Posts by IanPotter

'Stop-gap' way to get Linux on Windows 8 machines to be issued

Oh good

I was starting to almost get blasé about buying hardware for running whatever I damn well please, back to checking compatibility of everything again. Marvelous..

UEFI itself is not a big problem (well not if you don't want to p2v a UEFI based Win2k8 system anyway) my works laptop is UEFI based. But having been bitten before by shonkey gear that doesn't follow the specs until I have evidence that I will be able to utilize the motherboard/laptop in whatever way I see fit I will not be buying.

Global strategic maple syrup reserves hit in Canadian mega-heist

Re: Mmmmm, delicious...

Nice, though I vote for French toast with bacon and maple syrup myself.

Reg readers scrap over ultimate bacon sandwich

Roll with it...

Surprised nobody from Scotland has brought up the Caledonian bread of choice: the morning roll

Even the local Greggs have given up punting the oblong "breakfast" rolls they used to punt bacon in and have started using the proper Scottish ones. They still don't do a haggis roll though...

Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Bauernfrühstück v bacon sarnie

Re: That isn't proper bacon

I think we need a Holy War icon...

Pentax K-01 16Mp APS-C hybrid camera review

Re: Tripod?

I agree with you to be honest, it's what I do already. Just think that for macro work on the tripod with live view was where I saw this being of most use, but you are right the dslr doesn't loose that and is more flexible.

As someone else said though, some people only want to use the arms length technique. I remember my cousin holding my K10D like that to take a pic of me and family for example and that didn't even have live view...

Tripod?

Having looked at one in Jessops I think that it'll be at its best on a tripod, then you can use the focus peaking to good effect. An articulated screen may have helped too. Personally I still prefer to hold a camera to my eye though.

Re: Rise of the Neo-Luddites

He has a point though, I checked the referenced post and your original in this thread was pretty much a copy and paste. It's great that you are happy with your kit but why are you reading reviews of new stuff just to sneer at it?

Fedora 17: Mm.. this stew of beefy source tastes just right

Re: …Unix disk space issues that were solved decades ago

Pretty much any *NIX I've used is just a bunch of packages not just Linux. Solaris has been going down this filesystem consolidation route for some time as well. In Sol 9 and 10 /bin is just a symlink to /usr/bin and from what I understand 11 has taken this further. Indeed one of the arguments I've seen in favour of this change is to increase compatibility across *NIXs with everything being found in the same place.

Note that I'm not sure I agree 100% with this, having /usr on a read only or remote filesystem has its place on many systems.

SpaceX does what it HASN'T done before: Dragon in close ISS flyby

Re: Economics of reusability

"I suspect real reuse won't really be possible until we have an easy way of getting in and out of orbit and can employ modified ship containers."

Mass Drivers! If you can chuck an aircraft off a carrier fast enough to get airborne with one imagine what you could do with a really big one, chuck a shipping container into a low orbit and use some sort of orbital tug to take it where you want it.

I'd talk to my patent attorney about this but he's outside right now after an airlock mishap...

Cameron's F-35 U-turn: BAE Systems still calls the shots at No 10

Re: F18 -seriously? (IanPotter)

"Again IIRC 2 of the main problems that led to the split was that the Rosbifs wanted longer range and the Frogs wanted multirole."

Well that and they needed a carrier capable design as well. Good sense as it turned out...

Re: F18 -seriously?

The modern F-18E/F Super Hornet first flew in 1995 which is actually quite recent by modern standards.These are not updated early airframes either, the E/F (F being the twin seat version, with the back seat being fully mission capable not just a trainer) but new built with a larger wing, longer fuselage, more powerful engines and modernised avionics.

It replaced a whole slew of other types in the US Navy (including the F14 Tomcat and A6 Intruder) saving them bucket loads in operating costs. Hell they even use them for inflight refueling using buddy packs and the G version adds electronic warfare capabilities.

Useful piece of kit really.

Rafael would also be useful as we could cross train and qualify with the French. What happened to the idea of sharing the carriers with them anyway, they're not going to buy the F35 so no cats kills that idea stone dead.

