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* Posts by PhilW

139 posts • joined Thursday 11th June 2009 13:06 GMT

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PhilW

The BBC presenter Raymond Baxter was one such pilot.

PhilW
Mushroom

Werner Von Braun's autobiography was called 'I Aim For The Stars'.

Swiftly subtitled 'But Usually Hit London'.

PhilW

PC sales crashing has more to do with factors like smartphones and tablets than a troublesome O/S.

Your average tech purchaser is going the way of those who eschewed SACD and DVD-A in favour of 96Khz mp3 because you could cram more dubious bits of noise into a small box despite the resulting headache.

I purchased a new PC 2 months ago and the vendor who built it (PCSPECIALIST) offered Windows-8 AND all flavours of Windows-7 as the O/S. Naturally we chose 7.

PhilW
Joke

Didn't you read the article?!

It already has chips in it and is somewhat fishy ...

I'll get my coat.

PhilW
Alert

"Baikonur, we've had a problem."

There. Fixed it.

PhilW

Nah ... the Osprey is a twin prop tilting fixed wing. It doesn't melt anything except on the unfortunate occasions when one plummets from the sky. You're thinking of the F35.

PhilW
Facepalm

It only took the US Airforce / Army AirCorps 20 odd years to get a safe Osprey tilt-rotor after billions of $ investment. I'm sure a cheap flying car will be just fine then ...

PhilW
Coat

Or you could let someone else do the heavy lifting and like me use watches radio-controlled by the caesium clocks in Rugby and Frankfurt. Not anywhere near as accurate but significantly more accessible.

PhilW
Thumb Down

As soon as I see the word 'family' I think rubbish product.

PhilW
WTF?

'New' and 'Exciting' and 'Delighted' ...

I'm increasingly convinced that all managerial bullshit output is generated by the same computer program.

It's always 'exciting' (when it's clearly not!) and a delight.

PhilW
WTF?

Vidiots?!

Please stop insulting me.

PhilW
Joke

No doubt if it is tasty it'll soon be available in a shape suitable for portability and pocket storage, a rectangular bar maybe. Probably wrapped in a plastic film to preserve it with a suitable logo on it. I've no idea what they'd call it though ...

PhilW

Re: American organisation offended by breathing

But now show me a gay sex scene (or even a kiss) in a Hollywood film. Heaven forbid!:

Brokeback Mountain

A Single Man

I Love You Philip Morris

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Many more etc etc

PhilW

Maybe your vinyl collection does have an online future ... on EBay where someone who actually wants to play it can take it out of your cupboard.

PhilW

Re: where's George Taylor when you need him?

Give unto Caeser what is Caeser's ...

PhilW

Discovery ...

My God ... It's full of stars!

PhilW

Re: So what?

That might be the case for broadcast TV but not the case for recorded media. I would very much like to see my favourite films and filmed documentary footage (eg the NASA archive) at that resolution and and then we keep going until we actually replicate a projected 35mm frame (and beyond). Or would you still prefer VHS?

PhilW

Precisely!

PhilW

WD TV Live Hub

The have a nifty product in the WD TV Live Hub media device, a built in 1Tb drive, plays just about anything including (for my purposes) Flac encoded audio but they then chose to install a small mobile phone cpu in it and it runs like a hobbled drunk slug. Any competent manufacturer would have spotted that it sells quite well and improved the hardware by now. I'd buy another one if they made it faster!

PhilW

Re: Small car please

Because at 65mph it's still got massive acceleration to get you out of trouble or safely overtake and isn't thrashing the engine to death to do it resulting in a quiet reliable machine unlike a noddy shopping trolley. It's potential terminal velocity is more an indication of other benefits.

PhilW

flac ... ETC

Why do they think that anyone buying a CD these days will want an MP3 encoded copy? Anyone old enough to want a CD is probably ripping it to a lossless format like flac.

What Amazon is actually attempting is to seduce the diehard CD buyers away from the format by showing them the "joy & convenience" of pure digital files ... As usual they've failed to spot that the reason people still buy CD is not just because they want a shiny disc but because they want the biterate that Amazon won't provide via mp3!

PhilW
WTF?

