Posts by James Bassett 116 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2007
You don't need to go to the Chipper/Local Chinese. Whilst food prices may have gone up, you can still make a significant saving by driving down to Tesco and buying several large (5l) bottles of cheapo vegetable oil and using that to power your Diesel car. It's crazy that this stuff is about 1/3 the cost of Diesel in the UK (thanks to the lack of fuel duty on it).
You do need a LOT of bottles though.
Which is worse? The fact that he was so stupid he actually bought it or the fact that he isn't even embarassed enough to shut the fuck up and deny everything?
Although all the other one-click purchase thingies I've seen do have a 60 minute (or so) delay on them so you can undo it if you realise you've been a total retard. Though that explains why it isn't a feature on iTunes. No need to stop and figure out if the user might be a total retard.
Sounds like a wind generator might work for me then. I live on the coast at the foot of three bloody great mountains. The trees in my village grow at a 45 degree angle! I asked about roof-mounted solar-heating a couple of years ago but my electrician friend told me the few installations he'd done were producing bugger all energy and there wasn't a cat in hells chance of them ever paying for themselves, even with the governments (rather large) grants.
Don't give a flying fuck about carbon emissions but anything to cut down on the bills so I can afford more long-haul holidays.
Even if his students can't spell then can we not at least teach them how to use a spelling checker? I can't believe any of his students are actually handing in hand-written essays.
Yes, I know this also means teaching the plebs how to switch the spelling checker over from the default English (US) to English (UK) (would it really be that hard, MS, to set English (UK) as the default when the OS's time zone is set to GMT?) but they can't be that thick can they?
I did hear our head of HR complaining earlier this week at the appalling standard of English used by respondents to a recent job advert for a very junior role. She didn't mention the spelling in particular, just the general inability to put together a coherent sentence.
You know two more than I do then. And I'm in the 30-something target demographic for the Sony marketing. Mind you, most of my friends and I don't buy many DVD's anymore either. DVD rental by post is so cheap and convenient it seems a complete waste to spend £10 on a crap film you'll only watch once. I'm certainly not going to spend double that on the Blu-Ray version.
For those asking about the half hour lunch, it's usually an elf n safety thing. The company has insurance etc. etc. and some condition will state all staff must take a full hour for lunch regardless. The same thing happened where I work years ago. It was pointed out by staff that there was nowhere within the building to take a break and what should we do if it's pissing down outside. They built a staff kitchen, dining room and lounge complete with large flat-screen telly!
I've been using the same crappy monitor for six years but they spend a fortune on a staff room mumble mumble grumble....
I love my DVD Rental service. I'm on the £7/month service. I can have two at home and maximum four a month. I only tend to watch one on a Friday night so that works out well. I can add an extra for a couple of quid if I want to. I've bought one DVD in the last twelve months and that was from a bargain bin in HMV for £3.
There is only one reason I can see to buy DVD's at full price and tat is for the extras. I seem to remember watching the extras on Terminator 2 many years ago. Haven't bothere since so I don't feel I'm missing out.
The only downside to the rental service is that family oriented films are often scratched to feck due to people letting their little darlings use them as frisbies.
So, in a rant on "Junk Science" you make the claim "bicycle helmets are a scam: they actually make most cyclists less safe".
Genius!
I think you may have difficulty showing, scientifically, quite how a plastic helmet physically makes someone a poorer cyclist. Call me MR Presumptuous, but I would hypothesise that the causality is a purely psychological one and not the fault of the poor, defenceless helmet.
But thank you for giving me a good laugh on an, otherwise, entirely dull Thursday afternoon. Junk Science indeed.
I must be in the minority then. I found the new bond film "Casino Royale" dull as ditchwater. Seem to recall catching a few winks at one point. Far too long and drawn out. Wasn't overly enamoured with Craig - though couldn't give a stuff about hair colour; some people clearly don't have enough to worry about.
Really like Dalton. Thought he brought a dark, nasty edge to the character that seemed more in keeping with a lonely assassin. Okay, the films themselves were a bit "eighties" but what do you expect? They were made in the eighties!
Will people stop getting the severn estuary scheme (which is tidal) and Wave power schemes mixed up.
Yes, the Severn Estuary scheme would have a major environmental effect. Personally, I think the environment would adapt pretty quickly and people vastly underate the adaptability of ole mother nature.
