Posts by phr0g

Re: Just go Linux "Take my Linux ... please!"

I always find this attitude slightly bemusing.

I am a long-time developer (originally on Unix mini-computers, and recently in the Windows and Linux environments for different parts of our workflow). I have used Unix, Linux, Windows, MacOS throughout the years and whilst I have zero choice at work, I do at home.

I have tried to live with Linux. I had YellowDog on the original PS3 as well as Ubuntu, Mint etc on my desktop.

However, when it comes down to it, I do prefer Windows. I know how to script, and I know how to use command line tools, but in the end, Windows is easier.

Not to mention that I am a gamer, I have a subscription to Photoshop and Lightroom and use Office365 (mainly for the 5 Terrabytes/5 users I get for the yearly subscription (which makes it by far the cheapest cloud-storage option).

I also use a Lenovo Yoga 2 pro as my home laptop, which plays very nicely with Win 10, especially when I use it in tablet mode. I have tried to find a decent Linux distro that comes close for tablet useage, but they are miles away...

As for the general, non-IT public, Windows (or MacOS) makes for a far better experience than Linux for simple ease-of-use reasons.

My PC has "Please activate windows" this morning. Hopefully they will sort out the problem soon, but it doesn't seem to be stopping me from doing anything.

Re: It's not for me then...

You should go back to Pink FIsh or whatever asylum of "golden eared" snake-oil consumers you come from.

Not heard such a crock of shit for quite a while. Let me guess, you think vinyl sounds better too?

"I'd rather listen to Petty/Young recorded on a 1970s portable mono tape recorder in terrible quality than much of today's garbage written and recorded on an iPad by someone who classifies their music as "grime"."

And there is the beauty of subjectivity. I love the classics (and much classical), I also enjoy much modern music.

I regularly listen to The Stones, Beatles, Petty, Young (although his nonsense promoting the dubious merits of HD music have irritated me beyond belief), I also love many modern bands, artists and even electronic music written and composed on laptops (or possibly even tablets).

What makes music good or bad? Some of the worst music in my ears is self-gratification style jazz blowouts, or hyper-difficult and hyper-unlistenable guitar solos. A huge amount of talent and not (in my ears) a huge amount of fun (Much like the recent world-record of a high A hit by Audrey Luna).

You want modern music with the soul of your examples? Try Ray LaMontagne, Gregory Alan Isakov, Elbow, First Aid Kit, London Grammar, to name a few off the top of my head. Take a listen to Radio Paradise.

But don't disregard modern pop, rock or anything, because YOU don't like it. Many do.

Re: A certain bias, there

Correct, kind of. But that 8 hours assumes you drank all 4 pints at once.

units of alcohol is about strength % * volume (in litres)

So a metric pint (half litre) of 4% beer is 2 units.

If you begin at at fairly normal 20:00, drink 4 pints between then and 00:00, that's already 2 of the pints gone from the system, the next 2 by 02:00. Driving to work the next day at 08:00 won't be an issue.

(This is a rough estimate as it takes some time for your liver to start processing the alcohol obv.)

In the UK, the drink driving limit, roughly, for a 12 stone man, is around 4 units, so you would unlikely be over the limit if you waited an hour or so after midnight and then drove (but I wouldn't recommend risking it).

Re: If only it had...

"Also, all the people wanging on about battery life - the iPhone 7 has a 14 hour talk time and the S8 20 hours compared to the 6.5 quoted here. It only has a long battery life IF YOU DON'T USE IT FOR VOICE! and voice is its only feature..."

...and as you say, people don't use voice that much these days, but there are times when it is necessary, even critical. So the "total" talk time is not relevant. What is is whether it still has any left. So standby time is of far more use.

I'm not even sure there's a point in specifying talk-time for a smart-phone. Video playback time,would be more useful.

I'd be tempted to get one as a car-glovebox phone, but it's way too expensive. A Nokia 105 is under £20

Re: Re Battery Life: Save me From Electro-pedants!

