* Posts by Fryerman

12 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Mar 2010

Microsoft Surface: Designed to win, priced to fail

Fryerman
Unhappy

A near miss

I had hopes for the Surface. Sometime ago I Loaded the developer preview of Win8 on one of my old laptops and that gave it a new lease of life. The metro interface was refreshing change, but in the end it ideally needed a tablet device. So I loaded the consumer preview on an old 10" tablet a few weeks ago and, after a small registry hack, its working pretty well - even works with existing software. The touchscreen keyboard is hopeless compared to that on an iPad though. I was holding off to get hold of the Surface as it promised to be a good piece of kit with a better keyboard. But at this price point and without a stylus it doesn't't seem worth it. The deal-breaker has to be the power adaptor which appears to be an extra. No one in their right mind sells a portable device without a charger, or maybe that clever cover hides a solar array...

Samsung slaps swift patch over phone-wiping Galaxy S III vuln

Fryerman

Re: Weirdly, this seems patched on my Vodafone S3

Make sure you have NFC switched on. If it is disabled this test seems to show everyghing is ok.

Biz prof disses Big Data as a fetish for info hoarders

Fryerman
Holmes

We've lost the plot

The emphasis seems to have shifted away from understanding what data means and we are now more interested in collecting as much as possible, no matter what. Having lots of data is no good if we forget how to analyse it. Having data isn't the same as knowledge and doesn't imply. understanding.

Microsoft tech turns any object into a touchscreen

Fryerman

Fondle Slab Killer?

Nope, I don't think so. The essence of a fondle slab is that you can -errr - fondle it. Of course it may see us stroking walls and tables, in which case will it have turned us into the tech equivalent of tree huggers...?

Civil servants cough up more lost BlackBerrys

Fryerman

I can shed some light on why Civil Servants list so many Blackberrys: It's the standard issue phone in most dept. Of course, they may lose personal phones with equal ease, but there won't be figures on that.

Man builds smartphone dock into arm

Fryerman

The real reason Apple dropped outj

The dock was better suited to a device with an ARM chip.

El Reg in email address blunder

Fryerman

Well, that's an easy one; 'coz they're reporters. It's their job to report on that sort of stuff. Don't confuse the hacks who do the stories with the tit in the IT dept who caused this fuck up. It's good to see them own up and follow the correct procedures.

IBM PC daddy: 'The PC era is over'

Fryerman
Holmes

The PC is dead. Long live the PC

The PC was brilliant. It brought computing power to the masses in an efficient form factor. Many people got hold of them in the early days, just to have a PC, not because they were power users like you and me. They used them as electric typewriters, and to run arcade games. The thing is, they only had one platform - the PC. Now we have many: PC, laptop, netbook, tablet, console, mobile phone..... There is a trend is towards minituarisation and mobility that will appeal to the vast bulk of people who dont do power computing and just graze the cloud, they won't have need of a PC anytime soon. Even school kids, who usually want some grunt in their machine, seem to prefer laptop styles as they can cart them around (& lose them). So, as convenience dominates, and the technology of batteries, displays, and memory advances, the PC market will diminish. Howere, it won't go away.

Please excuse any typos in this submission - I'm using a smartphone and the keyboard is s**t. I could have moved 50ft to my quad core desktop, but the weather is too nice in the garden @ the moment.

Boffins brew up formula for consummate cuppa

Fryerman

art not science

I have to agree with Mhoulden's post about this. Cravendale are obviously looking for publicity, and the uni need funfing. Great. But the only way this is science is that it uses scientific method, maybe. The sample is small, so there are no great revelations. Interesting to see that the formula has a crucial ommission too; there is no figure for the amount of water to be used.

At the end of the day though, this only helps get us in the ball park for a 'good cup of tea'. Each one is a work of art that should be made to suit an individuals tastes. Some people like no milk, some may like 30ml, some may like it barely brewed, or over brewed. Who's to say what's right. Maybe we'll see manufacturers of oil paints sponsoring research into the perfect oil painting.

Parliament's expenses body spent £2.2m on IT

Fryerman

misleading?

This looks like a lot, but is probably not a bad price to set the IT infrastructure for a small government dept. So this probably isn't the cost of saving some £150k in expenses. It is interesting that they couldn't have tagged onto the shared services used by some of the other departments, especially as this would appear to be a small goverment body.

Dutch get wound up over invisible SMS

Fryerman

Jonfryer

If you are tracking someone then you try to get their location information in real time. A silent SMS is pretty good at providing adequate ball-park. Texting the operator is hopeless. You'd need to be in direct contact for constant updates.

Light bulbs inspire boffins to find fast data transfer trick

Fryerman

Out of interest ...

The story is sparse on info, but it looks like the big difference from lasers is that they aren'tusing lasers. Not clear what is being used though- but not LED and not tungsten.