Posts by Nick Mallard

Brit teachers are getting AI sidekicks to help with marking and lesson plans

Re: Bullshit

I dunno - I mean yeah they're mostly together, but show some of them an Apple device and they turn into full blown magpie-sheep hybrids.

Forgive me, father, for I have used an ad-blocker on news websites...

Johnstone Press sites are even worse - they "work" with adblockers installed but the sites are literally designed around the ad spaces, meaning with no ads the whole site looks badly designed, disorganised and difficult to distinguish sections. I'm sure they hire the laziest web developers in the world.

Opera debuts free VPN built into desktop browser

Have you tried reading the readme or anything? The bit that shows you how to enable the VPN option at all, or the bits on installation that ask if you want to import exactly those bits from your existing browser? Obviously not!

Did Kim Dotcom invent 2-factor authentication? Er, not exactly...

Frankly with his track record anything he says should be taken with a pinch of salt. He hasn't changed, he's still a cheating, bullshitting moron with no correct claim to anything since he first found out about the Internet.

Council IT bod in the dock for flogging scrap work PC parts

Perhaps it was just 5 old Crapple Macs sold to some silly sheeple? :D

4chan founder Moot threatens site for using his handle

Moot point indeed

perhaps someone should point moot.it at IRC if it thinks it's going to have any claim to "putting conversation first". Been there, doing that, and probably far more successfully than they ever will.

How I learned to stop worrying and love SSDs

Pricing

"You can find a 128GB V+100 kit for under £120 on eBay"

Dammit, where man, where? :D

Prices are just going up at the moment though, making them that little bit less attractive :( Struggling to find the money for a 60/64gb unit!

Re the above comment about 32GB being enough for win7 + basic apps - I've struggled to get my existing install below 45gb, with all of the user information, page files, temp files etc on a mechanical drive. 32gb is an almost certain no.

Zero-power LCD aims to reduce paper use

Etch a Sketch

Call me old fashioned but Etch a Sketch and similar cheap things (My son has one) do exactly the same with NO power useage.

UK etailer calls self 'the last place you want to go'

May be old but someone has to point out how daft it is

As above. It's probably supposed to be a clever parody of the old joke "it's always in the last place you look" - because you won't keep looking after you've found it. But it doesn't work. Dixons and Saatchi and Saatchi are falling foul of Crap English Syndrome.

On the positive side : lot's of hits from people wanting to point and laugh at their moronism.

The the flipside : Ideally Dixon's will want them to go "oooh" at their low prices.

Low prices? Heh. Couple of "deals" and loss leaders on the front page and the rest is overpriced rubbish.

All ironic of course, when you bear in mind when they did have stores. Dixons would be the first place you'd go to find a TV or something then go somewhere decent/reasonable/trustworthy to buy it.

Conficker smites Oxford Brookes network

because?

Frankly there's no need for such harsh actions. They can safely continue to do as they are as long as they brought up to scratch in the first place, and kept that way. These colleges and universities have their own technical staff - if they are not keeping their network and subsystems up to date, they shouldn't be doing that job; being able to Facebook and play World of Warcraft at the same time is not a skill these establishments want to be looking for in their recruitment process.

Windows 7 versus Snow Leopard — The poison taste test

@ Simon

Go 64bit, might as well make use of it. Besides, it's time we killed off 32bit entirely >:| One of my biggest Windows gripes, even as a distinctly anti-Apple person.

Anti-apple as though I am, I do love MacOSX. Windows 7 though? Lovely - it's a mile ahead of Vista, but that's not difficult. XP? Set up properly, and on any modern machine it's certainly quicker than XP. Is it faster than XP on older machines? Depends how lucky you get with drivers, many of them (ATI noteably) have cut support off at the neck for some older hardware. This is where the downsides to PC's come in thick and fast, having to support all these types of hardware, and Windows is still doing a ruddy fantastic job of managing it.

I know, I can hear Linux in the background making lots of shouting noises "Me! Me! Look over here!".

