Posts by Paul Bristow

Google asks YouTube commenters to stand up and be counted

Sod google

I too have multiple indents I use online. I don't want to mix my work persona with my personal persona. If Google insist on using my real name, I'll simply never post on anything google-owned again.

'Space Monkey' craze: Texan students 'get high' by choking each other

Darwinian

Isn't this "problem" likely to solve itself through darwinian selection if we just leave it alone?

Winter for webOS, winter for Droid, but springtime for iPad!

Because iPad was the first slim design...</sarcasm>

A year and a half before the iPad launched was the Crunchpad. It looks a lot like a white iPad finally did in terms of hardware...

http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/

BOFH: Ready for the Judgment Day

I haven't played it yet...

...but I did already pre-order it on a credit card.

Downloads are not performances, rules US court

So what happens...

...if I record a stream to my hard disk with the volume turned down?

Apple sues three more over power adapter 'knock-offs'

I'd be a lot more impressed if...

...Apple would license the magsafe connector to companies, so that some leads that do not exist can be created.

As it is, there is an artificial restriction put in the airplane connector lead - IN THE CHIP PUT IN THE CONNECTOR - that tells the computer not to enable charging. If you want a magsafe connector to enable charging, if, say, you wanted a solar charger for your laptop, the ONLY way to do this is to buy another apple power supply and cut the end off, to get a magsafe connector that has a chip that allows charging.

This is the only reason the magsafe connector has 4 pins and not 3...

Murdoch's paywall: The end of the suicide era?

Deleting bookmarks in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

Do they have the right to charge? Absolutely!

Do I have the right to ignore them from this moment onwards? Absolutely.

RIP The Times. You used to be a great newspaper.

Microsoft eyes mobile app store

Skymarket or SkyNet?

I'm sure this should read "SkyNet" instead of Skymarket and hence the only inaccuracy in Terminator was caused by Windows not being selected for the US Military's AI experiments in the late 90s.

I'll get my tin-foil coated coat...

NASA: Mars is good habitat for Terry Pratchett dragons

Re: Mars plays dice

"It's a million-to-one chance, but it might just work!"

...but according to Terry Pratchett, million-to-one chances work nine times out of ten.

Official: OOXML approved as international standard

A "standard" with only one implementation possible is a waste of space

Call us back when it's actually possible for a third-party to have an independent implementation.

Until then, this is just business as usual. New versions of office have yet another file format that is guaranteed to be impossible to import and export. Just calling OOXML a "standard" won't change this.

Surely one of the national bodies has some integrity left? Or is this just confirmation that standardisation has become like every other walk of business life - hard cash talks - any thought of honorable behaviour (you know - like having a standard that , I don't know, was actually implementable by someone else) can just get stuffed.

Tiscali and BPI go to war over 'three strikes' payments

Why should music be a business, rather than a pleasure?

"If bands only make money from live performances, why bother having any high quality recordings made? Yes there's an argument that music downloads and radio play will act as a taster to encourage paying punters to go to concerts, but why bother producing CDs and DVDs (or whatever replaces them)? The tasters can be low-resolution loss-leaders suitable for radio-play and downloading, if you aren't going to make any money from them, why bother with anything better?"

I think you need to think again at why people become musicians. Hardly anyone says "I think I'll take up a career as a pop star". If you are a professional musician it is very likely that you have to play every week - that's what it means. Musicians are generally artists first - they make music because they have to, not because it will make them rich. You also have to consider that the cost of creating content has fallen dramatically. You can have a pocket multitrack recording studio for around 120 quid! As for quality - you would have to take extra steps to reduce the quality and make your music sound worse - not a good advert.

In short, we are never going to run out of musicians. The RIAA and BPI didn't exist while Mozart was around and I seem to recall one or two pieces of music by him. What we are going to run out of is the music industry itself. Record labels, who exist for the purpose of creating then duplicating music (making records if you remember) are simply not necessary in a world where the initial recording can be made on a cheap computer, and the duplication costs have gone to virtually zero.

The music industry will look different, yes. Different could well be better and healthier. I think it would be a much better thing to have lots of bands that we go and see live, and decide for ourselves that we like them, rather than a few that we all "consume" because we have been told by industry marketing that we should.

US HD DVD player sales pass 750,000

It's now about movie sales

Could be that demand for HD-DVD is accelerating or it could be that selling off the old model at $98 meant a lot of people bought it as a great, cheap upscaling DVD player with HDMI out.

I bought a PS3 as a blu-ray player AND as a games machine. Currently the score for me is 15 blu-ray movies and 3 games.

We could sit and argue all day about PS3 vs standalone blu-ray players vs HD-DVD players. We could argue about stupid Toshiba vs Sony battles (Actually Toshiba+Microsoft vs almost every other CE vendor)...

But as Andy says above, watch what happens with actual movie disc sales. After all, if the content industry decides blu-ray is where the action is, and stops producing HD-DVD content, it's over.

Record labels to ditch CD singles for USB Flash drives

How many USB sticks do I need?

I might buy one out of curiosity, but by the time you've got 10 USB sticks this would look bloody stupid. And if there is only one or two songs per USB stick? Do they seriously expect me to keep my music collection in a box of USB sticks? Have they even tried iTunes or any modern piece of music organisation software?

Or in short. No, I do not think this is a good idea.

Teens using M-rated games to vent anger

Not just teenagers

I'm 39 years old, and a quick blast on Quake4 or Doom3 is VERY good at relieving stress, and a lot friendlier than actually shooting anyone.

Danes 'prove' sudden iBook death syndrome

Re: Fan boy warning!

The point I was making is that other than the fault highlighted by the Danes, which seems to be a manufacturing fault, as it can in many cases, including mine be fixed by the process documented at:

http://www.coreyarnold.org/ibook/

my iBook G4 has given me exactly zero problems in the 3.5 years I have had it. Not a few, zero. I am a long time windows and Linux user and this is my first Apple computer I have had in a long time. It will not be the last. My 3.5 year old iBook is still perfectly useable and working for all the tasks I wanted it.

I have never seen a Windows laptop last like this or give such faultless service.

To summarise, not a fanboy (far from it!) but a 25 year IT verteran and customer who is very surprised by anything going wrong with his faithful laptop, let alone something that is clearly happening to a considerable number of us around the world.

I have exactly this fault

Happened to my iBook G4. I followed the instructions available on the net to apply pressure to one component on the motherboard, and I am typing this response on that iBook G4. But I shouldn't have to perform hairy kludge repairs because of one bad design element.

Other than this my iBook is faultless.

Paul

Missing the PowerPoint of public speaking

Flexibility

"I don't know how you'd set up a PowerPoint show that would allow that flexibility."

1. Don't use PowerPoint, if at all possible. I use KeyNote where I can.

2. Use the two screen speaker view, where you can see all of your slides and choose from them dynamically to suite the way the conversation/presentation is going. Typically I have around 200 slides available and use about 10.

The other handy tip is to have slides as graphical as possible so you can tell whatever story you need around them. As long as they are related to the subject in some way, you're good to go.

Mobile phone threat to honeybees

Re: So no more Bees is bad?

Umm, yes it's bad. With no more bees, no more plants get pollinated. No more plants, no more crops, no more food.

The Human race would die out quite quickly with no more food available.

Unless you don't count that as a bad thing?