
@AC 13:19
"The premium handsets are for all the hardcore Internet users."
Are you suggesting all iPhone users are pron addicts?
61 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2011
Just a little correction: the Skoda Octavia is based on the Golf, not the Passat. The Passat/A4 is a little wider and longer. Other than that I agrre with you're attitude, when making any purchase you compare and decide within you chosen budget.
I really liked the A4 (and A6) but decide to get the Passat Estate and save myself about £4K. The Audi's are a higher build quality than the VWs, just as the VW's are higher than the Skoda and Seat brands. The benefits of one are not always obvious or very noticeable, but can mean fewer faults, better crash safety, more space/comfort, quieter, etc...
Personally I see nothing wrong with any of these purchases as there are actual benefits to paying more depending on the users requirements. For me having a large reliable estate car is essential for my hobbies, and the level of comfort and room for passengers was the deciding factor (ie: Passat over Golf).
Almost none of this applies to a sodding mobile phone! Particularly when the retards buying them have not even seen or held one let along tried to use the damned thing before handing over the cash. When I see these sad schmucks it just confirms my belief that about 70% of the human race are complete morons, and that P.T. Barnum was dead right.
PS: The drop in Windows boxes is also probably nothing to do with iAnything, it is the fact that in the last 5-10 years businesses have found that running server with Windows costs a lot more than doing the same on Linux.
Just 5 years ago getting a Linux box into a big bank was hard work as they only used Big Blue, HP, Sun and Windows. Now they prefer Linux just about everything else as it save them money and is deemed good enough.
It is also worth remembering that until Apple created the original iPod it was on the verge of bankruptcy itself. With just 2~4% of the PC marketplace.
I wouldn't mind betting the main reason for Mac selling more today is entirely due to the fact that you cannot develop iPhone software without one. Sort of a monopoly there...
And don't forget those other BBC Summer/Xmas/Easter holiday morning TV classics of:
Flash Gorden (1936) and Buck Rogers (1939) both with Buster Crabbe, Cassy Jones (1959), White Horses (one for the girls), with the occasional “Laurel & Hardy”, “Buster Keaton” and other silent era classics (L&H had a few with sound).
Yep I'm another child of 1963.
Though you example is correct it looks like a non-typical situation, and I would sugest those drives are not being made to the same standards, despite the product names.
Also according to those figures the 5400rpm unit is also noisier, which suggests it has inferior barings and motors, thought the 750GB model shows what you would expect; lower power and noise levels.
also from the first page of that pdf:
• 7,200 RPM delivers a constant high-performance boost
• 5,400 RPM enables affordable, low-power and high-capacity drives for external enclosures
TWO MONTHS WORK!
Sorry for shouting but many of the retarded comments here make it sound like they were sent to a forced labour camp for 4 years.
By the time they had done their inductions, received training to learned how to use the machines and do a remotely passable job, they probably cost Foxconn money.
TeeCee...was your Doom3 different to mine?
I playing Doom I and II on my 486DX50 and later Pentium133, followed by the Duke in 3D, Hexen, Quake I & II and on to the ultimate Half Life (which used a modifies Quake engine) and HL2 (and more...).
I got Doom3 a year or so after release cheap (about £5 and that was too much), and after HL 2 it was boring.
Just walking around for ages (mostly in the dark) trying to spot the key cards on a desk/floor (with correct colour), shoot everything that moved and try to guess when the next creature would be spawned around the corner or behind you.
Story progression was nothing more than after a few hours trudging around looking for keys; kill a boss and get a new/bigger gun.
I have no idea how far I got through it as I never completed it, due to it being so utterly monotonous.
It had better graphics than the original Half Life and just about on par with HL2 that was released a year earlier than this, but zero style or substance.
I have replayed HL, Opposing Forces, and HL2 (plus MINERVA) multiple times as they are beautifully crafted games with evolving stories, that just like watching an old movie can still be enjoyed again.
When you think of the stink the phone hacking has caused for MP's and celebutards, imagion what the effect of someone publishing all their web browser activity could cause.