Long given up trying to compare them as an OS vs OS scenario - two different systems in use in different places, they do cross often and usually play well.

Few important things to note and/or summarise:

1. All Hail VMWare.

2. I'm all out of cookies. Someone pop over to Asda for me please :)

3. Re the "can run Windows on a Mac but not MacOSX on a PC" - is the typical strictness of an Apple "use me and die licence" or EULA as they like to call it, a feature or a problem. It's only ever going to be a problem to PC users wanting to run MacOSX without having to run a Mac. Legally. We (PC users) can only really hope, a choice is never bad and it would be nice to have one other than Windows or Linux.

Microsoft to bomb Europe with IE-free Windows 7

so no IE...

and how do we therefore go about downloading our favoured browser, whether its IE, Firefox, Opera or whatever floats your boat? And if it's not IE, assuming we have to get it from Windows Update (if you can get to your router settings to set anything up without a browser) that means we need to download 2 browsers to get the one we want?

iRiver P7 8GB portable media player

Very nice but more importantly...

who's the young lady in rubber in one of the pics? ;)

Microsoft: Don't rush to download Windows 7 RC

So whats wrong with it?

Too many moronic bashers on here today starting with Vincent.

Actually try it. I've had it running, and running well on Asus EEEpcs, it runs wonderfully on my 1gb el-crappo E machines laptop and a space Celeron D box with half a gig of ram. It runs better than XP. It runs a hell of a lot better than Vista. It's reliable, the beta's were solid for me and the RC is now my main OS installation. I will indeed be buying it on release.

Why whinge about it cutting out every 2 hours after March? That's a long time of free OS useage which is beyond what they need to do, but probably necessary to help cut out the mental images Vista carved in.

It's more intuitive than OSX and does just as good a job on a far larger array of hardware installations. It's outright better than Vista and they've finally sorted out 90% of the issues they had with it. It's a step forward from XP however I'm still annoyed we're stuck with 32bit, which is wholly unnecessary however they need to drag money out of people in all places possible.

So, a good step forward by MS as far as I'm concerned. If you're going to bash it, do so constructively, and not just for the sake of it.

Dell prices up XPS 435 gaming beast

how much?

That's great if you're not at all shot in the wallet department and don't have the ability/a friend with the ability to build one. £1700 for the "base" system? That's almost Apple-like in gargantuan pricing schemes for what isn't exactly a completely top end system.

Anyone actually priced up the components separately? I would be looking to pay that amount of money if it had a good couple of TB storage, SSD boot drive, 4870X2 or similar in the graphics department and some goodies thrown in.

Busted! Conficker's tell-tale heart uncovered

It's not THAT intelligent

Yeah, I admire how well it's done and all that. But it's not that intelligent is it?

It stops AV packages from installing, running and updating.

Change the name of the package and watch it fly. ren norton.exe fluffypants.exe and it'll run just fine. Wont update, granted, but it's still a lapse in the intelligence there :)

Microsoft claims Firefox- and Chrome-whopping IE8 speeds

Release date?

When do they intend to release this version of IE8 I wonder? Will it arrive as a beta? Or will we just have to wait and see for ourselves, as clearly the current versions of IE8 available aren't even close in anything they've mentioned so far, even compared to IE6 in some cases.

17in MacBook boasts bloody big battery

Sense?

That you're able to upgrade something like the memory without worry of recourse, but why not the one thing that you're most likely to replace in a portable computer - the battery?

Rather typical of Apple, but on the positive side it means I can continue selling PC DDR2/3 memory at grossly inflated prices just by slapping "Apple Compatible", quite correctly, in the listing.

Getting better, but Apple need to start considering the needs of their users rather than just using them to line their pockets. Unfortunately most of their users are more than happy to blindly do so.

Western Digital My Book World Edition 1TB NAS box

Reliability

Let's just hope this isn't as absolutely shoddy and moronically firmware'd as the rest of the MyBook range. I wouldn't mind if they put hands up, admitted there was a serious problem and got on with fixing it but rather the "ignore it and it'll all go away" attitude prevails.

