* Posts by David Haworth

80 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Aug 2007

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Apple relents, doubles EU warranty (sort of)

David Haworth

practically speaking

what does this mean then?

can I now take my 21 month old iphone 4 back to the apple store and get them to replace it due to the "getting increasingly sketchy" home button? is that not the case at all, only the case if it's bought from an apple store rather than any other shop, or true all the time?

or does it only count going forward?

what's the end-user practical upshot of this?

Apple New iPad 3 Wi-Fi + 4G

David Haworth

Re: Then please allow me...

"will fob off my first generation fondleslab on someone I really hate."

crikey, send it to me, I'm not so proud I wouldn't accept one! :)

Braben sticks knife into secondhand games market

David Haworth

well..

how about making games that take longer to complete?

If your concern is that people will buy the game on friday and will complete it over the evening and then sell up on saturday morning then make games with more longevity!

Two UK airports scrap IRIS eye-scanners

David Haworth

typical

I tried several times to register for IRIS at manchester airport. I can't claim to fly often, but everytime I flew from there, I'd look for the IRIS office to register. The first time I was there too early for the office to be open, the next 5 times I was flying from T2 and due to the refurb's the office was closed. Then when I flew after the refurb's had finished I specifically looked for the office, found it and found a note saying that the office would not be re-opening and to go and register in the office in T1... well, that's fine if you're flying from T1...

I guess it's all moot now, but I did try and register every single time I was in the departure lounge there...

dave

Flash stalks Seagate's hybrid drives

David Haworth

Momentus XT w/ 16G flash

where?

Cops seek clues to $1.7m tablet snatch

David Haworth

best news for RIM yet!

claim on insurance, call them all sold, your bottom line has improved already!

UltraViolet: Hollywood's giant digital gamble is here

David Haworth

DRM issues

I think I'll be happy to try UV if I get it free with a bluray which I can keep and play as normal and the UV licence is something extra I can try. I'm not sure how comfortable I'll be to buy a UV licence to a film without that fallback media yet.

Also, they talk about a streaming licence, do we know what quality this streaming will be in? lovefilm streaming is alright for an old comedy, but it's not even DVD quality nevermind anything approaching HD. of course, as this is supposed to be a perpetual licence, I guess the streaming quality can be improved over time and in theory, this licence should still cover it.

I suppse the last question is wondering when I'm going to get a UV streaming plugin for my XBMC box? :)

dave

Have everything. Own nothing. Learn the difference

David Haworth

if it looks like a duck

is there not some similarity to this case?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05/if-it-looks-duck-seattle-judge-finds-software-was-

lets face it, itunes does say "buy song", not "licence song". surely a CD is licenced to me as much as sold, but I can resell that. why should I not be able to resell an itunes song or an app from the app store I no-longer want?

The big reason will be that the vendor doesn't want a second-hand market messing with their first hand market and hasn't implemented the technology to sell or give away one's purchases. but I think the law would support it.

OpenCL ratchets up to version 1.2

David Haworth

so what uses it?

as the title says… OS X supposedly supports OpenCL but I don't think I've ever come across a program that uses it yet. anyone got any tips?

Apple iCloud: Steve Jobs' own private internet

David Haworth

paranoid much?

for crying out loud people, these commends all sound like the ravings of paranoid lunatics.

As far as i can see, apple aren't trying to get rid of local storage, they're not trying to be gatekeepers of your data, they're not trying to insist that all your data is always downloaded and rented back to you, they're not shafting anyone etcetc. I don't know for sure, but I don't really think that steve is a member of SPECTRE either.

Apple make products for people to buy. if they don't make what people want, they people don't buy them (look at mobileme as an example). They seem to have a rough "master plan" of what they think will work for people and how they'll get there, and often (but nto always) they're right. this can e seen by the obscene amounts of cash they are making. they're not forcing it out of people's hands you know. people are willingly paying money for goods they think are worth the price.

From what I can see, this icloud stuff is a way to try and get multiple devices (iphone, ipod, ipad, mac, pc) in sync for certain types of data without keep having to plug stuff into each other. lets face it, this is part of the utopian future dream many seem to have, and it tends to fit in with apple's general ethos of trying to make things "just work as you think they ought to".

