Posts by Edwin

whine whine whine

"I bought a PC, wanted a non-standard option and paid for it."

FFS - If you don't want Vista, and don't want to pay to have XP instead, buy a PC elsewhere

(for the record: I have two Vista installs and neither has caused me headache other than with my ancient SCSI card and a proprietary bit of software)

Wow - sensibility!

Great news! Although I know plenty of parents who would either:

* prefer to point the finger elsewhere (not that this would stop them doing so)

* happily teach their kids how to use torrents for massive copyright infringement

(disclaimer: I am a parent, and my kids are learning that they have to pay for their music/software/films, despite the fact that many of their friends do not seem to need to do so)

On the porn filter twit: if she pays for it, then that's fine.

Otherwise, no.

Is it just me

or is the adolescent bodily-function humour in these stories getting a touch old?

missing something here...

LHC... isn't that at CERN?

And didn't they invent the web?

As a BYPRODUCT of their core research?

But you're probably right. Money down the drain.

Idiot.

meeeeeeeeeeeeeeemories!

@Russ: actually, yes - I work from home 90% of the time, so many nines and good support are worth a premium. So I pay more for my 8Mbit line than most people for their 20Mbit line. But its been down only about 2 hours in 5 years, so I won't complain.

As for the back of AOL: will noone lament the passing of the AOLamer? And what about the classic numerical compuserve email addresses? It'll be the end of an era, to be sure...

Mine's the one with the 1200 baud VT102 dialup account details in the pocket

Funny

You'd think you'd find the most vehement arguments in IT in the classical areas:

Windows vs. Linux

AMD vs. Intel (vs. Cyrix vs. IDT/Centaur vs. Transmeta)

Apple vs. not-Apple

emacs vs. vi

big-endian vs. little-endian

coke vs. pepsi

But no. Some of the most vitriolic comments show up in the hard drive brand stories.

Guess it makes sense: HDD failure can *REALLY* hurt, whereas all the others just keep us employed...

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeez

@the first two anonymous cowards:

if you fail to understand why you shouldn't get too attached to the (free) service, but refuse to use a service that is funded by advertising (on the assumption that you won't pay for the service yourself) then you need a short sharp lesson in economics, preferably administered by cattle prod.

Hmmm

You know, it sounds very much like Spirit decided to take a few days off and not tell the boss where it was going.

And finding your orientation unexpected is quite normal when vacation and spirits mix...

Whining contractors

While I appreciate the need for contractors, I've never worked out why they complain when rates drop. Most contractors I know have swapped a steady job (e.g. 'regular employment') for higher income.

If they wanted the job security, they should have taken a job.

The whole point of contractors (and presumably the contractors are aware of this) is that you can hire/fire them at the drop of a hat, giving you a nice flexible workforce.

Geez

Must be a seriously naughty promotional vid

- youtube won't let me watch without registering with them...

So....

is it POP?

is it IMAP?

or has Google decided to

- create a new, better open standard?

- create a new proprietary standard?

I just don't see the point - I really don't.

Damndamndamndamndamn

You know, I really want to agree with the 'merkins.

I was in China a while ago and watched a Chinese government official slam Microsoft for crippling bootleg Windows installations. Boggles the mind if that's the official policy.

But how can I agree with a country that arrests the interweb gambling folk from Antigua despite WTO finding against the US? A country that consistently listens only to statements that conform to its world view? (kind of like my kids).

Maybe if the EU tackles China - then I'll agree.

The interim solutions concept

is interesting: charge up a series of seriously big capacitors that can then dump the required power to the car in 10 minutes.

Will be very popular until the first 'merkin pet/toddler/mother-in-law gets vaporised because they accidentally shorted the contacts...

@Ken

Power is, of course, measured in Ballmers per Jobses, with Ballmer providing the current (measured in units of office furniture) and Jobs providing the potential (measured in terms of iProducts shipments)

And 10l of low-pressure hydrogen per tank? That's a big car, methinks!

Not entirely Oprah's fault

Presumably, it's the publishers and the copyright holders who decide what format is used, not Oprah or Amazon.

I know Rowling won't publish any of her books in electronic format for fear of piracy, and many other books (particularly series, which are at their best in electronic format) are also not available, such as Patrick O'Brien and C.S. Lewis

It's mostly stupid anyway, since almost every popular book can be downloaded online, and many jurisdictions make it legal to have a copy of something you have a license for, so all the bootleg ebook editions of Potter and Aubrey on my Sony eReader are perfectly legit since I have the dead tree editions.

