New statement
Segway - There's no flys on us
Posts by hi_robb
355 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2007
Segway philanthropist found dead
IE9 strips to win Chrome fans
Front End / Client Side Web Developer
Virgin Media to warn malware-infected customers
Sony Walkman NWZ-A845 media player
Waterfall Niagara speakers
Friday 9th July 2010 15:38 GMT 
They look nice but...
Don't really sound all that great. I've heard previous incarnations of these speakers when hifi shopping and wasn't all that impressed by them. Fairly plodding, slow one note bass, and screatchy treble. That could have been down to the room, setup etc but I don't think it was.
The new ones look very similar so probably sound similar.
Far better getting a pair of these for 5k which sound fecking fantastic. They really do disappear once the music starts playing, leaving you just a pin point soundstage both height and depth wise. Johnny Cash smoking a fag while playing? You'll hear the spiralling waft the smoke takes as he blows it out never mind him smoking it. As for bass, my kids are genuinely frightened when I turn the volume up.
http://www.wilson-benesch.com/discovery/discovery.html
You'll still need the source, pre and power amps though :-)
Rob
Hack forces Flash onto iPad
Beeb reinstates teaboy in Pestogate scandal
Low-priced home digital media connections promised
Friday 2nd July 2010 09:49 GMT 
Not another...
Stupid, useless fecking connection standard
This is nowt more than some big players trying to get licensing rights on something so they make more money. They get this in then everyone else has to start paying them a license fee to put the new ports on the back of their products and we'll all need to go out and buy new tv's, blu-ray players, consoles etc as our old uns will be incompatible.
Then, just as we get used to the new standard, having spent a fortune getting the new kit some other consortium will come up with something else and the process will start again.
Cnuts
Rob
Airline passenger videos Atlanta maggot horror
Garlands folds: 1000 call-centre jobs axed in Northeast
Tuesday 18th May 2010 12:45 GMT
No they didn't.
Garlands had one of the highest staff turnovers of any company I've ever worked for. They paid low, and didn't seem to care very much for their staffs welfare, gripes etc. They would employ just about anyone, even staff who had been sacked for fraud from other companies!
I worked there for a couple of years, taking a job in their Orange call centre when I was desperate for work and there were no IT jobs in the area to which I'd just moved to be with the significant other. Out of the 30 people who started the same day I did, only 3 survived to the end of the 4 week training course. Every time a bunch of new starters came in, it was the same thing. Out of 20 starting, 1 or 2 actually stuck it out.
I went in to the job knowing that the minute something else came up doing what I normally done, I'd be out of there. As it happened,within 3 days of completing my training on how to answer a phone, a job came up in their IT department and I got it and moved there. They did treat their backend staff better than the agents to be fair, but the agents were like cattle to them.
In the end I left after over two years there having been what I felt was constructively dismissed as I was effectively sidelined so the boss could get his best mates in to do the job I was doing. This was after the guy who was boss when I started left due to the same sort of treatment.
He did warn me before he went that I was likely to be next.
However, to be fair while that guy was there he put me through some certs, and got me into telephony, IVR'S etc. Due to that my career progressed quite nicely after a I left. So while I left with a lot of grievances towards the company, they very quickly subsided and I was thankful to my old boss for furthering my career. Kind of 2 steps back to go ten steps forward.
The one thing that used to irk me badly though was that they employed anyone. Some of those employees customer services mannerisms were terrible and must have gave the mother company their contracts were offered to a very bad reputation. A lot of the agents just thought they were there because they had to be and it was their god given right to be as rude to their customers as possible.
That IMHO does not make for a good company reputation.
However at the end of the day, it's a shame they have gone as no one likes to see lots of people being made redundant and there was some very good people working there.
D
Samsung NaviBot robot cleaner
BT could face criminal case over Phorm trials
Tricorder/Aliens-motion-tracker handscanner kit gets $6m
Echelon computers can't cope with bad lines
Greenock pensioners cuffed for Tesco 'sex romp'
Sun squeals over 'UK's first iPhone baby'
Monday 25th January 2010 12:29 GMT 
iWoman only on iPhone
Hmm looks like I'll have to get a iPhone(tm) now.
This program that the couple used (we shall call it iWoman) will be very handy for letting me know when it's safe to go to the pub after work, or that it's her time of month and I risk a bollox by doing so.
iPhone has just truly became a mans best friend. Stuff the dog.
The beer for obvious reasons.
Peppa Pig told to belt up
Legal highs now illegal
Wednesday 23rd December 2009 12:27 GMT
I'll never understand these legal highs
When the illegal ones are far better. I tried spice and was it better than good old mary jane?
No!
Not even close. It smelt like canned fish, tasted like custard socks and gave me a feeling that was similar to how you feel when you've been awake 24 hours.
