* Posts by system11

78 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Oct 2009

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Man sparks controversy, fined $120 for enjoying wristjob while driving

system11

I can't work out which is the most pitiful. Being stupid enough to think that this is reasonable in the first place, or trying to contest the fact that it isn't?

Blighty's BONKERS BANKING BONKING BONANZA: Apple Pay arrives

system11

On the other hand, it's really difficult to hack the OS on a thing without one.

I'm going to write this off as "stupid marketing solution to a problem that doesn't exist". Who is going to start leaving their wallet at home complete with any other things that might be in it, just because they can wave their much larger phone at a payment terminal?

Nobody.

What a pity: Rollout of hated UK smart meters delayed again

system11

"I am determined to bring the benefits of smart meters to GB consumers,"

No you're not, you're determined to show that you can get something done for entirely self promotional reasons, regardless of the money wasted doing so, since none of it is yours.

YOU are the threat: True confessions of real-life sysadmins

system11

Can I hire Joe to get rid of these PPI refund plague calling systems?

Brighten your November morning: 900 in-browser arcade classics added to the Internet Archive

system11

Re: this is cool and also legal, i think?

I think it just means they're breaking copyright laws instead of you. Maybe. Perhaps they're a recognised library and therefore exempt?

It's an interesting situation because until recently ROM sites were routinely being smacked with DMCA takedowns, the ones which survive are at providers who ignore notices or are based overseas. The process of releasing new ROMs is still pretty clandestine in itself.

Jaguar Sportbrake: The chicken tikka masala of van-sized posh cars

system11

They're actually planning a 'new' XF - this one is substantially different rather than the slight facelift it had a few years ago. The new one is supposed to be a bit larger to differentiate it from the XE, but that's a mistake IMO - stepping on the toes of the XJ. The XF is already a pretty big car within its market segment, and it feels big too.

If we compare it to BMW, just looking at them side by side the 7 is bigger than the 5 which is bigger than the 3 - the XF is similar in size to a 5 series so I suspect the XE is the one they mis-sized.

system11

Re: Jaguars are astonishingly awful in the snow

You must be doing something wrong, didn't have a problem myself and that was a V8 S-Type with everything on the rear wheels (and not winter tyres). They're big heavy things, treat them with respect, the accelerator and brake are not binary controls. If the ABS and traction kick in you're already Doing It Wrong.

Fiat 500S: So pleasingly sporty we didn't want to give it back

system11

If I was in the market for a small car, I'd get a Fiat 500. All the rest are so boring by and characterless by comparison. I've lost track of what BMW think they're doing with the Mini, I realised they were on a different planet when my great big Jag was overtaken by a mini which dwarfed it.

Scrapping the Human Rights Act: What about privacy and freedom of expression?

system11

Another day, another thoroughly depressing bit of news about UK politics.

There's nobody left to vote for.

Virgin Media hit by MORE YouTube buffering glitches

system11

It's still broken by the way.

"We are aware of intermittent, local, issues with YouTube and have been working directly with affected customers via our forums and our partners at Google to investigate and resolve issues as soon as possible,"

"local" to the entire of their UK subscriber base, presumably.

Waiting gamer slams no-show show: E3 – was that it?

system11

Re: Sad Times

You've missed a few points.

Consoles have had (and have) MMOs, they may not be the same ones popular on PCs. Why? Some don't translate well in control terms, but more importantly a majority of console gamers don't give a shit about PC games. World of Warcraft is a prime example, it looks and feels like a game aimed at the PC gaming crowd, because it was.

On the flipside look at something console owners do identify with, something which appeals and something which has been brilliantly translated to console - Final Fantasy XIV. Seriously the interface is a work of art, want to use a controller on a PC, or a keyboard/mouse on the PS4, or some combination? Go right ahead - it all works. You need to put that effort in and have an attractive product or there's no point releasing MMOs on the console, so most aren't. Square are even making noises at Microsoft about wanting to get XIV on the Xbox One, if they'd allow cross platform play like the PS4 does.

E3 was exactly what I expected. The one thing I wanted was some news of No Mans Sky and I got exactly that. Seeing the new Rainbow Six footage was the only other nice surprise.