Hacking an ISP known to be used by MPs/Lords/Z-listers would be the perfect target for getting dirt on them.
I bet they have not thought of that.
"RISC designs make handling inter instructional dependencies difficult (read expensive in transistor counts), This severely limits OoO and speculative execution." - Complete coblers.
The Alpha 21264 was much smaller than those EPIC failures. Plus the 21264 was doing OoO and Speculative Execution and could execute up to 6 instructions at once, 5 years before Merced limped out the door (21264 was released in 1996, Merced 2001).
FACTS:
Alpha 21264 = 15.2 million transistors (6 million for logic)
Itanium2 = 221 million transistors (25 million for logic - same as Merced)
Merced was nearly a decade in the making and was a complete failure on every technical metric, the only thing Intel (+HP) managed with it was to convince the nieve bosses and Compaq(+DEC), SGI (MIPS) and HP was to stop development of thier own CPUs, believing the Intel hype/bullcrap.
The biggest laugh being that Merced went from the "Super chip of the future" to "Evaluation prototype" status within a month of release.
It took almost 4 years with zero developments in Alpha/PA/MIPS for Intel to produce CPUs that were even comparable to the old EV6 and equivalent products (for real software not rigged benchmarks).
"McKinnely could do 6, not that the Madison -> Tukwilla cores extend that" - Yes, they didn't extend it because when they actually looked at the vast majority of code produced by compilers they found that 25-50% of the instruction blocks were full of no-ops due to instruction dependencies.
"There is no single player Diablo 3.
There is only multiplayer pn your own, which isn't quite the same thing."
Not having purchased or played the game I'll have to take your word on this, but it is rather stupid of Blizard to not have a true single player mode, which does not require constant internet access.
There are many thousands (millions?) of games players who just like to spend around an hour or so playing games then save and leave it for another time/day/week. These types of players tend to have full time jobs and other responsibilities like families and definately do not live in mum's basement.
For these types of players getting an “error ###” message because; the servers are down, too busy, or the Internet performance dropped due to it being “peak time” are all unacceptable if you only have a short time window to play.
Just as pressed the submit button I realised my initials L.B. are the same as those of the author of that book series I referenced to. I assure you I just enjoy reading them (book 4 has to wait until I finish "Matter" by Mr I.M. Banks) and I had nothing to do with creating them.
... the Kobo store has loads of "Previews" of latest release (typically the 1st chapter) so you can just try any you like in the comfort of your own home.
Up until last year I was definitely on the "real books are often cheaper and less liable to break" side, but once the price came down to a reasonable amount (they start at ~£60 now) I decided to get one as I spend a couple of hours a day on the bloody train commuting and the Metro/Ev.Stanard are getting more full of celebutard crap by the week.
I'm a convert; my Kobo (even with a nice leather case) is lighter that all but the slimmest paperback. When I take it too lunch and forget to pick my glasses up of my desk (I'm well and truely middle aged), being able to make the font bigger and increase the line spacing is great. As a result of getting this new toy I've read more books in the last 4 months than I had in the last 3 to 4 years, a lot of that is due to the free books and previews.
I would still always prefer to use real books for reference material or guides (eg: programming languages, cook books, etc...), but for a simple good read they are excellent.
There are also a lot of good cheap reads out there (not just all the classics) where new authors are able to self publish (a good example being the "Emperor's Edge" books, the first book was a free download from Kobo, the following 3 novels I was more than happy to pay for).
I had similar thoughts about B&N, I suppose they didn't go with Kobo as W.H.Smiths have been there for years now.
I got the Kobo Touch from WHS last February £89; unfortunately it died on me after just 2 months, but the free telephone and email support direct from Kobo was excellent. Their staff actually read the emails I sent and answered each question specifically, not a single "generic"/useless response.
