It's in the ears of the beholder

I'm probably a little older than Alistair Dabbs as I went to university in the late 70's. The average student then generally had a crappy mono 'record player' , or more accurately record destroyer, whilst only the more fussy/rich had a set up usually based around components from Wharfedale, Garrard and that other colossus of the cheap British 'HiFi' Clive Sinclair. At home My parents had a 'radiogram' where the quality of the wood veneer was far more important than the sound. So most people put up with sound quality far worse than today's MP3 players. I think that the average, admittedly not Hi Fi, sound quality of music that people listen to is much higher than it was 30 or 40 years ago and for most people that is good enough as it always has been. There will also always be people for whom this isn't good enough, myself included although i wouldn't go as far as:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/14/product_round_up_build_a_bonkers_hi_fi/

Context is also important. If I really want to listen to music i will always prefer the source whether it's Vinyl or CD, I have never messed around much with FLAC etc, but when i am enjoying an evening around the dinner table with some of my amazingly witty and intelligent friends then MP3 is fine, plus I don't have to keep changing things. The same for listening in the car.

So chacun à son goût as Nigel Farage would say. He likes a pint or two, apparently.

the vanishing clouds

As well as the £960k demanded to keep the data centre running until the 15th the admionistrators' letter states: ( http://www.2e2.com/docs/jacqui/letter-for-non-data-centre-customer.pdf?sfvrsn=2 )

'As you will understand, we have received a number of requests from customers seeking to gain access to their data

immediately. Unfortunately, the levels of data held in the Companies’ Data Centres are such that this process could

take up to 16 weeks and we will need to ensure that the integrity of third party data and security is maintained.'

That is a lot more money yet to be demanded. I assume that as the numbers of customers with data declines the demands on the remainder will go up.

This is a haemorrhoidal clusterf**k

An outrageous omission

Your pub bound correspondent missed booth 35853 obviously, where they would have seen THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THING EVER.....

http://www.quantummansite.com/catalog/

and it's from SPAAAAACE

Not too big to fail then

This is the world's third largest private sector company with 657,000 employees, I'll repeat that 657,000 employees. It seems that none of them were available and they had to recruit 10,400 from scratch?????

There may be more...

It's pretty obscure but if you dig a bit deeper, in System profiler in the syncservices log you will find this, or variants thereof:

2012-06-13 20:45:44:432|SyncServer|1994|110fd0|Server|Info| Goodnight, Gracie.

I think it is a message when the mac goes into sleep mode. 'Goodnight Gracie' was a catchprase used by George Burns to his wife Gracie Allen at the end of his radio show, and no I'm not that old, I had to look it up.

sheer unaulterated brilliance

I know there is a link to the original Reg story but let's hope Menshn.com lives up to this:

http://menschbozier.tumblr.com/

BTW I think Luke Bozier is Steve Bong's pen name

Levitation?

From the Almaz website 'EA owns four RRV (Reusable Reentry Vehicle) capsules and two large Salyut-Class Spacecraft. The reusable reentry capsules can carry three passengers to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).' So no actual rockets then!!

form over function

the lemon squeezer looks very nice but is TOTALLY USELESS as an actual lemon squeezer. Not untypical of the Starckian cult's products, although I do like my Miss Sissy lamps.

not an issue for me

I've done speedtest.com comparisons with my wife's iPad 2. sometimes the the iPad 2 is quicker, sometimes the iPad 3 is quicker. it does not seem to be a problem for me anyway. Likewise the overheating thing, it does get a bit warmer than the iPad 2 but never more than luke warm, strangely warmer when reading the `Guardian iPad app than watching films or playing games. Must be a liberal conspiracy thing.

.... cos i'm off to the pub now

satire and fact elide....

Luke Bozier exists?? Possibly?? Don't know why though.

reliable BMWs (sic)

and don't get me started on the swirl flaps ...............................

yawn

I preferred it in the old days when there wasn't all this nostalgia.

Left my coat at home actually cos it's so sunny

it's hot stuff!!

Anyone contemplating the new iPad should visit their local Apple store (or pc world as I did). Compare them side by side. The screen is much better but worth an upgrade from an Ipad2? I doubt it. More seriously though, those extra pixels and bigger battery generate significantly more heat which you can feel if you hold both models, especially in a store environment where they have been running for hours. This has produced a lot of posts on Apple discussion pages with some people claiming it gets too hot to hold under some circumstances!

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3810951?tstart=0

it's not just money........

As the blessed Steve made clear to Obama (http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120123/ARTICLE/301239999/2055/NEWS?Title=Apple-s-Jobs-to-Obama-jobs-aren-t-coming-back-to-U-S-), it's the massive number of skilled workers and the ability of companies like Foxconn to ramp up/down and rapidly make changes which simply cannot be matched in western Europe or the US economies. Of course there's nothing to stop Apple reducing their profit margin and insisting that the Chinese subcontractors pay their workers more.

Crap

The big thing with scalextric is that you can modify and expand the layout, add cars and generally be a bit imaginative, as well as competitive. These sets are one trick ponies which will bore their owners after 10 minutes IMHO.

How old?

How is Office for MAC 2011 'years old'. Looks pretty much as horrid as Office 2010 for Windows to me!

virgin media

here in cardiff the broadband service disappeared at around 11.00 on wednesday evening. Fix time on Virginmedia website is 3.15 am tomorrow morning

Not happy

accuracy

As far as i know software is downloaded from the the App Sore and installed directly without using iTunes.