Posts by Sean Timarco Baggaley

A budget phablet, what a curious thing: Reg puts claws to the Lumia 1320

I've had one for a couple of weeks now...

... and it's pretty damned good.

My only quibbles with it are:

1. The flip-cover case I bought for it is rubbish (and actually makes it overheat at times)

2. The 8GB built-in storage is too little. Luckily, it works just fine with a 64GB µSD card.

3. Point 2 makes installing the preview version of Windows Phone 8.1 a must. (Good thing that's free and easy to do. It includes support for installing apps on the SD card.)

The screen is excellent. Although two-hundred-and-something PPI doesn't sound like much, it's easy to forget that this is similar to what an iPad Air offers. I certainly haven't had any issues with it, though as the main reason for my giving away my old iPhone 4 and getting this is the decreasing quality of my eyesight, my opinion on this aspect probably isn't worth much. It looks plenty sharp enough to me, and it's even visible in bright sunlight too.

If I'd had the money—Italian operators don't like subsidising unless you're willing to commit to a usurious contract over a ridiculously long period—I'd have gone with the 1520 for the increased storage and future proofing, but I don't. That said, I've not regretted the purchase.

Watch: Kids slam Apple as 'BORING, the whole thing is BORING'

Re: "Computers? Beep beep beep. Does not compute! What use are they?"

^

This.

Kids are *born* wanting to learn. Our education systems beat that desire out of them, because most teachers are mediocre at best and fall back on telling, not guiding. Guiding is harder, but a lot more rewarding.

The world's education systems are still fundamentally based on precepts invented by the Victorians. This really, really needs to change, but it will require major upheavals.

"What they didn't have any difficulty doing was speaking on camera, proving this writer's suspicion that Americans are trained to act on telly from the minute they emerge from the womb"

Actually, I suspect this has more to do with the US education system. I don't remember ever being asked to do a "Show and Tell" session in class at school when I were a lad, but these—and other public speaking / presentation skills—seem to be much more commonly taught in the US.

In the UK, even into the 1980s, the underlying philosophy in education was that the public education system was primarily intended to train up good, obedient little worker drones who knew their place. The managers, politicians, etc., came mainly from the Eton and Oxbridge set.

The upshot of which is that British school-leavers tended not to have quite as much self-confidence as their US counterparts.

This situation does appear to have improved since my school days, but I think the US is still way ahead on this.

Re: How things have changed

Myth 1: Xerox did not sue Apple until much later, and that suit was mainly an attempt to settle primacy in aspects of GUI design at a time when patenting in IT was still a very new idea. Apple PAID for access to the PARC research. In shares. Shares that would be worth staggering sums of money today.

Myth 2: PARC's GUI was lovely and polished and ready to roll into a (relatively) low-cost consumer / corporate desktop computer. Not true: It was actually very crude and certainly not ready for a consumer or business desktop computer. The first Xerox Star machines cost an absolute mint—even more than Apple's own Lisa range.

A hell of a lot of additional work was needed. Guess who ended up doing that work? Hint: people who used to work at PARC and moved to Apple. (Drag and drop*? That was invented at Apple, along with overlapping windows and a number of other features we take for granted today.)

Myth 3: The WIMP GUI concept was some kind of closely-guarded secret. Utter bollocks: it was already a well known idea—see other replies in this forum—and the PARC people sure as hell didn't invent it.

What PARC *did* do was create a working implementation that could be *seen in action*. THAT is what gave Steve Jobs (and, later, Bill Gates) their moments of epiphany: it's all very well *reading* about graphical user interfaces, but it's a lot easier to understand the concept when you actually see one in action and play around with it.

* (not object linking and embedding, which was implemented first at PARC, but the 'drag an object with the mouse and drop it onto something else' user interface itself. As I said, the original Star environment was nowhere near as complete and polished as people seem to think it was.)

Chuh. Heavy, dude: HP ZBook 17 mobile workstation

Re: Like or not, a Pro machine by the (ancient) book.

Except...

The 17" screen is a mediocre 1920 x 1080 model. (Yes, there's a 10-bit-per-pixel version, but that's *extra*, and it's STILL the same crap resolution.) Even worse, there's this quote from the review:

"There are 15-inch and 14-inch versions too, the former available with a 3200 x 1800-pixel option [...]"

Why the hell isn't the 17" model available with that resolution?

As for the Blu-ray drive: remove it and re-jig the interior slightly so that you can have three drives: one boot drive (SSD), and two additional drives in a RAID 0 or 1 arrangement (according to need).

If you really need to use BD for archival purposes, get a proper auto-loader / writer unit and plug it into a cheap PC back at the office. When you return there, just dump the data you want to archive onto that PC and let it create the archive disks overnight. Job done, and you don't need to cart around sufficient blank Blu-ray disks (plus spares for the inevitable coaster) with you when you're out and about.

If you're truly paranoid, you can get an external drive or two as well and plug one in to backup your RAIDed drives whenever you want. Chances are, this will still weigh less than the BD drive + bunch of blank disks.

If you need to watch, or master, Blu-ray disks, an external unit is a better option anyway: they're not exactly the most reliable things ever made, so you might as well get one that won't require you to open up the machine to replace it when it inevitably dies on you just when you need it most.

So, no, I'm not impressed by this offering. It's only a "pro" unit if you define a professional as someone who requires everything, including the kitchen sink. For the life of me, I can't think of *any* profession for which this unit actually makes any sense. Especially at that price point and with such a low-res* screen.

* (Yes, "low-res". I've owned *CRT* monitors that had higher resolutions. Come back, Iiyama, all is forgiven!)

Tech that we want (but they never seem to give us)

Re: Can anything be on my Christmas list?

"Apple, for some reason, seem to be getting away with it. I can't remember a micro USB adapter being included with any of my recent devices."

Did your non-Apple device not come with a suitable USB-to-micro-USB cable?

Apple's chargers all have a standard USB socket. There's nothing non-standard about them. You can plug any USB cable you want into the things and they'll charge it just fine.

The Apple-specific component is the separate USB-to-Lightning cable, which is only a problem if you have multiple devices to charge including some non-Apple ones. Is having to unplug one cable and plug in another really such a painful ordeal, given that you'll be doing that at the other end of the cable anyway? Do your pretentious hipster neighbours keep you awake all night with their incessant pointing and laughing? Oh, the humanity! Heaven forfend! How will you survive?

Of course, you could always just buy one of those third-party chargers with multiple USB sockets instead. There: problem solved.

Now, if you'll all please stop interrupting me, I'd like to get back to work on world peace.

"You missed out the best reason for getting one. It's not from Apple."

