* Posts by RichyS

664 publicly visible posts • joined 22 May 2008

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The hoarder's dilemma, or 'Why can't I throw anything away?'

RichyS

This isn't hoarding...

... It's just a business continuity plan. In the event of the apocalypse!

Ten external battery packs

RichyS
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Re: Replaceable batteries

OTOH these can be used with pretty much anything that charges over USB. Personally I'd prefer a couple of these rather than spare batteries for every portable electronic item I own.

HP preps designer desktops for Windows 8

RichyS

At least one? At least five...

RichyS
WTF?

Reselling (out)

I know HP used to resell the old HDD iPod (with an HP logo etched on the back). Are they now doing the same with the Apple keyboard and trackpad?

Menage á tablet: Apple vs Amazon vs Google

RichyS
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Price not size

I suspect 7" tablets are bought by the vast majority of people because they are cheap, not because of their size. Even with the somewhat beta OS, surely the PlayBook would have sold better if 7" was the killer size.

Apple has 7.85in 'iPad Mini' in its labs

RichyS
Stop

Re: Fragmentation disaster

Dear Barry Shitforbrains,

Do you ever have anything worthwhile to say?

Love and kisses,

The Internet

Apple New iPad Wi-Fi only

RichyS

It's always the next Android tablet that's going to blow the iPad out of the water though, isn't it.

One never quite seems to come along though.

iPad 3 benchmarked

RichyS

Display

Personally, the only reason I'm getting an iPad 3 is because of the display.

I think there will be many people like me.

Has anyone been complaining that the iPad 2 isn't fast enough? At the very least, it keeps the original iPad relevant and usable.

Tim Cook's post-PC iPad domination dream crushed by reality

RichyS

Gartner predictions

So, when has a Gartner prediction ever proved to be accurate?

STUNNING NEW APPLE DEVICES that will follow the iPad 3 HD!

RichyS

Re: enlarged iPads up on raised stands

Nothing gets passed you does it, Sherlock.

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet

RichyS

Thick

So, if this table. Obtains pretty much bog standard Tegra based internals, and what appears to be a fairly small battery, can anyone explain why it's half as thick again as an iPad or Galaxy Tab?

Googorola's desire for iPhone royalties will upset Apple cart

RichyS

There you go

I think you answered your own question there.

RichyS

Really

LG first? Then that Sony Ericsson P800 I owned in 2003 must have just been in my imagination.

Mac demand helps Apple business bloom in Blighty

RichyS

Sounds about right

From a non representative sample of people I know and other companies I do business with, everyone has a personal MacBook Pro and a Thinkpad at work.

Not seen a new Dell or HP in ages.

Apple tops estimates with earnings leap of 118 per cent

RichyS

Just imagine how much Apple could have made if the iPhone 4S wasn't such a disappointment, and the Kindle Fire hadn't eaten all the iPad sales. </sarcasm>

TomTom axes 10% of workforce

RichyS

Great timing. Merry fucking Christmas.

Motorola Xoom 2 10in Android tablet

RichyS
WTF?

They spent a year working on an upgrade, and all they could come up with was this? What the feck have Moto been doing? Counting their Google Dollars? This is basically last years Xoom, slightly over clocked, corners cut (literally and metaphorically), and a few ports bunged up.

Seriously, this is pathetic. 7.5% would be nearer the mark.

3m iPad 3 'retina' screens sent to Apple by month's end

RichyS

The calculation is a little more complex than that. You have to factor in the distance the screen is away from the eye. Certainly I hold my iPad at a greater distance than my iPhone.

So (without being arsed to do the actual calculation myself), that may well put 264dpi into the realm of 'retina' (the marketing term), whereby the pixels are indistinguishable from one another.

HTC prepares quad-core smartphone for 2012

RichyS
Facepalm

Buttons

If it's going to run Android 4.x, why does it persist with the buttons beneath the screen? Seems a little redundant, I;d have thought.

Feds warn 'pox party' zealots not to send viruses in post

RichyS
Childcatcher

Chlamydia Parties

Hasn't FaceBook been running 'Find a Chlamydia Party Near You' (okay, it might be called something a /little/ different) for years now?

How is this different.

EU to quiz Apple and Samsung on Frand deals

RichyS

No.

Apple can patent a shape (trade dress or design patent), and Samsung can patent a 3G technology.

However, you do not need to have rounded corners etc. to make a mobile phone; while you do need to implement the 3G standard to make one (if you want to be competitive). As the latter is part of a defined standard, license to the patent needs to be under FRAND terms.

