Posts by Haku

No need to comply with data laws if it's too difficult - EU ministers

So what's the point of having the law if companies can simply side-step it by saying it's too difficult to comply with?

Be co-founder mows BT's long grass in bid for fibre success

"claims download and upload speeds of 1Gbit/s for high-rise-living Londoners"

Ah damn, oh well at least I have nice views, big open spaces, fresh air and can see the stars at night here in rural Britain :)

Apple's iPhone 5 connector said to be a control freak

Re: No matter

Micro-USB is still too big, I'm looking forward to Femto-USB.

Powering your iPad costs $1.36 per year

Re: CFL

I've been experimenting with LED lighting, in this case those 5 meter 300x 5050 sized LED strips that are great for whole room lighting once installed right (pointing at the walls/ceiling instead of directly down works well).

I found that the normal white LEDs are too 'cold' and blue in colour whilst the 'warm white' ones are almost too yellow, but if you use an equal mix of the two types you get a really nice daylight-ish white. Throw in some dimming circuitry and you can fade between the two types of white to get the 'perfect' blend.

Re: Meaningless

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that many people will not get to the stage of needing a replacement battery for their portable computing device as they have a contract (in the case of a phone) which entitles them to upgrades, or they buy the newest version of the gadget when it's released every 1-2 years anyway.

So really shouldn't the whole cost of the device be included into the study?

Vatican subtly shifts its position on The Blues Brothers

@thefutureboy

I also own that double pack DVD set, only watched TBB2000 once, which was one too many times

My brother managed to buy the original film without the abomination sequal, we both love TBB and he hasn't (luckily) seen TBB2000 and I will not ever subject it to him, ever.

P.S. Orange whip?

Philips 46PFL9706T 46in 3D smart TV

Re: Painful

Forget about the flowers, think of the poor defenseless light bulbs!

Re: is it 3d

No, because you're watching a stereoscopic image where the effect only works when your head is aligned with the tv correctly.

You'll have to turn off the 3D effect when lying on your side (or close one eye).

William Shatner confirms Devon town actually prostitute free

Re: "Mr Shatner was not above making jokes at his own expense"

Ah, yeah, sorry about that I forgot just how racy the roasts can get :)

The full roast is an hour longer and very funny.

"Mr Shatner was not above making jokes at his own expense"

Definitely, just watch his Comedy Roast (only the first 18 mins sadly)

Sony slams Nintendo Wii U functionality

I see what Sony did there.

They're on a free adverisment crusade.

TSA screeners spooked by Apple's 'futuristic artifact'

Re: TSA fun continues

I dare you to print out your next boarding pass on an industrial sized plotter.

Apple silences mute kids' speech app in patent blowup

Re: no no no...

Prior art - lexigram keyboards, created for primates to interact with researchers.

World smart TV sales surge

"FIRMWARE UPGRADEABLE!" printed on the box

but what they don't tell you is that they stop working on the firmware after a year or two because they have an upgraded product on the market, which is also "FIRMWARE UPGRADEABLE!"...

Hitchhiker shot while researching 'Kindness of America'

Shot whilst trying to find out how kind people are? What is the word coming to, next you'll be telling me major sporting events get sponsored by junk food companies...

Google to axe Meebo apps on 11 July

Toolbars? We don't need no stinkin' toolbars!

Does anyone actually purposely install and use toolbars in their browsers these days?

That is beyond those who have unwittingly had ones 'forced' upon them through software installations, and not including the single icons of the likes of Adblock+, Noscript etc.

O2, Be Broadband axe Pirate Bay access

Re: Still accessible for me

I'm confused about the timing though, the blog post on Be saying they were going to comply with the order overnight was dated 6th June, today is 7th June so shouldn't it have happened already?

First wave of censorship

I see this as the first wave of censorship because everyone who knows how to torrent knows how to circumvent these measures (or can find out in a few seconds with a search engine), making them ineffective.

I'd put money on the 'powers that be' who forced this on the ISPs knowing that this situation will happen and it's a strategy of theirs to then turn round and say "we need stronger blocks because this isn't working", which will end up making things just a little bit worse for everyone.

