Posts by Mark Serlin

Apple's new Final Cut Pro X 'not actually for pros'

Re:Simple suggestion

There's a problem with that, long-term, in that the previous versions will one day (one day soon? Lion?) be incompatible with the OS. I have this situation with 60-odd projects written in VisualStudio6, and another 20-odd in VC8.

VC8 is kind enough to perfectly convert VC6 projects if you want to move up to the newer IDE & compiler (well worth it BTW) but it's way more convenient to fire up VC6 for a quick fix on an old project.

All of which was fine until I had to get Win7 and guess what - VC6 just won't run on Win7, and several upgrades are now required to each of these legacy projects.

So now I either *have* to convert them all or run a virtual machine with WinXP so I can use VC6... it's a hassle any way round. I wish now I'd kept my old WinXP box - but then I don't get the choice about that kind of thing :(

Mac OS X Lion to include browser-only boot

One good thing...

about Lion - resize windows from any edge. Welcome to the 1980's, and about flippin time.

Dear Dell and Microsoft: You're not Apple

@Jeff 11

and i'd happily run IE9 on my MAC if I could. Safari is "kind of OK", Firefox still gets weighed down by its addons and Chrome lacks functionality - or can someone tell me how to "send a link to this page in email"?

Re: Gates sucks

Oh come on. Find me the head of a massive corporation who got there by being nice and cuddly. Mark Zuckerberg? Fred The Shred? Larry Ellison? Grow up, dude, it's a big bad world out there.

Rapture postponed as world inexplicably fails to end

Dammit

Our local faith school is *still* going to be tough to get into then. I was hoping the over-subscription would ease up quite a bit.

Apple to support reps: Don't confirm Mac infections

Dork

Yeah, cause no manufacturers ever, EVER sell anything that isn't 100% fit and working. Like my Toyota ... can't stop now, though ... maybe see you l;ater....

Duh! RTFP!

The point is that they believe their mac to be virus-impregnable AND that the scanner has "found viruses". Double-think in action??

Norton?

Is it good news for anything?

New PlayStation Network hack hijacks user accounts

re consultant

refer you straight to Scott Adams :) http://dilbert.com/strips/

'Upgraded' Apple iMacs lock out hard drive replacement

Upgrade the mac? Me??

The main reason I bought the iMac is so I WOULDN'T have to do any IT support on it for my wife & kids (who clock up 95% of its use). It needs a bigger disk & more RAM? It can go back to the damn shop. I've spent 15 years building, upgrading and troubleshooting PCs from win98SE on up, and I'm bored of it. Nowadays it's sit down, wake-from-sleep, do some stuff, leave. Period.

And don't get me started on how useless, lazy, needlessly expensive and just plain crap ALL the car mechanics around here are. My biggest nightmare is finding some monkey to service the car every year without trying to con me over "rusty brake discs", "worn shocks", "rusty-looking exhausts" and all the other scams they use to try to bump up the bill for the MOT for no good reason. I'd rather drive it down to the main dealer and have it serviced by someone who knows what's what and doesn't have to run to the local library for a Haynes manual!

Just in case I feel the need to get the screwdriver out, I still have the Shuttle XPC I built and the old Dell laptop I can play with. But we are talking cold day in hell here!

Fit your own hard drive...

"there might well be a ... service provider who can do the job"

What, like the Apple Store?

Think file-hosting sites guard your private data? Think again

why would anyone think *that*

Duh!

Save the planet: Stop the Greens

Shale gas will work?

That's where you lost me. That's just rubbish, do your research. The environmental costs are MASSIVE and cracking destroys local environments and communities.

Apple breaks location-storing silence

Timestamp

Probably because the timestamp is a unique identifier for the piece of data and the location info is not.

RadioShack gun giveaway: A clarification

Wish I'd got one with my fetchTV box

I'd have used it to blow the useless thing into a million pieces by now.

iPhone 5? You might be waiting till 2012

I don't care WHAT you write about...

... just keep up the same old snarky tone and reader-baiting attitude and I will keep reading. Work is dull and I need a good laff at lunchtime :-)

Pandora's mobile app transmits 'mass quantities' of user data

Why would you let a radio service know your location using the GPS?

