Posts by STurtle

Sony denies Netflix app to older Bravia smart TVs

Same procedure as last year

Exactly the same happened last year with LoveFilm support: I bought my Sony TV in early 2010, but only models bought from 05/10 were granted LoveFilm capability in early in 2011.

So yes, Sony really thinks that a one year old TV is not worth supporting (last firmware updates was in Spring 2010). Never again for me.

So my TV has ethernet, that is completely useless, since the Sony Applicast widgets are no longer supported at all, as they were superseded by something my TV does not support.

Poll: One in six interrupt bonking to answer mobile

What is wrong with using a mobile on a toilet?

I understand all the other points, but seriously, what is wrong with using your mobile on a toilet?

People were reading papers on the crapper for ages, reading or playing on your mobile is no different.

Furthermore, if you know how to use the "mute" key properly, actual phoning is fine in my option. If the callee cannot tell, what is wrong with it?

Otherwise, my mobile switches itself on/off according to a preset schedule. So no one will interrupt me in bed, sleeping or not.

Beeb creates new global iPlayer post

Why would they want that?

We moved to Germany, and now my kids watch the same BBC children's programmes dubbed to German and interlaced with ads. I doubt the BBC can sell those at the same price if they were available through the iPlayer.!

However, last night, when my song spotted a children's yoghurt in our fridge that he had not seen before and spontaneously started to sing the corresponding ad's song, I instantly decided to purchase the expensive 120cm satellite dish necessary to receive Cbeebies in Germany as soon as possible (our UK-Tele has an HD-Freesat receiver built-in anyway) . It might also help our kids to retain the ability to speak English. So yes, I would willingly pay quite a bit to use the iPlayer outside the UK (using a Proxy works but is cumbersome) - but would that be enough to compensate the losses in selling to other broadcasters all over the world?

Google pulls trigger on 'Instant' search engine

Works amazingly well

I don't get the whining here. I love the new instant search!

It is especially useful if you do not know the exact search term, e.g. if I look for information about something in Germany, it is sometimes better to use search terms in English, sometimes better in German. So I first type in the base term or name, and then try the English term - if I see that this brings the wrong kind of results, I just hit backspace and type the German term or try a different refinement.

On the other hand, when I know exactly what I am looking for then I hit "Ctrl-L gg <search term" and are not bothered at all by instant search. It's called "Keyword" in Firefox.

So what is the silly whining about?

The Large Hadron Collider's mega-pic churn

Busy until doomsday?

"Until that happens, the LHC is generating enough data to keep scientists busy from now until doomsday (unless doomsday is in the next couple of years)."

So scientists are busy for a certain span of time time, which happens to be _shorter_ than the "next couple of years"?

I would have thought that they are busy until doomsday, regardless whether doomsday happens happens sooner or later, since they are really pretty busy, no?

Google tests 'streaming' search engine

"Tell me what I should be doing next?" Yes please!

Of, Reg-readers don't want to be told, but Google-usage has reached the masses, and from all my personal experiences and my understanding of history, the masses want to be told exactly that. It's really sad, but not without merit.

As long as it remains an offer one can refuse, this might still end well somehow, no?

Schmidt: Erase your identity to escape Google shame

What if no one no longer embarrassed?

Will the future generations even care about possible embarrassment of that kind? It's no longer embarrassing once everyone does it, once it becomes the norm.

I don't do Facebook myself, I don't see the point, but I already start to feel left out. Pretty much everyone seems to do it. I think I am regarded as old-fashioned to worry about these things.

OpenSUSE 11.3 delivers spit, polish and niggles

One-click always worked for the last distros for me

One-click codec installation has always worked for me for the last few years. Just use the one-click install provided by the openSuse community pages, not the official openSuse pages.

Then again, I always installed Suse roughly a month after its release, which might have helped to avoid one or the other hiccup.

UK pol touts canine chip implants

Statistical Significance?

In how many dog attacks was the ownership of the dog unclear in the last decade?

Apparently this must be a very happy country if politicians cannot find things with higher priority to deal with:

- How many people died by unregistered weapons?

- How many people died in accidents on insecure and ill-maintained roads?

- How many people died in insufficiently funded/maintained hospitals?

- How many people became brain dead from reading about politicians?

I would have thought that answering the question "How many people are affected how severely and how much could it cost per person to fix it?" should always be done first.

Surplus astronaut right-sizing imminent at NASA?

Rover's Spirit

Given the advances in robotics, why exactly do we need trained monkeys in space?

Spirit and Opportunity did quite well. How many Rovers can we operate on Mars for the price of one Mars Spacepirate?

Western Digital goes cartoon crazy

Green guy is wrong

The green guy should have some crutches or a wheelchair!

WD support told me by eMail that the green drives cannot be used in a RAID1 configuration, since they are for "home users" only. WTF?

I bought two green drives for a home-user NAS, which does not have to be fast, but silent and 24/7 eco friendly. I did not know that there are RAID-incompatible HDDs for sale! Lucky for me the NAS manufacturer implemented a work-around.

Prof: Extremists tend to dominate debates

Old news

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

(attributed to Bertrand Russell)

Palm Pre smartphone

Review misses most important point!

The review misses to examine the most important point:

How well to legacy PalmOS applications run?

How easy is it to transfer the old contact and calendar database form an old Palm device?

MORE PRECISE:

Can I swap my old Treo650 easily for a Pré, and continue productive use right away, slowly adapting to new applications and uses as I go, or will I be grounded for a week or two, being thrown into completely unfamiliar surroundings?

There are smartphones galore, and the iphone is posh enough, but die-hard palm users, of which there might still be a few around besides myself, don't want to be bothered with too much change at once! Change and learning is painful. A gradual update possibility, which lets me continue to use all my old applications (such as my trusted Password-Safe, which is crucial to me), is what is truly important about the Plam Pré - which is, after all, Palm's new child, and the only hope for old PalmOS users!