* Posts by Nya

228 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Oct 2010

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Saddle up for the Tour de Firmware

Nya

Re: Grumpy old git

Usually it's the second tier kit that gives the best bang for the buck. And yes most of the cost is sold via reducing weight mostly (except for the electronic gears etc which are simply far more flexible and accurate than cable) which all means better acceleration and easier climbing hills due to the weight being dragged along.

Once you try a system like Di2 sheesh, you wonder how you suffered the clattering and chain rubbing of cable systems.

Nya

Missed a few bits!

You forgot the KMC DLC (Diamond Like Coated) chain! Let alone brakes, come on, should be looking at maybe hydraulics on a fully twinked out techno bike.

True fact: Your CAT wees ... like a racehorse

Nya
Joke

Did his research...

include shaking dribble time also?

We'll probe Pluto's moon cracks for mystery ocean – NASA

Nya
Coat

Disney moment...

Probing Pluto's crack all sounds a bit Goofy to me!

Google: The Internet of Things to become the Internet of ADVERTS ON YOUR THERMOSTAT

Nya

Re: How much?

Well the only way will be to use an adblocker...well that or some blacked out sunglasses. Although as soon as those start appearing your local governmental type, with no funding from anyone, will have this bright idea that blocking anything is anti competitive and bans all the adblockers before they retire somewhere as a "consultant" to an advertising firm :P

Microsoft Surface 3 Pro: Flip me over, fondle me up

Nya

Re: So close...

But we all know what MS will do. The new whizz bang budget 7" model will be out soon with RT...and do unless they've learned off Nokia on how WinMo only started to take off when it was cheap it'll fall flat on it's face again.

MS doesn't make niche products. It's always about getting things out for the masses and giving businesses the chance to make a livelihood off them. So far Surface has been a total feck up mostly through pricing and the lack of sources to get the things into market. They still haven't learned on the pricing issue as we've seen here sadly. Let's just hope this time they put them into the long established channel who sells MS things so that this time they can try and find places to sell them to instead of like last time and them going to Dixons Curry House Phone World to attempt to sell them to Britain.

Nya

So close...

MS is it's own worst enemy. The design is right as is the ports etc. The snag is it's far too over powered and far too expensive. The screen didn't need to be bigger, or higher res. The processor didn't need taking up to an i7. It actually needed downscaling to an Atom and MS banging them out at the £300 area to go toe to toe with the 10" Androids (without having RT stuck on it). As it stands you might as well just buy a Nexus and run your Windows applications through remote desktop and save a grand. So close MS, but still missing the mark sadly.

Game of Thrones written on brutal medieval word processor and OS

Nya

He's right!

He makes an interesting point though. If you listen to all the crap about the whole "PC is dying" brigade no one uses them any more. The thing is, like with Martin everyone still uses them, they are just happy using the old one the know good and well and have no intention of spending money on something new if they don't have to. We have machines running all kinds of stuff from DOS, 2k, XP, Vista, 7, and various Linux flavours. But it's the job which they do which matters, not what they run.

HP exec: 'CYOD' will TEAR APART the IT dept as we know it

Nya

I dunno...

Am sure letting them choose from a list of one would be perfect. They don't, and won't be getting any more options but that though!

No Notch niche: Minecraft man in rift with Oculus after Facebook gobble

Nya

Oculus have proved to be a bunch of sell outs. Sad, I almost bought one of the dev kits, glad I didn't now. Good on Notch for leaving.

What does people-centric IT mean, anyway?

Nya

Velvet glove?! Bollocks to that! You go buy the latest shiny, you ain't getting to use company files on it!

Tab for Xmas, Mr Consumer? Yes please. And Mr Busin... NOPE

Nya

Which disties?!

Not one of the any of the ones which are our primary ones anyhow that's for sure. Oh forgot, they decided to give the majority of UK stock to DSG didn't they and now they are wondering why no one else could sell them. Strange that!

As for discussions with our businesses customers about what kit they need it's simple. Tablets (no matter Windows, iOS or Android) are a complete and utter waste of time to someone spending all day banging in accounts into Sage or using Word all day. These clients only buy machines now when they die, or they expand staff levels (still not very common at the moment) which is why nothing much desktop/laptop wise is selling. These customers have a 8+ year old C2D desktop which is good enough, fast enough, and ideal for someone to spend all day using for general office tasks. They simply don't need new hardware and that is the battle we have to overcome. Currently the only tablets selling to the majority of businesses are for the marketing and sales droids so they can dangle something fancy in front of the customer to try to impress them, or management who want something as they've heard they need one to look fancy while sitting in the airport.