Wave generators could have an impact on marine wildlife, particularly in terms of migratory routes or breeding grounds (if not carefully sited), but nothing like the impact of a tidal estuary scheme and the two are, bar the water thing, completely unrelated.
Christ, we did Tidal v Wave in 1st year Geography <cough> years ago. Where the hell were you lot?
Egg. Something non-chicken (but very closely related) laid an egg. Due to genetic-mutations during the gestation period this became a chicken.
It's very simple. Very easy to understand.
NOW CAN WE PLEASE STOP ASKING SUCH STUPID QUESTIONS?
Oh, Re: Alan Parsons. Congrats. Me too. Isn't it great?
"pre-authorised". I initially winced at this, but decided that, as authorised has no inferred tense, the "pre" suffix is probably acceptable. Could you be authorised without it being in advance? I think the answer is probably yes.
It isn't like the word "booked" where the past tense is inferred. If you turn up and pay on the door, you hadn't booked, so "pre-booked" is unecessary.
It doesn't matter how much money the government throws at "information campaigns" if it's still totally cocking up the switchover itself. In my region, we still don't have a digital service but the analogue is being turned off in April 2009.
The Digital switchover website is no use. If I enter my postcode it tells me my transmitter is 50 miles away and in another country completely and that I have until 2011 - despite receiving a notice in the post telling me I only have nine months left
That same notice in the post told me my options included Freeview and Virgin, neither of which are available where I live (and virgin certainly never will be). Until the government actually employs somebody with an Arse/Elbow differentiation qualification, people will continue to be confused by the Digital Switchover process and for one very good reason - the information they are receiving is confusing and bollocks!
The power of running the direct server does not constitute the whole cost. These things pump out a fair bit of heat. You have to pay to get rid of that. I'd still agree with you that it's unlikely you'd save $400 over a year though. Given your figures, $150-$200 looks possible and Dell say the worldwide average premium is still $100.
Ahhh, yet another American, so stricken with grief that he's only just able to recall, off the top of his head, the number of his lawyer. Presumably the money het gets (this is the US, so no question he might lose) will go towars a memorial for ginger and a generous donation to a nearby pet hospital.....<cough>
So, previously, many of us (gullible as we are) believed that the word "Unlimited" meant that something was without limit (oh how I laugh when I think back to how naive we once were).
Then, the mobile phone companies and broadband providers corrected our terrible misconception. We eventually came to realise that "Unlimited" was actually somewhere below 2GB (TMobile's Web'n'walk). So we knew a little more, but we did not yet posses the full picture.
Now, thanks to those kind people at the ASA, we can say with absolute certainty that, for today, Unlimited is somewhere over 120MB whilst, presumably, remaining below 2GB (unless that has changed).
Am I expecting too much to believe that, one day, our gracious masters may grant us mere customers, us plebs who simply pay the bills, the knowledge of EXACTLY how much unlimited is?
Paris, because her talents are unlimited.
This seems fair enough to me. If people are being given an estimate up front and then given the option to switch/cancel if the actual speed is significantly below the esitimate then I can't see the problem.
Your comments regarding advertising seem a little unfair. How would The Register advertise a service which is so variable?
"Broadband: £15 per month for upto 8MB although quite possibly as low as 2MB depending on how far you are from your local exchange, the quality of your internal wiring and how many people near you also have broadband"? We'd need advertising hoardings the size of the titanic and you'd have crashed your car by the time you've read it.
Ferarri are allowed to advertise a car with a "top speed" of 180mph because it's assumed anyone interested in a Ferarri would have enough common sense to realise that those speeds can only be acheived under special circumstances.
I don't see the problem in making similar assumptions about broadband speeds AS LONG AS the information is made freely available and in a clearly understandable form - and this proposal seems a pretty good move towards that.
For god sakes, change the record will you? This is getting like the Vista bashing. Hardly anyone cares about video acceleration on these things and HTC never said it would be included so get over it! And if you really think hardware-accelerated-video is a "basic" need in a smartphone then you really do need to get out more.
No idea about the bluetooth thing. Not happening with mine and not heard of it happening to others. Plenty of people can't connect to bluetooth systems in cars at all but not heard of dropped connections once established.
