* Posts by Chads

23 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Aug 2007

Kids LIE about age on Facebook, gasps Brit ad watchdog

Chads

A friend of mine recently related (in a Facebook post) how she'd had to patiently explain to her 11-year-old why he had to delete the Facebook account he'd created and why he couldn't have one until he hits 13. Ended up saying how proud she was of him when he understood it all. Parenting at work.

Huge erections - or lots of small ones. Checkmate, mast NIMBYs

Chads

Re: So much infrastructure for so little reception...

You mean like the one here..

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/369229

We developed this for Orange, but the additional cost over a standard tower meant that not very many were ever sold. The palm trees were a bit more successful

FaceTime now on patent troll list

Chads

Prior art in Europe?

As the article points out, SMS has been able to do this in Europe for years. It seems to be the case (reading more than just the abstract) that in the US you have to (or had to) append a domain name when sending an SMS to a phone on a different network and the invention appears to be a database to determine which carrier a particular number belongs to (something the carriers must already have had surely otherwise cross-network calling wouldn't work) and the use of an IP network to connect the two telcos, something for which European prior art must surely exist.

In any event the age of the company screams TROLL!! Given that the patent system is supposed to protect inventors, why is it even possible to buy patents? As soon as a patent is sold it no longer protects the inventor.

Hmm, I think I'll order an iPad Mini on Amazon ... Oh no I won't

Chads

Re: Both products are a big fail.

"mmm, personally I really can't see the point of any tablet"

Fair enough - you don't have a use for one. I'll be using mine tonight as an adjunct to the laptop because it gives me multitouch control on faders when I'm mixing the band tonight from wherever I want to listen in the venue... and yes it is Apple because that's what the software's available for and frankly the price pales into insignificance compared to the rest of my audio system

The Big Debate: OK gloomsters, how can the music biz be FIXED?

Chads

Yes because "artists" are the same as the rest of us and deserve to be paid for their time and effort. In my current show I'm on stage for 2 hours. That's what you're apparently paying for. What you don't see is that the show means a 14-hour day for 12 people with something like £25,000-worth of kit.

Product development, market research, capital investment, advertising, training (practice, practice, practice!). Every industry has to cover these costs. Music is no different.

Major London problem hits BT broadband across southeast

Chads

Re: I'm on VM

Never had any problem with VM myself, however I did have difficulty responding to a telephone survey the other day. The question was 'would you recommend VM to a friend?' The response was along the lines of:

If it's the ex-Telewest network then Yes

If it's the ex-NTL network then probably not

If it's unbundled BT circuits then all bets are off

Strangely the survey-droid couldn't cope with this and asked the question again

European Parliament prepares for crucial ACTA vote

Chads

Re: Jail Time needed

Tricky to respond to this one because some of what you say has merit.

"ALL of copyright is a dangerous fiction. There is no proper way to square copyright with the public good in the age of computer networks."

This argues that no intellectual output of anybody has any value. The end result of this attitude would be no art, no published research and no new software since the writers would have no means to support themselves. If you go down this road then there would be no 'standing on the shoulders of giants' because nobody would publish anything.

"The overall value of currently copyright-able material would radically increase if copyright became illegal."

I call bollocks. The overall value would tend to zero. Who's going to spend their time, effort and money creating anything if it's then going to be free for anybody's use?

"The tiny handful of artists that actually make a living from copyrighted material often make it another way."

so they don't make a living from copyrighted material then?

"The vast majority of artists *pay* more for copyrights than they ever have any hope of earning."

Not if they're producing original material. Mashups don't count.

"Most working musicians likely make their money touring or teaching."

True, but that doesn't make it right.

"For the sake of an Eagles' "Don Henley" being able to bully the domain name "DonHenley.com" from the original owner (named Don Henley) and claim a disproportionate share of proceeds from the world's music, we financially (and musically!) impoverish nearly everyone else."

True. I had a vaguely entertaining video pulled due to Hotel California being played in the background which had no chance of reducing their sales, but the Eagles are famous for this attitude.