Although recent evidence would suggest otherwise, you don't need to make a phone look like an iPhone to be competitive. Ergo, no requirement for FRAND licensing terms.

Manufacturers testing wider cars for swingbellies

RichyS

Don't we already have cars catering for the obese?

They're called SUVs.

Profiteers cash in on Steve Jobs' signature glasses

RichyS

So, a genius can only be an engineer or a designer?

I guess that's Stephen Hawkin fucked then.

Shock movie upset - Daniel Craig still James Bond 007

RichyS

And R was short for "R bugger, what have we gone and done..."

Apple sending sun-juiced iPads to rural Zimbabwe

RichyS
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That's rather assuming they had books in the first place.

I'm astonished at the closed-minded nature of posters on this topic. Leaving aside the whole Mugabe regime and whether Apple know/do not know anything about this, I think this idea is fantastic.

Think about all the information that can be stored on an iPad. Have a look at apps like Elements for the sorts of teaching aids you can have. Access to the internet would be possible too --mobile telephony coverage is actually pretty good in Zimbabwe. Hell, we could do with something like this in UK schools!

WHSmith Kobo Touch wireless e-book reader

RichyS

Missing important details

A good review, so far as it went. However, I think the important details missing are:

- How does Kobo's selection and range of books compare to Amazon

- Are Kobo's prices similar to Amazon

- How is the whole process of navigation, book discovery, and buying via Kobo compared to Amazon.

The hardware looks nice (a fair bit nicer than the Kindle), but as Apple have taught us, that's only half the story. It's the whole experience that counts, and this is where I would worry that Kobo are behind Amazon.

Samsung demands iPhone 4S source code in Aussie row

RichyS
Stop

@Neil

Unfortunately, the OP's argument has no strength.

Therefore he /has/ to resort to shouting (at the walls in his basement, mostly, I suspect).

Pete Townshend condemns Apple as 'digital vampire'

RichyS
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iTunes takes a lot less than 30% for music. IIRC it's substantially under 10%. The record companies take the lion's share (as per usual).

Really Pete, it's the record companies that are the vampires. They do very little of value in this day and age. You should be thanking iTunes for being a relatively level playing field. And, although you can't directly self-publish to iTunes, there are a multitude of aggregators out there who will publish your song for a few $ per year.

Android voice assistant shootout

RichyS
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Missing detail

The important thing about Siri (and what raises it above the standard voice-to-text converters and voice command systems) is the understanding of context.

I got no impression from these reviews that any of the apps demonstrated that ability. It's one thing to convert a voice sentence to text then pass it to Wolfram Alpha; it's an entirely other thing to maintain the understanding of context across a number of spoken sentences.

Farewell then, Sony Ericsson

RichyS
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Used to love SE phones

I had a pretty much unbroken run of Ericsson (and then SE) phones from the T18 to T28 to T68 (Ericsson branded, as per the photo, before Sony Ericsson ruined the colour!) and finally T610. The T610 was awesome (well, the built in camera was a bit ropey, but then most phones didn't have cameras at all at this point). It was small, simple, and great looking. The phones after that were a little disappointing (can't even remember the model numbers).

Then I got a P910i (the one with the vestigial but surprisingly usable keypad on the flip down bit). At the time a great smartphone -- good battery life, reasonably fast browsing (despite only being GPRS), and plenty of apps (albeit rather expensive compared to the App Store -- amazing what a bit of competition and scale can have on downward pricing pressures). Specs were well below the WinMob phones of the day, but it worked so much better.

It died on me before the much delayed (and ultimately disappointing) P990 came out. I didn't get that and settled for some almost entirely unusable (and poorly made -- I got through 3 or 4) Walkman slider thingy. None of their promised smartphones really measured up, and I didn't like the look of anyone else's products either, so stuck it out until the iPhone came out. Got one of those, and have never looked back.

If only SE had been able to build on the success of the P800/9x0, rather than making them worse. They could have been dominating the smartphone market today.

Desperate RIM in 'buy two PlayBooks, get one free' offer

RichyS
FAIL

FailBook

But then you'd have 3 shitty PlayBooks instead of two. Which has to be worse. Obviously, none is best.

Apple shifts Lossless Audio Codec to open source

RichyS

@Stuart Longland

The thing is, most people who listen to music (on the move, at least) have one of the first three devices you mention. Which don't support FLAC.

The huge numbers of FLAC supporting hardware are actually in the minority.

