Posts by HP Cynic
281 posts • joined Tuesday 12th October 2010 08:57 GMT
Can you please stop finding a way to mention Jobs in every Apple post/headline?
Re: but why would anyone?
And I presume by "pick up" they actually mean "buy".
Old news
Well, maybe having 28 acceptable haircuts is new but for years they have not only frowned upon long hair (for men) but actually have a TV Show where they publicly shame men who've "transgressed".
I've seen "clips" of it :)
1-2-3
To this day I still use some of the various 3-step paths that Excel took directly from Lotus. I miss that little guy (and WordPerfect)
Cinema tickets are indeed insane but there's often good deals on a Tuesday.
One of my local Odeons has not even bothered with a silly euphemism and just called it "Cheap Tuesday" where tickets are £4
The other nearby Odeon knocks off money for Premier Card holders.
Re: HateLoveFilm
Hah! About to do the same with TalkTalk.
Weds: I get a "Health Check" call which is in fact a sales call to ask me to get their TV deals. Not the first time, happens every few weeks but picking up the pace recently. As usual I say "If I want more services I'll look on the website".
Thur: Another call from TalkTalk, I refuse to take the call and am told "It was TalkTalk doing a HealthCheck - they will call back tomorrow".
Fri: expecting another call tonight where I'll tell them as a result of their harassment I'm going to cancel.
Basically TalkTalk are losing customers fast so seems they are desperately trying to get their existing base to buy more of their services. Another free Netflix trial just appeared in my inbox too.
LoveFilm can jump off a bridge or pay me back the £10 they scammed out of me during their "free trial".
Re: @silent_count
Cars have a purpose beyond killing people. Guns don't.
Re: Follow the chain of logic.
I do, but the availability of guns means the shitheads have an easy time committing these mass murders.
In the developed nations which have controlled guns it's blindingly obvious, just as it was obvious the US healthcare system was a giant for-profit scam at the expense of the people.
The corporate propaganda has been far too effective at conditioning Americans into accepting frequent mass shootings as "a price worth paying" along scapegoating everything but the guns.
No idea why it took 2 years to pick the exact gun almost everyone would have suggested in the first 2 mins of them saying "Let's replace our Brownings".
Posted in Far Cry 3 game review
Far Cry 2's bugs killed my interest before this was born
Stunning graphics but I shan't be touching it after the game-breaking bugs I encountered in Far Cry 2 made it impossible to complete. I spent an epic amount of time hitting 44% before it irrevocably broke, 20+ hours replaying and or trying to work around the bugs but was eventually defeated by that same bugged story quest. In some ways I was lucky as I heard many people encountered a game killing bug once they had fought their way to 88%.
Approximately 2 years ago the Far Cry 2 forum was little more than complaints about these bugs and the only official post I ever saw was "Good news, we are making Far Cry 3!!"
NOPE.
Re: Perhaps
That's what I was thinking, I bet they excluded their Jersey (tax dodge in it's own right) depots too like "Indigo Starfish" which supplies a lot of my orders (and I but virtually everything I don't eat from Amazon.co.uk)
I bet this would not have been passed off as a mere "Admin error" had the mistake been made by a less Royal member of the team.
I believe that remains, it's probably even more pervasive now .
Feck
Once my TalkTalk contract ends I was going to make the leap to Virgin after coming to believe they were now one of the good ones.
A mate of mine with 2 faulty iPads in a row (broken connector port followed by broken WiFi) said "If you don't have AppleCare, Apple don't care".
He and his wife own many Apple products between them but this experience + the ridiculous schedule of tiny upgrades has driven them out of the walled garden.
Re: Wasn't this more meaningful when...
I don't own any Android devices.
I do however know 4 people who own iPhones, iPads and iMacs and they do indeed update them at every iteration (sometimes "sensibly" skipping one) and could truly be called "Fanbois" (and girls).
They are now griping at the release frequency. I did warn them this would happen before the iPad appeared - they will keep adding products into the gaps, you will want them, they will keep updating them, you will want them and your wallets will bleed.
As a neutral observer I think Apple should release updates when they have something significant to update, not just because they have moved into the next quarter. Ah well, they're the billionaires not me!
Re: Good luck Apple
Every 6 months now.......