Shame really, I like WD hardware, just the MyBook range has suffered these issues for so long (network/NAS permissions related problems) that I'd be waiting for people to use these on-masse before I even considered buying. Wouldn't think twice about using one for USB connectivity though.

Windows 7 public beta end date named

@ Neil

re the Maxtor drives: that's just Maxtor I'm afraid, hardly the most reliable of drives.

Google kills iPhone-optimized iGoogle

And they expected what, exactly?

Different terms to everyone else, for Google to continue running a service at cost to themselves especially for them? Even more so when they've got their own hardware doing quite well - why would, or even why should they continue to do something special for a competitor?

Looking at that help message board makes me laugh though, they all believe they have a god given right to special treatment. It was nice while it lasted for them, it's time to move on.

Which is the best mainstream gaming GPU?

ATI

Would definitely side with the 4670 for midrange oomph. Generally better performance levels, driver support is better (slightly ironically!) and you've better IQ and features to boot.

Apple swings DMCA at Hackintosh maker

Green eyed monster?

Well, it's not entirely surprising that others want a go at it. After all, it's a fairly decent OS and lots of people enjoy using it on non Apple hardware, illegally. Apple would do well to open (sic) it up a little but as was mentioned, they've absolutely no requirement to do so. Monopolistic? No. At least no more so than MS.

And this is coming from someone who thinks Apple are the world of the devil. Well, in a sense they are, hence the icon. But disrespecting a companies rights and conditions isn't on, really.

Apple claims MacBooks are world's greenest laptops

The Worlds....

Most Bullshit Using Company?

"The World's Best Laptop"

"The World's Best Phone"

"The World's Thinnest Laptop"

"The World's Greenest Laptop"

Spot the pattern. Their marketing department is the most unscrupulous bunch of gits I know in IT, and that includes Microsoft! (Vista Ready!) and they're certainly happy to through around a lot of outright fabrications, yet for some reason get away with it constantly.

I really hope they get knocked down a peg or two soon.

Formula One kinetic energy recovery rigs debut

Lots of F1 experts here!

As the title says - few people here appear to know more than the guys in F1 do!

And of course people who don't seem to understand it at all. It's been mentioned already, in laymans terms you press a button, you get 6 and a half seconds of boosted power ideal for overtaking manouvres, something F1 has been lacking due to Ferrari not allowing it and otherwise lack of driver talent/will.

We already know KERS can be dangerous, BMW's mechanics certainly do :D - as for flywheels spinning off out the car - they're no more dangerous than any other part of flying car, by the time it's external to the car (which, depending on the location could be next to impossible) it'd be about as dangerous as decapitated driver's little finger flying into the crowd.

"Mummy Mummy, I've got Robert Kubica's pinky!"

"Put it in your pocket son, it'll be worth a fortune on eBay!"

KERS is *not* about F1 going green, that's not something likely to happen for a good few years yet.

Pioneer DVR-116D multi-format DVD rewriter

IDE?

And why on gods earth are these things still being made with IDE connectivity? I've not built a system for an age with anything IDE in it :/

Apple MacBook Air stays skinny, gains beefier specs

@ Philip

Wasn't specifically a dig at fanboys in that fashion - I meant a large proportion of sales of these and similar Apple products are to people who generally like Apple hardware; naturally I'm not one of them.

It is a huge improvement on the original as I said, although still isn't quite "there yet". I'd certainly not say it's a bomb, and I'd also like to agree with Chris C regarding currency - the rates have gone completely haywire, I can only assume it's something to do with the current banking crisis. (Can tell I've been playing games too long, I kept wondering where the Y is in crisis!). Annoying really, it's been nice buying the cheap $5 games on Steam for £2.50! ;)

Getting there, but there's still no cigar.

If those were the release specs, It might have been worth a buy - for £800. Anything more and you're just urinating away money which could have been spent saving a bank. Money is still better spent on one of those new Samsung efforts and put up with something that's a couple of millimetres thicker.

