* Posts by Silverburn

1609 publicly visible posts • joined 24 May 2011

Samsung ships two smartphones for every one Apple sells

Silverburn
Happy

Re: And...

Actually Samsung cars are essentially Nissans - although these days it's Renault which owns the bulk of Samsung's Automotive Division.

Lets see...Automotive company who's products struggle to last 3 years without catastrophic failure partners with technology company who's products struggle to last 3 years without....

Woohoo! Synergy! Someone better tell the PHB...

Dr No, Thunderball, Casino Royale? Vote now for the best Bond film

Silverburn

Re: Dalton fan checking in

Beer, because it's as close as you have to a martini...

Careful what you wish for...in Skyfall, he supposedly replaces his Vodka martini with a Heine...no, I can't even say it. I'm too traumatised.

Silverburn
Devil

Re: I'd vote Goldeneye but....

But the Bond Car.... A BMW Z3, I half expected Bond to confront Alec Trevelyan and offer him a light perm and a bit off the back.

It could be worse - he could drive a rented Mundane-o, whereapon he'd jump out and try and sell you some plumbing supplies...damn you Cas Roy!

Silverburn

Re: I really want to like the Daniel Craig films

The later movies have become too action orientated...no intrigue, no deductions or working out of the cunning plan (instead, we rely on Mr evil to spell it out), no covert ninja-ing, too much reliance on intel and gadgets to solve the problems for you. All DC has to do is run about fighting.

More brain, less braun please. More John le Carré, less David Morrell (Rambo).

Surface RT: Freedom luvin' app-huggers beware

Silverburn
Facepalm

Useful features

Sinofksy has even attached wheels and used Surface as a skateboard

Because that's important in a tablet. Why has it taken all the manufacturers so long to add this mission critical feature...?

Though it would not surprise me in the slightest to find Apple has 'patent-turfed' this particular feature.

Lenovo IdeaPad U410 14in Ultrabook review

Silverburn

Re: No nub?

Worst than that, my nub just fell off. Followed shortly by the N key. Then my unit started doing random back-to-bios reboots. When I took it to tech support, I find lots of Lenovo laptops having issues.

In short: thinkpads aren't what they used to be.

Come back IBM! All is forgiven.

Microsoft's 'official' Windows 8 Survival Guide leaks

Silverburn
Happy

Re: @ Teecee

He actually thinks?

Wow, I just thought it was a Turing engine with an anti-apple dictionary and sewage farm attached...

Silverburn
Happy

Re: Shitpeas in Orlowski like shocker.

In other news...

Barry Shitpeas' sense of self importance reaches critically dangerous levels. Lucky nobody gives a shit so a Global Apocalype has been avoided. For now.

Silverburn

Re: A suggested subtitle...

Alternatively:

"Stay calm and carry on"

{using w7}

Renault Clio IV and R-Link Android console hands-on preview

Silverburn

Re: 10,595

Check the small print. They've probably extended the warranty to 5 years.

Which means the engine and gearbox rebuild you'll need in year 3, and replacement of half the suspension, steering and braking systems youll need in year 4 has been built into the purchase price...

Silverburn
FAIL

Renault

Renault always scored well on the journalist reviews, because they only test them for a day or two. Not even that sometimes.

This conveniently skirts the small issue that nearly all Renaults change their badge to LOTUS at exactly 3 years or 60,000 miles.

LOTUS in the contect of Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious.

Amazon ships Kindle Fire HD, Paperwhite to Brits

Silverburn

I read this as

"Amazon ships Kindle Fire HD Paperweight to Brits ."

Maybe I shouldn't have tried to Jelly Bean mine afterall...

No GPS in the iPad Mini Wi-Fi: People are right to criticise

Silverburn
Happy

Obligatory Scotty reference

"A digital compass? How quaint...."

Fujitsu assigns team of women to design PC for women

Silverburn
Thumb Down

Sexual Discrimination

Is it just me, or this sexual discrimination?

If I - as a guy - applied for a position on the team, would I be rejected because I wasn't female?

Could you imagine the outrage if it was the other way round?

China's Goophone unveils US$99 Android iPad Mini clone

Silverburn

Re: AC re: Breitling

A Brietling? Pfft. What you want is an Aeternitas. Unreadable and unuseable, but reassuringly expensive. Because to some, that's all that matters.

Carphone Warehouse outs LG-made Google Nexus 4 smartphone

Silverburn
Coat

Anyone else think these "leaks" are strategic ways of increasing click rates, and/or biasing user to visit the vendors site first for these new phones?

Just me? oh. Mines the one with the tinfoil hat.

