Posts by Gannettt

What's a Chromebook good for? How about running PHOTOSHOP?

Interesting idea, but not that useful really. I love my Chromebook, and use GIMP with a Crouton install, like other posters have mentioned. On my Chromebook 14 it runs just as smoothly for the everyday editing (cropping, levels adjustment, small touch-ups, etc) as it does on my 5-year old Mac mini. Even Sumo Paint and Pixlr.com do a fine job for the very basic stuff. I do use PS on my Mac, for more demanding stuff, but for quick stuff, chromebook + Crouton are perfect.

So long Lotus 1-2-3: IBM ceases support after over 30 years of code

As Easy As

Couldn't afford Lotus 1-2-3? We used As Easy As and SuperCalc at college in the late 80s. Some wag used a hex editor to change the SuperCalc disc, and when the teacher booted it up, everywhere it said SuperCalc, it had changed to SuperCrap. Those were the days!

T-Mobile US goes gaga for Wi-Fi calling, AT&T to launch in 2015

Is that the same AT&T who sell their 'high speed internet' by saying that using the bundled wifi router helps you save on expensive mobile data...from the people who made t expensive in the first place? Instead of racking up your data allowance, how about adding to your monthly broadband data cap...sorry, fair usage limit? I must be getting too old for all this, I just wonder what happened to just picking up a phone and dialling a number.

Amazon axes hated Fire Phone price: 99 pennies but a niche? Ain't none

99 cents????

"In my 9 years on this planet, that's the best deal I've ever seen!"

O2 breathes life into Amazon Fire: Mobe to hit Blighty in WEEKS

I hope the UK doesn't get the awful advertising we've had to endure here in the US, featuring a gorky kid with glasses who says 'in my entire 9 years on this planet, I haven't seen anything like it!"

Also, Amazon's attempt to create a new verb, like 'to Google', in 'firefly: "I'll just firefly that' Wrong!

Come on Amazon, you're great for bits and bobs, and the occasional book, but this mawkish advertising has to stop!

And as a Kindle user, I tend to source my books elsewhere and use Calibre to convert them and upload them to my Kindle. I think I have one actual Amazon ebook on it, the rest are from...ahem...other sources.

Speaking in Tech: Meet the man who SURRENDERED to Facebook

Agree. Tried SiT, and alot of the stuff is very interesting...once they actually get down to talking about it! Sorry, guys, too much buddy banter.

CNN 'tech analyst' on NAKED CELEBS: WHO IS this mystery '4chan' PERSON?

Re: It's difficult to remember all those passwords

And the annoying way presenters seem to revel in their ignorance of tech: "So, what's this internet selfie thing all about? I haven't got a clue about anything like that!"

Angry Birds CEO hops into slingshot, goes 'WEEEEE!'

Someow you knew the wiring was on the wall when they kept coming out with successive versions of the same game with random words tacked onto the end. It seems like a combination of greed and no mid- and long-term strategy (getting more, different games in the pipeline) are doing for the like of Rovio and King.

Too slow with that iPhone refresh, Apple: Android is GOBBLING up US mobile market

GS5, yes! Anything is better than TouchWhiz. As soon as it became available, I put a custom ROM on my GS3. I got an iPhone 5s now, though the old GS3 is still doing good service for my trips abroad.

Brit chip biz CSR rebuffs US takeover bid from Microchip Technologies

I'm sure there are plenty of US companies champing at the bit to acquire a company like CSR to enable them to implement a tax inversion before the US government clamp down on them. Not sure if that would do CSR any favours, though.

Larger iPad could target big biz, save Apple from low-end scrum

Windows 9

I went over to Apple devices (iPad Air, iPhone 5s and mac Mini) when I couldn't find any compelling Windows devices when ti was time to upgrade my aging laptop, but with the Surface Pro 3 looking like something I, and it would seem quite a few others, could actually use, and the prospect of a Windows that could be a worthy successor to the excellent Windows 7, I may be tempted to go back.

