Posts by phr0g

Science says death metal fans delightful and intelligent people, great at dinner parties

I went to a Sepultura concert in Manchester many years ago, on the "Arise" tour (so yes, it was MANY years ago). My ears are still ringing.

And yep, I would agree, death metal types are generally nice folk.

Windows 10 Pro goes Home as Microsoft fires up downgrade server

Re: Just go Linux "Take my Linux ... please!"

I always find this attitude slightly bemusing.

I am a long-time developer (originally on Unix mini-computers, and recently in the Windows and Linux environments for different parts of our workflow). I have used Unix, Linux, Windows, MacOS throughout the years and whilst I have zero choice at work, I do at home.

I have tried to live with Linux. I had YellowDog on the original PS3 as well as Ubuntu, Mint etc on my desktop.

However, when it comes down to it, I do prefer Windows. I know how to script, and I know how to use command line tools, but in the end, Windows is easier.

Not to mention that I am a gamer, I have a subscription to Photoshop and Lightroom and use Office365 (mainly for the 5 Terrabytes/5 users I get for the yearly subscription (which makes it by far the cheapest cloud-storage option).

I also use a Lenovo Yoga 2 pro as my home laptop, which plays very nicely with Win 10, especially when I use it in tablet mode. I have tried to find a decent Linux distro that comes close for tablet useage, but they are miles away...

As for the general, non-IT public, Windows (or MacOS) makes for a far better experience than Linux for simple ease-of-use reasons.

My PC has "Please activate windows" this morning. Hopefully they will sort out the problem soon, but it doesn't seem to be stopping me from doing anything.

The great wearables myth busted: Apps never, ever mattered

Agree with many comments. I run about 3 times a week, only between 4 and 7 km at a time, so have Garmin forerunner 235. Battery is a week and it gives me notifications. for sms, alarms and calls.... That's all the smart I (personally) need All for very little money.

"Smart watch" === "3D TV"

.

Google Pixel 2 XL: Like paying Apple-tier prices then saying, hey, please help yourself to my data

Re: It's not for me then...

You should go back to Pink FIsh or whatever asylum of "golden eared" snake-oil consumers you come from.

Not heard such a crock of shit for quite a while. Let me guess, you think vinyl sounds better too?

You Wreck Me, Spotify: Tom Petty, Neil Young publisher launches $1.6bn copyright sueball

"I'd rather listen to Petty/Young recorded on a 1970s portable mono tape recorder in terrible quality than much of today's garbage written and recorded on an iPad by someone who classifies their music as "grime"."

And there is the beauty of subjectivity. I love the classics (and much classical), I also enjoy much modern music.

I regularly listen to The Stones, Beatles, Petty, Young (although his nonsense promoting the dubious merits of HD music have irritated me beyond belief), I also love many modern bands, artists and even electronic music written and composed on laptops (or possibly even tablets).

What makes music good or bad? Some of the worst music in my ears is self-gratification style jazz blowouts, or hyper-difficult and hyper-unlistenable guitar solos. A huge amount of talent and not (in my ears) a huge amount of fun (Much like the recent world-record of a high A hit by Audrey Luna).

You want modern music with the soul of your examples? Try Ray LaMontagne, Gregory Alan Isakov, Elbow, First Aid Kit, London Grammar, to name a few off the top of my head. Take a listen to Radio Paradise.

But don't disregard modern pop, rock or anything, because YOU don't like it. Many do.

What is the probability of being drunk at work and also being tested? Let's find out! Correctly

Re: A certain bias, there

Correct, kind of. But that 8 hours assumes you drank all 4 pints at once.

units of alcohol is about strength % * volume (in litres)

So a metric pint (half litre) of 4% beer is 2 units.

If you begin at at fairly normal 20:00, drink 4 pints between then and 00:00, that's already 2 of the pints gone from the system, the next 2 by 02:00. Driving to work the next day at 08:00 won't be an issue.

(This is a rough estimate as it takes some time for your liver to start processing the alcohol obv.)

In the UK, the drink driving limit, roughly, for a 12 stone man, is around 4 units, so you would unlikely be over the limit if you waited an hour or so after midnight and then drove (but I wouldn't recommend risking it).

