Posts by Ben Rose

Apple vows to squash iMessage SMS-KILLER

Re: SMS Problems?

I live for downvotes.

SMS Problems?

If your friends are having problems receiving your text messages, it's because you're the last one with an iPhone.

Bin it off, switch to Android...get WhatsApp...sorted.

FBI floats $5 MEELLION bounty for alleged Chinese WMD purveyor

Everytime you say MEELLION...

...a puppy dies.

Stop it.

China's customs cops grab 76 MEEELLION tech products

Jesus...

Enough with the "MEEELLION" stuff. Tedious!

Japanese schoolkids arrested in £2.4 MEEELLION phone fraud bust

Re: RE: "I know this might be a little inappropriate....."

I'm wondering how many people in this thread would get a senior job at Mozilla?

Tesla in 'Ethernet port carries data' SCANDAL

Re: "showing a Firefox install running on the console."

Clearly AC/DC then?

ISPs' pirate-choking blocking measures ARE effective – music body

Streaming

"It said that file-sharing had dropped by 11 per cent in the countries where such measures were imposed on ISPs"

Of course this has nothing at all to do with it being even more convenient to use services like Spotify and Netflix?

Pirating is not down at all due to enforcement measures, it's down purely as it became more convenient for people to listen legally.

Dragon's Den star's cloudy biz still losing MEEELLLLLIONS

MEEELLLLLIONS

Enough with the MEEELLLLLIONS already.

Takeaway order spewer Just Eat plans to raise £100m in IPO

MEEELLION!

Anybody else bored with the whole MEEELLION thing in the headlines?

Google's Drive SLASH, secret 'big upgrade': Coincidence? Hardly

Re: De-Dupe on a gloibal scale

Google Play Music got it wrong for many of my tracks, how do I tell them?

Particularly annoying that they have replaced tracks on Mix CDs with entirely different versions that don't run into the next song at all.

Apple iOS 8 'will put end' to crap map app rap flap misery

Fixed in the next version

Is it just me, or is the iPhone always fixed in the next version?

No doubt they'll be addressing concerns about battery life too? And reception difficulties that cause phone calls to be cut off?

Netflix needling you? BBC pimps up iPlayer ahead of BBC3 move

Trademark

Of course, as soon as it does start generating revenue, those Apple people will be all over them claiming they own the iPlayer trademark as it begins with a little "i" and plays videos.

Boeing going ... GONE: Black phone will SELF-DESTRUCT in 30 secs

Re: Last 5 mins of Small Soldiers

Maybe it has a Halo style app that will call black helicopters?

NO WONDER Big Blue dropped it: IBM server biz BOMBED in Q4

Re: Bad headline

agreed...subbing as its worst.

Like WhatsApp? Meet 'desktop' version... and his BANK ACCOUNT RAIDING Trojan pal

Not to be mistaken for...

...WhatsRemote. Which does allow WhatsApp on the desktop and works pretty damn well.

Amazon fuses LoveFilm, subs service, calls it Prime Instant Video

Backfire

Based on conversations I have, this one may backfire.

Throwing the kindle library into Prime...good move, worked well. You can share prime with other members too, so husband, wife, children etc. get the benefit.

Throwing LoveFilm streaming in, great idea too. For £30 extra? No hope at all.

Count me into the ever growing list of people who won't be renewing prime, the price hike is obscene and I have no real need to use the streaming service.

Apple’s Mac turns 30: How Steve Jobs’ baby took its first steps

Re: Floppy Eject

"If you allow the user to eject without the data being committed then they lose their work."

But that is no reason to lose the button. Apple put a motorised eject system into the drive, far cooler than a mechanical button. There was no reason at all not to include an electronic eject button in that process that first flushed the drive buffer and then ejected the disk. It's really not rocket science and far more useful than a hidden OS command.

Re: Floppy Eject

"It would have been right there in the Special menu!"

The Special menu, for special people? Sounds about right.

Of course I spent a light of time trying to right click on the floppy icon, which just opened it because there was actually only one mouse button - another eternal source of frustration for users of proper PCs.

I've just always found Macs completely non-intuitive. People says they are so much easier to use than Windows but I couldn't agree less. For example, the window management buttons. On Windows the buttons represent the action. A big square to make it bigger. A little line to minimise. An X to close. All logical. On Macs I get some odd coloured traffic lights. How is a new user supposed to have any idea what red, green or yellow will do? No labels, no help if you hover over. Nothing. Just seemingly random coloured buttons. MS Windows and X-Windows got it right, why do Apple have to be different?

Re: Floppy Eject

I knew how to operate a floppy drive, had done for years. They came with eject buttons, always did on PCs. Apple chose not to include one. I still have no idea why.

