Posts by Lallabalalla

Hear that sound? It's the Windows XP PC bubble popping

Huh?

Why would anybody want a computer with XP on it any more? Really? With the total lack of support they surely can't even give them away?

Valve set for OpenGL BIG REVEAL at upcoming conference

a viable alternative to the likes of the Xbox One and PS4?

I'd have thought they should produce a client which doesn't regularly lose the location of its game files or just plain corrupt them, allows more than one login (as previously alluded to), doesn't run like treacle on all but the very latest hardware, wakes gracefully and has a decent support infrastructure over and above "ask someone else or wait 2 weeks for us to patronise you".

I realise a LOT of people play through Steam. A quick google will reveal that my kids (and therefore I) am not alone in finding the whole thing to be rather pants.

Last month we waited half an hour for some enormous (paid-for) game to download only to be told "oh this only runs on windows, sucker". No refund. No warning that it wasn't going to play despite being obviously downloaded to OSX. And again, no refund. WTF.

Google boffins PROVE security warnings don't ... LOOK! A funny cat!

Please contact the web site owners to inform them of this problem.

Using the contact details provided on the page we won't let you access.

"No keyboard detected. Press F1 to continue"

A Bombe Called Christopher, or A Very Poor Imitation

I preferred Into The Woods

It was more historically accurate. And the singing was better.

The Year of Living Danishly, The Internet is Not the Answer and Classical Literature

I was there for a week, once

and so I know all about Denmark. There's industrial quantities of potatoes with everything and the beer is incredibly weak. Lovely people, too. Danish pastries and bacon, not so much, at least where I was.

Siri? Are you seeing another man?

Ooh look how clever *we* are

We did a thing, because we can. And it got reported. So it must be a valuable contribution.

Or something.

TERROR in SPACE: ISS 'Nauts end panic by switching computer off and on again

Re: This SO reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey...

You *really* wouldn't want to switch that one back on though.

BEHOLD Apple's BENEVOLENCE! iMessage txt BLACK HOLE finally fixed

Re: hang on

You're complaining that a computer remembered your registered email address so that you didn't have to? I thought that was what computers (well, databases) were *for*?

Re: F#ck me!

iMessages are still blue and text messages green though

Re: F#ck me!

I've never had a problem with iMessage except from occasionally in shopping centers for some reason, but the handy "send as text message" option always does the trick.

I now have an iPhone 6 and it's a really nice jump up from the 4. Fast, slim, light, great battery, screen size and so on. I'm not worried about the sticky-out camera as I keep it in one of those leather flip cases that holds a couple of credit cards, and the leather's easily thick enough to protect it, as would any kind of bumper or skin be.

Incidentally, I think there is one massive advantage to having the lens stick out a bit like that .... when using the camera with the phone in its case, when the flash is on, you don't get that truly awful lens flare that I used to get on the 4, which made taking flash photos impossible without wresting it out of the case first, which is always a PITA.

Re: Bug????

True, but people forget - there's so much else to worry about when changing ecosystems.

It's 4K-ing big right now, but it's NOT going to save TV

Re: 4K monitors do not need to be bigger than 32 inches in size

That's fine if you have a small room. Our previously enormous 26" set suddenly looked like a postage stamp when we plonked it down in the front room of our new house: subjectively, the 46" set we replaced it with only looks like a 32" would have done in the old house.

OTOH I don't see why anybody would need more than 640k of RAM

Re: too complex

Not sure about the phoning home - I think my Samsung can only do that if you set up a Samsung account - a requirement of some of the "smart" features - but the only things I actually use are the iPlayer & other catchup apps, and youtube, both of which I find very handy indeed.

Costco won't have done any kind of setup on those screens .... they often default to some pretty crappy settings and viewing them under a massive wash of striplighting may not help things.

None of it really matters IMO (unless you're a manufacturer, I guess)

For me - and I suspect a lot of people - there are 2 things at play here which utterly override the whole 720->1080->4K->[...] upgrade path thing.

1. At some point, everyone decides that a good enough picture is good enough. I have a 1080p 46" screen and it's absolutely fine. I will change it when it breaks or I move and need a bigger or smaller one.

