Posts by Alistair Dabbs

Re: ew Acer.

>> Always shoddy, always breaking, always poorly finished, always loaded down with shitware

Yes but apart from that, what have the Romans done for us?

Re: Free upgrade

Yes, I could have rephrased that better. The point was that Acer says it will upgrade you, rather than you necessarily doing it yourself via a Microsoft store. How this will work in practice, I have no idea.

Re: All in 1366x768!!

I thought someone would ask this but I didn't want to get bogged down with a long and boring list of all the specs. I imagine you'd also want to know what ports you get, all disk size options, etc. This stuff will trickle through when we start reviewing the real kit.

In the meantime, let it be known that tou can get the Aspire V15 in 1920x1080 but not if you want a touchscreen. You can also get a 1920x1080 version of the Chromebook. The 17in version of the Aspire ES has a 1600x900 display. The Aspire Switch 10 has 1920x1200.

>> I wouldn't want to leave trace lines of graphite on my tablet's screen

A normal blunt-ish HB worked fine without leaving any visible traces on the glass. I can't say what would happen with a 2B, though. I didn't have one on me at the time.

Re: Ceterum censeo!

I once worked with an Australian who was 100% convinced that any Englishman will laugh out loud at the mention of the word "bottoms".

Re: Spot on description of acess control purgatory.

>> What you had to do to gain entry

Yes, I have a colleague who was refused re-entry via a convenient side door after he had nipped out of the company gym for a run. The jobsworth on video security could see that he was waving a valid pass and covered head to foot in sweat but still made him walk up the road and use the main entrance and take the public lift back down to the gym, dripping sweat throughout.

Re: ...never go full C***son

I owe a bunch of flowers to the Reg sub-editors. When I typed that sentence, I inserted asterisks only in the first c-word.

Re: Doing a Clarkson

Nice blog? This ain't no steenkin' blog. I get paid for it!

Mind you, this has given me an idea for next week's column...

Re: you need a holiday Mr Dabbs!

I heard you the first time.

Re: who picks the photos?

I picked the photo because I felt like it.

Re: Augmented Unreality

This is my feeling too: AR has a tricksy, surprising, pop-up feel that makes it best suited to entertainment. For everything else, it strikes me as the most inconvenient method possible of communicating information.

>> well, a few graphics would help!!

It's bad enough that I made puerile sexual jokes that turn out to involve a child character. You want me to post pictures?

>> felony

I'm not surprised. Everything is illegal in the USA. It must be like living under the Taliban over there.

I would pay the premium rate to stop them from recording in the future.

Re: These people are out of their tiny minds

>> These people are out of their tiny minds

Why cannot I not get Alvin Stardust out of my head?

Re: Great article, gave me a really strong mental image.

Deadmau5, yes. In a row of Deadhed5.

Re: Fred-rick Nee-chee

And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart

I drink therefore I am... (Etc)

Re: Streaming? more like Steaming

>> the original vinyl album's track order changed for CD

I'd forgotten about how they used to do this in the early days of CD. The worst offender for me was Thomas Dolby's Golden Age of Wireless. Even now, if I choose to listen to this album, I play it via a custom playlist that puts all the tracks back into their original LP order. Shame that the continuous joins and cross fades are impossible to recreate this way, but there you go: a perfect album ruined.

Re: Blumlein

I met Robert Alexander at Wednesday's event. I think a new updated edition of the book is in order.

Re: Word perfect article

>> article is a masterpiece.

Thanks, mum. I'll be back at 6.

To be fair, several of these artists do play an instrument: Jack W plays guitar, Alicia Keys plays piano and Kanye West plays with himself.

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

I'd feel more charitable if the Tidal crowd on that stage made music that I'd want to hear. Why would I want to encourage more of that that garbage? How could I trust these identikit-surgeoned airheads to promote original bands? Even Jack White is a has-been whose interesting work ended the day he recorded that bloody awful theme tune to a James Bond film... with a certain Alicia Keys, wasn't it?

Re: Good riddance, I say

Are you invading Steve Coogan's privacy by quoting what he once said? Isn't Steve Coogan acting like a tabloid newspaper by blurting out his cruel opinions of celebrities he doesn't know personally?

>> Go fuck your hands you blubbery, bilious bunch of baboon-faced bastards.

I've read that before. Was it Captain Haddock in Secret of the Unicorn?

>> disgraceful attack on the LGBT community

One of the Facebook comments in question claimed that JC was a misogynist (which he may well be for all I know) because he used the word "c*nt" as a term of abuse. Earlier in the post, the same person had already called him, apparently without any sense of irony, a "prick".

Re: CompuServe computer magazine Forum

It was CLIFEUK. Disappointingly nothing to do with fish but the UK edition of Computer Life.

Re: How Internet chat works

An animated GIF? Fascist.

Re: Ahh CL

InDesign doesn't do 'lorem ipsum' precisely but it's another part-randomised, mashed-up Cicero variant, I think. PageMaker used 'lorem ipsum' and I believe WordPress used to (still does?) when you preview themes. Which makes me wonder... do the Vatican newspaper subs have a spellchecker?

Re: Just one more thing...

I don't think I ever met anyone who had actually animated a gif

What, like this one?

Re: Ahh CL

the infamous "Type some shit in here please" Amiga Format issue

Thank you x100 for the link to the page scan. I use this exact anecdote regularly in my training courses with respect to the use of 'dummy' text. I'm a strong believer that the reason why Adobe InDesign uses faux Latin for its dummy text (as opposed to 'lazy brown fox' or indeed 'type some shit in here' etc) is that it will always get flagged up during a spell check. Now I have a copy of the original page to show everyone too. Thanks again.

Re: It was crap but...

In the eBook publishing industry, we have to put up with this all the time. We have perfectly acceptable EPUB standards but when will we ever see an eBook reader that respects them properly or a creative package that supports them correctly?

Re: Ahh CL

I'm pleased that Computer Life is fondly remembered. I did several freelance stints on the UK edition, starting as production editor, then CD editor and CompuServe sysop for CLIFEUK. There was no such role as a web editor in those days, although someone later pointed out to me that Britain's "first ever magazine website" (Futurenet) only got going some months after I artlessly coded my handful of CL pages.

Re: In a wonderful piece of irony...

Apparently the alignment of my mugshot is obsolete. It's the story of my life.

Re: non European character sets

ISIS must be bricking it without IE.

Re: "I'm on the internet....."

Good piece but really of most value to those who will never read it.

When I publish my book, I'll print that on the dust jacket.

Re: Vinegar and Cat’s Piss

Enough to avoid the gym I go to, anyway.

Re: A bit over the top, but...

implanting it into the user's hand

The gadget would be out of date before the stitches healed.

Re: Is it just me?

Your password is as secure as you choose to make it.

Whereas it's perfectly OK for my biometric identity to be in the public domain? BTW, Apple treats your fingerprint as your password on iOS devices.

Re: A bit over the top, but...

1. YOUR FINGERPRINT DOES NOT AUTHENTICATE YOU TO THE BANK!!

This is true. However, your scenario only considers the possibility of a user's phone being stolen. My opinion is that the greater threat is that the bank allows all of ITS records to be pilfered.

Re: Wishful thinking as a platform

Thankfully, the UK Government has an excellent track record in rolling out IT systems.