Posts by James Bassett 116 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2007
Here you all are having a go at Sociologists in general and this pair in particular. On the other hand, they have received funding ffor a twelve month research project, spent 364 days down the pub spending the grant, knocked together the paper in the afternoon of the 365th day and are now back down the pub laughing their arses off.
The site registration CANNOT have been abusive as it was made many years before MySpace came into existence. MySpace probably has an argument that TWS is now taking the piss by earning advertising revenue out of the confusion but that's just abusive advertising. The domain should still belong to TWS who can do whatever the hell they like with it as long as it isn't related to MySpace's business.
Translate this to the real world.
I have a plot of land. I use that plot of land to display billboards. If I display a billboard advertising MySpace, they have every right to tell me to take that billboard down.
They don't get to take the freaking plot of land off me!
So, one user wants an Eee PC but with a bigger screen, someone else wants more memory, someone else better smartphone connectivity, 3G, HSDPA etc. etc.
Somone else will want to play games on it, run windows apps natively, VM Ware, better sound, bigger keyboard...
It just goes to show what an impossible task it is to build a sub-sub notebook that satisfies enough people for their to be a decent market and therefore what a wonderful job Asus have done with the Eee PC. Lets face it, by the time they've added in everything everyone wants you've got a large laptop running Windows!
I hope Asus resist the temptation for feature creep and maintain the ethos of the original. Small upgrades to memory, battery life and processor speed are fine as long as the time-to-charge isn't negatively impacted. Other than that, leave it alone. It's great!
Our local hospital got rid of the ban a few years ago, with the exception of Intensive Care wards. I think it was introduced genuinely enough. There was enough doubt about whether interference could cause problems that a "safety first" approach was sensible enough. This has now been dispproved to the extent that the NICE have removed the ruling.
Any hospitals still observing the rules can only be doing so for either profit or patient consideration (noise and annoyance).
And what's the betting this surgeon gets suspended for the non-event of "invading a patients privacy" and not the, quite serious, misdemeanour of using un-steralised equipment in the course of an operation?
I know it's considered a no-no around here for anyone to (shock horror) go against the accepted wisdom but, having used various versions of word et al since the DOS days, I find Office 2007 and absolute breath of fresh air. The previous few versions (damn near identical) were horrible products. Who thought up "dynamic menus". If I want someone to hide things from me I'l get my year-old son! I don't need my "productivity" suite to do it.
Sure, Office 2007 takes time to get used to. It took me about 2 days to feel comfortable and probably a couple of weeks to find all the stuff I use. However, I am now way more productive.
However, I should point out that, to my mind, Word XP (or 2003 or whatever) is the work of the devil and I hate it with a fervour boardering on psychopathic.
I also really like Vista and, until I installed SP1 RC1 last weekend, have had no problems with it (since last weekend I get a BSOD, core dump and auto-reboot every time I bring my PC out of sleep mode. SP1 was removed last night!).
As others have mentioned, it's a complex issue that isn't helped by "If they weigh over X kilo's then charge them more". There are plenty of people who weigh huge amounts who are not overweight. Each member of the England Rugby team weighs well over 100KG. I dare any of you to walk up to one of them and call them "Fatty".
Are we going to start "Taxing" people based on their genes (and I'm not talking the a**holes who say they are 20 stone overweight because of a "genetic disorder"; I'm talking someone who is 2.2m tall, weighs 130KG and hasn't an ounce of fat on them)? In which case, do we tax parents of kids with low IQ's more because they are going to require more teaching? Or parents of kids with High IQ's come to that. What about those with DNA pre-disposed to heart conditions or cancer?
Absolute weights are as meaningless as the BMI system. As I say, it's complex but to those suggesting "I only weigh 12 stone so I don't see why I should pay the same as someone who weighs 18 stone" I ask do you really want a world in which people who aren't exactly average pay more? Should light people get a discount? Should we have a check-in system with laser measurement to get the exact volume of all passengers and charge everyone accordingly? How far are you prepared to take it?
I don't understand the focus on global warming. Personally, I'm not convinced either way. The world's been getting warmer since the last ice age. We had a mini ice-age only a few years ago (in climatological terms) etc. etc.
But it doesn't matter, does it?
We are going to run out of fossil fuels some time in the short-to-medium term. Some people say 150 years. Some say 500 years. Both are pretty close.
We shouldn't really be pumping all sorts of crap into our atmosphere anyway. Whether it causes global warming or not, it's just not a sensible or pleasant thing to do.
There are plenty of alternatives which require investment. In the short term we have nuclear, wind, solar, wave, tidal etc. In the long term we have fusion. These are far more sensible energy sources anyway.
So why is the focus not on promoting the benefits of investing in these technologies which, whatever the arguments over global warming, we will eventually need anyway because we are going to run out of oil, gas and coal?
