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* Posts by Andy 70

174 posts • joined Monday 15th June 2009 09:19 GMT

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Andy 70

Insurance....

I'm looking forward to the tracking collars, and having my life insurance based on where i go.

i get an electric shock if i go into an unsafe zone or something, as a warning that my premiums will go up if i remain in that area.

my commute will be filled with little zaps as my train goes through various pockets of shit to get to london.

can't wait. zaps auto uploaded to facebork as a warning to others.

oh wait. foursquare! what am i thinking. just need that uploading to an underwriters... i just had an idea for a business proposal... back in a bit.

Andy 70
Meh

bollox

there was an initiative to bolt something on to bluetooth, where your car dumps the sensor information to your phone, and your phone generates the UI on the car's screens sort of like RDP or something.

i take it that's died a death then.

Andy 70

marking your turf

ever think about marking your own yard? communicate on their level.

Andy 70

pykies will still probably be ripping out the ground...

Andy 70

Re: Do not want, and in fact this kind of thing is a fucking 'orrible idea.

so... the driver has to operate gadgets and gismos whose sole purpose is to stop the driver being distracted by gadgets and gismos?

right. what idiot thought of that one?

eventually the driving test will consist of. those who can drive a manual, those who can only operate an auto, and the fuckwit test.

passing the fuckwit test and driving a fully autonomous fuckwit car has lowered the legal age at which one can hold a driving license to 8 years old.

good to see audi trying so hard in targeting their current demographic's mentality.

Andy 70
Windows

x86 playstation?

wipe it, install windows, install steam, job done.

media centre machine+gaming in a frontroom friendly unit with no vendor lock-in or tie-downs. nice one.

playstation ecosystem? huh, whatever...

Andy 70
Pint

Gorgon Stare

Sorry, i read that as the Gordon Stare. I imagined Gordon Brown just staring at some MP for questioning his lack of ability. As a result i didn't think it would be much cop at object tracking - didn't he take a pie to the face?

beer. Friday fuel.

Andy 70
Thumb Up

Architect....

I'm going to update my corporate brand right now! top buzzwordization! or is that bastardization? either way, happy friday BOFH'ing to all!

Andy 70

nice pixel density. if only PC OEMs would follow.

I hope Apple hasn't gobbled up the only supplies of higher density screens.

For my work issued Dell 14" lappy - I had to do a right song and dance to be "spec'ed up" to a 'huge' 1600x900 from the generic miserable 1366x768 or whatever, and it still looks pretty poor. Like it's got a really fine mesh over then screen that just seems to make things fuzzy. My comparitively ancient Asus with its 1680x1050 screen still looks pin sharp in comparison, without that much of a difference in resolution.

I was spec'ing up an Alienware to replace my Asus, but if the 1600x900 on the Alienware is the same screen as my Dell work machine, given the amount of money you can spend on this thing, then it'd be a bit of a let down.

moar piksells pleez!

Andy 70
Thumb Down

Uplay

i most most displease about having to install yet another bloody game client front end account info scraper. had i known i needed some poorly built 'going to be ignored in a few years' custom front end; i wouldn't have bothered with far cry 3

just like i gave masseffect3 a miss and a couple of other EA titles that are "origin exclusives"

the time i'll "log in with my facebook account" is the time that satan will go skating to work.

Andy 70

Meh

can we not just have one standard please? lightpeek seems as good as any with PCIe direct and displayport multiplexed together.

there's the obligitory XKCD for competing standards somewhere...

Andy 70
Unhappy

"maximizing the potential for shareholders"

translation:-

strip mine the company, and decimate the workforce. The rest can go to hell.

R.I.P. quantum. your SCSI fireball drives were the byword for speed and your tapes, reliability.

wheel another one to the tech graveyard of my childhood/adolesence

Andy 70
Thumb Up

mankind's tombstone for eternity

at least something of mankind will survive the sun's eventual destruction, even if commities and budget cuts ensure that we don't.

provided it doesn't fall into a star or get eaten by a black hole. but given that [hitchhickers] space is so mind bogglingly big [/hitchhikers] etc. hopefully that won't happen for a while.