Because Google are such paragons of virtue: They'd never, ever, consider reselling your personal information to other companies, despite that being their core business!

I sometimes wonder why Snowden bothered.

Microsoft Surface 3 Pro: Flip me over, fondle me up

"Surface ***3***. i.e. this is our 3rd attempt after 2 dismal failures"

Oh?

And which was the first version of Windows to start selling in large numbers?

Oh, right: it was Windows 3.1.

Microsoft are very good at iterating. They don't give up after just one go; if they think the concept has legs, they'll keep trying and trying until they get it right.

And it's not just Microsoft either; the Mac was Apple's *second* attempt at producing a GUI-based desktop computer. Similarly, the iPhone and iPad were predated by Apple's own Newton by some years.

It's extremely rare to get it right first time.

Comcast exec says wired broadband customers should pay-as-they-go

Re: Lets say what this really is about

^ This.

TV as we know it is going through a massive upheaval. Netflix was one of the first to disrupt the old guard of broadcast TV.

In 5-10 years' time, many TV broadcasters will be staggering against the ropes and ready to collapse, while the few who saw the writing on the wall (e.g. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, the BBC*, etc.) will have made the shift to Internet-based distribution.

* (No, seriously: Look closely at what they've been doing with their 'iPlayer' technology. And their recent announcement about their "BBC 3" channel going online-only is likely to be the first of many over the next few years. The only issue is how it'll all be funded in future, but there are all sorts of options for that too.)

Survey: Patent litigation skyrocketing, trolls top 10 sueball chuckers

Re: Still missing the point

If you don't like the rules of the game, either change the rules, or change the game. You don't get to just whinge about it and demand that "somebody" does something on your behalf. You ARE that "somebody".

Feature-phones aren't dead, Moto – oldsters still need them

Re: Buttons

Ironically, the recent Nokia Lumia smartphones actually have touch screens that can be operated with gloves on. And the displays are good in sunlight as well. I do hope Microsoft are aware of the Lumia team's strengths and ensure they keep them up.

Using any electronic device in the rain is a bad idea, but that's what Bluetooth earpieces and headsets are for.

Re: Physical buttons FTW!

Or... you can just hold down the big, tactile "Home" button on an iPhone and just *tell* it what you want it to do. ("Call wife", "Send message to [CONTACT]", etc.) The dictation works very well now too. Apple's "Siri" feature has been around since late 2011 now, and the technology itself predates even that.

You can do this on Android devices too, as well as on Windows Phone 8.1 (when that comes out next month; I have the beta installed on my new Nokia 1320.)

China 'in discussions' about high-speed rail lines to London, Germany – and the US

Re: "Monorail, monorail, monorail!"

Who the hell bases their entire knowledge of a technology from a single episode of a bloody cartoon?

Besides, that episode was not about the merits or otherwise of the specific technology chosen – they had to pick *something* to focus on and monorails just pulled the short straw. It could have been anything – high-speed rail, a new airport, a tunnelled urban metro, Zeppelins, you name it.

The POINT was the wilful ignorance of the townsfolk and their utter failure to think for themselves. This was a common thread back then, and still is: pretty much anyone can win over the town if they have sufficient charm and the gift of the gab. The monorail was merely the McGuffin. (Ironically, given the visual punchline in that episode, selling a used monorail system is actually not that unusual.)

Go visit Japan, China and other part of Asia – hell, even some places in Germany – and you'll find "monorails" (a rather vague term, but "prefabricated modular guideway system" is a bit of a mouthful) in regular, everyday public transit use. There's nothing inherently wrong with the technology.

Nintendo says sorry, but there will be NO gay marriage in Tomodachi Life ... EVER

Re: They have learned actually

What about non-equality?

We really *are* all different. Women can conceive and give birth; men (currently) cannot. Some of us are left-handed. Some of us have different skin pigmentation. Some of us grew up multi-lingual, while others might never, ever understand what it means to be able to see the world from multiple points of view. Some of us are born into poverty, or into great wealth, or into dysfunctional families, or into loving families. And so on and endlessly on.

True equality isn't possible, short of a global, massive – and very intrusive – government-mandated genetic programme, coupled with family and childcare standardisation, all on a level that would make the 2-metre-high docs for ITIL look like a short story.

I'm much more interested in the French philosophy: Vive la différence! Stop trying to homogenise humanity and just grow the f*ck up. Everyone is different, but that's a good thing. Because being different can be a strength.

What we need far more of are policies that level the playing field. We cannot do anything to change our own differences, but we can change our environment to ensure those differences can become advantages rather than obstacles.

The verdict is in: Samsung to pay Apple $120m chump change, but gets tiny rebate

Re: Wait a minute...

"Quick links and Slide to Unlock (frivolous features) >100 million"

Hindsight always has 20/20 vision. It's also easy to forget that this lawsuit has been rumbling on for years and predates the 3.x and 4.x Android releases. It's mainly concerned with older Android v1.x and v2.x devices.

Nevertheless, you don't get to blame Apple for the collective failures of their rivals to come up with a successful multi-touch UI for smartphones (and, later, tablets). None of the hardware that appeared in the first iPhone was new; Nokia, SonyEricsson, Samsung, HTC, etc. all had their chance to nail it first. That they did not is entirely their own damned fault.

Furthermore, Microsoft have clearly shown that you don't have to slavishly copy iOS to create a good multi-touch UI. So Samsung cannot play the "But... you HAVE to do it that way!" card either. Which is exactly what they were implying back in the v1.x and v2.x Android era.

(Incidentally, the "Slide to Unlock" patent is very specific. It doesn't apply to the method used on Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 / Windows 8 devices, for example.)

Re: $119.6m

Strange how many allegedly intelligent people forget that protecting patents is a legal obligation for an entity like Apple. Same goes for Samsung, Microsoft, Nokia, and so on. These companies have no choice but to hurl sue-balls at each other with tiresome regularity.

This is what happens when you let the very lawyers who benefit from such a system enter politics. They're hardly going to do their friends and colleagues out of a job, are they? (A similar situation exists with accounting, banking and finance. Guess how many politicians are involved in those fields too.)

What you're whining about is a symptom. For the underlying cause, go look in a mirror.

Re: "Beloved products like the iPhone..."

Have you ever heard of a TV programme called "Top Gear"?

People have been treating inanimate objects like this since prehistoric times.

We often view anything that has complex behaviours as being capable of independent thought and action. (Especially if the thing in question also exhibits unpredictable, "chaotic" behaviour, though only up to a point.) This is why some worship deities, while others worship cars, ships, steam locomotives, or smartphones.