I remember once getting the disk out using a paper clip in the hole. The OS instantly displayed some kind of horrible error and wouldn't operate again until it was powered off and back on.

How could this possibly be a good thing?

Floppy Eject

I used an early Apple Mac to help create the school newspaper and it was quite an eye opener - I'd already been using PCs at home for a while.

I remember saving my file to a floppy disk and then trying to eject it to go home. There was no eject button. I hunted around the operating system and could find no obvious way of getting it out. I was there ages, refusing to accept my failure and ask a teacher. In the end I had to ask for help and I was told I needed "command+E" or something. Not only did Apple not have something as simple as an eject button, it also had an extra key on the keyboard that nothing else had.

From that moment onwards I hated Macs and still do. I'll never have one in my house.

Of course, the beauty of all this is that when they break and my friends ask for help I can comfortably say "sorry, I've never used a Mac and can't help you". I recommend them to all my friends and family now :)

Paris - because even she has buttons in the right places.

Ninten-DOH! Japanese giant slashes Wii U sales forecasts by 70%

Shame

The Wii U is a great piece of kit, highly underrated. We use ours pretty much every day, which is more than I can say for most of the electronic kit in the house.

Hybrid flash mutant Tegile: Array with Dell, we say... 100 times

Tegile Mutant Hybrid Flash-Dells

I'll get my coat.

BBC's 3D blunder BLASTED OUR BRAINS – Doctor Who fans

re:adverts

I get your point regarding adverts on commercial channels but don't most people just skip through adverts on their PVR these days? What proportion of people still watch TV live?

Re: Cooking etc.

"Is it cheaper to keep building new production teams to come up with new ideas than it is to continue to make episodes of older ideas which can then be sold internationally?"

If the shows can be sold internationally, then the rights to them would have considerable value if sold.

Building new productions teams to come up with new ideas isn't cheap, that's why we pay the license fee, right?

Re: Cooking etc.

No, not Sky...I said another terrestrial broadcaster. It would be important to keep the shows free to air.

Cooking etc.

I thought of a simple fix for the BBC license fee argument a little while ago.

Clearly it's difficult to please everybody, there will always be some who argue that they don't want "their" licence fee money going towards a show they don't like. e.g. I think we spend far too much money on Masterchef.

If a show is popular, as indeed the cooking and baking shows appear to be, they should have a limited run on the BBC. Perhaps 2 or, at most, 3 series. After that, the BBC should be contractually obliged to sell it off to the highest bidder.

This indirectly happened with Jonathan Ross when he left the Beeb for unrelated reasons. His chat show is now on ITV, with the same bad jokes. License payers are no longer paying Ross's inflated wages.

Shows like Masterchef, Apprentice, Top Gear, Bake off and Eastenders would all be gone to another terrestrial broadcaster. It happens with sport, why not drama and reality?

The funds received from selling off the successful shows could go towards paying for new television to replace it.

Most of these shows are now "made by xyz for BBC" so there is no reason quality should drop as a result of it changing channel. We'd just start saving money.

Xbox One FAILS to beat PS3 - yes, PS 3 - week one sales

Re: total meh

At least the Wii U is managing games at 1080p/60 - the only console in the UK that does.

London: Hey Amazon, wanna slip your speedy packages down our tubes?

Interesting...

I had a similar idea for the soon to be empty Tie Rack stores in railway stations. So small, they aren't much use for anything else.

Samsung pulls Galaxy S3 update as users moan: It's PANTS

Re: Ahh

Nobody will notice problems with phones on a platform that nobody uses.

Check out The Register's Google+ page

Re: Not for me but...

The pop-ups I get are often crappy survey things, although admittedly I haven't seen one for a while.

Not for me but...

I do hope that the costs of this venture don't mean (even) more banner ads and pop-ups on the main site.

I know advertising is essential to pay bills, wages etc. but keeping costs down can help too.

Bitcoin mining rig firm claims $3m revenue in just FOUR DAYS

Not just me then?

I've been wishing I was on the Bitcoin track for some time but clearly I missed the bus. I'm wondering who is actually making the money here? Maybe if you had a solar panel on the roof this could work out quite well?

Beer - it's always a good return on investment.

XBOX One SHOT DEAD by Redmond following delivery blunder

Re: Again with the PS4 ad?

I prefer the ambiguity..."was he joking?"

In real terms it was a self-deprecating joke. I love my Wii U.

Re: Again with the PS4 ad?

You see to have overlooked the Wii U.

NO! Radio broadcasters snub 'end of FM' DAB radio changeover

DAB is pointless

Given the availability of internet radio, I find DAB a little pointless. As you can pick up global radio stations from anywhere with an internet connection, whats the point in a poor broadcast service? Many new cars now have internet access options, which could be used for in car audio.

