Posts by Dan Price

IoT has too many platforms, says IoT platform startup

So... many... buzzwords. 0_0

BuzzGasm: 9 Incredible Things You Never Knew About PLIERS!

What did I just read?

Gran Turismo 6: Another glossy, gorgeous Mario Kart on steroids

Re: So, do I buy?

Presumably the lower rating is because it's being compared to a game that's now 3 years old and doesn't seem to have improved on it in that time?

Ready for the car 2.0? Nvidia preps UPGRADABLE car system

Re: No

@b166er: if occupancy = 0, I'd hope the ignition would be disallowed anyway!

McAfee seeks asylum in Guatemala

North Korea? Really?

Even by McAffee's standards, claiming that he sent a decoy out on a North Korean passport is absurd. Travellers actually being allowed to leave NK in the first place is such a rare event I'd imagine anyone travelling on one of their passports is going to be subject to so much scrutiny that a decoy would be uncovered in short order.

Besides, surely a decoy McAfee would have to resemble him in some way. A 6-foot white guy. On a North Korean passport. Yeah.... no.

Why do Smart TV UIs suck?

Not just TVs

The strange categorisation of apps isn't just limited to smart TVs - the Xbox 360 has separate sections for TV and video apps. Currently the only app in the TV section is the Sky player while iPlayer, 4OD and Demand 5 are lumped in the Video category with such "gems" as Dailymotion and Crackle. Last time I checked, the BBC were still a TV provider and iPlayer a TV catch-up service.

Man, 19, cuffed after burning Remembrance poppy pic is Facebooked

Sadly, it is a criminal offence under section 5 of the Public Order Act. Check out reformsection5.org.uk for more on that piece of government idiocy.

Pirate Bay moves to the cloud to confound copyright cops

While I'm not going to comment on the morals of their business, that is possibly the most genius way of building a resilient system I've ever heard of.

Chinese 'Thunder God' plant could crush cancer

At the risk of sounding like one of the anti-"big pharma" loony posse, the problem with stuff like this is that the drug companies actually have no interest in selling a quick cure to you - they'd rather sell you a treatment that you'll need for a few years until you eventually pop your clogs.

SpaceX Falcon 9 flameout leaves commercial satellite in wrong orbit

"a satellite belonging to sat-tracking firm Orbcomm"

A satellite-tracking satellite eh? At least they'll have no trouble knowing where it is!

Happy 20th Birthday, IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad

Re: Been through many, a lot still work.

I had the same issue with PAE on one of my laptops - the "messing around" is pretty minimal if you use the grab the (non-PAE) mini ISO and install from that, though it's a hell of a lot of downloading after using the 50MB CD to get started.

McFlurry McMisdemeanour costs Welsh lass McJob

Re: McShite

That's right - and if you respond to a McEmployee confronting you about it with "I'll buy something after I'm done in there", it's a McShite With Lies.

Curiosity rover blasts, grabs and fondles its first Martian rock

*First* contact?

Surely Curiosity "completed its first contact with the Martian surface" when it landed on it last month?

Ten external battery packs

Practical joke potential

1: Connect Lindy power pack to smartphone

2: Play MP3 file of a geiger counter through phone's speaker

3: Wave battery pack around

4: Watch people freak out

Google whips away card, leaves just clouds in your Wallet

I still think NFC payment is a solution in search of a problem - the only real benefit they're touting is that it's quicker than paying by card, but chip-and-pin is only slightly slower. Contrast:

1. Insert card.

2. Wait for reader to talk to your card.

3. Type PIN.

4. Wait for auth.

5. Collect card and receipt.

versus:

1. Touch phone to reader.

2. Wait for reader to talk to your phone.

3. Type PIN.

4. Collect card and receipt.

Total saving: 10 seconds?

Build a bonkers home cinema

Yeah, great...

This is all well and good for the Euro-Millions winners among us, but how about an article on building one on a budget smaller than what the average joe earns in a decade?

Apple plans extended iPad display through 'Smart Covers'

Re: Microsoft

They did, it was called the Courier and looked like an amazing piece of kit.

Ballmer killed it because it wasn't sufficiently windowsy.