Because you have to, to get the app to run, on Android anyway. "This app requires access to your GPS data, mail account and inside leg measurement. so do you want to run it or not? (click here sucker)"

Apple 'orders 12 petabytes of storage' from EMC

Reply to post: "... I'll have a 1.8 inch 200 PB hard disk for $35 twelve years from now."

Nah. By then we'll be storing all that data on a human hair. Somehow.

UK's oldest working telly up for sale

guide price of 3-5k

It cost £99/15/- in 1936 which according to http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/historic-inflation-calculator was actually £5,208.95.

That's depreciation I guess.

Stardust comet hunter drifts off into space

who needs a bin?

we need WALL-E

Scientists eye curvaceous Earth gravity map

Re: And in the Maldives..?

It should change I think, especially after some catastrophic thing like the recent earthquake or maybe even the Icelandic volcano thing.

Well done you

because so far no-one has referred to gravity as a "force".

Apple's 'App Store trademark': A farce of Jobsian proportions

What a bunch of twunts

why can't apple stop being such an arse and become The Good Guys? It'd require a MASSIVE turnaround in their attituide to the world but there's a pretty big hole in the market and they could fill it claim the high ground that google seem to have run away from.

Amazon is best hope of a viable alternative to iPad

That IS the problem

@Jedediah - and how many rubbish apps did that result in - ones that crashed, froze, locked up your box, wrecked your files, or just did nothing? That's a rhetorical question but I'd guess somewhere in the tens of thousands. Not to mention all the malware, crapware, trojans, etc etc etc.

Give me the distorted reality of an app that doesn't raid your contacts, cripple your device, run it as a spambot etc blah blah any day, thanks.

iDect iHome Android phone

Binatone

that says it all.

A "pucker" handset? You kiss it if you want to....

iPad 2? Let's be kind and call it iPad 1.5

Re: Syncing

Why don't you just drop the new things you want onto the phone icon in the sidebar? How hard is that?

Apple fanbois leak secrets of Mac OS X Lion

Yeah but how much is Win7?

£80? Makes this look cheap, and I'd happily pay £25 for the resizeable window thing. welcome to 1986!

BBC Trust says no to kit-specific iPlayer apps

Works on iPhone4 just fine thanks

and on my rubbish fetchTV box. And my computer, and the Wii. presumably would be fine on the iPod and even on the iPad too if it hadn't been stolen. How many formats do you want, anyway?

PS If anybody gets offered a 32Gb 3G iPad with initials and a postcode engraced on the back, let me know!

Facebook facing fall-down issues

It's only facebook

so get over it.

Stephen Fry security whoopsie leads to prank fart book order

Fry

What a dick.

Apple iPhone 4 vs... the rest

No social network updates on iPhone??

Really? Have you never actually used one? I get facebook and sms content straight to the screen when they arrive, and would get twitter updates if I hadn't turned them off - they are all individually configurable.

Txt tax would wipe out half UK deficit, claims union baron

And shame on HMG

for letting them get away with it and landing me with the bill!

1bn a year = 147 years to clear the debt?

What a knob.

An iPad for under 200 quid*

I really like these shiny pokey-things

Just that, really :)

Paris, because she's shiny and I'd happily....

Except that...

...it's not just about functionality. Having bought the thing you then have to look at it for n years, have it sitting in your living room etc. So if your Kenwood, Sony or Technics is the best-looking thing in your house all I can say is you're living in a dump filled with ugly grotware. Now either you don't care and it's a conscious decision to ignore aesthetics maybe because of cost or you have no class. None of my business either way of course, but I recently bought a Dualit toaster and kettle just because they looked nice. While the toaster is a HUGE improvement over the old cheapo one, the kettle is kinda small and a bit noisy but I don't care, it looks nice and every time I walk into the kitchen I get a little happy glow :)

Anyway if B&O is "tat" why do you want something that sounds "just as good"? I'd go for way better and get a high-end Naim system and some massive speakers. Makes B&O look cheap though!

Gear4 UnityRemote

I'd have one

The other remotes are for the rest of the family to lose under sofas/park in the kitchen/absentmindedly put in the fridge etc. When *I* want to watch something I won't have to hunt round the house for an assortment of hidden treasure - I always know where my phone is. Share it? You *must* be barking...

I just feel sorry for the reviewer - I too have a FetchTV box. Now, an article on how to ensure it stays connected, and always records what you tell it to using the splendid iPhone app would be great! Also, how to stop it freezing/dying/recording bits of things that weren't scheduled, etc etc....