Samsung NX200 20.3Mp APS-C compact system camera

Much to like

The NX200 does look like an interesting choice, with a nice selection of compact primes (Sony take note!) making for a compact and portable kit.

The only downside I can see is the loss of the accessory port that the NX100 had and therefor no way to use the EVF that was available for that camera which does look like a retrograde step.

2011's Best... DSLRs

20 minute video recording

Though the fact the sdhc cards are formatted as FAT and therefor have a 4GB max file size may have something to do with it too...

Pentax range

The Ricoh takeover hasn't had any affect (so far) on the Pentax range. The two model entry (K100, K200, K-R, K-X) and enthusiast (k10d, k20d, K-7, K-5) range is pretty well established and a lot easier to grok than the myriad models Canon, Nikon and Sony have been throwing around of late.

One can only hope that we'll see some more lens announcements under Ricoh. I can heartily recommend the K-5 though, I got mine this time last year with the 18-135mm lens (upgrading from a K10D) and really like it. Pentax's range of compact primes has no equivalent in any other system either.

More than $60bn spunked on cyber-security in 2011

Most overuse of the prefix CYBER award goes to...

Cyber this, cyber that, cyber spending, cyber, CYBER...!!!###??

This is supposed to be an IT site, we know what sort of security you're referring to, why do you have to keep on bloody putting is such a redundant bloody prefix? I stopped reading after the fourth.

</rant>

Off to the pub to unwind now...

UN set to dump GMT for tech-friendly Atomic Time

Bi-annual bollocks

I wish someone would explain to me how moving the clocks forward another hour would improve tourism. I mean who is saying "oh, I'd go to Britain in the winter if only the sun didn't go down so early" You'd have thought the weather would be more off putting.

And if doing so would save us x million annually on heating/lighting why isn't the rest of the world campaigning for it too? Surely we could solve global warming and world poverty if we all put our clocks forward 2 hours.

Solar power boom 'unsustainable', says Gov

I've got one of those in my flat

The little old lady downstairs...

Apple shifts Lossless Audio Codec to open source

Re: There's always a motive

"Or Webkit which many of us browse with, on Mac and 'nix"

And is originally a fork of the KDE khtml rendering engine...

Updating to Windows Phone 7.5

Plug it into a comuter?

Well I suppose it would make the trip to work more amusing...

Windows 8 ribbon entangles Microsoft

RE: Improved Keyboard Shortcuts

100+ additional shortcuts? Do you get a space cadet keyboard to go with that?

"Function foo? Certainly, that's shift+alt+cntrl+super+meta+coke bottle... No use your nose man!"

Traumatic scenes for car geeks as forum falls over

RE: Consultants & TVR's

At least your Skoda probably starts reliably, doesn't leak, has working electrics and on the odd occasion it does run doesn't need followed by a fuel tanker...

Lossless music goes High Street

RE: Dance music in FLAC

Tend to use Massive Attack's Angel as a stress tester myself but for similar reasons. Bad source copy or equipment quite easily turns the cymbals to mush.

RE: Waste of space

Aye, but it is my time and space to waste so why should it bother you? This sort of inverted snobbery is nearly as common as the audiophile version and frankly just as tedious. I use flac as my archival format as it can be easily transcoded with no loss of fidelity, except that inherent to the target format anyway. Vbr mp3 is fine for my car/train listening but I use the flacs in the house as they are there, in most cases I have the cd anyway but would have to dig it out.

RE: Prices starting at £9.99

Shame the actual price is £8.99 then and for 24 bit flac too which is higher than cd quality. Not bad deal really. Would need to know the sample rate too though, cpu on my Squeezebox Classic runs out of puff at 48KHz though I think Squeeze Centre is sane enough to down sample if necessary.

They've only got about seven or eight titles available though, including both 16 and 24-bit, not going to stop me buying cds and ripping yet then. Not through choice though, most of my cd collection has been opened once, ripped and then has to be bloody stored. Can only think of a few times when I've looked at the sleeve notes for any reason. Now if you want to sell me the vinyl edition and give me a flac copy too then we can talk...

