Posts by bluest.one

Windows 8 'bad' for desktop users - Gartner's one-word review

Windows 8: neither fish nor fowl.

Google suspends 16GB Nexus 7 orders

Re: Does Google not know why people want local storage?

>There are reports that you can use a USB OTG cable with a USB memory stick but I have not picked up a cable to test it yet.

USB OTG storage, unfortunately requires root. It seems a little daft, but once you have root and download an app from the Play store it works. You shouldn't have to though.

Re: Does Google not know why people want local storage?

> You can't even connect to a file server on your local network (accessing SMB shares requires a rooted device).

Nonsense. I have about three different apps downloaded from the Play store that let me connect to samba shares on my PC over the local network. My Nexus 7 is unrooted (I thought it a little early in the day to mess around with it. Looking forward to doing that later though.)

More Steve Jobs iPad mini attacks from beyond the grave

With the news of the imminent 7" iPad mini, we can at last begin to work out the half-life of the Jobsian Reality Distortion Field.

Google Nexus 7 Android tablet

AUP

<blockquote> I[f] Asus were to release basically the same tablet with 3G and an SD card for about £250 they'd probably shift plenty of them [...] </blockquote>

Yeah, but then you'd have to contend with the Android Uncertainty Principle (AUP) where you don't know if you'll get the next OS update in a timely manner (or even at all).

A Nexus branded device ensures timely updates with no extra vendor-crud thrown in. That's worth a lot to me - and I suspect, many others.

Now if Asus can guarantee their newer, better specced (but more expensive device) will work flawlessly with the latest stock Android and be indistingushable from a Nexus device in that regard ... then we'd be talking.

UK judge hands Samsung win for being 'not as cool' as iPad

Tablets are so bloody minimal in essence anyway.

A screen, a bezel/frame ... and a back side, corners, a button or two.

These are basic elements of the constuction of the device - necessary for it to exist. It also applies to the monitor I have in front of me.

If you reduce your design to the most minimalist version of a concept, then, philiosphically, you cannot patent it or claim ownership over your implementation of the device without also effectively claiming ownership of the ENTIRE CONCEPT of such a device, which is of course ludicrous.

If Apple want design patents, they should add stuff - create stuff - not reduce something to it's constituent elements and then arrogantly try and claim ownership of them.

YouView launches with pricey premium DVR

Re: It's superb.

Hope they don't come after you for breaching you NDA, dude.

Re: Content

Well, Youview will allow for lots more companies to sell you (or even give you) content. Nothing on terrestrial or the FTA satellite broadcasters? Sky will happily sell you a movie through their channel on your Youview box and so will all the other chanels that want to offer a service through such devices.

Re: Freesat version??

>No Freesat version. Only Freeview.

Not true, according to Emma Scott, chief honcho of Freesat:

Q: Is it Freesat’s intention to launch Project Canvas [YouView's development name] (subject to approval)? Will 4OD and Demand Five be considered in the interim?

A: Freesat does intend to launch a Freesat receiver with Project Canvas within it, pending BBC Trust and OFT approval and 4OD and Demand Five are under consideration.

http://www.joinfreesat.co.uk/response-ask-emma-scott-a-question

UK.gov proposes massive copyright land snatch

Re: When this comes to pass...

The Kleptocratic Plutocracy - (Neo-Aristocracy, if you like) - at its finest - stealing from the poor, the masses and giving to the powered, and the moneyed; stuffing their faces at everyone elses' expense.

It's the only thing they know: greed and personal enrichment, regardless of the cost to others, in every respect and endeavour they engage in.

Linus Torvalds drops F-bomb on NVIDIA

With Valve curretly porting Steam to Linux and a number of their games, perhaps Nvidia will have an incentive for getting its act together soon.

Asus Transformer Pad TF300

UK Reamed once again.

Shame it's about £100 more expensive than it is in the US, even with 20% VAT added on.

BBC shrinks Red Button: Loses 8 channels after the Olympics

Re: BBC HD

>Only a shame that some documentaries on BBC4 wont get HDd.

They will. Part of the plan is to repeat the shows from Three & Four on 1HD and 2HD, bringing them into the more 'regular' schedules, as opposed to sticking them on the BBC HD channel, so those BBC Four docs will defninitely get shown in HD.

As for red button channels, Sky gets the most and Freesat gets fewer (inexplicably).

Ah ... these cuts. Apparently they're "delicious" according to David 'Call Me Dave' Cameron. Are we all enjoying how tasty, reduced public services are? Jolly good!

Goddamned Tory cuts.

(+n)

The iPad 3 would make me so horny...

Re: overpriced?

