Posts by Bassey 1131 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Sep 2008
"What is it with people wanting to drink coffee in their cars? How has this ridiculous activity managed to become mainstream and acceptable?"
Why would it be rediculous for my lift-sharing passengers to want to drink a cup of coffee in the morning whilst I drive them in to work? Or is it just that you assumed everyone drives around by themselves, like you perhaps?
I'm surprised to learn that a bunch of so-called geeks use facebook through the facebook website. I genuinely thought everyone with any technical nouse had stopped using that POS a long time ago. I have a close network of about 50 friends and family on there and I just read the news through Freindcaster. I know there are loads and loads of other options out there but I'm not a big user so I stick to what I know. Plenty of friends have much better alternatives but I'm not interesred enough to try them. Hardly anyone actually uses Facebook though.
Facebook is just a bunch of APIs that allow you to access the data you want how you want. I find it incredible a bunch of so-called geeks don't get that.
Any of the cheap Chinese-made Android tablets can do what you want - they are on the likes of Amazon for around £70, last I looked. Plug it in, connect the headphone to the line-in on your HiFi and download something like 2Player (there are a few apps that do the same thing but I found 2Player to be zero setup). Select your source (any DLNA/uPnP source - 2Player shows both my NAS and my PC), set the destination as "SELF" and you are off. A 7" touchscreen controlled Wireless media player with album art etc that will play any music, in any format from any (DLNA) device in the house and can be moved around and plugged in to anything with a line-in.
Works for me!
Oh, and they actually make half-decent tablets/ebook readers as long as you are patient and don't mind using a stylus.
This sounds good but how do you receive the voice message? Is it played automatically or do you get an alert and then have to open the app and play it back? Endomondo offers something similar when I am out training so the wife can send me messages (like "stop at the shop on the way home and grab the milk"). The advantage is that it plays the message without me having to do anything so the phone can remain in my pocket. but if I don't hear it properly I can "play it again".
This sounds like it could be really handy but I'd want to know how it plays back messages.
Did you actually bother to read the article or was a single, vaguely critical, reference to Stallman enough to light the blue touch paper and you just went off on one? The entire point of the article was that there is nothing about propriatory software that makes it evil. Indeed, as the article makes clear, Bill Gates has done far more for the poor and needy than Stallman ever will BECAUSE he made shit loads of money from selling Windows.
We really need a RTFA icon.
Don't know about SuperOneClick but all phones can be unlocked - for a cost. The easiest is just to search eBay for the phone name. Unlock codes are usually about £8-10 and the process is simple. Stick your new SIM in. Start it up. When it asks for the unlock code, enter it and press OK.
There are more complicated, cheaper and riskier methods but the unlock code is the one I usually stick to.
There is no mention of how long the battery lasts. If the sole justification for buying this over, say, an Orange San Francisco (which would be cheaper, more capable, better screen etc) is to save the battery of your smartphone then would it not be useful to tell us how much music/video you can squeeze out of it?
I may have missed it but I didn't see any mention in the review of the ability to pull media from network sources to the device? It seems to be all about pulling from one device and then pushing out to another. Can I use this to, for example, access music on my NAS from my Android tablet and play it ON the tablet.
We have a couple of desktops running the old Atom at home, albeit with NVidia ION, and they perform perfectly well. I don't run photoshop on them but video editing is fine, it multi-tasks well enough (as it presents four cores to the OS) and the 2GB of RAM seems okay. I would have thought the SSD would make these seem quite spritely. Does the Intel graphics really make this considerably slower than my desktops or am I considerably more patient/realistic than the reviewer?
"borked yet another ohone by making their crapware non-removeable"
Depends what you mean by removable. All of the crapware can be removed in such a way that you will never come across it. Just install a new launcher and uninstall the games etc. from the App manager. However, as it is all installed in the ROM, removing it will not free up the available storage. To do that, you need a new ROM - which will not be far off. If it takes past the end of September I'd be amazed.
Sounds like the SanFran then. A decent phone for the normal user. An absolute bargain for those willing to root it and put on a decent ROM thereby getting around "most" of its foibles (the orange crap, lack of video/games performance and lack of RAM).
Picked up a Galaxy Europa at the weekend for the wife. £50(+£10 credit) from 3 and £8 to unlock. It is already a nippy, decent device - albeit with a 2007-era screen. With a fresh ROM it should be a cracker and, for the price, you just can't even be bothered to worry about the poor camera or lack of multitouch.