Believe it or not, designers are well aware of this human trait. The good ones will deliberately exploit it. And it's not just product design either. Good marketing people can also use this to their advantage when it comes to branding. After all, Apple and Samsung are also complex entities with more than a hint of the unpredictable.

And if that sounds like the formula for a cliché romantic comedy, there's a very good reason: Design patterns are everywhere and Homo Sapiens is no exception.

A real pot-boiler kicks off Reg man's quid-a-day nosh challenge

Re: What's the point?

"So the homeless / hungry kinds of challenge are different because someone is putting themselves in the particular situation they are campaigning about - and then telling you what it's like."

I suspect most people are already well aware of exactly "what it's like". Turns out it sucks. And is often quite death-y.

This particular "awareness" stunt is about malaria, not starvation. I'm not sure how picking an arbitrary weekly amount to spend on food helps either. £5 is more than a month's average salary in some particularly poverty-stricken countries – and spending said money in Spain and the UK, where the cost of living is actually quite high, doesn't signify anything of value either. So far, all I've learned is that you can buy 2 kg. of rice in the UK for less than it costs in Spain. Never mind that you have to get it back to Spain as well.

We know malaria isn't nice. It's called "malaria" – a name that literally translates as "bad air". There's a clue right there. And that nice Mrs. Gates and her feckless wastrel of a husband have actually been doing something rather more concrete about it than trying to live off £5 of egg butties and a bit of risotto for a week.

I'm all for doing good deeds, but I genuinely don't understand what the point is of "raising awareness" about something most educated people already know plenty about. Despite the increasing link-bait, this is The Register, not FOX News.

Awkward? Elop now answers to ex-junior Nadella as Microsoft closes Nokia buyout

"...grand turnaround plan from Elop that was supposed to save Nokia."

Last time I checked, Nokia still exists: it's just changed its focus. Nokia have done this before: its ancestors used to manufacture comms cables and rubber products. (Similarly, Nintendo originally made playing cards.) Today's Nokia is focusing on other things, like telecoms infrastructure. It's still going. It's not dead. Even the name continues.

Shareholders don't give a toss how a business makes its profits, so long as it makes some.

Nokia's mobile phone teams were in a huge mess. The writing was on the wall for Symbian as far back as 2003: they just let it rest on its laurels. Then Apple caught Nokia with their strategic management team's pants down and their hand dipping into a nearly empty box of tissues.

Similarly, System 40 was trundling away nicely at the low end, but landfill Android devices appeared quickly and started banging nails into that coffin too. Nokia bought in their "Asha" platform, but this is still a very limited OS and unlikely to stick around for much longer now that Microsoft are calling the shots.

What's important here is that Nokia managed all that before Elop came along. By the time Elop turned up, his only option was to find a buyer for this increasingly irrelevant branch of Nokia... but who's going to buy a mobile devices department that's still buggering about with not one, but two increasingly obsolete operating systems that few people are interested in?

Hence Windows. Elop came from Microsoft, so he not only knew what MS were working on, but it's also simply what he knows. Android would have turned Nokia into yet another "me too" company, forced to fight behemoths like Samsung and Sony – the company wouldn't have stood a chance.

Windows Phone across the board seems the most likely future for Microsoft's new acquisition. Keeping one or two Android-based devices on the market has some advantages even for Microsoft: they've recently released a very good version of their Office suite for the iOS platform; there's no reason to assume they're not considering something similar for Android too. And now that Microsoft also have an own-brand Android device that looks like a Windows Phone 8 one, they can bundle MS Office with it for free.

Remember, MS are switching to a "devices and services" philosophy. Like Nokia, they're changing at a fundamental level, but you don't turn a company that size around in a few minutes. It'll be a few years yet before we'll know if this strategy has worked. This acquisition adds some of the final pieces to the puzzle.

What Apple have become to the consumer, MS are aiming to be for the enterprise. This is going to be a very interesting decade or so.

Patch iOS, OS X now: PDFs, JPEGs, URLs, web pages can pwn your kit

Re: Did they fix the bug where you can't use a Swype keyboard?

Have they fixed the bug where all your personal data are belong to Google?

Christ, most Android device manufacturers still can't be arsed to support any product that's more than about six picoseconds old.

As for Swype: why would I bother with a kludge like that when I can just dictate or connect to a proper keyboard over Bluetooth?

WiLAN files appeal in Apple WiFi case

Re: So a company with a real tech patent is bad

The "rounded corners" issue is purely a design language one related to "trade dress" laws. These issues are indeed protected by relevant IP laws. They're the reason you can't just go ripping-off the Coca-Cola swirly logo style on a red background for your own brand if you happen to be making carbonated soft drinks, even if you use a different name. The point is that that style is very recognisable: anyone who sees it on first glance will conflate your product with theirs. It's like slapping a "Sorny" label on a TV: Sony will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Guaranteed.

If you actually read the relevant documentation, you'd know that the "rounded corners" bit is just a very small part of the whole: Apple were pointing out that all their devices share a common 'design language', and that they believe this is covered under trade dress laws.

In most countries, they're right.

*

As for "slide to unlock": it's strange how everyone seems to think this is so "obvious", yet nobody thought it obvious enough to use it before Apple did. Not one company managed to nail the multi-touch smartphone / tablet GUI until Apple came along, because not one damned company other than Apple truly groks UX design. Not Samsung. Not LG, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson... Not even the once-mighty Nokia.

If it's so bloody obvious, show us the prior art. Show us the commercially available device that came anywhere near close to what Apple made.

You can't, can you? You can only point at feeble attempts like the P900, the Palm Pilot, the iPaq, and their ilk, most of which relied on a stylus. And none of which had a full multi-touch UI at all. Sure, you might be able to dredge up some niche product that cost two arms and four legs at launch, but that's like pointing at an F15 and claiming it's exactly the same as a commercial airliner.

(Surprisingly, Microsoft have actually learned from, and are genuinely competing with, Apple today. They needed a couple of years to get going, but, since the loss of WebOS, MS are pretty much the only game in town that is actually striking out on its own journey, rather than following the herd. Say what you like about its implementation in Windows 8, but ModernUI really is very good on mobile platforms.)

CEO Tim Cook sweeps Apple's inconvenient truths under a solar panel

Emissions from a new building that's made of concrete? Seriously? You do realise that buildings tend to last for quite a while, right? Take a look outside if you live anywhere near the centre of a major city (except Coventry or Dresden) and you'll see very few buildings that don't have a design life of at least 50 years, and typically much more. Apple's new building will also be expected to stand for at least as long. Many buildings have stood for centuries.

