Posts by MarcusArt

US-China trade war is back on: White House repeats threat to tax Middle Kingdom imports

Invest, invest

No one spot the byline?

在6月15日之前投资特朗普酒店，以避开名单

Invest in Trump hotels before June 15 to avoid the list? Nice touch El Reg.

Chief EU negotiator tells UK to let souped-up data adequacy dream die

Re: The more I listen to the EU...

We need to have clear and robust agreements on law enforcement interagency data sharing. We need to make sure we have solid rules to protect the right to privacy. We need simplified and forward thinking methods to access information that protects citizens in the UK and in the EU. We need to have data protection policies that EU and UK citizens can understand and that minimise the impact on small and large businesses.

We won't get any of that in or out of the EU. Politics gets in the way. To be part of Europe as a group of interacting sovereign nations working to a common good was a darn good idea. Yes to Europe.

Did we want a wasteful and corrupt beurocractic hegemony? Did we want another layer of lawmaking and policy enforcement on top of our own legal and political framework? No. No to the Political elite of Brussels. No to the Troika and the crippling financial hold of the ECB. No to the secret privitisation of key infrastructure they enforced in France and other EU member states.

Will leaving the EU fix all this? Unlikely. However if we don't start coming together to support each other as an independent United Kingdom and work as a strategic partner with countries in the EU we will fail.

We are leaving for a range of reasons and it looks like it will be messy and expensive. Were we lied to? Yes we are always lied to

we will always be lied to.

It's all like some horrible divorce. Emotions are high and fear is running rampant.

Can we not make a positive decision to make the best of it? At the end of the day politicians won't sort anything out. It will be down to people working hard and building bridges trying to negotiate one small step.

Data sharing will be a mess. It has been a mess. It WILl be a mess.

Let's not slag each other over this. We are in it together. Tally Ho! :-)

Photoshop for 40 quid: Affinity Photo pushes pixels further than most

Potential rival indeed

Affinity Photo and Affinity Design are hand in glove with each other and they both provide a commercial alternative to their Adobe counterparts - Photoshop and Illustrator. In fact for me, Affinity products get rid of some of the feature clutter that makes Adobe applications a bit tardy in the workflow area for some projects.

I do tend to use Photoshop more for concept work and if I'm wanting to integrate 3D in art - Photoshop does handle nicely. Affinity Photo is fast and since I'm a huge fan of Affinity Designer - even over Adobe Illustrator I will try to use Affinity Photo for some concept work and see how it goes.

Serif has been for many years the lesser known name behind some great shareware and some nice home craft products, but also Serif Draw was a solid solution in its time. Serif products were often seen featured on the Cover CDs of Computer Shopper and PCPro Magazines in the 90s. I should know ... I helped put them there. :-)

Brit game devs WILL get tax relief for, er, EastEnders Game and Legend of Slough

The tax relief is very much needed. It's hard to compete with Canada, Finland, China, German and many other countries let alone the USA for business. Independent games studios are developing some really innovative gaming experiences and narratives against an industry which has actually suffered a lot of companies going to the wall or being gobbled up by the larger publishers. THQ - gone along with some other great names. The rules to pass the test may be... European, but is anyone in the UK going to argue against this place being a leading and furtive ground for great games companies?

Apple releases Mountain Lion, Safari updates

Re: Copawhat?

I understand that, if you worked on the Apollo program you may know the word and it's a particularly parochial American term. Not British English my dear boy.

Gov.uk named THE BEST THING Britain has made all year

Smells like some backward dictatorship awarding themselves a pat on the back indirectly. Bollocks to it.

UK plc 'needs a chief engineer' - also a chief social scientist

Side line and ignore

Idiots in charge tend to employ more of the same. Wish politicians would stick to do what they do best. Oh. I'm sorry. I'm not sure what that is? Why not just get rid of the politicians and let the people of the UK get on with running the country? Let's get the right people for the right job. Perhaps we should get lobbyists in charge? We will never be known for technology while we have a government that does not have the balls to invest in startups and protect our interests globally. Oh, there's a few things to rant about. I've like the rest of us in IT have had experience of UK Gov's inability to deal with IT and the tech and games business in general from the bottom up. Head - wall hit.

Microsoft exec departs after tweet about Nokia phone

Sublime irony?

Hey Commentards! [This title is optional]

[snip]

Also, since I am an anally pedantic foreign grammar nazi, the following options:

A) Click here to report spelling fails

B ) Hide illiterate posters' posts because they can't be taken seriously

[snip]

You mean: 'Click here to report problems with spellings'. In fact it's frowned upon to use 'click here' in terms of usability. So you should probably say 'Report spelling mistakes.' Make sure it's underlined.

Oh and nazi should be written Nazi.