Keep trying, Apple, and one day you might actually have a product worth buying to people that are neither mere fanboys or want something more than just a fashion accessory.

Apple gets first Air-look MacBooks from factories - analyst

Shocking

Wonder if these would be just as prone to the electrical shocks? :D

A third of Vista PCs downgraded to XP

Let's not forget something here...

Vista needs a decent system to run, no doubt about that. On a high end machine, it'll walk all over XP in gaming performance and feature (but even I will admit the feature's aren't really worth the hassle.)

I, personally, get on well with Vista, and experience better performance than I get from XP with the same reliability. The only crash I've had was down to Creative's dodgy drivers.

This brings me onto something to slap the apple/linux people around the face a bit.

Think a little, if you will, about how much work MS have to put into Windows rather than Apple do, or Linux.

Microsoft. PCs. That's a HUGE amount of hardware combinations they have to cater for - literally tens of thousands more combinations than you get with Apples.

Apple. You get a range of hardware, and don't really go outside of it. The mainboards remain the same, the processors remain the same, the memory and controllers remain the same. Apple, have it very very easy indeed.

Linux: Yeah, it's the same hardware base as Microsoft - but instead of a single (albeit bloated) company, has the support of Open Source and thousands upon thousands of well meaning geeks around the world. Something not work? Someone's bound to have fixed it or done it before.

This isn't a post to point out how great I think Vista is - you love it or hate it. I use what's best for me, and in performance terms, that's Vista. Of course a lot of that is that I'd not want to suffer XP64 for 8gb of ram, it's far worse than Vista for support or compatibility.

I just feel it's worth remembering now and then just how hard MS have to work to make the average PC go.

An avatar to celebrate the open source community though, and everything it stands for.

Nvidia waves goodbye to chipsets?

Reliability?

Adnim? Craig? Reliability? nForce?

Someone's been passing around the wacky baccy!

Frankly, it's about time. Nvidia gifted AMD a lease of life, ironically, with the near-perfect nForce2 motherboard, and ever since has been providing chipsets of mediocre quality, low reliability, mostly marketed at people who for some reason really, really wanted SLI compatibility and those who would sacrifice reliability for performance.

Bring forth the Intel chipsets and a little bit of sensibleness.

Apple optimistic it will sell 10 million iPhones by year's end

Ivan

Well, thats the sort of atitude that pushes the difference between the average fanboy and people actually in the know.

I'd rather hear valued opinions from more sensible folks such as Chad H. I agree - lots of people are jumping on the bandwagon and rightly so. Apple are usually right up there with ideas - they're just rarely implemented too well.

But for further information - I'm also writing this on my Sony. Doesn't take long, the handwriting recognition is a godsend. I've never been a fan of short txt msging 4 kids and prefer a good, properly written sentence. Ok, point taken; writing like I do ;)

That many daft people?

Exactly as my title states - are there really that many people blind/daft enough to hit that figure? There's god knows how many better phones out there, but I suppose rather alike most iPods and Macs themselves, people will always be happy to fork out for inferior products at vastly inflated costs - for the sake of a label on the hardware.

Out of the thousands of people I deal with on a daily basis, only one has had the balls to admit to owning an iPhone - and even then he announced it was still under a 14 day return to O2 contract thing which he was about to do and change for a Sony Ericsson w960i.

Apple need to come down off their soapbox, and people really need to stop buying for the sake of a label.

eBay: 'We will lower listing fees'

Oh dear

It's clear some of the moronic buyers are here!

"IMHO it should go even further. eBay should give me automatic positive feedback if I pay via paypal within 24 hours of end-of-auction. Take the seller completely out of the loop." - Nice, John. So you pay via paypal within 24 hours, instantly, whenever. You then start a tirade in the messages against me saying the items haven't turned up instantly. You become an idiot and decide to start proceedings with PayPal who blindly side with you anyway and refund your money. Seller has posted the goods and is now left out of pocket and time. How is the seller to then warn people of the buyers moronicness? Feedback should be a 100% picture of the ENTIRE transaction from winning bid/purchase to delivery and any aftersales. From ALL parties.

