Posts by John

obligatory bananaphone comment!

ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring bananaphone!

was it just me or did the guy's voice seem to drop in and out randomly?

I had to watch a second time to see the gestures.

learnings!

I guess he didn't take learnings from grade school english class :)

oucho

recievers are expensive

dell back in the 90s?

Dell has been pre-installing cruft in the 2000s too.

a new c64 generation?

while it's possible this could lead to a new generation of geeks like those of us who had c64s, I'm not really sure if there's much of a market for this. A box below the tv and a bluetooth keyboard would presumably be more useful.

That said, I like the look of it and it only remains to be seen if it is as good to type with as the MacBook-style apple keyboard.

unbelievable!

Twitter was working!

iPhoto? an editing tool?

news to me. well, yes, you can make basic adjustments, but iPhoto's strength is mainly as an organiser.

storage space

I know 2.5" HDDs are more expensive and can be powered by USB, but you can get 1TB 3.5" portable drives for £80. I have no idea about the quality of the backup software, since I use time machine, but the only problems with my Fujitsu Siemens StorageBird is that I can feel 50Hz through the metal casing (power supply is supposed to be double insulated) and the light on the front is WAAAAY too bright.

Results!

There used to be ads on TV in Northern Ireland for a maker of chemical fertilisers whose tagline was 'Richardsons gets results'. Richardsons went bust.

Wayne's World 2

Seems Dell learned Jim Morrison's lesson for Wayne and Garth that there is a difference between building a concert venue and booking the bands.

seedy ads contd

The bigger problem with the DT's ads is that the flash ones cause opera to use all available CPU time

health benefits

I'm teetotal because I hate the taste of alcoholic drinks. almost makes me wish I could drink

Mac laptop users...

can just turn their laptops upside down and put the toast at the MagSafe corner

Massive respect

Massive respect to your work ethic and your desire to re-enfranchise. I am saddened to hear of both sides gaming the system (and HAVA seems wide open).

Also thought I'd mention the voting "booths" used for paper ballots that were made in Northern Ireland. I feel sorry for anyone from the US who had to use them. Yes they fold up and are very light and easy to carry and store and yes they are wheelchair friendly, but Nothern Ireland has used them at the last two elections (maybe more) and I don't think they give much privacy.

Tony Blair

The Americans liked our Tone so much they built a bigger one!

girl from accounts?

why was she in your 1950s semi?

Iveco?

The Italians are currently building a fleet of big vans for the Army (in fact lots of armies) to replace the Land Rovers. They are much bigger than them, but still smaller than a hummer. Not sure how they'd fare against RPGs, but they have a massive armour plate on the bottom.

oh, dear

math win, but tech fail all round! (except Simon Preston)

1080i has 540 lines per frame, true, but one frame is the odd lines and the next frame is the even lines. JUST LIKE PAL AND NTSC. I'd love to see a 1080i signal shown at 540p! Hmm, super widescreen, 1920x540.

interlaced:

frame one is like this

1 picture data

2

3 picture data

4

frame two is like this

1

2 picture data

3

4 picture data

BBC has the iPlayer

I think the Register's player need's a snappy name too. Since it's the Register's player, how about "The R's Player"?

11 is for wimps

my Behringer 30W bass amp goes to 12!

never liked the new style

I can't use the new style in Opera, but that's a good thing. In the new Hotmail the banner ad is always at the top of the screen no matter what size the window is. In the old one at least you can scroll down. But I hardly use Hotmail now because the best way to use it used to be Outlook or Outlook Express. Now I have a Mac and love Mail.app lots and lots, but I can't be bothered paying for POP access to my hotmail. I tried out Yahoo mail and while the UI has serious issues with taking over keystrokes and the insanity of its virtual tabs interface, .e.g. you can close the inbox tab, but you can't close the home tab - why do I want the home tab, it's yahoo _mail_, not yahoo celeb news - it does have one advantage over hotmail. The banner ad is down the side of the screen thus taking up less of your precious widescreen's vertical space.

GMail also has serious UI problems (actions are performed by buttons and links and a drop-go?) but if I have to use webmail, GMail's is the least worst UI for me.

don't forget google finance

and google analytics.

flash is a serious resource hog (2D portal put my macbook in leafblower mode), but I find it is only flash ads that make my opera crash nowadays.

Bounced cheques

Now Jerry should be sure of not having his cheques bounce at the bodega.

Is there an icon for confused?

Sony and Apple

Have collaborated for a long time.

economic collapse?

yeah, like the factories of the industrial revolution. and the tractors and combine harvesters of the farming revolution.

Ev'rybody! Ev'rybody!

