Keys are WAY too small on BBs

Why do BlackBerry insist on full QWERTY keyboards crammed into such small space?

I've tried several times to use one, each and every time wanted to smash it to pieces having been forced to try and hit the tiny, tiny keys with the tips of my thumbnails.

Completely pointless unless you are a women or have had a hand transplant operation, with a woman....

Has anyone got anything positive to say about Pinterest?

I've tried using it.

I've added the app to my phone.

I've had a look around at other people's pins.

Pros:

Nice polished presentation

Lots of pretty pictures

Cons:

Pictures are by and large 'stolen' content

What the fuck does it actually do?

Seriously, I browsed about, and as far as I can tell, it's Facebook photos/Tumblr/etc - doesn't bring anything actually useful/new to the table bar a pretty layout.

How on earth it can achieve such a potential level of funding is beyond crazy. I need to come up with a pointless but pretty Web 4.5 application* and make some quick millions from stupid investors.

Insane...

(*4.5 > 2.0 = more cash, obviously)

Size looks fine

I've currently got a Desire HD (4.3" screen) and there is a lot of wiggle room in my hand to allow for a bigger phone. Up against my Mekon-esque head, it isn't large in the slightest.

I'm looking forward to owning something with a good sized screen on it, my dimensions happily cater for it. For those crying about it being too big, why not quit moaning and look at small phones that obvious fit your less than impressive size - there's plenty to choose from...

Awesome

I do love it when we get to read about the more fun research that is going on around the globe. There are plenty of future practical applications for this sort of tech, but for now, it is just great to know that someone somewhere is being given the budget to make stuff like this work!

Yey another way for beaurocrats to justify their meaningless existence!!!

Seriously, this sort of crap needs to stop. This is legislation for the sake of legislation.

If the figures in the article are close, or at least vagulely ballpark, £5m per person is a frankly stupid value placed on human life - there are already way too many of us anyway. Also I presume the costs will be passed on to drivers?

Oh, obviously this is before we open that Pandoras box that allowing the government to force a monitoring system into legislation generates. Surely this breaches some sort of civil right?

At the end of the day our roads are pretty damn safe. The biggest problem on our roads is, and always will be, people who lack the basic skills required to drive properly, conscientiously, and at a pace that actually equates to people getting where they need to. As and when the human aspect is removed from cars, safety will rocket - until of course a massive trojan distribution cause every car to go all 'Christine' one day....

256GB - erm...?

Given the high end nature of this device, I can only assume high end users will be interested. How much of that 256GB is available after OS, Creative Suite, etc, are dumped on? Video editing is out of the window unless you specialise in 2 minute films, and inability to just hardwire into your network (unless you buy an adaptor, obviously) means relying on wi-fi for shunting stuff to/from a NAS box - assuming Apple let you do that, lmao!

Thanks, but no thanks. Some awesome additions, well, actually, mainly 1 - the screen, but far too many removals to warrant the cost. Does it even accept a regular SD card????

That said it will still sell like shit off a shovel because it's shiny and has an Apple logo on it. Sigh.

What bit rate are they using these days?

12meg requirement for say a 2hr movie would mean a roughly 10gig file, which isn't too bad for 1080, but not ideal - would mean your line running at full pelt the whole time, i.e. not hitting a bandwith throttle. So I assume then that they would hope to get a continuous real world of what, 60-70%? so about a 6-7gig file? That's starting to sound less good.

Anyone else notice the timescales here?

Work started on Sunday, they aim to be complete in 2014. Lets assume they've 'only' aiming for a 2 year turnaround - 1373 miles in 2 years, 1373 / (365 * 2) = 1.88 m/d

That's nearly 2 miles a day that will be completed. Underground, or over ground, that seems like a pretty damn impressive daily goal.

I'm guessing in the UK we still work in yards per day on a project such as this...?

Thanks for the Flickr link Kristian

Those samples are pretty outstanding considering they have come from a phone, very impressive.

I have to say I am completely and utterly baffled by the logic behind cramming such an immense camera into what appears to be a great form factor, to then shackle it with such a comparatively low resolution screen to show off your lovely photos?

Very curious decision, I guess good screen + good camera would = bigger price point then hoped...

