* Posts by paul brain

91 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Aug 2007

Page:

Microsoft markets 'collection' of PCs to consider

paul brain
FAIL

too much choice

People find too much choice confusing...

Microsoft solution... here is 30 choices..!!

You can`t make this up.

Motorola confirms Xoom tablet is Blighty-bound

paul brain
Happy

Wifi only

Then I'm buying one. Don't need 3G or 4G hardware when I can tether from the phone. Can't wait for this to be released, Then again I'm also excited about the iPad2, I could sell one of the children to Madonna and have the best of both worlds.

Will Windows on ARM sink Windows Phone 7?

paul brain
Grenade

Is it free to register as a Win Phone 7 developer

Just wondering what the other 14,500 devs are doing ( building android apps ?? )

Android's Gingerbread finagled onto iPhone

paul brain
Alert

@ gary f

its not for the need. its the techie mantra lifted from climbers. why climb the mountain .. because it's there.

or why go to the moon.. because its hard.

the challenge is the fun. publishing for knowledge share and kudos.

Apple I goes for twice the price of an Enigma

paul brain
Welcome

i have an apple II

going cheap at £129,999.50 sold as seen

O2 offers Xboxes instead of phone upgrades

paul brain
Grenade

Here's a crazy idea

Instead of handing out 'free' laptops, xbox's etc... Couldn't we just have cheaper call and data tariffs ?

Asda prices up Elonex 7in Android tablet

paul brain
Thumb Down

Does it come in Beige ??

Honestly , Beige is the new black.

OOo's put the willies up Microsoft

paul brain
Gates Halo

Understandable but...

What about the support calls for the Ribbon interface ? where are the costs there. I've been using Microsoft office for 15 years and I still spend too much time looking for something in Office 2007.

I've now moved the organisation over to OpenOffice and due to the limited feature needs of 90% of staff and apart for the first couple of weeks, no one even notices that they're not using a microsoft product. They just use what they're given. We left the finance bods with MS Office and eveyone else gets open office. The savings are considerable.

Its understandable that MS consider OO.org / google docs and other productivity suits as competitors... because they are. If MS were not paying attention to competitors in what is certainly their biggest cash cow, Steve-O would go far and beyond chair throwing.

I miss Office 97 ;-) and Bill.

Undiplomatic tweet from French diplomats

paul brain
Coat

comedy

If the French turn this into a comedy movie it would be a Rom Com

Zuckerberg admits working for man claiming Facebook ownership

paul brain
Coat

I invented Facebook

And so did my wife.

Microsoft's KIN is dead, long live Windows Phone 7

paul brain
FAIL

The first people I would sack..

Would be the chumps who decide brand names in MS.

Zune ? , Kin ?

Forget if the product is or isn't any good , or if the price point is way off the mark.

Marketing people, first up against the wall when I get in power !!

Naked Cowboy wrestles Naked Cowgirl

paul brain
FAIL

Holy Crap

She's no eeeeepc girlie

Microsoft rejects porn, iPad protesters fake it

paul brain
Terminator

Doesn't really matter

No one will buy a win 7 phone anyway, so block all you like MS.

You're too late to the party, and we're all having a great time without you.

Proud Nexus One owner ;-)

Intel pitches Atom storage platform

paul brain
Happy

QNAP NAS

My QNAP 839-pro 4TB iSCSI NAS, runs on the 1.6Ghz single core ATOM and its been doing so for 6 months. Awesome bit of kit that, so much so, I bought one for the house.

I love marketing people, always physically first to the party, always last to arrive mentally.

Sony to demo 'world's first' in-box wireless tech

paul brain
Thumb Up

smart thinking

I love and also dislike aspects of this.

Love the thought process behind making modular components that could be replaced. In the new carbon economy, we'll all have do what we did in the past and repair what is broken , not throw it away. This is an excellent solution to a problem that will face us all in the not to distant future.

Dislike the fact that it's based on wireless, even at extreme limited range up in the 100'sGHz, I always immediately start thinking 'Spooks' can eve's drop with super high powered gear. That being said , maybe they can already....

Australia leaves the internet

paul brain
Stop

Net Censor

In principle, I like the idea of a net censor.

Anything that blocks access to all kiddie porn is A.OK in my book, I've just downloaded the ACMA black list and gone through it and overall , its a great starting point.

Where the Australian's end up looking like the Chinese 'Great Firewall' is as soon as they block something outside of what the majority would accept as the 'public good'.

