Re: Just say no.

>I fail to see how, after you explicitly remove locally saved data, that it is a failure of the websites that their locally saved data has been removed.

I didn't say it was the fault of the website, just of the website model. If you are to infer anything further, it should be that an option to 'delete all cookies and cache except from websites x, y and z' would be quite nice to have in a browser, but that it would be still be effort to administrate.

Re: Type A and B ports

A good number of, but not all, tablets and phones can act as host- 'USB OTG'. You notice that micro USB has 5 pins yet USB A has 4? Shorting two of them together will instruct a compatible device to act as host and read memory cards, USB HDDs and keyboards etc.

Check online for '[your device] USB OTG' before buying a cable. Making one yourself is a good test of your soldering skill and patience, though.

http://usbtips.com/usb-otg-adapter-connects-usb-accessories-to-your-android-device/

Less of a holiday and more doing some work on a house. Still, the food was good, simple and plentiful... have been on a mostly soup diet since returning to Blighty!

Re: Are you serious?

m.theverge.com does a mobile-optimised site quite well. The rotation of Top Stories at the header can be swiped through, and stories are loaded in a list form, with the option to 'load more' rather than move to an 'older stories' page.

The Reg is okay to browse on a 4" screen, but depends on the browser re-flowing text. Comments are tricky, though.

Re: Just say no.

I'm getting bored of websites that throw up a "Would you like to download our app?!!". For looking up a film, for example, I might want to look at its IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Wiki or Showcase entry. If anyone knows of a way of setting "No, %&^ off, just show me the &%$ing website like I asked you" to be the default response, please do let us know.

That said, and at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, specialist apps will require less data to be transferred and are often better formatted for my device. The app will continue to remember my preferences (my local station, to use the Rail Enquiries as an example), if I decide to purge my browser's cache and cookies.

Re: expandable memory

If its important to you, then you should research it more. XDA Developer forums are usually a good place to start. People used to use an app called 'App2SD' to move apps onto removable storage, but it appears that it doesn't work with all versions of Android or every device. However, it might be that you don't require so many apps that it becomes an issue.

Personally, I have a fair few apps on my ICS phone, only some of which are really useful ('Gstrings' guitar tuner is great, unit converters, calculators), many I never use, and I haven't loaded too many games on it- so I have never run into any app storage limit.

Re: OK, I want to add

Read the book; In the forward to a collection of related short stories (collectively 'A.I' but the short story the film was based on is 'Super Toys Play All Summer Long") Brian Aldiss was concerned that Kubrick doubted his own ability, and was overly in awe of the Spielberg's commercial success- which is why Kubrick wanted Spielberg's input on the A.I project. Aldiss was pretty dark, but had the ring of truth... if man succeeded in making truly realistic androids, then the sex industry would be at the front of the waiting list.

Re: Any love...

>is based on the Athur C Clarke book of the same name and so like everything else he wrote is crap.

So geostationary satellites are of no use to you, then, Irongut?

Re: More films...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0267287/

Avalon - a live action Polish Japanese production from the director of Ghost in the Shell...

Re: Also missing

Just for the bit where the hero remarks on the sexiness of the installation's recorded voice, and his host responds:

"Oh, you want to meet her? The lady we got to do the voice lives about five miles away, but she's sixty-five"

Re: Harrison Bergeron

There is a more recent 20 minute version that is rather good:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2081_(film)

Re: No love for Dune?

And based upon a book written as an ecological parable- the same criticism levelled at Silent Running.

Re: Primer

Damned right - more serious than half the films in the article, fully realises its premise (and then some) and delivered in a realist style that reminds me of the real-life young scientists and engineers I've seen in their places of work. Confusing as hell though, but by necessity.

A scandalous omission for the Reg, especially as the first act resembles a documentary about a silicon valley start-up.

The creators of Primer have a new film out this year- 'Upstream Color"... IMDB can help you out.

"Primer"

I time travel movie that I can't get my head around, even with the help of a flow chart. The depiction of working scientists and garage start-ups has the ring of truth about it, though.

Tom's Hardware were of the opinion that ARM were efficient when doing nothing - good for smart phones - but when they looked at power conspumption by task, the race was far from over. They did note that Intel were taking greatly pains to invite analysis of their power consumption.

I don't know if this rumour is true, but Apple are x86 customers of Intel's, and having their ARM chips made using Intel's fab processes would give them an edge over their iDevice competitors.

Re: Almost 2 years old?