However I'm sure you won't be forced to use it if you don't want to, for one, enterprise users won't use it. but it's an option, and for most people, I imagine it's a damn good and useful option. taking a picture on an iphone and having it appear "auto-magically" in iphoto without plugging my iphone in? that's brilliant. hell, I want that for my nikon! (there's about 2 months of pics on there now, un-downloaded).

syncing contacts and calendars is all good stuff. using the icloud stuff to save and distribute app documents is good too, esp as it is extendable to other apps. should be very useful. means you could edit your wedding spreadsheet on your laptop at home, and then on your ipad an hour later at the hotel after the meeting with the manager. no messing about tcopying files across or manually keeping things in sync. this is good stuff.

the flipside is that you're trusting apple with data. that said, does apple have a history of data mining? I don't recall if ti does. I'd be mroe concerned with data being within the grasp of the american government. Will they provide any encryption? they've not given us enough info to know yet but honestly, for most people, I don't think they'll care either way. the usefulness will outweigh any perceived deficiency.

As for people being shafted, where? mobileme users? hardly. they've been given a free extension for a year, and that year as notice of termination of service. that's hardly being shafted. all the data they may have there is in standard formats that can be retreived and sent elsewhere and I'm sure that someone at an applestore will help you move your data if you ask them.

in the future could they upgrade icloud for a new OS and then prevent lion users connecting? of course they could, but I've not seen anything yet to imply that they would, or that if they did, they wouldn't give enough time for users to get their data off first.

come on guys, I know some people don't like apple gear, but there's no need to get quite so paranoid about it all.

RIPA to be changed to demand full consent to monitoring

David Haworth

no it's not

I disagree.

Many companies, even ones with DLP, allow their staff limited personal use. That aside, the personal use is irrelevant to this discussion. DLP is inspecting the email traffic, whether business or personal. you can get the permission of your staff but how do you get the permission of third parties outside the company? without that permission, how do you scan email things? AV/spam might be easier as it tends to be automated scanning, but DLP stuff tends to be backed up by human eyeballs to confirm that something isn't a false positive.

David Haworth

What about DLP?

How does this impinge on corporate DLP systems? where a company scans the content of emails for data loss. You could get consent from your staff but not the other side. admittedly I've not had time to read the text yet, but it sounds like it could potentially make DLP difficult.

Deleting 'innocent' DNA will cost £5m

David Haworth

is that for all, or each?

as the title says. if it's £5m to remove every innocent person's DNA then fair enough. if it's £5m per person to remove their DNA then I might suggest that someone needs to go back and look again at the bill.

Is Samsung imitating Sony?

David Haworth

Licenced?

if they really did install it, I wonder if they were licenced for that number of install's? :)

O2 tariff rejig bundles tethering with data

David Haworth

current iphone contracts

I wonder if they'll enable free tethering on current iphone contracts? it would be a useful extra and my contract's not due to end for some time yet.

LaCie and Promise Thunderbolt their desktop storage

David Haworth

800GB/s?!

how many thunderbolt ports would that require?

LG pitches Blu-ray media streamer ahead of CES

David Haworth

Plex

Aren't these players also going to feature a plex front-end? Plex being a very ncie mac port of XMBC.

http://elan.plexapp.com/2010/09/02/plex-and-the-future-of-television/

http://www.lgblog.co.uk/2010/09/lg-partners-with-plex-to-bring-enhanced-media-services-to-netcast-tvs/

This would allow you to run the plex media server on a computer indexing and organising all your "acquired" video and audio media, and then the plex front-end in the LG bluray player (or TV) would be able to access that, show a nice full screen menu with tv episodes, plot synopses, actor lists, fan art etc and then you select something and it'll stream it to the screen for you.

