Posts by Roby
84 posts • joined Friday 11th September 2009 09:45 GMT
Re: So glad these are still live!
http://www.ladyproblems.org.uk/
Re: Oh bollocks
Same here. I've had no usage limits, no slowdowns, just fast, reliable internet, and it's cheap because I have my mobile with them. I suspect the first thing to change after Sky takes over will be the price going up, shortly followed by terrible slowdowns in the evenings. I've had Sky before and between 6pm and midnight it was sometimes like dial up.
Posted in Keyboard, you're not my type
I like proper keyboards, with big keys that you can tell when you've pressed them. They last ages and I find them easier (although maybe I'm just used to them). I don't like laptop keyboards or ultra thin keys, and I've often found them to be questionable (sometimes requiring a firm press to get a response).
I don't beat my keyboards into submission because since I am quite young I never used a typewriter. My fingers fly over the keys pushing them just enough to get a response, but I still like the traditional basic Dell or Logitech black keyboard with large keys where you can really feel you have pushed the key. My dad learnt to type on a typewriter and he murders keyboards and claims he cannot relearn to stop hitting the keys so hard.
Has nobody seen Taken? His Tweet is a joke reference to Liam Neeson's character.
Re: "You sick, sick man," responded one shaken reader.
I tried cofftea once. Never again.
My logic was that I like coffee and I like tea, so together it must be awesome. Actually it's a case of two rights making a wrong.
Someone at work gave me the wrong mug and I had a colleague's tea with sugar in it. It made me want to die. How can people drink that?
Shame
I think this is sad news. Not bad news - it's probably good news for the web - but it still upsets me to hear it for some reason.
I don't use Opera (apart from for a few months many years ago) but I liked it and I was happy that there were people who use it. Variety and competition is good. Even now when I use it to test websites I am amazed at how fast it is at loading pages.
I can foresee a future where every browser uses and contributes to the same open source rendering engine. It would certainly be convenient for web developers. I'm not sure if there would be negative consequences to such a future.
I hope Opera Software will still manage to keep going.
Re: Bit dim.
It must have turned on inside him. I can't believe anyone could be so stupid to leave a phone on when you put it up your bum.
Also I wonder if he had the charger up there. On the X-ray it looks like just the phone and some headphones, so surely you'd conserve the power while smuggling it in.
Or
I reckon it will turn out to be a shiny rock that got especially polished by duststorms and then happened to catch the light in the right way. You can sometimes see things that look like metal on a beach when the sun is at certain points, but when you get closer it's just a rock. Or, tarmac can look like water in the distance on a hot day... I don't claim to know the specifics but it'll be something mundane.
I wouldn't pay to see any of the things I normally watch on YouTube, i.e. short (sub 15 min) videos made by an amateur about a topic, or very short humorous clips, or music videos. I would pay to see actual American or British TV shows (e.g. Netflix kind of thing), but YouTube's current content is not worth anything to me. If they charged for it, I would stop watching it.
Re: If it is ~ same efficiency as plants..
If it is the same efficiency as plants.... why not just use plants? They look nicer and have other benefits for the environment and even mental health in humans.
Data is by far the most important thing to me now (as I imagine it might be for most smartphone users). Most operators give me ridiculous amounts of minutes and texts that I don't ask for and never use and then a tiny amount of data.
I would happily pay less and get less calls/texts or even go back to PAYG so long as I can have a few GB of data. I know that's not the kind of freedom they would allow though. I'm sure I wouldn't be as profitable to them as I am when I have to pay for things I don't use.
A very similar situation to my home phone line that I pay monthly line rental for as well as a calls package - the cheapest one of course - just so I can have broadband. I never use the phone as a phone. In other countries of Europe you can just get broadband on the line and not pay for a phone.
GNOME 3
I really hate GNOME 3. It massively reduces productivity, and not because it's new and needs getting used to; it's because it's terribly designed. It seems like somebody did some research on good UI design and then did the opposite. I can't see how else you could get it so bad.
Ignoring the massive elephant in the room then.
Re: Just left BE as they no public FTTC plans
I'm actually very pleased with my O2 home broadband. It's basically the same service as Be. It's been very fast and unthrottled and I get it at a massively reduced price on an offer since I have O2 mobile. I get a good speed and don't experience slowdowns. It's a shame (and a little suspicious) that they have no FTTC plans. I guess they will milk their broadband customers and then offload them, so they won't be investing in their infrastructure.