I believe the thinking with this (as indicated by them being at the back) is that you have a USB hub at home with everything plugged into the hub. Then, just plug the hub into one of the USB ports at the back leaving the other spare for anything requiring a decent pull of power. Certainly that is how I've done things in the past and it works rather well.
"Ports on the back are never nice, especially USB..."
I would normally agree but not in this form factor. These ultra-slim laptops have few ports so it is common to have either a docking station or even just a USB hub back at base - in which case having the USB port at the back, to slide into the docking station, makes perfect sense.
Except that SugarSync already provides all of this and it is free for upto 5GB. My photos etc are automatically uploaded from my phone and I can both access files and stream media from it. I suppose this has the advantage of not handing over your files to a third party - but that is only really an advantage to the law-breakers and/or paranoid.
I've never understood the debate over the ribbon. It is there for people who don't know the app. If you know the app you use keyboard shortcuts. If there are functions for which there isn't a keyboard shortcut, create one or place that command on the home ribbon. I can understand the argument that it takes up too much space (though I'd argue that is as much a problem with stupid monitor manufacturers making everything wide screen and so reducing verticle resolution - but that is another debate) but advanced users will never use the ribbon as is. They will bypass it for the 90% of things they do using shortcuts and they will customise it for the rest.
It isn't there for us. It is there for the new users so they don't have to wade through 5 or 6 sub-menus to find a command - or, more likely, use a program for five years without ever discovering 95% of what it can do BECAUSE it is hidden in so many sub-menus.
Interesting comments in PhysicsWorld about Biomass being a major source of aerosols. If the rest of the theory proves sound then it looks quite bad for a lot of "carbon-neutral" energy schemes.
Although it doesn't really need another study and more pointless arguing from both sides of the APGW debate. Whatever your beliefs, pumping crap into the atmosphere isn't a good thing.
I'm not sure Motorola were actually in the wrong here. Why does "most powerful" have to mean "fastest"? Why can't "Most Powerful" mean "capable of more" which, given the various docking options and desktop browser, you could argue DOES apply to the Matrix?
Not that I give a shit either way and, as always with the ASA, the punishment is simply "don't run that advert you stopped running ages ago".
You can actually get it over here in Home-brew-kit form from an importer in Norfolk (good link!). Don't have the details to hand but got my Dad the kit 18 months ago for his birthday and he has produced some excellent stuff from it. Still not sure I'd rate it above a decent pint of Bushy's but a good save none the less.
"Not such a problem for your average el reg reader, who could apply a ROM from the net, a problem however for the average mobile phone user who expects their phone to work, with no AV running, and with updates"
I'm not sure I agree with this. I know half a dozen people who have bought Android phones in the last couple of weeks and none of them would "expect" updates. They wouldn't even know what an update is. Consider how many Windows users get pissed off when they turn their PC on and it takes five minutes to boot up because windows is installing "yet more updates". Yeah, I know, those are "patches" but users don't understand the difference. They buy the phone that is in front of them in the shop. They don't give a damn if it contains v2.3.3 or v2.3.4.
Only we care about shit like that and we're freaks.
There is also a question of what works. I've been to see new bands/artists and, frankly, I tend to feel disappointed. They only have one or two albums with a couple of hits - the rest is filler or covers. The artists themselves haven't got the background or experience to carry off a live gig. You can easily pay £35-50 to watch a new band going through the motions and they might only be on stage for an hour.
On the other hand, £50-70 can get you good tickets to a major star with 10+ albums, 20+ well known hits, decades of experience, real music talent and a fantastic band playing for 3 hours or more. Much as I like supporting new music I usually come away from such gigs feeling like I've been had. I've never failed to be impressed by the major names - even if I'm not a fan of their music. There is just something about the guys (and gals) who have been making a living playing live for 30-40 years that impresses the hell out of me.
Just as an example, I am NO fan of Elton John but I can assure you seeing him play for 3 hours, just him at a piano, with no band, is an amazing experience. Same goes for seeing Clapton, The Who and others. In straightened times, when money is tight, people want to spend their hard earned on someone they know will deliver.
An aquaintance of mine got 4 weeks for drink driving - a second offence! Although, when he came out, he admitted it put the shits right up him, he sorted himself out and, six years later, is still on the straight and narrow. But still, 4 weeks for operating a potential killing machine whilst pissed. 6 weeks for a paper plate with foam. Rediculous.
"once again showed...the tactical nous of his McLaren pit crew"
Erm, didn't Jenson state in the post-race interview that his team actually called him into the Pits to Queue behind Lewis and get intermediate tyres when it started raining? It was Jenson's "tactical nous" that made him decide to discretely ignore the team instructions, sail past the pits, into the lead and win the race.