Ed Pearson - You fail to notice that eBay's practices are monopolistic. The fee's are not too bad currently, win some, lose some. It works alright. The paypal fees are a bit different though. The trouble is, they have no competition.

I have personally already contacted the OFT with regards to anti-trust procedings and many others are/have done the same. It's not about any "open source e-hippie get everything for free" anything - it's about being fair to the end users. Ebay are by no means poor, racking in silly figures like £2000 a minute. That doesn't make anyone poor by any standards.

Baloney

What a spin - people are already in uproar about the fee's they charge - not only those, but the huge fortune they make through PayPal too.

It's just a way to make more money yet making it sound like you'll be better off. I've a feedback of over 200 - and have never had a listing that hasn't sold. So, over 200 items that's $134 extra in the new charges (or the UK equivelent). That's a lot of money.

Considering how many items are listed per second, and how many transactions PayPal deals with a second - they're raking in a fortune and people already aren't happy. Just see the recent reports in the national newspaper about PayPal, eBay's appearance (although for the wrong reasons) on Watchdog, and all the sites such as paypalsucks.com.

And all the time, eBay are touting all the "problems" as them protecting us.

Perhaps they should all give it in and become MPs.

Microsoft prints get-out-of-jail card for Vista Home

VMs in Vista?

"Yeah, you can run Vista Home flavours in a virtual machine, but you can't run a Virtual Machine in Vista Home.

How do I run an Ubuntu VM with Home Premium, none of the VM servers will install in Vista Home Premium."

What on earth?

My VMWare server (as does Virtual Server) has several running machines, on my Home Premium setup.

Current OS list:

Vista x64 Ultimate

Vista x32 Business

XP

Ubuntu

Slackware

BSD

2003 Server

It's not difficult, in fact it just installed and worked in all cases. Suggest a case of pebcak rather than "it doesn't work".

As far as performance goes, it's swings and roundabouts. Vista on my current system is *faster* than XP. It takes 10 seconds longer in total to start, but once it's up and running, performance in 5 different benchmarks show significant improvements. Was a very different story on my older 32bit platform (AMD Barton) where XP had the definate edge. It's a matter of drivers, 3rd party softwares and probably most importantly, user preference.

It was the MacBook Air sub-notebook

Battery :/

And they've not learned from the iPhone disaster - this has a sealed, non user replacable battery too.

That'll be expensive in a couple of years.

The price doesn't look too bad, but once you look closer at some of the components, I'd not want them in a very, very, very cheap budget PC notebook - 4200rpm ata drive? That won't last long - and how much will the solid state replacement cost? :)

It does look nice though, and this will be the first nice thing I've said about Apple. Ever. That's how laptops should be looking but it does need further expansion possibilities and a proper battery.

Apple fans hope keynote holds news of sub-notebook

@ Giles Jones

Heh, well said. I was half way to suggesting he looks like a cult leader or perhaps one of those guards from Equilibrium.

Jobs is, of course very talented. The ability to send sand to the arabs as a viable food source is one to be used as an example of sales techniques everywhere - the lack of ethics and "if it moves, patent it" approach is not.

Dictator Evil

Why is it that Steve Jobs always looks like a stereotypical movie villian whenever he appears to spout some more brainwashing sales speak?

Caption for this photo:

"With this device, I summon a thousand sharks with frickin' laser beams"

Mother launches attack on epilepsy inducing video games

Pfft

More red tape and complete crap - frankly there's hardly any computer games that DON'T involve flashing images, they ALL warn of this as a possibility, even some of the card games I've got do.

So who's to blame - the game manufacturer for providing a game with flashy lighty things (well, its called Raving Rabbits - what do you expect, Tellytubbies with glowsticks?) - or the mother for buying this for her son in the first place?

Put the blame back where it should be - in the place of the damned fools daft enough to buy them in the first place. The same idiots that despite reading "WARNING - HOT CONTENTS" on a MacDonalds Coffee manage to burn themselves.