Posts by Tony Barnes 255 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Sep 2007
Why do BlackBerry insist on full QWERTY keyboards crammed into such small space?
I've tried several times to use one, each and every time wanted to smash it to pieces having been forced to try and hit the tiny, tiny keys with the tips of my thumbnails.
Completely pointless unless you are a women or have had a hand transplant operation, with a woman....
I've tried using it.
I've added the app to my phone.
I've had a look around at other people's pins.
Pros:
Nice polished presentation
Lots of pretty pictures
Cons:
Pictures are by and large 'stolen' content
What the fuck does it actually do?
Seriously, I browsed about, and as far as I can tell, it's Facebook photos/Tumblr/etc - doesn't bring anything actually useful/new to the table bar a pretty layout.
How on earth it can achieve such a potential level of funding is beyond crazy. I need to come up with a pointless but pretty Web 4.5 application* and make some quick millions from stupid investors.
Insane...
(*4.5 > 2.0 = more cash, obviously)
I've currently got a Desire HD (4.3" screen) and there is a lot of wiggle room in my hand to allow for a bigger phone. Up against my Mekon-esque head, it isn't large in the slightest.
I'm looking forward to owning something with a good sized screen on it, my dimensions happily cater for it. For those crying about it being too big, why not quit moaning and look at small phones that obvious fit your less than impressive size - there's plenty to choose from...
XBMC is IMO one of the best bits of free software out there, the Mac version is as good as expected, and makes watching my media PC files a breeze in the office on my Mac. Way more elegant than VLC, and whilst it probably doesn't do some of the weired stuff that VLC offers, it does a lot more with ragards to library/pretifying things.
Seriously, this sort of crap needs to stop. This is legislation for the sake of legislation.
If the figures in the article are close, or at least vagulely ballpark, £5m per person is a frankly stupid value placed on human life - there are already way too many of us anyway. Also I presume the costs will be passed on to drivers?
Oh, obviously this is before we open that Pandoras box that allowing the government to force a monitoring system into legislation generates. Surely this breaches some sort of civil right?
At the end of the day our roads are pretty damn safe. The biggest problem on our roads is, and always will be, people who lack the basic skills required to drive properly, conscientiously, and at a pace that actually equates to people getting where they need to. As and when the human aspect is removed from cars, safety will rocket - until of course a massive trojan distribution cause every car to go all 'Christine' one day....
Given the high end nature of this device, I can only assume high end users will be interested. How much of that 256GB is available after OS, Creative Suite, etc, are dumped on? Video editing is out of the window unless you specialise in 2 minute films, and inability to just hardwire into your network (unless you buy an adaptor, obviously) means relying on wi-fi for shunting stuff to/from a NAS box - assuming Apple let you do that, lmao!
Thanks, but no thanks. Some awesome additions, well, actually, mainly 1 - the screen, but far too many removals to warrant the cost. Does it even accept a regular SD card????
That said it will still sell like shit off a shovel because it's shiny and has an Apple logo on it. Sigh.
12meg requirement for say a 2hr movie would mean a roughly 10gig file, which isn't too bad for 1080, but not ideal - would mean your line running at full pelt the whole time, i.e. not hitting a bandwith throttle. So I assume then that they would hope to get a continuous real world of what, 60-70%? so about a 6-7gig file? That's starting to sound less good.
Completely agree guys - I highly doubt that Perfect 10 were upset with the amount of traffic Google would push their way. If they haven't set up stuff to not get indexed that they don't want indexing, that really is purely their fault. Plus thumbnails = preview = new customers, as far as I can tell they were trying to sue Google for making their business more profitable?!?!
Funnily we have a product called Perfect 10 at work, you'd be amazed how often the wrong website gets loaded up in error..!!
Work started on Sunday, they aim to be complete in 2014. Lets assume they've 'only' aiming for a 2 year turnaround - 1373 miles in 2 years, 1373 / (365 * 2) = 1.88 m/d
That's nearly 2 miles a day that will be completed. Underground, or over ground, that seems like a pretty damn impressive daily goal.
I'm guessing in the UK we still work in yards per day on a project such as this...?
Did I miss this in the article? How much carbon / cash is used / spent on the current water treatment system?
Surely the cost of a new system should be it's total cost minus the cost of the old system?
Also would be worth factoring in the business related costs associated with having the decking road dug up all the time....
Sounds like a great plan though
Those samples are pretty outstanding considering they have come from a phone, very impressive.
I have to say I am completely and utterly baffled by the logic behind cramming such an immense camera into what appears to be a great form factor, to then shackle it with such a comparatively low resolution screen to show off your lovely photos?
Very curious decision, I guess good screen + good camera would = bigger price point then hoped...