2. The whole point of a TV is the content. Yes, you can enjoy that content more when it's Attenboro' or sports maybe, etc, but for the most part one watches the show not the picture quality. A really good programme could be on anything and it will be as good as the writing and acting can make it. First time I saw Das Boot it was on a 12" black and white set, and it was as riveting as when I saw it again on a 26" TFT.

There will always be the er, TV-o-philes same as there are audiophiles who listen to the Hifi rather than the music, but they are rare by comparison.

Ferraris, Zondas and ... er, a bike with a 500hp V10 under the saddle

Re: Owning a Supercar...maybe 'seemed a good idea at the time'?

Surely you just drive it from one of your country mansions to another of your country mansions?

Windows 7 MARKED for DEATH by Microsoft as of NOW

What's with the numbering, guys?

Windows 7 -> 8 -> 10

XBOX -> XBOX 360 -> XBOX One

Is it just me and Sheldon Cooper thinks this is ALL WRONG?

An e-reader you HAVEN'T heard of: Cybook Ocean 8"

What a turkey - somebody tell them Xmas is over.

Lacklustre and grimy-sounding "reading experience". Virtually no content available (er - remind me again what the point of an ereader is). A bit large and slippery to be held comfortably. Also - HOW MUCH??

Oh but it's 3mm thinner than a paperwhite. Pardon me for not rushing out to get one.

No wonder nobody has heard of this turkey. And they never will.

Tesla S P85+: Smiling all the way to the next charging point

5 adults AND 2 children?

Really? Where - in that huge boot?

Tesco tosses loss-making Blinkbox into TalkTalk's basket

Subscription coming?

Er hang on. It's currently not a subscription service, and I "own" 3 or 4 seasons of Breaking Bad, Doctor Who and a few other bits n pieces.

So if TalkTalk (Worst. ISP. Ever) turn this into a subscription service - what happens to the stuff I "own" ... am I going to have to pay again to watch my own property?

I will never trust digital content, and this is why.

Renault Captur: Nobody who knows about cars will buy this

Re: Graham 24 Built to appeal to its market, which is not you

So this car isn't for you. Get over it and buy a Zafira. Or an XC90...

Re: Built to appeal to its market, which is not you

Pootling around is exactly all you are going to do in this: it's a school run car, with trips to the hairdresser and Tesco and dogwalking thrown in.

Any serious travelling is done in Dad's vehicle - you know, the powerful one with the twin turbos.

YMMV - literally

@Norphy - Well, I have a VW Transporter-based camper - RHD - and the bonnet release is on the left. Methinks it's not so much lazy as a mixture of "who really cares" mixed with a VERY large dose of "it's cheaper that way".

Double-digit tablet growth spurt is OVER, say pundits

Re: Hmm, weird. Talks about iOS alot

No, what it means is that if they sell 10,000 windows tablets the growth is 500% whereas if they sell 10,000 iPads growth is -100,000%

Apple's 16GB iPhones are a big fat lie, claims iOS 8 storage hog lawsuit

Re: This..

No. Both my kids' phones have trashed their SD cards and they were reputable branded cards from a reputable source. SAMSUNG galaxy fame. SAMSUNG is to blame for this.

Would that include the proprietary connector that allows you to connect ..... a 32Gb SD card?

That's only partially helpful. Yes, you get lots of storage for music files and photos. No, you don't get any more room for apps on most (not all) handsets as they are forced to store in main memory. My kids are constantly having to delete apps to make room for some new game or other, and moan mightily about being unable to remove bloatware that they never wanted or use.

Beware of merging, telcos. CHEAPER SPECTRUM follows

No no no

We, the retail consumers, pay for everything. Note: Every. Thing. The multinationals, as noted above, reclaim the cost of the spectrum through lower taxation, any fiscal shortfall is paid for by us. A lot of them don't pay any tax anyway - Vodaphone for example. Oil analogy? When oil goes up, pump prices go up, and usually fail to come down again with any sort of promptness. Fixed costs are passed on to us as a baseline minimum price, on top that it's all profit, which doesn't get taxed because of writing off other costs against tax and moving surpluses offshore, and round we go again.

Yotaphone 2: The two-faced pocket-stroker with '100 hours' batt life

Re: @ Lallabalalla

You're an idiot

Re: @ Lallabalalla

Actually I'm ruminating on its usefulness as an e-reader when compared to a kindle, first and foremost - but don't let actually reading the post stand in the way of an ill-informed and boorish personal attack. This *is* the Internet, after all.