Yes, the bulldozers and concrete will have a small effect, but over the entire life of a building like this, it's a rounding error. Especially when you consider the reason why Apple is pushing for this project: their current multi-campus setup means a lot of energy is wasted just getting around 1 Infinite Loop.

Compare with wind farms: I'm pretty sure you need some pretty heavy plant to put those up, and they're not made of fairy dust either. But wind farms aren't just massive structures: they're also massive machines, with very large moving parts. It doesn't get much more environmentally expensive than that. These things currently have a design life cycle of just 20-25 years. (The turbines themselves last even less, according to some reports.)

Some things are genuinely worth worrying about, but the one-off, "environmental capital" expense of a building like Apple's new HQ is not one of them.

Which sweaty exec dreamt up Office for iOS? Ballmer, Ballmer, Ballmer

Re: What next?

Actually, even some of the most rabid Apple sites are saying that Office for iPad is pretty bloody good for a v1.0 release.

Yes, you need an Office 365 subscription to unlock the full feature-set. So what? Did you expect Microsoft to just give it away for free? And if the "Freemium" model is good enough for games, why shouldn't Microsoft be allowed to use it too?

Torvalds rails at Linux developer: 'I'm f*cking tired of your code'

Re: coding

I was raised bilingual, as are many others. Both of Linus' parents were Swedish and that language would most likely have predominated in the home, but Suomi would have been the language used in educational institutions, with a strong understanding of English required for most computer-related courses due to the Anglo-centric nature of most programming languages.

That said, Scandinavians typically learn multiple languages in school from an early age as a matter of course – typically from the UK equivalent of primary school and up, as the younger you are, the easier it is to learn new languages. Most will be taught their native language, plus two others, often including English, with German also popular.

For what it's worth, I've always considered programming as mere translation, nothing more. The trick is to understand how the target audience – i.e. the computer – 'thinks', and work within their frames of reference, but that's a given for any language. I used to get weird looks from colleagues when I told them I really could think in the programming languages I was using.

Newsnight goes sour on Tech City miracle

I was wondering what happened to Demis Hassabis – a child prodigy whose name seemed to be everywhere for a while. "Theme Park" (Bullfrog) and "Republic: The Revolution" (Elixir) were some of the games he was responsible for.

Interesting that he's gotten into much the same field as Jeff Hawkins. Shame his company was bought up by Google as that only goes to support Orlowski's (and my) view of the "Silicon Roundabout" hype.

Sticky Tahr-fy pudding: Ubuntu 14.04 slickest Linux desktop ever

You know, what the world of IT really, really needs is for every OS to be based on the same, 40-year-old, UNIX design.

Because that's clearly the answer to every technical problem from yesterday, through today, and forever into the future. UNIX is perfect. All hail f*cking UNIX.

One thing Microsoft has managed to achieve – beyond all reasonable expectations – is to maintain a viable alternative to that ancient UNIX design. Granted, they often mess up the GUI design – Windows 1-3.0, anyone? Windows ME? Windows Vista? – but then, Canonical and GNOME don't exactly have an unblemished record in this field either. Even Apple make mistakes: their old "Dashboard Widgets" technology hasn't exactly taken the world by storm, for example.

Furthermore, WIMP GUIs are designed for new users. There is no excuse for claiming to be a professional or expert in IT and not knowing the keyboard shortcuts. Those shortcuts have NOT changed in Windows 8; it literally took me five minutes to learn the changes, and even then, Windows 8 has added new shortcuts, not taken away the old ones. Hell, it even comes with a tutorial. If you still can't work out that the Desktop mode is basically that from Windows 7 with flatter icons and better performance, the problem is with you, not the OS.

If there's one thing nobody working in technology should ever be afraid of, it's change.

We dig into the GTech GDrive Mobile ... and watch WORST tear-down vid OF ALL TIME

Re: What I don't understand is why bother?

Thunderbolt does for PCI Express and DisplayPort buses what eSATA does for SATA: It's basically PCIe and DisplayPort on a wire, so you no longer need to provide space inside a computer's case for traditional expansion slots. (Hence the recent Mac Pro redesign.)

For external storage, PCIe offers another advantage: it operates entirely independently of the CPU. USB keeps its price low by making the CPU to do much of the heavy lifting, taking valuable processing power away from your applications.

What the benchmarks in the article don't show – and they should – is the additional processing overheads imposed by using USB. Yes: the raw speed looks identical, but if you're having to give up a CPU core to achieve it, it's going to brutally hammer the performance of any high-end video editing suite you're using at the same time. Even Aperture and Lightroom will be noticeably more sluggish.

Trust me: if you're working in a field where processing large lumps of media is a core activity, you will care about this. It's why Apple redesigned their Mac Pros the way they did: that machine has the equivalent of 18 PCIe expansion slots. (Or 15 + 3 x 4K displays if you prefer.) All that's changed is that those slots are now on the outside of the machine, allowing the engineers to optimise the hell out of the arrangement of the core components inside the case.

That is what Thunderbolt can do that USB cannot. USB isn't even playing the same game, let alone in the same league.

Thunderbolt comes into its own in the high-end professional markets, where the cost of the actual computer itself is tiny compared to all the storage and other peripherals you need to connect to it. No, most readers here won't need that level of power, but it most definitely has a market.

Ancient telly, check. Sonos sound system, check. OMG WOAH

Re: Snobby

"Call me a snob..."

Fine: You're a snob. Who also can't spell "bass".

The reviewer made it crystal clear that he was comparing the Sonos to an older TV. Given that's what most people will have, it's a perfectly valid comparison to make. And, yes, pretty much anything would beat that.

As for why anyone would pay £500+ for something like this: you do know that the UK has some of the smallest homes on Earth, right? Many of us can barely find space on the wall for the TV, let alone for a subwoofer, amplifier, and veritable multitude of speakers. (And let's not forget the wiring involved too.)

Yes, there are compromises made with these small form-factor designs, but they're still plenty good enough for the 99% of customers who don't still think they're so special that they can hear the difference between FLAC and high-quality MP4 audio files. (Despite all the research proving that practically nobody can actually do so.)

Apple to switch HUMAN iPhone-juicer-fiddlers with ROBOTS – report

Dear Jasper,

So, a Chinese manufacturer is going to make increasing use of automation on battery production line that produces iPhone batteries? Given that increasing automation is standard practice – and has been for years – among manufacturers, I'm not even sure why this is even considered news.

