Posts by Daniel Pimley

Nuke support in UK hits record high

@tmTM

Bravo, sir!

HP exec: WebOS tablet will trounce iPad

Numberoneplus?

Doubleplusgood.

Falklands hero Marine: Save the Harrier, scrap the Tornado

"Argie-land"

Please stop reading The Sun, just look at the pictures if you must.

Cameron cocks up UK's defences - and betrays Afghan troops

Fighting is not open to debate.

You, sir, are an unarmed opponent in this battle of wits.

Top cyber crime cop lied under oath, says judge

Good cop, bad cop

"The Met will carefully review the findings to see if there is any wider learning for the future."

Let me help you with that: lying, cheating scumbags do not deserve to be police officers.

Three-version Avatar disc sets out 15 November

It's called branching content

And it's rarely done because it requires careful planning and skill. Shoving two discs in the box is less elegant, less convenient, but cheaper. IIRC, the Aliens SE DVD uses branching to allow the theatrical and extended cut to fit on one disc.

US Navy says electric jet-flinger tech looking good

Fixed that for you

Defence cuts should be made with value for money being the number one priority.

Ballmer's 'lost generation' note finds resonance

@Trevor

"Personally, I am of the opinion that after the initial Apple shakeup on UIs, the subsequent innovations by Apple’s competitors have largely been superior"

You may well be right. I don't propose Apple as the shining light, I just know that of the PC and CE devices I've used over the last 10 years, Apple are one of the few companies I see doing more right than wrong - but yes, it is all very subjective. Now is a dangerous time for Apple, as the innovations they presented become shtick. Perhaps the MS situation is a cautionary tale for Apple: Ballmer seems to crave innovation whilst still thinking in anachronisms - it's like bring a knife to a gun fight.

OS X != Linux

OS X is built on a BSD core with a considerable amount of NextStep thrown in, it has nothing to do with Linux.

"paste a flashy UI on it"

It always amuses me to see Apple's excellence in user interface / interaction design reduced to the flame-bait of "flashy UI."

Five quits Project Cartel

That's the spirit!

A British consortium shouldn't attempt to lead in this sector because - when they inevitably fail (even if they succeed) - it will curtail the plans of foreign cartels such as NewsCorp and Sony to sell us cheap devices made in China...? That's the spirit!

Leica Pinmaster rangefinder

Consequently

I have rated this article "Below par."

Adobe declares 'LOVE' for Apple

Understood

But it's possible that Preview has secuirty by obscurity *and* by design.

H.264 is a standard

It's just not free to implement.

The sound of one hand clapping

So, are you claiming that Adobe Reader isn't a piece of shit that needs constant patching because it's so badly programmed?

Steve Jobs bans all apps from iPhone (or thereabouts)

lol

"Bill Gates will rescue us again very soon"

You forgot the Joke Alert icon.

Google to open source $124.6m video codec, says report

Hate is not a useful emotion

There is the world as we wish it to be, and the world as it is. QuickTime is not perfect - far from it - but it is an entrenched standard which, just like Flash, predates the newer superior technologies we are discussing now. Perhaps one day QuickTime will disappear from the web and the desktop, but your hate and vitriol will not make that happen.

Open source VP8 != death of QuickTime

QuickTime is a very robust and versatile container format for desktop video production. As a delivery platform for internet video, it is as flawed as all the other proprietary solutions. I welcome a high-quality, universally adopted solution to the thorny issue of web video, but I don't feel the need spitefully to wish for the demise of other useful technologies.

Tories drop opposition to UK.gov DNA plans

Principles

Politicians don't have any principles.

Linus Torvalds doesn't hate the Googlephone

Serves me right for speed reading

Misread your comment, Tarthen. I suggested iPod Touch precisely because Linus seems to like smartphones, except the phone bit.

Galaga REMIX

Galaga REMIX by Namco. Plenty of Solitaire options.

Should have bought an iPod Touch

"With his G1, Linus says, he did little more than play Galaga and Solitaire on long plane flights."

Who ate all the iPies?

FarmVille

Flash is not allowed on the iPhone/iPad because of its excessive CPU drain and thus battery drain, not because of "customer lock-in." Maybe part of the reason is because Steve Jobs hates Flash, but that's the lesser part.

Maybe It's the onset of middle age, but I have ClickToFlash installed on my Mac so I don't have to look at every piece of Flash that web designers try to foist on me, and I don't want to play FarmVille!

Microsoft China accused of pilfering webcode

Misquote?

"Microsoft takes intellectual property seriously"

"Microsoft seriously takes intellectual property"

Fixed.

Icon design for dummies fanbois

Ask, it won't kill you

"The Pro Edition costs $69.95, which is a fraction of what you’d have to pay if you employed an icon designer to create artwork according to your specifications."

You might find that, depending on the purpose and cost of your application, you could find a pro or talented amateur designer to produce a very nice icon for you at little or no cost. It will look much better than bashing together some monstrosity from a kit of parts.

Sometimes it's who you know, not what you know, that counts.

Macs not all that for reliability

Damn lies and statistics

Nice to know the average Reg reader is as credulous as everybody else when the statistics "prove" your own point of view.

MS patent looks just like Unix command, critics howl

Rabid Dog

"Makes a change from Apple patenting the blindingly f***ing obvious then..."

One could argue that Apple have learned their lesson, having played fair and been bitten too many times in the past. Now they are the IP rabid dog that few dare to approach. It doesn't make it right, but it makes it understandable.

