Posts by Dropper 394 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jan 2011
The next generation's Olympics will be played entirely on WII Consoles across the internet.. which is how it should be in an age where sports in schools is regarded as too expensive... "athletes" will be disqualified for taking a new range of banned substances - Rockstar, Red Bull, etc - and avatars will have to conform to IOC dress standards.
Many companies, still struggling with a no-end-in-sight recession, simply can't afford to upgrade PCs purchased 5 or 6 years ago to something that can run Windows 7. Hands up who works for a business (not government) that gives your department enough cash to upgrade all your PCs every 2-3 years? Don't bother telling me about what should happen, about responsible practices and security. All of you work in places where those words are fairy tales that only the extremely niaive believe in. Those of you that don't should consider yourselves incredibly fortunate and never quit your jobs.
Not really. While I can't claim to be a fan of Apple, their phones are so poor it still amazes me anyone would buy such shite, iCloud is pretty decent. It has only failed me twice, and both times it probably would have paid to free up some space before trying to fit 2GB video files into 512MB of storage. And there-in lies the problem. With Amazon's cloud service, the only physical storage you need is enough to buffer what you're trying to watch. With iCloud (at least on an iPod Touch) you can only watch what your device can download. I can watch 35 minutes of Pirates of Carribean if that's all that will download - which is precisely what did happen last time I tried - but no more until I delete a few episodes of Stargate Universe. On the other hand it does as advertised. Everything I've bought is available wherever I have WiFi, provided I pay attention to what I've already got on my device.
Oh, I may (quite correctly) believe iPhones are shite, the way they suck is too endless to list, but I do love my iPod and want an iPad. Also I play WoW on a Macbook Pro and it works seemlessly, which is all a computer is good for anyway. Other applications are sort of like an orange some arsehole has put in your Christmas stocking - a waste of space..
If you want things like I/O and the ability to read media, don't buy toy computers. Better still, build one yourself and make sure it has everything you want plus plenty of ports/sockets for extra stuff you might decide you want later.
Real computers can't be slid under closed doors. They are sprawling junk yards, leaking dozens of ribbon cables connected to devices no one recognises any more. They don't have cases, or at least not complete cases and they most certainly have at least 2 of every kind of port that has ever been invented.. SCSI and Firewire, Serial and Parallel, all still there, breathing life into scanners, printers, genlocks and modems.
You can keep your shiny baubles with tiny screens that for some reason are capable of resolutions better suited to a 60" TV.. and you can keep your app-driven etcha sketches. Computers that require 2-3 people to lift safely are the only ones required on our watch, thank you very much.
"It seems that consumers simply don't have the finance to continue buying PCs while businesses are still impacted by negative economic news"
Wait, you mean someone finally figured out that if you ship all the best paying jobs overseas, start paying everyone you do still employ minimum wage and then complain because you have to pay them that much.. that might mean they won't keep buying expensive computers? Woah, slow down there genius.
About 7 years ago I found myself switching.. now I buy big TVs for the bedroom and smaller ones for the living room, 46" and 32" respectively. Maybe it's because I'm English and live in the US...
What amazes me though is the price changes. I got to cash in on an extended warranty for an $800 no-name 32" 720p LCD only a few months before it was due to expire. The store gave me $800 in credit because the TV no longer exists and I drove home with a 40" 1080p Sony Bravia. That was 3 years ago, god knows what I'd get for the same money now.
I don't think this proves anything except Microsoft have produced another shite version of Windows no one will be interested in. They've been doing this since the days of MS-DOS. Obviously this version has no place whatsoever in a work environment, the first then any IT department is going to do will be to wipe if off any PC that arrives and replace it with an operating system that makes sense.
It's like that ribbon shite they put into Office, they've just changed things for the sake of changing something. Sure people who still use safety sissors might find this special needs interface necessary in order to load a program, but those of us who moved on from colouring books and crayons will probably not embrace it.
All digital cable boxes give you is an extra cost per TV. Also you lose any free HD versions of network TV channels (our equivalent of BBC, ITV and Channel 4), so I'm not really seeing any upside.