They offered a direct RMA/replacement when we couldn't even get it to factory reset, but I just went back to WHS. My local store didn't have a black one in stock (pink's not colour) so I got a full refund and drove to another nearby town for a new one which was ten quid cheaper at £79 (and a new full years warranty). Took about 5 minutes for the new Kobo to be registered, updated to latest firmware and have my entire library downloaded again.
IMHO £79 for the Kobo Touch version is a lot better than £109 for the Kindle version and they all use the same ARM chip + e Ink screen.
PS: Does anyone else thing the Amazon TV ads showing someone using a Kindle floating in a swimming pool is an attempt to sell more devices, they are not water proof after all!
Well the other great thing about e-Ink over pads/phones is that it uses naff all battery power, meaning recharges are only needed every 3-5 weeks with daily use.
Adding a LED light will bring that down a lot if it's used often just as it does for backlit LCD screens.
Plus a clip-on led light with its own battery can be purchased very cheaply (less than a fiver) for any e-book and they can even be used with real books!
My first reaction to this article was bullshit, but then I read it.
The players doing the shooting games were using controller designed to be held and used in a similar way to real hand guns.
As such they got out of the chairs and used muscles they would not normally use in that way, it is often referred to a muscle memory by sportsman.
This is almost certainly the only reason for them to be better (and also they defectively practised doing nothing but head-shots) than those doing the Mario games who were probably just sitting down fiddling with a joypad.
Remember they said nothing about them being "good shots", just better. The article never stated the range they shot the real guns over, so scores are meaningless. Shooting a stationary manikin in the head at say 10 yards is a lot easier that at 25 yards.
You are mistaking a terrible legal system with a specific argument for or against capital punishment.
In the US many people are sentenced to death as much for a plea barganing chip by the DA as anything. A typical example being offer them the choice of the death sentence or confess and only get 20 years when they are not certain of a win.
Most advocates of the death penalty would want a system closer to that of Japan, and the better states in the US, where the death sentence is only applied to the worst cases.
These typically being where the perpetrator is exceptionally viscous, serial killers or killing for profit, though I would also add those indiscriminate killers like those who shoot into shops or crowds of people and those with previous convictions for assault and BGH.
For most people who have jobs and live a (mostly) law abiding life any jail term is too long.
But there are those who will commit crimes or just do really stupid things if given enough motivation.
If you put a revolver with one round loaded on a table and offered £100 to anyone to stick in their mouth and pull the trigger and survided, you would not likely get any takers.
Make that a £1000 and you may get some try it, as to some a £1000 is a lot of money.
Make that £10,000 and you’d like get more and by the time you offered £1m you’d probably be surprised at the number of takers (there are lot of stupid people out there).
The death penalty in Singapore almost certainly does deter some, but as with any system of prohibition all that happens is the supply gets reduced and the profit potential increases to the point that someone will take the risk.
This is why all drug prohibition is futile, when the local plod catches some and advertise how they have stopped £n million of drugs hitting the streets, all that happens is the street price goes up.
The police know this and the politicians know this is true. The politicians are just scared of the mass media morons and the public not voting for them.
Perhaps if you tried getting the story from someone less biassed it would help. This is typical Lewis crap reporting, only printing the fragments that he agrees with and ignoring the rest.
A small excerpt from another source of this story (BBC web site):
"A French team used satellite data to show that glaciers in part of the Karakoram range, to the west of the Himalayan region, are putting on mass.
The reason is unclear, as glaciers in other parts of the Himalayas are losing mass - which also is the global trend."
So they state categorically that the trend is for global glacial melting, and that this is an unexplained event in a one region.
As opposed to the nay sayers who just think: F*ck the world anyway I'll be dead anyway by the time it really matters, and will grasp at any tiny little bit of data (usually out of context) to back them up.
Think (I know you find it difficult) but:
- If you're wrong and nothing is done, millions could suffer from a screwed up climate.
- If I'm wrong, but people try to stop adding vast amounts of CO2 by wasting energy and resources, there is still the benefit of having a less polluted planet for those that come after us.
If we are truely honest Hollywood has always prduced 98% crap.
