* Posts by JDX

6847 publicly visible posts • joined 28 May 2010

Brit inventors' GRAVITY POWERED LIGHT ships out after just 1 year

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Charging phones/radios

I'm confused how 0.1W is any use for charging anything?

Otherwise it's a neat idea although even for lighting 0.1W seems very low indeed... what is a very efficient .1W buld equivalent to in old-fashioned bulbage?

If 20lb is a problem to lift, a simple block & tackle would be a low-tech solution.

European Commission gives Microsoft/Nokia merger the green light

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You posted this 3 years too late. Sales are growing.

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Re: We will wait for the inevitable

Indeed. The Nokia workers are what made Lumia not a total failure.

Also it may well be in the agreement that they must retain Finnish workers in the first place, if the Finnish government has any sense.

Google unveils ten-year plan to build its ROBOT ARMY of the future

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Re: Hastening French Revolution 2.0, I see

>>There's two paths - a Star Trek universe where everyone does what they're good at and there's zero scarcity, and a messy revolution when the majority of society gets pissed off at being broke and unemployed.

3)All the manual labourers get paid to not work by the government. We could call it Just Sit Around payments or JSA for short. Housing would be paid for and free entertainment would be provided to fill their time in the form of satellite TV.

Of course you'd have fraudulent claims where smart people claim they are only stupid enough to do automated jobs, when they could earn a living as doctor, but the government would surely clamp down on such things.

iPhone slips in Europe as Windows Phone claims OVER 10% market share

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re:MS / Nokia are selling a lot of units because they are very heavily subsidized

Really? How much does an Android phone with a 1GHz CPU and 512Mb RAM sell for? Considerably more than £150?

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Re: Lolz

Developers target the ecosystems based on their overall value, not the number of devices. If Apple users spend far more on apps than Android/WP users, iOS will still get a lot of attention.

You also have to remember apps includes tablets too, and iOS has much bigger share in that market (for now).

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@Richard Plinston re:there's no real landfill Windows Phone category.

Valid points but does it really matter if the phone OS can be upgraded? Before you answer, consider what % of android phones ever receive an OS upgrade to a new major version.

So, what is new in SQL 2014, exactly?

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Re: Only Microsoft?

"Most people" use MySQL not either of those.

Sony PS4 SHATTERS UK console sales SPEED RECORD

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Fairly meaningless

The Wii has outsold all of those other consoles. First day sales are just for bragging rights.

I think it'll be an interesting battle, if MS can avoid shooting themselves in the foot so often.

MPs back call to boycott low-taxed tat from Amazon over Xmas

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Your MP routes their VAT through Luxembourg?

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Never mind price

When other stores can match Amazon on delivery (I have Prime, virtually everything comes next-day) and more notably, customer service, maybe I'll switch back. I'm not talking family stores for who every return is a real hurt, but big online stores... when something returns faulty or breaks in the warranty, do not ask me to post it to you so you can inspect it and decide if I get a replacement, and you'll reimburse me the postage. Do what Amazon does - send a replacement right away and then arrange a courier to come and collect the original.

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"Morally wrong"

Translation: totally legal but we don't like it

Anglo-Australian cricket brawl spills over into coding clash

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Re: Did they include the Ian Chappell speciality in this game?

It's not legal anymore

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No decent cricket games at all?

You'd think the Wii or Kinect would allow a fairly decent gaming experience on the batting side of things.

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Re: Amazing

I think you're right, it must have been F:E2 because it was launched to massive hype which must have meant it wasn't the first game.

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Re: Yeah...

Unity3D is specifically targeted as being easy to use, which is why indie teams use it so much.

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Amazing

You don't get to see such a total shambles of a game get to full release that often. Memories of Elite and OS/2 Warp.

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Re: Not really up to the task

Unity is an entirely adequat engine, if not suitable really for AAA titles.

These are game logic bugs and look like something a 15-year-old hobby programmer would be ashamed of.

Chester Cathedral smites net in Wi-Fi SMUT OUTRAGE

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Re: Yawn

>>Just change the DNS server to an opendns server that doesn't resolve porn. How stupid are these people?

Why would you expect someone running a coffeeshop to know what DNS is, or have heard of OpenDNS?

REVEALED: How YOU PAY extra for iPHONES - even if you DON'T HAVE ONE

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"tax"

I wish people would stop calling things a "tax" when they are not. Call it a fee or a charge whatever, but "tax" is a word with a meaning, and this is not it, no matter how cool you feel using it when talking about 'M$' or 'Crapple'

HP’s ENORMO-SLAB: The Slate 21 MONSTER tablet

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Re: How is this a tablet?

What has GPS/accelerometer got to do with it being a tablet or not?

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Interesting

Sounds rather well executed, and I'm very impressed indeed with the price.

Asus Transformer Book T100: Xbox One? PS4? Nah, get a cute convertible for Christmas

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Obligatory

Amazed the first comment wasn't the always-funny "if only they sold it with a proper OS".

Dixons selling £68k gold, diamond, ruby and sapphire iPhone for Xmas

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Happily.

Elon Musk scrubs lucrative MONEY RING debut again on Thanksgiving

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Re: Measure twice...

More like measure 100 times, cut once in that industry!

Microsoft wields turkey knife, slices Surface to $199 for Black Friday

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Surface or Surface 2?

As title

False widow spiders in guinea pig slaughter horror

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Re: Jordan

Not a basketball fan then?

Microsoft hires Pawn Stars to shaft Google

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>>You spelt Linux wrong.

So did you. It's called GNU/Linux.

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What next, Storage Hunters?

A scene where they bid like crazy after seeing a pile of laptops in a unit, only for the winner to realise they are worthless ChromeBooks?