As mentioned in the article. Yes Barclays bought a shedload of iPads. And they are going to be used by whom? Yep, sales droids selling stuff pottering around in front of customers. Are they going to sitting there typing letters on them all day? The RSI lot will have a field day :P

The majority of businesses are still a sit down in an office environment doing lots of mundane grunt work. Tablets, touch screens, gestures and all that are utterly useless. A good sized monitor and a full size keyboard and mouse are the perfect tool in this environment. The snag is that nothing is needing the power of a modern system in this environment. Why does the secretarial pool, or accounts need a bunch of i7's? Simply they don't, thus they aren't selling. As soon as the manufacturers stop listening to ANALysts and actually listen to the customers the better and quiet possibly they could get some sales going to them.

Microsoft asks pals to help KILL UK gov's Open Document Format dream

Nya

Looking at the gov list of file types to distribute things to us minions why apart from HTML are any of them even considered really. Surely these days it should be a format easily readable on any device which considering pretty much every manual on the planet has used for donkeys years (ok I hate to say it I'm endorsing an Adobe product) why not just shove everything in a pdf and be done with it. Ok interoffice stuff before el public get to see it fair enough odf etc, but to put all gov publications for Joe Public in it is just asking to (and agreeing with MS here) cause more aggro. Even the most general of the general public now know what a pdf is, so just stick to using them and don't fiddle!

Robot army to police football World Cup

Nya

Are these the ones which ok, are a wheelbarrow but they've mounted something like a 50cal to the top of it?

Apple patents touch-sensitive controls for MacBook

Nya

Re: Hehehe so now they can sue Samsung...

Infringing yes...even though them (and LG and others) have been selling this tech for many years long before this patent. Really goes to show how utterly screwed up the US patent system is.

Fujitsu launches lappie for oldies

Nya

Nice idea, only real issues are the name as that'll tick off many, and also the price tag. The majority of the retired folks who end up buying a lappie end up going to places like wonky world and buying whatever cheap tat with the lowest specs going as it was cheap. If they moved it down to an AMD (ok shudder) or an i3 and did it for under £500, preferably under £400 than the thing I bet would be a great success.

Just as we said it would: HP clamps down on server fixers

Nya

Meanwhile...

Lenovo enters the server market (properly) at the same time. And what happens next will be a bunch of suits wondering what happened to the sales.

Is Google building SKYNET? Ad kingpin buys AI firm DeepMind

Nya

So Google's going to add it a British brain. So when it tries to take over the world we offer it a cuppa or a pint and it'll think sod it, am off to watch the footy instead :P

KCOM-owned Eclipse FAILS to cover up the password 'password'

Nya

Re: Can be useful though

Sorry SP but you seem to be mistaken. Just logged in, and the user passwords (all of them) are all hashed out even when logging in with the main admin account. The DSL password is visible, but the user accounts aren't at all. Although you can still change them from here using the admin account.

Nya

Can be useful though

The password being shown isn't the one used to log into that page. The one shown is the main DSL password. Which was actually quiet handy for me once to be honest when my router last went tits up and I needed it last time without having to deal with tech support or go through the pile of paperwork to find out what it was. Anyhow, if you have access to that page and wanted to do any kind of damage, the password is the least of it as you have full access to cancelling, or altering what the connection is, or altering your bandwidth shaping as well, or purchasing no end of other things off them.

Ok, this is typical user friendliness v security, but in this particular case when needed, I did find it useful once.

Ancient carving of 'first human-built holy place' = Primitive Vulture Central

Nya

Isn't the one on the left holding up one of those new Lacie spherical hard drives? Not so sure about the crocodile eating the vulture on the right, but the scorpion on the bottom looks rather like the Inq's logo (with a few extra legs) :P

Mexican drink-driver shopped to cops - by his own gobby parakeet

Nya

Re: Odd timing.

Kind of surprised Mr "N" didn't make it an ex- parakeet in the cell :P

Now we're cookin' on gas: Google crafts sugar-alert contact lens for diabetics

Nya
Thumb Up

About time :)

Nice to see one of the big tech companies doing medical things as for once it'll hopefully shake up the medical companies to actually make something for once instead of sitting on there "expensive research" and doing sod all with it until someone else breaks ranks and makes something similar.