It's been many, many, many years since man first thought about how to capture an image - make a hole, have a recording media screen, an exposure time, etc - been stuck like that since the start. This is a crazy progression IMO, sure at the moment it might not be 'great', but jesus, this could just be looked at as a proof of concept. How long did it take digital cameras to lift themselves up to decent quality? Were they great from the start - were they hell!
The form factor will be the biggest issue - will increasing the resolution result in a thicker tube? Can this be rectified by making it collapsible? Etc. Beyond that obvious disavantage the potential advantages are huge. Every item in a photo in focus is surely a possibility with some software cleverness.
Great to see such innovation
So 'similar bodied' means what then? I took it to mean has a body, stands up. Nothing about either of those criteria that would by definition make things flammable...
To imply that in addition to having a similar outward appearance, they also have the same 'running gear' as life from earth is kinda daft, and was the point I was making.
Oh well...
Kinda makes massive assumptions regarding the ability of life to exist in what would be outwardly hostile environments to us. Even on earth places like hydrothermal vents would be a bitch for us, but many species thrive there.
It does bother me that humanity can be so unimaginative when it comes to thinking outside of the box with our definitions of 'life', pretty lame really. That close to the sun you could come up with a solar powered life form that could generate enough energy to ambulate, think 'Little Shop of Horrors' ;)
I've only got the 20meg line, but am pretty sure that it was a 75% throttle for all bar the top package holders previous to this? I really ought to find out when my fast upgrade is coming, as with just a 50% throttle, regardless of what I'm doing it will be giong quicker then it is right now.
Anyway, for those crying 'boo hoo' - I am a pretty heavy user, typically 2-300gb a month, which means most days I hit a limit for a bit, so I have to structure my downloads. I accept that my level of usage will cause network worries compared to your typical punter who just wants to have super fast access to small volumes of data. The amount of users who will use high levels of data - small, few percent. For those of you above demanding even higher levels, you're into the top percentile no doubt.
I'm not entirely sure how you can expect a pricing structure for a product like this to work over such a large distribution of usage? If you *need* that bandwidth permanently, why not go find a service that suits? It will cost you a shit load more than your Virgin line, that is for sure...
For those who already have gmail accounts (presumably large %age of folk on here), just use one of the programmes set up to use your Gmail storage as a drive - e.g. Gmail Drive - http://www.filehippo.com/download_gmail_drive/download/4c07cc67ebeb90d2b8cbbb28f7e4fcdf/
Very simple to use, you already have 7GB to play with (less emails), you can monitor spare space, you have the login info, presumably their email systems are encrypted, etc.
Once you've set it up on 1 pc, simply drop the installer into you gmail drive folder, then if you want to install on another, its easy enough to find - simply search your gmail for the file.
Admittedly, the official way of doing things will probably bit a bit more versatile and cross platform friendly!
As a manufacturer of tech that by and large takes existing ideas, and makes them more useful/accessible to the mainstream, this is a pretty transparent "please stop making us pay out for stuff we didn't invent" begging letter IMO.
Fair play for trying, but c'mon, get real!
Though these composites are gorgeous, they really aren't a patch on that shot from '72.
The banding from the ocean reflections is the main culprit in ruining things for me, makes it look like the earth isn't spherical. Plus it's perfect daylight everywhere - again, boom, not a sphere illuminated by a single lightsource anymore. So techincally impressive, initially attractive, but ultimately full of fail.
When its decomissioning time, they should strap some boosters to Hubble, bob her off a bit into the solar system, and get a nice close up from there - would be a lovely shot. Hmmm, would be nice to do fly-by's of the whole solar system...
Firstly, baffled as to how it would let water through but not helium through, given the size difference at play (only thought coming to mind is dipole nature of water?), but if this membrane does just let water through, and not anything else commonly found in drinking water, water purificaion options are surely about to get a boost?
That said distillery option is also pretty intriguing - I believe home distilleries were made illegal for their potential to go 'boom' - a flame/heat/pressure chamber free solution should therefore become viable...??
So you come up with a media sharing site, which is fairly transparently a copyrighting scam, rake in £100k+ a day in personal income (I believe that was the number quoted?), and get to play COD for about 8hrs a day....
He should really have lived somewhere he couldn't be extradited, as that isn't too shabby a lifestyle!!!
My BB experience from Virgin has been pretty damn good over the years - sure, it fails some times, but in most occasions it is up an running again before the day is out. Jumping up to 60meg from 20meg is going to be a god send - when throttling kicks in I will still be pootling along at pretty close to my previous max speed, top stuff.
As for the email, yeah, got both, my thought was it was more PR than error (someone else mentions this above) - but meh, who cares - so long as they actually do the upgrades all's good IMO!
