Posts by alan buxey 61 publicly visible posts • joined 31 May 2007
"And while we’re here, they are having their way with us.
They’ve packaged our fight into product, turned our dissent into intellectual property, televising our revolution with commercial breaks.
They’ve backdoored into our minds and robbed our truth, refurbished the facts, then marked up the price.
This is what they do. This is what they’re good at. This is their greatest trick.
Lobotomizing us into their virtual reality horror show."
:)
the idea of the cabin part being an installable/changeable part is something i had many years ago (at least a decade ago) ...whilst waiting again and again at airport boarding areas and finding it the most inefficient part of the process - even when treating aircraft more like buses (ryanair BMI baby easyjet etc).
load passengers into pod.... move out to location, slot into fuselage (shortly after the arriving passengers have been de-docked in similar fashion). I'd expect this to only be for the short-haul rapid turnaround commuter style flights.... the long-hauil stuff - you want more comfort/opulence and 15/20 minutes extra boarding time isnt much on a 17 hour flight.
but as the article says...for emergencies? not really.
alan
hi,
agree with most of the review. my biggest current issue is the parental control PIN - its not fine-grained enough. Yes, I can use it to stop content being streamed or bought... but if I only stop it being used for purchase then ANYTHING can be streamed - not just eg 'U content' material - littleones are able to stream ANYTHING thats available on prime. thats quite sucky.
the other thing is lack of 'off' or power-down option. sorry....yes, it uses 'little' energy but I should still be able to turn the thing off or put it into low power standby
...PS it comes with amazon value AAA batteries... that seemed to last about 2 weeks. so yes, no 'batteries required' on box...but what a waste of materials to put 2 dead batteries in the bin(!) (why dont these things use inductive charging etc now...just leave remote ontop of the box to charge it.....especially as the box cannot be turned off (see above) without just hitting the mains power switch
okay...unless its really scarey technology its NOT going to be able to filter what videos/films the customers are streaming via netflix, lovefilm etc - at which point parents are going to find their kids watching stuff via such services that they thought BSkyB would be filtering...after all, they've been told that their ISP is filtering their content. law suits await.
..and now you'll have this article in your browser history which will be interesting. 'oh yes Sir, researching how to avoid being caught were we Sir?' - best use private browsing for The Register or ensure your total history is wiped... (oh , dont forget your backup software/Timemachine etc will keep handy copies and snapshots of that too). obviously this doesnt worry me... ;-)
>And thus we are provided with yet another reminder of the risks taken when installing "version .0" of any major software release
well, not really. the OS itself seems sound. not had a problem. regarding those Apps - iMail, Safari etc - I dont use them, I use superoir (IMHO) applications instead - namely Chrome and Thunderbird. iBooks - I havent had a problem with..and I' happy that , at last, I can read iTunes book purchases on the desktop and not NEEDING an iPad or iPhone.
as for memory usage - read the very very informative reviews and tech notes - the OS is swap-averse and uses memory more aggressively to reduce power consumption..inclusing using memory compression methods to use memory as much as possible. Some applications will need some updates to take advantage of the new features (if those Apps are still being developed) or they'll enter the battery-eating hall of shame (energy impact pane in the acvitivy monitor)
you seem to have misplaced the argument. you've stated exactly the point - the laptop you bought several years ago CAN be upgraded to give it some more relevance years later...SSD, maybe more memory...use a PCCard adapter or such for new connectivity. you cant do that with some recent devices...particularly fruity firm devices - the iPad and Macbook Air spring to mind here.
the use of 800MHz for 4G can mean problems for boxes without decent filters...the at800 group are providing filters to stop these signals interfering (if your Freeview signal uses the channels near 800MHz you're more likely affected. retuning wont help if the signal you want is at eg 792MHz! ;-)
however the proposals that have been put forward are to squeeze the frequencies used by freeview and to take away the 700-800MHz range - giving it to 4G/LTE instead. this would require some more remapping of main broadcast antennae and set-top boxes would have to be re-tuned to use the new channels - the knock on effect may be less channels on freeview in total...less HD content etc - OFCOM want the UK population to shift to getting content via broadband(!)
rarely use the mouse when visiting web sites. usually the cursor gets parked out of the way somewhere and then I use the trackpad to scroll up/down/left/right . luckily NoScript is quite useful to stop this kind of spyware too. Some sites I dont read 'natively' either - I use their aggregator feeds or mobile App to just read the articles...much much faster/better experience than their ghastly designs that they change every few months.