Nokia updates classic comeback mobe 3310

Re: If only it had...

"Also, all the people wanging on about battery life - the iPhone 7 has a 14 hour talk time and the S8 20 hours compared to the 6.5 quoted here. It only has a long battery life IF YOU DON'T USE IT FOR VOICE! and voice is its only feature..."

...and as you say, people don't use voice that much these days, but there are times when it is necessary, even critical. So the "total" talk time is not relevant. What is is whether it still has any left. So standby time is of far more use.

I'm not even sure there's a point in specifying talk-time for a smart-phone. Video playback time,would be more useful.

I'd be tempted to get one as a car-glovebox phone, but it's way too expensive. A Nokia 105 is under £20

A year living with the Nexus 5X – the good, the bad, and the Nougat

Re: Re Battery Life: Save me From Electro-pedants!

Better still. I was forced to revert back to my old Nokia 1020 because the Moto X Play I'd been using got, erm dropped. The Nokia hadn't been used for almost a year, and was, of course, switched off.

As I took it out of the "old phones drawer" I must have pressed the on button, as when I finally had it in my hands, it was on. With power (about 10%). The time since last charge and estimated time remaining was insane.

So, a switched off phone will last a year. Impressive huh?

Forgive me, father, for I have used an ad-blocker on news websites...

No.

And sites that block me because of it get blacklisted.

And sites that get around my blocking of auto play videos get blacklisted.

I will go and find online what I want, when I want. And I want quite a lot.

Saying that, I had no problem with small, link-type ads that are targeted to my cookies. Just that nowadays they want a third of the site real-estate and want to wave at me and shout at me.

Guilty? You'd have to be extremely weird to feel guilty about it imo. Or be a EuropeanLiberal socialist MP (I say that as a European Liberal socialist).

HTC 10: Flagship goes full Google – but the hardware's top notch

Love HTC and their recent designs.

But I ain't paying a penny toward the licence of Airplay. Utterly pointless.

You've seen things people wouldn't believe – so tell us your programming horrors

A very long time ago, we had an in-house written time-recording application that worked just fine. One day, it just crashed, for everyone.

It was December 1st.

The month array had been defined for 11 (fine as it begins at 0), (not so fine as the month was then directly mapped as in 1 - Jan, 2 - Feb, etc).

This was back in the days when we used an interpreted version of basic (VBB) and used 12" dumb orange screens to develop on, connected to "mini-computers".

All programs would crash out with buffer overflow if you rested your hand on the keyboard...We even had one issue from a customer that simply read "Problem - Banana on keyboard"

Bah humbug. It's Andrew's Phones of the Year

Have the Moto X Play. Cost equivalent of around £250.

I'm not sure where I am missing out in comparison with the premium phones.

I also have a work supplied S6 edge, which admittedly looks and feels great, is not a "better phone" in any significant way.

Not a fan of the iPhones. The plus with the same screen size as mine, is way bigger and clumsier. And having owned an iPhone 5, I wouldn't personally want to downgrade to iOS.

I did use a Nokia 1020 for a time. Pretty nice phone, decent cam (although no where near as good as the fervent supporters would have everyone believe...and WAY too slow).

I may give Windows phone another chance next time, but for now I'm happy with a "midrange" Android.

Audio fans, prepare yourself for the Second Coming ... of Blu-ray

Re: @phrog

"At any rate, if the file(s) you have were examples of that, the experiment proves nothing except (possibly) that upscaled CD audio is little better than regular quality. And even that's assuming the test was experimentally sound."

No, I specifically chose music that was 1. Recommended to me by "audiophiles" and 2. Examples of "demo" HD music that was being used as "advertisement" of the wares of the particular, very respectable purveyor of quality music.

Re: Overcutting their artists...

I bought some 24/96 music to do a test recently. I downsampled it to 16/44.1 and null tested the files (this involves making an inverse copy of one and combining them...which if you did with identical files would produce a file consisting of nothing).

There was absolutely nothing audible in the difference file. 4 minutes or so of complete silence.