Once you start paying for this wonderful new package, if you want HD you will be charged for an HD capable box as well as an additional subscription for HD channels. Your HD is still 1080i, just like it was with analogue cable, because the delivery of your TV hasn't changed and the same bandwidth limitations still apply. No one has marched over to your street and replaced the copper with fiber, they just gave you a bunch of boxes, then charged you for them.
Yes you could get additional premium channels if you really like giving away your money.. or you could toss out cable altogether and get a digital antenna, Hulu Plus and Netflix.
Being English I spent the first 30 years of my life in the Great British NHS system and then after moving to the US I've spent the last 14 years with private insurance.
There are so many misconceptions on both sides of the Atlantic and of course even when you do tell people how it really is, no one believes it anyway.
What I will say though is shouting that you pay more than we do (that's both of you).. you're wrong. You pay roughly the same and the care you get is pretty much identical. That $200 a month covers the whole family, it is not a per person amount. As long as your 'children' are under 26 that is, otherwise you have to ask the question - why haven't they got jobs yet?
There are a few differences. You almost always get a private room in the US and the hospitals have more carpeting. On the other hand in England most doctors still do house calls. The procedures are the same in both countries, waiting lists are similar - in the US you tend to have to wait a long time to see a specialist, surgery is then almost immediate, sometimes as soon as the same day.. in the UK you tend to get to see the specialist right away but then have to wait to get the surgery. Different areas have better availability depending on where specialists have decided to live.
I know English people want to believe that you get thrown out of hospitals if you don't have money or insurance, but that's illegal. And the US has always had government backed health insurance, but it's only offered to the most vulnerable groups, such as the unemployed, disabled, seniors and children. I know Americans want to believe that European doctors still hack off limbs without putting the patient under, but that is also illegal outside of Scotland.
When it comes to prescriptions Americans pay far more than anyone else, mostly because insurance companies are willing to pay whatever they're asked. That can be hard if you don't have prescription drug coverage. On the other hand they get access to the new stuff well before anyone else, which usually doesn't matter but for an extreme minority is the difference between life and death.
I still say the most significant difference between health services in the two countries is that carpeting tho.
Windows For VTechs maybe? Whatever, like all the shite versions of Windows the only copies MS will sell will be to vendors. As soon as IT departments get hold of the pre-installed machines they'll repair them by doing a quick re-image. I guess I don't know why people get upset over something they have no intention of buying. We will wait for MS to fix most of what is wrong, improve the things they got right and release a version with a Start Menu and a way to stop the widget circus from appearing in the middle of the screen.
While I agree there are a lot of things wrong with this, the amount you can be awarded in compensation is not one them.
The most expensive XBox 360 or version of Windows is less than half the maximum award you can get in small claims. So if you are unhappy that Windows came with Media Player, you XBox overheats or you're still banging on about how IE should be removed because it killed Netscape.. then getting a grand seems more than fair. provided the store you bought it from won't give you your money back.
The things that are wrong with it also don't include not being able to get $5 from a class action lawsuit.. oh you think you'll get more than that? Guess again, the money from class action suits goes to ambulance chasing lawyers, not the people affected. You'll probably get a free mamogram or teeth cleaning, thrown in, but you won't get cold, hard cash.
The real thing wrong with it is that Microsoft will have some sort of control over the retribution.. I mean compensation..
The real victims of Microsoft are not users. It's what they do to other software companies that matters and they won't be using class action suits.
News organisations left research behind as an optional extra a long time ago. Questioning the credentials of "experts", verifying sources, challenging the validity of statements issued by.. well anyone really.. were all left by the wayside so they could focus on more important concerns such as viewing figures and how advertisers will respond to content. What you have to remember is TV news only exists for entertainment purposes these days, it rarely contains facts or any kind of accuracy and certainly a little thing like using a Halo logo would be far less important than making sure the story was presented in the most sensational way possible. More likely they might decide the logo is more viewer/advertiser friendly and therefore the UN itself would be at fault for not adopting it. Throw on a few soundbites from politicians and random loud mouthed presenters.. all preaching how the violence in Syria would be ended if only the UN would approach Microsoft for a licensing agreement. Remember, if Twitter can save Iran, Halo can save Syria.