Not that I think ALAC being open source is a particularly big deal. The massive majority of people couldn't care less if their music was lossless of 128kbit MP3, and I doubt many of them could tell the difference.

Steve Jobs: the Exclusive Biography

RichyS
Stop

[citation needed]

Really?

In the UK at least, it's £12.99 on Kindle, £12.99 on iBooks, and (you've guessed it) £12.99 on Kobo.

Almost as though there's a cartel in operation...

Stallman: Did I say Jobs was evil? I meant really evil

RichyS
Stop

Comic Book Guy

Can anyone else read Stallman's speaking rider without reverting to the voice of the Simpson's Comic Book Guy after a sentence or two?

I don't think it can be done.

Stallman is an arse.

RichyS
Thumb Up

It's real.

Here are the piss takes though: http://thestallmandialogues.com/

Job-seeking university bods panic over incriminating online info

RichyS
Facepalm

Maths

Thanks for explaining that 42% is also (roughly) 4 in 10. And that a third can also be viewed as 33%. All. The. Way through the bloody article.

Maybe the students of today should be less worried about incrimination stuff online, and learn some basic maths.

Apple's iPod: ten years old

RichyS

Re. Sharp Minidisc

If it's the MD player I'm thinking of (fecking ugly with a knurled silver wheel around the LCD screen), then wasn't it more of a jog-wheel -- i.e. it didn't continuously rotate like the iPod.

I may be wrong, my recollection of a friend's MD player from over 10 years ago is a little hazy.

Ellison munches unstructured data with Endeca buy

RichyS
Happy

Unstructured Data

Guess they don't need Autonomy's help now!

Acer UK sales slashed in HALF in Q3

RichyS

No shit.

We, you don't think per chance that the reason it was so cheap was due to having a fuck load of inventory that they needed to shift faster than you can say "TouchPad-alike fire sale"?

Dixons stores knock £150 off RIM PlayBook

RichyS
FAIL

I assume that once they get cheap enough, Amazon can buy up the lot, reflash them, and call them the Fire 2. Product development with someone else paying for the R&D. Nice.

Apple slips, moneymen pounce

RichyS
FAIL

Logic fail

Firstly, the iPhone 4 was sold in several countries from launch last year (inc. US, UK, France, and Germany).

Secondly, who gives a shit what the reasons are? Apple sold a boat load of phones compared to last year. Money is money, and they've made a lot of it.

Apple iOS 5.0 downloads drive all-time UK net traffic high

RichyS
Stop

Don't worry yourself unduly. This is the last version of iOS that'll be this massive. All future updates can be incremental and done OTA.

So yes, Apple have heard of them.

RichyS

And more...

And I needed to update iPhoto to get the iCloud goodness.

I;d also been putting off the latest updates to iWork too. I suspect I was pulling 80GB/s myself!

iPhone 4S pre-orders obliterate sales records

RichyS
WTF?

@MooseNC

Holsters? Fecking holsters? You rednecks are hilarious. If you'd bothered getting a passport and travelling outside of the deep south, you might notice that almost no-one outside of the good ole US of A wears their phone on a holster. They'd realise they look like a dick.

This, I suppose, explains why these ridiculous gigantaphones are largely (no pun intended) a US phenomenon.

Holsters. Christ almighty.

Samsung and Google's next Nexus specs leak

RichyS
WTF?

4.7 inches? That's a fecking tablet.

When will this madness in oversized phones end?

What's not in the iPhone 4S ... and why

RichyS
Happy

That's a pretty specific use case. I'm not sure it's made too much of a dent in Apple's selling of 1/4bn iOS devices...

RichyS

Good analysis of Siri (and why it's different from 'voice commands'

Try here: http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/04/iphone-4s-hands-on-impressions/

And here: http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/04/siri-work/

Ten... Androids to outshine the iPhone 4S

RichyS
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@swisstoni

That's the problem with Android. You generally /have/ to hack away to your heart's content.

RichyS
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All these are great if you buy simply by looking at the spec sheet; but I think I'll stick with looking at the whole end-to-end user experience and benefits, thanks.

Quattrone blasts Ellison, says Autonomy is right

RichyS
Stop

Bullshit detector off the scale on this one

Lynch was meeting Hurd and Oracle's head of M&A. And we're expected to believe that they were just talking about database issues? Why would you talk database issues with the head of Mergers & /Acquisitions/? I don't buy it.

And having used Autonomy's enterprise search elsewhere, I'd say they are the last people you want helping you with your unstructured data.

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