Love it

It's been many, many, many years since man first thought about how to capture an image - make a hole, have a recording media screen, an exposure time, etc - been stuck like that since the start. This is a crazy progression IMO, sure at the moment it might not be 'great', but jesus, this could just be looked at as a proof of concept. How long did it take digital cameras to lift themselves up to decent quality? Were they great from the start - were they hell!

The form factor will be the biggest issue - will increasing the resolution result in a thicker tube? Can this be rectified by making it collapsible? Etc. Beyond that obvious disavantage the potential advantages are huge. Every item in a photo in focus is surely a possibility with some software cleverness.

Great to see such innovation

"in the crispy-fried zone for humanity or similar-bodied aliens"

Kinda makes massive assumptions regarding the ability of life to exist in what would be outwardly hostile environments to us. Even on earth places like hydrothermal vents would be a bitch for us, but many species thrive there.

It does bother me that humanity can be so unimaginative when it comes to thinking outside of the box with our definitions of 'life', pretty lame really. That close to the sun you could come up with a solar powered life form that could generate enough energy to ambulate, think 'Little Shop of Horrors' ;)

Wasn't it 75% before...??

I've only got the 20meg line, but am pretty sure that it was a 75% throttle for all bar the top package holders previous to this? I really ought to find out when my fast upgrade is coming, as with just a 50% throttle, regardless of what I'm doing it will be giong quicker then it is right now.

Anyway, for those crying 'boo hoo' - I am a pretty heavy user, typically 2-300gb a month, which means most days I hit a limit for a bit, so I have to structure my downloads. I accept that my level of usage will cause network worries compared to your typical punter who just wants to have super fast access to small volumes of data. The amount of users who will use high levels of data - small, few percent. For those of you above demanding even higher levels, you're into the top percentile no doubt.

I'm not entirely sure how you can expect a pricing structure for a product like this to work over such a large distribution of usage? If you *need* that bandwidth permanently, why not go find a service that suits? It will cost you a shit load more than your Virgin line, that is for sure...

Impressive

Erm, how many sets of eyes/hands has Google Wallet been past/through over at the Chocolate Factory? Must be at least several hundred people, evidently none of whom thought to check this,

Seriously impressive wood for trees fuck up there!!

Prefer the original

Though these composites are gorgeous, they really aren't a patch on that shot from '72.

The banding from the ocean reflections is the main culprit in ruining things for me, makes it look like the earth isn't spherical. Plus it's perfect daylight everywhere - again, boom, not a sphere illuminated by a single lightsource anymore. So techincally impressive, initially attractive, but ultimately full of fail.

When its decomissioning time, they should strap some boosters to Hubble, bob her off a bit into the solar system, and get a nice close up from there - would be a lovely shot. Hmmm, would be nice to do fly-by's of the whole solar system...

Water purification

Firstly, baffled as to how it would let water through but not helium through, given the size difference at play (only thought coming to mind is dipole nature of water?), but if this membrane does just let water through, and not anything else commonly found in drinking water, water purificaion options are surely about to get a boost?

That said distillery option is also pretty intriguing - I believe home distilleries were made illegal for their potential to go 'boom' - a flame/heat/pressure chamber free solution should therefore become viable...??

Hard life

So you come up with a media sharing site, which is fairly transparently a copyrighting scam, rake in £100k+ a day in personal income (I believe that was the number quoted?), and get to play COD for about 8hrs a day....

He should really have lived somewhere he couldn't be extradited, as that isn't too shabby a lifestyle!!!

Well I can't wait

My BB experience from Virgin has been pretty damn good over the years - sure, it fails some times, but in most occasions it is up an running again before the day is out. Jumping up to 60meg from 20meg is going to be a god send - when throttling kicks in I will still be pootling along at pretty close to my previous max speed, top stuff.

As for the email, yeah, got both, my thought was it was more PR than error (someone else mentions this above) - but meh, who cares - so long as they actually do the upgrades all's good IMO!

Nice - shame about the arse

As per Tom, bar I like the front. Side on = wowsers!

Will never own one... oh well...

Huh - actually affordable?

Impressed - I've staved off buying a BR player for many years, but if they can start getting good box sets like this down to those prices, I might have to think again. Anyone know if they are re-mastered at all?