Also, last time I checked, Apple didn't own any factories in China, despite constant, ignorant media bollocks to the contrary. I expect such headlines from the BBC, Stephen Fry, or the Daily Mail, but not from a website that claims to be aimed at the Information Technology industry! If I wanted to read that kind of childishness, ignorance and FUD, I'd read your article comments.

Apple isn't "switching" a damned thing: Foxconn (and other Chinese suppliers) are.

Robots aren't new to the world; they're only new to China, which has, until very recently, been able to rely on a very cheap workforce instead. That China would have to adopt them eventually was always a given: it's the nature of a "developing" nation to aim to become a "developed" nation, but the price of doing so invariably includes losing your dirt-cheap workforce.

Please, for the love of Codd, stop heading down the plughole to click-baitism. The Register ought to be better than that.

Is the World Wide Web for luvvies and VCs – or for all of us?

Re: Berners-Lee and media luvvies?

@pacman7de:

The problem is that there are already plenty of Great Charters that are supposed to be protecting basic rights. The US even has a couple that are rather well known.

Like the endless flood of pointless new laws by knee-jerkist career politicians with no clue how the real world works, the hard part isn't telling people what they should and shouldn't do, but enforcing it.

And then there's the small matter of the Internet not being a public space. It's a network of mostly private networks, often connected by private infrastructure*. Freedom of Speech and all that jazz only apply to public spaces, not to private ones. There's a reason why an audience member can't just stand up in the middle of a stage play and start reciting bits of Shakespeare at the actors: their right to freedom of speech ended the moment they stepped into the theatre. Private property; their gaff, their rules. The Internet is no different.

Neither Facebook nor Google are doing anything wrong or evil. All their users have been notified, often repeatedly, that they are the product those companies are selling. If you don't like how they run their businesses, stop using them. It really is that simple.

* (No, you don't get to trot out the "British Telecom was once publicly owned!" cliché either: the GPO was privatised back in the early '80s. The GPO didn't have anything like the same infrastructure at the time of its privatisation.)

Satisfy my scroll: El Reg gets claws on Windows 8.1 spring update

Re: As if this will make people happy!

@Paul Crawford:

No, he's pointing out that Windows 8 was *more* keyboard-friendly than Windows 7 even in its 8.0 incarnation. It's right there in the second paragraph; is English not your native language?

There is nothing "new" for you to jump through in Windows 8 if you've actually bothered to learn the keyboard shortcuts. Which is, incidentally, what you're supposed to do. (Mice are the biggest cause of RSI, not keyboards. You really aren't supposed to use them all the time.)

If you haven't been mentioning that rather crucial bit of information to your "friends/family/non-tech users", then the fault in their training is entirely yours and yours alone. You don't get to blame Microsoft for your own ignorance.

WIMP GUIs have always been designed to provide neophytes a way to discover functionality for themselves and learn the keyboard shortcuts as they do so.

There are textbooks explaining this core principle that date as far back as the 1970s. (The WIMP GUI concept was first mooted in the 1960s, but the first implementations had to wait until some core technologies became available in the 1970s.)

Pine trees' scent 'could prevent climate change really being a problem'

Re: Limit climate change?

"But climate change isn't happening. You've posted about a thousand articles saying so."

No. The climate is changing. That is not – and never has been – in dispute. It's been changing ever since the Earth formed.

The "debate" – and I use that term in its loosest possible sense – is about humanity's contribution towards it, and the resulting level of catastrophism – if any – that will result.

The opposing sides of the debate – and there really are more than two sides to it – are:

1. Who the f*ck cares what the human contribution is? Surely all that matters is what should we do about it?

2. Okay, if humans are contributing towards Climate Change, is it really as much as the media says it is? If not, see 1.

3. Are things really going to be as catastrophic as the Chicken Littles are claiming? So far, there is little evidence to suggest that the skies really are about to fall on our heads.

4. Where's the evidence that we have a real handle on how this complex system works in the first place? We hear endless talk about computer models, yet we also see articles like the one Mike Lewis just reported on in this very item that prove we don't have all the information necessary to create accurate climate models.

That last point is also the reason why Mike Lewis is reporting on this debate in a website called "The Register" aimed at IT professionals: the AGW camp's incessant blethering on about "computer models"...

Anyone who has ever programmed a computer knows that a computer model is merely an interactive illustration. Illustrations prove nothing. They are also only as good as the data that went into their construction. Ergo, a computer model cannot be used to support a hypothesis. It can only be used to illustrate it.

The fact that we are still seeing articles in major peer-reviewed journals like Nature that reveal previously unknown facts about how the Earth's complex climate actually works is sufficient proof that we do not have all the data needed to create wholly accurate predictive climate models. Which means the old IT "Garbage In, Garbage Out" cliché applies in spades.

The more complex your computer model, the more bloody accurate the data it's derived from needs to be. Given how easily even a computer model can spin off into the realms of utter bollocks given even a slightly incorrect data or algorithm, anyone claiming to have cracked this stratospherically difficult nut is, for the present at least, either lying, ignorant, or both (i.e. a politician).

Apple's Windows XP moment: OS X Snow Leopard left to DIE

"No wonder their security record is so crap if they don't have the decency to notify their userbase that products have gone the way of the dodo."

Where does it say, in any of the documentation, EULAs, etc., that any manufacturer is obliged to support your purchase indefinitely? Usually, support is optional (and certainly voluntary) after the legally mandated support period (which isn't exactly the same as the warranty itself) expires. That's three years in the EU. After that, you're on your own.

HP and Dell happily tell consumers to sod off after a few short years; their corporate customers pay them support money and get support for much longer. Nobody gets that level of support for free.

This is IT, which moves damned quickly. Nobody offers a 7-year guarantee like some automobile manufacturers do. Not even Apple, who, like every other consumer electronics manufacturer, is also tied to the support provided by their component suppliers.

UK citizens to Microsoft: Oi. We WANT ODF as our doc standard

Re: Thanks

@Trevor Pott:

A corporation is just a collection of people run by a dictator, or a cabal, called "shareholders", who elect their own dictator to represent their interests in the corporation.

A community is... just a collection of people run by either a charismatic leader (i.e. a dictator in all but name) – or a baying mob whose intelligence is on a par with its dumbest member.

In both cases, you can have a benevolent dictatorship, or your bog standard tyranny, but the nature of the entity itself makes little difference: either way, it's a bunch of people working together towards a common cause. So I've never cared about the distinction. A community-driven project is no less "proprietary" as a commercial one: either way, if support for a format is dropped, I'm screwed. (No, I'm not going to wade through hundreds of pages of ISO documentation and code up my own conversion software. Life's too bloody short.)

My interests may be met by one, other, or both of these two kinds of entities. I will pick whichever solution best fits my needs.