It did have information in it, but that was a small amount at around 17 KHz and -80dB (one, it's a higher frequency than most can hear, 2, it's at a level well below that of "silence" in a normal listening room (or even studio)). There was some other stuff in the difference file, at over 20 KHz and at between -100 and -120 dB.

I have done this test a few times now and it's always the same story.

A CD is enough to give any human the absolute maximum fidelity they can perceive.

The problem is that in recent years, CDs have been over compressed (dynamically) and often to the point of clipping (the peaks are simply cut off). This gives them an initial LOUD sound which is apparently great for radio, but makes them sound bloody awful.

I have a stack of HD recordings now, which are all better than the CD. But each and every one of them sounds equally good when downsampled and burned back to CD.

Amazon sets FIRE to your living room in bid to shake up TV streaming

Re: "unlimited content for kids aged 3 to 8 at a cost of $2.99 per youngster"

I would imagine that would be "other devices connected on a different account"?

Samsung Galaxy S5 in El Reg's claws: This time the 'S' is for 'sensible'

Re: Huh?

Never understood this argument. I have my private Note 2 and my works iPhone 5 in the same pocket.

Do you wear leggings?

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

Re: Wow, it truly is amazing the mis-steps Microsoft is making.

What a load of cock.

Gmail sucks. Really sucks. And I say that as someone who has his main email on Gmail. Business uses Outlook. We do, many others do, and the chasmistic difference in usefulness Outlook has over Gmail (or any other third rate webmail service) is like saying I would forward my pint of Guiness to a glass of cat piss.

Jesus H on a bike.

Lenovo ThinkPad Helix Ultrabook: Your new summer convertible?

Re: oh, ffs

A small orange weighs the same as my Android phone yet costs 1000x less...Your point is?

US Navy coughs $34.5m for hyper-kill railgun that DOESN'T self-destruct

Re: Game changing?

The rail gun was king in Q2 though (Which was "my" game) :)

A simple SSL tweak could protect you from GCHQ/NSA snooping

Re: Key exchange for dummies.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/03/quantum_boffins_get_spooky_with_time/

Cold, dead hands of Steve Jobs slip from iPhones: The Cult of Ive is upon us

Re: Lowercase keyboard?

Quite different. I imagine most people rarely use the caps lock on a real keyboard (except Eadon), rather they simply press shift at the same time therefore it is rather difficult to not realise you're typing in uppercase, whereas on a screen keyboard most will indeed press caps lock.

It is very useful to see what is being typed. And more to the point, it's possible so why not? Or at least have a choice.

I have an HTC One X and an iPhone 5. The HTC keyboard is a masterpiece in comparison to one on iOS. And what's more, I can change it to any number of other keyboards.

Reports: New Xbox could DOOM second-hand games market

silly argument

"New" Steam games cost a lot more than in the shops or online. When they get old they go on sale.

just like the games that you buy in the shop or online.

It is exactly the same.

Another Chinese thing you can see from space: Lenovo's sales

Re: That is becasue they offer all their machine pre downgraded to Windows 7 from Windows 8.

We only buy Lenovo. And strangely enough they come with Windows 7. And immediately get upgraded to 8 and Office 2013.

It's a shame they are 1920x1080 now mind you. That sucks.

More than half of Windows 8 users just treat it like Windows 7

Re: Not surprising

"Be honest here, do you really have a choice?"

-

Personally, no, but of course we could leave the systems on Win7 of course, but then Win 8 brings with it the advantages of native Hyper-V support.

All work is done on VMs sitting on our SSD drives which in turn are running various Windows Server versions.

But either way I have Win8 on both my laptop and desktop at home. On one I am testing Classic Shell, but it makes little difference to be honest, apart from slowing down the access to certain functions.

Not surprising

If you buy a 2 GUI system that has an almost infinte amount of software of any type you want readily available for the old one and mainly repeat recreational stuff available for the new one then that's gonna be what the majority use.

Hell I am a Windows developer, and we are all swapping to Windows 8 on non-touch machines at work. It's painless enough once you've gone through the first 10 minutes of "What the heck". Some people install Classic shell, some don't. Makes little difference in the scheme of things.