TVonics DTR-HD500 Freeview HD DVR

Wireless OK

I've got a box with wireless support and it's fine, thanks - I live in the middle of N. London surrounded by routers, and have a standard 8Mb BT service (ie 3 at best, usually less). The box drops the connection now and then, but less than it freezes up, refuses to change channel or shows a frozen image over the new channel's sound. It also refuses to series-link, crashes in iPlayer when time-shifting, time-shifts very badly otherwise and oh yes did I mention it freezes and crashes all the time?

Really it's a piece of rubbish - the wireless support is one of the better things about it! It's oneof those £200 Tesco fetchTV jobs. God it's awful. I'm soo glad I kept the old Humax!

Duracell MyGrid cable-free gadget charger

Some genius idea

I saw recently someone came up with the idea of a USB socket in a power outlet plate, underneath the regular plug socket. Now that's genius - just plug your phone's USB straight in!

iPad tethering does disappearing trick

Fail

What, apart from the easily accessed update settings where you can specify - er - whether to notify, download, or download and install?

Apple goes social with musical Ping

"The demise of the compact disk"?

I think the announcement of the death of the CD is still somewhat premature...

IPVision FetchTV SmartBox 8000 DVR

Locking up??

WTF? Why can't these idiots make shit that works for this kind of money?? IPVision (and Jobs haha) I'm looking at YOU!

On my Humax...

padding the recordings cancels the ability to series link. So I ditched padding (which never really worked o the Umax anyway) and I haven't missed an ending since.

@Picked up the 8320HD myself

Me too - I'm liking it as my old Humax is getting crankier by the week. Except:

I find the handset a bit fiddly and unresponsive.

iPlayer, if the content is actually unavailable once play has been pressed (as I sometimes have found it to be on the web), freezes the box up, from which there is no recovery. The only way to reboot is to pull the plug, there's no off switch. Thank you, Flash??

The EPG is annoyingly polluted with ads for FetchTV.

Pause/rewind/forward is not as usable as I'd like. Humax much better (when it works)

Don't think the epg is searchable like the Hummy though :-(

I'm liking the media streaming/networking etc.

There's no need to sign up to anything during setup any more, you do it on the web later.

When I first switched it on it only found 20 channels, but a rescan found them all later (phew!). After I plugged the aerial straight in, not via 2 other devices.

Paris, because she only sort of works, too.

Apart from HD it feels like a £50 box not a £200 one. plus £50 for the (wireless) networking and ability to save to pendrive I guess. So - Jury's kinda out.

Apple's iPhone 4 denial: insulting or ignorant?

The bridging thing

Has nobody tried a bit of clear nail varnish?

Apple seeks antenna engineers after 'Death Grip' debacle

Pointless though

So the solution to irradiating your customers brains is make a phone which doesn't actually, er, work. If you're really worried about that wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just not buy a phone?

Surely anyone who uses the phone enough to have a worry on this score would use a handsfree anyway, if they're *that* worried? In which case you could mount the antenna up there anyway.

Isn't the problem about bridging the phone and wifi antennas? Why not site the wifi one at the top since when you're downloading stuff etc you likely won't be holding it to your ear?

Should I apply for the Job?

I have no electrical engineering degree, much less a Phd, still less the faintest idea about how aerials work or whether they emit photons or waves or particles or shredded wheat. But even I could have designed it better than that! FFS!

I have just bought a new phone. It cost £50, has an FM radio (I like Radio 4), and you can hold it in your hand and make and take calls. I love it. It's small and light and has 10 days standby. But my point is that it's all metal APART FROM the top third at the back...now as I've indicated I'm no genius, but what idiot sites an aerial in a metal case at THE BOTTOM of the phone *where you hold it* and not at the top where it can wave around in free air??

And this is without the proximity sensor issues!

Workers scared to befriend bosses on Facebook

Friend Boss?

If you think your boss is in any way your friend you are a complete mug!

Prisoners chucked off Facebook

Now you can get Failbook on your mobile!

Dude, it's about mobile access, not Internet access!

Steve Jobs re-invents the portable telly

Sell the netbook?

I don't think so. What are you going to activate it with, synch to, and backup to if you do that? Oh, I guess you could then buy a macbook?

Re: Where does it fit though?

Yes! I've got a Dell XPS and it's absolutely shit at playing HD video.