* Posts by Weird_George

26 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jul 2010

Chinese boffins build brain-powered camera 'copter

Weird_George
Big Brother

Drone

Put that in a drone...

So that Obama or <place any US President> could kill anyone he pleases :(

Third-gen Ultrabooks must offer USB 3.0, anti-theft tech

Weird_George

"Anti-Theft Tech stops the laptop from running if it has been reported stolen."

So the Anti-Theft Tech is useful after you have reported the theft of your laptop. Vendors keeps using this term' Anti-Theft'. I do not think it means what they think it means.

ARM creators Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber

Weird_George
Mushroom

Get Real

The work on the BBC Micro and ARM was done by Roger Wilson. End of.

That he might now want to be known as Sophie is immaterial. Credit it properly and stop with the PC (stupidity, not personal computer).

Raspberry Pi signs big-name sellers

Weird_George

"Unless Farnell and RS could prove they had the grunt to handle this,"

Is there an established recognized method by which they could have proved they had the grunt? Maybe the foundation could have initiated DDOS attacks on their partners websites ahead of launch just to check.

"...they should always have stuck to the plan and put off the big distributors until round 2.

So they would have sold them, how? Via their own website, which they knew wouldn't handle the traffic?

"...while trying to avoid the fact that what you really needed to do was spend a ridiculous amount of money on web infrastructure that can handle the spikes"

Are you missing the part where the Raspberry Pi foundation is charity run by volunteered who largely self financed their first production run and don't have 'ridiculous amount of money'? Why would RS or Farnell spend 'ridiculous amount of money' just to handle the traffic generated for a few hours by interest in one single product amongst everything they sell?

Raspberry Pi ship date slips

Weird_George

The foundation have repeatedly stated that they won't take pre-orders because they don't believe in taking people's money before they have something ready to ship.

Weird_George

The foundation have repeatedly stated that they will not take pre-orders because they don't want to take people's money before they have a product read to ship.

Sony outs Xperia Ion

Weird_George

1280 x 720 display, 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, sounds great. What did you say the battery life was? Ah, you didn't. Hmmm.

Orange revisits San Francisco with another budget blower

Weird_George

"Memory is also up, to 512MB, which can be expanded to 16GB using Micro SD cards."

Eh? When you say Memory do you actually mean Memory as in RAM, or do you mean storage?

Ultra-cheap HP TouchPads to hit UK at 6pm

Weird_George
FAIL

Seriously!

I had one in the shopping cart, it fell over on the payment page, didn't take payment, when I refreshed, it said it was out of stock on a terribly formatted page. DSGi = Feckin' useless.

Ubisoft insists DRM 'a success'

Weird_George

Ubisoft is hard of thinking...

...don't they realise that stopping pirates copying games is not the same as getting them to pay for said games?

Ads watchdog bites Virgin Media over 'con' claims

Weird_George

It's not like VM have a leg to stand on...

.. what with their Superhub unable to reach reasonable speeds (especially over wireless), with their Subscriber Traffic Management cutting your speed by 75 percent on top of traffic shaping that cuts speed in half on certain protocols on top of an undocumented Fair Use Policy that threatens you with disconnection even if you stay under their published limits. There's nothing honest about the speeds you get out of a VM connection if you actually want to use the service.

Teenager tries to trade virginity for iPhone

Weird_George
Thumb Up

I prefer to give an iBone for an iPhone

I prefer to give an iBone for an iPhone

Mac OS X 10.6.8 hails from Paleolithic era

Weird_George

download before you try and install

I run this occasionally

$ sudo softwareupdate -dav

It downloads all currently available updates but doesn't install them.

When it's convenient install I launch Software Update from the Apple Menu knowing that all the updates are already on the disk ready for it to install.

Samsung readies 'world's first' solar netbook

Weird_George

Built in solar panel is simpler

A detachable solar panel with retractable cable would also be a more complicated, expensive and cumbersome option. It would require it's own enclosure which would add to the production cost, you'd always have to work out somewhere to put it, you could potentially leave it behind and so on.

Samsung rolls out 22in see-through screens

Weird_George
Troll

Key loggers?

BUT DO THEY COME WITH KEY LOGGERS INSTALLED?

Or even just an empty directory that will make poorly written antivirus software say there's a keylogger...

Toshiba £300 'entry level' Froyo tablet back on sale next month

Weird_George
Thumb Down

0.2MP?

"0.2Mp and 5MP front- and rear-facing cameras"

0.2MP? Are you sure? That's not even 640x480. If it's true it's ridiculous.

Ford Focus 2011

Weird_George

"off of"

"The new Focus' other tech works off of a couple of forward facing cameras..."

"off of"? Really?

"The new Focus's other tech works using a couple of forward facing cameras..."

Perhaps you're an American. They use 'off of' a lot I've noticed. Doesn't change the fact that it sounds bloody awful.

Sadly no grammar Nazi icon.

Samsung dangles £200 lure at iPad-eyeing punters

Weird_George

Cost is not the same as worth.

"The 15 films are worth £165. "

No, the 15 films would ordinarily cost £165. Whether they are worth £165 is a matter of personal opinion.

Brits say 'no, no, no' to 3D TV

Weird_George

nobody...

... really gives a shit about bad hypes these days. Telco's think 3D is the way forward. I would't bet on it.

Virgin demands ISPs end broadband speed 'con'

Weird_George

They should talk.,,,

Virgin implements Subscriber Traffic Management that cuts your speed to a quarter of what you pay for, if you don't got above those limits you still get threatened with Fair Use Policy and told to download after 9pm, and now they introduce throttling for 7 hours every evening and night and for 12 hours at the weekends that if you're lucky, cuts your download speed in half.

Virgin should stop advertising speeds when they deliberately stop you getting those speeds as soon as you try to use them. Sure, their lines may be more capable than DSL, but they are no different if you can't get the speeds due to artificial restrictions made so they can pack more customers onto an overloaded network without doing upgrade work.

Apple MacBook Pro 17in Core i7 BTO notebook

Weird_George
Thumb Up

As a Python, bash and Apache config hacker...

...the £ key being a # key sounds like a most excellent idea to me. Hmmm.

WD Livewire four-port powerline Ethernet adaptor

Weird_George

Not always bad...

You could get one of these and, clearance allowing, plug something else into the same socket.

http://www.solwise.co.uk/net-powerline-av-push-piggy.htm

I am not a Solwise employee so this isn't a plug. I have a couple and they work OK but the speed isn't exactly spectacular. I hear they're non standard too but I don't know if that's really the case.

RUSE

Weird_George
Thumb Up

No online DRM

RUSE is thankfully devoid of Ubisoft's heinous online DRM.

Apple fans drool over Liquidmetal widget

Weird_George
FAIL

I'm getting sick of this marketing shizzle

If they marketed copper this well the fanboys would be drooling too, it's just a name, it's not actually liquid!

Sony Bravia KDL-32NX503 32in LCD TV

Weird_George

Remote

If it's anything like the 46" version, then the big-old power button on the back of the remote will switch off all of the sony devices in your cinema setup, and not put just the TV into standby like the front-face button does - it's a bit more than just a gimmick.

Olympus PEN E-PL1 Micro Four-Thirds camera

Weird_George
Stop

Bad layout

Having 6 pages of photos in between the 1st and last section of the article is dumb.

Having the specs of the camera on page <random> instead of page 1 or 2 is dumb.

Having a 9 page article with no section descriptions to help me jump to the section I want ... is dumb.

Nice camera. :-)