New Mac mini: Business in the front, party at the back

Silverburn

Re: optical drives

Welcome to 201x, where optical media is getting replaced with DRM'ed downloads and streaming. Technically superior? Better quality? Probably not, but it does suit the media companies who 'claim' piracy of conventional media is ruining their business. Yeah right.

That and the small niggle that Apple don't support Blu-ray playback, and you're not likely to be buying crappy low res DVD's these days anyway if you're a media buff.

Re: laptop vs Mini...you do realise this is a desktop machine, right? And your laptop might be thinner, but it will be deeper and wider. But it's irrelevant as this is a desktop, remember...

Silverburn
Facepalm

Re: Afordable?

* rabid. Doh.

Silverburn

Re: Afordable?

Worth is perceptive.

To some of the more rapid fans, they'll be paying only half of what it's "worth".

Silverburn

Re: 500MB hard disk eh?

For those with old mac mini's there's a very high probability they've got external storage attached. I'm one of them. So they'll probably save cash and go for 500gb.

It's nice that Apple thought about us oldies with Firewire 800's, but what about the display port? I've got an old 24" DVI Apple display which now needs an adaptor :-(

Apple unsheathes MacBook 13-incher

Silverburn
Coat

Never mind the length, feel the...

oh never mind.

Silverburn

Re: The only snag...

For consumers, I doubt the ethernet is a big loss - most people use wifi, and only the towers/gaming rigs have cables hanging off them.

For corporates (who *do* use ethernet), it's not a big deal either - Apples corporate penetration is the exact square root of jack shit and they know it, so no great loss there.

LG Vu 5in Android phone-tablet review

Silverburn
Alien

Re: Lower PPI = usability

That's not how it works.

An button that's 0.5 cm across on iPad 1 is still 0.5 cm across on iPad 3.

Researchers find not all EC2 instances are created equal

Silverburn

Re: Stop comparing Amazon with your DC

- It will never solve the issue of data confidentiality but, eventually, it will make us get used not to worry about it.

Not if you work for a bank. If anything worrying *more* is the current preferred approach.

Silverburn

I propose a new operating model...

..One where you buy your own kit, and stick it in a DC (your own or 3rd party). That way you know what you're getting, and when it's running, and the costs are fixed. Use your own DC, and you even get added security thrown in.

Surprised nobody has thought of this before....oh wait.

Apple iPod Touch 5G review

Silverburn
FAIL

Raised/proud camera lense = scratch-tastic, fancy lens material or not.

Recess the lens please!

The hoarder's dilemma, or 'Why can't I throw anything away?'

Silverburn

Re: I found in my dads garage.

and if you're like me, you'll scour ebay to max out the RAM, HD, maybe find a video card...under the vain pretense you can make it relevant and useful again. Only to find Crysis does'nt run.

Silverburn
Happy

Indeed. Cable and connector hoarding is absolutely natural. You never know when you might need that 20m CAT5 ethernet cable. Or that 3m SCART. Or that USB cable with that propriatory terminal (usually Sony). Usually for that 2mp camera...that's in the other box. As a backup, you understand.

Why James Bond's Aston Martin Top Trumps the rest

Silverburn
Facepalm

Re: Well....

I personally felt CR earned one of it's downticks for that travesty alone. I mean...Jimmy Bond...in a rented Mundane-o...that isn't being crashed, riddle with bullets or being driven like it was stolen (usually by him).

And I hear the next one means ditching his vodka martini's for...of all things...a Heineken. FFS.

Silverburn

I believe most of the problems were not that the BMW were bad car per se. It was that they made bad stunt cars. Mainly due to the hardwired electronics not realising that doing a massive power slide, on the rev limiter with the tail out was *intentional*, not accidental.

Look behind you, WD: Seagate's turned up, and it has 3 biz drives

Silverburn

Theoretically, I can now max out my drobo at last. And my credit card at the same time.

New Oz road rules forbid touching mobes

Silverburn
Unhappy

You got to retire???

You're one of the lucky ones. Us youngers will be dead long before we hit our retirement ages. Not that our pensions will be worth jack shit anyway.

Apple ordered to open its books on iPhone, iPad profits

Silverburn

On a serious note, this could be important. Apple will need to prove direct damage to their bottom line by the introduction of these "offending" Samsung products.

And even worse, they'd need to prove that it's the design from the violated patent that cause Samsung to gain market share at the expense of Apple.

If the judge has any sense, he'll tell Apple to take a hike with their multi-bn claim, and peg it at $1.

Apple loses UK 'Samsung copied us' appeal: Must publicly GROVEL

Silverburn
Happy

Re: Still smiling

You always know where you are with Samsung

In court, fighting Apple?