I'm looking forward to seeing how all this works, but it seems quite exciting. if it all works as planned.

iOS 4.2: An 'ace' for iPad, a 'meh' for iPhone

David Haworth

No Airplay to AppleTV mk1

I've got a mark1 AppleTV connected to my hifi and I've often used airtunes to stream music to the appletv and thus to the hifi. I had high expectations that I and friends would be able to stream from an iphone/ipod/ipad to the hifi, but my iphone won't see the appletv.

Okay, so I know that the old appletv won't be upgraded to support video streaming, but it's supported audio streaming (AirTunes) for ages now. and it can't just be some critical change in the protocol as airplay claims to support an Airport Express, which is older than the AppleTV isn't it? I can't see a good reason not to support audio streaming to an old appletv, apart from a financial one.

anyone else had more sucess?

Toshiba outs and touts mSata SSDs

David Haworth

Macbook pro's

never mind use in macbook air's, is there any space in a unibody macbook pro for such a thing? I'd erally like to go SSD in mine, but I'm using much of the 500GB hd and I want to keep the optical drive. If I could slip suich a tiny drive in it somewhere and have it hooked up, then I could make the SSD boot and apps, and have data on the traditional drive, without losing the DVDR.

Come on OWC (or whoever), make it happen!

Boxee box to come to Blighty

David Haworth

XBMC

I'd like to know if XBMC would go on it, as I'm not all that keen on the boxee interface, nor do I want my tv and film watchings to be socialised. if it was completely supported by the normal XBMC itself, including skins and plugins then I'd be interested...

esp if they supported HDMI audio output and preferably decoding HD audio into LPCM too!

Brits not buying into Freeview HD

David Haworth

Recorders

Well, I imagine a lot of people want a Freeview HD PVR, rather than just a decoder, and those have only just become available in the last month or so, and are still fairly buggy by many accounts. hardly surprisingly that the numbers are a bit low. I'm looking around at the current range of HD PVR's now with an eye to a potential purchase to replace my humax 9200t which is acting a bit flakey.

The new humax HDR looks good. I kinda liked the 3view box but it seems pretty buggy atm. we'll see.

Jailbreak hole found in Apple TV firmware

David Haworth

@Tony Smith

oh, I'm well aware of that, as i have an old appletv patched up with XBMC on it currently, but it doesn't feel as fast and snappy as I'd like nor does it do HD. Also the Plex offshoot is looking good atm, and I would hope that they would create a plex frontend app if/when an ATV appstore opens

David Haworth

media centres

The ideal app for me for installation onto the new appletv would be replacement media centre software such as XBMC, Boxee, or for preference, Plex, though I don't think the latter will happen as they want to stay on apple's good side.

the flip-side of it running iOS is the potential for an appletv app store at some point in the future when apps could "legitimately" be made/sold for the appletv.

Dawn raids catch 9 for massive iPhone 'fraud'

David Haworth

Why iPhones

it's a cunning scheme certainly but why iphones? surely any phone contract would do. I appreciate that iphones are desirable thus saleable, but from O2, they'd be locked to begin with, and I don't think O2 unlock for 3 months at least. why not HTC desires or any other nice phone?

anyway, isn't the majority of the income coming in from the premium rate lines?

Waterfall Niagara speakers

David Haworth

@Rob Kendrick

ha yes, I'd prefer a pair of DSP 8000's too, and no worries about the bass there either, what with 6x8" woofers driven by 3 dedicated amps. in fact the bass probably needs taming via room correction rather than enhancing. that said, I've really not got the room for them. I'd be happy with 3 DSP33's if I could find them at a good price :)

as for these niagara's. I guess they're pretty enough but for that kinda outlay, would you expect them to leave the dumpy box design behind and try to go for something curvy and smooth? Even wooder speakers are typically shaped these days to avoid standing waves and the like.

3D TV: Avatar or Ishtar?

David Haworth

3D not a selling point

Watching avatar in 3D made me feel sick and I had to walk out, so I'm perhaps not the natural consumer for this, however when I was watching it, the 3d effect felt like it was making the image less sharp. I've paid a fair amount of money to get ultra sharp Full HD bluray films playing in all their glory, so I don't really want to dull it all with 3D.