Whatever you may think about Microsoft, I don't consider them any more "evil" than Samsung, and they're a bloody sight less "evil" than Google. But I also have no time for the constant bickering and squabbling of GNU radicals and extremist FOSS nutters either.

Mac Pro fanbois can rack 'em and stack 'em like real sysadmins

"Throw in the fact that MacOS is not exactly the operating system enterprise software vendors make their first development priority..."

Really? You are aware that OS X is basically a UNIX-based OS with a decent GUI, right? If it'll run on GNU / Linux or FreeBSD, there's no reason why it can't be recompiled to run on OS X as well. You can even get X and Ports for it if you want.

Wasn't platform portability a key feature of UNIX?

SCRAP the TELLY TAX? Ancient BBC Time Lords mull Beeb's future

Re: Unfair Tax?

"The BBC tax is unfair (technically: regressive). The reason being that everyone pays the same amount, irrespective of their ability to pay."

The BBC License Fee is not a tax. The clue's in the name. It's a part of the price of owning a TV; the TV itself merely provides the machinery with which to receive the broadcasts.

The BBC is a Corporation with a Royal Charter, not a subsidiary of a government ministry. It is a legal entity that has been granted very specific powers. This is an uncommon form of business these days, but it's the same mechanism that was used to create the University of Cambridge, the East India Company, and the Bank of England.

Also, how is everyone paying the same amount "unfair"? I don't get a discount on shoes, clothing or food based on my "ability to pay", so why should I expect a discount on a luxury item like a television set? Do Sky give you a discount on their subscriptions based on your level of income? Do Tescos give you an "I never watch TV adverts" discount on the stuff you've bought from them?

A television is a luxury, not a basic necessity. I haven't owned a TV since 1996, so it is most certainly possible to live without one.

Re: fund it from general taxation

The BBC iPlayer Global app – iOS only – lets you watch archived BBC content for a subscription. It's been available since 2011.

That's little consolation if you don't have an iOS device, but there are strong hints that the BBC are planning to roll out an international version of their web-based system through the bbc.com website, rather than building umpteen mobile / tablet / desktop apps instead. (Apparently, this is in direct response to Hulu and Netflix's success.)

Re: Please stop for a moment and look around

This.

I've lived and worked in a number of countries and *nothing* comes close to the BBC in terms of quality. And, yes, most continental European countries not only have their own state-funded TV stations, but those TV stations _also_ have ads, and produce nowhere near as much quality content. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence – check out Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. Still think the BBC is terrible value for money?)

Considering the tiny budgets the BBC makes its programming for – even Doctor Who is made for a fraction of the cost of typical US telefantasy productions – it's a miracle they produce as much as they do, let alone produce content that many other countries, including the US, are willing to pay for. And at least you're not getting ads *and* having to pay a license fee regardless, as Italians, Germans and French TV viewers do.

While I agree that the license fee is not an ideal form of payment, it is by far the least worst option available at present.

And no, the Queen does not count as "state interference". Yes, she's the head of state, but she's apolitical – she has to be, given how long she's been in the job. The Windsors, for all their faults, do at least provide a level of long-term continuity, countering the short-termism endemic to elected representatives. This is one of the few advantages of a royal family, and one that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. The UK could certainly do a better job of making use of this feature of a monarchy, but it absolutely should not remove it. Not unless they can come up with something better.

Micro Men: The story of the syntax era

Re: DVD

The article explains the reason: the music.

The BBC have a blanket license to use such music for their broadcasts, and I think they can still show the programme on iPlayer as that comes under the 'broadcast' umbrella too.

A DVD or Blu-ray release is not a broadcast, so the music licenses would need to be renegotiated at some expense. As this was a low-budget BBC 4 documentary, it's probably just not worth it. They could simply substitute library music instead, but it wouldn't be the same.

'No, I CAN'T write code myself,' admits woman in charge of teaching our kids to code

Re: Schol Reform

Oh, the irony of someone insinuating that teaching and education are fair game for the armchair ignoramus.

"Aside from a 'life skills' class, the only other reform I'd like to see is a change in school hours, change it from 9-3:15 (or whatever it is right now) to 8 - 5."

Good luck with that. Leaving aside the fact that teaching is actually a hell of a lot harder than you appear to think it is, the human brain can only process so much new data in a day. The brain suffers from fatigue, just like your muscles do.

There's a good reason why so many EU nations have shorter hours for their schools than the UK's. (The trick is to demand more homework, rather than more Victorian-style spoon-feeding in a classroom.)

"1: Daily PE rather than weekly, with no BS excuses to get out of it."

With all due respect, [WORD THAT RHYMES WITH 'LUCK'] you and the high horse you rode in on. I hated PE with a passion, the depth of which you couldn't even begin to conceive. I've always preferred working out on my own in a gym, listening to music. Team sports – professional and otherwise – have never remotely interested me.

"2: Bringing options selection forward to year 9 or even 8 in senior school to allow a better focus earlier for those who know what they want to do."

And what about those who don't? Have you spent even a microsecond considering the logistical and timetabling nightmare you're proposing here?

"PE would help with the obesity problem, as well as concentration at schools."

Firstly, know this: There is no such thing as an "obesity problem". There is a media obsession with scaremongering – because fear sells – but there has been no appreciable increase in actual childhood obesity measured using accurate metrics. Fact. (And, dear lord, if I hear the phrase "obesity epidemic" – as if obesity were somehow contagious – I swear I won't be held responsible for my actions.)

Any article or report you read that mentions using Body-Mass Index ("BMI") as a key measurement can be trivially dismissed as 100% fact-free scaremongering. BMI was discredited long ago as it utterly fails to account for muscle mass. Muscle is twice as dense as fat. BMI treats muscle as fat: Arnold Schwarzenegger would be considered "morbidly obese" under that system.

"Almost every kid I went to school with who had ADHD was almost perfectly behaved after PE, at least for a few hours anyway."

ADHD has surprisingly little to do with being "well behaved" or otherwise: plenty of kids with ADHD diagnoses manage not to disrupt their classes. All it does is affect concentration and focus, making it easier for you to get distracted.

I found doodling on a pad and creating little flick-book animations in the corners of my exercise books helped relieve the boredom of being taught about 1066 and all that in history lessons. (Or Computer Studies O Level: those of us who went into IT careers already knew more than our teacher did by then in any case.)

While those kids that do tend to disrupt lessons may or may not have ADHD, what they definitely have is a dire need for a bloody good clout round the ear. And better parenting.

Fine! We'll keep updating WinXP's malware sniffer after April, says Microsoft

Re: This doesn't alter the fact...

