* Posts by Chris Ashworth

36 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2008

Frustration with Elite:Dangerous boils over into 'Refund Quest'

Chris Ashworth

The irony of the whole saga is that the multiplayer doesn't even work anyway. Want to play with friends? Haha, you'll be lucky.

Unfortunately ED is another very polished framework for what can be an incredible game but has been released before being fully fleshed out (I'm looking at you, Destiny).

Pity the poor Windows developer: The tools for desktop development are in disarray

Chris Ashworth

As said, Unity is fine for simple 2D games, if you've any game dev experience you should be churning out prototypes in a matter of hours, and hitting all the major platforms.

Chrome makes new password grab in version 34

Chris Ashworth

I don't mind it installing itself as a service on my main machine after asking permission.

What I do mind is it automatically installing itself onto every other machine I had Chrome on...HTPCs/servers etc.

Simpler to just uninstall than faff about in settings. Chrome was good for giving the competition a kick up the arse...but these days it has no benefits over them, and a major downside (i.e. constantly having to be on your guard for 'new features' that are hooking you deeper into the googleplex). No thanks.

Chris Ashworth

I've uninstalled Chrome from all my machines after the last update that installed itself as a background service on ALL my PCs that had it installed.

I find IE a pretty capable browser these days. Might give Opera another go though.

TV sales PLUMMET. But no one's prepared to say what we all know

Chris Ashworth

Bets on when the global economy will have to adjust to the fact that 'growth' aka consumption is not an end of itself and resources are not limitless?

Apple investors fall for CEO Cook's product-presentation prank

Chris Ashworth

Re: Talk is cheap

Foxconn is at the stage now where you have to pitch to them if you want them to manufacture your product. They also have various investment schemes where they will fund production runs for products they think will be a success in return for a slice of the action.

Their factories are a million miles away from the filthy concrete amateur factories that make 99% of our stuff in China.

Joke no more: Comedy virty currency Dogecoin gets real in big Xmas heist

Chris Ashworth

Bonkers yes, but I'm taking advantage by having a couple of new GPUs pay themselves off in a few weeks mining dogecoins.

The internet is a strange place, but there are some opportunities to gain fron the madness.....

Ghosts of Christmas Past: Ten tech treats from yesteryear

Chris Ashworth

The tsetse flies in Raiders Of The Lost Ark were a pain in the arse.

Crystal Castles was great though, and the tanks one.

If you want an IT job you'll need more than a degree, say top techies

Chris Ashworth

If you want to get into software Dev, create or contribute to an open source project.

If I get a CV that has a link to a project that I will take the effort to go and have a snoop around your contributions and that will be the deciding factor in you getting an interview. Just make sure

a) Your code is good!

b) You put all the other necessary BS on then CV to get it past the pimps\agents\salesmen

It's true, the START MENU is coming BACK to Windows 8, hiss sources

Chris Ashworth

Add a one time install option to use a traditional start menu and assign default file associations to desktop instead of Modern apps, and 99% of the whinging will go away.

If you could also pick up Modern apps from the start menu icon and drag to snap onto the desktop...boom. Best of both, desktop people are happy, Modern is still there so people can use the nice aspects of it and get used to it, slab users stay as is.

Bigger on the inside: WD’s Tardis-like Black² Dual Drive laptop disk

Chris Ashworth

Struggling to see any reason to buy this over a Momentus XT 1TB (which I have already given a friend's oldish laptop a new lease of life with).

Anyone enlighten me?

Bring Your Own Disks: The Synology DS214 network storage box

Chris Ashworth

The iTunes server is functionally useless since Apple's Home Sharing appeared btw. Very good unit otherwise.

THE HORROR: Bloody SLAB sales slash fest forecast for 2013

Chris Ashworth

Is it just me, or did the entire consumer hardware space hit 'good enough' already?

I mean, I'm a big gadget lover, bot really, why does anyone need to upgrade anymore? What functionality is gained?

Nokia tears wrapper off Lumia 1020 monster imaging mobe

Chris Ashworth

Nokia are not using EOS, that was just an internal project codename. Go take a look on Nokia.com. It's a Lumia 1020.

Microsoft: Still using Office installed on a PC? Gosh, you squares

Chris Ashworth

But Office 365 doen't mean data all stored in the cloud. It just means a subscription model for the license. Cloud use is optional.

I have Office 365 and the whole office suite installed locally, and my files stored locally.

NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days

Chris Ashworth

This engine converts electrical energy (from a big solar array) into kinetic energy, via fusion.

It is not a generator.

Transit of Venus, live-ish from Australia

Chris Ashworth

Seeing it bright and clear here in Hong Kong looking through a bit of exposed film. Makes up for the lousy weather for the eclipse the other week!

Teufel Audio iTeufel Air

Chris Ashworth
FAIL

Speaker review with no mention of how it sounds :/

China warns domestic mobile phone makers of IP dangers

Chris Ashworth

Re: Bless 'em

"I gather that even internally there are problems with Chinese firms ripping off other Chinese firms' designs."

