* Posts by Slim

31 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Sep 2007

Orbital ATK launches another Cygnus without anything blowing up

Slim

Re: Explodey...

"In any case, in view of the modifications and refurbishment undertaken by Aerojet, the AJ-26 was regarded as a U.S. motor. Until they broke it, at which point it became a Russian one again."

So just like Andy Murray, when he's doing well he's British otherwise he's Scottish.

Renault unveils mini-SUV equipped with a QUADCOPTER DRONE

Slim

Re: Fred Flintstone

My thoughts exactly, Renault are not exactly known for their reliable electronics, or infact reliability at all. Also the fact they are making a car with more moving parts then necessary, means they'll have more parts to go wrong,

For Windows guest - KVM or XEN and which distro for host?

Slim

Specifics

When you say you want to be able to play games on the Windows side of things, is there any chance you could give an example of the sorts of games being played, and how well (graphically,) do you want to run them?

Also how big of a space have you got for the computer? If you do decide to go down the two computer route, how about this case? http://www.mountainmods.com/u2-ufo-duality-mirror-black-powder-coat-solid-top-p-390.html

Would running Windows as the host with VMware being able to allocate physical memory and processors negate the issue you have with Windows taking resources away from the Linux install?

Gnome cofounder: Desktop Linux is a CHERNOBYL of FAIL

Slim
Childcatcher

Re: Huh.

The native younglings in Blighty are currently forced to sit SAT's at 7, 11 and 14. They're pronounced sat, not S.A.T. and are more to do with seeing where the younglings are for their age rather then if they are good enough for college.

British armed forces get first new pistol since World War II

Slim

Re: The point is not always to kill

Not even Robocop was stupid enough to use a "DEAGLE", his was a modified 9mm Beretta 93R, called the "Auto 9". It was basically a Beretta 93R with a bigger magazine and longer barrel with "some extra metal on the end" to make it a bit more mean.

Japan Airlines to serve KFC on Christmas flights

Slim

Re: "topping it off with special mayonnaise"

I'd hope to be tossed off IN the plane for the sort of prices airlines charge lately.

Slim
Coat

Really?

"and topping it off with special mayonnaise" any excuse to join the Mile High Club.

Hands on with BB10: Strokey dokey

Slim

The phone looks a bit too square

This patent lawsuit stuff is getting silly!

Analyst warns BlackBerry 10 won't be out until March

Slim
Gimp

Really? again RIM?

The worst thing RIM could have done is announced OS10 over a year before it was ready. They made the same mistake with OS7 in which it took 18 months from them having a Apple like announcement/press conference to the general public, through to getting the first OS7 phone on the shelves.

People who are fans of Blackberry might not wait until March or later for the next generation of Blackberry's to be released. As someone who's used a self confessed Blackberry fanboi for 5 years now, my phone contract is up in December and i'm looking towards Android because I can't see OS10 being worth the wait, nevermind OS10 won't be compatible with my current Blackberry and the new handsets will be behind the curve before they are even released.

To survive and to stop making themselves look like total dipsticks, they need to follow Apple in the sense that they don't announce something, unless it's ready to go the next day.

Perth porkfest crowned ULTIMATE BACON SARNIE

Slim
Paris Hilton

You're not the only one!

Paris because she loves a sausage fest too.

Guardian's Robin Hood plan: Steal from everyone to give to us

Slim

The King is dead. Long live the King.

The thing that certain newspapers have yet to realise is that unless you’re willing to offer daily "celebrity" gossip or tits, your printing days are numbered. Let’s be honest, the only "newspapers" that still sell sufficiently are glorified daily versions of magazines like Hello or FMH.

I'd happily say that the majority of the people, who want to be kept up to date on what's going on around the world, are no longer satisfied with reading information that's 6 hours (at least) out of date. I mean it's called NEWs for a reason; if you want the information, you’ll want the latest information. Until the invention of news channels on TV and the internet, daily printed news was the best way to access the latest information on a particular subject/event, whereas now it is possible to get information on the same events instantly.

The newspapers need to focus less on the paper part of their business and more on the news part of it. Once they do that and learn that a media company in the 21st century, needs to be self-sufficient on the internet, otherwise they’ll crash and burn like the rest of them.

Ultimate bacon sarnie scrap starts to sizzle

Slim
Thumb Down

Re: Spot the Guardian reader

While I can see this being a very nice sandwich with bacon in it, this is not a bacon sandwich.