I've also never heard anyone discuss what we are going to do for plastics when we run out of oil. Or are we all going to be using our microwave ovens to make stuff as per Machu Pichu's hilarious "Visions of the Future" on BBC 4 last night?
I've never understood the, seemingly accepted notion, that Apple Mac's are easy and intuitive to use. I'm a computer user of nearly 30 years. For the first 12 of those I used Mac's (at school). I then went to University and did a computing degree using UNIX, Linux, SUN and Windows. I've now worked in Industry for over a decade using various OS's but no Macs.
My dad recetly retired and bought a Mac Mini as he was used to Macs from his teaching job. He asked me if I could set up his email for him. It took me over two hours! I eventually had to ask him where on earth the menus were that would contain the options I needed. How on earth was I supposed to "intuitively" realise that the tiny menu-bar at the top of the screen was changing to show the menus relevant to the app currently in focus? It is completely counter-intuitive that the tools I need to use an app should be floating off nowhere near the app itself and looking exactly the same whatever the contect. And as for the damn Docking Bar, or whatever it's supposed to be called, the designer of that should be consigned to hell along with the designer of the "dynamic" menus used in MS Office 2003 and, thankfully, abandoned for the largely wonderful MS Office 2007.
Macs require exactly the same thing every other operating system requires in order to become comfortable with it. Persistence, guidance and exposure.
Some parts of the country haven't even got Digital yet. For example, I live in the Isle of Man. The old analogue signal is to be switched off in 2008 (November I believe, although they still won't confirm this). Under these plans, that would mean they would stop supplying analogue equipment almost imeadiately. Except that our region has not had it's digital signal turned on yet and it isn't scheduled until the first part of next year (maybe).
The whole thing has been a complete farce. The entire region has about six months of running with both systems, during which time every household is supposed to switch over all their telly's and VCR's!
There has been one thing about this whole case that really confuses and, whenever it is mentioned by someone who does not follow formula one; it is always one of the first things they mention.
A Ferrari employee stole a dossier containing Ferrari technical information. He then gave it to McClaren. Okay. As soon as McClaren found out about this, they should have notified Ferrari, the FIA (or WMSC) and the police. From McClarens’ point of view, this would have been an end to the matter. It would appear this did not happen and, therefore, they have to accept some responsibility.
However, and this is the thing all people with no interest in F1 seem to be asking. What about Ferrari's role? They have allowed a Dossier (about 800 pages if press reports are to be believed) containing full technical data on their car, to disappear. They appeared not even to notice until it was bough to their attention by a third part. The man who took it was either an employee at the time (in which case it's Ferrari's responsibility to control him) or he wasn't, in which case it's Ferrari's responsibility to ensure outside parties can't access confidential data.
The fact that they have failed to act responsibly has resulted in the sport being bought into disrepute. I fail to see how even Ferrari could begin to argue against this. Their incompetence has caused the whole furore and yet no punishment has been handed out to them.
Short of the usual conspiracy theories (no, most members of the WMSC are NOT on the Ferrari pay-roll!) can anyone think of a single reason as to why Ferrari have not been charged with bringing the sport into Disrepute?
Clay Garland at 12:40. Not everyone has either the room or the desire to stick 8 speakers around their living room along with the necessary cabling! Besides, to my tastes, a top quality 2.1 system is far preferable to the loud, brash, bass-heavy Harmon Kardon which, works great with hollywood blockbusters and American rap/rock but struggles with material with any real subtlety.
Whilst I haven't heard the LG system, the review suggests the sound characteristics may suit a more conservative taste.
And Andy, I thought the reviewer was talking about the sound not the picture. After all, that's what this kit does. Okay, the picture is passed through in order to GET the sound but I thought (possibly incorrectly) that the reference was meant to infer that the level of detail in each separate sound effect and it's stereo placement was consistent "to the edges of the picture". Admittedly, maybe not a great turn of phrase (and I could be wrong) but, seriously, calm down a little and put your flame-throwers away. It's just a review, nobody is threatening your family!
Ho ho ho. How smart and self congratulatory we all are with our witicisms and criticisms. Particularly such well thought out comments such as "I refuse to switch to vista....it's the worst yet". Que? Quick tip. Think, then type!
I've been using Vista since the end of January. I've never had a crash (okay, once. I didn't fit a new heat-sink correctly and the CPU went to 86C!), the machine flies (E6400, 2GB RAM), the search facility is lightening fast and saves me hours etc. etc. Okay, I'd prefer if it didn't ask me to enter the admin password every time I update a driver or add/remove a new piece of software, but I'm an advanced user so do this stuff often. For your average drone who runs an £800 PC to browse the internet, read email and type out letters, they aren't going to get the nag-box.
But, of course, it's trendy to criticise the big guy and we wouldn't wish to accidentally set off the independant thought alarm by straying from the pack now would we?
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