If that's the general quality of the high you get from these so called legal ones compared to the real thing, then I don't see why people bother. Even more so when you consider that some of the alternate chemical substances are probably much worse for your health.
D
Firms fuse high-tech sensors into concept phone
Walking With Dinosaurs star goes walkabout
MPs to go clubbing in cocaine inquiry
Samsung YP-R1 16GB PMP
Boffins 'write directly to memory' of living brains
Swedish military bras burst, melt during 'rigorous exercise'
Extra large condoms hit UK supermarket shelves
Man blames cat for child porn downloads
Phorm phading phast
BT abandons Phorm
Glasgow unbans Life of Brian
HSBC online banking hits another wall
Controversial mobile directory fails on launch
Bristol crim caught with mobile up jacksie
Nurse Lovelace gives hardened lag 55-hour stiffy
Sony X-Series Walkman
Monday 1st June 2009 13:54 GMT
I almost bought ones of these until...
I found that it doesn't do gapless playback.
So if you have any DJ mixes or seamless music like DSOTM, if you rip as seperate tracks, when you play back you'll get gaps between the tracks which completely spoils the flow of the music.
The only way to get aorund it is to rip as one big long track, but then you can't skip between songs, you have to hold the fast forward button and slowly search through until you get to the bit you like.
A right PITA.
BT names first 29 exchanges for fibre rollout
Police drop investigation into 'rent-a-Lords'
Thursday 12th February 2009 14:54 GMT 
Disgusted (not of Tunbridge Wells)
Those who pass the laws appear to be above it.
If this was you or me, we would be in the clink as quick as we could say bribary. It's about time we got shot of these smarmy, inflated expense claiming, corrupt gentlemen.
Get in to politics - Don't care about your country needs, care about yourself and business friends needs.
Dave
XSS bug crawls all over PayPal page
BOFH: A safe bet
Friday 23rd January 2009 15:33 GMT 
To all the whingers saying it's crap
Well I enjoyed it and am very glad it's back again, I was wondering where BOFH had vanished off to.
But for those whinging gits who are saying it's crap here's your reason.
The writers PC was affected by electromagnetic interference from nylon under pants which caused his PC to die. He then had to completely re-write the episode in 1 hour to get it in for todays deadline.
/slinks off to wire a PC someones keyboard u pto the mains.
Norfolk children get £310,000 of free laptops
Friday 2nd January 2009 14:39 GMT 
Errr just one problem
I have no problems with this scheme however I can see a potential problem. These laptops are probably going to be given to the sort of kids who's parents will just flog it on for the price of 24 can of special brew. Saying that some of the kids might do it themselves
As for the travelers, well they'll just sell it in the pub and upshot and move area (potentially, not all travellers should be tarnished with the same brush - errr).
The article states that the laptops will go to the kids who play truent most. So surely a much better option is to target the parents with harsh sentences (stop their giro's, make em do community serivce like clean up litter etc) so that they start making their sporgs go to school as the kids should be.
Letting them have access to the net is going to do very little for their education me-thinks and the fact they are not going to school means we end up with another generation of pretty much useless - dole scrounging - leeches on society.
/picks Paris because at least her kids would go to skoool
Royal Navy completes Windows for Submarines™ rollout
Shure SE102 sound-isolating earphones
Friday 14th November 2008 11:54 GMT
Re: Diminishing returns
I'm one of those audiophiles as I spet 200odd quid on on my Etymotic ER4 headphones when I bought them.
Why?
Simple, I love music, and want to hear it how it was intended warts n all. I have 20k's worth of stereo at home to listen to music (2 speakers, 1 cd player, 1 pre amp, 1 power amp + assorted cables). Listening to music on that is almost as good as listening live.
I wanted that sort of experience on a portable for when I was out and about, and the Ety's were the best in ear phones at the time that I tried. I rip lossless as I can tell hear the difference when lossy. The sound I get out and about is fantastic and I'm happy with it.
200 quid is a small price to pay as far as I'm concerned for something I get so much enjoyment out of.
as for the Etymotics, they are brilliant and way above other portable headphones I've tried and I tried a few. They don't emphasise any part of the frequency range, sound stage brilliantly, and are very well made. they block almost all outside noise, so music can be listened to quieter.
Their bad points though is that the cable is pretty microphonic (something all headphones of this type suffer from), so you can't go jogging in them. Getting them correctly fitted into your ears takes a lot of practice and getting used to, as does the feeling of them being in there. And they are useless if you have sore ears due to cold or something as they do irritate if you try to wear them then.
Oh and unless you get them correctly seated in your ears, they do not sound all that special.
for the days I have a flu / cold etc, I have Koss Porta Pros which have a fantastic build quality, great sound quality (though nowhere near as good as the Ety's, but still vvery good), no noise cancellation though but they were cheap as chips.