I remember this movie from the 80s that did the rounds repeatedly, then made it to TV (with crappy cardboard 3D glasses stapled to TV Times mags). It was shite and 3D movies have progressed precisely nowhere since then. My favourite characters from these movies are crossbow bolts, with good supporting roles from random debris. What I don't get is why the movie companies employ on actors and writers for 3D movies, when clearly they could save money by just producing 90-120 minutes of random objects flying out of the screen.
Of course this is the reason why 3D has no bearing whatsoever on why a person chose a particular brand/model of TV.
I didn't even get to the part where having decided to hand over the extra cash because you wanted a better quality screen, you then proceed to downgrade it towards the low end of a 1970s set wearing crap, plastic glasses. The price per viewer to downgrade the quality of your TV is presumably a source of great amusement to the bigwigs at LG, Sony and Samsung.
I think Samsung have this unreasonable expectation that the so-called experts dug up by Apple would have something relevant to say about the patents Apple is defending.. for example can someone who created a second-rate OS for a black and white computer give expert testimony on whether or not Samsung ripped off Apple's touchscreen tech.
I'm sure Samsung are just as guilty of boring the judge to death with flowery, rose-tinted bullshit.. which is why they had a bunch of their fanbois thrown out already.
Actually it seems refreshing that experts are actually being called on their expertise. In most technology trials this is pretty much never done, with the courts just accepting claims of expertise by random people who have invented bullshit titles for themselves.
Yeah, then when I arrived in the US and tried my hand at cooking in an American kitchen I was presented with their weird measurement called.. CUPS..
WTF is a 'Cup'? Do two Cups make a mug? Why is there no place for saucers?
And then of course it took a while to realise American gallons are wrong, which partly explained why the fuel economy of a US hybrid couldn't match that of a 1970s Ford Capri.
Satellite and cable providers charge far too much money for TV these days, so I'm not sure I care whether Dish wins this or not. Over the last 8-10 years prices have been steadily pushed up while content has largely remained the same. All the premium channels have doubled in price along with the cost of a basic channel lineup.
Which is why I dumped cable and refused to sign up for satellite TV.
I have netflix and hulu plus, which has less than a top end basic cable/satellite package - but not by much - but it costs $44 less. $16 vs $60.
Of course it's conditional on having decent internet service, but as that is something I would be buying regardless of anything else, I don't include it as part of my costs.
With Hulu and Netflix I can't store shows on a DVR (at least not legally) but then they make having a DVR superfluous anyway, as you can do anything with streamed content that you can with DVR-stored content, except pause the live TV I don't get now. I don't need a box that stores 100-500 hrs of TV I'll never get around to watching. You watch what you record onto these things? I call bullshit on that immediately.
I've had mine for about 10 weeks now and I have to say it's a great phone. I used Dolphin Browser frequently throughout the day, stream netflix movies while I'm waiting at my kids volleyball training and of course use it for txting and phone calls. I charge the phone once every two to three days.
There are only 3 very minor quibbles as far as I'm concerned. First is there is a software bug affecting all RAZR phones, it will lose it's ability to auto-rotate the screen, requiring a power off/on to fix. Which apps cause this are currently unknown, but I suspect it is browser/internet access related. The issue is not entirely the fault of the apps as they don't cause the same errors on other Android phones. They are probably doing something naughty, but HTC and Samsung phones appear to have more robust versions of the OS. Very minor like I said and a quick "reboot" fixes the problem, which occurs maybe once or twice a week.
The second minor quibble is that you cannot remove the battery. So ok, this phone makes having a spare mostly irrelevant, but if the phone does lockup then you're in a bit of bind. Consider that the only way to clear many Android lockups is to power off the phone - and that most Android lockups mean that you cannot do this because the touch screen stops responding and pressing 'Power Off' is no longer possible. So that leaves removing the battering (you can't) or waiting for the battery to discharge.. You now have a phone that accepts no inputs, will automatically go into a power-saving smart action when it's battery reaches 50% life and a battery that lasts a month on standby. This could be a tiny issue. Fortunately the most common reason for this phone to lockup is simply that it's overheated, so a fan or a lump of ice in a baggy will return your phone to normal operation. But you can see where this might be a bit of problem later down the road as most smartphones last around 18 months before weird shit starts happening.
