* Posts by Tim Lake

31 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Aug 2007

Google plugs YouTube into Playstation 3

Tim Lake
Boffin

To agree with Phil...

The hard drive upgrade on a PS3 is actually documented in the manual that comes with the console so there is no question about it being any kind of hack, I agree too that we can already watch YouTube through the PS3 browser and WMP can handle any media sharing you might want anyway. That's only Windows but so is this!

Grand Theft Auto IV leaked online

Tim Lake
Happy

Lul Whut

I realise this doesn't help you but ShopTo.Net dispatched my preordered PS3 copy today to be delivered tomorrow morning!

Blu-ray 'to bloom', now HD DVD's dead

Tim Lake
Happy

As a PS3 early adopter

I am already building a decent library of BD movies and have to say that the difference is totally worthwhile on a decent HD TV.

Phix8, blu-ray is primarily designed to hold high def movies so the extra space is needed for the extra resolution, however, BD writers are available and it is entirely possible to rip your DVD collection and re-burn it to fewer Blu-Ray disks.

Would you honestly re-buy Star-Trek at the same quality as DVD but on fewer disks?

DIY satellite TV installer shoots wife dead

Tim Lake
Coat

Guns don't kill people...

Americans do!

DAB: A very British failure

Tim Lake
Unhappy

Only just got one :(

My girlfriend just got me a nice little DAB for £25 which is great. I loved listening to The Jazz but it's being shut down. Planet Rock is great but it's being shut down and now, the whole damn thing might be killed off?!

If DAB radios had been available for the money we paid for mine about 1 year or so agao, uptake would have been much higher.

Nokia starts tagging photos

Tim Lake
Thumb Up

Memory issues

"like all good Symbian apps it shuts itself down when memory is low"

This is becoming much less of a problem since Symbian started using demand paging. For example, the latest N95 (classic) firmware, v20, includes demand paging and this allows the location tagger to run alongside several other background apps and the camera without running out of memory.

Boffin stacks 16 PS3s to simulate black hole collisions

Tim Lake

@ Andrew

Call Of Duty 4, Burnout Paradise, Gran Turismo Prologue, Uncharted, Singstar, Resistance.

These are some of the decent games you have clearly missed. Maybe they were on a shelf too high for your little troll arms

Sony talks up Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3

Tim Lake
Paris Hilton

Problem with theming a console...

...is that after a few years your console will look particularly outdated. If I was gonna get one, i'd want it themed timelessly, maybe Paris-home-movie theme :)

Physicists fire up strontium atomic clock

Tim Lake

When do they start making watches?

And handing them out to public transport drivers

Pod slurping licks a*se antlers to claim Oz word of the year

Tim Lake
Unhappy

Ok and...

What the effing heck do these mean?

Teen-mum flick gets filmgoers hungry for hamburger phone

Tim Lake
Flame

@Lorum Ipsum

Did you read the actual article?

"why people would want to talk into something that’s been around for decades, rather than a state of the art wireless Dect handset is beyond us"

We all know it's been around for years, thats kind of the point

HD DVD fights back in the US

Tim Lake

Why not PS3?

I don't really see how they can just 'not count' the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player. The fact of the matter is that thousands more BDs are selling because people have a PS3 to watch them on. OK, so PS3 owners aren't the main HD format buyers at the moment, but most have at least one or two and it's a fair bet that their decision on which format will follow the fact they already have a player now.

Bank turns London man into RFID-enabled guinea pig

Tim Lake
Thumb Down

How hard is it to type in your PIN

It takes seconds to do so why the need for this new system anyway? It seems like they are solving a problem that doesn't really exist but introducing ones that do along the way!

Lindsay Lohan packed off to morgue

Tim Lake
Go

Please, morgue workers...

I urge one of you to lie under a sheet and jump up when she is wheeling your trolley along.

Why do women get plastered at fancy dress parties?

Tim Lake
Go

So who is coming to my 'fantasy ball'

Ladies get in free and there will be ample booze :)

German air passenger quaffs litre of vodka

Tim Lake
Go

I love the idea of this

You can just picture his total defiance, making a big scene of downing the bottle and immediately realising he is heading for air passanger martyrdom

Wii grasses up cheating wife

Tim Lake
Heart

Gaming gods help us!

The comments on this post have sapped just about the last of the faith I had in humanity. Comments like "Cheating is a standard and predictable part of human sexuality" and "To be fair he's got off lightly" really wear at your soul. Where the munificence of Love?

Where is the shotgun

CompuServe France headed for the knacker's yard

Tim Lake
Heart

I remember my old modem

14,400 and bigger than Bill Gates' wallet, chugging away so I could Go Compuserve. It's funny, I still have my wincim and mosaic floppies... shame i no longer have a floppy drive!

Prosecutor sets date for Pirate Bay showdown

Tim Lake
Thumb Up

Nice to see people sticking up for themselves

As jeremy said above, these companies just throw lawyers and threats at the 'small time' site admins in the hope they'll close it out of fear but it's refreshing to go on PB and see, not only a site that is ballsy enough to stay running but knowledgable enough to say 'We know the law, we have community support and we will see you in court if you can face the humiliation in which that will result, bring it on!'

I say, swill down yer grog and give a hearty Arrr to the good ship PirateBay

BitTorrent site Demonoid.com downed by Canadian record industry

Tim Lake

@Anonymous who listed Canadian artists

Hmm:

Neil Young - Not so young anymore

Joni Mitchell - A parking lot would have aliviated congestion on the outskirts of paradise!