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Office 365 includes native applications - Word/Excel/etc you install as normal - AND web-applications which you can run through your browser on Chromebook.

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Re: The overwhelming message I get from these ads

Or they are targeting ads according to market. There was that anime IE thing in Japan the other week... and this kind of brazen ugly advertising is normal in the States, their TV/radio advertising is VERY different to ours.

Hello! Still here! Surface 2! Way better than iPad! says slightly desperate Microsoft

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>>For the $500 you spent on an iPad, you could have bought a TV...

Yes I could, if I wanted a worse solution. I can't take a TV to watch in the bath or in bed without waking the wife.

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I use my iPad almost exclusively with the cover acting as a (crap) stand, for watching Netflix. Many others do the same. A stand is not just for typing Word Docs :)

Bitcoin value breaks $1,000 barrier in FRENZIED HYPEGASM

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How do you spend the darn things...

... if one unit of currency is worth $1000? Can you spend a fraction of a BC?

It puts me in mind of the Triganic Pu...

Twitter mobs attack wrong celebrity Ian Watkins after child abuse case

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Considering many inmates have mobile phones, it seems quite likely he would... plus they do have internet in gaol...

Sysadmin job ad: 'If you don’t mind really bad work-life balance, this is for you'

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What's wrong with it?

Many people happily have a poor work-life balance when they love the work they do, so it's good they note they only want someone who lives to work and will invest in the job.

As for having to "do 4 jobs" that's hardly unusual. Especially in a small company, you often find a developer doing sysadmin stuff anyway.

It puts things bluntly, but if I was still as much of a hardcore nerd as I used to be, I'd find it appealing and I think that's the point - it will put off "career" people and attract passionate people.

Visual Studio 2013: 50 Shades of Grey not a worry for MONSTER dev TOOL

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Re: Edit & Continue

I can rarely get Edit and Continue to work in 32bit, which is a shame because in C++ it would be such an awesome feature if it worked reliably.

On the other hand with native code I can see why it is hard to achieve...

PS-PHWOARRR: We review Sony’s next-gen PlayStation 4

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re:I assume it'll be making me *rent* the same game that I've already purchased...

It'll also let ME rent games I never purchased. And you don't need to keep those old games to have a lciense either.

Anyway this is a stupid argument. You wouldn't claim it's unfair you have to buy a separate XBox/PC version to play the same game on multiple platforms.

If you already OWN the games, just use your old console and stop complaining about something the rest of use will find useful.

Valve pal iBuyPower touts cut-price Steam box as powerful as PS4 or Xbox

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Ooh, 8Gb of RAM, how novel. Or not... pretty standard spec on a decent workstation and not expensive at all.

8 core CPU is a bit unusual but you don't simply compare number of cores to see which CPU is more powerful.

You DON'T need a new MacBook! Reg man fiddles with Fusion, pimps out vintage Pro

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Why DO you need to upgrade?

If your MacBook Pro was an adequate desktop replacement, why isn't it now? I'm finding in the Windows world that you really don't need to keep upgrading like you used to. Other than an SSD, if you have 4-8Gb RAM and a dual/quad-core CPU, things don't seem to be getting slower. Other than games of course, but they are always a special case.

Julie Larson-Green: Yes, MICROSOFT is going to KILL WINDOWS

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Re: Why Windows is doomed. @JDX

"You could leave a desktop PC sitting in sleep mode but my experience of exploding PC power supplies forces me to turn off at the wall."

Yes, and the reason you need to do a full shutdown rather than hibernate is? Rebooting from hibernate is near-instant in many cases. For me it's a sluggish kind of instant, but then my storage isn't entirely solid state like a phone/tablet.

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Re: Why Windows is doomed. @Filhart

Have you timed how long your phone or tablet takes to do a cold boot? It is by no means instant.

Undercover BBC man exposes Amazon worker drone's daily 11-mile trek

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Re: Crappy Job but its still a job

Some people walk 11 miles just to GET to work, and consider themselves lucky.

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Re: Is this a story?

Postmen seem to manage, even carrying a bag full of post. Now who's the asshat?

'Best known female architect' angrily defends gigantic vagina

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They couldn't have picked a more fun-loving, tolerant, non-sexist nation for it either.

Lead ONTO your pencil: Bill Gates pours cash into graphene condoms

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a use for graphene which will literally touch our every-day life

Every day? I wish!

SuperStride Me: Reg man attempts to walk off GIANT CURRY

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Re: 2kg in 4 days?

1kg is quite a lot to fluctuate over the course of a day, if you don't imbibe all your food and fluids in one go and aren't drinking several pints at lunch.... Ah - he's a journalist.

What’s new in SQL 2014?

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SQL 2014

I didn't realise SQL was shorthand for SQL Server ;)

Bill Gates orders hitman to kill right-hand man Steve Ballmer

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Re: WARNING HEADLINE INCLUDES SPOILERS

It's a cartoon. The plot is not why people watch it.

World's first selfie found on Wayback Machine

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Re: It is vital that we preserve our early selfies for posterity

I think you totally fail to understand what FB is for, to its users. It is a way for people WHO ACTUALLY KNOW EACH OTHER to keep in touch.

The fact my friend got a new kitten is indeed insignificant and uninteresting to 99.9999% of the world, but it is interesting to me. If you restrict your use of FB to only those people whose lives you are actually interested in, it makes much more sense.

I suggest the reason FB is so boring to so many on this site is because they HAVE no interest in anyone but themselves. Which is ironic when you're claiming FB is about people who only care about themselves.

If someone on FB is boring or spews updates that are boring, I simply block them. I'm sure they do the same if they feel my updates are dull too.