Lucky sods!

Seriously, that could easily have killed folk, would be amazed if they're not hauled up in front of a court

$35k

That was quite a sweet deal for Apple at the time - shame their lawyers didn't look at the small print.

If they only bought non-chinese usage of the name, then they shouldn't use it in China, pretty simple really - and it's right that the company are sticking up for themselves, though I will admit, they are probably only doing it to access a great big settlement worth way more than they could have made from the brand.

Nice one - great one to put an end to 'what goes in that' arguments!

It will be a while before I can review the single player...

...because as long as my internet connection is working, it would take an awful lot to drag me away from the multiplayer!!!

I am surprised that your review failed to spot that the matchmaking system is, as it stands, dire - 1 mate, sure, easy enough, 2, gets tricky to find a game, 3+ = complete nightmare - 10 minutes of looking at a crappy screen before you give up.

That said, the MP is without a doubt the most immersive experience yet on the 360 for me - the sheer scale of the maps, the interaction (blowing up) of the buildings/cover, the large selection of vehicles with their own strong/weak points - brilliant.

COD has a big problem on its hands...

Check out the corners - not nice and round, but half rounded... lol, pathetic that they need to resort to making their product a bit uglier to make sure it stays on shelves!

Good on him, I personally can't stand Unions

Look at what the unions are doing here in the UK - their response to an economy in dire straights is to try and cover the assses of their precious members at the cost of the entire country. I have no sympathy whatsoever for public sector workers who are suddenly looking at losing some of their absurdly OTT benefits (e.g. NHS sick pay - 6 months @ full salary, erm, seriously?!?) in lieu of the fact that the country cannot afford to keep paying such ridiculous expense for what is, at the end of the day, just someone doing their damn job. They aren't special...

In a non-unionised job, you get on with your job, and if you don't like the conditions, leave to find another, or take the employer to tribunal where it is decided if they acted fairly or not. People who hide behind a union who are demanding that they as an individual are treated 'fairly', are in fact demanding to be treated like royalty compared to their non-unionised counterparts.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment of the Unions, they represent a major fail with their current mentalities, and are a nasty reminder of less enlightened times

Seems fair enough to me

I use the API on a few sites, all with tediously low traffic compared to the threshold mentioned here. Given the data shunted, and processing cycles used, it's fair enough that folk should pay for it - weird that it has been free for so long if you ask me!!

As for maps loading on the page and 'robbing' your allowance when people don't use them, just stick in a placeholder image and use jQuery to replace it with the actual map if someone clicks on it - not the most daunting of tasks.

When I was young it was all Pac-Man and board games

Unless I'm mistaken, board games include things like:

1. Cluedo - so presumably murdering folk with a spanner in the kitchen is ok

2. Operation - removing random bones and organs from your fellow person is just fine

3. Battleships - blowing the crap out of battleships, sure, why not

4. etc..

Also, Pac-Man - erm, look at what happens - you run around munching on stuff, hiding from ghosts, then when you eat something special, you get to chase down and eat the ghosts.

Sounds kinda like rioting to me.

Hooray for the faceless constable, clearly a fine addition to the boys in blue...

Hahahaha!

Awesome :D

Best. Game. Ever.

Honestly, nothing else has come close to this for me - remember firing the demo up on my dads work laptop as a kid, and getting giddy as hell! The only thing that bugged me was that they dropped the laser effect (it sort of blew out a load of pixels on a hit) from the full game, shoulda stayed.

Agree - android version would be immense, though possibly end up with me getting the sack for never working...

Personally rate G+ very highly

I think G+ is what Buzz should have been - that died a death for me after less than 2 hrs of bothering with it. G+ with its tight android integration is a complete win for me, and I'm looking forward to it taking a large slice of FB pie.

Facebook has been great to me, but I can't be arsed with it these days - bloated, slow, and full of crap I'm not interested in... no thanks!

Proprietary = cheaper?

I'm a bit confused - how can it possibly be cheaper to develop a proprietary media system of your own, than it is to license one that already exists?

I guess they have done the maths on it, but it feels wrong - unless they are predicting such massive sales that they can drive down the per unit cost?