Re: @ Lallabalalla

No, it's a discussion about whether we are looking at useful innovation or a gimmick, comparing it what is currently available and I know about i.e. the phone I currently use.

If you would like to talk about the need to grow up I think you should look at your pathetic need to resort to cliches like "sheeple" (the use of which immediately marks you out as a brainless drone whether the expression is one you use or one you project onto other people because that's really how you think) and your saddening insecurity that a "clever remark" is somehow therefore invalid over the man-in-the-street stupidity of your own "argument".

So you think having an eInk screen is genuinely clever? Bully for you. You are welcome to your opinion. I think it may be worthwhile but question its real value. That's my opinion and if you don't like it perhaps YOU could grow up enough to argue the toss without arguing like a tosser.

Re: And the best part

Not so sure about using it as an eBook: that curved screen looks like making reading the words either side of the page a PITA in bright light, or side-light, and I find that I have the paperwhite's backlight switched on *always* (at various levels).... my old Kobo didn't have a backlight and that was mostly OK, but having tried a backlit one I'd never go back.

And finally.... I have an iPhone6 which was only £70 more expensive and has 62-odd Gb (of useable memory for apps as well as pics/music) and I really don't have an issue seeing the screen in even the brightest sunlight. Most of the time the brightness is set down to about 1/3rd of full power. Sorry, Apple-haters but the battery life is also very good (2 days+) even with wifi and GPS on permanently. Bring on the downvotes. Haters gonna hate, potaters gonna potate.

Sonic BOOM: 10 blast-tastic soundbars

Cheap option

Any halfway decent computer speaker system - with or without a subwoofer - can be a massive improvement over stock. Just plug it into the headphone socket. From Creative to Hardman Kardon: Expect to pay under a hundred for Creative GigaWorks T40 Series II or Creative A550 (5.1) systems...

Compared to a standard telly they sound great, though I find subwoofers a bit overpowering personally.

Pebble: The brilliant stealth wearable Apple's Watch doesn't see coming

Re: Battery Life

It also charges when you look at it. Like others, I wear mine all day and put it on the bedside table at night. It has kept faultless time for 3 years and outlived 2 leather straps: I've fitted a stainless one and find it just as comfortable (the original canvas strap was just horrible).

Re: Where Pebble fails?

Still fugly.

PHONDLESLAB-ULOUS: Motorola Moto X Android phablet

Re: I'll bite

Speaker placement is as much an art as a science, but one thing you *don't* want to do is face them towards each other from either side of a room.

As a rule they should go against the same wall (a short distance out from the wall), a variable distance apart with an amount of "toe-in". The optimum place to sit is where the "cone of sound" from each speaker creates a Venn Diagram-like sound space. Speaker height is also a factor, and all of this depends on the speakers and the room they're in. It's complicated. A good initial placement is an equilateral triangle with the listener at the apex. For floorstanding speakers, try placing them so that they are initially approximately 9 feet from the listener (and 9 feet from each other as well), then adjust from there.

see http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/speakerplacement.html

also http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Set_Up_Your_Speakers?

The engineers who crafted the final mix had their speakers set up similar to this, and that is how you reproduce their efforts. Firing them at each other from opposite sides of the room will set up an interference pattern you don't want. What you DO want is for the two outputs to mix rather than clash.

Bug fixes! Get your APPLE BUG FIXES! iOS and OS X updates right here!

Brand new iPhone 6 here, with all the latest software

You can open iMovie and Garageband (2 more pointless apps on a phone I can't imagine) and they just crash straight out to nothing every time.

SO impressive.

Virgin Media struck dumb by NATIONWIDE packet loss balls-up

Re: VM outages in North London

I'm in N11 - we've had a few ups and downs over the last 9 months.. mostly ups, once I had complained about the very slow connection (<2.5mbps) after supposedly being "upgraded" to 50mbps and they poked something with a stick*. Didn't notice this latest one at all though, and everything seems normal at >= 50mbps

*BT used to actually do this to jolt an ADSL connection back to life!

Apple gearing up for Watch BONANZA

Re: Sweat sniffing sensor?

No worries: a year down the line and there'll be a sweat-sniffing version available. And we're all supposed to buy a second Watch at that point. Well, maybe. The v.1 will still be worth a lot on eBay I suppose. That's just the way Apple roll.