Incidentally, from the original article, after the keyboard the main change from the diamond is external storage. Many, myself included, felt 4GB of storage with no expansion was a bit weak for a "multimedia" device like the diamond. Good to see HTC sorting out the basics!
It's all very well everyone claiming that all these manufacturers are lazy, cheating scum for not investing in UI design, proper manuals etc.
However, it wasn't the manufacturers who drove the "DVD PLayer for £15 from X Supermarket" trend - it was the consumers (and the supermarkets).
Manufacturers are meeting a customer demand. Imagine a scenario if you will;
Product A is sat on a shelf. It is beautifully designed. The user interface has taken years of development. There is a printed manual in the box, written in all possible languages. It costs £100
Next to product A is a no-name, unbranded product. The blurb on the box suggests it does exactly what the other product does. It's £30.
Which one do YOU reckon Tesco's would sell most of?
NOW, do you still think it has NOTHING to do with the consumer if they can't figure out how to use the obscure menu system from the description in the poorly translated manual?
For a start, some of us are more interested in performance that gimmickery.
Also, I'd rather have a nice simple box that plugs directly into my HiFi. If I want to listen to music I switch it on and hit play. I don't want to have to pop upstairs, turn the PC on, wait five minutes whilst windows boots/logs in, start up a media server, run back downstairs.....
Yes, you could use a NAS but again, those of us with lives/families etc don't want a box running away 24 hours a days with either the associatd cabling or the constant WiFi dropouts, reconnections etc. etc. (And yes, I'm over exagerating the problems with media streaming etc)
It's music, it's supposed to be relaxing. Turn it on. Sit down. Use remote to select track. Hit play. Bliss.
In the same way a Windows Mobile Phone makes more sense than an iPod. You pay less, because you get it on contract. There are lots of different player apps. It's also a phone, a GPS, you have internet, you can stream music from your home server etc. etc. But everyone still goes out and buys an iPod.
Just because some people like to have a can opener that's also a food blender, a cordless drill and a juicer doesn't make something that's JUST a can opener useless. Guess what? It still opens cans!
Probably a bit late now, but if you press and hold the power-button on a WM device, you get the option to reset or power off. That's ANY wm device - including the original XDAs.
It WAS in the manual and, in fairness, is the same process used by any Nokia or SE phone I've ever had so could hardly be described as obscure.
I don't know what you guys were doing with the battery (probably safest not to ask) but I can easily go from 5pm Friday evening to 9am Monday morning without charging mine. Granted, I never leave bluetooth or WiFi on (no need, I have profile switchers that turn them on and off when I need them) but still, 2 hours compared to more than 60 hours is a bit of a difference!
Anyway, it's a brilliant device and I would highly recommend it to anyone without a bluetooth car kit. As someone mentions above, MS stick to the bluetooth standards (weird or what?) which means their devices don't support any of the Nokia or SE customisations required by lots of car kits.
As for the Diamond - pah! 4GB? I have an 8GB card in my device and it's already full. 4GB is pathetic in a high-end phone these days. Surely they should be increasing the memory, not going backwards!
My local Off-licenses and supermarkers only sell the bog-standard 6 litre boxes of wine. Holyhead is starting to sound like a fun place for a holiday. Light-sabre wielding nutters, drunks dressed in bin bags impersonating Darth Vader, super-sized alcoholic beverages.
Beats the hell out of Disney Land!
Icon? Disney Land isn't the only way to have a fun ride in Paris!
How in the name of Bill Gates does a £500 phone qualify as "mid-tier"? Should you not be comparing it to other phones, rather than executive 4 bed houses in Surrey?
There are only a couple of phones in existance that cost more than £500 and they are all "Premium" phones with saphires and the like.
The missing 3.5mm headphone jack is no issue. A £1.99 adaptor sorts that out and allows me to charge at the same time (e.g. in the car) and make handsfree calls. If you really want to listen to music THAT much, a £2 adaptor is not much of a hassle. Good sound quality too.
The real killer, as Chris says, is no MicroSD. 4GB storage is pittifull. What WERE they thinking?
Oh, on the battery, apparantly it uses some new screen tech to massively reduce the power drain making battery life equal to or better than a touch....I'm yet to be convinced!
I haven't actually bought a DVD in a long time. And no, I'm not a Pirate or anything like that, I just use the rental-by-post services.
