* Posts by Valerion

593 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2009

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My HOUSE used to be a PUB: How to save the UK high street

Valerion

Re: Tesco's problems aren't just economic

Their problems are because they treat their customers like shit.

I bought an Xbox game there for my son a few months back. Turns out when I got it home and he tried to play it that it needed an Xbox Live subscription. Given that the only wording on the box that indicated this was obscured by the sticker-covered opaque case they put the games in to prevent you from nicking them, I thought returning it would be no problem.

But no, this was entirely my fault for not having x-ray vision, and they would not accept a return. I would've happily accepted a voucher or swapped for a different game, but no they were having none of it. I asked the store manager if he would really be happy to lose my custom forever because of it. He said yes. So I handed him my club card and haven't been back to any of their stores since. At £100 per week per average shop that's now about two and a half grand that Sainsurys now have and Tescos don't. I actually sold the game to CEX for what I paid for it.

If I had bought from Amazon, I'd have been protected by Distance Selling Regs, and also Amazon's customer service is actually pretty damn awesome. I had a delivery from a 3rd party not arrive the other day. Instant refund and extended my Prime by a month for the inconvenience. All accomplished in 2 emails.

The late 2014 Apple Mac Mini: The best (and worst) of both worlds

Valerion

Refurb store

I’m going to get one to keep in the office, to save me carrying a laptop back and forth. I just think I might see if I can find a discounted 2012 model, its initially wobbly HDMI output now long fixed, rather than the current one and grab some extra memory for it. ®

That is precisely what I have done this morning. The Apple Refurb store is selling them, but they are appearing and disappearing VERY quickly. Twice I got as far as adding into the basket, only for it to be taken out again as someone else had nabbed it. You literally need to be F5'ing every couple of minutes and acting immediately.

So I got a nice quad-core I7 with 1TB drive for £479. I've then splurged another £100 on 16GB of RAM from elsewhere. The old base models are in there (when they appear) for £339. Bit of a bargain, really.

FIFTEEN whole dollars on offer for cranky Pentium 4 buyers

Valerion

Is there a limit?

I definitely recall buying 1,000,000 of these. Can I claim $15m?

I've lost the receipt but you say it isn't needed.

Kingston's aviation empire: From industry firsts to Airfix heroes

Valerion

Great article

I've worked in Kingston for a few years now and never knew any of this!

Philip Morris seeks pay-per-puff patent to help you STOP smoking

Valerion
Coat

Bad joke

So does this product actually exist? Or is it just vapourware?

I'll show you the D next week – billionaire space baron Elon Musk

Valerion

Batteries

Surely D is just the size of batteries (not included) the new model will run on?

One Windows? How does that work... and WTF is a Universal App?

Valerion

VB6

Any word on whether Win10 will support the VB6 Runtime?

There's a LOT of business stuff out there still written in that.

Bruges Booze tubes to pump LOVELY BEER underneath city

Valerion

>>PS why do the British insist on calling towns and cities in Flanders by their (hated) French names)<<

Stoopid Flanders.

(Need a Homer icon)

Microsoft's rumoured $2.5bn Minecraft gobble expected on Monday

Valerion

Merchandising

They will make a bomb from merchandising. Minecraft is currently very poorly merchandised compared to other IPs (Moshi Monsters, Angry Birds etc). Every kid 8-12 that I know (and I mean EVERY kid) is Minecraft mad. My son most of all.

Once they sort out the merchandising, make Minecraft: The Movie (and its sequels) and so on, they'll certainly recoup the cost.

Apple's Watch is basically electric perfume

Valerion

Freudian

>>You can transmit a pre-programmed Watch code that your partner will know means "Fancy a quickie?" But winking remains cheaper.<<

Totally misread that last sentence the first time.

Hawking: Higgs boson in a BIG particle punisher could DESTROY UNIVERSE

Valerion

Re: Hmm,

Maybe it already has. It then expands outwards at the speed of light. So if happened 200,000 light years away, 200,000 years ago it should be night night time any time now.

Nevada to host Tesla gigafactory: reports

Valerion

I charged my car in Reno...

....Just to watch it die...

Dr Dre's crew gets Beats-down from Apple: 200 jobs to go – report

Valerion

We don't have HR

In a company of about 600 people we have no HR department, and not even a single HR person.