I really think there is too much rumour-mongering going on, especially where Apple is concerned, and you just know all this speculation is going to go out of the window on launch day when the lineup is that bit different to what all these overpaid analysts have been saying.

Cult of T-Mob US wants you to INDOCTRINATE your friends and family

I've just sold my soul and renewed my contract with AT&T for another 2 years. I did look into T-Mobile, but the service issues that many were complaining about made me stick with the devil I know.

And as another poster noted, the PAYG plans here are really just contract phones that you can stop at any time. They really are a rip-off, especially the way they debit your balance every day even if you don't use the phone. Oh for British/European style phone deals here!

Wait, an actual QR code use case? TGI Friday's builds techno-restaurant

Re: TGI Fridays, badly mitating Applebees *again*

Whatever people think of poor service and bored wait staff, I find this electronic ordering rather sinister. Doing people on minimum-wage out of a job to save money really is the pits. if they could have a robot open up, cook the food and bring it to your table, these restaurant companies could do away with all wasteful human capital. The railway station situation seems logical, though, but for the rest of us, looks pretty bleak.

As for TGI Fridays, cook-chill meals brought in on pallets, warmed over in a semi-automated kitchen, never really appealed to me.

Cor blimey: Virgin Media pipes 152Mb fibre to 100,000 East Londoners

Re: Q from the US

I moved from the UK to the US about 6 years ago, and reading these descriptions of the current UK internet provisions and comparing it to what I'm getting in the US now it quite depressing.

When I left the UK, I was with VM and paid about £50 a month for their 20Mb service, and apart from some minor slowdowns in the early evening, it was fine. I see the prices have come down and the speeds have increased considerably since then. Right now, i'm with AT&T's UVerse, and pay the equivalent of £40 per month for 12Mbit, admittedly with no slowdowns at peak periods. if we paid the dizzying amount of £65 per month, we could bump this up to 24Mbit!

Like the NHS, nice beer and cheese that tastes of something, value for money internet service is something I sorely miss living out here!

Too rich for an iPhone 6? How about a gold-plated Brikk?

Thanks for the Harry Enfield....shouldn't it be "considerably richer than yow"? :)

Swell. Apple buys 'Pandora-for-talk-radio' app... for $30 meeellion

Talk Radio

So just a load of right-wing nutters, then. I truly wish the iPlayer app was available to us outside the UK, being some sanity to this place!

White? Male? You work in tech? Let us guess ... Twitter? We KNEW it!

And you hardly see anyone who is directly offended, it always seems to be someone who is afraid that someone else might be offended.

NO TIME to read Facebook? Delegate the task to your FUTURE SELF

This facility won't make Facebook any more relevant to us Reg readers, though. My brother tries to post interesting stuff he's found or seen, and invariably gets about 2 likes; one of my relatives posts yet another boring pic of her kids, suddenly gets 15 likes and countless comments. I don't think FB is for interesting people, or men.

Amazon's Spotify-for-books: THE TRUTH

Nothing new under the sun!

Makes me think of the old-fashioned subscription libraries, where you paid an annual fee and take out books: I think Boots the Chemist used to run one way back when. Now they've just updated it for the kids.

Want to legally unlock your phone from its network? The US Senate says that's A-OK

My first exposure to how backward the US mobile phone market was soon after I moved here in 2008. I signed up and, armed with my shiny new phone, tried to send a text to my wife. Nothing happened. Turned out you had (and still have) to pay extra for text messages on top of your monthly bill...and you have to pay when somene sends you a text.

It just galls me whenever i visit family in the old country and see some of the ridiculously small amounts, compared to here, that they pay, and what they get for it.

Listen: WORST EVER customer service call – Comcast is 'very embarrassed'

I hope alot more people start to record their encounters with these corporations. You wouldn't even have to tell them: don't they always state that "This call may be recorded for training purposes"? doesn't specify who is recording it, does it?

Apple OS X Yosemite 4 TIMES more popular than Mavericks

Is it true that Yosemite will have a dark theme, with white on black? If so, that would be awesome, especially for blindies like me who find the whole dark text on white background very hard to read.