MoneySavingExpert.com founder flogs website for £87m

@Andrew James

You make an interesting and valid point, so far he has been the champion of the consumer as that's what he has been, but now he has some 'real' money he's going to see another side of the banks and investment industry, which hopefully he'll use it to his advantage and do some investigating and reporting.

Re: Breaking News from June the 1st.

Probably too much celebrating by the staff over the double bank holiday...

Hard disk drive prices quick to rise, slow to fall

Prices have gone up, quality has gone down

At least that's what it looks like from where I'm sitting.

Toshiba America says no to new netbooks

The tablet would need to run Windows as there are some programs I use on my Asus Eee's that just do not exist on other OSs and there are no equivilants that do the same job.

Short answer: too big, too expensive.

So long as I can source 2nd hand netbooks in the forthcoming years I'll be happy, batteries are not a problem as the Chinese keep producing laptop batteries for laptops that aren't made anymore and if push comes to shove I could replace the cells in a pack myself, I do not have any desire for a smartphone or tablet, I like my portable computing devices to have real keyboards.

And the worst film NEVER made is...

Snakes on a Plane in the top 10?

Oh come on, the whole premise of the film is right there in the fricken title!

That's like going to the supermarket and buying Hedgehog Flavoured Crisps and then complaining they taste terrible, WTF did you expect?

(I actually did have some hedgehog flavoured crisps as a kid, they did taste terrible, and I did like Snakes on a Plane because I knew what it was going to be like before watching it - a silly popcorn hollywood flick with no aspirations of being anything with substance)

Pipex 'silence' condemned punters' emails to spam blackhole

Doesn't surprise me, just look at their advertising...

Free ringdings!

WTF is... Li-Fi?

Re: mercedes are trialling LED headlights

Car-to-car comms could be used to find out traffic conditions ahead of you; average speed, density of vehicles, traffic jams, roadworks, roads closed (signs could put out their own signal) etc. by cars automatically transmitting data to each other.

But a significant amount of cars would need to have the system installed for it to be any use.

Star Trek's Scotty boldly goes where he always wanted to

@Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Watch this and tell me he wasn't just an actor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsSdLD_YodQ

Report: SAP exec charged with $1,000 LEGO bar-code caper

Re: LEGO

Well if we're going down the pronouciation route, try asking an American to say "solder"...

Re: LEGO

Normally I'm not too bothered about words that are said/written incorrectly*, however for some reason I can get extremely annoyed whenever someone says or writes "LEGOS".

*people who use 'txt spk' on forums are an exception, they should be banned

75,000 Raspberry Pi baked before August

Re: Prince

Thank you for your confirmation of my oddness :)

Prince

Please tell me I'm not the only one whose brain can't help hear the words "She wore a raspberry beret" every time a Raspberry Pi story pops up on one of these tech news sites?

Button batteries burn kids from inside

I've never swallowed a button cell battery but I did explode one!

Back when I was a kid in the early 80s I had some button cell batteries for watches/early electroncs (LEDs primarily) and being a kid in the 80s pocket money was almost non-existant, couple that with the high price of button cell batteries I found I could charge them up a little so they'd work for a few minutes.

Until I charged one up for too long with too high a voltage and it went BANG, exploded out of my hands and into my face, no injuries but did give me one helluva shock and I've never tried charging a non-rechargable battery again since that day... :)

Vote now for the worst movie NEVER made

I almost voted for Koyaanisqatsi 2

Because I once bought the Koyaanisqatsi & Powaqqatsi DVD but instead of being interesting I found them incredibly irritating to watch, long scenes of not much happening along with 'music' from Philip Glass. The 'music' irritated me the most as it was contrived crap which practically repeated the same boring sequence of notes for the entire length of the films with little variation.

I bought them because I had prevously bought Baraka on DVD and found it to be a very good 'film', amazing footage with a soundtrack to perfectly match it (even with the haunting imagery of the aftermath of how bad humans can behave towards each other; concentration camps, mass graves etc.)