It just that when we look back we mostly only remember the (averaged) 1.2 decent films that come out each year.
Though is seems worse these days as many of the truely awfull films being made are remakes of what most people regard as classics.
I can understand doing this if the original was a foreign film and they just want to make an English version, but when the originals were made by and started the Hollywood greates, it makes no sense at all.
"Unfortunately the Sheeple voted against AV."
Or perhaps those who voted against AV are the smart ones, that can see how corrupt all the governments are in the rest of Europe. YES, EVEN MORE THAN OURS!
A perfect/worst case example: Silvio Berlusconi, kept in power by a corrupt "AV" voting system where you have absolutely no say in who actually gets elected at all, you just get to choose the proportion of MP's taken from each party.
Only the brain dead hypocrites of the liberals could think a system where; those who vote for iffy/unpopular candidates should get second, third,... vote when their first choice get eliminated, yet those who vote for the most popular candidate only ever get one!
You point out a number of failings and gripes yet still give it 80%.
So its got a metal back plate, but the extra £40 over the Kindle or Kobo-Touch could buy yourself some nice accessories those others. If you don't want a touch screen, buy the Kobo basic at £70 (I always add the penny to these prices).
A question about accelerometers, the only feature this has that the others don't bother with:
What do they do when your being bounced around on the train?
PS: I finally gave in and got a Kobo-Touch a little over a week ago (from WHSmiths £89), works very well. The only niggles that I would say could be better are:
You can only display PDF's in landscape, not a problem for books but it would be a good addition for the browser as most non-mobile sites expect users to have wider screens.
Sometime the touch screen is a little slow and you end up turning two pages.
The web browser sometimes does not react to clicking links (not a big deal as this device is WiFi only so it's not going to be used extensively)
Are they any good for making telephone calls?
I ask this as a number of bods at work have the HTC/iPhone/whatever... smart phones and when they are in a noisy environment (like being on the street with traffic or in a comm's room with lots of fans), they sound like they are talking while standing on their head in a bucket of water.
Most real telephones and mobiles of the non-smart veriety don't seem to suffer from this.
Probably on my own here, but my fave bond was George Lazenby.
He played Bond well, help significantly by having the best leading lady played by Diana Rigg and a decent villain played by Telly Savalas.
Plus, probably best theme music of any film made, performed by Louis Armstrong.
I remember using it in the 80's on VMS with just dumb terminals. On the VT420 terminals you could even get a "print preview" display by using the downloaded character/bit-maps.
The idea of having 20-30 users all working on documents, software development and such on a single machine about as powerful as a 20MHz 80386 with 20MB memory is something people today cannot even comprehend.
The fact that actual productivity was about the same as today without everyone having multi-GHz PC's with x1000 times the RAM (and power use) is ridiculous.
As was pointed out these magical system don't work or have very bad effects of other areas.
For example from Central_Valley_Project link you provided:
"Despite the benefits of the Project, many CVP operations have resulted in disastrous environmental and historical consequences. The salmon population in four major California rivers have declined as a result, and many natural river environments, such as riparian zones, meanders and sandbars no longer exist."
In other words to live one lifestyle, others had to pay. This will eventually cause enough trouble to trigger wars or the collapse of societies. Man has been changing his environment for millennia, but the repercussions are only now being felt in some areas.
Go back a few centuries and the vast majority of Europe was covered in forests as dense and diverse as those in the Amazon, our ancestors got away with deforesting a continent as most of the planet was still mostly untouched. If that gets repeated in South-America, Africa and Asia the effects could be devastating all round.
Going purely by what I see as your incredible naivety on the real world issues, I assume you also believe in the Sky Fairy and/or Intelligent Design. Where as in reality; humans are just animals, a few slightly more intelligent than most other species, but the same basic rules apply. When the resources needed to live run low we either kill or steal from our neighbours or die off.
The one difference between us and the other species, is that we should be smart enough to stop breeding beyond what can be sustained, and before we need to fall back and act like all the other critters on this planet.