I do suspect that 3D will eventually become a given on many TV sets and in the future, if I'm buying a new TV I wouldn't turn down a 3D one, if it didn't affect anything else. I just wouldn't go out of my way or spend too much extra for it. I'm rather hoping it will drive down the prices of boring old 2D HD projectors really...

More of a concern to me is the plug compatibility. supposedly we need HDMI 1.4 for fullHD 3d, but what HDMI1.4 kit is there? the indistry is still struggling to get people to HDMI1.3. and if you want the full, lossless surround sound from your bluray, you'll need to feed the HDMI through a surround sound amp/processor but there's now 1.4 ones around at the mo (unless I'm mistaken) and all the early adopters and hifi/AV geeks have only recently upgraded all their high end kit to 1.3. they won't be keen on selling it for 1/4 of it's value for the next plug standard, esp with the spectre of this new cat5 based cabling hanging over everything as well.

The obvious solution would be to have 3D bluray players with 2 HDMI's, 1x1.4 to go to the TV and 1x1.3 to carry audio to the amp, but apparently companies like Sony haven't thought of this.

it all just seems riddled with problems and looks like an attempt to get consumers to buy it all again, just as they thought they'd got sorted. from the PoV, I'm not predicting it's meteoric rise, perhaps more of a slow burn with a moderate and then falling number of 3D titles.

I can see it being cool for games, but again, all the points above still apply.

PS3 owners: This cinema is buff!

David Haworth

nevermind that

how about getting XBMC as a native app on the PS3? then I'd be seriously interested...

dave

Adobe pushes out Photoshop Elements 8

David Haworth

snow leopard?

so, do we know if PSE8 supports the new snow leopard technology, ie OpenCL to supposedly allow it to process things quicker? I'm still waiting to see a program come out which properly makes use of this shiny new tech and works astonishingly quickly.

dave

Baroness Scotland fined for failing to follow own law

David Haworth

good

but she'd better not put it on expenses...

Apple blogger legally unlocks iPhone

David Haworth

What about O2?

While I still have several month left on my iphone 3g contract, when I finish the 18 months, will O2 unlock my iphone for me?

Apple to offer own-brand HDTV, claims analyst

David Haworth

appletv

I could believe that they'd bring out a bigger, better version of the appletv, supporting fullHD, lossless audio and other stuff, but I don't see an apple branded TV set being likely. they've got nothing to offer that's not done by the appletv device itself

dave

BMW's X6 turns eco

David Haworth

I like it

I know it's not a popular opinion, and I'm not saying it's got it's own special niche or is even pretty, but personally I like it. it looks (to me) like it could do the paris dakar rally. I know it couldn't, but it makes me think it could.

I also have no problems with a hybrid one, and I could see why people in London would want one, as it would allow them to buy a nice powerful 4.4l v8 SUV and still be exempt from the congestion charge.

I don't see it as a planet killer and I have no problem with people buying and driving such cars as these. it's not as if they aren't paying for it in tax and fuel. Why should we be able to determine what cars other people can drive, if they want and can pay for it.

just because you don't like it is not a good enough reason and I think that the amount of damage done to the environment by cars is very small compared to that done by industry, plans and shipping, never mind cows!

good for BMW, it may not be popular, but I'm sure they'll sell enough to have made it worthwhile, and if it means that they get more experience in making powerful hybrid cars then so much the better for the rest of us.

dave

38% of large US companies have full-time email monitoring staff

David Haworth

technology or wholesale snooping?

The article reads as if all these companies have whole swathes of staff reading every email that enters of leaves the company to see if it contains sensitive data or not (and checking all the latest gossip of course!). Is it not more likely that they have implemented one of the various flavours of DLP technology into their email platform which will automatically check through emails and flag those that match certain patterns for further investigation?

platforms that can see if a number in an email is actually a credit card or account number rather than just a sequence of numbers for something else completely?

Although this may also be a cause for concern, it's not nearly so much of one as reading every message regardless. Also, the use of such technology would mean a much smaller number of staff looking into and investigating such incidents.

