Posts by Steve Davies 3

Submerged Navy submarine successfully launches drone from missile tubes

Cool but not as cool as

Taking your multi £Billion Nuclear sub right up underneath the Russians newest Carrier (The Kiev), tracking it and photographing its features. Then slipping away unnoticed with all the ships sonic signatures in the bag.

Done by the Royal Navy in the Cold War (The Kiev was sold to China in the 1990's and is now a luxury hotel) but the above episode was beautifully described in one of the episodes of the BBC-2 Cold War series. The Captain of that sub really had some balls to do that. He

He came across in the prog as 'it was just another day at the office'.

Have one on me

Our Vulture strokes Dell's ROBUST 15 INCHER: Inspiron 15 Core i7

Re: Oh Dear

Some people want to like 'do stuff' and can't be bothered to watch movies (the reason for HD screens)

My 17in laptop when docked at home drives two 1920x1200 screens rotated to give 2400x1920.(not 4:3 but close) Perfect!

If I want to watch a movie than I'll do it on my tablet.

Bigger on the inside: WD’s Tardis-like Black² Dual Drive laptop disk

Not only windows products.

MS Office for Mac is a nasty piece of software. It not only ties itself to the hard disk but spereads itself all over the disk into places that frankly it should be going.

So you change your HDD to an SSD and copy everything over and Orifice won't start. You follow the online guide to uninstall and the re-install fails.

Total and utter crap. Typical MS Software.

Three offers free US roaming, confirms stealth 4G rollout

Re: EE? Are they serious?

As an adjunct to my previous post we can be thankful that we are NOT paying US Data prices

Data is priced between $20 and $500, for between 300MB and 50GB of usage.

THis is for the latest AT&T plans PER MONTH

Verizon claims average billing per user to be $129 PER MONTH

There can only be one icon for this

Microsoft 'cautiously optimistic' about Christmas sales

A casual Observation

made at my local PC-World (while waiting for my other half to get her hair done, sigh) was that no one was interested in anything with any flavour of Windows on it. There were people around the Apple kit (at the back of the store) and some were buying peripherals like All-In-One printer thingies. That was it at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon less than 1 month before Crimble.

This was my first visit to one of their stores in a long time. Sine my last visit to this one, they'd reduced the floor area by about 1/3rd and there was considerably less items on show. Stock levels seems poor as well. A sign of the times I suppose. I didn't stay long as I kept being asked 'can I help you' by sales droids. I went to the pub instead.

I know that this is not a scientific survey or anything but I get a feeling that anything with an MS label (apart from an X-Box) might not be very popular this year.

Microsoft expands Dublin bit barn to slurp Euro-Data

In other news....

The NSA quietly announced that they were adding 50 more staffers to their outpost in Dublin.

mines the one with a build in Faraday Cage and Invisibility cloak.

PC market staging a RECOVERY. (Only joking, it's through the floor)

Lets try to look at the facts

For years we had performance improvments that made 'upgrading' worth it. Extra Ram, 64bit CPU's, bigger HDD's etc etc.

Nowadays there is nothing 'vital' about current PC's to make me want to upgrade (As in buy a new one) as my current PC will do everything I care to throw at it.

Then there is the huge thorn in the side of the PC and that is the Tablet. For many formar (in the not too distant future) PC users these devices are all they need for browsing, shopping and the odd email. Why do they need a PC? They don't.

Add these two things together and the death of the PC as we know it is looming.

Actually, the things that Apple have been doing (Mac Pro apart) like making it impossible to upgrade kinda makes sense with the commodization of this section of the Electronics industry. Most average punters can't be half arsed to upgrade anything themselves.All they want is something that works when the switch it on.

Bring Your Own Disks: The Synology DS214 network storage box

Interesting but...

IMHO it is of limited attraction but at least it is a TWO drive unit. How many 'NAS' solutions are there with just a single drive or worse still a dual drive units where the default is a Raid-0 when you have two drives.

I have a Synology CS407. Works well but the CPU is rather underpowered for my liking. The saver is that as it is a 4 drive unit I can setup a RAID-5 solution. Just as well as in the past year three different 1Tb drives (from two different makers) have bitten the dust. 2 from Samsung and 1 from WD.

any chance of doing a test/review of 4 drive units? Some of us have a lot of 'stuff' to squirrel away.

Windows 7 outstrips Windows 8.x with small November growth

Not pleasant reading for Redmond

So they will bring forward the date of stopping sales and support of Win 7 to .... next week?

Their whoe thrust is to get the world onto that pile of dog poo (IMHO) called Windows 8.1

Half of all mobes sold in South-East Asia are now smart

Re: Sad

1) not everyone wants a 'smartphone'.