Like many others I have been a huge F1 fan for many years (since the very early eighties). It is one of the highlights of every-other weekend and my kids are both great fans now too. One of my big concerns with this move is the damage it will do to the UKs leadership in F1. Bar Ferrari, all the teams are based in the UK. All the drivers have homes here (albeit domiciled in Monaco for Tax purposes!) and the Universities around Silverstone and Brands Hatch dominate motorsport research across the world.
By removing F1 from the public conciousness there will be few younger people wishing to get into the sport and we will lose another or the increasingly few things we are good at.
As for my interests in F1. That is now at an end. Perhaps, if a significant number of people refuse to watch, they will get the idea but I doubt it. Bernie is only interested in selling the rights for the maximum he can get and UK based sponsorship of teams is virtually zero so I doubt it will bother them as they chase the asian and middle eastern viewers.
Everyone seems to be missing a rather pertinent point here;
The guy stole the identity of ANOTHER member of Lulzsec. So, even if they don't have "the official spokesman" of the group, they still have another member of the group - albeit a junior one.
Obviously this (as with all comments above) works on the basis the story actually has any truth to it.
"If I could use sliding controls on a configurator screen, to adjust the quantities, and the cost adjusted accordingly"
There was a telco (probably virtual) called Cloud9 that were due to launch with exactly that 3 years ago. I remember playing with the sliders and figuring out what I would need. I assume they ran out of funds before they ever launched as I never heard of them after the initial announcements.
"Welcome to 2009..."
Ahh, so you read "The History of Smartphones" by St Jobs - the one where smartphones were invented only a couple of years ago and then, in a moment of inspiration, he decided to (sort of) add multi-tasking to them?
2009 my arse. Smartphones have had multitasking for a decade - and that includes Microsoft.
"it asks "Are you planning to buy one this year" and **all** the answers are variations on "Yes".
Credible?"
The original version of the pie-chart has a little disclaimer at the bottom indicating that they have only used the "Yes" answers. If you go to the source you can see the original chart but the survey was "Of people who want a tablet this year, who will buy what".
"An organisational structure that puts the keys to the cash register in a man's pocket and then turns away is at least as much to blame as the man who fails to withstand the temptation."
If I leave my front door unlocked am I "at least as much to blame" as the burglar that nicks my stuff? For the love of Newton, what kind of a fucked up prick thinks you are as guilty as a criminal for trusting someone who then steals from you? Presumably the same sticking piles of shite who think women are "at least as much to blame" for being raped if they wear a short skirt?
"my nephew (not quite 2 years old yet) could have thought that one up. "I don't like them... hit them""
I agree with what you're saying but....
"mushroom cloud because these types of idiots need to be nuked from orbit"
...you kind of pissed all over your own point there, didn't you?
"the query and design tools should mean that developers rarely need to switch to SQL Server Management Studio"
Thank god for that! However, will the Visual Studio Tools continue to randomly corrupt my databases forcing me to re-build them from script at least once a week?
Nokia's big problem seemed to be that they both made the hardware and the software - or rather, that they had invested hugely in the software and to turn their back on it would have been unthinkable. When Apple introduced iOS it became obvious new software was going to be needed. For the other manufacturers that was relatively easy. All they did was make the hardware. What OS was running on it was irellevant. So, for most, they produced the same model with 2 or 3 OSs and let the market decide which they wanted - turned out it was Android but Smasung, HTC etc didn't give a damn as long as the phones sold.
Nokia, on the other hand, just couldn't switch from Symbian. It was only when things had become utterly retched that the unthinkable actually became thinkable. Things NEEDED to get that bad.
The thing is, Nokia aren't in that position now. Okay, they have committed their future to WinPhone7 and there are contracts in place but I'm sure, in reality, they could switch to Android in a year or two. Or, more likely, they could switch to whatever the hot new OS turns out to be in a few years time when the market suddenly changes again. In fact, there is only one phone manufacturer that couldn't do that now. Only one manufacturer is in the position Nokia were in 5-6 years ago in having the whole house invested in the hardware, the OS, the software development, marketplace etc....
Are Apple the new Nokia?
Now I get the other two - they are great films and quite a lot happens. I'm not so enamoured with them to regard them as "landmark" and, already having the original trilogy on DVD for less than a tenner, I have no intention to re-buy them but they are good films.
But the fellowship? 30 minutes extra? Nothing happens in the original 72-hour cut. The plot is "Small village, wizard arrives. Group sets off with a ring". That is it. Litterally NOTHING else happens. It could have been shown as a five minute short before the second film.
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