Payroll is managed by finance. Hiring is managed by the department that actually needs the staff. Grievances are dealt with by managers/directors. Anyone is free to go and see the CEO about anything if they want to.

Every now and then at a company-wide meeting a newish employee will ask if we can have an HR department. The response from the top is always the same: "If we could come up with a reason why we'd be better off with an HR department, we'd have one."

End result is I work for a company where everyone is happy!

iWallet: No BONKING PLEASE, we're Apple

Valerion

I already have an NFC iPhone

I made it by keeping my debit card in the back of my iphone case. Every time I want to use the contactless, I just put the phone against the reader. Job done.

Sometimes the proposed solutions are far more complex than the easy way...

Motorist 'thought car had caught fire' as Adele track came on stereo

Valerion
Happy

My debut single

"Brake Failure" should be hitting the shelves soon.

US judge: Yes, cops or feds so can slurp an entire Gmail account

Valerion

What's the problem?

This is very sensible. Otherwise it'd be like the cops getting a warrant to search a house, but limited only to the kitchen.

Remember when Google+ outed everyone by their real names? Now Google's sorry

Valerion

I tried to sign up once

Google+ wouldn't believe that my name was real (it's honestly not that weird!) and wanted me to send in actual identification - copies of my drivers license or somesuch.

Instead I closed the browser and got on with my life.

BitTorrent not to blame for movie revenues, says economist

Valerion

Even when it's free I hardly go

We get 4 free cinema tickets every week with our medical insurance (not sure how encouraging you to sit on your arse for 2 hours whilst stuffing your face with popcorn and Minstrels helps you stay healthy but whatever).

And even though they're free I've only been 3 times this year. There just isn't usually anything worth watching to justify the 30 minutes of adverts and trailers (don't mind the trailers, can't stand the adverts). And sitting in a cinema that's either too hot or too cold, with lots of other people crunching, blocking my view, and just generally being there. And stuck on an uncomfortable seat with not enough leg room.

Better to wait for it on Netflix - or iTunes/BluRay if I really want to see it - and watch it on my own TV, on my own sofa, with no adverts.

When everybody had 20" CRT TVs with a VCR there was a point. Now everyone has a 50" HD TV with full surround sound, the cinema "experience" is not the step up it once was.

#YO_NO! Messaging app 'Yo' gets hit by hackers

Valerion

Aahm Oot

Would have loved to have seen this try on Dragons Den.

IPv4 addresses now EXHAUSTED in Latin America and the Caribbean

Valerion

Easy solution

Just allow it to go higher than 255 in any Octet.

I know it's possible because I've seen it in the movies and on TV with addresses like 625.2.54.946

Everyone can and should learn to code? RUBBISH, says Torvalds

Valerion

Art

At school I had to take Art up until the end of year 3 (year 9 for the current generation).

I was worse than hopeless at it. I am unable to draw a straight line even with a ruler. I have no skill whatsoever in drawing anything at all. I recognise this fact. I have no interest in it either. And yet, I was forced, week after week, to do Art lessons and Art projects. Every term my report card would have an Art-shaped blot on it where the teacher would have to mention I made no effort and was basically just utterly shit at it. Eventually a mutual, unsaid agreement was reached where I would do something rubbish and he'd just pretty much ignore it. Towards the end the report cards stopped being so bad actually as he knew there was just no point in making a fuss about it.

Forcing me to do art - with a complete lack of aptitude for it - was a waste of everyone's time. Teaching coding like this is exactly the same. It won't be valuable for those who don't "get it" in later life any more than Art was for me.

Quick Q: How many FLOPPIES do I need for 16 MILLION image files?

Valerion

Re: 3.5in floppy

My wife (who was bought up in Seth Efrica) once told me that over there such a device is known as a "Stiffy".

10 years later I still haven't stopped laughing.

Netflix FREEZES prices for existing UK users to stop them quitting vid-streaming service

Valerion

Refreshingly nice business model

Netflix - Prices for new customers are going up. Loyal customers get to keep it cheaper.

Most other companies - Prices for new customers are heavily discounted. Loyal customers get large price increases.

Apple DOMINATES the Valley, rakes in more profit than Google, HP, Intel, Cisco COMBINED

Valerion

>>well when you can take hardware that cost same as everyone else's and sell it at 2-300% mark up, yet people still buy it cause they are idiots. You will have insane profits, google may not have the insane $ but they are seen as a much better company as most their products are FREE.