A load of Tosh: External hard drives the new 'personal clouds'

Slim
Megaphone

Bullsh*t Bingo

Am I the only person who's sick of everything lately having the word "Cloud" in it's name or in the product description? It's the latest buzzword (Synergy anyone?) and I wish it'd sod off!

Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think

Slim

Re: Biggest thing my cat ever brought in...?

Mine has once brought in a hedgehog, we were picking the spines out of his face for days afterwards but he looked very pleased with his kill.

Although lately he's been picking fights with foxes, don't know if he's mental or suicidal.

Slim
Devil

Re: Do you find...

Mine usually leaves the head, at least once a week i'll wake up to find the outhouse floor has several severed mouse heads staring at me, I swear he lines them up on purpose to face the door.

Amazon to bash down Google, Apple with SIX new tablets - report

Slim

Re: What puzzles me

"Is why anyone would buy anything, any time, which ties you to one particular retailer."

Yes the Fire is designed to be used with the Amazon’s own multimedia and application stores, and it’s default configuration is to use these and only these, but In the grand scheme of things, Amazon doesn’t tie you down as much as you presume. (I’m taking a guess here that you don’t own a fire or have probably never used one for a long period of time.) To the extent that 8 months of having my Fire, I have never installed any applications via the Amazon Application store.

Unlike the Apple devices where you have a fairly complex route to being able to install any applications that are not from Apple, Amazon have made a tick box. Tick it and the Fire will allow you to install whatever from where ever. Granted it takes a bit of jiggery-pokery (all on the device itself, not on a connected machine) to get the Google application store installed, but it does work.

Like Apple, Amazon have realised that the majority of the customer base is happy to be spoon fed content and are more than willing to give it to them. Unlike Apple, Amazon have realised that some of its client base will want to shop around and not eat from the spoon Amazon are holding out, so they’ve made it easy for those people to do that. Granted it’s not as free and easy as native Android but it’s so drastic that people used to Native, wouldn’t be lost on a Fire.

Nokia v Apple nanoSIM format war: Victor will be named next month

Slim
FAIL

Waste of time, money and effort

Why do we even need smaller SIM cards anyway?

Bring-your-own-mobe pilot for BlackBerry-shunning council bods

Slim

Where to start?

As Crisp said, the fact that council employee's will be walking around with tax payers information on their own personal devices, which as much security as active sync can now give, you can't get it to tell the device to block USB access to every computer but the office machines.

Then there are the unhappy council workers, which realise later rather then sooner that as part of this BYOD, they probably won't be compensated for their own personal phones having to download all their emails and attachments.

To be honest, I don't think any the people who complained about wanting to use their own personal phones for their work emails have realised that it's a bad idea for a bigger reason. By having their work emails connected to their own phones, this means they will make themselves pretty much obtainable 24/7. Yes, alright you can turn your phone off when you leave work...but then what's the point of having a personal phone that you only use in work time? How many people will actually know/be bothered to turn their emails off after 5pm? You might not respond to your emails after 5pm but how many people read their emails when they first come in, just to see if it was something important you were waiting for?

Personally, I think the work phone is the way to go. It's the perfect way of stepping away from your work life and getting on with your personal life because you can turn it off and put it in a draw when you’re on holiday!

Anyone who complains that having to "lug around two mobiles" is a difficult task, man up and stop buying stupid clothes without pockets for work clothes. Phones are not that big and do not weight that much, I’m not asking you to carry around a lead brick in your pocket.

Finally for those who complain that they'd rather have an android or an iphone instead of a blackberry, grow up and be thankful that you've even been given phone for work. My company gave my an iphone (when I’d have rather had a can with a bit of string on the end) but just get over it and work with what your given.

RIM launches five BlackBerry smarties

Slim

@Mike 32

RIM has stated there is no support for legacy devices and BB7 as the minimum specs for BB7 are too high for older devices.

Sadly you'll have to upgrade your device if you want to use OS7 (or OS6 SP1 as it's also known!) It seems RIM doesn’t mind abusing parts of their customer base, probably not the best move in their current situation.

I'm intrigued by the Torch without a keyboard, it's very unusual for RIM to make a Blackberry without a physical keyboard and I’m not sure if I like it or not.

Council busts breast milk ice cream parlour

Slim
Alert

Re:Amused vegan is amused.

This raises another question, is breast milk vegan friendly?