2) Have you been to S.E Asia and actually tried these 'generic' tablets?

3) most people in the UK who want/need a mobile already have one.

I was in H.K about 6 weeks ago and looked at and even tried a few. The result was IMHO that the cheap tablet can get in Tesco is better value for money. Most of my colleagues in HK and Shanghai think that Samsung tablets are crap whereas their phones are so-so.

UK.gov's web filtering mission creep: Now it plans to block 'extremist' websites

An MP Listen? That's an Oxymoron if ever I heard one

Especially if your MP is a Government Minister.

Britain’s forgotten first home computer pioneer: John Miller-Kirkpatrick

US/UK Exchange rate

There are companies who simply change the $ sign for a £ sign and call that the UK price; most are more reasonable.”

Not a lot has changed there then in the past 40years.

Sometimes it is almost worth flying over the pond and buying the kit in the US especially in places that don't charge sales tax and bringing it back with you.

Re: Electronics Today International.

Great Mag, sometimes iffy projects though. The various clocks using CT-7001 modules sucked but I did battle throught and complete the synthesizer. I lost count of how many issues it was serialised over.

Build your OWN Apple iBeacon with a Raspberry Pi

Re: Too much fun!

Android users don't need to worry. Your devices will soon be as annoying at iDevices with all this suff being broadcast at them.

You gotta feel sorry for the few Windows users though. Missing out on all this lovely advertising stuff.

Fantastic

Send a bunch of people into store with systems in their shopping bags broadcasting 'Free beer next door' and other stuff like '50% sale in Harrods' to shoppers in Selfridges. Or worse, 50% off sale in Jewlery.

A really good way to mess this up so badly to make it totally unusable. Yay, bring it on

Sigh

One would think that all Linux distros for the Pi need to use 'apt' to load packages.

The Pi that I use to control my model railway runs Fedora quite happily but it isn't really trendy like Ubuntu.

El Reg Contraption Confessional No.1: The Dragon 32 micro

I have a PDP-11/05 (circa 1975) I rescued from a Skip plus a VS-11 Graphics Device. I will wow the grandkids on Boxing Day playing Lunar Lander. It will also heat the room at the same time.

I have the full schematics for it as well. All 74 series IC's and a wire wrapped backplane.

REVEALED: How YOU PAY extra for iPHONES - even if you DON'T HAVE ONE

US or Worldwide?

Most of this only applies to the very skewed and frankly obnosious market in the US.

Does this apply elsewhere? Maybe not but frankly it is beholden on the hack that put this together to actually look at the worldwide markets.

After all, the US is no longer the biggest market for technology....

The outrageous if not obscene rates for data that the likes of AT&T and Verizon charge per month would be more newsworthy not that I have an iDevice or even have data capability on my phone.

Samsung to spend ENTIRE budget of London 2012 OLYMPICS... on ADS

Not immune to marketing?

I beg to differ. The more something is marketed at me, the less likely I'm going to buy it.

I'm immune to being persuaded/brainwashed to buy a certain product. If anything, I'll buy a competitors one instead.

As for Samsung, after some really bad experiences with 3 of their 1TB HDD's going tits up in rapid succession they are on my 'do not touch with a bargepole' list.

DVLA declares J14 HAD on BU14 SHT and SL14 AGS

Re: Escaped Plates

The other neat plate I used to see in Kazakhstan was on a British Truck carrying oil & gas parts from the UK.

H1KGB

Think about it....

Re: Escaped Plates

H1HBB

On a Hogs Back Brewery Truck delivering HBB naturally.

Partners to Microsoft: We are NOT ready for cloudy stuff yet

Ah! The old X.25 cloud

I remember it well.

As for the rest of it, my thoughts exactly. Let the rains begin and when the sun shines, the cloud will evaporate.

US puts Assange charge in too-hard basket - report

Yeah right....

Until the next election looms and whipping his Ass(ange), pun intended will be a sure fire vote winner in certain parts of the US where the average I.Q. is in single figures.

Want to reach out and touch your Chromebook? How does $299 grab you?

Eh?

Quote

a bog standard 11.6-inch, 1366-by-768 display

So it is still a pig even with some touchy feely lipstick but it is still a pig none the less.

In this day and age it must be time to more to higher resolution 'bog-standard' displays?

The words, 'Could do better' come to mind here. I'd even pay a bit more dosh for a better resolution screen.

Instead we get companies in a race to the bottom.

Even Paris deserves to to be seen in higher definition.

Schmidt: Social networks will FREE THE PEOPLE of China

What a load of old cock

What this really means is the Google want more uses of social media so that they can satisfy their insatiable appetite for persona information and advertising cannon fodder.