Every time I think about buying an iPad, the rip-off insult of the extortionately priced storage (and its imposed limitations) makes me angry, and I don't buy one.

This article makes me realise, Apple has taken that rip-off to an entirely new level, hitherto unimagined by me.

Asda knocks out Kobo e-reader for £49

Re: wife one of these for Xmas and they love it !

Clearly one wife: "I got THE wife one"

However, obviously she's a siamese twin: "they love it".

DMOL proposes Freeview EPG shuffle to pull in IPTV

Re: It wouldn't matter..

The Sony Bravia I have allows me to delete and re-order Freeview channels as I please. The guide also reflects the change in ordering.

Apple New iPad Wi-Fi only

For Apple, the iPad is the result of a vision for a device that will deliver a certain sort of experience.

For Apple's tablet competitors - well ... it's just not. They don't have a vision, they don't have the desire to bring something innovative to people, they just want a slice of a particular market's profits: their heart isn't in it; they're always going to be playing catchup because their motives are poor.

And I say this as someone who largely dislikes a lot of the controlling, anti-competitive shit that Apple pulls.

Charge of the Metro brigade: Did Microsoft execs plan to take a hit?

Re: Metro

Can you put Metro or Metro apps on a second screen and have them remain there without taking over your main screen?

I could live with that. But from what I've read, it jarringly takes over your main screen every time.

Windows 8: Thrown into a multi-tasking mosh pit

It sounds like Windows 8 comes from the Millenium/Vista side of the family.

I love Windows 7. I'll be waiting for Windows 9 when they ditch all the half-arsed ideas or implement them properly.

Ten... Freesat TV receivers

Except the Lidl boxes are not Freesat, they're just Free to Air Satellite. Basic now and next EPG.

Freesat, is, essentially, the EPG - channels pay a modest fee to be included on it and boxes have to agree to licensing terms to include the logo that certifies a certain format and EPG.

The EPG is what makes Freesat boxes usable, over the bog-standard Free To Air satellite things.

In regard to the IR beam, I found that there was an elusive bit of protective plastic in front of the IR reciever, which I didn't spot when I unpacked and removed such tape from the rest of the box. Removing that improved the responsiveness. Might be worth a check.

Regarding auto-deleteing a series-linked show. Why would you not just hit "delete" after watching it, if you wanted it deleted? I agree, though, that the feature would be nice.

Regarding deleting many items, you're right - there should be no reason why the box can't simply automatically queue deletions in the background as and when the user deletes them. Saying you can't delete stuff while stuff is being deleted is kinds ridiculous.

I think the Humax box has come a long way since it was first released. They improved the speed of the menus and responsiveness and made all sorts of improvements that still make it one of the least problematic boxes on the market today. Releases by much bigger manufacturers like Panasonic and Sony fail on any number of things that Humax has long since resolved.

It still has quirks, it still needs to improve - the long-delay Guide download that occurrs and can be fixed with a re-scanning of channels (without saving) is another trait that should be worjed on, but it still performs better than anything else out there. And that's its saving grace. For the big stuff - it's the best available, and very good.

Humax has made a good name for themselves over the years with these boxes. It was the only one I considered buying at all.

I think you're doing something wrong with your Humax! :)

What you're not doing wrong, just expecting more than the box has to offer is that you can't record the buffer. It doesn't operate like a Tivo, unfortunately. When pressing record while wacthing the timeshift buffer, a message pops up saying that timeshift mode will stop and recording will start from the present time.

What you must be doing wrong, however, is not being able to change channels whilst watching the timeshift buffer. I just tried it now, to double-check: rewind time and watch the buffer; press up or down using the P channel change keys = the channel changes.

Check to make sure you're using up-to-date firmware maybe?

Iranian gov mouthpiece Press TV finally gets taken off the air in the UK

>Exactly what Ideology are CBS and NBC motivated by?

American Corporatism.

Explicit pics of glorious rounded globes snapped in festive Saturnalia

I only read this article becasue I thought it was something to do with boobs.

Facebook shoves your face into creepy 'sponsored stories' in 2012

Commercial use of a person in a photo/video requires the featured person to have signed a 'model release'. Some tickbox EULA probably doesn't cut it.

It's different with copyright, which is a seperate issue to a model release.

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

"Note that the issue of model release forms and liability waivers is a legal area related to privacy and is separate from copyright. Also, the need for model releases pertains to public use of the photos: i.e., publishing them, commercially or not. The act of taking a photo of someone in a public setting without a model release, or of viewing or non-commercially showing such a photo in private, generally does not create legal exposure, at least in the United States."