Those of you who don't shoot will never appreciate the time spent training newbies down the range or in the field on how to hold fire arms safely and never, ever point it in the direction of anyone.
It doesn't matter how many times you think it has been checked as been cleared, you never do it! Guns should always be treated as loaded at all times.
The problem is some people are just dim, and bad habits picked up playing with "toys" can be hard to break. Likewise those of us who do shoot will react badly when anything gun shaped is pointed in our direction, it's become an instinct for self preservation.
In the UK; shooting shorts are among the safest activities you can partake in, and it is a very popular activity (despite what our exceedingly liberal media may tell you). Taking part in football, fishing, or ballroom dancing are far more likely to cause serious injury or death.
I live in a Kentish village, with one telephone exchange (closed to other suppliers) providing services for approx 1500 homes and 90 non-residential premises. No cable alternatives.
In the middle of the night and most of the working day my ADSL can provide the good 6 to 8Mb that I pay for, as my house is about 200m from the exchange. (FireFox downloader shows rates of over 800KB/sec). Problem is that like most people I'm at work during the "working day" and asleep most of the night.
From about 17:00 to 22:00 my ADSL will slow down to around 0.3MB (FireFox dowmload reporting between 26 to 40 KB/sec).
That's not enough to use iPlayer (or equivalents) without constant pauses every vew seconds, and all but the most basic browsing is slow, and there's only so much time spent online banking and looking on amazon...
Considering most ISPs cap bandwidth (last time I looked at BT is was a few GB/month) prividing massive speeds that mean you reach that cap in a few hours seems pointless.
Providing a decent service to thousands of customers by upgrading the back haul to the nearest major exchange would be better that fiber to each and every a tower block.
I'm peeved that it's gone HD only.
I liked the cooking, cultural, and other factual programs, along with added world news events not covered by the likes BBC/Sky.
Unlike the BBC (and a slightly lesser extent Sky News) they do report what happing in the world even if there is no video for the morons to oggle at, and they have professional reporters rather than idiots on twitter/facebook to supply their content.
There are some channels on sky that are very low bit rate; but avoid the god/shopping/bingo/etc...channels and the bit rates are far better than freeview.
As for HD, it will never make a bad movie/program good, and apart from a few things that are specifically visual (eg: frozen planet) it does not add much of anything. Seeing Cameron Diaz (and others) spotty faces covered in pancake makeup or pointless exploding car #12 in HD really adds nothing.
A good script works on radio, a not-so good script works better with pictures, a cr*p script will always be cr*p.
Just about al the kernel features of NT where copies of what VMS had been doing since 1978, the only big difference being that VMS didn't go multithreaded until Version 7, on Alpha's (not on VAX hardware).
If anyone wants to read how a truely secure kernal/OS should be implimented look around for a copy of the (Open)VMS "Internals and Data Structures", it covers everything from boot sequence onwards.
For those that think not doing multi-threading is bad, they need to realise probably less that 1% of VAX's made had more than one CPU so there was no benefit to be had, and the OS used AST's (Asynchronous System Traps) that made writing software where one process could handle 100's devices, timers, etc... all at once was so simple you wouldn't beleive (plus it's much more efficiant than threading on 1 cpu).
PS: The "Open" seen with VMS is silent.
Comparing a F/A-18 to a Radar UAV is pointless.
The UAV is not a fighter, so it does not need massive engines to fly, it does not need or want high speed.
It will not be making 9G turns so will not need those extreamly strong wings and heavy engines and everything else needed for a heavy plane.
It will not be carrying the meat and its life support equipment.
All those thing do not exist in the massively successful UAV's in service today.
The weight savings are huge, that is why a the Predator only weighs in at just over 1 metric ton fully laden. Also the Predator has a range of over 600 nmi, and can stay aloft for 24 hours.
Something like that with a catapult system for takeoff would be ideal.
The F/A-18 on th other hand weighs in at around 10 metric tons (empty) and 16-23 loaded.
The Super Hornet takes that up to 14.5 tons empty and 21-30 tones loaded.