VINYL is BACK and you can thank Sonos for that

That Flexson deck....

It looks *awfully* like my ancient Rega3!! The Rega is an awesome deck, second only to an LP12 IMHO ... hot damn! I know what I want for Xmas now... but we're talking an absolute FORTUNE for all the bits.

Doctor Who trashing the TARDIS, Clara alone, useless UNIT – Death in Heaven

Re: FFS

Haters gonna hate. That's right kids.

Bendy, but hangs loose too: Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 10-inch Android tab

Re: 2 year warranty

Thumbs down from Kobo lovers, but I'm telling you: We have 2x Kobo Touch and a (13 month old broken) Kobo Glo. Compared to them the Kindle is just awesome. When you touch it, it turns the page. No waiting. No manic stabbing the display. No resetting the device because it froze again. TO coin a phrase - it just works.

Amazon are cheaper than Smiths too. And don't give me crap about "supporting the evil empire" unless you are prepared to live in a cave and eat roadkill, otherwise it's BS. Plus, have you ever tried to FIND any of those 1,000,000 free books on Kobo? Good luck with that.

Anyway, the point is that our Kobo Glo broke after 13 months and Smiths were all "2 year guarantee? No. We don't know the law and we don't care, either".

As far as the Yoga: we have a v1 at work and it's pretty awful, so the bar wasn't very high. I hope the v2 is better as the screen size is decent. I believe the one to beat at the budget end these days is the new Hudl though?

2 year warranty

Same goes for WH Smith and the dire Kobo hardware. If you're wondering if you should get one - just - don't.

TalkTalk's 'unbeatable signal strength' and 'fastest Wi-Fi tech' FIBS silenced by ad watchdog

I have a VM Superhub...

and live in a large brick 3-bed semi. We have the router stuffed down the side of the telly on the floor by the window at one end of the front room, quite close to the numerous plugboards etc that run the 2 stb's the tv, the ps3, the dvd and the phone - in other words, probably the worst possible siting - and we get a passable signal everywhere. In the bathroom, which is as far from it as you can get and involves the floor and at least two brick walls (if you don't count the doorways which are only filled with glass downstairs and wood upstairs (if the doors are shut) we get usually 3 or 4 bars signal strength on any device....allowing me to sit in the bath and download ebooks while hopefully not dropping the kindle.... I think you might want to get them to send an engineer round!

P.S. TalkTalk: Worst. ISP. Ever.

Samsung slams door on OLED TVs, makes QUANTUM dot LEAP

Never seen gogglebox then

A prog which proves beyond doubt that actual real people sit around with a glass of wine and watch tv together. It's a social glue that sticks families and friends together and will never be replaced by 5 people sitting around watching X Factor on their individual screens.

Even if this does come to pass it will not be the equivalent of the current experience and we will be the poorer for it - which is why I don't think it will happen.

Boxing clever? Amazon Fire TV is SO CLOSE to being excellent

Re: Wii Console

480p looks poor even on a 28" set :(

Google Glassholes haven't achieved 'social acceptance' - report

The only use-case for me would be....

if the camera in them could overlay the display in realtime with an image corrected for my crappy vision, magnifying at x1.5 for walking around and driving, x2.5 for computer work, x3.5 for reading a book and x5 for real close-up stuff like fixing the gears on my bike. I'd pay $1,000 for that. I'd also want a bifocal option.

Snapper's decisions: Whatever happened to real photography?

Re: Interchangeable viewfinders

Our standard 35mm was Nikon F1 with a photomic head, which could be swapped out for a regular finder, and allowed for interchangeable screens too.

The overriding reason for this was true 1-1 WYSIWYG -ness.

Re: 10 x 8

I used to do this too, but we used tungsten lighting/film. The heat meant you had to work quite fast once the set was dressed but the results could be spectacular. <>30 second exposures rather than 30 flashes!

Re: Re-learning Photography

+1 for having a Nikkormat *that still works* - though this might be because you don't use it much!?

Forget the $2499 5K iMac – today we reveal Apple's most expensive computer to date

This may be true in America

but in the UK my opinion is that the moniker "Model T" should go to the Sinclair Spectrum (or the ZX80? Or the BBC Micro?).

Ok never mind.