Valve's Half-Life

Silverburn
Black Helicopters

HL3

Just waiting for Hl2.3/3 to round it all off now...C'mon Gabe, get your finger out!

helicopters...'cos the set peice with the apaches & the rocket launcher was great.

Mission to Pluto faces DEEP SPACE DEBRIS PERIL

Silverburn
Thumb Up

Credit where it's due

Acts of micrometeorite aside, navigating something travelling at 30,000 on a journey of a million miles and parking it in orbit at it's destination deserves some kudos.

Bravo chaps.

Microsoft Surface priced up for Blighty

Silverburn
Windows

Magnetic power supply...

Apple lawyers on standby.

Microsoft Surface: Designed to win, priced to fail

Silverburn

Re: Fandroid name

It was probably the same guy who came up with Fanboi; the aim being to cleverly cause equal amount of afrontage to those as rabid about Android as those rabid about Apple.

if being insulted by being called a Fanboi or a Fandroid, it means either:

a) You need to worry less

b) You need think about whether your love of a particular platform is perhaps not as objective as it should be

Global notebook sales tank in recent months

Silverburn
Linux

Re: Linux laptops

Linux might be the funky monkey as far as OS'es go, but with only 1% of the audience using it, you'd really need a strong offer to go into this vertical market (by providing a native linux build) and hopefully make a profit.

The margins really are wafer thin at the best of times, and the additional overhead of building a 2nd channel into your production model purely for linux builds (and then there's the issue of which one to use) for only 1% of the market probably isn't that cost effective for all but the largest of vendors. You - as the customer - won't see any significant cost savings.

British car parks start reading number plates

Silverburn

Should the car park really be a worry then travel by motorcycle, as SwishPARK admits that the lack of front plate makes two-wheeled transport invisible to them

That and the fact most (but not all) council motorbike parks are still free anyway. And probably closer.

Silverburn
Thumb Down

How very "unsporting"

No more the calculated gamble of being a few minutes later for the meter (c'mon...who *hasn't* done this?)...instead, the second you go overdue you get fined.

Once again, technology has taken the fun out of another of life's games. Gone now is the chance of a small victory celebration as you go overdue by 5 minutes yet avoid a ticket.

Wanted! 4m-plus PC purchases to halt industry decline

Silverburn
Facepalm

Re: To all the computer OEMs

- A minimum of at least 8MB of RAM or better.

I think we broke the "standard 8mb RAM" barrier some time ago...

WTF is... NFC

Silverburn
Black Helicopters

Security

Article could do with more information on native security of NFC, and security weaknesses?

Tibetan STATUE found by 1930s NAZI expedition is of ALIEN ORIGIN

Silverburn
Boffin

However, the ethnological and art historical details of the “iron man” sculpture, as well as the timing of the sculpturing, currently remain speculative

I love the way Scientists come out with statements like this. Why can't he just say it properly? ie:

"That's just a load of total bollox innt?"

Event Horizon Telescope spots source of black hole jets

Silverburn
Unhappy

Universe = depressingly vast

At 50 millions years, even if we *could" travel at 10 x 'c' as NASA would like, it would still take us 5 million years to get there and see this with our own eyes.

Note to NASA: 10 x c (or equivalent) will not be enough...space/time dimensional tunnelling required methinks...

Space Station ready to SWERVE sat junk hurtling towards it

Silverburn

Re: Space-cleaners

A sound concept, except a lot of the (detectable) crap up there is only a couple of inches across, making recovery tricky and high cost. And getting hit by a metallic object at 500 m/sec is gonna do damage whether it's 2 inches or 20 feet in size.

And thus the NASA dilema on how to clean it all up.

Silverburn
Boffin

that the red zone is a 50 km square, 1.5 km deep, surrounding the ISS.

Given Space is 3D, surely a sphere would be be more logical? In fact, surely it would be rugby ball shaped, with the long axis on the path of travel?

Japanese boffins unfurl banner above newly-discovered Element 113

Silverburn

Re: half life?

Yes.

You're maybe thinking of whether it should be called an element if it cannot survive in natural conditions...anywhere in the universe.

Hobbyist star-gazer cops amazing eyeful of Jupiter's space ball

Silverburn

Re: It's an 11" Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain

I don't think DSLR's can maintain the necessarily framerate, and given most of the image processing is done by the telescope, the SLR part is mostly overkill.

Silverburn

Given you can now blow £10k on a top end road bicycle (never mind the accessories or clothing), it's fair to say that hobby spending - any hobby - really knows no limits.