And you simply need to say pedantic - technically.

A dog just crapped by the bench I was sitting on so I'm grumpy and mean today. Sorry.

B. Yep. So I should not have seen this beauty.

Rant on folks. Happy days.

Ridley Scott confirmed for Blade Runner pre/sequel

Sir Ridley may be filming on his own...

I wrote a feature with Syd Mead, the designer behind the amazing cars and sets in blade runner. He is not convinced about a new Blade Runner. http://bit.ly/qY9mbM.

While I love Blade Runner, and written a lot about it, I just can't see it being ground breaking and only really marginally money making. There's so many reasons for this. The only way it could work is a mind blowing script, new effects and a desperate love by cinema goers for the Film Noire genre. Or the legendary director takes the story into a complete reboot. But what does that say about us? One of the points about the underlying theme of blade Runner is consumerism and the re-has of retro. Would Sir Ridley pickup much from our current culture? Post Modernism has come and gone, so what's left?

90% of visitors declined ICO website's opt-out cookie

This policy will sure need a turn-about

This cookie opt in farce is beautifully illustrated on the ICO website. The header is taken up with a message to op out. You click continue to get rid of the box and it tells you that you have to opt-in to continue! Not sure if the website completely works without cookies?

It's another classic: Europe.UK.Gov.IT.Web.fail.

Apple will 'own games industry'

Cloudy Vision

The idea of playing games online on demand is exactly what Games publishers are dreaming of. We pay to play. But the payment model is not good for the consumer. So who will win out on that. Will the consumer be forced to pay up or will the play up?

The idea of Apple become the game's industry is just to catch your eye here. That's not going to happen, any more than the Kinect will do away with the controller of a console, or the console die out in favour of an iPad. I would dare to say that in two years time the iPad will be a nice to have gizmo going cheap on eBay. It will end up on the slag heap of technology because after a while people get fed up with it and opt to go back to their PC or console. The iPad and the son of Wii both suffer the same problem of being poor interfaces to games.

I think the comment that single player FPS and adventure games becoming rare is just simply wrong. There is a healthy demand. I think my cynercism sensor also went off when I read this and it sounds like a general exorcise to persuade/breed consumers to think second rate games of simple blocks being pushed around is what real gaming is about. Bollocks to that as well. I'm not saying all games have to be COD or Halo, but I am saying that good games are those that capture the imagination of the player and they play them. Good games are not those we are told are good by corporations.

Being cynical here I would say it smells of someone hoping to be snapped up by Apple and be their evangelist for their domination of the games industry. Bollocks.

Can I just point out there is a new Halo4 coming out, when everyone thought it was all over. It's now coming back. The idea of interacting with story is not going to go away.

Personaly I'm with Gordon Freeman on this and Cave Johnson. Do good science and the world's a better place... for those still alive. ;-)

Would Microsoft's Skype buy strengthen Lync or push it off a cliff?

Another great service down the tubes

It's a pretty good bet that Skype will be hobbled by MS for that disaster of a mobile OS Win MoPho7.

What will MS do with your data? Will they start thrusting ads through Skype at us. They can never leave things alone!

Microsoft resuscitates 'I'm a PC' ads to fight Apple

What - you've never heard of a Mac?

Wait and see her face when she see's a Mac!

I'd never go back to a damn PC using Windows. I'll push the three laptops, one running Ubuntu Netbook, the other two windows 7 under the carpet and shuffle off. And push you in front of my 27inch iMac.

What an inane advert. The 30 second advert did nothing to help. It's plain for the world how to make a success out of selling hardware. Own it all. Own the box and innovate in product design. Own the operating system and push it. Own a search engine business and screw the competition and then force the mobile operators and every other business to try to get their hardware to run your cobbled together OS. No Microsoft, not you, I mean the other company that has actually made money in advertising / searching.

If apple did this advert I bet it would look like a very glamorous apartment. Not something out of DIY SOS.

'Let's put a shop in home. WTF?!' she cried. 'Where's my sofa! Where's my Mac?! I want a Mac!'

Husband looks embarrassed.

One basket only? Proceed to self service

InterSell has also been doing this since 2001

Ha! We've been doing integration with Sage, old Tetra, AS/400 systems, AX, Nav and a whole pile of other CRM systems for years. It's not just integration it's being able to sell to trade at agreed terms , discounts and promotions. Retailers want to know they are going to get the best deal like any other customer. We also provide access to Order and Invoice history so they can see what's going through their different buying channels: Web, Fax, Reps etc.

We've also been quietly doing this for the NHS when they order wound care products. PCT managers can see what their spend is and reduce waste and their costs. No one's making a big noise about that either.

http://www.aspin.co.uk/ecommerce if anyone is interested.