"The world is about 100 Trillion Dollars in debt"

..to whom exactly? This is one of the things that bothers me about modern capitalism. Every country seems to have massive amounts of debt, but where are the creditors? It can't be only Germany!

From further up the comments, 'Think about the poor creatives', spare a thought for the other creatives that you've never heard of because they only have a few thousand fans. There are always going to be a few headline-grabbers who manage to evade their taxes, that's the sase in any industry (and at least Jimmy Carr seems to have seen the error of his ways: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18531008 )

Copyfighters jumpstart MPs' probe into Blighty's IP law

Chads

Re: Moving Beyond Copyright

What makes is 'his' picture is that he was the one to apply the paint (which he paid for) to the canvas (which he paid for) using the brushes (which..) using his creative talent.

If you're a developer then your work depends on all of those people before you who have developed microelectronics and programming languages without whom you would have no job (or at least not one doing what you are doing)

The work is the creative act. There is very little that we do now that is not built on the actions of previous people. That does not automatically mean that it is of zero value.

440m2 screen has fewer pixels than iPad

Chads
Boffin

..subject of "Wind Engineering"

Of course it has. Another quick bit of maths says it's going to get something like 90 tonnes of wind load on it in a design storm. That'll be one reason for piling then.

US Supremes: GPS tracking requires warrant

Chads

Has the article got it backwards?

"The police obtained a court order for the use of such a device, but were a day late in installing it"

seems fine to me - they installed the device a day after getting the warrant. If on the other hand it was supposed to read "The police obtained a court order for the use of such a device, but were a day late in obtaining it" then that would be wrong

Apple's new Final Cut Pro X 'not actually for pros'

Chads

If the Pros don't like it they'll shop elsewhere

A couple of professional editors post and get voted down? what's going on there?

I've listen to most of the linked podcast and from the sound of it this release will not go into pro shops except for compatibility with incoming projects. There's just too much missing.

I'm an FCE7 user (not a Pro) who's been thinking about upgrading to the full FCP. My problem now is that:

- Multi camera tools have gone from FCPX. That was my primary reason to want to upgrade.

- Even if I was prepared to take the risk and buy into FCP version 7, I can't because Apple have withdrawn it. This also means (for the 'you can always keep using FCP7' posters) that if you're an established FCP7 shop and you want to expand then you're stuffed because you can't buy any additional licences.

When companies refused to migrate to Vista due to compatibility issues, MS allowed a 'downgrade' to XP. This FCPX situation is almost identical.

This release will be good news for Adobe and Avid

Intel staff 'fired' in ring piece stunt

Chads

Plausible but..

Ok so it's doable, but given what a cynical bunch we are on the interwebs, wouldn't you have it covered by more than one amateur cameraman if you did it for real?

Google says ad blockers will save online ads

Chads

Another vote against Shell

I do use AdBlock generally but with an exception for ElReg.

However..

a few more ads with the annoyance level of that bloody Shell one and it will get turned back on.

GSHP: The green tech even carbon sceptics will like

Chads

Heat pumps

Back in the late 80's British Gas research labs were looking at using heat pumps for domestic heating, though those were driven by natural gas-powered internal combustion engines (in a very well sound-insulated box!) Never understood why they didn't make it it to customers really - they were a hell of a lot more efficient than using the combustion heat directly. On second thoughts I do get it - British Gas pushing tech to reduce gas consumption?

Granada to start losing analog telly tomorrow

Chads

@JasonW

Half right.

I'd call the guys that do the final switchovers technicians, but we've got the Engineers who designed the antenna systems (currently Caldbeck, Emley Moor, Black Hill and several others) up the masts doing installation checking and tuning.

All of the sites have to be completed in a certain order so that all regions get continuous coverage.

Meanwhile, us Structural Engineers have to make sure that the masts can take the new antennas without collapsing in a heap under the load.

It's a big job and there's only a handful of companies doing the work so it can't be done overnight.