The only reason for flash is Homestar Runner (and Strongbad), but I can watch those on my MacBook. Other than that, the biggest annoyance I have with my iPhone is that the SMS app seems to take ages to load and I'd like to have quicker access to the WiFi on-off setting and the brightness setting.

The name: 4211?

Is there any logic to this name at all? Here's what I'm thinking...

Dixons marketing bod1: Hmm. We need a groovy name that will make the masses want this like they want an iPod.

Dixons marketing bod2: Yeah, but numbers sound business-like, we want businesses to buy them 10 at a time!

Dixons marketing bod1: I've got it! 4211. It sounds business-like and the first digit is the sum of the other three.

Dixons marketing bod2: Way-aye mon, that's canny maths. Let's celebrate at the pub!

why run unaltered?

Handsets are catching up in terms of power and resources available to the developer, but why would the goal be to have software run unaltered on both a big system (desktop/laptop) and a handset? The user interfaces will in many cases be completely different. In that case wouldn't it be better to have a smart server-side system that can push different class files/byte code (or whatever) out to the user depending on their client-side device (i.e. capabilities or user preference). The developer develops all his (or her) heavy duty work classes once, but can have multiple UIs available.

what if it was Steve Jobs

then if the fans fell out with the owner they could chant "who's the bastard in the black [turtleneck]"

more tax means lower dividends too

IANASB (I am not a stock broker), but aren't all these publicly owned energy companies the only thing keeping our pension funds going at the minute. making the companies pay more tax means they will be giving out smaller dividends, so your pension fund won't be worth as much. And lower profitability means people won't want to own the shares so much, so the price of the shares will go down.

not only that, they can go wherever they want

even bus lanes:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2475792/Google-Street-View-car-pulled-over-by-police-for-driving-in-bus-lane.html

bus lanes too

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2475792/Google-Street-View-car-pulled-over-by-police-for-driving-in-bus-lane.html

chip who?

Wasn't he called Trip Hawkins?

No word on who will be manufacturing these machines? Will they be EA-branded Foxconn/Asusteks or an alliance with Dell/HP/Alienware?

@adnim

"Microsoft expect us to trust them with all our computing now? A net-centric operating system which you have to be connected to ms servers to use. All ones actions within the OS monitored and logged. Well not for me thanks. This is a hackers dream, ms code has be owned by hackers from day one, how do they expect to secure this scenario?"

sounds very similar to XBox Live.

green?

Digital distribution will cut down the number of discs being manufactured, but then that takes more infrastructure hardware and more datacentre power.

Whatever happens, one day a storage medium will never have enough room.

HDD cache helping transfer large files?

If you are transferring a file larger than 32MB, I'd have thought the cache would be useless, better to stream straight through. The cache is there because often the data you want is the same as you got before, or very close to it. If you are reading a lot of small files all the time, or at least the same blocks, better to keep them in a buffer of fast memory and read that fast buffer instead of the relatively slow HDD.

Miss GB, UKIP and more

Miss Great Britain will be standing, as she did in Crewe and Nantwich, on a platform of better pay for soldiers.

As for the UKIP, they were the real Conservative party, favouring free markets, grammar schools, and all that good stuff as well as independence from the EU. However, their only MP at Westminster, Bob Spink, voted with the government in support of 42 days' dentention.

On the one hand, if Labour puts up a candidate they are giving Davis more publicity. That's one reason Clegg didn't get the LibDems to put up a candidate. On the other hand, Davis has challenged Labour to make the case for more intrusive government to actual ordinary voters and taxpayers, not MPs. If there isn't a Labour candidate, Davis can legitimately claim the government is abandoning the debate.

Finally, I am ashamed that my MP, Rev Dr Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, MP MLA, voted with the government. The DUP obviously has some shady deal in place to get more English money for NI or to get some policy changed. Paisley's wife is now Baroness Paisley of St Georges. Hopefully she will see sense and vote the bill down in the House of Lords.

Davis's move was certainly a stunt and probably has a lot to do with being in Cameron's shadow for the last two years, but if he wins his seat back I hope the Queen invites him to be PM.

very healthy engine, Andy

I just about manage to change my oil every 6000 miles or 6 months, and I should check it a bit more often too.

I don't have pablo honey, but in general I tend to prefer a band's first album to its second. e.g. An End Has a Start has three outstanding songs, but the album as a whole is nowhere near as good as The Back Room. The Zutons are an exception though, I liked Tired of Hanging Around just as much as Who Killed the...

usb

I can understand needing the 3.5mm jack for playback with portable devices, but why can't they use the USB on its own when plugged into a computer?