oh, didn't I spot spot some O2 Ads on The Register this weekend that drew a circle where your mouse was.... (noted when parking my mouse over an Ad) ;-)
how about they just have a simple web form where you put in your location details and report your current
DAB signal? or register your driving routes and whether DAB actually worked at all for you?
they'd soon get a lot of data. its called crowd-sourcing.
or they can start with this, DAB signal is generally rubbish in Nottingham.
alan
...so, noone will leave for this sub $1 fee? but it adds up...and smallest changes can break the camels back - in this case, this little 'smart trick' might lose them customer goodwill...and actual customers. its not a 'smart trick' to gain money if eg 10% of your customers jump ship...ask Sky or Virgin about customer churn when they mess around their current customers and up fees.
hi,
a month or so ago....
Old WinXP laptop died and replaced with little Windows netbook - she had CS2 and still needs it - so I went through the whole debacle of trying to install from CD/DVD package.... which couldnt activate. went to adobe site with her adobe account and found the info about CS2 licence and download. et voila. after many hundred MB of downloads a working CS2 on Windows Vista.... which turned into a working CS2 on Windows 7. After reading about the Adobe update tool and error codes found the clock/date fix which means it understands the update for eg photoshop so you get some patches.... funny, their licence servers are pulled and their X509 certs have expired too for update tool.
one thing I am cautious of though - these are old old products and if there are any vulnerabilities they are very unlikely to be fixed/patched now.. thats why CS3 et al came out after all. Am looking at free or cheaper alternatives for why CS2 had to be installed but not happy with any of the packages so far (I'm a big Linux fan so am aware of all the usual GPL tools ...but I am also realistic about their user friendliness ;-) )
I think the consumers have no choice - last time I looked, if you wanted decent features (freeviewHD, HD ready display, DNLA or smartTV, etc etc you can only get those on the bigger panels.
(there again, even bigger panels are missing vital features.... and I think they should have brought in a law to ensure that any HD TV sets that offer Freeview reception should have FreeviewHD receivers)
no, Bad week for consumers.
Apple is using legal tactics to keep itself in a position which it acheived because no other
companies blocked their entrance...its called an Open Market. they are now sticking it to the other companies. If there were legitimate patents (ie ones that arent obvious, arent prior arent and are really cool and novel ways of doing things) then yes, they would have a case. ...talking of cases, I cant believe it will be next year when the case goes to court, the phones will all be old generation by then, Apple will have used this legal method to basically block any free competition.
as others have said, I expect Apple to start taking litigation against these same companies the moment
they launch a TV screen...probably along the lines of claiming all rights to high resolution screens
or a screen which has a motion detector built into it in a certain way.
my next phone is Android, my next tablet is Android - where I can choose which model and which manufacturer I like.
Given that TPB moved from being a torrent track system to simply a magnet file search system.....how long until courts tell ISPs to block access to Google (on which I can freely search for magnet links?). Eh? (in fact I can use Google to search for old fashion torrents too....and non secured cctv streams, peoples bank details etc etc)
80s computing with no real mention of the Amiga. launched int he middle of the decade and spanked all those other toys into touch....by the end of the 80's people could even afford them in the UK ..the amazing A500 batman pack dropped to 399 quid - which was, for that amount of compute, and incredible offer...and the start of computer/console + games bundle era.... still going strong with eg PS3/Xbox360 bundles...
yes. to certain devices. and its not very easy to do..i think they hid it away because it is so 'old fashioned' to print things out (and its limited to a small subset of printers...wouldnt want all those users to complain that they cant actually print even though the device says 'print' ) ;-)
as others have said...shame they couldnt hit the printers properly with the business end of those tools. i think with a good strike with the long-handled axe you could go clean through an HP.
next video, VIVA LA REVOLUTION! stick those blue-blooded printers into madame Guillotine! ;-)
I dont sleep next to my electric meter - its 2 floors down in the cellar...but I do sleep next to my mobile phone - on my bedside table. The smart meter is using GSM - my mobile phone has WiFi and 3G on. I'd still worry far more, like others have mentioned about the phone...given that its next to my brain for quite a large amount of time...and if not in use...right next to my chest in my coat pocket, yes, we'll find its a killer technology, literally, in maybe a few decades and a cause of new, currently unknown cancers...but we'll also find that other tech that we've lived around for a long time and these smartmeters ARENT a cause of ill health...and if used right should help save the human population from its own doom (peak oil gone, lack of any natural resources and all that good stuff) - people blocking the install should be charged more and pay for not having smart meters
>As a result, such patents would typically need someone with a money truck handy to create commercial products
hmmm... not unlike all those patents that patent trolls sit on waiting for someone to actually
invest money and actually MAKE something. eg Intellectual Ventures who The Reg have mentioned a few times recently...dont actually make anything..they just sit on patents and get cash in from companies.
this Easy Access IP is the decent way of doing things
this is pretty miserable news - i like Best Buy - they are one of the better tech retail stores
around and i've had some good purchases from them since they opened their store here in Nottingham.
now all we've got left is the DSG bunch of overpriced horrendous stores - and random tech stuff in tesco/ASDA/etc etc - horrible.