Going through the list I can see legitimate gambling companies which are household names in the UK, lots of casino games and Poker. Now this is just protecting the Australian state run gambling which generates revenue for the country.

By blocking anything outside of (quite rightly) illegal porn, the net censorship mechanism is deemed as state 'thought' control and the population will naturally fight this. ( there is a valid debate for zero censorship of net access - but lets face it , wouldn't we all like to see an end to child exploitation ?? )

If they wanted to get this filter system in without complaints from its citizens, they should have just filtered the illegal porn stuff only and then started blocking whatever they wanted 18months later, when everyone was used to the technology.

Blocking legitimate international companies is just anti-competitive and has no place to be part of the net filter mechanism.

NASA Titan moon-balloons to run on cloud fuel

paul brain
Go

Cock up

Can't wait for someone to miss something small and make Titan explode.

What do you say after you've blown up a moon ...

'I forgot that Oxygen would re-act with 'Chemical X' and start a chain re-action that resulted in the explosion of Titan', after the moon had exploded, there was a correction in the orbits of all solar system bodies, causing the earth to edge nearer the sun and accelerate the global warming problem. We've got 6 months to live.

Oops !

Microsoft sees its chance in Googlephone

paul brain
Go

My favourite line

Nice article.

Best line = 'Unlike Android, Windows Mobile costs money. And it's rubbish.'

Microsoft are worried, and they should be. 6.5 is pants, I doubt 7 will be any better. Android is free and pretty solid. This is really non-news. Everyone can make an android phone, even me. So why not the people that spent the time to develop and release it ?

I'm pretty excited about a common mobile platform, its about time. Android will be that glue.

Microsoft ends Windows and Office 2007 rental restrictions

paul brain
Linux

Linux and open office

People wonder why others dislike MS. Most of it has to do with poor products, high prices and complex licensing.

This will not continue for ever. There are viable alternatives.

Samsung plans Symbian-free future

paul brain
Stop

what's the point of another new OS

Why bother creating another Linux based OS, when there is Android ? , The beauty of Android is that we'll end up with Mobile phone operating environment convergence ( with the exception of iPhone )

I don't understand why Samsung would go to the effort to re-invent the wheel, when there is already a free and rapidly developing environment ?

WarMouse pushes gamers' buttons with OOMouse

paul brain
WTF?

April fool ?

Less is more.

Amazon's EC2 brings new might to password cracking

paul brain
Unhappy

@ AC re: Moore's law

Dude , calm down. The guy was just saying it would cost half as much in 2 years. Which according to moores law would be accurate if the ISP took an additional 6 months to upgrade.

Beeb unveils new Doctor Who logo

paul brain
Stop

5 minute photoshop pants

that is all

Windows Mobile 6.5 ships today

paul brain
Terminator

IE6

'WM 6.5 uses Internet Explorer Mobile for browsing the web. The app is based on version SIX of desktop IE'

I stopped reading after that.

One word to Microsoft .... ANDRIOD

DDoS attack rains down on Amazon cloud

paul brain
Grenade

@Kanhef @Pascal

I completely agree. Right now, cloud services are the equivalent to a brand new version of operating system from Microsoft. It looks shiny, promises much , but there's no way you'll install until everyone else has discovered 85% of the problems.

As with all new economies of scale, there will be problems, there always will, but over time, most will be mitigated and naturally as Pascal says you're not going to store hyper critical data there, but, and this is a big but, for most businesses, in time, this is where they will ultimately host mission critical systems.Business and CFO's will demand it. The mind set of sysAdmins will simply have to change from 'how do I protect my own personal farm, to, what kind of fabric layer encryption I am using in the cloud to protect my data and how to I replicate that.

I agree with both, its not ready yet , far from, as demonstrated by both Google and Amazon, but you'll have to accept that it will get better over time , security issues will be addressed and the economics of running on the cloud will ultimately lead to its adoption , like it or not.

paul brain
Coat

one bucket

I find it interesting the number of people who complain when a cloud service craps out, then the obligatory phrase ' That'll teach you to put your eggs in one basket...' appears...

In reality, how is this different to running your service, in a single data centre, on your own servers, with your own comms gears, firewalls , Anti-DDOS appliance, edge routers, software licences and support contracts.

No matter how much failover gear you've got, when someone launches a large scale DDOS at your site, you're still going down until the upstream ISP can sink hole the offending traffic.

Most sites are single points of failure and how many in reality can afford real time replication between two data centre's and double the hardware/software/support/hosting/bandwidth.