Andy 70

pricing.

you know what? i'm thinking about getting one of these (and know a few others who are also), and may get one IF(!) they don't just change the dollar sign for a pound sign and keep the numbers the same. like usual.

Andy 70

all our sunOS and Solaris boxen had hostnames from various comic book heros and villans.

management took a dim view, so the IT director had a new naming convention installed.

names of irish towns. brilliant. names that seemingly can only be spelt and typed correctly when the requesit amount of irish fighting juice has been consumed.

also the root password was the name of whatever brand of watch he'd bought himself.

Barucci was the last one that has been burned indeleably on my cortex, and i've not had to use it in nearly 20 years. while an annoying reminder of someone elses pay packet being larger than ones own, the main problem we had was no longer having the excuse to shout the old root password (transvestite) down the phone at each other.

happy days...

Andy 70
Thumb Up

would help if all manufaturers who put MIDI sockets on their machines confirmed to the kind of standard.

had a yamaha something something stand in for a roland something else that had it's drum section on channel 10, instead of the seemingly agreed channel 16 that everything else expected.

made everyone jump when the melody kicked in. i remember their faces ....

good times, happy unbirthday MIDI. i might just dust off the old datel MIDI-X for the A500 later...

Andy 70

hmmm

looks like a good reason to weld another RSJ to the front of the ol' Jeep. yes officer, its to mount a winch pull the boat out of the water. honest gov'nor.

Andy 70
Windows

yeah, but....

functionality plays second fiddle to form. and really, when was the last time you used your DVD drive for anything?

anyway, they are just iterating through all the motions (cash generating steps), that will lead us to what will effectivly turn the iMac into; an ipad on a stand.

nice. so in 2020, we'll have what we had in 2010, and be told it's the next big thing. and you will all accept it, love it, and once again - you will all pay for it. isn't marketing great.

Andy 70
Facepalm

@ Thorne

judging by the pile-up at the ticket barriers as people figure out how to operate them, a good portion of the 25% can be found on the early trains into Liverpool street this morning.

Andy 70
Meh

never let any one stash for you!

have your own stash. and keep it.

at my cost, i sold at the time under much duress of convincing from family, a very expensive and custom video editing system. but i was good. i did my dutifull backups onto its DDS3 (3 no less!) scsi tape reassured in the knowledge that i would get back on my feet and i would own such a beast again. one restore and i would be golden. parents also had stuff in store, and offered to store my stuff which included generic nicknacks, about 1000 floppy disks, and the golden, precious tapes.

i now have enough of such a system back in operation, i have salvaged a known working DDS3 drive. when i asked about the stuff they had in store, i was told.

"oh we've got it all back, it was costing too much."

"so what about my stuff?"

"you've got it all."

"a vic20, a reflecting telscope, and a stick on garfield?"

"yes"

"no hundereds of disks or small stack tapes, or anything else?"

"no"

"..."

in that silence, the realisation that a section of my past life was consigned to history

Andy 70

That's quite funny,

must be a reg key on a server somewhere...

HKLM/Software/wow/everybodydead=1

Andy 70

so, how much coffee is a "cup"?

is a quad-shot americano (four espressos topped up with water) a cup? certainly fits in one...

used to do 4 -5 of these a day. is that bad?

and man the headache's on the weekend! unreal! only when i cleared my first litre of filtered in the morning that they would go away. - reminds me. need to defrost the bacon for tomorrow morning...

Posted in Populous
Andy 70
Thumb Up

breakthrough into link up gaming

two amiga 500's one properly wired 25 pin null modem cable, and countless hours lost. getting annoyed when the other player hits the armageddon button before you're ready.

or single player, and big maps being left to run overnight and during school hours - to be picked up when i got home and should have been doing homework. good times. not much homework done though ;)

Andy 70
WTF?

so much for the looks

i don't care what they're called. still can't tell the difference between one of these and a super cheap acer from pcworld. (cheap and pcworld in the same sentence! i crack myself up sometimes....)

looks. isn't that what this is supposed to be about?

Andy 70
Thumb Up

and what happens if your bubble bursts half way?

oh sorry, erm, your warp space containment field destablizes...

you can't exactly phone the AA to tow you home, and unless you're carrying enough exotic material on the outward trip to build another stargate doughnut the other end, it sounds pretty one way to me. As i guess there isn't a local tesco's in the alpha centari system to visit the meat counter?

also, how do you "arrive" at your destination? calculated bubble bursting?