London rioters should 'loose all benefits'

No, Escape from New York

Or in this case London. Lets just build a sodding great wall right round the bloody place and herd in all the bankers (not hard, already there), politicians (ditto), royalty (same), and all the rioting chavs and let them fight it out. Winners get to eat the losers! We can sell the TV rights to the Septics and pay off the national debt in the process...

Nokia snubs UK with N9

@StrictlySocial

Shan't. Might have got an N9m not interested in WinPho and since decent feature phones are now like rocking horse poo it like like 'droid for me. SE Neo looks nice...

Blackberry QNX phone details leaked

You'll be lucky

The success of the current "charge every day" phones seems to have convinced the manufacturers that we're happy with that and so their concentrating on upping the performance while not letting battery life get any lower.

The obvious exception was Symbian, and look where that is now...

Canon EOS 600D 18Mp DSLR

RE: Wireless Flash

Ditto Pentax

DHS scraps nukes-in-cargo-containers scan plan

RE It will happen one day

"So when it happens how will the greedy, arrogant and racist western nations respond ?"

Gee, I'll take "bomb the shit out of the usual suspects" for 10 points Bob!

UK's first Stealth fighter in successful catapult test

RE: @Yag

"The French did not give us the codes for the Argentinian Exocet missiles."

They certainly offered some more practical help by refusing to sell the Argentineans any more and helping us identify and tie up any that were on the open market. Destruct codes are probably largely an urban legend, not like you get much time to experiment when one of the suckers punches over your horizon...

'There's too much climate change denial on the BBC'

RE: Of course the Earth isn't doomed!

Harsh, but fair...

RE: Science

"Poking Daily Wail readers with sticks isnt science"

Yeah! Totally futile, they don't even blink. Cattle prods now...

RE: Some proof of that

"If the BBC could actually find some credible scientists who had problems with climate change science then it might not be quite so as infuriating."

Freeman Dyson?

News Corp kills BSkyB bid amid 'difficult climate'

Sky Phews

Of course, now Murdoch pulled out of the bid there is no reason for him to continue the charade of "arms lengthing" Sky News. I think we can safely predict their editorial standpoint on this issue...

Sunday Times accused of blagging Gordon Brown's records

RE: Bill Hicks

Pity both the News Quiz and Have I Got News For You are on hiatus really. The satirists should be having a field day.

If the bridge fits...

>And if they really thought the Rebekah Brooks was to blame, why invite her to parties, attend

>her wedding etc etc?

Gee, maybe because Screws International has too much influence on British politics and keeping your enemies closer is a well know tactic? Same reason Murdoch could make any sitting PM fetch and carry.

>Gordon just can't accept that he lost he election because he was cr*p, not because of a

>Murdoch conspiracy.

What the one when no one got an absolute majority, speaks volumes to the crapness of the rest of them really.

Brewer bashes Beeb over anti-beer bias

RE: Neil Morrisey

Yes, of his own beer. Talk about product placement...

Pentax Q takes mini system camera crown

F11?

The kit prime is F1.9, in depth of field terms the crop of the sensor will add probably 5 stops making subject isolation difficult true. However it also means you will be able to shoot wide open in low light and still get (for example) the whole group of people you are trying to shoot in focus. Swings and roundabouts.

Personally I've been looking for a compact lightweight camera to carry all the time for taking opportunistic shots mostly of landscapes/city scenes where shallow depth of field really isn't often a problem. If the image resource samples at medium to high isos stand up then this could be very useful. A 28 or 35mm equiv lens would add even more attractiveness.

Interested to see what the street price ends up as and IQ with the final firmware (the Image Resource samples are with a pre-release firmware)

Spielberg flung Fox from Transformers 3

RE: Dumb as a rock

Not a bad description of the Transformers franchise really. Or any Michael Bay film in fact.

How to choose the right screen size

RE Broadcast Dimensions

My old Toppy was doing that for a while, turned out a firmware update + factory reset had set its scart output back to 4:3. Have you checked your Virgin box is set to the right aspect?

Fujifilm Finepix X100 APS-C camera

Pricing?

So Amazon are asking £899 for the Fuji already. The E-PL2 + 14-42mm is £480, Panasonic 20mm £320 and the VF-2 viewfinder (for those of us who prefer a vf) is £196 all from Amazon which comes to £996. Now I accept that you don't have to buy all that but the build quality of the X100 is also much higher than the Oly having handled both and I've already said I've already got one camera system in my slr, if I'm going away for the weekend I'll take that instead whereas the Fuji is pretty much a grab and go solution.