Personally, I'm not a cloud user yet, still hosting on own hardware, but when these cloud services have been running for a while longer and they sort out real time support issues, they should afford us business users with the kind of scalability and resilience that we simply could not afford ourselves. I think the cloud will be the data centre for the next few decades, the days of buying your own gear are numbered.

I'll get my coat.

There's water on the Moon, scientists confirm

paul brain
Pint

where there's watering hole. . . . .

There will be an Irish bar..

Moon base O'Reiily's

Wireless carriers gear up to fight FCC’s net neutrality plans

paul brain
Thumb Up

they dont want this

As it means that there will be no restriction on VOIP applications on any handset with an internet connection , thus eroding the massive margins made on calls and roaming.

This will probably force up contract prices , but lower monthly bills as the majority of calls will be made using the providers data contract.

I'm sure they'll still continue to make wods of cash, just the nature of the game will change. They should embrace this, The market would get a jump start in the already saturated west with all the new VOIP applications. Businesses would love it.

HP launches Linux-fiddling support group

paul brain
Linux

Most distro's already work on most hardware

Use ESX or other VM , there , it works

Labour to push for broadband tax before election

paul brain
Megaphone

The problem with this is..

Once a new tax is introduced at a nice attractive not-going-to-upset-too-many-people price of say 50p per month , is that after it becomes common place and people are used to seeing this on their bill, come the next budget and the next, this value will go up and up.

I'm all for raising money to pay for major infrastructure investments that will ultimately benefit the society at large, but with this government, you just know that over time , this will just be identified as another revenue stream and the money will be diverted.

Just force people to work for their social welfare benefits , that ought to solve most of the debt. Holes need digging for all this new fibre ...

AMD grows very own Opteron chipsets

paul brain
Coffee/keyboard

None the wiser ?

Is it just me or did I just learn nothing from AMD here ?

Windows 7 versus Snow Leopard — The poison taste test

paul brain
FAIL

OPEN XML

I loved the line ...

'Microsoft's Open XML is best avoided in mixed environments.'

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of an 'open standard'

Be damned Microsoft and embrace the ODF

Lad from Lagos makes YouTube pitch

paul brain
Alert

radiator

I love the towel over the radiator with the two elephants, attempting to disguise the fact that its a radiator belonging to a house in Hemel Hempstead and possibly not Lagos ( would they need central heating ?? )

Windows XP customers positive but split on Windows 7

paul brain
Jobs Horns

M$-ing the point

What M$ fail to understand is that there is no killer app , no real reason to upgrade.

People use OS's to run applications , the OS isn't the application. Apple hit this on the head with a ' here is the OS , it costs X ( forgive the pun ! ) , no versions , no up-sell , just the OS....

XP, for all its failings , is now a pretty stable OS and it runs the applications , the purpose of the OS , everything talks to it , hardware compatibility is tight and it works..

To get people to move to 7, will have to come from making XP no longer available and forcing it upon the consumer / corporate, as they are not going to move voluntarily.

Finally , they've got the price points all wrong..... Who is going to pay 200 EUR/GBE /USD , when the machine costs the same ?

It really is time for everyone to wake up, ask the question 'what do I do with my PC' and look at LINUX / Open Office.

For the record , I like the look and feel of 7, but do feel M$ have missed the point with pricing/versions.

Boffins build World's tiniest 'laser'

paul brain
Go

ms windows version x will still run slow

MS will find a way to chug up those extra clock cycles and Windows will still run like a dog , mind you , by then ( Hopefully ) we'll all be running some GPL'd parallel processing OS.

Microsoft's Windows 7 price gamble - and why it's flawed

paul brain
FAIL

clueless

Name one person who upgraded from XP home -> Pro

No one will upgrade , what for ? , 99% of people will just stick to what they bought on the machine.

One single version would have been nice , two at a push . but who here isn't confused already by the 50 versions , did they learn nothing about vi$ta

Apollo 11 vets urge Mars mission

paul brain
Terminator

practice

Surely a couple test runs to the moon would be required before even thinking about Mars.

Yes , we've been to the moon 40 years ago , but a lot of stuff has changed and this will have to be a fully international mission ( metric & inches ? ), actually, come to think it , can the world even afford to be thinking about this now , or would this be considered 'Stimulus'.

Mars.. Yes , but lets get some practice in first with something a little closer and continue to send robots to the red planet until such time we 1) know what we're doing and 2) the pro's and con's of financing such a project and understanding the potential global benefit are fully understood.

Final point.. The movie 'Mission to Mars' still ranks among the worlds worst ever made.