Re: I don't buy it
Well, I think they are experimenting with their release schedule more than anything: how many products can we be iterating on and at what frequency to maximize money. The actual improvements in those products barely matter in this scheme, just keep announcing them and pushing them out the door until they discover the sweet spot.
I think they have likely gone too far this year, the iPad 4 appeared so soon after the iPad 3 I know a few true fanbois who felt agrieved.
And I am pretty sure with the iPhone 4S they said "you all told us you thought the screen size was perfect and did not want it larger" only to announce the 5 soon after with a new "perfect screen size".
Just as the iPad Mini was suddenly the "perfect size" and suddenly Retina screens did not matter.
Re: There will be no iPhone 5S...
Well said, I still think most of those are "good ideas" and with each new Apple product it's quite a simple task to run a checklist then walk away.
Until they do replaceable batteries, expandable memory and a reduction in their ridiculous price premiums I know I'll never buy any of their offerings.
No matter how shiny.
Silver Lining
I'm a TalkTalk customer and I've noticed that my connection has been more stable in recent month: perhaps the lines are not quite so clogged requiring them to recycle me less often (I was getting a new IP Address almost every day at one point with regular disconnects at 6pm and Midnight).
However their Customer Service remains utterly appalling and I'll be leaving once this year's phone sub expires to one with a decent monthly allowance.
Backwards
Tiny storage capacity, no Optical Drive and no Ethernet Port? I don't even need to see that it's overpriced to confirm it's something I'd never go near.
Not bad for such a mediocre series.
Amazon own Lovefilm now right? So it's no even Amazon OR Lovefilm content you are pretty much feeding at 1 trough.
I just hope this is a joke, misheard, taken out of context and them misconstrued otherwise I'd have to give up my last vestiges of respect for the BBC.
Posted in Apple iPad Mini 8in tablet review
Retina or GTFO
This time the presentation/videos went to went to lengths to tell us that 7.9" is the "Perfect Size" as they glossed over the fact their now standard "Retina" display tech was missing from their latest product.
When they do the Retina version and drop the price a bit it might be the first tablet I'd consider buying since I got my HP TouchPad at firesale price.
Then again it won't fit in a pocket so perhaps 7" might have been more "perfect"
Re: So Called Fulfillment Centres
The scourge of internet shopping: we no longer have to get off our asses to shop and barely have to move to receive the goods so the hassle of waiting for couriers becomes the focus.
We just need 3D Printers for everything and then we'll only have to worry about earning the money and refilling the raw material vats :)
Posted in Vote now for the ULTIMATE BACON SARNIE
I'm pleased to see the foreign muck like Bagel butties scoring poorly.
It's tragic enough when American Apple staff "high five" complete strangers who are about to buy a massively overpriced product from their company, but part of me recoils in horror to see Brits engaging in the same behavior.
Posted in AT&T defends FaceTime price gouge
Re: Lovefilm not so bad
I believe Series 2 is where her stupidity is abundantly demonstrated which makes an element of Series 3 and beyond all the more grating.
Idiot Ubisoft Trolls: not content with wrecking their games with DRM they are now inventing piracy figures, probably in the hope of making us feel sorry for them or to hide profits.
I've still not played AC2 since the DRM measured wiped my first hours of (dull) progress, I swore off their entire catalogue at this point excepting when I can get them for pennies via Steam :)
Re: "The geography that did not perform well was Europe"
I guess they got bored of saying "territory" or some plonker mistakenly said "the geography" and the pack followed him. Got to keep up with the buzzwords!
Bizzare
My mate was JUST telling me how he ordered one duing the keynote but then almost immediately tried to cancel it once he learned it's Kindle support was poor.
He spent 2 weeks trying to cancel it and now it's turned up at work.
He's chucked it on Facebook Market at cost price.
Conspiracy nonsense galore!
I'm a bit put out by the "Could'a / Should'a been American" comment: during the announcements and conferences I saw constant references to "Global Collaboration" with no sense that this was some kind of European "win".
Funding an expertise came from America as well as all corners of the globe and one of the commenters was right to call it a leap forward for mankind an so on.
Not a shred of gloating or Europosturing just a shared sense of achievment for physics/engineering/computing/theorizing etc.
I'd like to think that had the SSC been completed and found the particle they would have made a similar presentation but it now sounds suspiciously like it would have been another " 'merica, Fuck Yeah!" moment. Hopefully just the bittersweet response of a handful, one should be gracious in defeat and magnanimous in victory.