As for the lens, the lights are a start, an actually number would be more handy though (speaking as a diabetic) and not necessarily just covering hypo but also hyperglycaemia and a blood glucose direction rating (many constant glucose monitors use a simple arrow, or multiple arrows if they are moving very rapidly in a certain direction).

A great start Google. Can't wait to see how you do with this :)

Microsoft tries to trademark 'Mod' in the US

Nya

TIFKAM

Thought we had already settled and called it TIFKAM? even pages not on here, and the main press have used it. Although I guess licensing it off the Reg might of been a bit highly priced for them, there is after all only so many pints you can get stacked onto one of the licensing types.

Smarty Ring promises technology at your fingertips

Nya
Joke

So when the battery fails does that mean you get a burning ring of fire?

Inside Steve Ballmer’s fondleslab rear-guard action

Nya

Bollocks!

Oh fondleslabs will replace desktops...utter bollocks! While the marketing types out front might end up holding a tablet to sell something to look modern and fashionable to the punters, the grunt work, all those 10's, 100's, 1000's of thousands of entries which need entering into ass backwards software like Sage and the like will need someone chained to a desk with a keyboard and mouse typing away.

So PC (and I'm using this as a whole desktop/laptop/Windows/MacOS/Linux/whatever as a proper PERSONAL COMPUTER not a load of marketing spiel) sales have dropped, and tablets are increasing? And so what? It’s a different tool for a different job. Yes big companies like HP and the like are listening far to much to ANALysts and not to customers, or they might realise what the punters are doing. The PC, the venerable old bit of kit chugging away with its 6 year old C2D in it, is still "fast enough" and is going to remain chugging away until it either dies (and gets replaced) or the company gets more staff. Why do companies need to replace them on a 3 year cycle like they used to? because during the penny pinching times they realised they don't need to. New kit just means added hassle with down time and grief of getting staff to learn everything all over. Replacing a few machines at a time and yes you have to subject a couple of members of staff, or better still the new fellow to it but all is fine for most users and it keeps the grief down a bit.

Ok, I mention "good old" Sage here, but the same goes for many jobs, DTP, CAD, and even normal word processing for a company. A touch screen, and word processing?! Fine maybe for fast notes, but for all day banging out letters and things. The RSI brigade will have you lynched for it.

Is the PC dead? No. Has it evolved into that device which is only replaced as and when needed? Yes! Are tablets etc "good enough" for the home user online? Probably.

Xbox One site belly-up in global Microsoft cloud catastrophe

Nya
FAIL

This is why anything cloud related is utter crap. You have no real control of anything yourself.

When three Linux journos go crowdfunding

Nya
Thumb Up

Good luck to them

Being stuck suffering management which won't use your good ideas to improve the product is always disheartening and hope it works out well for them.

Whovians, your Doctor needs you: Take back the Day from One Direction

Nya

Sign me up!

Not so much as I'm a Who fan, ok I watch it occasionally but thats about it. But for the sole fact to tick off Simon Cowell and in the process my niece who's one of these no direction fan girls, well worth buying the track for!

Rogue US-Israeli cyberwar weapon 'infected Russian nuclear plant'

Nya

Flash

Was I the only one who thought what were the Russians doing moving flash drives back and forth between their plants and the Iranian ones?

Google patent: THROAT TATTOO with lie-detecting mobe microphone built-in

Nya

Goat fetish

So when you ordered your tattoo did they know you wanted to attach one to your bleating one?

Oooh! My NAUGHTY SKIRT keeps riding up! Hello, INTERNET EXPLORER

Nya

Re: Microsoft Mascots bad...

Oh come off it! The Office XP movies were brilliant.

XP...X..X...Ex Paperclip! Along with Sgt. Xbox. Those videos were bloody brilliant. And probably one of the best bits of marketing MS has ever done.

GIMP flees SourceForge over dodgy ads and installer

Nya
Thumb Up

Nice

Good on them.

Trying to talk Joe Public through downloading anything off these sites is a nightmare these days. Usually they end up without what they needed and with half a dozen pieces of crapware instead.

US aviation watchdog approves $75K balloon ride into SPAAAACE!

Nya
Coat

Some sod stole it's wings!

It's a Tie Fighter with the wings nicked off it.