RIM boss: 'Our PlayBook shames the You Know What'

Slim
Alert

Can't we all just get along?

Well it's very clear where most of you lot all stand with your tastes in hardware/software vendors. I am the first to admit that I am a fairly dedicated Blackberry user and it’s a huge chunk of my job. I DO however appreciate Apples hardware and some of its devices. I do think some people have overlooked a few things with the Playbook though and are letting rivalries get in the way.

I think RIM and HP have made a strong decision with the OS of their tablets. Instead of trying to add functionality to a phone OS, they've started from scratch to make a OS just for tablets and then further down the line, disable whets not needed to move it onto a phone. Yes OS6 on the playbook meant it would have been out by now but how buggy would it have really been. Not that the iOS is that bad but at times it does feel rushed. Although no where near as bad as W7P that feels very rushed and lacking at times.

Yes, it has taken them a very long time to go from initial announcement to actually selling them, as long as the time has been taken to iron out any issues with the OS, I for one would not mind waiting a few months more to have a near faultless device as possible. I mean you wouldn’t be happy if you brought a car if the engine kept on cutting out every time you tried to take a left hand turn, at 20mph on a Tuesday would you? Although I do agree that if it's not out by the end of April, 9 months from announcement to sale is more then pushing their luck.

RIM say that it's big feature is "it supports real-time multitasking with symmetric multiprocessing," however have you guys even looked at the hands on reviews and videos of how the play book handles multitasking of two HD videos being shown on the same screen at once with comparative ease? I’ve read from a hardened apple fan who was taken aback from RIM's offering. Though that's just it's party trick to be fair, the fact that companies that want a highly secure mobile device can get a Playbook and connect it into an existing BES server. There is a reason why Apple don’t get threatened with being banned in a country because their devices are too secure for the local governments own liking.

Honestly though, I don’t think the Playbook will be an "iPad killer" much in the same way no blackberry will ever be an "iPhone killer". They are chalk and cheese, the playbook will take a good portion out of the tablet market this year but they will be mostly taking it from a part of the market that’s not accessible for the iPad, The medium/large scale businesses and government departments. Just like the iPad will strive ahead in the personal and small business markets.

BlackBerry boss renews disdain for Steve Jobs

Slim
Alert

I think the point has well and truely been missed on this one

As someone who does not hide his distaste for all things jobsian, I WILL admit for the standard joe bloggs home user, having Native Apps can be more useful at times rather then having WebApps.

The thing most people have not really mentioned here is the fact that the Playbook is aimed at firstly at Enterprise users, with the general public as a bonus. The main reasons some of the Companies whom I help support are waiting for the Playbook before they even think about tablets, is very simple. The Blackberry Enterprise Server/BES.

As much as the MD's and CEO's I work with like the look of the iPad's, it has been asked numerous times, "Can we control them from a central location?" and they are usually disapointed when we say "no, not really". It is simply easier on an administration level for larger scale Companies to have a BES infrastructure, add the Playbooks into the servers controlled devices and off we go. Nevermind they can add their Blackberries into the same BES server as the Playbooks.

It has been an added bonus that with the Blackberries, the in house dev teams can just make a WebApp for something they have made in house and do not need to buy/use/train any software to get their apps to work on their mobile devices. Its even nicer that the same applies to the Playbooks.

So with very little effort a Dev can make a WebApp, we can load it into BES, download it to a device and we can either have said Web front end as a homepage or as a icon on the menu. That can be done with one Blackberry or 1000 Blackberries with very little more effort involved never mind it will be just as easy on the Playbooks.

(I will apologise if someone can prove me wrong here, slight ignorance with all things jobsian but) I cannot find a way to do the same thing with a Companies set of iPhones or iPads, I.e. roll out a change to the iphone home page to point towards a WebApp within the local infrastructure OR install a menu icon to them all at once, pointing towards the internal web server.

Forgetting the things that one Companies hardware and devices can do better then the others, that list is endless and will only spark more debate. The thing that will make the Playbook a success of any kind is that it can be administered from a central location. That's where RIM will always make its numbers until the day that Google or Apple decide to make their version of the BES.

Apple coughs to time zone problems

Slim
Grenade

Time to poke the Lion with a stick...

Is this where I mention that both my Blackberry and my Nokia updated their clocks, alarms and calendar entries, automatically and correctly?

Apple Hand Grenade, pull the pin and wait for the blast of hot air from the iFan's.