"nav" computer to take into account destination system's velocity and direction, given that when we look at where it is from earth, the time taken for the light to reach us is where it was eleventy billion years ago, not where it is now?

calculated course will have to be re-evaluated and adjusted continuously over the course duration, getting more accurate as you go (the closer you get the more recent your visual positional data is). or do you just take a massive calculated punt that the block of nothing you're aiming at is where the system is at your arrival time, and not empty space.

over all, if there is a call up for pensioners to do test trips that may or may not get home, sign me up when i'm old enough!

spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!

Andy 70
Meh

yawn

nothing here that excites as much as the hardware specs would lead you to believe.

i think i've officially lost interest in "smart phones". andriod, symbian, windows phone, and after suffering the recent round of hype over the next device apple have released, i just don't care anymore.

nothing inspires, no inovation, no new ideas. just a revamp of the usual spyware and information gathering bugware that the general public have accepted as part of their personal 'information revolution' that everyone vaguely intelligent went trough in the late 80's/90's, before people became the products that kids now accept as the default settings for their lives.

fuck this, where's my nokia 6310? track me now you cunts.

Andy 70
Windows

chrome shmome

yeah, no wonder the install count is creeping up. every freaking install of adobe, or java, or somethingelseineed(tm) comes with "would you like to install google chrome and set it as your default browser?" that and the google/ask toolbar. people just click yes yes yes yes yes ohfuckwhatwasthatlastone? ahscrewit, yes yes yes finished.

and are they counting every android handset out there too?

fruggin grumble grumble IE9's too good for 'em... netscape 3.01s what they want....

Andy 70
Happy

i bought this over the samsung 8000

lovely picture, lovely screen, 3D gimmickery - erm i mean 3D bluerays work fine. not sure how you get cross talk on passive specs? btw, cinema passive specs don't work on passive TV's

here's what sold it to me.

watching a film on this and watching a film on the samsung 8000 side by side.

once i'd spotted the light pooling/banding on the samy's screen, and also leaking in from the edges plus spotlighting from the corners, i was spending my time looking for and finding imperfections. as once you'd seen them, you couldn't "unsee" them, as you knew they were there.

on the LG, i just got sucked into the film and watched it. even when i tried to snap out of it and hunt for jaggies, wobbly motion compensation, odd light gradients or pooling, i just ended up drawn back to just watching the content.

So, put money where mouth is, and bought one. Initially i was worried about smoothness issues replaying SD content. but those went away real quick. I think the review is a little down on what this set can produce, and sure, if you have the cash to burn, go for the higher end models, but it seems you're really getting into the realms of deminishing returns if you do.

so far, I have nothing to complain about, and especially, the missus likes it. surely that's _the_ rubber stamp of approval. Good HD on this thing is like looking out the window.

all in all, kinda agree with the final percentage score given in the review, (maybe i'd give it 5-9% more), its a good solid TV with a decent feature set. spend more get more, spend less get less, it's your money, you takes your chioce. there is no such thing as the perfect TV for everyone, it's always going to be a compromise. But i'm happy enough that i'm not planning to upgrade this screen now till 8KHD takes off.

Andy 70
Windows

well...

TechnicalBen, my take on it is that you have a pre-agreed way to read the numbers off of the light beam at both ends, and you just take advantage of the phase shift of the light beam itself and modulate accordingly to get your information there 'a tiny tiny tiny bit faster than light'.

nothing is physically travelling faster than light, just the numbers just ride the phase peaks like a surfer on a wave. like a stopped clock surfs a 12hour time wave to be right twice a day. provided you know when to read the cycle, you'll get the information you need. so each end has to know how to read and transmit the information accordingly.

meh, whatevs. probly wrong init. safe.

Andy 70
Facepalm

@lemmac

thanks for reminding me why i don't click on the "view comments" button too much anymore.

Andy 70

£££

i bet someone pays that kings ransom aswell.

100 grand? 100 quid would be more like it! ;) 100 quid well spent though...