Netgear router admin hole is WIDE OPEN, but DON'T you dare go in, warns infosec bod

Nya
Joke

Secure option

Last week D-Link, now it's Netgear. Is the only secure option available these days Huaweu?!

Surface 2 MYSTERY: Haswell's here, so WHY the duff battery life?

Nya

Nothing to see here but flame bait

Come on El Reg, surely on a quick look. But the devices with longer battery life are smaller (7" or the nVidia handheld), or the only real exception is the Ipad which simply has a bigger battery since (same with the Asus) only real machine to compare it to on that list is the (old) Nexus 10 which its comparative with.

US parents proclaim 811 'Messiahs'

Nya

He's not the Messiah...

he's a very naughty boy!

Leaping SpaceX GRASSHOPPER ROCKET jumps 2,500ft, lands safely

Nya

FAB!

They have to paint one up to look like Thunderbird 1.

Valve uncloaks prototype Steam Machine console specs

Nya

Snag is,

while "testing" this "console" with a i7 4770 and a GeForce Titan and a load of other pretty much top of the line parts means it'll kick the living daylights out of any of the new consoles coming out and the average home PC as well. To sell such a machine is going to cost a grand or more which kind of defeats the object of a cheaply available console. Yes they will make slower models, but part of the reason for consoles is it's a uniform platform of a known design.

Surely the model they should be playing to is a set hardware spec which can be exceeded by the home build crowd, but that set hardware spec if what the platforms games are written for. As it stands this is nothing but a standard gaming PC with a custom linux distro on it.

Bungie ’bois offered ‘early’ access to post-Halo FPS Destiny

Nya
Thumb Down

Wrong platform for a MMOG

So it's a MMOG on a console...so that's going to need (Xbox wise) Live Gold on it, and to fund a MMOG unless it's going to be micro transaction central is going to need an additional subscription. Two subs out of console users is asking to fail. That's PC territory where this game should be anyhow and it's just daft Bungie aren't supporting the market which is the real home of all decent FPS and MMOG's!

Dell ‘xpands XPS line with 'WORLD-FIRST' MEGA-RESOLUTION laptops

Nya

Finally!

A decent screen...how much?!

New iPhones: C certainly DOESN'T stand for 'Cheap'

Nya
Childcatcher

Tin foil hat moment

"Another new component is the M7, which Schiller described as a "motion coprocessor." That's as in physical motion, rather than onscreen motion; the chip works with the accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, and other sensors to track how you move throughout the day, and to provide support for fitness apps."

Let me correct that for you Mr Schiller, "a motion coprocessor, a chip which works with the accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, and other sensors to track how YOU move throughout the day, and to provide support to the NSA and others we are supplying the data to."

Brit Skylon spaceplane moves closer to lift-off

Nya

Why things going up?

Surely if they prove this works with the prototype, forget the cheapass way to launch satellites, surely selling the mach 5+ bomber might be more open to buyers no?

Apple wins Samsung import ban, loses 'Battle of Rounded Corners II'

Nya

Hang on a mo...

So I can go out, buy a load of tech off a third party company to use in my device, patent it, and then sue the crap out of anyone else who buys the same kit I bought?!

Despite Microsoft Surface RT debacle, second-gen model in the works

Nya
Windows

Well it will be a huge success...

for nVidia atleast, who are selling the parts to MS. As for MS, well only time will tell on that one :P

US town mulls bounty on spy drones, English-speaking gunman only

Nya
Joke

Re: Good Idea, Small Problem: Ordinances, Ordnance, Suitable Targets.

Come on, RPG's are the standard hickville munition of choice when hunting gophers isn't it?

Chromebooks now the fastest-growing segment of PC market

Nya

Statistics, and damned statistics!

Selling two this quarter to the one last quarter and posting the growth in sales doesn't make it really that successful. Even if on paper it is the highest growing area of PC sales :P

Motorola shows off tattoo and swallowable password hardware

Nya
Coat

Reworded it for you..

It causes all, both small and great, both contract and pay as you go user, both free and fanboi, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead using the very fashionable over the nose attachment, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the 'droid device, that is, the name of our all encompassing data overlords or the number of one of the OEM's. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the tax payment, for it is the number of a Irish man or possibly a fish, but quiet possibly that of a large case of Guinness, and this number is not know to anyone, even more so if you be one of those at the HMRC.

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