I wonder if it would have been better of they actually advertised more...word of mouth seems to have been their main method....and The Gadget Show was still DSG sponsored - that was the sort of spot that BestBuy should have grabbed.
oh well, online shopping only...along with MMC splitting up of DSG
Anyone in the nottingham vicinity can go to gamecity6 and try out this game in a travelling EA game trailer/pod at the market square. I didn't as there are far more indie titles elsewhere that I personally prefer ... fez dez rez, for example , rocks my boat rather than another paint by numbers FPS
I got my 'personal computer' which was far more advanced than any PC or Mac in its day - and
it had draggable windows...all at different resolutions.... Amiga
of course, what happened to Amiga just as the iMac was being outed is probably the worlds biggest loss in terms of computing freedom and ability. Still...20 years later its still going - OS4 updates
keep coming out. the OS is exactly what others have been trying to make theirs operate like now for the past 20 years..
40Gb backbone with 10Gb to several of the campuses. The current JANET network is still made up of Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) who have local expertise and knowledge..and their own dark fibre in many places - providing each campus with ethernet WAN is most places.
JANET is also ahead of the game for wireless roaming too - thanks to eduroam - 802.1X WPA enterprise wireless at all involved sites meaning that visitors to the eduroam SSID authenticate using their home site credentials - from wherever they are in the world.
I've always said that the 7" form factor is just right for 'on the move' tablet stuff, rather than eg sitting on sofa or at desk ...smaller sizes feel like overgrown smartphones and bigger ones are a balancing act or cause your wrist to be well exercised
I'm not surprised at lower battery life if the CPU is chucking that amount of horsepower around...perhaps they should have gone for eg eeepad transformer speeds? Wouldn't be surprised to see a large community around this one..perhaps performance tweak to improve such things by a magnitude eg underclocking mods/utils
no App2SD support - otherwise it'd be an instant purchase
PS don't care if its available for other platforms. you'd have to be a
bit of a twit to switch phone platform just for one nice little App - after all,
such an App could exist as a Cloud-based web application that you
simply e.g. tweet your photos to.
after the Register coverage of the Orange San Francisco phone (aka 'ZTE blade') I popped out
and picked one up (for playing with...) 89 quid with mandatory 10 quid top-up (I think its 99 quid with 20 quid topup now...)
it lasts for over 5 days from a single charge when used as a enhanced phone (ie dont run data apps etc). thats actually not that bad!
A1200 with PowerPC upgrade - 240MHz of 603e power and 256Mb of RAM - with a Voodoo3
card on PCI busboard expansion. yep - these things could be expanded WAYYYY beyond their original shape/design.
anyway, for those intrigued by the current AmigaOS etc then you could do worse than head on over to amigakit and look at the SAM440EP system with OS4.1 http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=sam+flex+system
when i was at Sussex Uni, every year a motion was brought forward to not pay the NUS
affiliation fee... it was always voted down primarily because of the 'we get cheap drinks'
argument.. with no cheap drinks I can see many bodies dropping their NUS affiliation.
that said, when I was at Uni, the Uni bars werent cheap - you could go into town (Brighton)
and get far more drink for your cash.. 2 for 1, half price, free shot with every pint etc etc.
yes, there was very cheap drink when i was a student - at least 1 quid per pint - and yet we didnt have issues with binge drinking in the early nineties as we seem to have now (or is it all just media hype?) - its not cheap drink..drink isnt that cheap (reports have said cocaine is cheaper ;-) )
theres a _reason_ why people are drinking themselves into stupors every wekeend in the UK - because life int he UK is currently quite sh*t and theres nothing better to do for a large proportion of the population.
history teaches us lessons. if we dont learn from history what hope do we have? not that long ago a similar portion of the population used to wpend their free hours in gin houses drinking the cheapest mind-bending stuff they could. those 2 were the days when the poor were porr and the rich were very rich and thousands died of curable illnesses. ah yes, and now its 2009 and its all the same again.
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