IE, Chrome, Safari duped by bogus PayPal SSL cert

Never let the truth get in the way of a good headline

"If you use the Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Apple Safari browsers [on Windows]..."

The vast majority of Safari users are on OS X, and so apparently unaffected by this exploit - but of course you should never let the truth get in the way of a good headline.

Palm Pre re-re-introduces iTunes synchronization

Do you hear that?

That is the sound of inevitability.

Microsoft's web world shrinks

Flying chairs

"There are no stats, worldwide or otherwise that give such a high figure."

Those are the statistics his minions give him. If he knew the truth, he'd throw a chair.

Google fits web with meta comments engine

Criticism from the mindless masses

"If you're smart, you'll read the comments and take constructive criticism."

teh shuld be more lolcats on this web page!!!1

Tyre firm sketches rubber SUV concept

Re: Brakes

Cars with regenerative braking actually do need traditional friction brakes, according to our good old, always reliable friend, Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_braking#Limitations

The only thing worse than a Wikipedia-quoting pedant (me) is someone who doesn't even bother to read Wikipedia before replying (Andrew and Andy.)

Tokyo battles monstrous murder of crows

News-bite

"Megalomaniacal assholes discover that nature does not bend to their schemes."

Crows 1, Assholes 0.

Apple nabs 90% of all 'premium PC' dollars

@barth

"...keeping apps open even though I closed them."

cmd-Q is your friend. Alternatively click on the application menu and select Quit. A little RTFM never hurts.

Wikipedia's Gallery guy hung up to dry?

Re: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality"

I wonder who paid his electricity bills? (Or 18/19th century equivalent thereof.)

The English commentators complaining about misuse of their taxes might like to consider the fact that perhaps our taxes do not cover the NPG's costs, hence the need for other revenue streams.

New York nips facelift firm for astroturfing

Hello Everybody!

I'm Doctor Nick!

Never give a sucker an even break.

Getting Started with Avisynth

FUD

"movie-editing software like Apple's Final Cut Pro and Adobe's Premier emulate reels of celluloid that you can wind through to find your edit points. Unfortunately, this emulation eats up computer resources. Dispense with it, and there's a great way you can do movie editing without having to lash out on a quad-core machine with multi-gigabytes of Ram."

This is totally inaccurate . Modern NLEs require quad-core machines with GBs of RAM to do massively complex real-time colour correction, compositing, key-framed effects and multi-track audio mixing, not simply to display an NLE interface.

"the ability to access frames at random and do virtual cuts without modifying the original clip - and a feast of instantly deliverable transitions - dissolves, wipes, and so forth. Not stuff you'd expect to do on an 800MHz single-core Celeron system."

In 2001 I was doing exactly what you describe with DV quality material using a PC with an 800 MHz Celeron and 512 MB RAM, with off-the-shelf software and no additional dedicated hardware.

This article is pure FUD and the author is utterly uninformed.

O2 tells Apple fans to talk to the hand

Safari FUD

"Safari on the desktop is crap owing to the availability of much better browsers"

Oddly, in my browser your comment reads as "blah blah blah." Perhaps it's a text encoding problem. Silly me for browsing with Safari, now I'll never get to read your illuminating words.

The Times kills off blogger anonymity

Nice work

I hope the tabloid hacks at The Times are proud of themselves.

Extreme porn law used on beastly Chinese DVD pirates

"What about heavy petting?"

No sex with our pets, please, we're British.

Microsoft fans call for Opera boycott

Zealots

I hope they will also stop using Google's search engine as a protest against that company's role in this despicable anti-Microsoft action.

"One Bing to bring them all and in the darkness bind them"

Japanese games group to ban twisted 'sex torture' sims

@Ray

"a female point of view would provide excellent balance."

You are aware this is a news website for IT geeks? QED.

Terrible reasoning

'part of a plan to control content that "deviates extremely from social norms"'

An unpleasant truth eradicated by a dangerous precedent. Which group of social deviants will be next and where will it stop?

Who will win the epic battle for the kitchen OS?

Gates the prophet

"Let us not forget that a long time ago Bill Gates reckoned the kitchen would be the natural environment for the PC."

Oh, then it must be true.

Cloud power harnessed to dump unwanted Mac apps

Re: Um

"for some reason the term small things please small minds spring to mind"

It seems you don't appreciate the value of discreet UI feedback to users.

Are you by chance a Linux programmer?

Hackintosher to open US storefront

Re: Hmm

Actually, "labeled" is valid in U.S. English, whereas "labelled" is the British spelling.

By the way, it's "Hm" not "Hmm"

Fanbois squeal over Mac OS X upgrade

Perfect

20+ OS upgrades on 4 Macs over the last 5 years and I have never had a single problem.

And yes, I do know how to use the shell.

Spy chiefs size up net snoop gear

RE: Perspective

"We will never be able to stop GCHQ / the NSA from monitoring what we do"

That's the spirit! Now hold still so I can implant this tracking chip in your brain.

Subsidized netbook model could sweep away 20 years of PC history

@ A Baird and Andrew Moore

Thanks for your erudite comments. Why don't you just fuck off?

Westminster forced to switch off digital CCTV cameras

Re: Standards

It's a collision and small-minded misinterpretation of two related standards: 704x576 is 4CIF, a worldwide recognised standard for generic digital video; 720x576 is a worldwide recognised TV broadcast standard for encoding analogue video signals, which Sony adopted for the pioneering D1 digital tape format and has since become the reference standard for all digital video encoding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Intermediate_Format

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCIR_601