US war robots in Iraq 'turned guns' on fleshy comrades

Slim
Pirate

Well

Am i the only one who is not surprised by this at all???

Xbox Live account takeovers put users at risk

Slim

@Lou Gosselin

In standard networking 101 yes the MAC address of the object (pc, server, router etc) isn't sent through the network.

I have however found out (had a problem with the built in NIC in my 360 and got talking to one of the xbox live server tech's) that when the 360 logs onto the server for xbox live it not only sends the account details but also the MAC address of the xbox, Bios information and information from the actual game (presumably to connect to the correct server for said game.)

So in theory unless the "hackers" have managed to clone their MAC addresses or change their com chips fairly often they are not only traceable, but M$ can ban that MAC address from accessing xbox live.

Supposedly soon they will also be able to ban machines by their bios/serial numbers.

Still it doesn't do much for the security and stopping people having their accounts stolen

Virgin Media eases off bandwidth throttling

Slim

To all who reckon ADSL sucks

I pay Tiscali (only problems i have had is when stuff goes wrong, and thats been 3 times in 5 years!) about £15 for a supposed 2Mbs connection, ive never seen it drop below 8Mbs (anyone else in the leicester area get this?) They dont cap me in any way, so why would i want to even think about VM?

Mostly because the fact when i disconnected from Cable+Wireless all those years ago they sent Paddy and Shamus to disconnect me, and they managed to damage the streets cable service. Ive checked the website and the list of houses who can get cable ends at mine.

Nokia and O2 get on the tube

Slim
Thumb Up

@ Chris Mear

you my dear sir are a legend!

although i can see the point about having a "swiss army knife" phone which can do everything (email, music, video, camera, washing the dishes etc)

My only issue is that the phone companies are making phones that can do everything AND being the same size as a credit card and by making them this small, their batteries have about the same life span as lady mucca's career!

personally i like the fact my phone can do everything i want in one device. but i like it even more that its big enough to notice when you have missed trying to put it into your pocket on a friday night drinking sesh but its big enough to have a battery that could power a small village for a year!

Vodafone CEO sticks head in sand, goes 'La la la'

Slim
Alert

Billing 'relationships' my a**e

The single worst thing about VF is their "billing relationship".

If it wasnt the fact that they are the only service provider i can get a signal with at home i would have left them years ago. every year when my upgrade is due, i get offered a worse phone then the one i already have (honestly waiting for them to offer me the mobilephone that had its battery housed in a brief case!) i get told that my current tarrif no longer exits so i have to change to a "new" tarrif (but not one of the new ones that they are advertising you dont get any rewards for staying with VF only new customers do,) one which doesnt do what i want it to do. then they top it off by messing my billing/direct debit up and have managed to shread my credit rating into oblivion.

The funniest thing about all of this though, is that everyone i know who is with VF has had worse treatment then me!

arun can stick his billing up his relationship hole if he thinks no one can take his customers away from him. as soon as another service provider can get a signal, theres at least 8 customers who will be leaving when they do

419er needs $2k to buy portrait of Queen

Slim

stamps?

Well he wants a picture of the queen to studdy/work on (i dont think i want to know what he means by "work on") why dont we send him a stamp? it has the queens face on it! or even a 2p coin?

BOFH: Building changes

Slim

Feng Shui

one of my previous employers had the idea to move the whole of the main office (luckily IT was not part of the main office so we had total control of our room!)

we got the plans and started work 5pm friday, did the underfloor cables, tested the network points, made sure that the switches/cabling was mapped, put all the floor ports/plugs in. finished by saturday.

sunday the decorators/handymen came in to put the new false walls, desks, draws etc.

bank holiday monday we turn up to put the pc's in to find that the plans had changed and now the desks were in a totaly different position and the ceo's bit of crumpet i mean PA telling us we have to re-wire the whole office again.

the reason why the plans had changed? frigging Feng Shui. so we all spent most bank holiday monday in the pub, much to the delight of the ceo who walked in tuesday to find all the desks upside down!

Canada develops motorised parachute delivery bot

Slim

Re: What the batteries are for,

Or sex toys???

the only thing i cant understand though, is that they say it has been used for the us special service deep behind the front lines correct?

how is it that the enermy are able to shoot down hlicoptors with fully trained pilots and weapon operators, yet not able to shoot down a 6ft brick with a parachute attached to it?

its good and all but unless its gonna be made of stealth material and be able to dodge RPG's its not gonna last long really.