Fail for MS' usual unerring ability to shoot themselves in the foot.

Sharp outs 90in monster LED TV

Only 1080p?

With screen dimensions of 80.875" by 47.6875" and a resolution of only 1920x1080, we're getting the not-too-stellar native resolution of 22 to 23dpi. I think I had a mobile phone with more dots per inch ten years ago. Lovely.

Met cops get new pocket-sized fingerprint scanners

Re: Oh hey, not a problem

So to stop yourself being fingerprinted when you're stopped and searched while not guilty of a crime, you use an illegal jammer that the police find when they stop and search you.

Net result, you're marched off to the station, fingerprinted anyway, and charged with causing interference under the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 2006 - an offence punishable with an unlimited fine and up to two years' imprisonment.

Nice!

FBI nabs AWOL soldier for stealing Paul Allen's debit card

Is this guy the dumbest fraudster ever? He changes the registered address to his own house, has the card sent to his house on the same day as the address change without thinking this might start ringing some alarm bells, then uses it to directly pay off a loan in his own name, without any intermediate steps to try and hide where the money's coming from. What a moron.

LG touts Tegra 3 talker

Is it called the 4X because it's four times the size of competing phones?

Acer pulls out Wang, thrusts its wealth at Ho

Applause!

Ladies and gentlemen, the headline of the year.

Doomsday Clock ticks one minute closer to annihilation

This is a real thing?

Having never heard of the Doomsday Clock before or since, I assumed Alan Moore had made it up in Watchmen.

The more you know.

Rainbow Islands

Absolute classic.

I remember pouring hours into this and its sequel Parasol Stars on my mate's Atari ST. Absolute classic, thanks for the nostalgia.

New pics of giant black sphere hurtling toward Earth

It's the excession!

oGCU Grey Area

xMSV Not Invented Here

We're fucked.

CyanogenMod 7.1 brings 24 Android phones into fold

Ah, that's good to know. I might have to give this latest version a go then, next time I have a spare few hours to kill re-installing all my crap.

I liked CyanogenMod 7.0, but its known bugs on the ZTE Blade / Orange San Francisco (Crashes if the screen locks while on charge or just whenever it feels like it) made me jump ship to Swedish Spring. It's only based on 2.2 rather than CM's 2.3, but it's absolutely rock-solid.

ViewSonic intros tablet sized to strike at iPad

Good for the accessories market

Hopefully it'll be a similar enough size to an iPad that it can use iPad accessories - about the only gripe I have with my Advent Vega (apart from the viewing angle, but for £200 you can't grumble too much) is that its funky dimensions make finding a decent case a real struggle.

Paris, because.

MS kills, un-kills kills Zune player line

A shame

I bought a Zune HD (imported from the states due to the lack of a UK release) and was really impressed by it. The screen, while small, is absolutely gorgeous and the sound quality is superb even using the bundled earphones. I for one will be sad to see them go, though I suppose with even cheap feature phones packing a competent media player nowadays the death of the PMP is pretty much inevitable.

Flipboard

Feedly looks the business, thanks!

Alternatives?

This looks like a great piece of software, but my fondleslab's a droid, not a fruit. Anyone know of an Android alternative?

Nissan Micra DIG-S

A title is no longer required.

Sounds like a nice little engine - it's just a shame that the car looks so damned uninspiring. And what the hell were they thinking with that horrific interior?

Virgin Media preps firmware update for glitchy SuperHub

I must be one of the "vast majority"

I must be one of their "vast majority", since I've had no problems with my superhub apart from an occasional (very occasional) tendency to drop wireless connections. The only thing I'm hoping for from a firmware update is the ability to do dynamic DNS for me, like my crappy old Orange Livebox used to.

Most Adobe Reader installs are out of date

Imagine my surprise.

Since Adobe Reader appears to be on a 15-minute release cycle, I remain unsurprised by the fact most installs are out of date.

Dinner Spinner

Nice, but...

A nice app. I've used a few recipes from allrecipes.com in the past and they're generally pretty good - though since they're mostly user-submitted the quality can be variable.