Car titans WON'T STEAL our tech, says Musk: DAMNIT, I'll GIVE IT to 'em

system11

So how many fossil fuel burning powerplants is the UK going to have to push back into service to get all the clean electric cars running? Eventually this will have to happen but do look at where the pollution simply shifted to.

Need more nuclear. Now.

When will Microsoft next run out of US IPv4 addresses for Azure?

system11

Of course if people could stop wasting them, that would also help. How many of these organisations really need a class A block of externally addressable IPs?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks

Lego is the TOOL OF SATAN, thunders Polish priest

system11

I agree with him in the vaguest of ways. I do think lego was nicer before all the smirking attitude faces.

Steve Jobs statue: Ones and ohs and OH NOES – it's POINTING at us

system11

It reminds me of the pillar from one of the earlier Hellraiser films.

Woman claims she was assaulted in Google Glass 'HATE CRIME'

system11

I don't want to be secretly recorded, I'd ban them from all establishments. Phones and actual cameras are different, they're very obvious when in use, someone wearing a pair of glasses may be recording and they may not be, it's completely unreasonable and Google are at fault here for not giving a shit about privacy when they invented them.

4K-ing hell! Will your shiny new Ultra HD TV actually display HD telly?

system11

So, buy a new TV on which my existing HD content will look ... awful? At a time where world & dog are finally embracing Blu-Ray?

I despair with the TV manufacturing industry. 4k should be 4x1080, then you could scale without artifacts.

PlayStation daddy on new PS4: She's ALL 'PLAY', NO 'Station' this time

system11

The Xbox One can't actually play disc based games out of the box, you need the 600mb or so patch for that. The PS4 is missing some functions out of the box, but playing games it will do.

system11

Re: The PS3 was and still is a top-notch product

FUD.

Both consoles contain a hardware scaler - Microsoft (or DICE) opted to employ edge sharpening on the lower resolution Xbox One version of Battlefield 4. They chose a horrible full screen AA for the PS4, that's why the XB1 version looks (in my opinion but it's not a popular one) better.

CD/MP3/DLNA to be implemented in a future PS4 patch.

The ESRAM cache if fully utilised still leaves the Xbox One at a significant power disadvantage even before Kinect eats (approximately) 10% of the resources. MS are working to find ways to free that up but it's not enough to counter the 50% deficit.

Kinect hasn't taken off, it's a party toy - Sony did well to make their camera a separate item people can choose to buy.

Moto sets out plans for crafty snap-together PODULAR PHONES

system11

I hope they manage it, I'd definitely own something like this where I can tailor make my phone. I think the most realistic outcome is they learn a lot making a prototype, and some of the concepts and features invented along the way end up in Motorola handsets and/or Android.

James Bond's Lotus Esprit submarine car sells for £550,000

system11

Re: @ ACs bitching

Agreed - they used to mostly be reserved for when someone had something relevant to say, which they didn't want to be tied to their name (and therefore employer).

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 debuts with IBM code side and centre

system11

Re: LibreOffice

Even harder when you consider that MS Office is *actually quite good*. Even as a Linux guy I find myself working on spreadsheets via Office in a Windows VM in preference to using LO/OO, because the software is simply better. I could certainly live with LO/OO most of the time, although some MS generated documents do turn into a mess, it's not as bad as say video editing where there's nothing as good as Sony Vegas available.

Confirmed: Driverless cars to hit actual British roads by end of year

system11

Re: All at once or none at all

I went for a training course in Milton Keynes. I thought the way the town worked was fantastic both from the point of view of a driver, and in the evenings a pedestrian.

Seven snazzy smartphones for seven sorts of shoppers

system11

Re: Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX HD

Nice to know it can be made to work. The older MAXX is actually available in the UK and when/if it dies I was rather planning to get whatever the newest version was, due to battery life.

Ubisoft admits major hacking breach, advises password change

system11

Information sharing...

I signed up to Xbox Live with a specific email address, that I used only there for security. The last game by Ubisoft that I actively played online was R6 Vegas 2, which came out years before I set this new email address.