As per the article:

Google profit margin: 22%

Apple profit margin: 21%

Theory fail.

Veteran Brit tech distie Chessington HQ to become 28 flats

Valerion

Flats?

I used to work in the old Racal building on Davis Road... I can't imagine anyone wanting to buy a flat there!

This city's smog is so TERRIBLE, people are told to stay indoors. Beijing? No – PARIS

Valerion

The Devastation Of Smog

Best of the Hobbit movies, I reckon.

SACRILEGE! Hitchhiker's Guide game's back ... and it TWEETS at you

Valerion
Alien

No mention of his birthday?

He would have been 62 today.

Of course, he's not really dead. He's just spending a few years that way for tax reasons.

Gamers in a flap as Vietnamese dev pulls Flappy Bird

Valerion

Surely he's still making money?

All the existing users can still play the game. So if he was making $50k per day from them, he will continue to do so. He just won't make any more from new users.

Of course it'll die down in a few weeks anyway as people gradually stop playing. But he gets to stop a lot of hassle immediately, whilst still coining it in. Smart guy.

Jean Michel Jarre: Je voudrais un MUSIC TAX sur VOTRE MOBE

Valerion

Why smartphones?

Why not other things? I.e. amplifiers and speakers and CD players. Things whose SOLE PURPOSE is playing music.

I think what we should do is just automatically tax babies a one-off payment of £5000 the minute they're born, just in case they decide to listen to some music at some point in their lives.

Amazon floats 'Prime Air' drone delivery plan

Valerion

Inspiration from Harry Potter

Just replaced the Owl with a Robot.

Rowling should sue!

What's wrong with Britain's computer scientists?

Valerion

>>Now we need teachers who are both knowledgeable and - most importantly - passionate about computer science. Computer science is all too often taught by people whose first degree, and general interest, lies in another domain. We must attract talented computer scientists into teaching so that they can pass on their excitement about the subject to the next generation.<<

How will this happen? People who are knowledgeable and passionate about computer science will go and get a job actually doing computer science. They won't want a job paying them half what they could get whilst doing some actual, interesting stuff. And they certainly won't be happy teaching FOR loops to disinterested kids who'd rather be Snapchatting.

The only people you will get teaching CS is those who aspire to be teachers, not those who aspire to be programmers.

'PATHETIC' Galaxy Gear sales skewer smartwatch HYPE-O-GASM bubble

Valerion

>>Exactly, it's pretty expensive given what it delivers and it's too 1.0 right now. I have a decent, cheapest watch right now ($100 \ 70 quid citizen ecodrive) which any $300 smart watch should at least match in a few areas.

You just precisely described Pebble.

Cost - £100 (Kickstarter), so only £30 more than your Citizen. Not sure what RRP is.

Battery - 3-4 days easily

Waterproof - Yep

Daylight Readable Screen - Yep.

And of course it'll work with IOS and Android out of the box.

Boffins agree: Yes we have had an atmospheric warming pause

Valerion
Paris Hilton

Seems like problem solved

So, over the past 50 years CFC gasses were increasing and the temperature was rising.

We then stopped CFC gasses from increasing and the warming has stopped.

Seems like we solved the problem.

Paris - coz the explanation is very simple.

Could Doctor Who really bump into human space dwellers?

Valerion

Going fast

Getting a spaceship to go really fast and cutting voyage time down to a manageable level is a problem we will solve fairly easily I expect.

It's the slowing down when you get there that's the real problem.

Netflix original TV shows gamble pays off... to the tune of 10m new viewers

Valerion

Re: What an original idea

>>Rather than the industry standard - you can only watch this series in the USA, the rest of you have to wait 2years to find out who killed JR. Or just pirate it.<<

Except this is still somewhat the case. I really love Netflix, but I can't watch, for example, the Walking Dead on British Netflix. I have to jump through some hoops to watch it on the US Netflix instead.

And don't even get me started on why there are a lot more Classic Dr Who on US than UK!

Reg readers! You've got 100 MILLION QUID - what would you BLOW it on?

Valerion

Bestie

Booze, women and fast cars.

The rest I'd just squander.

Teen buys WikiLeaks server for $33,000 – with dad's eBay account

Valerion

I think

Dad bid on it, wife found out and went mental, so blaming the kid was the only way out of the mess.