BBC's 3D blunder BLASTED OUR BRAINS – Doctor Who fans

Re: RE: The lack of ads on the Beeb is still remarkably compelling

There is a world of different (IMHO) between advertising content on that and other channels to Commercial Product Advertising, eg Fairy Snow, Volkswagen, Jaguar, M&S, John Lewis, etc etc etc

There again, I'm at an age where any prolonged/repeated product advertising is more likely to make me buy a rivals product. (a.k.a Grumpy old man)

Re: I've never understood the need for on-screen logos

Two reasons

1) so that the like of the RIAA/MPAA/etc/etc/etc can see what broadcasters stream/broadcast was priated/torrented illegally.

2) To keep the TV execs reminded that they should ONLY be watching their channel and not anyone elses.

Frankly, on a lot of shows they really get in the way of the action. But, after a while you tune them out.

Apple stalls iWatch, 12.9-inch iPad from Quanta rumored for mid-2014

missing the point methinks

I get the feeling that this devices (should it ever see the light of day) will be an entry level 4K TV display.

That part of the market is AFAIK virgin Territory. Everyone else is going after 40/50in+ displays. There is a clear niche for smaller 'personal' 4K displays.

The biggest problem in my opinion is not the technology but the content. 90% of what Hollywood produces is remakes, sequels,prequels and teen coming of age crap.

Original content and ideas are few and far between.

so you have your 4K display but what do you show on it?

Much like being all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Suck on this Hollywood Accountants and accounting rules--->

Microsoft releases wonderfully loopy experimental GIF-jiggler

Re: Points

Isn't 'Jif' a floor cleaner?

Coat with a packet of Flash in the pocket

Stewardess first to book $250k Virgin Galactic 'space trip' with BITCOINS

Just wait

until the US Gov declares Bitcoin an illegal currency and worse still, used by Terrorists (alledgely).

The bearded one and the stewardess could see themselves doing hard time for breaching their silly interstate commerce laws.

FAT PIPE for ALL: Britain’s new tech firms take it from the telcos

Re: How wrong can you be?

Nowt new in Hackney then,

When I lived there it was exactly the same with anything to do with the SSRH (Soviet Socialist Republic of Hackney) a.k.a. the Council.

Macy's: Now with Apple's Minority Report ads system that TRACKS your iPHONE

Re: Two things....

You obviously have not tried to sell to a fully paid up member of the 'Grumpy Old Man' Club.

We are those curmudgeons who know what they want and no amount of sales bullshit will deter us.

It is no use saying, 'Sorry, none in stock today. We are expecting some next week.

If you do, we will be gone whoosh out the door we go.

As for the salesdroids 'How can I help you'. You will get a polite 'No Thanks' the first time.

The second time you can expect 'No!'.

If you have the temerity to ask a third time, you will get an 'Eff Off Twat' (or similar verbals)

We know the price we will pay. Woe betide you trying to flog a 3rd years warrany for 10quid on a 29.95 item. Suddenly the sale that you thought was yours will be gone in a flash.

Get the idea?

Re: fanbois can opt out by turning off their phone's location services.

Quote

You might as well say "fanbois can opt out by buying a samsung"....

Nice one....

However, how long before Sammy say, 'Can't let Apple take all this lovely lucre from the Ad revenue' and introduce it themselves?

I give it 6 months.

FCC: How we'll RIP 'n' REPLACE OLD phone system for new IP tech

Time to bring back the good old

WW2 Scrambler phone?

Where the 'Up yours NSA Icon'?

Lumia 1520: Our man screams into ENORMO new Nokia phondleslab

Re: Microsoft account needed for Facebook? ??

Why?

Well how else will you be assimilated into the Microsoft Collective? A.K.A The Jedoon

Prime Minister David Cameron in Twitter gaffe

couldn't resist

Corporal Clegg had a medal too

In orange, red, and blue

He found it in the zoo.

(if the words were 'In yellow, red and blue' then it would have been strangely prophetic)

Lyrics from a Syd era Floyd song.

US senator asks: Will Bitcoin replace Swiss bank accounts?

Re: Yes, HSBC Bank.................

Quote

it's not regulateable and it is reasonable to regulate the use of a currency.

The US has a habit of banning anything it can't understand thus they will begin to regulate the LIFE out of. Think Prohibition and frankly they are still scared of Booze in all shapes or forms. IMHO, Bitcoin will die a long slow death once the US Congress Ctirrers get their teeth into legisltating it out of existence.

JESUS battery HEALS itself - might make electric cars more practical

Jesus Battery?

Where is the Apple angle then?

