Posts by Salacious Crumb

Google's new free music service is classic Google: Take someone's idea and slap ads on it

MixRadio

Someone's already mentioned MixRadio, but as a Bloom & Blinkbox refugee, I'm a happy camper once again. A big plus is the ability to download mixes for off-line listening.

Going up hills past blokes with coke-bottle legs: The Smart E-bike

Re: Pointless limitations @ Pisartis

>>>"From experience, most pushbikes are being operated illegally anyway so I'm not sure they'd give two hoots about speed limits."

From the 2011 census, 741,000 working residents aged 16 to 74 cycled to work in England and Wales.

Limiting ourselves to just the cycle commuters in England and Wales, and ignoring leisure and sport cyclists, by definition "most" (i.e. >50%) cyclists would have to number over 370,000.

You claim that you have personally observed the illegal conduct of over 370,000 cyclists? That is what you're saying, isn't it?

>>> "Two days back, had a near miss as a car and van came through roadworks whilst the lights on my side were green. Turns out they were following the cyclist ahead of them and hadn't noticed that he was intentionally redlighting. Probably was thinking he was narrow enough to squeeze by the oncoming traffic so why the hell obey a silly stop sign? . Basically, and a danger to all road and footway users."

You say that a car and van jumped a red light which caused danger to yourself - yet somehow it was the fault of a cyclist? How did you arrive at this conclusion? Show all workings.

If you're concerned about road safety, you'll see that the focus should be towards cars and trucks, as these kill many more pedestrians that cyclists.

Statistics trump opinions in all cases. Even anecdotes.

From the ONS:

Deaths (persons) |

|------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| Year | (a) Pedestrian hit by | (b) Pedestrian hit by |

| | pedal cycle | car, pick-up or truck |

|------+------------------------------+----------------------------------|

| 2006 | 3 | 233 |

|------+------------------------------+----------------------------------|

| 2007 | 6 | 267 |

|------+------------------------------+----------------------------------|

| 2008 | 3 | 247 |

|------+------------------------------+----------------------------------|

| 2009 | 0 | 141 |

|------+------------------------------+----------------------------------|

| 2010 | 2 | 123 |

New dirt-cheap Chromebooks: Team Google keeps jackboot on throat of PC titans

Re: Yet, still worthless!

As Charles Babbage once said:

"Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple."

Of course, even Babbage needs updating. Replace potato peeler with Chromebook, and you have the gist of it.

Kim Dotcom: You give me proof of govt corruption in my case, I give you millions

Re: UKIP ranter I expect

"What you have forgotten is that Hollywood studios generally do pay the people who do the work. (Clue: the workers go on strike when they don't). So do publishers and record labels. Most often in the music industry at least, it's the managers who rip off the artist."

http://konvexity.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/what-accounting-lesson-winston-groom-learned-from-the-movie-forrest-gump/

http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17

About to make a big bet? Don't crash out, cash in with the power of maths

Re: I'm a bit intrigued...

"I believe this particular problem is known as the 'drunkards walk' problem."

Indeed - and I can wholeheartedly recommend Leonard Mlodinow's book "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives". It's a fascinating read. Just get it. You'll thank me for it.

Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

Dynamic

You can spend millions on a studio and still sound shite if you crush the dynamic range of music.

Dust off a quality hi-fi and play a CD that was manufactured in the '80s, before the 'loudness wars' took hold and marvel at it's sound quality. You'll find you'll need to turn up the volume knob. Compare with a modern CD with so little dynamic range they may as well have recorded in 8 bits. You'll need to turn the volume knob down.

Good article on the sad subject:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep11/articles/loudness.htm

Ubuntu 13.04: No privacy controls as promised, but hey - photo search!

Cute names?

"Raring Ringtail" is quite intriguing.

Looking forward to 'Spunky Spermwhale'.

Windows 8 has put the world's PC market to sleep - IDC

Re: Remember when the Windows fanantics would say "...but its not like Windows..."

You have a point.

Linux advocates took the track of "My gran can use Ubuntu - it's easy" or "My three-year-old can use Mint", but this was never good enough for Windows fans, because it wasn't "just like Windows."

Now Windows is not "just like Windows".

Microsoft leads charge against Google's Android in EU antitrust complaint

Re: Pot/Kettle hue-comparison scenario

There's an important difference between the Windows + IE bundling / Browser choice issue and the current complaint about Android.

Unlike Windows and its default browser, it's quite possible to compile your own version of Android without bundling the Google apps. Exhibit A: Kindle Fire.

Microsoft could compile Android from source, write IE for Android and make it default to Bing for search. For free. Instead, they are competing with a functionally equivalent phone OS they wrote themselves.

I went to the FairSearch site to see what the complaint was. It went something like this: "Google is doing phenomenally well. We are competing on an equal footing with comparative products, but people are not buying our products and we're getting the shit kicked out of us. We're not happy about this and we'd like the EU to do something about it."

Pot/Kettle hue-comparison scenario

Well, isn't this quite a pot/kettle hue-comparison scenario?

Microsoft & co's complaint is without merit, though. Android is probably the most configurable phone system available.

On my Android phone I use Opera Mini as my browser, and Android's mail client syncs my Yahoo mail accounts.

For searching, I use, by choice, Google.

For videos, I use Youtube.

I could easily use Bing if I wanted to, but why use something that isn't the best?