"It incenses me that she won't use the perfectly good laptop with LinuxMint on it because "she doesn't like it"."

Christ, talk about egotistical.

I suspect your girlfriend won't be losing any sleep over the prospect of never becoming your wife. Good on her.

Re: Old systems still working

"What about all those old systems that are still working but simply can't run Vista/7/8.1."

What about them?

Microsoft didn't make all those PCs! All they did back then was sell software, a games console and some peripherals like keyboards and mice. Why should they be expected to go out of their way to support someone else's products? It's not as if information about Vista and Windows 7 weren't leaked well before they were released, and you've certainly had plenty of time to put some money aside to save up for suitable replacements.

XP's expiry date has been known about since 2011 – 1000 days' notice – or a little under three whole years. Even setting aside just $150 a year would have left you with enough money now to buy a decent replacement, so there really is no excuse for all the whining.

As for the ecological argument: last time I checked, older PCs tend to use more energy. Quite a lot more if using kit with a Pentium IV (or related CPU) inside it. They're also quite a bit more recyclable than people realise. It's using the things to death and then chucking them into the nearest bin in their entirety that's ecologically unsound. Recycling them responsibly is actually the right thing to do. The WEEE regulations actually requires PC manufacturers to take back their old kit for recycling.

Mozilla CTO Eich: If your browser isn't open source (ahem, ahem, IE, Chrome, Safari), DON'T TRUST IT

What's the point of auditing the source code...

... when you have absolutely no way to audit the build process itself?

A handful of deliberate bugs that make it easy to compromise is all you'd need. Those could be added to a low-level library anywhere – i.e. it would affect any application linked against it. When someone spots the bug and fixes it, you simply insert another bug somewhere else. It becomes a never-ending game of "Whack-a-Mole".

This symptom is indistinguishable from ordinary bug-testing, so not an easy problem to identify.

Remember, the NSA, GCHQ, the CIA, etc. are all intelligence agencies. That basically boils down to spying, and intelligence operatives have been doing undercover work for decades. Find the right person with the right leverage and nobody would ever know your organisation had even been compromised – not even the managers.

Woz backs Chinese 'Apple of Far East' in play for US hardware market

Re: Who is Woz?

This.

The man basically designed a couple of 1970s-era microcomputers – at a time when every Tom, Dick and Sally was doing the same thing, so big sodding deal – and, aside from a switching power supply, that's pretty much it. It was Jobs who suggested putting one of them in a case and offering a pre-built model for sale.

Mr. Wozniak had precisely f*ck all to do with Apple's transformation from a near-bankrupt basket case in the late '90s to its current status as one of the most successful businesses on the planet. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Naff all. Quite why anyone pays him any heed escapes me. Like Richard Stallman, his views are anachronistic, harking back to a bygone era before computers became a commodity consumer product.

Woz has become an embarrassing, parasitical media tart. A "rent-a-nerd" whose views represent the minority of the mercifully dwindling old guard.

Microsoft were #1 back when Jobs returned to Apple. However painful it may be to admit to many of you, it's Jobs you have to thank for finally knocking Microsoft down a peg or two and forcing them to get off their collective arses and actually innovate. (No, they didn't get ModernUI right first time, but it took them three goes to make Windows acceptable too. MS are good at playing the long game, so I'm not inclined to write them off yet.)

Google stabs Wikipedia in the front

"How do Wikipedia get money when they don't advertise, if they are not going to ask for money?"

Wikipedia is what Yahoo! always dreamed of becoming: a curated catalogue of links that can act as a springboard to the rest of the Internet.

So... spin off a search engine built around their content. Make it a non-profit, but allow ads set around categories, etc. Allowed 'sponsored articles' paid for by the corporations who want them (but mark them clearly as such).

The Wikipedia site itself would continue as a separate entity, but it would now receive funding from that non-profit search engine business. (Who knows, maybe they could even start paying for contributions.)

I sometimes suspect that the above is precisely why Google decided to cosy up to them: Wikipedia is a potentially huge threat to their business model.

Gone

Christ, it's like a children's playground in here. "My bullshit and ignorance is better than your bullshit and ignorance! So there!"

It's forums like this that make me wonder how the fuck we had the gall to name our own species "The Wise Man".

Windows Phone and Windows 8 are perfectly fine operating systems. As is iOS. (My antipathy towards Android isn't about its technology, so much as its politics. I avoid anything tainted by Google like the plague.)

No platform is perfect. Each has its pros and cons. Buy the one that best fits your needs. No need to start another sodding religion over it.

Blame Silicon Valley for the NSA's data slurp... and what to do about it

Re: @Andrew Orlowski

Really? It took you long enough. I've been saying this for ages.

The Internet was designed to be inherently 'trusting'. It's never been fit for its current purposes, and there are no signs of this changing. I therefore don't put anything on the Internet that I want to keep secret.

The NSA, GCHQ and their peers spy on people? Who knew? Oh right: I did. So did anyone else with more than two brain cells to bang together. They're spy agencies! Spying is what they do! Spying on their own citizens was also a wholly predictable result of the US PATRIOT Act and its foreign equivalents: It's hard to spot home-grown terrorists within your own borders if you don't do it and the UK certainly has form: the IRA and UDF were rather into setting off bombs and murdering civilians until relatively recently. Both groups were operating inside the UK's own borders. Spain and France also have similar experiences, with the former having to face the Basque separatist group, ETA.

The only thing surprising about Snowden's "leaks" is that so many people were so shockingly ignorant about what these agencies actually did for a living. What did you people think they were doing all day in those vast buildings? Watching porn?

*

All those GPL variants so beloved of the GNU and many members of the FOSS communities? Without IP laws, they're not worth the rusty iron they're stored on: Copyleft cannot exist without Copyright. Without IP laws, without the pillars that support Copyright Law, no license agreement can be enforced: counterfeiting would be effectively legal for everyone. Even the Creative Commons movement relies on existing IP law to enforce its own licenses.

So, yes, IP law is needed – or a very near facsimile offering similar features. (I'm not convinced of the validity of software patents, for example. And the USPTO really needs a major overhaul.)

What we need are standardised Open Formats. If we can store our personal profiles in standard formats, they become much, much easier to trade. We could trivially leverage our personal data, and there's no need for micro-payments to do so either: "Do ut des." The personal data is the payment. Make this the price for "pro" services and we can choose whether to pay that price. Offer a cut-down, genuinely "free" service tier, then use it as a 'teaser' service to entice users to make that choice of their own volition. Give people the choice.