Last issue is that overheating. It's a minor thing but I now live in Vegas and the last thing I need in a 100-110 degree summer is a phone that acts like a heating pad sitting in my trouser pocket.
These things are hardly deal breakers though. I loved my old HTC Incredible, gave me 2 1/2 years of very decent service. But after trying the latest Samsung offering with ICS, I find this to be superior in every way. ICS itself is not a big deal to me as most of the features other people love are things I don't use. I have around 5 apps that I use on a daily basis, another 5 or so that I use a couple times a week and the rest of the phones functionality is wasted on me.
The important things are all checked - big screen, big battery, Netflix, Navigator and my apps work.
Blizzard have done something weird with their code recently. Those having issues with Diablo III should know that something happened around Christmas that causes machines (especially gaming laptops) to overheat and shut off.
WoW isn't exactly graphics intensive, and a machine that can play Crysis on close to max settings with only a few stutters should not have issues with cartoon graphics. But settings above fair cause my own laptop to die after 5 minutes and Diablo won't last that long on any settings so far.
These issues started just after the final content was released for Cataclysm, until then WoW didn't have anything that could cause my laptop to fall under 60 fps.
Crisis and the latest Call of Duty run fine, I can push those settings as high as I like for as long as I like and temps don't break quite reach 80 degrees.
This is not entirely the fault of the NHS, all government agencies in all countries are ripped off this way. People like to whinge about waste, but companies they work for (or companies they run) are all too happy to rip off tax payers.
When you buy from a government agency, you have rules you have to follow - usually under the pretence that this supports local business and creates jobs in your area. This of course is bullshit. All that happens is local campaign contributers who run all the businesses that have government contracts get their pockets lined by fat contracts and overpriced services. They have their pet politicians tying up government in red tape in such a way that you are NOT ALLOWED to just order things online, despite the fact you know very well what these things should cost.
So the very things bidding processes and approved contractors/vendors are supposed to protect us from are actually made easier for the worst perpetrators. Instead of making sure that government doesn't hand fat, overpriced contracts to a few greedy corporates, we are facilitating it. Instead of making sure we don't pay 3 times as much as we should for office supplies, we are actually making it easier for companies to rip off tax payers. You guys can figure out the answers, I'm too busy ordering new toner for $500 a pop.
Reading on things like the Kindle Fire or using a cell phone Kindle app at home works well and of course the screen is better, but outside these devices are crap. You spend your time looking for shade just to barely make out the text.
I know that outside of Bournemouth, not many people back home in Blighty might choose to read a book on the beach, but I've heard that one or two do make the perilous cross-channel journey during the summer. So after you've finished eating (or shouting at the waiting staff in English in the vain hope they will understand the universal words "LAGER", "TOMATO SAUCE" or PROPER CHIPS) there is nothing better than sitting on the beach, squinting at a 4" screen.
Naturally over here in the colonies, we prefer to squint at an 7" or 10" screen depending on your wallet size and whether you prefer your books in iTunes or Amazon Cloud format, having just spent an hour shouting at waiting staff who claim to speak English but don't understand the words "bottle", "water" and then bring you crisps instead of chips.
"Congestion on the roads wastes time, increases emissions from engines, and makes people unhappy."
I wonder how unhappy people will be when they find their teenagers played World of Warcraft all night instead of plugging in their cars..
And while I would hate to disagree with a wise professor with the reasons why we won't take to the skies tomorrow, I have to say the chief obstacle has been overlooked. People in this country are too fucking stupid. Okay we're not Americans, but we are pretty close to that level of moronic optimism in mechanical tech.
If you think Essex boys and girls pose a threat to your commuting life now, wait until their fluffy dice laden Ford Escorts hit the skies..