Yeah, but my 2003 XP laptop did most of the same things as my Win 7 now

machine does, and in much the same way. Mobile devices have been evolving more over the same period, though they now seem to be settling down a bit.

Re: Price Ideas?

A bigger screen only for makes a better phone if that's what the individual user

prefers. Choice is good, though.

Didn't that big tease Google announce they would release GoogleMaps for iOS after all? And didn't Nokia say they were going to do the same with their well regarded map product? Just saying.

Re: And the Winner gets..

It's just you.

Eadon, this isn't the place to just air your prejudices, this is the place to discuss the article at hand. I'm quite sure that Win Pho lets its users post tedious messages on the Reg forums as easily as any other mobile OS - which is all you seem to use computing equipment for anyway.

As if unsatisfied with exhibiting your ignorance by your normal methods, you've employed analogies to really advertise it:

- An institute that used to be a polytechnic would be a university, so wouldn't be attended by a college student, as you put it.

-You don't get Modern Art courses, you get Fine Art courses.

-Saatchi ain't the collector to be impressing these days

- Win Pho looks like the works of Mondrian, who is well thought - or at least encourages a more orderly state of mind than the artless experiments in latex that are the true hallmark of a 1st year Fine Art student.

Re: Not Yellow!

It sounds like it would survive a dunk in some yellow paint, so you have options.

Re: One way trip

Earth, with its ever higher population, population density, communication between populations and human encroachment on potential 'reservoir' species is an ideal place for viruses and bacteria to evolve and spread... Mars not so much.

Re: Intel HD graphics

Ilgaz - I wasn't aware that there were any netbooks with Intel HD 4000 graphics, they came in with Ivybridge CPUs, and can quite happily decode HD video and drive a few monitors. Check the benchmarks online.

Things do get better, you know.

Re: iPod on while doing dangerous sports

Dunno, I haven't used headphones whilst on the piste, but snowboarding takes you in zig tags, and generally you are visually aware of your surroundings. Unlike being on a road, the moving objects that are likely to hit you make the same sort of noise as you yourself are making, and often your ears are muffled by a hood, hat or helmet anyway.

The loudness war is sad, since most digital player have to ability to normalise the levels if the user requires it.

What would be good is for more portable players to support 192Khz/24bit playback, since music is available in this format- and a good quality external DAC fgor a PC is relativily cheap compared to Hi-Fi components of old.

There are two or three very expensive 24bit portable audio players available, or you could use a high-end portable audio recorder for output, or you could use an iPad connected to a 24bit DAC... (and possibly Android devices too, with the USB Audio feature added to Jelly Bean... but I don't know for sure)

Re: Busting your data allowance in minutes

250 GB / month sounds much the same as my use... a few times a week I will use it to stream an hour long 25MB podcast, to keep me company as I walk to the pub or drive to the next city, plus a bit of browsing here and there, sometimes some maps... If I were more organised, I would download them via WiFi before leaving the house.

Re: "stereoscopic sound"?

>I think you mean stereophonic sound, unless you're one of those rare people who say they can see sounds..

"Son, what you've got to understand is that in the seventies we took a lot of drugs..."

(to paraphrase and re-purpose a Gary Larson caption)

Re: Introducing a new definition of "a few"

>Also the iPod wasn't originally flash - it had a 2.5" HDD in it until (I think) the iPod Mini in 2004.

The iPod had a little 1.8" Toshiba disk in it, the same as the iRviver H1xx and H3xx machines, as well as some of the Creatice players, amongst others. Then mysteriously, you couldn't lay your hand on a spare drive for love nor money... and everyone but Apple seemed to move exclusively to solid-state. These days, portable HDD-based players are thin on the ground... there's the iPod Classic, Cowon and Archos, but I can't think of many others. To be honest though, a little Sansa Clip+ with a few microSD cards quickly exceeds all but the biggest music collections.

Re: Introducing a new definition of "a few"

Yeah, that jumped out at me as being a very strange paragraph... The cassette Walkman was king for years, then a very few people bought DAT and DCC, before the CD Walkman became very widespread (though wasn't as portable as its cassette brethren). The MD player started to gain a bit of momentum before it was killed by flash players (more portable) and HDD-based players (more capacious).

I miss my iRiver H320, stolen from my car, one of the few HDD machines that had mic and line-in for recording WAV and MP3, analogue and digital recording was a feature most MD devices had.

Re: @SuccessCase

I tried an EEE PC with its stock Linux distro on it... it wasn't great.