Barenaked Ladies - No one outside Canada even knows they are still going

The Tragically Hip, Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, Jeff Healey, Gordon Lightfoot, Pat Travers, Diana Krall - Who?

k.d lang - Ok, that's 1

Rufus Wainwright - I already have anything good he will ever do

the Rheostatics - Who?

Crash Test Dummies - I already have that song they did :)

Cowboy Junkies - Another.. who

Avril Lavigne - Whiney, troublemaker. Canada can keep her

Alanis Morissette - Being bitter for 20 years isn't a music career.

Shania Twain - I don't do line dancing

Nelly Furtado - Ok that's 2

Celine Dion - You ARE joking?!

Bachman Turner Overdrive - If we ain't seen nothing yet, when will we?

So that's 2 canadian artists I really give 2 wotsits about!

Teflon top cop evades justice, responsibility

Tim Lake
Happy

I, for one, am glad Blair isn't quitting

I am fed up with the scapegoat attitude this country has developed. It happens in politics, law and even sport. If one person is clarly responsible then, of course, punish them but when no-one can be clearly blamed we just go to the top and tell them to take the blame and walk away when really we should be saying "Look, the buck stops with you, you better sort this mess out and don't let it happen again". They are in the best position to implement effective changes anyway rather than some newcomer who just does a load of drastic crap so it looks like he is 'shaking up the system' (another overused buzz-phrase I hate) when all he ends up changing are the bits that actuallly worked.

Royal Navy presses IT Crowd for nuclear missile 'servers'

Tim Lake

All the geeks

Oh yes, all the tech nerds are lauging into their yoghurts about this one. "Look at the stupid navy man, I'm much smarter", yeah just a shame you too much of a coward to risk your life defending your country! I'm pretty sure he isn't just rebooting some vital missile control system, it is probably a windows box they keep running so bored sailors can play hearts while on downtime... Maybe get in some practice on Minesweeper :P

TV-Links man: 'I'm no master criminal'

Tim Lake

@ Rik

No, compiling lists of expensive goods and when the owners are out is not illegal either (except maybe on grounds of privacy etc).

Hackers hit back at iPhone update

Tim Lake

@leslie: The fact you fail to grasp...

Updating is not optional. Once the update is pushed onto iTunes you have to install it on the phone before you can use it to copy music again. Sure you could skip the update but you would be stuck with the same songs for evermore!

Halo 3 UK launch fails to fire

Tim Lake

BBC report on Halo 3... or is it Killzone 2!

For those who haven't seen out glorious BBC in a gigantic cock up:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bXicqLahfEk

For those less geeky than myself, the game footage they show (startinon the screen outside the Odeon) is in fact, the cinematic trailer of Killzone 2 for PS3!

Whoops!

Sony poo-poos £299 PS3 claims

Tim Lake

Maybe true but strange

The essential story may be true, but I agree with the author that the rumoured cuts seem strange. The controllers are charged through USB, external hard drives/keys etc are usable through them and future devices such as the new Playstation Eye will use USB as well.

Also, the backward compatibility is software in Europe (unlike in Japan and the US where actual PS2 hardware is used) so there is no saving to make there. If they were suggesting a smaller harddrive and no card slots (like the 20gb model that was orignally planned for launch in Europe) then it might make sense but I can't see anywhere else they can make much of a saving in production costs.

Of course, a straight reduction on the existing model is still in the frame.

Facebook gags verbal dissent group

Tim Lake

Fuss over nothing?

I suspect this is a fault rather than a deliberate attempt to 'quash the uprising'. There are plenty of far more contraversial groups on Facebook and I can't see any good reason why they'd ban this one without warning.

I am/was a member of that group which seems formed out of a good idea. I hope they haven't just dropped a bollock and wiped the group by accident but suspect that if they have, it may be rather less embarassing to hide behind their terms of use.

Mac, Linux BBC iPlayers in the offing, says PM

Tim Lake

Not just Windows

It's not even that the player is only compatible with Windows, because it doesn't work with Vista or anything prior to Win2k. That means it is effectively 2000 and XP only! Oh except all those fee paying viewers who are running server 2003 :)

Facebook was my idea, says yet another ex-Harvard student

Tim Lake

Oh come on!

I'm sure every great succesful idea has taken influence, suggestion etc from many sources. Whether or not the core idea is yours, the person who made it available to the market is the one who get the money. It has always been this way and always will be. Pissing and moaning that they beat you to it will not win favour... or court cases

Battle of the stats: Blu-ray beats HD DVD

Tim Lake

HD DVD has it all to do

I am a PS3 owner so I have started to pick up the odd blu-ray release. If I didn't have the PS3, or if it didn't have a blu-ray drive, I wouln't be looking to upgrade to an HD player of any kind for a year or so at least. I think the vast majority of households are happy with DVD for the time being and very few people are actually seeking to upgrade. Most PS3 owners are, like me, likely to start looking to buy movies on blu-ray since they already have a player and might as well use it. HD-DVD has to start at step one, convince people to upgrade, THEN convince them to buy an HD-DVD player

Trade unions demand right to Facebook

Tim Lake

As a big facebooker but also network supporter...

There is no reason to allow facebook at work! We recently blocked it after a report on our internet traffic showed far too much going to and from facebook at all times of the working day. The TUC have said staff should be trusted to only access it during breaks but the simple fact is, they can't! I use it when I get home which is where this kind of social internet use belongs.

I would like to hear someone in the TUC debate this with my Network infrastructure manager!