Computer ownership has been a miserable experience for millions. (There are of course exceptions: simpler devices and machines bearing a certain fruity logo seem to fare better and no, I don't own a fruity machine.)
The PC retailers don't cater for these events and shouldn't be considered "channel" - they are mere spivs.
Montana TV warns of ZOMBIE ATTACK in epic prank hack
NFC SD crew gives up: No one wants our safe bonking tool
Wednesday 6th February 2013 13:13 GMT
@AC 15:45
Wrong: in this case the dodgy payments were processed through that business. That was how they happened to get caught (Note that the bored minimum-wager behind the counter is NOT the merchant).
While we're at it, what is actually "conspiracy theoryesque" or otherwise inaccurate about the idea that disabling the NFC element disables NFC payment?
Monday 4th February 2013 15:33 GMT
Re: Perhaps they are asking the wrong question
"card is not your property, it remains property of the bank.."
I'm not going to tell them.
If at some point in the future a compelling reason arises not to emasculate the card then I'll stop doing it. Until then I will take some responsibility for my financial security.
Monday 4th February 2013 13:58 GMT
Re: Perhaps they are asking the wrong question
Totally agree. On a related matter I was pretty annoyed to get a replacement credit card with contactless element the other month. I think it uses NFC technology - my smartphone certainly recognised something was there.
Anyway, the accompanying sheet of people cheefully informed me the limit for unauthenticated contactless payment was £20 - somewhat in excess of the "cup of coffee" purchase scenario these things are supposed to be for. I didn't like this, so using the old card (which upon closer examination turned out also to have the contactless element), the smartphone and a hole punch I located the NFC element and was then able to neuter the new card by cutting in the right place with a craft knife. The card still works fine in Chip-&-PIN readers, so I will be snipping future cards in the same manner.
Car dashboards get Nokia HERE without a phone in sight
Japan promised Ultra HD TV broadcasts two years early
Hydrogen on demand from silicon nanospheres - just add water
This week's BBC MELTDOWN: Savile puppet haunts kids' TV
Oz library finds Lance Armstrong books a new home: The fiction section
Engineers are cold and dead inside, research shows
Google denies smacking Botswanan ass
Tuesday 15th January 2013 17:05 GMT 
Trying to be a bit clever...
... The official explanation is that the donkey was lying in the road and got up to move out of the way when the googledrone approached. A quick google image search leads me to believe people drive on the left in Botswana, lending credence to this explanation - can anyone confirm / refute?
Lenovo, EA, Intel unite to DESTROY our childhood memories
Tuesday 8th January 2013 10:40 GMT
Same old problem
"Technology's gone robot-happy. Any job has to have a robot, or the engineer in charge feels cheated. You want a doorstop; buy a robot with a thick foot." - one of Asimov's robot stories.
The tech industry has been criticised for decades for its emphasis on punting tech over solving problems. Unfortunately they're still at it.
'SHUT THE F**K UP!' The moment Linus Torvalds ruined a dev's year
Making MACH 1: Can we build a cranial computer today?
Wednesday 2nd January 2013 20:57 GMT
Re: I doubt I'll be first to mention this, but...
My favourite is another of Ray Bradbury's, the circa-1950 short story "The Murderer". It's set in a near future where everyone is constantly in touch and constantly bothering each other with the minutiae of their lives. The story itself is an interview with a man in custody who's finally flipped and smashed up the talking technology so he can have some piece and quiet. Replace "wristwatch radio" with "phone" and it's a remarkably prescient piece of work.
Apple supremo Tim Cook's pay packet slashed 99% in 2012
Friday 28th December 2012 22:59 GMT
@Will Godfrey
"What's more to the point, is what on earth can anyone actually do with that amount of money?"
Blow it all on beer, SSDs and Intel Extreme Edition processors.
Seriously, with that money I would track down everyone who has ever wronged me, buy the houses next to theirs, and fill them with tramps.