I totally agree. Wars of the future will be fought by drones, either with their own AI or controlled remotely. There's no point in putting a human life in danger when a skilled operator can be safely in a bunker or nearby hidden armoured vehicle.
I love the keyboard and mouse
This could be good for the industry. So long as I can continue playing computer games on my PC using Steam, and they won't be more consolified (than they already are).
I can envisage a world where many vendors make "Steam boxes" running various Linux distros and with differing hardware at differing prices, opening up more choices, and the hardcore people still being allowed to play on their custom-built PCs.
Unfortunately I can also see a dystopian future in which Valve sees the console market as the most lucrative way to go and abandons the PC in a similar way to Microsoft after XBox or Epic. I'm sure that won't happen, but I still feel like an endangered breed being kept alive mainly by Steam and GOG.com, and anything that slightly threatens that worries me.
This has brought genuine tears to my eyes. I won't forget this brave sacrifice.
Great, that's another monocle smashed.
Re: I always wondered...
I'm pretty sure if a dog was chasing me while I was jogging then my reaction would be to run faster. Why would I stop and get mauled?
Posted in Word wonks insist GIFs are really JIFs
I used to pronounce it with a hard G because I had only read it and I assume that's how an English speaker automatically would pronounce it unless specifically learned otherwise. Of course, there are words like "giraffe" but these are learned. I think the soft G exceptions are generally learned and for most people "gif" would mainly be read first, and they would default to the hard G.
However, over a decade ago I read that the creators wanted it to be "jiff" so I switched to that, much to the annoyance of nearly everyone I meet. I think using the hard G must be in the majority since anyone who hasn't read that it should be "jiff" would automatically pronounce it as "gif". Most people will have read the word first rather than hear the word first.
Why I think GIF hasn't died
I think the recent resurgence in GIF popularity is due to the increased connection speeds allowing animated GIFs of a few megabytes to load in a couple of seconds. It suddenly is possible to post them on image boards and blogs without people having to invest time waiting for it to load. If you don't have to wait then suddenly the stuff you are willing to check out increases.
I can recall being on a very slow connection a few years ago, where every click was carefully thought out because after a 2 min wait for a website to load, it better be worth seeing. Now I click all over the place, pages load instantly, and if I'm not interested I close it.
The lack of a viable alternative also helps keep the outdated GIF going. Even if an alternative IS made (MPNG/APNG?) browser support would lead the older format to persist for a long time (also known as the IE effect).
It's the only way to be sure
How about a "nuke the entire site from orbit" icon? Could be used in situations of security flaws, webSITES that people don't like, or just generally when the poo has hit the fan or someone thinks there is no hope for a certain technology/company.
It would probably end up looking a lot like the "Eat this" icon though.
It was horrible
I recently went for 2.5 months without Internet at home (although I did have my smart phone). But it was astounding just how difficult it was to get anything done compared to only five years ago, and surprising just how reliant I'd become, particularly on Googling any stray thought.
But I found it difficult trying to find out information about government stuff (e.g. taxes), trying to sort my utilities out, booking appointments.
Arranging to get a phone line and a broadband connection installed was a bit of a catch-22. To find out any information to compare the prices and policies I basically needed to be online already. Even just finding out the phone numbers for anything. It's amazing just how disconnected and useless you feel without Google at your fingertips.
Of course, I did cope and didn't die without the Internet. In fact I found myself going to bed earlier. I did eventually sort everything, although some things proved more difficult than others (frequently being told to use their website or register with them online grrr). I think phone services in particular have become much worse because they expect you to use their online service. Most of them suggest that you use their online service as soon as you call before putting you in a queue for hours. I recall being in a similar situation only 6 years ago (moving house and having to set everything up) and it was nowhere near as difficult as I found it this time.
I expect the trend will continue. It makes sense because online services are generally better for the people who DO have an Internet connection and they are cheaper to provide. We will only become more connected. The Internet will be always available to us with smartphones allowing us to view any website exactly as it would look on a PC at any moment wherever we are. I wonder how far we are from glasses/contact lenses with Internet overlay.
Re: "Max Planck Institute in Germany"
You beat me to it.
Correlation does not imply causation
As someone else said, the ones with smartphones are probably more spoilt and allowed to do whatever they please and overall experienced worse parenting.
Posted in Japanese toilet can save penalty kicks
I'm so confused. What could possibly compel anyone to even come up with the idea for this, let alone follow through to completion.
