Posts by Benjamin 4

Dim-but-rich buyers targeted with million pound laptop

Other than in European countries of little significance like England, especially since it is the England Amazon website, where we do use the decimal point.

Google accused of meddling with S Korean probe

Does it really matter?

I'm for the free market as much as the next person, but at the end of the day I've never found a search engine that works anywhere near as well as Google. If there was a viable alternative to Google search then there should be a way to use it, but Google gets by far the best results, so what's the problem?

How digital audio ate itself ... and the music biz

ID3 Tagging

I ripped my cd library as wavs using windows media player, and copy music off of vinyl, cassette and RTR onto the pc as wavs. All works brilliantly until another device tries to access it. WAVs are notoriously fickle about ID3 tags, and always will be. It's a nice idea, but a PITA to actually use.

Paris, because I'm sure she's compatible with multiple devices.

Insulin pump hack delivers fatal dosage over the air

Sigh

They don't need a wireless communication protocol. For all of the people saying it's easier than cutting the patient open you obviously don't understand what an insulin pump is and how it works, or are getting confused with the comparison to the hack on heart monitors.

An insulin pump is an external device (as pictured), with a screen and buttons on it that can be directly controlled. It then has a cannula that goes into the body. It has wireless capabilities only because people are too lazy to enter the data once into it, and once into a computer database, or connect it via a cable to the computer.

Spotify tethers future to Facebook

Why???

This is hypocritical, but I wouldn't mind if it used a Google account, since I actually use my Google account on a day to day basis, but since I don't have a facebook account, let alone use it it seems pointless.

But the over-riding question is why can't people just have individual accounts. The more I see of the way computers etc are going the less I like it. We have less and less control over the physical hardware, our files and how we access content every day. The government planning to use facebook as an ID system just seems to be the biggest load of bull ever.

I hear black helicopters!!

Microsoft bans all plugins from touchable IE10

What's the problem?

Ever since I changed from feature phones to smart phones I've run android, and never had a problem with flash crashing / using resources. I appreciate that it may not be the best, but it works fine, and is better than any alternative I've seen. The only reason I can see for doing this is that Microsoft / Apple both dislike Adobe, and want parts of the market it controls.

Seven lessons from the HP Touchpad fire sale

Tablets - what's the point?

I completely agree that tablets are toys. Having replied to articles similar to this I ask you to show me something you do on your tablet, and I'll show you how to do it better on a laptop.

I mean come on lets compare a tablet to my ThinkPad:

Apps:

No contest goes to the laptop. Not even the IPad can come close to the diverse range of apps available for your favored flavor of Windows / Linux / OSX / whatever os you prefer.

Battery life:

With a nine cell battery my ThinkPad comfortably gets 4 hours, usually 5-6. Now tell me when you are away from power (be it mains, car or plane) for more than that time, and tablets don't run for much longer anyway. Ok the extra battery life might be useful occasionally, but in the two years I've had my laptop it has run out of battery twice, and on both occasions because I forgot to pack the power supply.

Ergonomics:

Again it goes to the laptop. Much easier to type, easier to hold in a comfortable position etc etc.

Connectivity:

Once again the laptop wins, being able to connect easily to many different devices, rather than having to play around with specialist printer adapters etc. Furthermore you can tether it to your phone, and not have to pay a separate data charge, which most phones don't support with tablets.

Portability:

Yes laptops are bigger and heavier, but not by much, especially when you only get 13.3" / 14" models, which are all you need for portable work (ok maybe not if you're doing on location photo / video editing or something, but then you wouldn't be looking at a tablet for that anyway) they are still plenty light enough and small enough to easily carry (I almost always take my laptop with me when I leave the house, and don't have any problems with it being hard to carry around).

Storage capacity:

Again no brainer to the laptop - much higher capacity, and much cheaper.

Price:

This is the only place where a tablet could win. However if you think that most decent tablets when not in a sale are at least £400, and once you add in a data contract (which you will probably want, but don't need with a laptop it goes up again.

So, what is the advantage of a tablet, other than following the herd??????

Bulgarian coeds exposed in hidden camera stuffed apartment

Playmobile

Playmobile reconstruction or it didn't happen!

Paris because she could likewise do with keeping an eye out for the cameras!

Anonymous, LulzSec go legit with PayPal boycott

Err...

That's why there's a thing called third party payment providers! (Worldpay for just one example). You don't just give your card details to random sites.

Is the fail referring to your statement?

Half of UK road users support usage-based road charging

No overall increase in costs?

"If there was no overall increase to the cost of motorists"

The only reason the govt would introduce this is to get even more money. The chances of them reducing road tax / fuel duty to ensure that there was no overall cost increase is slightly less than zero.

Beeb deploys ISS as unit of measurement

American or British Billion?

Because the Beeb is a British website a British billion has 12 0's in it (as opposed to frail american billion which has 9 0's in it), therefore it is approx 6285 iss's high.

Stupid beeb can't even write proper english anymore, now that facts cleared up.

(Sorry pedantic grmmer will have to do, since I can't find a pedantic fact checking nerd icon).

Bloated Office 2010 kicks dirt in face of old computers

Were in 2010

Are you seriously saying you can't spend 4-5gbs on a full install without running out of hard disk space. Were in 2010, 4-5gbs here or there as opposed to a few hundred megs makes no difference. They should just force a full install and be done with it. When I used to do minimal installs I'd always be looking for the cd.

People should stop worrying. Also, albeit slowly, I have got word 2010 to run on a Celery 400mhz / 512mb ram / 20gb hdd running XP pro, so it's not too badly bloated.

Our company largely runs amd semprons @ 1.7ghz, 486mb, 80gb, which 2007 runs fine on. Taking a PC life cycle of 4 years, all PC's sold within the last four years should run it ergo there is no problem with it, and people don't mind if it doesn't run on 10-15 year old hardware.

Resources will always increase, it's called progress. Now if you'll excuse me I'm leaving before the flame wars start. Paris because I'm sure she'd now how to use other peoples resources.