How then, do they have my XBL username and email address, and some unknown password which may or may not be my Live one?

Thanks Microsoft. Just because I play someones game offline, doesn't mean you should automatically send them my information.

Sony unveils latest attempt at an Android SmartWatch

system11
Meh

I still find it somewhat reassuring to wear a proper watch, with cogs and springs inside. I can't really see the point of this since everything it can do, a phone can do. Many things a phone can do, this can't - so given that most people will want to carry a phone around anyway (and the operating range of their current model is only 10m anyway), why would you pick this over something with a little character?

I'm going to file this under 'just because you can...'

Quit the 2D internet, flee your cave, and GET LAID, barks rock star

system11
Meh

Re: He's quite right

My taxes and cost of living go up far more quickly than my earnings, which is the case for most people at the moment. Online stores are considerably cheaper to buy from (even after postage). Online stores don't involve the misery of public transport or trying to park in punitively priced car parks used by careless idiots. Going to the town centre to buy something takes an hour of my spare time, buying it on Amazon takes less than a minute, leaving that hour free to enjoy doing other things.

So monetarily and from a time/stress perspective, it makes no sense to buy from real shops on the high street, unless you enjoy the act of wandering around browsing busy shops. A lot of people don't and I've noticed that the older I get, the less inclined I am to put up with all the hassle.

I'd also challenge the notion that online retailers don't have product knowledge, a lot of them do - it's really only Amazon & co where you're buying from a factory outlet.

Wii-U boat torpedoes Nintendo's '¥20bn profit' into ¥20bn loss

system11

You can't sell a last generation gaming experience with a gimmick, for higher prices than actual current generation consoles and games. It's just .. obvious.

Troll sues Apple for daring to plug headphones into iPhone

system11

Kind of difficult to feel sorry for Apple given their recent behaviour, even if patent trolls are wretched.

Ballmer's lightened pay packet is the least of his problems

system11

Looks familiar

Desktop users don't want an interface which has been dumbed down for touchscreen use. It's that simple. Reminds me of Unity all over again.

Hunt vows: 'UK will have fastest broadband in Europe by 2015'

system11

Re: When he says "Fastest"

Indeed. Every time the speeds are hiked around here, there is a corresponding increase in latency and packet loss. Great - just what I needed.

SCO keeps dying, and dying, and dying

system11

Could they please hurry up? We bought in the party hats years ago and they've gathered a layer of dust.

Party like it's 1999: CDE Unix desktop REBORN

system11
Thumb Up

Re: Cubuntu...

I would donate to a Kickstarter project for that.

PayPal is bleeding market share and it's all eBay's fault

system11

Re: What's all the fuss about?

All the cheapest stuff is in the US and other non-EU places though. I restore pinball machines in my spare time, even after customs and shipping it's often far cheaper to buy parts from the US. All those US companies and 'mom n pop' type supplies accept Paypal.

Paypal is 'too big to fail' at this point, not sure how much time analysts spend in the real world.

iPhone 5 poised to trounce Android, devastate BlackBerry?

system11
Thumb Up

Absolutely, how refreshing to see someone actually say it.

This is why when I bought a phone yesterday (the first mobile one I've actually bought for myself rather than being given by an employer), I approached it from a very simple angle: which handset has the best battery and build quality? The Razr Maxx clobbered everything in battery life and appears to be stuck together properly, so one is in the post.

Disable Gadgets NOW says Redmond

system11

I did - I like the little weather applet and the mini system monitor.

Study: Climate was hotter in Roman, medieval times than now

system11
Childcatcher

"I don't understand the polarisation in the climate space since it obviously wrecks peoples critical abilities"

Hard to take that seriously from someone who opens with 'climate deniers'. Until population expansion is addressed nearly everything you do is delaying the inevitable. I'm of the opinion that wasting resources doesn't make any logical sense and that's why I recycle/use energy savers/etc, but I don't truly believe that what I'm doing will have any real long term benefit in the context of our planets future.

The elephant is still in the room, I can see that it's easier to vilify 'climate deniers' though.

