Posts by Mark 65

@M Gale

I'd like to nominate "intellectual property" as the biggest c*nt of a term I have ever witnessed. A label to classify the most insignificant of brain-farts as if it were Nobel winning material.

60% after 3 years? In a global downturn, not to mention that BMWs are hardly rare in the UK, you should be so lucky. Don't even start to quote second hand advertised prices as that's like valuing the housing market based on a real estate agent's front window.

System info under the Apple symbol, top left.

I think you'll find they flog anything unclaimed. These are probably just more commonplace.

Context

What they probably mean is "for your average pleb user who just wants to buy it and use the inbuilt facilities for downloading and storing books rather than fuck around with extra software, converting, etc it is tied to Amazon."

I'd argue that, other than overclocking, it's a Xoom 0.95

Isn't it gas turbine (when it arrives)?

"We never see a teenager in our shop now, unless it's to rent a game and when they come in you hear them stating, seen that, seen that, seen that and this is with the weeks new releases that have just hit the shops that day."

They could have been to the cinema - old school, I know. Another issue with DVD rental outlets is often the combination of price and time since cinema release and the experience is not heightened by scratched and generally fucked discs. You'd have though you'd just be able to go into a place and get a DVD quality file dumped on a flash drive by now. If you think that'd aid piracy I can tell you that DVD quality USB file vs DVD ripping really is no issue at all. Also, have you ever considered that your business has been eaten by iTunes? I hear the youth use it and others like it.

A normal domestic freezer (think fridge-freezer combo) will easily freeze "heavies" (5% abv) solid in the space of a few hours. These normally run at around -20C. It states it was -25C outside and like not a great deal warmer inside the vehicle especially if he was conserving fuel - seems he didn't really have enough in the first place as idling doesn't use much.

So they should instead make losses honouring a contract they didn't sign?

@Proof

Vast majority of newspaper "hacking" has been shown to be accessing the user's voicemail via an unchanged default network password.

Often found that "which source control" ends up as just another religious argument.

I've used the high-end Dell monitors before and whilst the picture was very good the build quality was suspect, which is how I imagine they price much lower. Had multiple failures on the different input ports, flickering, sometimes working sometimes not, returned 3 times for replacements and then it failed outside of warranty. Fortunately the only working input was the DVI. It may be anecdotal and "statistically insignificant" but after multiple returns with screen issues on a Dell laptop as well I've concluded that I cannot be arsed with their sketchy manufacturing quality. It's also worth noting that Dell will often replace under warranty with reconditioned items and not new ones which I feel is taking the piss.

I wouldn't be so quick to castigate the investment banks and praise the retail banks as necessary and important in the functioning economy. Investment banks provide the means to have fixed or floating rate mortgages etc. They are the middle men. Their cut may be too big, they may well be utter shitbags, but they are also necessary for the modern banking system to work. It was the retail banks that lent money that could not be repaid on properties that were not worth it. Sure, the investment banks aggregated it, the ratings agencies blessed it like holy wine, and everyone went on a gambling spree. But don't forget who it was that decided (encouraged by "well meaning" Governments) to lend shitloads of money to people with no real means of repaying it in order to embrace the concept of home ownership for all - those gatekeepers at the retail end. RBS, Lloyds, HBOS, Northern Rock etc. If they wanted home ownership for all then perhaps they should start by making housing less attractive as an asset class with associated tax breaks. Or perhaps prevent foreign investment in housing. I suspect that these were encouraged in the past to prop up the market at that point and are now difficult to remove.

Bizarre approval from El Reg, especially after the article contains...

"But except in rare circumstances, that data is dumped out of a phone's internal memory almost as quickly as it goes in. Only in cases of a phone crash or a dropped call is information transferred to servers under the control of the cellular carrier so engineers can troubleshoot bottlenecks and other glitches on their networks."

So it's just fine and dandy-o to dump out all those nice key taps and websites (like banking) as long as a fault occurs? Really?

I think creative types spending 35k on camera equipment tend to use dual chip Mac pros

'Tis not better to have tried and failed if one has a mortgage and family to provide for.