UK Immigration has always been a fuckup. They charge outrageous fees for paperwork which they sometimes take years to process. Compared to countries like the US we charge 2-3 times the amount for people whose visas and residency should be guaranteed - such as spouses and the children of spouses. I know when I married someone from the US, it was an easy decision as to which country we should settle in. She had two kids so paying 6 times the cost with no guarantee the paperwork would be dealt with correctly meant I took the decision to leave the country permanently. It's a shame really, my wife and kids loved England, but there was no way we could take the chance that they would be thrown out of the country by the inept simpletons that work in the immigration office.
Anyone whose had to go through the immigration process would be horrified at this story. Not because of a crashed system, but the fact these people are so fucking crap that they forced those who are already in a massive state of stress to have to go through the entire process again. It took some of them years to get to this point, finally seeing an end to the enormous stress and worry, wondering if their families will be torn apart by bureacratic cunts, only to be told, "Fuck off home and start again, our computers crashed and we didn't keep off-site backups". Because that's what I don't understand. Why do they have to start over?
Surely we could get someone from eastern Europe to take their place for a fraction of the cost? This entire branch of government should just be sacked for gross incompetence. Wouldn't matter if the replacements can speak the language or understand the job, literally anyone would be better.
/rant off
Some people resort of beating the kid, some decide the best couse of action is talking to them others prefer making them sit in a corner and "think" about what they did. My humble opinion is the first action any parent should take with an unruly toddler is obvious.. restrict their smartphone's internet access. Just don't go too far, because while it might be tempting to pull the 50" LED 3D TV from their bedrooms, limit them to just one of their PS3, X-Box and Wii consoles or even threaten to cancel their World of Warcraft subscription for a week, what you should never do is cause permanent psychological damage by closing a Facebook account or restricting their texting. Some parents are just monsters, I've seen it.. you know there are children out there who well on the way to becoming serial killers by sadistic parents refusal to upgrade two-year old Androids?
Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy? Really? I seem to remember that one being pretty good, they even added a few very Adams-like additions to make it a little less predictable to the millions of people that read his books, watched the TV show or listened to the radio series. I've definitely been forced to endure far worse movies than several of the rest. Matrix Reloaded and Highlander 2 score special marks of course, but then that's sequels for you, after all witness the rest of the Highlander debacle with progressively worse movies released one after the other. But Phantom Menace.. poor and annoying I grant you, but for any "new" Star Wars movie you can place on the table, I will raise you one Ewok travesty. I have two for your viewing pleasure and no number of Jar Jar Binks can trump either of them.
Unless carriers drastically reduce their data charges there's no way they'll convince more people to pay actual money to connect their tablets to the internet. About the only place you can't get free wifi these days is on the beach.. you can find WiFi hotspots pretty much anywhere you travel, including the top of mountains in Alaska or in the rain forests of Maui. Why pay $30+ / month for a pathetic 2GB data when the alternative is unlimited for free. Even the airlines offer better data packages than that.
Stupidity on a grand scale. The US used to be the innovator, the world leader in most areas of technology. Now we lag behind because pretty much every area within IT has been off-shored to Asia. If you like the idea that we will eventually rely on countries like China for our technological expertise, that all the people working on systems at all levels are doing so from another country, cool, you go with that. After all what could go wrong with entrusting our financial, scientific and military systems to whatever country bids lowest. I don't care about immigrants working within our labor pool, I'm a strong believer in immigration, especially highly qualified people who help bring us advances in medicine and science. What I care about is ALL our jobs are being shifted outside of this country, where US Laws have absolutely no say in what goes on and who has access to what. Not to mention a rapidly growing trend of replacing high paying jobs with tempory contracts that have low pay and no benefits.
I think the point of the article was that Apple are worth more than the US Retail Sector, which (tongue-in-cheek) may point to an Apple market bubble..
The fact they sell more than the iPad - examples being the iPad mini (iPod), iPad mini 3G (iPhone) and a few strange iPads with broken upright touchscreens, arm rests with bumps decorated by letters and won't let me update to the latest iOS (Macbook / iMac) really doesn't matter in the context of what the article is trying to tell us...