I mean, it's actually quite brilliant. But utterly, utterly useless at the same time.
I didn't realise there were different series. I was gonna say why on earth would you want to replace Darwin. As much as I love Turing and think it was terrible how he was treated, I love having Darwin on the £10 note. But if the £10 note is getting a routine redesign then yes to Turing! That would be awesome.
This kind of thing should not be decided by the public. The only thing most of the public know about is celebrities, as illustrated by the list:
"David Beckham, Richard Branson, Princess Diana, Terry Pratchett, Jonny Wilkinson, John Cleese and Terry Wogan"
It should be an historical figure of great significance, and something decided not by a public popularity contest in which morons (aka most of the population) can vote.
Re: Economics
I understand that they have to satisfy record labels and need to make a profit. My issue is not with either of those, it's with their implementation of it. I would be happy with more restrictions, more adverts, one play per <unit of time> or five plays per <bigger unit of time> or just about anything else than what they did. It's the locking out of a song FOREVER that that I just completely disagree with on principle.
Can you really describe Spotify as free with ads if it has the excessive "5 plays of a track in your entire life" policy? If they made it per month, per year, or even per decade I could accept it, but since it never expires I just refuse to use it.
I was actually a paying customer, but I decided I didn't want to invest in creating playlists and letting it learn about my tastes if they introduced such a terrible policy to the free version. Who knows what other terrible ideas they might have in the future? And what if I ever had a month without paying - perhaps a month where I knew I wasn't going to use it as much. The knowledge of forever locking out a favourite song in the free version would cause me to be terrified of using the free one, which makes Spotify useless for occasional users who would probably be a good source of money over time and would be invested in your software meaning you would have a source of customers for advertising and who could potentially become full-time paying users. As it is, they've totally blocked that market out and made such users turn to piracy.
Posted in Valve's Half-Life
No offence
This is badly written, and I don't just mean the grammar mistakes. All of your articles seem like school homework pieces talking about what you did over the summer. They don't seem to have a point and lack any insight.
Posted in Borderlands 2 review
Re: Inventory fatigue
Yeah I finally bought it. The menu is an improvement over the original. As you said, you can use the mouse wheel, and clicking on things actually does something. It could be a lot better though. You can tell it's designed for a console and then they've attempted to port it to a mouse.
I also didn't see the 2 skill trees to the sides and that you have to switch between them by clicking an arrow. I can imagine that being intuitive with a directional controller on a console and allows them to cram more on the screen, but it makes navigating the menus a little bit harder for PC users. It would be much better if you could see an overview of everything on the screen and just click on stuff.
The inventory is much better. Just clicking on something to compare items is much more intuitive, but when you want to click on an item in the backpack it would be nice if you didn't have to click the arrow to switch between equipped and backpack displays. Both are already visible it just partially obscures one, making it slightly more cumbersome.
Overall though everything has been improved compared to the first one. It's a much better game. The only bad thing is the maps seem to be more labyrinthine and there seems to be less fast travel points and you don't respawn at the same location when you return to the game. It's a strange way of doing it because it forces the player to walk through previous areas and we know they could have done it differently because fast travel is in the game and in the first game you returned to the last save location. Additionally after completing missions or side missions it makes you walk all the way back through previous areas, which was totally unnecessary detracts from the fun.
Posted in Borderlands 2 review
Re: Inventory fatigue
The thing is the original Deus Ex made it an interesting problem. It had a fantastic interface optimised for mouse input in which you could drag and drop and arrange your weapons and inventory items in a grid, and the choices really came down to the guns and ammo you could carry that had a huge role on how you played the game.
In Borderlands you had one of the worst possible interfaces ever designed, optimised for an XBox controller, with no attempt made to facilitate mouse navigation (often you were not allowed to click on buttons, you had to press a certain key, and the mouse wheel would not scroll anything). You had to use the cursor keys, press E, X, Enter, Page Up and other awkward keys to accomplish things. Scrolling (with the keyboard) was nearly always required because the menus had to be big enough to be viewed on low resolution TV screens.
Furthermore the problem of inventory management was not an interesting problem in Borderlands. You picked up a new weapon every few enemies and this required comparison with all the weapons currently in your inventory if you wanted to make an informed decision of which weapon to drop to make room for it. You couldn't view all the weapons at a glance, it was just a list that you had to scroll with cursor keys and frustratingly navigate with the keyboard. It was a chore. It fatigued you, particularly mid to end game, and made you not want to play.