Linux turns the crank on code for cars

This is the year of Linux on the desktop in the automobile!

Using Android 4.3? Don't let malware snatch your private login keys

If 4.4 hadn't been dumbed down quite so successfully, I would have moved up to it. 4.3 is perfect for me at the mo.

Apple abruptly axes Aperture ... Adobe anxiously awaits arrivals

Re: GIMP runs under OS/X, they say

GIMP is fine on Windows, but on OS X it is a dog for some reason. shame, as it is a great (amateur phone editing tool.

But as others have said, Aperture is different from Gimp.

Tell us about your first time ... on the internet

We had a connection to Prestel at college in 1988-89, using BBC micros. That was a bit of fun.

The first time I used the actual internet was in September 1995, just started at University of East Anglia. It was a balmy 29 Celsius outside, but in the computer lab it was lovely and cool. You were given a floppy with your credentials on it, then you were away. I wondered what all the fuss was about. Eventually landed on a page with the complete script for the first Star Wars film, all centred in yellow text down a blue background. Getting Amstrad CPC games over FTP was more rewarding!

USB charger is prime suspect in death of Australian woman

"cheap electrical kit isn't worth the risk, so don't cost yourself your life by saving a few pennies"

I'm imagining a public information firm and ends with those words in stark white letters over a still of a dead, long-haired youth in flared trousers and tank top and being read out by Ray Brooks or Edward Judd.

Hey, remember the iPod Touch? Apple just did

Re: I still want my 1TB iPod "Classic"

And you can load Rockbox on it too.

Freeze, Glasshole! Stop spying on me at the ATM

Why do Google Glass need a camera anyway?

It's a Doddle: Amazon inks train station parcel deal with Network Rail

On the face of it a great idea, i think they still have the Red Star sign up at Gloucester station. I'm sure there are a good many stations with tons of unused office space, since everything seems to have been farmed out to corporate HQs, etc. Gloucester has a whole floor above the station which, I'm told, is empty. Am I correct in saying that the stuff will be delivered by road, though? Crazy.

I see that this is very much London-centered, though - we plebs outside the M225 are obviously too poor to generate enough revenue to justify expanding it in our direction!

'Hashtag' added to the OED – but # isn't a hash, pound, nor number sign

And Mitchell and Webb's "Fourth symphony in F hashtag major".

Never know there was so much humour in it!

As Welsh comedian Milton Jones put it when he rang up the automated phone line: "For customer service press 1, for order status press 2, and for a 70s cop duo press star-key and hash"

London commuter hell will soon include 'one card to rule them all'

Something like this would be great outside London, especially for visually impaired types like myself. Thise awful ticket machines at railway stations that have replaced human beings are so confusing and not really geared up for blindies. I like to think I'm tech savvy, but one look at the machine and I just walked away and risked it buying my ticket on the train. imagine just being able to simplify buying train tickets with this thing?

Yet another reason to skip commercials: Microsoft ad TURNS ON your Xbox One

These corporations won't be happy...

...until they have electrodes implanted in your brain at birth so you can control their tech. Are you a Microsoft of Sony baby?

Yes. Facebook will KNOW you've been browsing for smut

For a long time I naively assumed 'targeted ads' meant fewer ads.

It's not being fed ads per se that annoys me (with at least AdBlock installed you hardly see any), it's the deviousness and obfuscation on the part of ad slingers that has got my goat. If people like ads so much, why can't these organisations be open about their policies (more open than they think they are, that is)?

UK govt preps World War 2 energy rationing to keep the lights on

Calm down fellas, I have a hunch the poster was being a bit tongue-in-cheek there!

100% driverless Wonka-wagon toy cars? Oh Google, you're having a laugh

Wrong

These things shouldb't be driverless, they should be driven like normal cars but with all kinds of sensors etc making it ultra safe. Making it entirely automatic is a step too far.