The author is simply trying to give the world fair warning that the global financial market is about to go into melt down again when the Apple bubble bursts.. or something.
Really? They think the US has a better sense of humour about these things than we do? Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't we recently send a bunch of smart arses to the big house for writing jolly japes like "let's start a riot in Basildon" on social media websites? Yeah, I get it, the comments were too moronic to be taken seriously, but when you consider they went to a country not well known for having too much on top.. hopefully we sent them right back to the US for being too stupid to be British.. they'll fit in nicely.
It depends what you mean by 'where'. Mostly like they are on the same server, but occasionally a parent will roll for a different faction to keep their objectivity when disciplining their kids for hogging too much WoW bandwidth. If you mean 'where at 3am', my best guess would be farming mats or playing rated battlegrounds.
As long as Sony keep online functionality free I'll be sticking with Playstation for now. I understand the need to generate money for expensive R&D and loss making prices on hardware, but I balked at paying MS a fee just to use online services like Netflix. I don't understand why this isn't separate from the gaming side. Nintendo don't charge either. What puzzles me is why so many people are willing to give MS cash for something that comes free with any other console.
I believe this is a call to CAPTAIN CYBORG!! Just nail some ICs to the patients forehead as demo'd by the aforementioned Captain. Then simply use a carefully aimed tazer - mimmicking a handheld gadget that can read stuff. The jerky movement from the "patient" when the "tricorder" is energised will give the whole thing a 1960s SciFi feel too, so bonus right there.
Straight out of the Captain's handbook..
It took WoW until BC to get the polish it has now. It's still far from perfect, no MMO could be, but Blizzard have smoothed out the worst of it's rough edges. Every year brings two steps forward and one back, so overall it advances in the right direction. Right now it's possible to play WoW for just a 2-3 hours a week and still participate in raids. They've made longer downtimes less frequent and better explained their reasoning behind changes.
The problem any new MMO has is that they don't have the 4, 5, 6 years of tweaking that allows them to rival WoW out of the box. Personally I'm willing to give this MMO a year or two to see how it progresses. I have a feeling the fact it is not just another medieval/fantasy MMO will give it longer legs than the last 4 or 5 that have been released.
a noob.. Fortunately age is no barrier, so you should immediately purchase a copy of World of Warcraft, become hopelessly addicted to online gaming in order to learn the required terminology.
To answer your question, most online games have mature language filters but nothing will prevent someone from teaching your kids how to disable it. Games like these are filled with people aged 10-99, with a range of personalities to match. So suitable for kids? Yes, but not under the age of 10 or 11 and not without supervision.
What some people do is play the game themselves for a while, join a family-friendly group of friends (usually called a "guild" or something similar) and then let the kids take over the account. Most guilds have their own website, and will let you know if they are family friendly, therefore limiting language and behaviour to social norms.
There maybe some PG-13 sexual inuendo, but unless the game is rated Mature (M) there will be no nudity. It's a Star Wars game so there will be violence at about PG / PG-13 level shown in the game, including blood.
Who remembers how long it took to render the apple image in Real3D on an Amiga A500? Or trying to get anything except BLACK to render in the first version of Imagine.. I still remember nights waiting for single frames to render on a 30s 900 frame animation, eating up hard disk space like nothing else could.
"devastate modern civilisation" blah blah, "bringing down power grids" yawn and "frying satellites en masse" /shrug. "Food would rot, trains wouldn't move, traffic would be gridlocked", who cares? crisps don't go off for months, "phones and THE INTERNET WOULDN'T WORK".. O.M.F.G.
So what you're saying is this could be the End of the World of Warcraft (tm)? And I notice none of the important questions have been asked.. Is the downtime expected to be more than an hour? Will deleting my WTF folder and running a repair restore my WoW connection? Does WoW have it's own backup of the internet just in case of catastrophic, world-wide destruction? Given we are forecasting solar flares, a solar genny for my WoW laptop will be just the ticket right? Do the Red Cross have adequate supplies of spare laptop batteries for all major manufacturers?
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