Have you tried turning it off and on again - oh, you did: IT Crowd RETURNS

Valerion

Re: "YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR..."

You wouldn't shoot a policeman.

And then steal his helmet.

And then go to the toilet in his helmet.

Then give his helmet back to his family.

And then steal it again.

(Just been off sick for a couple of days. Netflix and the IT Crowd made me better).

'But we like 1 Direction!' Rock gods The Who fend off teen Twitter hate mob

Valerion

All seem to be rip-offs

I've heard 2 of their songs. One rips off Summer Loving from Grease and the other rips of Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash.

Sounds like business as usual for them, then.

Patent tank VirnetX fires 'secure domain name' design claim at Apple

Valerion
Alert

Have I missed something?

If they get a NEW patent granted, then surely they can't sue anybody for infringing it in existing products, as those products would therefore constitute prior art??

Xerox copier flaw changes numbers in scanned docs

Valerion

Goes up to 11

Maybe Spinal Tap could have blamed their Stonehenge on this.

Smartwatch makers: You need apps to beat Apple

Valerion

Don't need loads of notifications

I have a Pebble (Kickstarter backer). It is honestly one of the best gadgets I've ever bought. The existing notifications are ALL I want.

I get notified of incoming calls and SMSs appear on my wrist, with a nice little buzz every time they appear. Calls and texts are what I consider important and things I want to know about immediately, because they are a fairly immediate method of communication - something the sender expects a reply to straight away and probably something you want to know about straight away. I don't care about Facebook notifications because there is no way they are important. Ditto email - I don't want all 100 daily emails pinging on my wrist. I'll get those when I'm good and ready. In other words, for me, it's perfect out of the box notifications-wise. I always used to miss calls/texts with my phone in my pocket and on silent. Not any more.

Music control - superb. Get in car, plug phone in, 3 taps of the center button and music is coming through my stereo. Don't even need to look. At home, do the same, quick fiddle on the phone to route it over Airplay then phone goes back in my pocket and I can skip songs or pause whenever I like without finding the phone and messing with the screen.

The apps are then the icing on the cake. The RunKeeper integration in particular I use quite a bit.

Battery is not a problem. I have to charge my phone every night anyway so I just charge the watch at the same time.

Good tech should change the way you do things and make your life easier. That is EXACTLY what the Pebble is doing for me so far. The only downside is I have a nice, expensive-ish watch at home that I now never wear. I love that other watch to bits, but it's now relegated to "posh nights out" because the Pebble is just so damn useful.

Google's Schmidt calls climate-change deniers 'liars'

Valerion
Flame

Enough

When you can prove to me that the earth's climate was exactly stable for the past couple of billion years, and only changed when humans started emitting CO2, then we'll talk about man-made climate change, mmmkay?

As this is obviously total bollocks, how about we accept that it's going to change, and lets work out how best to deal with the consequences. And I don't just mean dealing with increasing temperatures, but dealing with decreasing ones too, because it's certain we'll get another ice age at some point.

IT staff clamouring to pay for their own BYOD kit, says survey

Valerion

Re: Not surprised

If I was forced to buy my own IT kit for work, I'd buy the absolute cheapest crap possible.

If it makes me massively unproductive then tough shit - they should've given me the tools to do the job.

Vodafone slurps MEELLLIONS for redirecting police hotline calls

Valerion
Megaphone

Outrage - Company Provides Services, Makes Profit!

I redid the headline for the Daily Fail.

Brit horologist hammers out ‘first’ ATOMIC-POWERED watch

Valerion

About "time"

I so need this. I often worry about turning up to work 0.00001 seconds late.

I bet the battery doesn't last 1000 years though.

Climate change set to bumpify transatlantic flights, say researchers

Valerion

Re: ...an inflight glass of wine spilling onto our lap...

And then they'll charge you more to cover the extra weight of the bars...

Study: Megaupload closure boosted Hollywood sales 10%

Valerion
WTF?

My grandmother died after they shut down Megaupload

So shutting it down killed her! Killed her I tell you!

I am soooo going to sue for this.

New evidence: Comets seeded life on Earth

Valerion
Alien

Your nipples don't work?

How do you pick up Jazz FM?

Toy train company bids for West Coast Mainline

Valerion

Ironic

My sons toy train also has several rigidly attached bogeys.

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