War On Standby: Do the figures actually stack up?

system11
Devil

I actually do switch things off

I'm one of those people who flicks the switches at the wall on a lot of things that don't need to be running all the time, something on stand-by uses more than something that is switched off, and that's all there is to it. My main driver is fire safety though rather than people wringing their hands and telling me to save the world.

I'd like to know the numbers for pointlessly plugged in chargers/etc as opposed to TVs which really don't use very much. Some of them get quite warm with no load whatsoever (same for any similar type of power pack) - where there's heat there's wasted energy.

Of course this is all undermined by the 2 kilowatt heater that sits in the garage running 24/7. Oops.

Speedball 2 Brutal Deluxe

system11

Re: Xbox Live

Unfortunately it was de-listed after Empire Interactive collapsed. It was a pretty good port too once you switched off the awful new graphics. Still got it on my machine, shame nobody can download it to play 2p with me now.

Biennial boner blights Beemer biker

system11
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Re: @ Sir Wiggum:

Not all of them, buy one of the big Mercedes or BMW and they still have a good ride and a lounge suite for seats.

Ultimate comfortable 'bang for the buck' ride has to be the previous model 7 series, just brilliant cars. I paid a whole 5k for my last 750 which I had for 3 years, spent about 2k in repairs on it, sold it for 3 when the ABS pump failed. So 4k for 3 years motoring in an immensely comfortable and capable car, which is significantly less than the depreciation on anything you can buy at the moment,.

Official: Britain staggers into double-dip recession doom

system11
Meh

Re: Austerity?

Correct, I never go to the public sector. Oh - aside from the NHS telling me I can't have the medicine for my chronic sleep disorder, because it's too expensive - but they told me that before the "cuts" anyway.

I have a reasonable income, my partner earns a pittance though. We have no children, but if we did I don't think I'd be complaining that other people aren't funding my lifestyle choice. They *are* a lifestyle choice you know. Aside from that, my income is also dropping in real terms, bills are all up everywhere you look, and it's pretty grim. All of these things happened regardless of "cuts". My remaining grandparent went into a council provided care home just two months ago, no problem there either. It's much nicer and safer than the house the council used to pay for - it's been like watching someone wake up for another lease of life. The pavement outside our house was literally still warm to the touch yesterday because they're all being replaced.

Child tax credits are the one very good point made, but as I say - you chose to have children. I have not chosen to buy a horse or live in Chelsea, because I can't afford to. On a reality based note, we reduced the amount of time our heating runs over the winter because it was so expensive, that's just life I'm afraid.

No amount of moaning about cuts to front line services changes the fact that individually and as a country, we're mostly broke now. It doesn't matter how much money 'Gideon and Dave' have, or their chums in business, or the amount of tax dodged by people wealthy enough to dodge it, because it would probably fund a single beer for everyone in the country. I believe spending significantly less on things we can't afford, is a real part (but not all) of the solution.

I'm just tired of people talking the cuts up as if it's the worst spectre in the world, destroying the lives of the poor while funding the lives of the rich. Do you know who the 'rich' are in the context of tax funding? The poor sods working for a living with no children, who are not rich and also use very little services of the state, paying a fortune in rent while people live next door free of charge. The same poor sods who can't afford to go on holidays or buy new cars, just like people with less money can't. The media particularly sensationalise it like an unknowable boogeyman lurking under the bed just waiting to kill poor granny in the winter. The economy falling over even more would be worse.

In short: it sucks for everyone, get over it. I don't like it either. I like the probable alternative even less.

system11
Stop

Re: Austerity?

Please highlight which particular cuts caused this, and when they actually took effect. I don't mean the pile of discussed, planned or speculated ones - I want an example of an actual cut which has made any difference to the situation.

I see too many people bemoaning 'all the cuts' when actually almost nothing has changed.

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

system11
Meh

Charlie's Angels 2.

I have an incredibly high tolerance for bad films, but this one was terrible enough in the first 15 minutes to get me to turn it off. I can't even think of another film I can remember turning off before the end.