LinkedIn: Obviously biz people DON'T use MS Exchange servers. REALLY?

Good

Given the spam that LinkedIn send, it's a good job they have limited access to corporate address books.

Twitter will leap into instant-messaging world with new app: report

Full circle

So twitter starts as an SMS based service, limited on characters due to the protocol it runs across. Anybody could use SMS, but they used twitter to be social.

Now you can use it for IM? But everybody had that to start with.

Windows 8.1: Read this BEFORE updating - especially you, IT admins

Re: You will be bored but...

bored

3.5GB per download?

So that's going to take, um, ZERO GB out of my download limit.

Can't believe people have deployed this crap, we stuck with Windows 7.

NASA finds use for 3D printers: Launch them into SPAAACE

Houston we have a problem...

Apollo 13 wouldn't have been anything like as good a story if they had one of these on board.

British Gas robo home remote gets itself into hot water

Re: Not needed@ Ben Rose

Thanks, interesting information, but it ignores the costs of running the electric water pump. Surely significant? A cupful of lost gas versus loads of, more expensive per kWh, electricity. Your boiler efficiency theory is sound but ignores this part - the condenser fan also needs to run.

Interesting that this article touches on hot water. I never really turn mine off, any heat lost from my hot water tank will only go towards warming the house anyway.

Re: Not needed

Similar calculations to yours, just not negating the same stuff.

Rate of heat loss is proportional to temperature, so if the radiators are hotter they will heat the room quicker. Once up to temperature, the boiler and water pump can both shut down. Running the pump for longer uses more electricity. Running the boiler for longer uses more gas. With cooler water temp the boiler may cut out sooner but will come back on quicker as the boiler return temperature will be much lower. The hotter radiators will stay warmer longer too, keeping the house warmer for longer and removing the need to turn the boiler back on.

My boiler instructions say to run at MAX temperature when it's cold outside. This is apparently more efficient. In that case, why is it not more efficient at all times?

Re: Not needed

"when it's warmer outside it also lowers the radiator water temp as that's more efficient than running hot, shutting off and then cycling again"

Really? Is it? Can you prove that with some basic Physics?

All my maths suggests the precise opposite. I've made a lot of eco efforts in my house and the hot water temp is the only one I've never had a conclusive answer on.

What a waste of time and money

I'm not entirely surprised people tinker with the app all the time, they've wasted their hard earned on it. On top of that, it's a thermostat...people drive me mad with those. In the words of Victoria Wood:

"I thought I was going menopausal and then I realised the cat had been playing with the thermostat".

It's not rocket science. Decide what temperature you would like your home to be, set it and leave it be. Some homes have hot and cold spots, but thermostatic radiator valves should cater for this.

The new generation have homeowners grew up in a home with parents who never had central heating when they grew up. CH was a mod-con and preferable to lighting a fire when they got up each day. This trend stays with us in the form of "it's so cold, i turned my heating back on this weekend" each Autumn. My heating never goes off...that's what the thermostat does. When it's warm, like it Summer, the heating doesn't come on. When it's cold, as if by magic, it fires up the boiler.

Modern boilers are hot and modern radiators efficient. You can heat up a cold house in around 20 minutes in the depths on winter. Remote control really isn't needed.

Full Steam Ahead: Valve unwraps plans for gaming hardware

Origin

Will I be able to run EA Origin under SteamOS?

Good :oD

Google tentacle slips over YouTube comments: Now YOUR MUM is at the top

Google+

Cool, integrating YouTube comments with Google+

That's the same as turning them off, right?

Google tries putting an NFC ring on it: Bonking will keep you SAFE

Yes, of course...

We had to put down 6 mice last week due to incurable infections.

Phil Collins' daughter 'will give you A VIRUS' – security bods

She's a bigger act than you think...

Lily Collins has actually been in quite a few movies, I've seen her in a couple of things recently, I doubt she needs any more promotion.

Mirror Mirror was perhaps the most memorable where she played Snow White alongside Julia Roberts' wicked Queen. She even sang one of the main songs in it. I checked carefully and it was disappointed to find it wasn't produced by the Genesis guy either.

It's Grand Theft Auto 5 day: Any of you kids remember GTA the First?

No PC Version...

The humble PC beginnings yet there is no PC version of GTA V. Fail.

'Silent' staff stood by as £100m BBC IT project tanked – DG

Silent Culture

As other, somewhat more sensational, news stories have demonstrated; there is clearly a culture of keeping quiet within the BBC. Seems to be an organisation full of people who are scared to lose their jobs.