This comes across to me as more scaremongering than a real cause for concern. surely companies have a duty to protect their assets against leakage and while the staff may expect some privacy, technologies such as these are unlikely to impinge upon that too much as it's not random sampling, it's targeted at emails which meet certain criteria.

dave

How to hack a Sony Reader

David Haworth

I really fancy one of these

but the RRP is a bit high for m to buy a brand new one. My question is though, why are the second hand ones still so expensive? even on ebay, the rpices are in excess of £150 often, even for devices that are a year or two old. cars would love this kind of depreciation!

If this kind of device gets cheaper and is still fairly flexible in what it will read and not have network access (ie, the kindle) then I'd be quite interested.

dave

Oz cops turn to wardriving to fight Wi-Fi 'jackers

David Haworth

@I've always maintained

To the people who replied to me, no I am not saying that this is the same as stealing a car with the keys in, or breaking into a house with an unlocked door. I don't think it is equivalent to this at all.

I do think that if you have a password on your wireless then there is very clearly a no entry sign and if you try to break it or guess passwords, then you're clearly in the wrong.

I'm talking about completely unsecured wireless networks, broadcasting an SSID and with no security. if they did not broadcast SSID then you'd have to know what it is to connect, but their router is actively advertising that there is a wireless network there.

a stranger comes along and scans for wireless networks. he might be looking for a BTopenzone or similar. he finds "Bobs wireless". he has no way or knowing whether the owner is ignorant of security conventions, or is deliberately leaving it open for strangers to use. some people do this, there there are even groups of people who do this (fonera for example).

if our stranger clicks on "bobs wireless" then his laptop attempts to connect and requests network access from the router. most routers are perfectly capable of refusing network access, but this one responds with all the data needed to access the internet. that sounds a lot like permission to me. compare "I'd like to use your bathroom" "third door on the right"

I'm not actively trying to "blame the victim" here, but the owner of the router has to take some responsibility for how his possessions act. Bob might not know how to configure a router, but I'm sure he knows how to pay someone else to do it for him.

I don't see this as being the same as "she was asking for it wearing those clothes", or "well, if he just leaves the door open then he shouldn't be surprised if I take something". there is a system here which regulates how one system can request access to network resources from another. the laptop is making that request on behalf of the user and Bob's router has responded on his behalf. if he wants it to respond differently, he should either configure it to do so, or get someone else to do it for him.

does this clarify my position, or does everyone still think I'm a burglar in my spare time? :)

dave

David Haworth

I've always maintained

that there is justification to say that using an unsecured WAP is allowed as you've already asked permission. Your laptop has asked permission on your behalf by engaging in the DHCP protocol which effectively requests permission to use network resources and the router responds not only in the affirmative, but with detail required to use that service (IP addresses, gateway and DNS addresses etc).

that the user didn't intend it is by the by. they are responsible for their device.

Note that this doesn't allow someone to guess or break passwords, but if it's unsecured then the DHCP process is effectively a request response system which is being followed. a good lawyer should be able to work with that.

Dave

Amazon may plug in-book advertising into Kindle

David Haworth

ebook readers

I must admit, I do like the idea of an ebook reader and I'd be quite happy with the sony device. looks attractive, seems functional etc. but £200 is just a bit too much at the moment. it's a little beyond my "aww, lets just give it a go" territory.

oh, and why are they never cheap on ebay? they seem to sell for near new prices it seems.

dave

Humberside koi carp rustlers trawl Google Earth

David Haworth

@Adam Salibury

to be fair, google don't show current garden configurations either. you'll be lucky if they're only 5 years old! have any of the victims only dug their pond recently I wonder, and is their pond shown on google earth?

dave

Dutch cat skinner publishes critics' personal details

David Haworth

@John Savard @Sarah Bee

@John Savard "In civilized countries, cruelty to animals is a criminal offence."

there seems to be a big assumption that killing a cat is cruelty. surely it depends how she did it. if she tortured ti to death then there would be a case for prosecution under aforementioned animal cruelty laws, but it was her pet. one would imagine that she had at least a modicum of feeling for the thing. Just because she killed it with her own hands does not mean it was a cruel death. it may have been but I would think that it probably wasn't.