Re: D'oh, for cripes' sake...

Argh wrote: "Does it matter? You still get the CD, and they give you the download for free?"

YES! It does matter. Because Amazon is a business and it costs them money to run this service that could otherwise be devoted to things actually useful to me like decent packaging for my items and better wages for the warehouse staff.

PhilW

Re: Only one real point

Because I like the artwork and liner notes having grown up on the scale of vinyl albums that weren't just music but also an artistic production.

Because I get the tracks in the order the artist intended.

Because the quality is far superior (usually) to mp3 and I can rip the discs to FLAC myself.

Because I have an easily stored hard backup of my data for the same price as not having one!

Because they play in my car.

etc

discuss

PhilW

Ironically ...

I fell off a Segway in Rome recently (true) and it fair old knocked the shit out of me ... Just saying.

PhilW
Black Helicopters

FAB?

Thunderbird 3 had this nailed ... but sadly with Gerry now deceased ... Oh well, they can keep trying.

PhilW

Re: It was a feature

I did it with a ZX-80 in 1981 before buying a ZX-81 and subsequently (for my 18th birthday) a Spectrum.

It amuses me that my current PC has 12582912 times the RAM of my ZX-80 (12Gbx1024Mbx1024Kb) ...

PhilW
Stop

Boffins?

Just because you're a redtop doesn't mean that ... oh whatever.

PhilW

Re: No profit ...!

That was true until about 3 years ago when very obvious cost cutting was introduced.

Try doing a web search on the subject or just take my word for it when I order hundreds of items each year. I'm extremely well placed to comment and I can assure you that Amazon's standards have declined. It causes me no end of hassle having to return items (they've changed that process to make it less easy to accomplish too!), Amazon accept all my returns with full apologies so I'm not taking liberties and I would very much like it to STOP!

PhilW
FAIL

No profit ...!

Any profit they might have achieved is probably eliminated by covering the cost of the extraordinary number of replacements they have to provide me for items sent out damaged or damaged in the post because of Amazon's ludicrous corner cutting (literally in some cases) packaging.

PhilW

Re: If anything

Install a new GPU ... job done.

Now try that with a console.

PhilW
FAIL

Re: Annoying bear thingies

Somebody blessed with the ability to write might have presumed that Chewie had been taught to operate machinery by Han Solo or was otherwise educated outside his culture and that the rest of the Wookies remained less capable ... instead George had a go.

PhilW
FAIL

Running Crysis 2 in 64 bit mode with Direct 11 and hi-res textures on my twin GPU powered, quad core pc makes me think that those screen-shots look like a console ... ie very poor. Playing Mass Effect 3 is a giveaway too ... I go from fabulously marvelous (mostly) when my system is doing the work to utter crap when the console suitable cut scenes appear. It's really night and day. What I'm really trying to say is that games used to push the development envelope but consoles have dumbed down the concepts AND technical execution ... but you know that.

PhilW

Re: A quarter of Brits fail to understand some science, that's probably excusable.

Randomly believing things without any actual empirical data should be outlawed ... You know who I'm talking about Mr Priest!

PhilW
Black Helicopters

Black Mesa ...

My opinion is that the extremely regular failure of expensive government IT projects is simply a cover for black project financing ... Therefore the British combat spaceplane (codenamed X-Viper-Wing) and/or the governments fleet of laser equipped sharks are (pun intended) swimming in cash but undoubtedly years behind schedule ... Maybe.

PhilW
Alien

QX!

How delightful to read a reference to Arisia's favourite project here on El Reg!

Peter vanBuskirk would/will be delighted ... !

PhilW
FAIL

D-Love?!

An animated character called 'D-Love'?!

After that hideous robotic thing that invaded my TV during the digital switchover this might be the tipping point.

Why do people think 'cheeky, loveable, cute, funny, SAFE' children's characters are a suitable marketing ploy or that ANY sane adult will appreciate them ... ?

PhilW
Facepalm

(very limited) Zombie Apocalypse!

I am the walking dead ...

PhilW
WTF?

Re: Very happy to see flight dynamics cited

I for one had zero difficulty with the flight dynamics. Learn to pilot a Cobra is my advice!