Some of us like to listen to music properly, and listen to proper music. Not this compressed, volume recorded so bloody loud so it sounds good on iPod, but crap on anything half decent chart crap.
Paris cause she would sound decent on anything.
Ofcom: No premium numbers for previous offenders
BOFH: Remote access malarkey
Friday 19th September 2008 14:50 GMT 
Ah remote access
Another great BOFH and so true. The number of times in the past I've had users switch off their PC's when I jokingly remark about seeing everything they have been up to, when I've done a bit of servicedesk stuff :-)
Stupid idiots do not realise that this just makes us all be really interested in having a damned good poke around.
Mines the one with the MSTSC in the back pocket
Apple is Fisher-Price of sound quality, says Neil Young
Friday 25th July 2008 10:38 GMT
In some ways Mr Young is right.
While his attack on Apple in particular is probably wrong (he should be attacking the recording Industry in general), the gist of what he's saying is right.
Nowadays, most music is mixed down with no dynamic range (i.e quiet bits and loud bits) because it sounds better when played back through a Ipod. Unfortunately, the process of doing this kills the actual performance within the music, and also kills things like soundstaging etc.
If you take a modern CD say the Artic Monkeys for example and listen to it, you'll notice that the volume of the instruments, and the singers do not chage, they are constant. It just sounds like a bit of music. Now listen to something like DSOTM by Pink floyd and you'll hear the difference. There's peaks and troughs to the music, quiet bits then swells to cresendos and on a good stereo it becomes a performance, you sit there in the studio / gig listening to the band playing.
Then on top of the lifeless constant volume of the music, you convert to a mp3. this sucks out loads of sub bass, and top end from the music. they claim you can't heard it but believe me, it's those frequencies which you can't hear which give the space between the band members, and the ambience of the studio etc, though to be honest, on modern music due to the mixing down being hot, you don't get that in the first place.
I've like most people have got a Ipod. I use very expensive (£250) earphones with it, and only rip any cd's I want on it as lossless. Even at 320kbp, I can tell the diffrence between lossless and the lossy format. The dac in the Ipod isn't brilliant either, no matter what people say.
I've also got a 7.5k hifi in my front room. If I plug my iPod in to it, and play a lossless track, then play the same track on my CD player, the difference is staggering, so much more musical and coherant on the CD player. In truth though, I'd expect it to be the iPod was £300 and the CD player £1500. Try playing a lossy track through the hifi and it's laughable, it really is like listening to an out of tune am radio.
Yes, Mr young does have a point. I'm a music lover and old enough to remember what the old black discs sounded like. Unfortunately, the convience generation who have been brought up on iPod sound have for the most part killed the life in music. Which is probably why I don't buy much modern music any more, it just sounds shit and lifeless.
D
British Columbia stray foot tally hits six
Unmanned Aerial Manhood outrage at Kasparov rally
How ComScore can track your mouse clicks
Information Commissioner: Phorm must be opt-in only
Wednesday 9th April 2008 17:59 GMT
I think people are missing the point RE cookies
Guys / Girls,
While the news on el reg today is great, I think a fair few people are still missing the point with the opt in / out cookies.
If ISP / Phorm uses cookies for Opt in or out, this will still mean that your data is going to be intercepted and passed to their servers. It doesn't matter if they proceess that data or not depending on the cookie, the simple fact is THEY WOULD STILL BE INTERCEPTING YOUR DATA.
Everyones posing hypothetical questions about cookies being deleted etc And while they are all fair questions, they are directing the gaze of everyone away from the real issue. "Cookie or no bloody cookie, I (as I'm sure you lot don't), do not want my data just not processed, I do not want it intercepted in and way shape or 'Phorm'."
In some ways Phorm must be sitting there laughing. As things stand, it looks like a lot of people will be happy for Phorm to be installed at their ISP, and for their data to be intercepted, as long as Phorm can say "Yes your opt out cookie means we won't process that data". The cookies thing is fast becoming a smokescreen which Phorm are hoping spreads out obscuring the real issue.
The only way that the Opt In / Out must work (as a few people have pointed out) is for the Opt-In / Out to be done at an account level at the ISP. When you then connect, your account is checked and if you have opted out, your data goes straight to internet and goes nowhere near the Phorm servers. For those that Opt in (and I bet it would not be many), they go a different route via the Phorm servers.
For Opt out, your data is then never intercepted, and there's no bloody chance of it *accidentially being processed* when Phorm turn off the ignore Opt out Cookies option in their software.
Great work people and El reg for getting things this far, but lets not forget what the real issue is here.
Rob
Biting the hand that feeds IT