Amazon Kindle 4

Calibre FTW

I just bought a 3G Kindle Keyboard - I wanted the unresticted free 3G - and I'm very happy with it, but it only really takes off when pared with Calibre.

I decided against using the 3G to read websites - too slow - formatting issues - and instead have Calibre download and pakage all sorts of websites into a mobi and drop it on the device - all automatically.

BBC news, Guardian, Wired Daily ... heck even The Register! The formatting is near perfect and I can even follow any links in an article if they look compelling enough.

Great for reading on the train.

And converting books from 1 format to a device specific format is, as you say, no problem. Almost invisible to the user.

Calibre really is the missing software that should come with any ebook reader.

PayPal to move into the shop - without cards or NFC

Newsflash - the security alarms will go off anyway for certain purchases.

I bought a portable harddrive in a Tesco store just the other day and despite paying for it and having it removed from a massive protective plastic box (with a debit card with additional protection, actually) the alarm went off.

I (despite knowing I wasn't legally obligated to comply) showed the security guy my receipt and the item in question (he tested it). He said that the company who make the drive install the security tag INSIDE the box (I don't know if it's inside the actual drive, that would be interesting) and that there's nothing they can do about it.

So everytime you buy a hard drive from a store with those security gates, you're going to set off the alarm.

Next time I may exercise my freedom to ignore it, knowing I haven't done anything wrong and don't have to either submit to an unlawful search or unlawful detention. Alternatively, I may take the packaging with me and walk in and out of the shop for the lulz.

Poor bastards.

Sony KDL-40CX523 LCD TV

title req.

>You’ll be able to play AVIs and MP4s, but nothing in an MKV wrapper.

Some AVIs, not all. Some MP4s. Not all.

Sony TVs seem inordinately picky - haven't been able to work out the specific settings required to guarantee a play when I experimented re-encoding existing files. One thing's for sure - that, ahem, movie trailer you downloaded from the internet is as likely to not work as work.

It's probably by design that Sony didn't really want to make the feature work, what with their movie business. You're better off looking at another TV or an additional device to view AVI or MP4 files.

In addtion, forget about the dongle - reports are that the signal strength is rubbish requiring same-room streaming (defeats the point really) - get a Netgear Ethernet to Wireless Adapter to turn the LAN port into a wireless one. Works a treat and is cheaper and you can use it with any device with a LAN port - and with a switch for multiple devices.

Apple bans iPhone 3G patch omission talk from forum

iChurn

I guess you could always use a browser from another source, and maybe less vulnerable apps.

If Apple wasn't locking you in.

Does Apple's abandonment of the iPhone 3 mean that they will release it from its lockdown and let people install, *oficially*, apps from everywhere, or are people supposed to throw it in the bin because Lord Jobs has decreed it yesterday's newspaper?

Coca-Cola fizzes over pornforacoke.com

Cocal Cola Corp. Has Friends in High Places

This account has been suspended.

UN defends human right to WikiLeaked info

A title is required, regardless of whether it offers any value or worth

>You can only commit treason against your own government to which you have pledged your loyalty.

Apparently I can (factually, legally) commit treason against the UK. I can assure you that under no circumstances have I pledged loyalty to the shower of bastards who consider themselves our ruling classes (including their corporate bretheren).

Treason does not mean the breach of an oath of loyalty.

Ten... sub-£150 PMPs

FLAC

Agreed - I was thinking of upgrading my excellent and cheap Fuze at some point and the Sony looked good, but lack of FLAC support kills it for me.

The old version of the Fuze is better than the new one - that's why I was conidering jumping ship - that crappy 'touch' interface bandwagon is one I want no part of: with my Fuze's mechanical wheel, I leave it in my pocket and can navigate next and previous tracks, pause/play and adjust the volume with a single thumb. None of the touch-screen/touch button interfaces allow this.

Sometimes older and crappier is much better!

WikiLeaks urged to stop hosting on Russian blackhat ISP

When They Outlaw Free Speech...

... only outlaws will have free speech.

Death of ID card scheme left £6.5m of kit going begging

Um...

Donate it to Wikileaks.

iOS upgrade cocks up iPad USB connections

Magical

n/t

Interpol issues arrest notice for Wikileaks' Julian Assange

Just Because You're Paranoid...

Assange's lawyer is saying (according to the Guardian) that it's unprecedented that an international warrant is issued for someone's arrest when the country where the trouble happened hasn't actually issued an arrest warrant - which is apparently the case. The Swedish puppets of the US .... er .... I mean powers that be, have only said that they want Assange to talk to them as a witness.