Japanese firm lifts lid on Android-controlled toilet
Boffins spot planet that could support life... just 12 light years away
McDonalds fried for serving spam
What did Capita ITS staff get for Xmas? Elf 'n' safety training
Morgan Stanley cops $5m fine over Facebook IPOcalypse
Tuesday 18th December 2012 16:11 GMT
Is something still going on?
According to my stock monitor Facebook is sitting at about $27. That's a impressive, if somewhat depressing, rebound from the low of around $18 several months ago. How come it hasn't dropped under $5 by now? I suspect continuing shenanigans.
(All prices are per share, not total capitalisation.)
Dutch operators: Ugh, we really overdid it on the 4G last night...
Tuesday 18th December 2012 15:44 GMT
Re: 3G
Yep, the insane UK 3g auctions cost the operators several hundred pounds for every single man, woman and child in the UK and that cost was before they'd installed any new infrastructure or posted off a single subsidised handset.
I make this Netherlands auction about 225 euros per head of population - a relative bargain.
North Korea's satellite a dud, say US astroboffins
Samsung's smart TVs 'wide open' to exploits
Wednesday 12th December 2012 14:53 GMT
Re: If it looks like a computer....
"So your average retired grandmother..."
Your average retired grandmother can't work out a smart TV either. Actually the same goes for plenty of younger people. I've helped out a couple of non-geeks get their giant tellies web-enabled over the last year. One was a thirty-something nurse, the other was a fifty-something martial arts instructor who'd been duped into buying an unnecessary £70 wifi dongle and didn't believe me when I said he didn't need it because his router was sitting proudly at the back of his telly stand. In both cases they were massively disappointed by the rubbish network functionality on offer and the bad ergonomics (an issue that has haunted consumer kit for decades) and I don't believe they bother with those smart features.
Smart TV features will remain "geek" features until the ergonomics get sorted out. The manufacturers don't seem to be up to it, therefore the Linux media box path has a realistic prospect of success.
Think Xmas bashes in your biz are scary? Try partying with the Channel
Tuesday 4th December 2012 19:40 GMT
My personal best
I had started a new job the month before. The Christmas party was on, however the taxi was an hour late picking me up. I'd made a start during that hour and so was already below peak performance when the taxi dropped me and another newcomer at the do. We circulated a bit, drank at the bar, chatted with people a bit, bumped into people and apologised, drank some more, sat down and enjoyed the meal., drank, applauded the annual awards, whinged about that idiot in marketing..
... anyway, at some point the other guy worked out why neither of us had recognised anybody else there: we had been dropped off at the wrong party. The nice lady at reception made a couple of phone calls and discretely directed us to the right party five minutes walk away, by which time our actual colleagues had finished their meal and were starting to go home.
It was a good evening.
Children increasingly named after Apple products
Ten technology FAILS
Tuesday 27th November 2012 21:59 GMT
Re: CDI != VCD
Consumer digital video was a huge novelty at the time. In the twenty years since then we've become accustomed to horrible blockiness and strange motion smearing - only a few years ago I was astonished that people seemed happy with the terrible image quality on Sky - but back then it was strange and terrible. The big selling point for Video CDs according to the magazines pimping this technology was - wait for it - rock steady freeze-frames.
Tuesday 27th November 2012 16:15 GMT
Re: CDI != VCD
I think (and have just wiki'd to verify) it was the later AGA-based Amiga CD32 that could take a decoder to play Video CDs.
I remember viewing a Video-CD demo in the big Virgin store in Birmingham. It was playing on a fifteen inch telly and the compression artefacts were appalling.
Tuesday 27th November 2012 15:40 GMT 
CDI != VCD
The Compact Disc Interactive things were not a "VideoCD rebrand", but one of the rubbish early-nineties attempts at doing a console based around a high-capacity (for the time) optical disk. I remember seeing reviews of games for CDI.
I think most of the CDI units could play VCD but needed an additional hardware video decoder costing in the region of £200 - a lot of money in those days.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