PhilW

I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed about this ...

PhilW
Meh

Noise ... ?

I can't hear if my Superhub is making noise because of the insane afterburner like din of the various fans in my PC. Not least my twin GTX580 GPUs that are quite possibly slowly propelling my house down the street.

I've had other transformers that hum, whistle and squeak though ... it's usually the mountings being a bit loose. Putting something heavy on standalone transformers (the typical plastic black brick) usually works.

PhilW
FAIL

N900 debacle ...

I remember well the buzz of anticipation that NOKIA managed to generate when the N900 was announced and the huge number of very committed users of that device who recognized its potential and bought into the concept. I was one of them. We then cursed NOKIA's very soul as it allowed the opportunity to turn to dust and as it betrayed nearly every promise made to the N900 users. Promised software features never appeared including basics like MMS, firmware revisions were late and not complete then dried up prematurely. Most importantly MAEMO was hyped as the future of NOKIA's mobile O/S that would DEFINITELY be used for the subsequent final revision device and then they threw it away by attempting to integrate with INTEL. We all know how that turned out! What truly appalls me is that the educated predictions of disaster made by most of the N900 user groups ALL turned out to be true. If you do this 'x' will happen NOKIA. They did it and 'x' happened. If you don't so this then 'y' will happen ... voila etc.

I own a Samsung Galaxy Note.

PhilW

Imagery ...

One useful ability of the 4K format is that it can get closer to displaying digital images taken with a consumer camera at their full resolution. I've got no way of doing that except by printing my images (or buying a very expensive and relatively small computer monitor) and printed images are not backlit and that really improves the quality.

PhilW

Tommy Flowers

Mr Flowers IS getting recognition. I've seen at least two recent TV documentaries that referenced Bletchley Park and Colossus and went into great detail about Mr Flower's contribution and how he was an unsung hero. Bletchley Park has several displays dedicated to the man and the wikipedia entry for Colossus details his contribution. Many books on the subject also mention his work. I'll admit it's only recently that he's getting the praise and documentation he deserves but better late then never.

PhilW
Mushroom

Well I ordered one!

And the most fiendish board game available is 'The War on Terror' ...

PhilW
FAIL

If anyone actually wanted the downloaded version rather than the disc(s) then they'd already be obtaining it. The fact that there has to be a 'special incentive' to get the downloaded version tends to indicate it's not really wanted ...

I'll stick with my carefully produced packaging and ability to store a long-life copy of my films on a convenient shelf please.

PhilW

Overrated ...

I've been in the district several times. In 2005 I spent a troublesome couple of hours trying to locate a CompactFlash card greater than 2Gb and failed. In the end I paid triple the price for a 2Gb card that I would have paid in the UK. With the exception of cellphones and blu-ray recorders there was no tech that was cutting edge and unavailable elsewhere. Most of the shops sold bog standard kit available anywhere and basic souvenirs of Japan catering to the tourists.

'TGV' themed? Really? Not Shinkansen Super-Express themed?!

PhilW

Re: wind sensor fault

I thought exactly the same thing. Some of the cabling was very exposed and tied together with tape as far as I can see. Weight reduction is key of course but it did look rather fragile in places considering the environment it would be exposed to.

PhilW
Facepalm

Here we go AGAIN!

How dare anyone invent a superior viewing experience that might actually be as good or better than films that I've seen in the Great Cinema Emporium when my 67 year old Etch-A-Sketch is still functional and capable of displaying perfectly good monochrome images at a frame-rate of 1 per minute. Seriously, some of you lot astound me. I'm amazed you ever invested in colour TV let alone HD and if one more person claims they can't spot the difference between 1080p and a 10 year old Nokia phone display then I'll probably have to scream!

I've seen this technology in Japan and it blows what you're used to clean off the planet. Have some aspirations for a change!

PhilW
Alien

A Sea-Devil?

(Just compare the two)

PhilW
Go

but ...

What if a competitor accidentally continued to carry the laser gun whilst in the swimming section of the event and a passing shark happened to end up with the aforementioned energy weapon on it's head by benefit of some seaweed adhesive anomaly ... ?!

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