Jesus Phone and all that..

Oracle pens recipe for tweeting turkey in Raspberry Pi sauce

Re: I like it

All I can say is

Bring back Pentodes and proper Analogue Computers, positive feedback included.

Salesforce slaps Amazon, Google with glove: 'I'm THE FIRST $1bn-quarter enterprise cloud biz'

Re: Let me get this straight...

In other words,

Analyst's should be tarred, feathered and then hung drawn and quartered before being keel hauled.

Android mobes outsell iPhones, but Apple gets MORE PROFIT THAN ALL

Re: insecure?

quote

Why are Apple fans in a perpetual cycle of looking for new metrics to "prove" that their iWhatever is the best?

Why are <insert phone maker name here> fans in a perpetual cycle of looking for new metrics to "prove" that their <same phone maker name device> is the best?

Their. Fixed it for you.

Sort of reminds me of the playground games, My Father earns more than your father. No he does not, mine earns more.

It does not matter who earns more or who's device is best. Whatever makes the family member/device owner the happiest then that is the best. All subjective naturally.

'I'm BIG, I'm BALD and I'm LOUD!' Blubbering Ballmer admits HE was Microsoft's problem

Re: PanAm is the Microsoft of today, the Microsoft of our times Was Not all bad

PanAm... There is a voice from the past. The only good flight I ever had on them was from Miami to London the night that the Dolphins played in their first Superbowl. There were just about equal numbers of crew and passengers.

At least there was a choice of Airlines (still is on many routes) not so with mainstream PC Operating Systems (by this I mean ones used by the average punter, not the geeks)

For them it is Windows or nothing. Especially those who had to suffer ICT at school which were basically classes in Word/Excel and worst of all Powerpoint.

Apple, for one, welcomes its ROBOT factory OVERLORDS

Re: Line up fanbois

Are you related to Ned Ludd by any chance?

Perhaps you should go back to pulling your solid wheeled donkey cart and ploughing the fields with a man hauled plough?

Google spaffs $80m on Sun-powered kit: Calm down, Oracle. It's SOLAR

Re: "a facility in Iowa that will rely entirely on wind power"

I am sure they could turn to any number of commercial oils derived from plants.

After all didn't 'Castrol' take its name from 'Castor Oil'?

In the US, 'Canola' based oils are available.

MANUAL STIMULATION: Whack me with some proper documentation

Spot on.

Re: blanking out all the fields.

The website creators are obviously total plonkers when it comes to usability. Nil Points.

I'm also passworded out especially, the extra security password that some banks are tacking on to Debit and Credit card transactions. I change it an immediately (not even a few seconds) after doing so it has gone from my memory.

As regards documentation. I can remember the work that went into getting the DEC VMS V5.0 Doc set printed. It seemed at one time almost every printer in Eire was doing something for the release.

Online documentation leaves a lot to be desired. Be it 'man' pages that have no examples at all to the maze of circular references that are many IBM Infocentres they are IMHO CRAP.

The best example of in your face docs I have ever come upon was the DEC 'DCL' command language. Totally structured with examples.

now what was the password to my 'router' again?

(answer, it is on a bit of paper under my UPS)

Apple faces €1bn tax probe in Italy, claim legal eagle insiders

New broom and all that?

Now that Sylvio B is out of the picture?

"Hey lets go after Apple. They have lots of money"

"Why?"

"We are broke. If we dont we will have to borrow more from Germany."

"Ok then."

El avión Buitre 2 rinde homenaje a nuestros amigos españoles

And for those of us...

Who are Spanish language challenged...

Can we please have a translation?

Mines the one with a copy of don Quixote in the large pocket.

How to relieve Microsoft's Surface RT piles problem

Re: The problem is the analysis

Exactly. The problem is the word 'Windows'.

The average punter will expect to see what runs on his PC to run on his -RT. It won't and they return the device.

Apple uses different branding for OSX and iPads. Far less chance of confusion.

I'd love a Surface but only to run Linux on it. Not Ubuntu mind you but IMHO a proper distro like Debian or Fedora. In my eyes, there is a lot of similarity between Microsoft and Canonical. Both of them are trying to put their ONE brand everywhere. It will IMHO be doomed to failure.

Unbelievably RARE, two-horned 'UNICORN' SPOTTED in woods

How long before....

We find that there is some crackpot Chinese Medical use for bits of this poor beast, like Rhino Horn and the like.

Bang goes any chance for its survival then.

Want to BUILD YOUR OWN Tardis? First, get a star and set it spinning...

That's more like it.

Reasoned and sometimes witty debate and no slagging off of <insert the name of company you love to hate here>

Keep up the good work!