(Okay, I won't be interested myself, but I'm sure plenty of people will be more than happy to do so. As anyone who's ever looked at Facebook or Twitter can attest.)

How the NSA hacks PCs, phones, routers, hard disks 'at speed of light': Spy tech catalog leaks

Am I the only person who understands the meaning of a certain three-letter word?

The NSA, CIA and their ilk are SPY agencies!

Spies.

What makes you think the NSA or CIA (etc.) don't have agents inside these companies? It's a lot easier to find flaws in software or firmware when you can actually read the commented source code!

It also means that it matters not one whit whether WD, HP, etc. are "aware" of any shenanigans as one of the golden rules of being a successful spy is that nobody knows you are one! All it would take is to install / bribe one or two employees in the right positions within each company and you're golden. Nobody else in the company would even know.

Microsoft had (at last count) over 100000 employees. Even HP and Dell have thousands of employees spread all over the world. And, of course, the rise in outsourcing will have helped immensely as a single, well-placed spy in the right outsourcing company could give you any number of businesses on a plate.

They're spy agencies! Spying is what these people do for a living. All day. All night. All the time. They're spying. Get it? What the blue blazes did you all think those thousands of spies actually do all day? Iron shirts? Mend wooden horses? What?

Jesus Horatio Fogharty Christ on a flying fuckstick. This is a bloody IT website. You're supposed to be intelligent* readers! Even allowing for the intelligence-battering effects of the Internet, I can't seriously be the only one who wasn't even remotely surprised by any of these so-called "revelations"?

* (Clearly for very small values of "intelligent".)

Guinness gives games geek world record for 10,607 piece collection

Re: emulators?

@dan1980:

Emulation doesn't give you the full experience, as you admit. You lose the context if you rely solely on emulation and that's my point. It does not solve the preservation problem, because preserving the code on its own is pointless. Jet Set Will on a modern HDTV has nothing like the same feel.

As for failed 1970s / 1980s hardware: something tells me that, by the time hardware rot becomes a real issue, it'll be trivial to just print out a replacement unit. We can almost print the bloody things now using 3D printing technology. Take a look at the PCBs on an Atari VCS or a Sinclair ZX Spectrum: they're not exactly difficult to duplicate. Besides, we've seen people willing to voluntarily (re)build Babbage's Difference Engine and even Turing's Bombes. What makes you think nobody would be interested in servicing old tech?

The hard part will be finding CRT televisions to plug 'em into, but I suspect there'll be enough nostalgia sloshing about by then to support production in small volumes. They'll cost a mint, but collectors are often very willing to pay.

We have national, state-funded art galleries right now that still display paintings from over 1000 years ago. First-edition books are still kept in our libraries. The National Railway Museum in York still has working steam locomotives that date right back to the 1800s. Even London's Transport Museum has old trolleybuses and horse-drawn trams in its collection – and, yes, they're all maintained. Because they're museums, and preservation is what they're for!

The UK needs an equivalent for its games industry – an industry it still manages to kick serious arse in, thanks precisely to the likes of Sinclair Research, Acorn Microsystems (and the folks behind today's ARM). Not to mention Rockstar, DMA Design, Psygnosis, Gremlin Graphics, Ocean, Matthew Smith, Messrs. Braben & Bell, and all their contemporaries.

I'm aware that there are some attempts at archiving this stuff by existing organisations, but having a small department within another museum's sub-department doesn't really count. Resources are very finite for museums and preservation in general: what the UK needs is a dedicated institution. Where's the games industry's equivalent of Tate Modern? Why does a pile of bricks or an unmade bed get its own power station-sized space, while the UK's huge contribution to the games industries is tucked away in a basement and barely even mentioned in polite company?

Games and Play have been an integral part of growing up for Homo Sapiens since before the days of recorded history. They play such an important role in how our species learns – even other mammals play for educational purposes – it's shocking that it's had so little attention. Why is this important field not getting the recognition it deserves? Toys have their own museums already, but even they tend to focus on static toys like dolls and teddy bears.

As a one-time game designer and developer myself, I have strong feelings about this. Preservation isn't just about retaining just the code and graphics, any more than history should be limited to lists of kings and dates.

We need a National Games Museum. And not one limited solely to video games – hence my dislike of hanging such an institution off the side of a video or film archive – but one that takes a broad, holistic view, covering board games, tabletop / war-games (which, believe it or not, was actually a hobby of a certain Herbert G. Wells; he even wrote two articles on it), and going right back to pinball machines and Victorian end-of-pier games.

Re: emulators?

Did you not read the article? The man has both a wife and children.

Just as philatelists don't spend their every waking hour licking stamps and sticking them on envelopes, so games collectors don't just slob in front of a TV all day playing their games. The playing isn't the point: it's the having that matters.

*

As for emulators: oh, hell no. An emulator does not give the same look and feel of the original: running a ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 emulator on a PC plugged into a modern flat-screen display just isn't the same.

You need the flicker, poor regulation and dot-crawl you can only get from a consumer-grade TV of the period, like an ex-rental Ferguson TX colour TV; the oddly hypnotic squeals while the game's loading screen streams in from the tape, or the short screech and burst of the US national anthem as a US Gold title's Novaload fast-loader kicks in. The sound through the mono, mediocre loudspeaker of the TV set, or the piezo-electric transducer of a ZX Spectrum 48K...

That 3-4 minutes of waiting for the game to load (with the possibility of it failing to load and having to be restarted – often after a few moments of twiddling with the tape head alignment) has the exact same effect as the queue before a theme park ride: the ride teases you with glimpses of what's going to happen; the game's loading screen similarly teases you and builds up the anticipation. By the time the actual title screen appears, you're already invested in the game, your imagination having had plenty of time to visualise what to expect.

And then there's the feel of the dead-flesh ZX Spectrum keys under your fingers, or the digital Kempston and Cruiser joysticks of the '80s. (Or the analogue controllers of the BBC Micros and some arcades.)

Any true preservation effort must preserve all of that context! Sterile emulators on modern hardware can provide some of that for you, but you need to preserve the hardware, for that, too, is a key part of this fading history. It not only gives you a much better idea of how the game felt to play, but it also shows the design ideals of the era, such as the materials used, the colours – the orange and black of a Binatone "Pong" clone console, or the wood veneer trim, as seen on the original Atari VCS – as well the manuals and marketing.

Modern LCDs are harsh critics of games designed to be played on old, often second-hand, and frequently imperfect bedroom CRT TVs. That dot-crawl, the convergence and geometry issues, etc,. also helped smooth those chunky, low-res graphics.

Preservation is not, and never has been, about merely keeping the code itself.