Posts by Tringle

Stopped buying a while back . .

Maybe I just have more patience now.

The rental shop closed, where I was a regular if small time client. There is no English language downloading service in France (and the French ones are horrifically expensive), so no go there. DVDs in the shops here, €20+, BluRays €25 plus; no film hard copy is worth that much to me. Go to the cinema occasionally, hate 3D.The last DVD I bought was Avatar, 'cos it was cheap.

So now I get my films for free. From Film 4 or some other satellite channel. I can wait a year or so to see a film for free, thanks very much.

As someone else has already pointed out the industry should pay us to watch low IQ teen drivel movies that comprise the bulk of current output.

The toy manufacturers regard the TV shows they make as simple advertising for merchandise. Most films make huge amounts from merchandising.

Time the studios grew up and started behaving like toy manufacturers.

I was a pro musician, many moons ago, and have no problem with people downloading music if they want. I am minded of comments by Lemmy to a concert crowd: 'How many of you have got our new album? What's wrong with you? Couldn't you steal it?'

I would strongly disagree with the view that 'piracy' = lost revenue. No, it doesn't. If people couldn't get this stuff for free they wouldn't get it at all. Stopping torrents and the like equals lost audience, so counter intuitively stopping piracy actually means losing revenue.

Maybe it's a price thing?

Blu-Ray disks cost on average about €35 each here. DVDs are almost all over €20, new releases often much more.

Hmm, I wonder why no-one buys them?

Vive la France!

The main problem with the hay making by the warmistas is that we 'deniers' have no problem with the planet getting warmer, or indeed colder. The climate changes; always has, always will, it is a chaotic system that will only reach equilibrium the day that all weather stops.

The $64,000 question is not how much the average surface temperature is changing (a pretty useless metric btw even if it could be accurately established, like just about all averages) but how much is due to human activity.

The media, and the Beeb is amongst the worst for this, make the bold leap that change just has to be due to human activity, even though that is impossible to establish.

There is no doubt in my mind (as someone who used to build econometric and risk models for a living) that the 'proof' provided by climate models is utter BS. It is possible, of course, to build reasonably accurate models of environments where all the variables are known with some precision, but the climate, like economics, is not one of those environments.

And, as a point of interest, Mr Watts has already remarked that that the first 30 years of the 'data' used in the one paper of this study that he had been asked to comment on are simply made up. So no change there then.

Prior Art

Oooh, what's the second item on this list?

It's a PAAD - Apple even copied the name. I thought the film studios were paranoid about their copyright; how come they haven't sued Apple yet?

BTW Anonymous coward 'it's about time'. Apple have created a load of basically useless fashion accessories. The world might just be a better place if people didn't waste their time rubbing their greasy fingers over bits of overpriced glass and did something useful instead.

Hell will freeze over

. . before I would buy an Apple product.

fuego - the analogy would be that Tesco wouldn't let you into their shop if you were carrying an Asda bag.

Apple are just pure evil. I can live with this knowledge and easily live without any of their limited function overpriced fashion accessories.

Why all the fuss?

Apple stuff is for fashion victims anyway. So, with the odd exception there stuff is regularly binned when the new shinier must have version comes on the market. Cost of ownership is irrelevant.

I don't buy the PCs always fail nonsense - if more fail it's because there are almost an order of magnitude more of them in the world.

I have just replaced my 9 year old Dell lappie, which was still working just fine thank you, but the battery was getting very poor; time to change the whole thing. Our 7 year old HP is serving faithfully in my daughter's study, and I'm writing this on my 3 year old HP. The new Acer lappie is just fine too. They are all flawlessly networked together even though they use XP, Vista and 7 repectively. And all three of them cost less that one shiny fashion statement.

Apples are like Ferraris; they look fabulous, but when you get down to it they aren't value for money.

Why does anyone 'buy' ebooks anyway?

Whilst I agree that Apple appear to be taking the micky here, the reason I don't have an idiotPad or a Kindle is that you can't actually BUY anything for them. You get a very limited licence that seriously restricts what you can or cannot do with the content you have 'bought'.

When these guys decide to actually pass ownership of content to me then I might reconsider. But as it is the batteries in my paper books seem to last for decades . .

Yeah, right

The law is an ass.

Such a stupid verdict.

I'll hazard a guess that it might have been the chorus that made this a world wide hit, specifically the lyrics.

I am also a little puzzled as to how an action can be brought 30 years after the event.

Simply VFM

When I switched to digital I went Pentax because I needed a robust camera and I was also attracted to the huge back catalogue of excellent prime lenses. I have a K10D and a K20D, both so far faultless despite some rough handling and the odd accidental plummet onto concrete.

The combination of price and features meant that the comparable Cankon was always between 50-100% more expensive, and that remains the case today.

If you think Pentax lenses are a bit rubbish then perhaps you could check out the enormous prices they fetch used on eBay. I just managed to get a classic 50mm f1.4 F lens, but it cost me an arm and a leg. However, as it was voted the third best prime lens ever made, I'm still a happy bunny.

My neighbour is a wildlife photographer and uses Canon. But the camera body is the cheapest component in his set up - his 400mm lens cost more than my car. And his everyday Tamron 28-300 cost £200 more than the one for my Pentaxes - the extra cost due to the in lens IS.

Horses for courses.