MYSTERY Nokia Lumia with gazillion-pixel camera 'spotted'

I'm in.

Definitely interested. I like WP8 and I want a decent camera that can mean I don't carry a compact all the time. I almost bought the 808 despite the crappy OS and screen.

Steve JOBS finally DEFEATS the PC - from BEYOND THE GRAVE

Re: Windows 8 destroyed the PC>

"No, it didn't, hasn't and won't."

Totally agree.

My desktop is ancient...upgraded bit by bit every year or so.

My laptop is 30 months old, but an i7 with a fast GPU (Asus G73). That will last at least another couple of years.

PCs and laptops have peaked. They don't need to be any more powerful. They have batteries that can be replaced.

Slabs on the other hand mostly don't have a replaceable battery (which WILL die) and a small amount of storage and memory. They are in their infancy and improving hugely all the time.

Re: Hybrids

"doesn't the android update 4.2 add multi user support on tablets?

Still - I'd love a proper linux on a tablet."

It does.

But access to downloaded apps is per google account. So ultimately useless. I want to be able to download games and apps with my account, and also allow my kids (and SWMBO) to use them, without access to my mail or purchases.

Re: Hybrids

I thought that too.

I *need* a new tablet as my Samsung 8.9 is going to a sprog :)

I want one with a 10+ " screen, preferably at least fullHD and definitely one with an OS with true multi-usewr support.

That leaves me with Windows 8 (or possibly Linux on a Nexus 10, but then there is no warranty).

So I am toying with the idea of the likes of the Acer W700 or Lenovo Yoga 13. I have until September to decide :)

Re: Prognostication

Give me a 10" Galaxy Note over a glorified app launcher with the wrong shaped screen any day. Even if the note cost more.

Android is a mess and needs sprucing up, admits chief

Re: Same article?

Actually I much prefer my HTC One X to vanilla Android. It's nice to have choice. And free launchers on the market will give any handset a stock flavour...Nova, ADW, etc.

On the other hand I hate my iPhone 5 UI. The keyboard is too fiddly for my fingers and I can't change it. ALL the apps must appear on the homescreens which I can't change and I curse every time I want to sent some tunes to it from the "wrong" PC.

Android UE is 10x iPhone imo.

Spotify spews 'unencrypted' FREE MP3s all over creation

CD will give perfect playback of anything in the 0 to 22 KHz range (Nyquists theorum)

Anything more is inaudible.

SACD is only useful for surround encoded music, HD music is only useful for making money from ignorant audiophiles.

(Many SACDs and HD albums DO sound better, but because they have been mastered better, without nasty compression clipping the peaks - The same could be done to the CD, but then they would struggle to charge £20 for it.)

As for MP3 at 320 KBps. It's pretty much transparent to the CD, and perfectly good.

By the way, Spotify use the Ogg codec anyway, which is even better.

Oz shop slaps browsers with $5 just looking fee

Re: Touch Call

So what happens if nothing fits?

They would have to prise it out of my cold, dead hands. Do tell where it is so I and others can avoid going.

Samsung's new Galaxy S 4: iPhone assassin or Android also-ran?

Sounds great

If only I had waited and not got my One X back in July. The One X is a great phone,but I miss the replaceable battery and card slot.

I love the idea of air gestures, and having played with the S3 I think more should be made of the ability Samsung have added to have more than one app on the screen.

IAs an expat, the translation thing might have been useful had it included the language of my chosen home.

It'll undoubtedly sell like hotcakes.

Amazon yanks SimCity download from store

a rock and a hard place

I'd love to give up EA, but just about the only game I play these days is Fifa on the PS3, and I need to buy it once a year.

I'd go to PES, but they don't have all the naming licenses. ;(

It does suck though. It sucks Donkey balls.

Reg readers brew up the ultimate cuppa

Swedish COOP own brand English Breakfast tea for me.

Brew time 30 seconds with much stirring and squashing

milk, semi skimmed

sugar DEFINITELY (1 spoon)

Bacon butty or snus.

ha!

Quantum computer one step closer after ‘true’ quantum calculation

"I think you guys should take this more seriously - there's a lot you can do with one bit. Or is there? (Answer Y or N)"

My answer would be "YN"

FIFA stages shoot-out between British and German goal line tech

2 things.