Netbooks tended to be second machines, when the user's primary machine most likely ran Windows- so no matter how easy the Linux distros on them were to use, the user would be learning their way around a new-to-them OS (and associated applications) for a machine they only used occasionally. Average Joes found it easier if their netbook just behaved as a 'mini me' to their primary machine. Simple.

The Linux distro that came on EEE PCs seemed pretty limited and designed to point the novice user at a web browser. Many of the concepts required to use Linux (package managers, mounting disks, SUDO) are logical and make a lot of sense- but they still do require a few sessions to get used to if you are a newbie, as does knowing which GNU program is the equivalent of one you are used to using on Windows.

Re: Where do I get one?

Try this, a review of a low-cost Quadropter (about $40 USD, available in the UK too), followed by a discussion thread. Its rivals are mentioned in the thread. It seems well suited for beginners.

Syma X1

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1797545

I have a conventional Syma helicopter, S105G (more stable than it is agile, so suitable for people learning in normal sized rooms), and I can't believe the number of times it has bounced of walls and ceilings with no real damage... since it was around £20 all-in, I was prepared to be generous. The battery has required soldering back onto the PCB- not hard- after my mate swatted it from the air cos we were buzzing him with it.

Re: Why a DVD?

CDs are about £0.10p each; I haven't seen coasters that cheap.

Re: It's the hydrogen bomb part

If you've already dropped your enemies in a volcano, why waste a nuclear bomb?

Re: Sweeney

L Ron Hubbard: It say a lot about a man when he is criticised by both Aleister Crowley and Isaac Asimov.

>No body wants to reach across a working keyboard and track pad like a Zombie to wipe mucky fingers on a screen. Ever!

I think the idea is that you write your novel on the machine when it looks like a laptop, then you proofread it (or catch up on your favourite TV show) sat on a comfy chair when it is in tablet mode.

Personally, I'm more connived by the idea of a laptop and tablet working together seamlessly, with the tablet acting as second display and input device.

Re: New blow for Microsoft Surface?

>People think of Windows as something that ... ... runs boring spreadsheets (the work association).

And games. Games are boring, right? and Photoshop, video editing, CAD, music production... really boring software.

If all you do with a computer is to use a browser to post tedious comments on The Register, it doesn't matter a damn what OS you use.

Re: Different kinds of products

If you just use Ninite to install the essentials on your new Win 7 machine (Codec packs, several browsers, Foxit reader, WMP Classic, whatever you poison is) you'll notice that Classic Startmenu is there- that's right: adding a start menu to Win 8 literally takes one extra tick-box.

Similarly, Win 8 can be made to skip the 'Metro' interface entirely. I imagine that most people here do some faffing around with an OS after installing it, so why all the fuss about a start menu?

Re: Social? .... Where's the SPLIT-SCREEN gameplay?!

The recurrence of '3' in your titles suggests that developer's were a bit slow in appreciating the demand for split-screen games.

Re: Back on the treadmill again...

@Amorous Cowherder

There there, it's okay, I've recently found I suck at Playstation games these days too.

Re: Obsolete tech

The games I enjoy the most are split screen, on a TV, sat on a sofa with mates... far more important to me than the better graphics on a PC. I'm not knocking PC gamers, but those who say 'my pc can do this...' are missing the point of what console gaming is about. Anyway, a PC gamer who is into WOW and uses fancy keyboard might be a different animal to the PC gamer who has a steering wheel, pedals and three monitors for a quick half-hour racing session.

Re: And of course

Title exclusives on the PS3 seemed conspicuous by their absence. A few tempting games did emerge (WipEout HD, Flower, some of the stranger Japanese titles) but nothing major at launch. On the previous gen, we'd been used to the PlayStation getting first dibs at Grand Theft Auto, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

When the PS3 came out, many people didn't yet have the HD TVs required to take advantage of BluRay, either.

Re: AC. Sony and Valve should Merge?

If someone wanted the 'it just works out of the box' approach for games, they'd just get a console. Macs offered neither the constant upgrade path of PCs, nor the 'plug and play' big screen experience of consoles.

I do remember the Pippin, but then I remember the Phillips CDi, the 3DO and the Windows/Sega Terradrive.

Re: Well hello there...

>Good luck with that. PC games such as the Civilization series would be a nightmare minus mouse and keyboard (shortcuts).

The PS4's Dualshock controller has a touchpad on it.

Re: "So ready ..... to run PS4 VM on my laptop."

What currency are your figures in? It doesn't look like $(USD)

Re: Proof of the pudding

>Do you work for Sony and you need to sell c*ap at any cost ?

Sod off Joerg.