Brits: Wanna know how late your train is? Now you can slurp straight from the source for free

Re: What would be really nice

"The train now arriving at platforms 5, 6, 7 and 8 is travelling sideways" - tried and tested over many generations!

Comcast and EA said to be planning streaming games service

Made-up Quote

"This will provide a steady revenue stream, ensuring a healthy financial future for both companies....oh, and people will be able to play games as well"

BBC hacks – tweet the crap out of the news, cries tech-dazzled Trust

Re: This:

Totally agree! Radio news, while better than TV, is going downhill. the PM programme has become a sort of really bad comedy show, and Today just doesn't go into any depth any more. I recently found a complete edition of Today from 1986 online, and the difference is like black and white - in-depth, serious reporting, authoritative without being condescending.

But if you think BBC radio news is bad, listen to NPR here in the US for any length of time and you'll be logging onto iPlayer faster than you can say knife: everything seems to be promped by a new book or article in the new York times or the Washington Post, nothing on its own merit. I think I'd take John Humphies' gruff handling of a useless politician any day!

Twitter investors squawk as user growth, income disappoint again

constant growth

the holy grail of capitalism, one day everyone on the planet will have 4, 5 even 6 Twitter accounts! Come on, you can't expect indefinite growth. having a Twitter account isn't like selling someone a fridge with built in obsolescence, so after a few years they'll have to set up another one. Oh well...

Selfies are so 2013. Get ready for DRONIES – the next hipster-cam-gasm

When I heard 'dronie', I thought it was going to be a sort of moving seflie, a video of someone droning into the camera about their first-world problems.

The gift of Grace: COBOL's odyssey from Vietnam to the Square Mile

It wasn't just the big companies that used COBOL. In the late 80s we were taught COBOL on a BTEC computing course at college. It seemed on its last legs even then: having to write out the code on coding sheets to be entered by a roomful of typists; getting your program back with one typo, you had to watch everyone else gleefully calculate the compound interest on a 15-year loan. The one we used was called Flinders COBOL, if i remember rightly, and ran on a Prime Computer. A year after finishing the course, I visited the campus, and saw all the Prime terminals piled up in a skip.

Raised £350bn in crowdsourced funding? Tell me about it (not)

TOTALLY agree on the point about press releases telling you how much a trendy startup has raised. i think that's all the Flipboard Technology section consists of these days.

Look at your column not as self-indulgence, but rather a peek behind the curtain at the journaismistic art.

What price justice? 73 CENTS in book price-gouging case

Re: *There is, as always, a better way.

I got a ripped copy from the second-hand shop - not the bargain it turned out to be

Ugh! This DUNKABLE wearable tech is REPELLENT

When you say 'dunkable', does that mean that if you dip it in your tea for 1 nanosecond too long, it disintegrates and you have to fish bits of mobile phone out with a teaspoon?

As WinXP death looms, Microsoft releases its operating system SOURCE CODE for free

As far as text-mode word processors went, WordStar was better. Just saying!

Blighty goes retro with 12-sided pound coin

Re: ... and a fitting tribute this is.

According to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/inflation/calculator/flash/default.aspx) £1 in 1953 has the buying power of £23.64 in 2012, or, if you prefer, £1 in 2012 had a value of 4p (or about 8d) in 1953.

Panasonic slaps Freetime EPG on 2014 smart tellies

Of course it will be new sets only. The stats showing the decline in UK TV sales says it all - obviously everyone who wanted a flat panel TV has bought one in the last three years. If Panasonic added this new tech as an upgrade, people would hold on to their tellies for longer.

totally agree with you about the dog's breakfast that is the current crop of 'smart' TV functionality, though.

iOS 8 screencaps leak: Text editor, dictaphone and 'tips' on the way

Looks faked to me

The TextEdit and Preview icons are of a totally different visual style to the rest of iOS, they look like they were just pasted into the image. Yes, maybe this is a hint of the often talked-about convergence of iOS and OS X, but I think someone hasn't realised it's another 3 weeks until April 1st!