Add to that the fact that Assange and his legal team have been trying to co-operate with the Swedish authorities for some time now, only to have been rebuffed at every occassion and it seems to me that this latest Interpol involvement can mean only one thing: what Wikileaks is exposing is the truth at the heart of the matter - ALL of the 'civilized' Western democracies and institutions are essentially corrupt and corruptable and that those who govern us do so and use OUR power (as a democracy) in their own interests and their own interests alone.

Pure Twilight DAB/FM radio and dawn simulator

Failure

It sounds like the two main selling points - fading of light and sound - it actually fails at: fading down the light and then turning it off abruptly and not fading the music down as well.

I swear, it's as if these companies don't actually test their products and think about them particularly hard. Or they're just hopeless at manifesting their initial idea and finessing it.

Sweden to issue international arrest warrant for Assange

Letter from Swedish Counsel Bjorn Hurtig to English co-Counsel for Julian Assange.

Worth a read:

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/71m62q

Cisco Flip Mino HD 8GB video camera

Better Yet...

... Get the Kodak Zi8. It's come down in price to just over a hundred pounds, has expandable storage (SDHC), replaceable battery so you can carry a charged spare around, image stabilization and a macro mode. Oh, and external mic socket.

Miliband retains Labour line on DNA and CCTV

Who Cares?

Whatever they say before they get elected, we know, from bitter experience, has no relationship with what they'll do AFTER they get their sweaty little hands on power.

Pre-election, pre-administration words and promises are worthless. They say whatever they think will get them onto the throne.

Harrow flicks pirate thrown in slammer

Pedantry Counter-Measure Deployed

Technically, the rule is that if you can count them, it's 'fewer', if you measure them by mass/weight, it's 'less'.

Given the number of laws that the Labour party imposed upon us during their reign of terror, however, I think referring to them by weight is probably more fitting. :)

ZoneAlarm slammed for scarewarey marketing

Comodo

I ditched ZA not long after Checkpoint took them over and things started to change and installed Comodo Firewall. After an initial bit of panic at the increased options/complexity compared to ZA's simpler interface, I got my head around it and have never looked back.

Adobe patches critical Flash Player vuln under attack

No Bullshit Link

That bypasses all the retarded 'GetPlusPlus' addon bullshit in Firefox and gets you the latest version of Flash:

http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player.exe

OFT waves through Sky's Virgin TV slurp

Just what this country needs

Less diversity in TV media ownership; greater entrenchment of the Murdoch monopoly.

Google Instant sinks raft of search controls

They Broke Google Maps

That's nothing, I tried using Google Maps yesterday and was relentlessly frustrated by it changing the search terms I'd entered into the text box.

I typed in a specific name of a place at a town in a county and whenever I zoomed into one of the suggestins on the map, the search terms truncated, but this meant that the results in the left-side bar changed, and I wasn't able to zoom out click on another place and then return to the place I'd first clicked on.

I ended up having to repeatedly re-type the full search querie to get the reults I'd had, every time I zoomed in and back out again!

It actually sent me off to use Bing Maps FFS! (Until I relaised it wouldn't work in Firefox without me enabling DOM storage for it).

Godly Aussie MP accused of being online 'smut' junkie

His Staff?

Is that a euphemism?

'Larry and Sergey's HTML5 balls drained my resources'

Hyperbole Much?

>Everyday, though, [Google are] rapidly becoming Sunny Delight. Increasing crammed with obnoxious additives and other shit you don't need

Every day?

Like what?

A fancy graphic on their birthday (hint: once a year) or on a special occasion (a significant date that's tech/geek/science/education related) after which it reverts to its minimalist interface?

What on earth are you talking about old man? Did your failing eyesight cause you to type in the URL for the Yahoo homepage by mistake? :P

Judge Dredd returns to the silver screen

Childhood Trauma

I'm still recovering from the wevelation that Walter the Wobot's 'pleasure center' was in his gwoin.

PC World, Currys to offer cash for clunkers

Um...

Good News! You're going to get £50 for your old PC.

Bad News! You're going to buy something from DSG.

Good Luck! (If something goes wrong with your purchase and you need after-sales service, you're going to need it.)

BSkyB mulls UK Online closure

Thanks

It's always a pain in the arse when you have to search for a new ISP, so thanks for your advice!

Will check out the Sky packages (not keen on being forced to use their router though - how can they enforce that?) and BeThere.

My only question about BeThere is throttling and the like - the godawful crap that is peak times and so on, that I fled my last ISP because of.

I'm not anything like a bandwidth hog, (175GB per month rare and absolute max) but if I need (want) to download the latest episode of [insert high-quality American TV programme name here] and watch it in 15 minutes I just want to get on with it and not have to check my diary or update a spreadsheet with past download amounts. Or even give it a second thought.