Irish ISP downed by DDoS

paul brain
Thumb Down

expertise ??

"Eircom has been in contact with other operators in the Irish market to collaborate and pool technical expertise in this area."

This should actually read... They don't know what the hell it was and need help as they are clueless when it comes to operating a network.

Rant over.

Mozilla's servers wobble as Firefox 3.5 hits interwebs

paul brain
Grenade

Use Google Chrome

Its fast , it starts fast .. oh.. and its fast

Lost interest in firefox some time ago when it took longer than Vista to start, tested Chrome and BAM!! converted.....

If they have fixed it 3.5 I'll give it a go ?

Anyone downloaded and tested this yet ? or is it still a dog

Samsung ML-1640

paul brain
Stop

no-brainer

I find this term disrespectful and exclusionary.

What next ?? Genocide of the 'Brains'

Microsoft begins Security Essentials downloads

paul brain
Grenade

you don't need to be in brazil

I've just downloaded and installed from Ireland , funnily enough , I couldn't register for it using Chrome...

I expect my machine to die in 5..4.....3...........2..................

Recession will destroy 40,000 UK IT services jobs

paul brain
Pirate

I for one am pleased about this

As someone who hires IT people and being a proper techie myself, I was beginning to tire of the self inflated worth, ego stropping, god complex, this new generation of IT engineers was breeding. Correcting the market was always going to be necessary, else all IT projects would have been too expensive to do in the west.

Salaries need to reflect actual ability and that needs to be measured by depth in knowledge. This market correction will weed out most of the chuff, who suddenly, well since last October, stopped strutting around like alpha males and are suddenly realising they are dispensable / replaceable and had better up their game if they wish to maintain a career in this industry.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure a small percentage of top people will get culled, but these are the ones who will find new work quickly, as has always been in IT, there is always a requirement for really good engineers.

Microsoft's Windows 7 price gamble opens door to Linux

paul brain
Black Helicopters

As usual , greed = missing the point

To be honest, the OS on a netbook is incidental, basic word processing, web browsing, presentation, IM etc, and if you're a tech professional, network tools , all available on Linux, with a nice zippy and 'free' environment.

What we need is to educate / advertise to the masses that you simply don't need Windows any more on this class of device, not because the world doesn't need windows , it does, however , M$ need to understand that what they are charging for their Desktop OS's is now way off the market value.

Charm offensive would be nice , just look at apple , offering a $29 upgrade from the previous OS. If M$ did that every single machine sold with Vi$ta would be upgraded overnight and they would make an instant profit.

But as usual, for all the money and talented staff , they miss the point again.

Shame. 7 is pretty good , but for now at least , my netbook will remain dual boot XP and Ubuntu.

Opera to 'reinvent the web' in four days

paul brain
Pirate

T1000

Sh1t ! , They have invented Skynet , we're all doomed !

Pocket DV cam packs pico projector

paul brain
Unhappy

Novelty but useless

Resolution too low for anything useful, only real world application is super wide screen p0rn in your hotel room.

These pico projectors all sound great in theory , but the fundamental downside ( Besides tiny Res ) is the intensity of the image , the room has to be absolutely pitch black before you'll see anything, perfect for meetings where you cant see what you're writing......

So , I go back to the porn in the hotel room market , should be quite sizable..

The idea is fantastic , but we'll have to wait a few generations for anything bright enough with text we can read.

Carry On producer Peter Rogers dead at 95

paul brain
Dead Vulture

Slapstick Genius

Good Innings, thanks for the movies, rest in peace.

Russian schoolgirl invents inertioid-driven Venus rover

paul brain
Boffin

anti grav stair lift

Indigo child develops Anti-Grav

Stannah develops the worlds first anti-grav stair lift.

Norah Batty can work again.

Circle complete.

Personally I'd like an anti-grav swimming pool , you know , one that floats

'No Office 14 this year,' says Ballmer

paul brain
Jobs Horns

take your time

I've moved one of our organisations over to openoffice3.0, its good enough , there's only so many ways of writing a letter or doing sums. €300 per client saved is good money saved.

Bluetooth message saves scousers' livers

paul brain
Thumb Up

Bill Ray .. United Fan then

Good man.

Google 'GDrive' revisits tech-pundit G-spot

paul brain
Linux

GmailFS

I've already got a G-Drive , its called GmailFS and as long as any single file is under 20MB, it works a charm. It runs on the Penguin or BarmyBalmerOS and has 7GB ( and counting .. ) of cloud storage. ( Only complaint is that it is not represented as a drive letter on a wintendo system )

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