It was even worse after a break because you would forget which of the weapons in your inventory (out of potentially millions) were the ones you wanted to save, so when you pick up new ones (or if there were some you had intended to sell when you got to a shop) you would need to spend a lot of time looking through the inventory to determine which shouldn't be sold.
I've not played Borderlands 2 yet but I can only hope that:
a) better interface with more of an attempt to optimise for PCs with mouses
b) inventory fatigue is less of an issue
Games are the only reason I use Windows, and in the last 4 or so years, Steam has been the only reason I've used Windows. If Steam moves over to Linux, I will ditch Windows altogether. Linux is significantly better as a development and work platform; as I said, the only reason I've been forced to use Windows was the poor support for games.
Currently I do all my work inside a VirtualBox Linux machine running inside Windows 7. I basically use Windows 7 for games, and then everything else (e.g. my work) I do inside the VirtualBox. Sounds mad I know, but the virtualisation of Linux inside Windows is impeccable. There are no issues at all, it runs just fine. The same cannot be said for Wine, so that's why I do things this way round. If Windows ceases to be the open games platform it has historically been or if Valve adds good Linux support (which seems increasingly likely given the Mac support and recent news) then I will finally be able to move over completely.
Posted in Happy birthday, Apple QuickTime
Feel old now
I have always hated QuickTime. All it has ever been to me is an invasive piece of software that I didn't want but that was required to view some particular thing. Much like RealPlayer.
You still sometimes get movie trailers requiring QuickTime to view, but that is usually for business reasons, and you can often find a version in another format somewhere else.
Posted in Happy birthday, Apple QuickTime
You'd be surprised
My dad has iTunes on his Windows PC. He does not own any Apple device.
Confused, I asked him, "why on earth do you have iTunes? What do you use it for?".
"I don't know why I need it," he replied. "I don't use it," he continued, "it made me install it".
Turns out if you have QuickTime on your machine, which he did because it was required to view some video he wanted to see, then the invasive auto-updater for it automatically tries to install iTunes unless you specifically uncheck the box during its update.
nothing wrong
They acknowledged Readability, they used it under the Apache licence. I really don't see the problem here...
Posted in 'Racist' job ad sparks investigation
sigh
Rasczak, positive discrimination is a recognised term. For example if a government confers advantages to a minority group in order to redress a balance, then that is positive discrimination. Basically instead of discriminating AGAINST someone, you do something FOR them because they would normally be discriminated against.
It's pretty common for women to be the benefactors, for example when David Cameron said he would make at least a third of his cabinet women. Or this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/mar/06/women.discriminationatwork
I don't necessarily agree with it, and the spokeswoman for Torry Harris was saying they won't tolerate it. I don't understand why you've got a bit upset/angry with me. Yes it's negative for someone, that's pretty much the main problem with it.
Posted in 'Racist' job ad sparks investigation
that isn't what it meant
It's talking about positive discrimination.
one metre tall?
I don't believe that it's as tall as a 7 year old boy.
What a strange body shape
I wonder what happens when he breathes out.
Let's watch this
Sorry, no. It's mathematically proven to be unwatchable.
Posted in Wired defines the storage 'PornYear'
Oh snap
I only just got used to light years being a unit of length rather than time, and now this!
Posted in Apple squashes wobbly jub app
Indefensible
People should be able to decide for themselves. So long as it is legal in the country you are in, I don't see why Apple should have a say. It's too much regulation. All it does is restrict people.
Historically the big successes have been open technology. Primary example: the Internet. Imagine if it had been fully regulated by a single governing body that reviewed all content, and no porn or questionable content was allowed through.
Would Windows have ever got far if every piece of software had to be vetted by Microsoft? No, you want to install whatever you want. You want the ability to use a competing company's software if you don't like the one that came pre-installed.
People don't like being controlled. People like freedom. Progress likes freedom.
Posted in Airport scanners face double exposure
Just scan everybody...
...or scan nobody.
Otherwise I just don't see the point.
This isn't like checking for bus tickets where you discourage fare dodgers with random checks. You don't want ANYBODY slipping through. If it's too much of a hassle or against the law to scan everybody, then the new scanners are not a good idea.
"scan the dodgy ones" is a dumb and lazy policy. Even if the scanner has a 100% success rate, only scanning a small proportion of passengers with it surely makes it pointless?
You got me
I also did not realise until the comments. Bit of a wake up call actually...