That was quite a sweet deal for Apple at the time - shame their lawyers didn't look at the small print.
If they only bought non-chinese usage of the name, then they shouldn't use it in China, pretty simple really - and it's right that the company are sticking up for themselves, though I will admit, they are probably only doing it to access a great big settlement worth way more than they could have made from the brand.
...because as long as my internet connection is working, it would take an awful lot to drag me away from the multiplayer!!!
I am surprised that your review failed to spot that the matchmaking system is, as it stands, dire - 1 mate, sure, easy enough, 2, gets tricky to find a game, 3+ = complete nightmare - 10 minutes of looking at a crappy screen before you give up.
That said, the MP is without a doubt the most immersive experience yet on the 360 for me - the sheer scale of the maps, the interaction (blowing up) of the buildings/cover, the large selection of vehicles with their own strong/weak points - brilliant.
COD has a big problem on its hands...
Firstly, thanks for the nice childish intro, good work.
Secondly, you are missing a huge point here - the government is the one who is trying to pull the plug on benefits that the country cannot afford. The unions are trying to prevent this from happening. So you have a situation where the elected government are being controlled by a group of people who were not elected, well, at least not by the general public - all happening in a democracy...
I'm sorry, but that is completely retarded. It is giving public sector workers their cake 5 times over, some puke bags should they need to relieve themselves, and the general thumbs up to do whatever.
You only have to look at the stats for public vs private sector sick leave to see that the public sector take the piss (I have had less sick days in my last 9 years work than the average for 1 year in the NHS). In fact, I'd imagine, though admittedly don't have the stats, that all unionised jobs have the same mis-allignment with the rest of the workforce.
So yes, people are replaceable - and so they should be. Just because you got a job in the first place doesn't mean you deserve to keep it!
Look at what the unions are doing here in the UK - their response to an economy in dire straights is to try and cover the assses of their precious members at the cost of the entire country. I have no sympathy whatsoever for public sector workers who are suddenly looking at losing some of their absurdly OTT benefits (e.g. NHS sick pay - 6 months @ full salary, erm, seriously?!?) in lieu of the fact that the country cannot afford to keep paying such ridiculous expense for what is, at the end of the day, just someone doing their damn job. They aren't special...
In a non-unionised job, you get on with your job, and if you don't like the conditions, leave to find another, or take the employer to tribunal where it is decided if they acted fairly or not. People who hide behind a union who are demanding that they as an individual are treated 'fairly', are in fact demanding to be treated like royalty compared to their non-unionised counterparts.
Whilst I agree with the sentiment of the Unions, they represent a major fail with their current mentalities, and are a nasty reminder of less enlightened times
I use the API on a few sites, all with tediously low traffic compared to the threshold mentioned here. Given the data shunted, and processing cycles used, it's fair enough that folk should pay for it - weird that it has been free for so long if you ask me!!
As for maps loading on the page and 'robbing' your allowance when people don't use them, just stick in a placeholder image and use jQuery to replace it with the actual map if someone clicks on it - not the most daunting of tasks.
Unless I'm mistaken, board games include things like:
1. Cluedo - so presumably murdering folk with a spanner in the kitchen is ok
2. Operation - removing random bones and organs from your fellow person is just fine
3. Battleships - blowing the crap out of battleships, sure, why not
4. etc..
Also, Pac-Man - erm, look at what happens - you run around munching on stuff, hiding from ghosts, then when you eat something special, you get to chase down and eat the ghosts.
Sounds kinda like rioting to me.
Hooray for the faceless constable, clearly a fine addition to the boys in blue...
Honestly, nothing else has come close to this for me - remember firing the demo up on my dads work laptop as a kid, and getting giddy as hell! The only thing that bugged me was that they dropped the laser effect (it sort of blew out a load of pixels on a hit) from the full game, shoulda stayed.
Agree - android version would be immense, though possibly end up with me getting the sack for never working...
I think G+ is what Buzz should have been - that died a death for me after less than 2 hrs of bothering with it. G+ with its tight android integration is a complete win for me, and I'm looking forward to it taking a large slice of FB pie.
Facebook has been great to me, but I can't be arsed with it these days - bloated, slow, and full of crap I'm not interested in... no thanks!
I'm a bit confused - how can it possibly be cheaper to develop a proprietary media system of your own, than it is to license one that already exists?
I guess they have done the maths on it, but it feels wrong - unless they are predicting such massive sales that they can drive down the per unit cost?
Any better than that of the Vega?
Does it have Google Market or not? If not, how come it wasn't shouted at for not having it, like the Vega was?
Looks nice enough, though is £50 more than the Vega is currently priced at.
Don't forget the Vega scored a measly 65% - 80% would suggest that there are BIG improvements in this tab...
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