Re: "Nobody has ownership over that."
iBoson
Osborne's rhetoric befouls an otherwise encouraging article!
Osbourne's rhetoric befouls an otherwise encouraging article!
MoneyMakingExpert.com
That's one heck of a sum and I'm glad to see that the money going to charity is a substantial %.
I really hope Martin not only keeps out their interference but himself can care so much about the few pounds we can save with his advice when he himself will be so spectacularly rich.
I can't believe he got away with this.
Posted in Apple's Ping has fatal pong, says CEO
I've never even heard of it but I like that Cook was honest about it's status instead of the usual corporate double talk...
Posted in Vauxhall Ampera hybrid e-car
How odd, my car died this week and when looking at a replacement "Small Family Hatch" I saw this rated the "2nd best" by What Car and started reading all about it last night.
First off the Chevy Volt is available here for less but still a huge mark up over the US prices (£35K -£5 Gov. Grant).
It's electric range has been revised to 25-50 miles since initial claims of 50 miles proved bogus.
Charging from your home 230v supply takes 6 hours and since I don't have a driveway I'd not be able to charge it at all.
Finally I saw the discussion about "Payback time" vs the Chevy Cruz and pretty sure it said 26 years not 14 which made it utterly pointless for the US market where fuel is far, far cheaper.
Not sure what sort of payback time it would have here with our insane fuel prices (thanks to 70% Duty) but I think the car would have long-since failed before you made any efficiciency gains.
Great, their bonus is based on a score site: cue astroturfing on a massive scale then.
No Schadenfreude here just relief that reality caught up with this bubble even faster than I thought: the valuation came out of thin air...
Then again it was so massively over-valued that it can never really collapse below "stupidly high numbers" so there's something to be said for these attention grabbing, fictitious values.
There just seems no end to the pathetic, money grubbing of the media corps - we are getting closer to pay per listen/play/read as it seems they don't want us to own anything.
I just spendt hours copying all my CDs onto my HDD the other weekend and never have nor will I ever buy MP3s: I want to physically own the CD as my "personal master".
I don't trust iTunes enough to buy from: it loses my music enough as it is.
Oh and CDs are cheaper: I never pay more than £8 for an album now. No idea how HMV can sell albums for £20 or whatever joke-price they are now.
Posted in UK mobile broadband carriers compared
I'm on GiffGaff myself and even the £10 a month I pay is deemed "too much" by GG themselves who say I can come off the GoodyBags and just pay as I go. They are awesome but yes the service can be a bit slow and sometimes lacks a signal...
Anyway the graphs: please consider recolouring them as each network has an established colour which is not just part of their brand but something most of us are very used to e.g. I expect O2 to be blue and Orange to be ...orange and so on :)
Posted in Diablo III
I've never done any of those things but you've just proved you want to be an idiot and a "fanboi".
It's a single player game for most and thus it should not suffer the issues of an online game: sure "most" people have the internet but on launch day that did little good against the Error 37s.
My internet is not 100% stable, I don't trust Blizzard's servers to be up all the time and I don't want to have ANY risk of lag for any reason.
There's not a single good reason for DRM bullshit when they could have just split SP and MP characters.
While I find some metric measurements harder to conceptualise (e.g. distances and pints) and have a nostalgic attachment to some (pints again) the fact is he's totally right.
I remember my Grandma constantly complaining about metric money as opposed to the nonsense that came before but if you asked people to convert FROM metric money now you would struggle to find anyone on your side.
They just need to get on with it.
I've always felt their estimator was inaccurate but it's also insulting as no matter what speed it displays I get the message "Congrats your internet is as fast as it can possibly be!"
Also TalkTalk seem to have abandoned Customer Service in favour of simply asking you to run this very speed test several times...
I very much regret a year's phone service in advance :(
What's fair is not the issue, the rich avoid tax no matter what rate is agreed. 50%, 40% or even 10% makes no odds if they actually PAY 0%.
Anyway what annoyed me in the article was the obsequious language used by his spokesman "has found it more practical to live in Singapore".....
He's rich enough you think he'd have the guts to admit he finds it more lucrative.
It calls to mind a documentary I saw interviewing the droves of F1 Drivers who live in Monaco: only one of them was willing to admit the real reason they move there is the small matter of zero Income Tax.