So then what's the differecen between getting the vet to do it, and doing it yourself?

and once the animal is dead, where is the issue making it into a handbag? some people may find it tasteless but that's not illegal, nor should it be.

@Sarah Bee "Oh for fucksakes it's more complicated than that"

is it? I can't say I particularly liked the handbag (but then I'm hardly a fashionista, my ownership of a mac aside) but as long as she wasn't cruel in her termination of the mog, I don't see that she has actually done anything wrong.

animals get killed all the time, either for our own benefit (leather, meat etc), for our convenience (eek, we've got mice, get the poison/mousetraps) or just because they are surplus (has that cat had kittens again? fetch the bucket!).

most people don't get confronted with this stuff day to day (neither do I thankfully) but it still happens and while I don't advocate anyone being cruel, I also appreciate some of the practicalities of life.

if her cat was already dieing and should have been quietly put out of it's misery, what does it matter if she took it to a vet or did it herself? once it was dead, why does it matter whether she buried it or made a handbag?

people might not like it but lots of things happen that I don't like, I don't send out hate mail.

dave

PS. I guess I ought to say I'm more a dog person than a cat person, but I would have the same opinion if she'd done it to a dog. of course, with a dog, she'd have scope for a much bigger bag!

PPS. did she use the cat's arsehole as a handy headphone cable port?

David Haworth

what's the problem?

it's just because we "like" cats isn't it? as far as I can see, there are 2 likely scenario's here

1) her cat died and she decided to make the skin/fur into a handbag.

so what? how is this different from a leather handbag made of cow skin.

2) she killed her cat to make the skin/fur into a handbag.

so what? how is this different from a leather handbag made of cow skin.

is it just that many people own and therefore like cats, but those people rarely come into contact with actual cows therefore don't give them as much "humanity"?

is it just that cats are cuter than cows?

what's the problem?

dave

ToysRus unleashes Devil's Whore on innocent kiddies

David Haworth

@steogede

well, it depends what context you're talking about. 18 or under is the legal context, but biologically, I thought there were three stages that a human could be in, infancy, childhood and adulthood. adulthood starts at puberty, therefore that's when childhood ends.

I think :)

dave

David Haworth

@Stu Reeves

I thoughts children were defined as being people who haven't yet passed puberty? 15 probably too old for that.

dave

Beeb tech boss seeks to expand TV licence online

David Haworth

@How will we prove we don't use iPlayer?

Daniel,

Owning a TV in the UK does not require you to own a TV license (as much as the TV licensing people hate to admit it), you only need a license to watch broadcast TV. If you TV is only plugged into a DVD player and a nintendo wii, then no license is required. (and no, you don't need to make your TV unable to receive or anything like that, just don't have it plugged into an aerial, and it would probably be wise to de-tune the channels if you can). and yes, I do know someone who did this for years. the TV was only plugged into a DVD player and 3 consoles. every year the TV licensing people would tell them they needed a license, and every year he'd tell them that he didn't need one.

this should then work the same way with computers. if you don't use them to watch iplayer, you shouldn't need a license.

of course all this talk of not getting a free ride seems to forget about those folk who only listen to the radio. don't they get a free ride?

dave

Apple power brick sparks lawsuit

David Haworth

frayed ends

There's several people here stating that users must have been very rough with their magsafe adaptors to suffer these problems just because they haven't had a problem. it's not so, some adaptors seem to be better than others. My macbook pro rarely leaves my lounge, and it sits on a little lapdesk most of the time too. it doesn't get handled roughly or even travel all that much. when it does travel, it's in a dedicated laptop bag and the PSU is wrapped up neatly but I had the problem. Basically the plug itself started to get very hot and over time, the plastic sheath of the wire, near the plug actually melted and the metal wires underneath were exposed. it also started to not charge the laptop anymore.

As my laptop was well out of warranty, i went into the store to buy a replacement adapter. I told the guy there what had happened and I was asked to bring my old PSU back in. when I did they replaced it for a brand new one free of charge, no questions asked. That sounds to me like it's a known issue to me, rather than a one off, or rough behaviour.

dave

RIAA settles for $7,000 after 4 years pursuing NY mum

David Haworth

Hanson?