You think? :)

New iPad: Crack open your wallets, fanbois, here's what it'll cost

Chris Ashworth

Don't need lots of storage as most media is either text (Kindle) or over wifi at home. Loads of wifi out and about here in HK, and I have a mifi knocking about if I really need connectivity. It's about 316GBP for the basic model here, and that screen is a good price imo. Bye bye Galaxy Tab 10.1 and your sluggish interface and shoddy applications!

41-megapixel MONSTER mobe shutters Nokia knockers

Chris Ashworth

Now cram this into a Lumia (I can deal with a lump for a camera of this quality).....and I will be a happy man. Love my Lumia 800 but stick this sensor and a xenon flash in it and it'd be perfect.

Actually, it would need an official Google Maps client to be perfect....but I can live with 3rd party ones for now.

Gov 'skunkworks' to develop e-petitions system

Chris Ashworth

Dear God

Given what a total hash of agile that most corporates make, I dread to think what government will do.

Microsoft fails to turn punters on to WinPho 7

Chris Ashworth

Surprisingly.....

Having gone iPhone -> Android -> winpho7, I'm surprised at how good Windows Phone 7 is. It's just a really nice user experience.

My only complaint is Bing Maps which are next to useless here in HK...but you can get Google maps via an app easy enough.

Fukushima situation as of Wednesday

Chris Ashworth

I think

Let's compare the consequences of a catastrophic failure at a coal/oil/solar/wind/tidal power plant....to the consequences of a similarly catastrophic event at a nuclear plant.

Let's also be very clear.....a serious earthquake and tsunami in Japan is definitely *not* a black swan event....this was entirely predictable.

Perhaps if Mr. Page is so comfortable with the safety of nuclear energy, he would like to be one of the staff in the control, or one of the helicopter crew flying over the 'safe' reactors.

(Pro-nuclear here)

Alleged Jobsian email promises iPad printing

Chris Ashworth
Thumb Up

Did no-one else

Ever own a Canon NoteJet?

http://www.smartcomputing.com/images/smartcomputing/fullsize/293n0912.jpg

LHC particle-punisher in record 7 TeV hypercollisions

Chris Ashworth

The clock in my office stopped at 12:37.....

Co-incidence?

German lad hit by 30,000 mph meteorite

Chris Ashworth

@Michael Smith

Terminal velocity isn't a constant. In fact I'd imagine it's rather fast for a small piece of metal, especially if it fit the meteor stereotype and was covered in golf-ball style pits :)

BBC zombie caper slammed by security pros

Chris Ashworth
Thumb Up

@ AC

That's not what happened though. Using your analogy, what the BBC did was demonstrate that they could give a quid to some shifty bloke on a street corner and he'd come back with someone's car with the keys in the ignition. The BBC then drove the car back to the owner and told them how to avoid having it nicked again.

I'm interested to see the show.....if it makes a few technophobes de-bot their PC then everyone's a winner.

Spotify: We kick the tyres

Chris Ashworth

Thumbs up

Been using it for a few months now, really like it, the missus uses it at home as well. Needs some playlist management and browsing enhancements, but it's a lovely low-footprint application. Top marks to the developers.

I'll be paying for a sub once it's out of Beta.

Amazon to sell one OLPC laptop for the price of two

Chris Ashworth
Alert

Re : paulo

Think you missed the point there buddy :)

Intel says 'no' to Windows Vista

Chris Ashworth
Flame

Re : gamers

"Now if even the gamers who are the people most likely to like the Latest Thing TM are massively chosing XP over Vista then this really demonstrates that Vista is unliked."

In reality, what that means is that Vista is much harder to pirate, and gamers don't buy their operating systems.

Heaviest Virgin Media downloaders face new daytime go-slow

Chris Ashworth

@ frymaster

Sense speaks at last, at least they are open about it.

Thou shalt not receive unlimited resource for £20 a month.

UK to outlaw cartoons of child sexual abuse

Chris Ashworth
Coat

At least there's some good to come of this

The filth that came up with the London 2012 logo are going down for a loooong time.

When flash mobs go bad

Chris Ashworth
Thumb Up

Simple solution

Organise another 'flash mob'...to go and clear the place up....

Redmond puts key Vista update on ice

Chris Ashworth
Gates Halo

A lonely voice

Just adding to the dissenters...I've been using Vista Ultimate on a fairly modest desktop with 1gb ram since RTM was first available. Great piece of software in my opinion, fulfils every function I require of a desktop operating system, and I don't have to touch a text editor.

Not that I'm a technophobe, I just like to leave my scripting and fighting technical issues in the office. Home is for 'press button', 'do stuff'.

I've really got better things to do with my time than learning my way round Linux.

Ho hum. Oh and whenever I see the phrase 'M$', a vision of an angry 14yr old, much like the ones that infest xbox live (god bless mute), springs to mind. I mean really, what is the point?