I was with his post until he started talking about abandoning the Eurofighter and blathering about making a smart choice like the Australians in buying the F/A-18.

1. It wasn't seen as a smart choice in Australia but was greatly questioned - "if an intermediary aircraft was always a requirement then why didn't we ditch the F-111 earlier" amongst other things. 2. Who knows what electronics they are ending up with as the yanks don't tend to give you their top of the line kit.

3. We already signed up to the Eurofighter, trained for it and have introduced it, ditching it makes no sense unless you can break-even in the used aircraft market - we'd take another loss. As for spares, we make the f*cking aircraft.

4. From what I've read, I'm led to believe the Typhoon shits on the F/A-18.

5. As stated above, the French option makes more sense if an alternative were needed. Smug they might be, but continual animosity towards your immediate neighbours, trading partners and carrier partners makes little sense save for generating a red-top headline. I'm sure they'd quite like the fact that someone was endorsing their decision to go their own way. Hell, you might even forge future joint development sans EF2000 bullshit down the line.

"what did they expect to happen to a guy with his hand on the trigger of a loaded weapon when subjected to an electric shock?"

Exactly what did happen perhaps?

Hayden, have a look at some of the photos out there (flickr etc) that have been taken with the Panasonic 20mm f1.7 prime lens - I think there's even a site dedicated to it. This lens is often touted as a great one for street photography, low light etc. and the shots I've seen taken with it are something special - the advantage of prime lenses. 20mm works out at more or less a standard lens for this format and makes the camera incredibly pocketable. I don't have one but it's one of the things I'm debating about as a carry around alternative to a DSLR, the other being a Canon S100.

I understand that the US political class is full of tossers. I also know and understand how they control their companies to data-mine for them. However you have not explained how a country protecting the data of its citizens against a company or country that will abuse that data is a WTO closed market issue. That is simply disingenuous bullshit.

Normally a sausage dog

Indeed, it's great to see the regulator give its tacit approval to the ISPs to totally fuck over their clients by no doubt introducing ever more filtering post contract signing with the "market" able to sort things out. Great. It's just so easy to move ISPs when most want a 12 mth lock-in. Looks like there's still hope for the smaller players offering rolling monthly contracts on the basis of not being total arse holes and actually offering a service. Doubtless they'll end up getting squeezed out of existence by the vested interests. Colour me sceptical.

And how would they be funded oh wise one?

Website has a UK url so who cares, we appreciate it?

It is certainly bullshit. Although not a Nikon user I sometimes download my Canon firmware updates from the EU site, sometimes from the AU site and sometimes from an English language version of the JP site. How on earth are they going to region lock it? Serial numbers? Purrrrlease. They'd instantly lose all of their professional users that would be fucked over in the process. A price not worth paying.

On a separate matter the loss of warranty is not entirely FUD. I would much rather have a 12 month warranty from the manufacturer than from a store (despite reputation) that is still more likely to go out of business and also needs to get the expertise from somewhere - local authorised agent maybe? The best that can happen is it makes the manufacturers have a rethink. Despite the supposedly higher prices I managed to get a 5D MKII with lens cheaper at launch in JB Hi-Fi than anywhere I could find in the UK (genuine local stock in each location).

@AndrueC

"Permanently screwing up large areas of the countryside is a no-no in my book."

We don't get tidal waves or suffer massive earthquakes and I would also hope that we wouldn't be building 40 year old nuclear reactors and surrounding containments. I have very little issue with *modern* nuclear energy and would much prefer that the existing stock were replaced by it rather than inevitably allowed to go on past their use-by dates.

Size not necessary

Size in model number is pretty much standard these days and easy to discern.

More important in these times would be the power rating and standby usage (which should be low in EU). Some of these TVs will be like storage heaters. The 65" VT65's figures are 311W and 0.30W respectively (454kWh annually - IEC 62087 Ed.2 measurement method). A 50" model in the same series has 190W, 0.3W (and 277kWh) respectively for comparison.