Ubuntu 12.04 hits beta, brings smooth Unity for marching masses

system11
Unhappy

Unity will sink Ubuntu over time

I deployed quite a few (well, 40-50) Ubuntu workstations to users here, and results were very positive - however that was 10.04 LTS. We also deployed some 11.04 builds which were configured for the classic Gnome interface, purely because Broadcom like to change their chipsets monthly. The 11.04 ones have ... been lacking. Even basic things fail like the session manager failing sometimes on login and vanishing the theme, or random X crashes. None of this happened on 10.04.

Then 11.10 hit, and a few users upgraded their machines.

I had to rebuild them, the upgrade totally hosed the machines - one even came back with a strobing display, I thought it was hardware failure at first.

Having shown a Unity desktop to some of them, the result was overwhelmingly along the lines of "but it worked before, this is primitive and unusable". I can't see us staying with Ubuntu at all going forward - which is a pain in the neck as I'll have to go away and make new build images.

Unity strikes me as a vanity project with nothing to offer end users. Even Gnome 3 is better, and that isn't brilliant either.

'Kill yourself now' - Torvalds throws openSUSE security tantrum

system11
Stop

Sorry Linus, have to disagree with you

If you wanted a friendly and permissive distribution for your daughters laptop, you should have either:

1) Configured OpenSUSE that way, or

2) Given her a different distribution

The fact that it won't by default let users do just anything without elevated credentials, is one of the selling points of OpenSUSE to (for example) IT teams in a corporate environment.

Rant away about bugs, by all means..

Feds to carmakers: 'Rein in high-tech dashboards'

system11
Alien

Banning distractions

I think it's a good thing to be investigating some of these. Entering a destination into a GPS while trying to drive is just as dangerous as texting - they're both an unacceptable distraction. I carry my accursed phone around with me all the time, I have to as part of my job. If it beeps or rings and I'm driving, it gets ignored. It's not a difficult skill to learn.

I would like the people noticing these new dangers to also address the plague of speed cameras which cause many drivers to watch their speedometer just as often as the road. I think many of us do that now, I know I do unless the car is on cruise. I find it quite stressful in fact, but the misery inflicted upon drivers after minor offenses is so great that speedo-stare we must.

As an aside, a nice feature to have in cars (which may exist on a car I've not heard of) would be a nice soft voice that announces when your speed passes certain configurable points. I'd like mine to tell me when I exceed 30 or 70. It should be easy to activate from the steering wheel or by voice control (the Jaguar Voice stuff actually works quite well).

Drink diet pop all the time? Look forward to VASCULAR DEATH

system11

Time for a new approach!

I think it might just be easier if they all started listing foods and drinks that don't cause cancer / heart attacks / leprosy / scurvy etc. We could have them all stocked at dispenceries in controlled amounts, in case too much or too little is responsible for blindness and immediate death.

Is apple juice (pressed) considered safe still?

Surprise: Neil Young still hates digital music

system11
Thumb Up

Cranked to 12

I think the worst one I've heard so far is 'This Gift' by Sons & Daughters. It's physically uncomfortable to listen to for more than 1 track at a time, and even that is unpleasant.

I've spent a lot of money getting hold of original non-remastered versions of other albums that I'd sold in the past. Here's a comparison of the original and remaster of 'Money For Nothing' by Dire Straits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UjQc0dM4H4

I've compared the actual CDs on a decent system, it's like night and day. Most of this seems to be driven by catering to people with rubbish playback devices (iPods+etc with stock earbuds) - perhaps they need to start making two mixes of everything, a standard and portable one with higher volume at the expense of range.

The big problem with all this is not that people in noisy cars or with iPods can get access to music that sounds sort of OK on their equipment, it's that only having that mix available means good quality recordings of some recent music simply don't exist at all. The music is forever unlistenable, you can't fix range compression.

Tablets will overtake consumer PCs, says Fujitsu CTO

system11
Meh

Too difficult...

It's too difficult to type more than a couple of words on a phone or pad. At that point you probably want to dock it with a keyboard and mouse, and probably a usably sized screen, and then - what was the point of having a tablet in the first place? You've just created a workstation.

I know quite a few pad owners, and they all use them for the following two purposes:

1) To watch films or show photographs on the move.

2) To show people what a cool gadget it is.

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