Andy 70
Meh

<title of hated>

<post of hatred> Ricky Gervais <growling and nashing of teeth>

<end>

Andy 70
Meh

another childhood dream goes down the swanny. i used to think i really wanted something like this, the idea's for it's uses go on and on.

but in reality the it'll track you, look at what you're looking at, hear what you're hearing, and sell all the info to the highest bidder.

nothing serves _YOU_ anymore. you are the product. not quite how i imagined a technological utopia of my future.

Andy 70
Thumb Up

at least he only has to deal with the proposal day anniversery once every 4 years.

on the other hand, he'll be damned if he forgets! ... oh wait. that's just normal.

Andy 70
Unhappy

bugger

and so disappears another mismanaged, repeatedly rebranded, overdue-for-death, hold out of my childhood.

and £20 off my game card. double bugger.

best wishes for future endevous to all retail staff. hope you get something out of this, but as we can imagine, probably eff all.

Andy 70
Meh

generic flame post

Andy 70
Windows

just so long as we can install windows 8 and change a reg key to turn it into server 8, everything will be fine.

Andy 70
Trollface

yes this is all very well

but are they mutating?

Andy 70
Windows

@the cube

terrorpeado - nice one, i did laugh. trouble is, it's funny cos it's true.

Andy 70
Windows

heh, when the more cash rich sections of the business heard there was a corporate ipad feasability study going on, they all rushed out to buy one.

the study concluded that they were too insecure, so the idea of using ipads for corporate use was tinned.

i saw a resulting purchased pad in its cover, with a pair of headphones attached, on someones desk, and motioned to it's owner, "new toy?", i asked. "yeah, i just use it as an mp3 player though" came the disinterested reply. must be nice to have that much disposable income.

as much as i inwardly chuckled to myself, i did wish i had bought shares when i figured the ipod was going to be the next big thing back in wayback then.

Andy 70
Windows

I love the "get people out of poverty" chesnut. just throw that one out there to make you feel good about what we're doing.

do they think people really are that stupid?

i really fancy steak and chips for munch tonight.

Posted in Mass Effect 3
Andy 70
Meh

Origin

hmmm, been waiting for this release for ages, and seems like EA is trying to jump on the steam bandwagon. i trust steam to be around longer than origin. unfortunatly, EA has a winner on it's hands and it knows it with ME3. same for the last star wars release, and not so much, but the NFS series too.

plus, another installer/drm client? really? ffs.

not buying this till it's on steam. probably next year. may get the 360 version if it's on download.

EA = dicks. no change there then.

Andy 70
Pint

MayPee Jordan

heh, i know a bank that has converted their risk reports into GPU code.

i think some financial rag touted it as the next big thing. PNL calcs in 5 seconds instead of 20 minutes!

from the sounds of the devs muttering, you'd think the project was financed purely for that headline!

oi did larf.

hey Matrox, as you're only alive cos you're gouging us $1500 per 8 port card, think you can slap in some cuda cores in your next G400 respin?

sent from my T3500

Andy 70
Trollface

windows phone

huh, all i get are investment opportunity, and property portfolio managment ads.

maybe it's a windows phone vs android general demographic vs actual data? ;)

Andy 70

x86

if i can run steam and games like blur or skyrim on my phone, i'm not really going to care about much else.

Andy 70

hmmm, so would pron be stored as pron in optical memory? would it even need a display device?

are we going to see a researgence in Boots faux red/green/blue leather photo albums as "optical storage media" for fambily fauxtografy?

has grannie with her years old dusty shelves and shelves of the afformentioned picture storage devices, got the drop on us all?

the mind boggles with the imaginary possibilities.

Andy 70

we ran a test project to see if iTablets were a possible future direction.

turns out they are insecure. game over for this round. but hey'll be back in some other incarnation i'm sure.

as for the death of windows? hmmm. maybe not. but without the office+windows combo in effect i suspect we'll see a weakening of the old guard.

anyway. Interesting times, as always.

Andy 70
Thumb Up

my first though was real "zoids" if you remeber those, and then i saw:-

"cretaceous New Jersey" is that with a cretaceous Snooki and co?

Andy 70
Thumb Up

awesomeness

its good we've been there before, but now making it work.

weren't those terminator thingys based on 3D cpu's?

Andy 70
FAIL

trade unions? heh, game over.

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