Better still. I was forced to revert back to my old Nokia 1020 because the Moto X Play I'd been using got, erm dropped. The Nokia hadn't been used for almost a year, and was, of course, switched off.

As I took it out of the "old phones drawer" I must have pressed the on button, as when I finally had it in my hands, it was on. With power (about 10%). The time since last charge and estimated time remaining was insane.

So, a switched off phone will last a year. Impressive huh?

Re: @phrog

"At any rate, if the file(s) you have were examples of that, the experiment proves nothing except (possibly) that upscaled CD audio is little better than regular quality. And even that's assuming the test was experimentally sound."

No, I specifically chose music that was 1. Recommended to me by "audiophiles" and 2. Examples of "demo" HD music that was being used as "advertisement" of the wares of the particular, very respectable purveyor of quality music.

Re: "unlimited content for kids aged 3 to 8 at a cost of $2.99 per youngster"

I would imagine that would be "other devices connected on a different account"?

Re: oh, ffs

A small orange weighs the same as my Android phone yet costs 1000x less...Your point is?

Re: Lowercase keyboard?

Quite different. I imagine most people rarely use the caps lock on a real keyboard (except Eadon), rather they simply press shift at the same time therefore it is rather difficult to not realise you're typing in uppercase, whereas on a screen keyboard most will indeed press caps lock.

It is very useful to see what is being typed. And more to the point, it's possible so why not? Or at least have a choice.

I have an HTC One X and an iPhone 5. The HTC keyboard is a masterpiece in comparison to one on iOS. And what's more, I can change it to any number of other keyboards.

Re: That is becasue they offer all their machine pre downgraded to Windows 7 from Windows 8.

We only buy Lenovo. And strangely enough they come with Windows 7. And immediately get upgraded to 8 and Office 2013.

It's a shame they are 1920x1080 now mind you. That sucks.

Re: Not surprising

"Be honest here, do you really have a choice?"

-

Personally, no, but of course we could leave the systems on Win7 of course, but then Win 8 brings with it the advantages of native Hyper-V support.

All work is done on VMs sitting on our SSD drives which in turn are running various Windows Server versions.

But either way I have Win8 on both my laptop and desktop at home. On one I am testing Classic Shell, but it makes little difference to be honest, apart from slowing down the access to certain functions.

Re: Windows 8 destroyed the PC>

"No, it didn't, hasn't and won't."

Totally agree.

My desktop is ancient...upgraded bit by bit every year or so.

My laptop is 30 months old, but an i7 with a fast GPU (Asus G73). That will last at least another couple of years.

PCs and laptops have peaked. They don't need to be any more powerful. They have batteries that can be replaced.

Slabs on the other hand mostly don't have a replaceable battery (which WILL die) and a small amount of storage and memory. They are in their infancy and improving hugely all the time.

Re: Same article?

Actually I much prefer my HTC One X to vanilla Android. It's nice to have choice. And free launchers on the market will give any handset a stock flavour...Nova, ADW, etc.

On the other hand I hate my iPhone 5 UI. The keyboard is too fiddly for my fingers and I can't change it. ALL the apps must appear on the homescreens which I can't change and I curse every time I want to sent some tunes to it from the "wrong" PC.

Android UE is 10x iPhone imo.

CD will give perfect playback of anything in the 0 to 22 KHz range (Nyquists theorum)

Anything more is inaudible.

SACD is only useful for surround encoded music, HD music is only useful for making money from ignorant audiophiles.

(Many SACDs and HD albums DO sound better, but because they have been mastered better, without nasty compression clipping the peaks - The same could be done to the CD, but then they would struggle to charge £20 for it.)

As for MP3 at 320 KBps. It's pretty much transparent to the CD, and perfectly good.

By the way, Spotify use the Ogg codec anyway, which is even better.

"I think you guys should take this more seriously - there's a lot you can do with one bit. Or is there? (Answer Y or N)"

My answer would be "YN"

Re: Dunno, really.

What's an Offcice?

Re: "there are other options"

"Lack of familiarity". Ha, more like when you Google for help on something you get a page full of Unix commands to execute. User friendly Linux isn't.