I wish they would stop mentioning the Ukraine incident. Yes, the ball went over the line, but they were offside. It was "rightly" ruled out for the "wrong" reason.

I think Hawkeye will get used personally. But long-term a sensor-type system may be the better bet. May even lead to offside tech too?

Android? Like Marvin the robot? Samsung eclipses Google OS - Gartner

Re: Dunno, really.

What's an Offcice?

BlackBerry Q10: This quirky QWERTY will keep loyalists perky

Ye'mann

Gonna luk sweeet wi mi nu Burberry cap n all. respec. init.

Review: Dell XPS 10 Windows RT tablet and dock

My next machine will be a hybrid, or a damn good tablet. One thing it must have for me is proper multi-user support. I even went through the pain of "upgrading" my current Samsung Galaxy 8.9 to Android 4.2, and Google have blown it with that. Multi-user,yes, but other users cannot use the same apps unless you use the main accounts gmail, which kind of defeats the object. So, can anyone tell me if RT works the same way as WIndows proper in that all apps can be available to all users? If so then that's the path I'll take.

XPS 10, 12, Lenovo Yoga...dunno. I'll wait a bit.

Price. Reasonable really if you compare to apple.

Reg Hardware Awards 2012: The Winners...

It's obvious.

Laptops is essentially Mac v Windows. The Windows market is "infinitely" more fragmented than the Mac one. So I would have been extra surprised if a Mac variant had not won. The other markets are also fragmented but in the case of mobile phones has coalesced around one very good product, enough to steal the crown (and same for tablets). Essentially people vote for what the have (or want to have) in the case of the positive votes, and for what they hate most in the case of negative (Dodo) votes.

Ergo Apple have a product in the (now) quite boring category of laptops and lose out on the major battlefields due to being overtaken by single stand out products,

They were voted down in the Dodo award because they are now the single most hated company (as well as probably the single most loved company) in the world. The football analogy would be Manchester United.

Paris - Loved AND hated for different reasons.

Windows RT jailbreak smash: Run ANY app on Surface slabs

Re: "there are other options"

"Lack of familiarity". Ha, more like when you Google for help on something you get a page full of Unix commands to execute. User friendly Linux isn't.

Victory on mobile belongs to Google in 2013

Re: Indeed

But while they say "You can't polish a turd", Apple seem to do just that a couple of times a year...

Dexter malware targets point of sale systems worldwide

Re: @Big-nosed Pengie

Absolutely, nothing wrong with "pled". I nearly leapt out of my chair when I saw that good old English word dissed. I wouldn't regard it as obsolete either.

Lawyer sues Microsoft rather than slot an SD card into his Surface

MS should just post him a free sdcard

A 16GB one.

In fact they should bundle one too. Then everyone is happy.

In fact if I was MS I would post him a 16GB, and everyone else who bought one, a 32GB one, and then bundle it in future.

How much would it really take out of the profit?

Saying that I don't think he has a leg to stand on. I went through all this nonsense with my "64K" Commodore 64, which has around 38K if I remember rightly.

Google Chrome app offers guided tour of known universe

very cool.

But does El Reg really think the Universe ends at the tip of the Milky Way?

Windows Phone 8: Everything you need to know at a glance

I want one. A 920.

I am definitely not a shill but I confess to being an ABA (Anything but Apple). I own an HTC One X. Great phone with problems. Trouble is I have 2 yrs contract left!

How do I get this one past the missus?

hmm.

Forgetting Microsoft: How Steve Ballmer's Surface could win

Re: Baahhhaaa

I say this as a fan of MS on many levels, and as a developer for serious stuff. ie NOT iOS or Android.

I say this as someone who now runs W8 on laptop and desktop and wants a Surface and a Nokia 920.

But when I did a MS C# course recently I went back to the office and needed to download the some extra course material. I inadvertently fired up IE9 and typed my search using the MS code for the course and some text relating to extra material. Bing gave me ZERO results. Fired up Google and it was the first hit, of many.

Bing is crap, really crap, it can't even find Microsoft's own stuff!