Shame I have to have so many dead trees in my house though.

Thoroughly depressing

particularly since parents & uncles happily stumped up cash as well

what were *they* thinking?

Strategic choice

Swap 2 A380s for some additional JSF orders?

Maths...

"That rating’s 90 for performance, 90 for novelty and 30 for the huge cost."

Unless you weight cost more than the other two, I arrive at:

(90+90+30=210)/3=70%

But I'd happily give it 90+80+10 since water cooling isn't that novel, in which case 60% still works...

Not Apple's fault?

"It's not really Apple's fault that users are losing data;"

Come on now - that's just silly. Simple, decent design would suggest that if I cancel my account, my devices are not able to synchronise anymore, rather than sync with /dev/nul

It's not often Apple gets things horribly wrong in the design department, but MobileMe sounds like a lemon from start to finish.

Cool!

The PC has come full circle!

Aside from the Compaq luggable, our first home computer was a TRS-80 offspring called the MC-10. Like the TRS-80 series, the Commodore 64/128s and a whole raft of contemporary systems, these were effectively keyboards with integrated computers and 'themed' peripherals.

Technically the Tandy 102 is even closer, since it also had an integrated display, but it didn't do TV out in any way...

Of course, you can't really compare the MC-10's 6803 with the Asus' Atom processor...

Silly question maybe

but how is biofuel low carbon? Presumably, we're still burning hydrocarbons, yes?

I've seen references to non-fossil-carbon biofuels, but presumably that's something different. Or is it?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Bubble 3.0?

I've used it, and while I think it works OK (not great, but OK), I somehow wonder how they're selling this as a multi-million dollar biz, especially if there are only 1.5M users, most of whom would probably not pay to use it...

Boo. Hiss.

This is stooping a bit low even for you, El Reg.

Don't do it again.

Typical

Customer doesn't like vendor's solution.

Customer modifies vendor's solution.

Customer's solution turns out to have some shortcomings.

Vendor expected to fix customer's broken solution.

Definitely some linkage to IT here...

Bollocks!

> The flexible display is ... the same E-Ink material .. used in Amazon's Kindle reader

Yes, although let's be honest: Sony was using it years earlier in their Librie.

> It suffers from a lack of contrast compared to desktop, notebook and smartphone display screens

Well, yes, but only if you let these displays have their backlights switched on, and even then I would argue an eInk display is more readable for long periods (less strain).

If you don't count the backlight, eInk wins by an enormous margin.

Clearly, HP's marketing droids are unsure what to do with this tech.

Clearly, El Reg didn't do their homework about real applications of eInk.

tsk tsk

Not a bad idea

You know, as a parent I'm not sure the idea is bad.

ESRB ratings are pretty simplistic, and what these guys have done is to try to weight the rating. Which is good.

It's a nice example of great idea, poor execution, but given their target demographic I'd wager that last qualification doesn't really matter.

Realistic pricing

ISPs selling a bandwidth on the assumption that not everyone will max out their line 100% of the time is a bad business model?

Is this the new freetard argument?

The ISPs need a pricing model, and I grant that their pricing model is probably somewhat out of date.

Here's my proposal for a new ISP that uses fair pricing:

we take the ISP's maximum available bandwidth and allocate the costs (plus a reasonable margin) as follows:

For every 24h period:

* Each user is billed proportionally for the bandwidth they actually use

* For unused bandwidth: each user is billed proportionally according to the bandwidth they *did* use (since they *could* have wanted to use it).

This is clearly much fairer than the current system (ISP selling bandwidth on the basis of a predictive model) and it only *appears* that you're paying for your bandwidth twice.

Paytards FTW!!

Clearly it's

'the blogosphere'

Because the notion that any idiot with a keyboard has something worthwhile to say is an excellent argument against democracy.

toothless? hardly

While the ASA may not be able to enforce anything, the risk to the advertising industry is that if they don't self-regulate, then the gov't will do it for them.

So by and large the advertising agencies will comply - they don't really have a choice.

it's friday

....but who would check security clearance of the staff employed to security clearance of the staff employed to check security clearances?

Clearly, it's turtles all the way down

Blogger=Press?