But my vote went to "Phantom Menace - The Musical" because after watching the original menace film in the cinema and discovering how badly Lucas had tarnished his Star Wars world, if I had to watch a musical of it I would probably end up perforating my ear drums with any sharp (or blunt) instrument to hand after the first note is sang. The gauging out of eyes would also be an acceptable action to perform.

Syrian secret police endorse male hair remover

3 Wolf Moon

"When I put this T-shirt on for the first time, my wife left me!

Thank you, Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt! "

You need one of these t-shirts, just read the Amazon reviews for yourself!

Cameron hardens stance on UK web filth block

Re: Petrol, pasties, granny tax, caravan tax...

You know those 2012 predictions where people think this year is going to be the end of civilisation? I don't think they're far off actually, it looks like the beginning of the end of being civilised.

BT missing from Pirate Bay High Court slap-down

In France they introduced a 3 strike law, online piracy dropped, so did media sales.

http://www.ghacks.net/2012/04/01/hadopi-cut-piracy-in-france-but-sales-down-as-well/

How exactly did that move help the media industry?

Basic instinct: how we used to code

BBC Micro

Perhaps the best ever book I ever bought for the BBC Micro cost me £2.75 from Toys'R'Us, it was an in-depth 'bible' of all the obvious and non-obvious tips, tricks, peeks & pokes of programming the BBC Micro that took you beyond BASIC and a little bit into the terrortory of assembly for enhancing BASIC code.

Hanging's too good for 'em - so what do you suggest?

Fix the crumbling roads - all of them

The state of the road surface in the UK is bloody atrocious, and some parts are just about lethal if you're on two wheels, the whole lot needs to be re-surfaced, not patched up by filling the potholes and not even putting tar around the edge to seal it up.

Crytek: Schemes to strike second-hand games biz 'awesome'

Re: Resellability affects perceived value.

Totally agree.

If you spend £40-£60 on a new game and you really enjoy it then you'll likely to keep it and feel you got your monies worth, but if you don't like it very much you can sell it to recoup some of your investment and you (hopefully) won't have lost too much money in the process.

However if you spend £40-£60 on a new game which cannot be re-sold and you discover you don't like it then you're less likely to buy new games in the future for fear that you'll just waste your money again, even if you try & like the demo it doesn't mean the entire game will be as fun - just look at movie trailers compared to the actual films.

Suspected freetloaders to face piracy letters in 2014

@Crisp

I tried but it overshadowed the leaflet campaign line, the best I came up with was:

"The Committee for the Lynching of Innocent Taxpaying Organisms and Removal of their Internet Serivce"

Red Dwarf - Polymorph

So suspected freetards will face piracy letters in 2014? Does that situation remind anyone else of that scene in Polymorph where they're all discussing what to do with the big ugly monster and Rimmer, who looks strangely like Rolf Harris, comes out with this:

"The time for talking is over. Now call it extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard and we hit it fast, with a major, and I mean major, leaflet campaign"

Sony denies Netflix app to older Bravia smart TVs

What? You have last years model? What a luddite!

Bates 4000 (vimeo.com)

Telegraph website falls over in outage riddle

OMG! A WEBSITE IS OFFLINE!!!!!11!!1

Slow news day?

Happy 30th Birthday, Sinclair ZX Spectrum

LOAD ""

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE DIT

Program: Jet Set Willy

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE DILLILLLIILLLILLILL.....

'I'm no visionary': Torvalds up for $1.3m life-changing gong

As much as the Linux zealots annoy me

to the point where some can become quite religious over their passion for the OS, I cannot deny the positive impact it has had on computing in general.

Thanks, Linus.

Battlefield Earth ruled worst film EVER

Re: I must like shit movies then

<AOL> ME TOO! </AOL>

10x power boost for Freeview as London analogue signal cut

I wish there was a setting on the tv so you could turn up the intelligence.

They made one called "brightness" but it appears to be broken.

Wasteland sequel given $3m green light

and Double Fine Adventure

They were the first to break the $3m barrier on Kickstarter.

So what's the worst movie NEVER made?

Howard The Duck II

"The film that's sure to cause a stir...fry"