@Simon Hobson

Emley Moor has recently been giving me major headaches with the new antennas. There's some great history of the site at http://tx.mb21.co.uk/emley/index.php

US music publishers sue online lyrics sites

Chads

@Steven Jones

"On another point, all those amateur musicians who have recorded covers of copyrighted songs on YouTube without authorisation are all technically in breach (as, of course, is Youtube)."

Asked the PRS about this one recently before posting a couple of cover version videos. They told us that they have a licensing agreement with social networking sites which allows for publication of cover versions, as long as we own the recording copyright.

MySpace was the only site specifically mentioned, but I'd guess YouTube have a similar licence.

Thom Yorke dismisses net-only album paradigm

Chads

seems to have worked

Had to laugh at Lily Allen on Big fat quiz of the year saying that Radiohead were 'sending the wrong message to kids wanting to get into the music industry'

Didn't Thom Yorke say they'd already made more money off this than their previous releases?

Wonder how much more Lily's record company have made than she has.

@Frazer:

You don't need music industry clout to get the pressing plants and distributors to work for you. You've just got to be able to pay 'em (though I guess that can amount to the same thing)

Red Dwarf even more dwarfish

Chads

@Keith T

But which Kochanski? Gotta be Claire Grogan

Anyway it's a small off-duty Czechoslovakian traffic warden

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard - Finder

Chads

Transparency..

..is an unmitigated pain in the arse. It's the thing that most annoyed me upgrading Logic Studio. Why do I need to see what's underneath the window I'm trying to work in?

One button mice? What's that about? My device of choice is a 5- button trackball with useful stuff on every one. Why Apple persist in supplying 1 button with their machines is beyond me.

Anyhow, looks like I won't be upgrading until one of my application upgrades forces me to.

Living with robots: The $3.5m DARPA Urban Challenge

Chads

what are the missions?

I've had this feed running in the background most of the day. It's interesting but a bit lacking in detail - they have 3 missions split into sub-missions, but no information is around to say exactly what these sub-missions involve. The only obvious one is the parking which would be a bit more entertaining if the car park actually had any other cars parked in it.

I wonder whether the MIT team will lose points on power consumption - the sensors and cluster are consuming about 3.5 kW which is a bit ridiculous when some of the other competitors are managing on a couple of quad cores.

UK gov advisor proposes 'licence to smoke'

Chads

It'll never fly

The only way they could enforce it is as a licence to buy tobacco.

So. 20 quid ferry across to the continent once a year to stock up (legally) and UKgov lose all that lovely tax revenue

Apple to roll out Mac OS X 10.5 next week

Chads

@Danny

"Lets see Apple release an OS that runs nearly everything and see if they can manage to get it to run as stable as windows does"

No no no!

The major reason that I run my studio on OSX is because of the stability which comes (in part) from dictating the hardware. I know that the system has had thousands of hours of testing on the same hardware combination that I've got. I cannot afford a crash in the middle of a session.

I do run 4 different general purposes OSs almost every day - OSX, Windows, Linux, RISC OS. I do this because none of them are the best at everything. They all have their strengths and weaknesses and I just use the best one for each task.

"How long have Apple been in the business and still can't get more than 10% global market share?"

So what? they're still in the business, still profitable, who gives a monkey's if they're not the biggest in the market? They're still providing me with what I need. So long as they keep enough of the market to stay in business that's good enough for my purposes.

The Return of iTuneski

Chads

@Caspian

Agree with the other points but you missed off..

The others:

5. Pay the creators

If allofmp3 paid a royalty collection agency which actually passed the money on there wouldn't be a problem.

It's true (@b shubin) that recording costs have fallen (~3500ukp for the last album I was involved in, funded by the artists) and distribution costs are virtually zilch, but promotion is still hugely expensive and allofmp3 pays absolutely nothing back to cover it.

Please remember that you are not just ripping off the fat cats of the Big 3 labels here. You're also ripping off the small labels and independent artists. The majors still have the money to survive this kind of thing. The small operators don't.