Could the family not counter-sue for libel? afterall, the RIAA were claiming that the defendants had downloaded and shared MMMBop by Hanson, which a pretty damning allegation!

dave

WD gives 2TB drive a green spin

David Haworth

for use in NAS's

Is all this green technology worthwhile in a NAS? I'm thinking of getting something like a netgear readynas and would be looking to put 4 drives in it. "green" drives like this I would hope would be cooler, thus requiring less fan speed, as well as consuming less power.

would the software on such a device negate the special stuff through? I don't know if all this stuff requires driver/OS support to really be useful?

anyone know?

David

Humax Foxsat-HDR Freesat HD digital video recorder

David Haworth

@SD mediocrity

actually, SD on freeview is better than SD on freesat. the bitrate on matching channels between thet wo platforms is hgiher, and a visual comparison between freeview and freesat shows that freeview pictures are better. which is highly annoying as one of the big reasons to get freesat is access to the HD stuff, but the flipside is that the SD stuff is worse?!

My dad has the this box installed, and while it's good, and it does the job, it is also somewhat buggy and crashes from time to time. It could do with a firmware update and I'd love to see the channels up their bitrate to improve quality.

dave

Hacking the Apple TV

David Haworth

appletv vs others

I seriously considered buying an appletv as I wanted a nice, small and quiet box to feed video to the TV with. I wouldn't have been averse to using it out of the box, but I really wanted it for XBMC. I wanted to be able to stream media, in a variety of codec's from my NAS to my TV, with audio fed through my amp. I also quite wanted the nice, rich user interface that XBMX supposedly provides (with downloads form the internet for films/tv show precis's and cover art etc).

what put me off was

a) it's expensive. even second hand it doesn't seem to lose much value

b) I'd be buying a box almost soley to hack it

c) it's not got the guts to do 1080p high def, and I didn't know what it could do with high def sound tracks (can it output truehd via the hdmi cable?)

I eventually decided to buy the popcorn hour A110. it's a good box with support for 1080p and HD audio output and lots of codecs onboard. It also acts as a NAS so I can drag and drop stuff to it over the network. I know the costs are similar to a brand new appletv (if I include the 1TB hd I installed) and it works fine, but it certainly doesn't have the rich interface. it's a bit basic and sometimes slow to get going. I nkow there are options for better interfaces (that all rely on pre-generating HTML code) but I've not got on well with any of them and it's just not "slick".

right now I don't think I've made the wrong decision and I'm relatively happy with my purchase, but I think if I had found a cheap appletv somewhere, then I would have been more happy with it in the interface sense, if less happy with the capabilities. I guess one of my concerns was how much of an unknown the "hacking the appletv" option was.

now if apple released a new appletv with better hardware, but just as hackable, then I might well be interested :)

so, did I do the wrong thing then?

dave

Judges: Don't know the law? It's understandable

David Haworth

don't patch, re-issue

Our current law seem based around bills created which patch a series of other bills created 2 years earlier, which patch other bills from the 70's which patch original laws made 2 centuries ago, or similar.

I'd rather see a different approach. if it's decided that part of the criminal justice bill is wrong and needs changgnio, then don't pass a bill which patches/edits it. pass a new criminal justice bill which completely overrides the old bill, and then repeal the old one. they could do this even if the edit was relatively small, that means that the original law should always be the current one.

are there any major problems with this approach?

dave

Lucky Mancs could get ID cards first, Jacqui declares

David Haworth

Jacqui's quite right

I live in Manchester I don't want to wait until 2012 to see ID cards rolled out, I want to wait a lot longer. preferably long enough for the current government to be voted out and for someone else to come in and ditch the cards.

I managed to open a bank account, rent a flat and travel to europe without the benefit for an ID card years ago so I'm struggling to see that reasoning.

I don't necessarily object to the concept of ID cards, but I've not yet heard a good reason for us to introduce ours...

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