"mostly, political blogs are written by people with disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy."

Which, given that this is at least an arguable definition of what the press ought to do"

Since when are bloggers press?

I mean, the mean 'level' of journalism is low enough already - must it go down further?

FFS - bloggers are NOT press!

Ergonomics?

If my kids' school suggested they read textbooks on their smartphone or on a computer, I'd find another school PDQ. Kids' bodies are not made for that sort of abuse!

The way to go here is ebook readers, and in fact is exactly what the Iliad (though indeed veeeeeeeeeeery expensive) was designed for.

Too bad such great ideas often see such crap implementation.

What is it with pizza peddlers?

One of the Dutch chains regularly gets flack for their foul language in advertising.

Admittedly, it's foul ENGLISH language, which (oddly enough) seems perfectly acceptable over here (to my son's great chagrin, 'cause he's 7 and not allowed to say the words the other kids say)

What about other countries?

Black helicopters?

To start with, if the complainers come from West Virginia, I think we can draw some conclusions already (PEBKAC...)

Secondly, the big question is not whether e-voting should be used but how much we're willing to pay to NOT use it.

Bear in mind the time delays (Media issue) and expense (manual counting) of the pencil-and-paper process.

Ultimately, most 'anti-evoting machines' stories seem to rely on someone going to inordinate lengths to either change a vote or eavesdrop on a voter. Neither strikes me as a serious issue other than in an academic environment.

As Georg W proved, there are easier ways to steal an electrion.

@Chad H.

I'm a huge supporter of bricks-and-mortar stores, but your argument flies in the face of software sales (especially for smallish markets) in the internet age (last 10-15 years):

In most cases, developers can *choose* whether they want to sell their product direct (thus keeping more of the sales) or to leverage the software-sales equivalent of a shopping mall: online stores that specialise in the sale of software, thus gaining lots more exposure to the target market at the cost of some percentage of sales.

Apple's novel approach is to use the pre-internet age sales model in the internet age, enforced through hardware lock-in.

It will work as long as consumers don't care - and that can be quite a long time.

Or, of course, until someone files suit against apple for anti-competitive behaviour...

Excellent!

I think this is one of the most concise analyses of Apple's iPhone business model to date.

Sadly, it doesn't pander to my deep need to bash Steve Jobs (hasn't done anything worthwhile since NeXT, etc) or spend time bashing the iPhone's ((in)significant) shortcomings, but rumour has it that that's what good journalism is all about.

Well done!

Truly innovative

Assuming that we're still talking about business jets here, would be to take the remote pilot concept a step further and allow the *passengers* to 'travel remotely', using cameras and some form of glass walls to show people to each other in real-time, mimicking face-to-face meetings for people thousands of miles apart.

THAT would be innovative.

Lost sales

I have to say Nintendo is hiding behind some pretty shaky arguments there.

We'd picked the DS partly 'cause it's region-free. Guess we'll be buying a different platform next time. Too bad - we're collecting quite a few games for it over at my house and my wife just picked up our second console on a trip to San Jose.

Is this really region lock-down or is it more pricing differential lock-in?

*shudder*

The thing I like about my PRS-500 is the fact that it's compact. This abomination seems to be wasting nearly 50% of its surface area... Think I'll pick up the PRS-700 when the price hits reasonable levels.

@Ben - of course, you could always buy from ebook retailers *other* than Amazon... Project Gutenberg has loads to read for free anyway.

...and they pay traders big bucks WHY exactly?

Astonishing that rumour on a public forum can wipe out millions and millions of shareholder value, especially since it's the same thing that's killed half the banks that have been in the news the past four months.

When are the traders, journos and politicians gonna learn to VERIFY THEIR SOURCES (elsewhere than wikipedia, I mean) and be held accountable for their actions?

Oh wait - if they had a brain, they'd have a *real* job.

Any trader dumping Apple stock this morning should be fired.

(with apologies to El Reg for the sweeping generalisation above)

Fab...

But it won't get Apple-accreditation unless Steve gets 50% of the course proceeds and 50% of the sales of any game developed by course-takers.

Silly bandwagon-hoppers...

@John Boyarsky

I agree completely (well, 1999 for me).

It would also be nice to see the titles of the first couple of comments again - it's how I decide whether or not to grace the twaddle of the great unwashed with my readership.

Or something.

Have a good weekend,

E-