It works nicely on my Advent Vega too, with one caveat: it's obviously not designed for larger screens or tablets, as the background on the main menu is a small rectangle in the middle of the screen and the app is forced into portrait mode.

Beer because it's not designed for lager screens either.

Parmo v poutine: The ultimate post-pub nosh deathmatch

I'll stick with my fusion cuisine.

I like the look of some of that poutine, but I'll still stick my oar in in favour of that pinaccle of fusion cuisine - the doner kebab meat nanzza. Naan bread topped with cheese, tomato and doner meat, cooked in a pizza oven. have your cardiologist on speed dial.

Doom guy: tablets, phones to be gaming platforms of the future

One dev timeline?

"When we started Rage, iOS didn’t exist. There was no iPhone. All of that has happened just in the space of one project development timeline."

Yeah maybe, by id's glacial pace. When they started Rage, people lived in mud huts.

Ten... festival survival gadgets

iPad? Gadgets? Good grief.

All these anti-theft methods seem a bit OTT to me - the best way of making sure your stuff doesn't get nicked is to leave it at home. Last fest I went to, I took my old camera phone (K550i, still got a 10+ day battery life so no charging required), sleeping bag, stove, torch, beer and instant noodles (easy to carry since they hardly weigh anything). Sure I'd be unhappy if someone nicked my £14 case of lager, but not as pissed as I'd be if they took my smartphone, iPad or £50 tent locating device.

Sputnik retro PC puts bureau back on the desktop

Nice, but...

...It looks like he couldn't decide which era he wanted it too look like it's from: the inside and back panel seem to suggest 60s-style G-plan furniture, the big emblem on the front slightly earlier (50s perhaps?) but the bizarre choice of brass escutcheon around the keyhole looks like some awful 1700s-esque thing. surely if he was going for the mid-20th century style a plain brass keyhole fitted flush with the surface would've been better?

That said, apart from that I absolutely love it. The amount of work and the details that've gone into it are truly amazing, even down to the ventilated hardboard back with vintage-style graphics on it.

Formula 1

Looks good...

...but can it make the racing interesting?

Peugeot iOn e-car

DC charging?

If it's got a charge socket for DC, is there a cable to charge it off a USB port? I hate having to carry loads of different power adaptors when travelling.

Nintendo: no DVD, BD playback for Wii U

It can be...

It does go against the grain, but it helps to remember that Ninty have already got a lot of prior art in this field (Nintendo Optical Disc et al), so they're not starting from scratch any more. The other thing to remember is that the only other high-capacity optical format, Blu-ray, is part owned by Nintendo's rival Sony. Whether Blu-ray was the superior format or not, I doubt Ninty would want to cut Sony a cheque every time they sell a Wii U.

Everything Everywhere goes all over the High Street

Can't you?

On quidco's site there's an option to link your credit and debit cards to quidco, doesn't that do it?

Dell intros world's thinnest 15in laptop PC

Funny shape

It looks delish, but in the top-down photo it looks like the lid's narrower than the base. If that's a design decision, it's a damned weird one.

Falun Gong lawsuit skewers Cisco's 'little red' sales book

"Some of whom have been allegedy tortured or killed"

What kind of crazy legal system do they have over there for you to be able to sue on behalf of a dead guy?

PARIS team to tackle the ultimate post-pint snack

The pinnacle of drunk eating

Round (west midlands) here we've got the doner meat nanzza - a nan bread half the size of Wales topped with tomato sauce, mozzerella and doner kebab meat. Lovely after a pint or eight.

Swiss jetwing backpack-birdman flies the Grand Canyon

Thrust-to-weight

"the current machine on its own boasts a thrust-to-weight ratio of greater than one, but not once the weight of the pilot is added."

...and an even worse thrust-to-weight ratio when you consider his enormous, clanking brass balls.

'Boil the ocean' data loss prevention needs to change

Did the headline make anyone else think of Firefly?

Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me...

MySpace bids expected this week

Who'd buy it?

I'm amazed that people are actually considering buying myspace - it's been hemorraging users for the last few years, so what do they plan to do with it? Even as a list of valid email addresses it's going to be massively overpriced compared to just buying them from a marketing company.