* Posts by Sadako

16 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Mar 2011

'Perfect storm' drives electronics stores to EXTINCTION

Sadako
WTF?

Yet somehow...

...Kaytronics in Southampton is still open.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2452/3588892886_de075aa7c1_o.jpg

Europe: warning, these Angry Birds CAN KILL KIDS

Sadako
Boffin

I came here to post this too. We need to get these to Stuart Ashen for immediate investigation.

Amazon's new Kindle Fire stripped naked

Sadako
Boffin

Expensive tools

You can solder stuff like that with an old beko toaster oven and some skill, and it won't need a clean room as the ram and CPU won't care if it's a little dirty.

Go back to the future with Red Dwarf

Sadako
Megaphone

Back to Ear^h^h^h the drawing board

I agree with the naysayers about Red Dwarf being done to death. The last two series did nothing to develop the characters, and concentrated far too much on strained one-liners that weren't funny. It also says a lot when the only good scifi sitcom i've seen recently is the Clear Skies trilogy; meaning that professional studios are being upstaged by people using home computers and using animation models from game engines to produce sets with a tiny budget, but succeed by having better jokes, a better plot and more action than things like Back To Earth. That's pretty embarrasing...

Sonic Generations

Sadako
Boffin

Sonic on the megadrive had to be slowed down in Europe. The only way to be able to get the system to output PAL was to downclock it, so games ran faster on the US and Japanese NTSC based systems. Sonic is supposed to be faster.

If you change some of the internal jumpers on the megadrive you can get it to run at 60hz if your TV can support it, and some games like Streets of Rage which had a different name in Japan will actually change the title graphics depending on those jumpers. Many people wire them to switches to use them with the few region coded cartridges too.

Pete Townshend condemns Apple as 'digital vampire'

Sadako
Stop

Music industry

What people are forgetting here is an increasing number of people selling music on iTunes are independant artists, so the musician gets 70% of the cut and Apple gets 30%. There is no record company taking the lion's share in these cases.

Small artists are using things like iTunes and Amazon because at the moment their only alternative, is a large record company who will give them the crappest contract known to humanity, aka a "360 deal", which means they will loan the musician 20k or so to make a record and promote it. They will then take 95% of all sales, touring and merch profit (hense 360 as they take a cut from everything) and expect the musician to pay back the 20k from the 5% they get. They have to sell hundreds of thousands of records to break even and many small artists make a significant loss on their record sales. This is assuming that they even get a deal in the first place because, unlike in the past, large record companies are refusing to take chances on anything.

As for promotion, MTV no longer play music videos hense why they got moved from Music to Entertainment on Sky. Radio stations only play approved "safe" music because they are all owned by either Clear channel in the states or Capital group here so small artists aren't getting their break on radio. Independant record shops are rapidly ceasing to exist as DJs are all using MP3s and Ableton/VDJ/Mixxx/etc now so you can't get them to stock your promos. Places like iTunes, Amazon and the internet in general are pretty much becoming the only place left for small artists to get well known. In this respect iTunes are probably doing more to help the music industry than anything and this is coming from someone that generally doesn't buy Apple's products.

Apple predicted AI assistant for tablets in 1987

Sadako
Trollface

Share and Enjoy

Yes. Apple are "Sharing and Enjoying" the voice search funciton that Android users have had for over a year :D

Crazy square barcodes can point your phone to MALWARE

Sadako
Devil

>:-D

Sweet. I'm gonna print up some QR codes that point to lemonparty and stick them on the tube

HTC to bring souped-up Sense to handbag handset

Sadako
Mushroom

Charm

OK. Why can't I have a keyring or something that does the same as their glowie phone charm? The teeny tiny LED on my Desire is so hard to see it is useless; same on my G1 before that.

My first phone was a brick of a Sagem back in '99 that had a really bright multicolour LED on the top. It was really easy to see when I had a text without waking the phone up. and I've missed it on every phone i've had since.

Game denies Steam threat claims

Sadako
Trollface

@Ipopman

Indeed. If Gabe spins in his chair to answer that mail, the resulting gravitational lensing will cause them to delay Episode 3 another month...

Sadako
Holmes

Has anyone...

...asked for a comment from Valve on this yet?

Chinese PLA video shows cyber-attack software

Sadako
Pirate

PLA?

I thought for a moment there that China had a branch of the Phone Losers of America. If this were true then I worry about China trying to hack into McDonalds using toasters...

Burg 5 watch phone

Sadako
Thumb Up

watchphone

I think these watch phones need to either be a frontend for your phone so you can read texts and dial without having to get your phone out, or to at the very least be able to dial, read and compose texts, and have access to a memory. I don't think they need to be fancy touch screens and this watch has the right idea with the circle of buttons. This makes it much much easier to use than most of the touch screen ones i've seen while making it much more affordable.

Perhaps there should be something like this watch phone, but with a dot matrix display instead of an analogue one to let you show texts and caller ID. At the end of the day I don't make calls that much any more and could go to using a basic phone that can text, and a tablet rather than using a smartphone. This might be the way things are going to go in the future as voice calls matter less and less to people.

Blighty gets gold-dispensing ATM

Sadako
WTF?

Hardware

I could buy some ATI cards for mining bitcoins and get a better return.

Powerline network radio interference debated in Commons

Sadako
Grenade

OF-CON

It doesn't matter what kind of person makes the complaints, and whether or not they are deemed to be socially acceptable by the politicos, OFCOM not doing their job is still OFCOM not doing their job. They are there to stop people generating interference and the cheap and nasty versions of the PLT kits blatantly are.

HAM radio has a long history of being used in times of human and natural disaster and is an important last measure for keeping communication in times of need, as well as providing a hobby for many. At the moment use of PLT devices is relatively few but as these devices are becoming more popular it is not hard to see that it can make these radio bands unusable as the noise level accumulates. Its not that the HAM using neckbeards are the only people to be affected either, they are just the first people to notice while the problem is still small.

I don't do HAM radio but I do CB so we banter to each other often. A little bird told me recently that a few hundred watts of linear amplified SSB outside a house broadcasting the telltale PLT noise does wonders for reducing the issue ;)

Teen cybercrime forum boss jailed

Sadako
Grenade

Southsea

This must be the first time in modern history that something interesting has happened in Southsea...