If I can't bring myself to pay for the Fuji I'm more likely to fall back to the XZ-1 but if you want the VF-2 you're still pushing towards £600 and trading off a lot in sensor size/performance.

Must resist tech lust

So want this.

Even with a pancake prime on it my slr is a bit bulky for carrying around every day but this would fit in my day bag just fine and the big sensor gives the sort of iso performance you would hope for. The sort of shots I've been missing have mostly been early morning/evening landscape scenes during commuting and this would do the job perfectly.

I've considered the various micro system cameras but with the zoom kit lenses on them they lose a lot of their compactness and if you are going to only carry a single prime what's the point of having the interchangeable lens? The focal length of the fuji seems a good compromise to me too, the Sony choice is 16mm f2.8 which I don't find as attractive and the u4/3 sensor doesn't offer as good high iso performance.

Of course carrying a £1k camera around every day would take a bit of bravery...

The Sandy Bridge Hackintosh

and

Lightroom in my case, I like the workflow and OSX gives me decent colour management. If Adobe ever port Lightroom to Linux I'd drop OSX in a hot second.

The best sci-fi film never made: Also-rans take a bow

Films never made

I could have sworn "Who Goes There" was the source for The Thing/Thing from Another World though...

RAF Eurofighters make devastating attack – on Parliament

spEak You're bRanes

"Wonder why all this American-philes who spend so much time rubbishing their own country do not just move there"

That's at least the second time this week someone has has used words to that effect. The signal to noise ratio from the commentards is quickly approaching the Have Your Say level, at least usenet readers had kill files.

Pint, because I need one...

Oxfordshire cops switch speed cameras back on

RE Law abiding motorists

"have nothing to fear from speed cameras. Only the ones who can't pay attention to their speed."

You try driving into the setting/rising sun and be able to even see the speedo without taking your eyes off the road long enough to adjust. Now try this on the M8 (which runs east/west) during rush hour. I'm damn sure I'd rather use my situational awareness on the surroundings, but maybe you can use the force?

"Drivers don't even know to stop when the light turns red."

You hit the centre pedal until the screeching stops. (sorry mum)

"They seem to think no laws apply to them."

Laws apply to everyone (even cyclists) it doesn't necessarily stop them being bloody stupid though.

I am/am not The Stig

"Mobile speed cameras though, unmarked (so as not to trigger avoidance actions), that works."

Depends what you mean by "works" really, a retrospective fine hasn't prevented anything. Maybe you mean it stops them doing it again, because no one has ever got more than one ticket have they?

Libya fighting shows just how idiotic the Defence Review was

RE Upgrade the avionics

Ooh touchy, and I'm sure I was being satirical about the Rafale not the Hornet, I'm not sure even the American export people could stop the French exporting whatever electronics they like. Though having read my contract with a certain American Corporation I wouldn't put it past them to try.

Still if you want to argue situational awareness why is the Typhoon a single seater? If we're going to have to rip out and replace the avionics on the F35 once we buy it then I imagine we'll be only able to afford one or two, I imagine that'll make the carriers only slightly less of a laughing stock.

RE Quite right

The F-18E first flew in 1995 so not really 1970s vintage and really should have been given a new designation as it is a hugely upgraded design rather an upgrade to the existing airframe.

RE @Andy

I think the real problem here is that it is over specialised being a pure air superiority fighter. Which is fine if all you care about is air defence or have sufficient funds to be able to support multiple types of specialised types. However with ever increasing costs and tightening funds operating a single multirole type is more efficient. Giving Typhoon multirole capability makes theoretical sense here but is going to take a long time and inflate the costs even more.

Note that the US Navy have taken the same view and retired their F14 air superiority and A6 attack aircraft in favour of the F18. Hornet or Rafael would be a good choice for the UK as both are designed for carrier operations so pilot training and posting could be further streamlined and both are designed for long over water operations which is important for UK air defence. Ultimately it is all about how many capabilities you are getting for your money.