Given the choice of spending £8 a month on purchasing one DVD which may turn out to be complete crap (i.e. a lot of the new releases) or £8 a month on having 5 or 6 DVD's delivered to my door, to watch in my own time, and then post back I choose the latter.
That's why DVD sales have stagnated, that's one of the reasons HD disc sales have failed to take off and I'm sure that will be the reason on-demand content will take over in 5 years or so.
With so much utter crap out there (has anyone seen "No Reservations"? 2nd worst film ever*), why risk spending your hard earned getting stuck with it for life when you can rent it, watch it, return it and choose to buy it less the cost of the rental if you REALLY liked it.
*Never Ending Story 2 BTW
"we likely loose bits of Russia, Mexico or its periphery with an estimated 10 million casualties should Colombia or Venezuela buy it"
Oh right. Nowhere near where I live then. God, you had me worried there for a while.
PS Am I the only one who clicked on the headline expecting a news story about some clever Schoolboy who'd figured out a way to do his Maths homework using a classic 70s arcade game but made a mistake? How dissappointed I was.
Julian. It does, of course, support SDHC - as did the original Touch. You often find the manual quotes out of date info.
When the touch came out, 4GB was the largest card available so that was what was quoted in the manual (stupid, I know). Someone then copies and pastes that into the TD manual "because it's the same reader".
It's quite clear that SocGen were either grossly incompetent in not spotting what was going on and having such lax procedures as to allow it OR, as he asserts, they knew full well what was going on, were chuffed to bits when it was making them money (and huge fat bonuses!) and he has just taken the wrap now it's all gone tits up.
I suspect he'll just get screwed over anyway but, hey, at least he's having a go at trying to bring some of the bastards down with him!
Jesus, you lot are a bunch of freaking morons!
No-one is suggesting a nipple ring is dangerous or that it has to be removed. The metal detector detected something metal. That's it's job. The security staff's job is to examine the metal thing and ensure it ISN'T a threat.
How do they do this? Do they ask the embarassed woman to get her tits out in public or do they, as they did in this case, ask her to step behind a curtain, remove them and undergo the scan again? It seems their actions were entirely correct. The same thing happens if you're wearing shoes with metal in them.
No-one is suggesting shoes with metal eyelets are a threat. You have to remove them and be re-scanned to make sure that's what set the scanner off. Or are you all too thick to understand a simple concept? Did you really think you were being asked to remove your shoes because the security bloke mistook them for a deadly weapon?
The authorities are now saying that, if your piercings are such that you can't easily remove them, you have the choise of a visual exam TO ENSURE THEY ARE ONLY PIERCINGS and not something more sinister.
Christ, have you lot ever travelled before or are you permanantly tied to your computers accusing everyone in power of plotting to subvert the progress of human kind?
What? And have it passing close by London and Parliament and millions of voters? Are you crazy? Why in gods name would the government sanction that?
No, far better to send it past The Isle of Man, Wales and the Scilly Isles where there is no one of importance to complain about it and any accident would have negligeble impact on the South East.
I've never understood why Telcos (and others) charge "Extra" for paying by methods other than Direct Debit. Of course that is going to get people's backs up.
On the other hand, if you simply offer a "discount" of, say, £5 to Direct Debit customers to reflect the savings to the Telco then I can't see the argument (though people will. That's the nature of people!).
So are you lot seriously suggesting that because someone doesn't have the technical know-how to lock down their WiFi YOU should be allowed to steal it?
What if someone suffers from Alzheimers and forgets to lock their front door? I suppose you consider that justification for walking into their house and nicking their telly? Forgetfukll fuckers! Serves 'em right!
Someone didn't get their Maths O Levels so I'm alright to short change the thick bastards. Should have tried harder at school shouldn't they!
You're a bunch of fecking theives and, worse than that, with your fucked-up pseudo logic and pathetic "Freedom Fighter" bullshit, you're theives who don't even have the balls to admit it!
I love the way people keep blaming everything on the policies of Western Governments, as if the decisions of Government have nothing to do with them.
Governments, like everything else, are selve-serving organisations. There may be individuals who are looking to do a good deed (and others looking to make a fast buck) but, as a whole, the government is attempting to stay in power as long as possible. The only way they can do this is to persuade people to vote for it.
That means that the decisions it is making are entirely designed to persuade you and me to continue voting for them and keep them in power!
I.E. blaming the government is blaming yourself!
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