* Posts by James Pickett

1321 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2007

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Acer outlook not so sunny after all

James Pickett

A good time to renegotiate MS licensing deals?

My local dealer has sold out of bought-in XP systems, and is satisfying demand by assembling their own (desktops). Not so easy with laptops, of course, but it's hard to see why the manufacturers can't revert to what they were doing a few months ago. Or has MS tied their hands...?

I've installed two Vista systems and hit driver problems with both. Also, it reduced high-spec hardware to pedestrian speeds, all for a bit of eye-candy that no-one needs....

Jet-powered go-kart roars onto eBay

James Pickett

Hmm...

"Push one button to inject fuel, then push the other to ignite!"

You're pouring fuel into a jet exhaust and it needs to be ignited..?

This has 'loony' written all over it, IMO.

YouTube - uTube showdown stays alive in federal court

James Pickett

Precedent

This all seems a bit silly - why should Universal Tube mind if thousands of extra visitors are driven their way? However, since MS managed to get a decision in their favour over Lindows, on the bizarre grounds that it could be confused with their product (!), I would say all bets are off.

Anyone who can take Rupert Murdoch for a few bucks has my vote, anyway...

Physics GCSE: 'insultingly easy, non scientific, and vague'

James Pickett

Pot calling kettle...

"Perhaps Gary and his triad of acronyms whom together with a thesaurus couldn't manage to put together coherent sentences"

I usually applaud the use of 'whom', but only when it's used correctly, and not to rubbish someone else's coherence!

James Pickett

Grim reading

How long before questions about 'intelligent design' start to appear?

(And to those for whom that is a reasonable question, what about the 'stupid design' of redundant organs, like the appendix?)

Boffins put encrypted bio-copyright watermarks in beer DNA

James Pickett

Two thoughts

1. Why are the Home Office buggering about with fingerprints and iris scans when this is available? (Not that I want to encourage them, of course.)

2. I look forward to its use to identify GM components in otherwise wholesome food, so that I may avoid it.

US lawyer ranking site raises attorney's hackles

James Pickett

Er...

What did they expect - that American lawyers would somehow overlook ratings of their own worth? The woodland habits of bears would be harder to predict...

Microsoft demos mind-bending photo app

James Pickett

Title

"based on technology Microsoft acquired last year"

'Look at what I just made' is not quite the same as 'look at what the company I just bought made', is it? Freedom to innovate? If only!

UK importing Army spy-drones to replace losses

James Pickett

How much..?

You have to wonder how they cost these things. Drones might have some smart avionics, but mechanically they are dead basic, and you can buy a very smart single-engined Cessna or Piper (with auto-pilot and computer navaids) for under £200k. What's the other £7.8m for?

Paris Hilton released for 'medical reasons'

James Pickett

The inmates at Guantanamo..

..are clearly missing a trick here. I admit the house arrest might be more difficult, but it sounds like Ms Hilton has some spare capacity...

HTC jumps on touch-screen phone bandwagon

James Pickett

Silly question

What happens when you touch/press it against your ear?

Paris Hilton goes down for 23 days

James Pickett

Special people

"celebrities, public officials, police officers, and other high-profile inmates"

Wonder what would happen if they didn't have a VIP suite?

Why Apple won't sell 10 million iPhones in 2008

James Pickett

Is it just me?

I have a phone for making phone calls. I have an MP3 player with a radio (so not an iPod) for audio entertainment, a PDA for organising and a camera for taking pictures. Actually, I have several cameras, but that's because no one camera does everything I want, which is really my point - if a single camera won't do everything well, how much worse will an all-in-one device do all the things it's supposed to?

I like things that are fit for purpose and have the right form and function. Trying to squeeze everything into a 'designer' box might be a fashion statement, but it doesn't appeal to me. What's the battery life going to be like, anyway?

Creationists open biblical history museum

James Pickett

Must have been fun in the Ark

..what with T.Rex , a few velociraptors and a pair of diplodoci!

US Army funds Prius-style hybrid battlewagon

James Pickett

EMP2

" I'm sure an EMP generator can be amplified, tuned, maybe even focussed"

Indeed. The MIG-25 (Foxbat) had a narrow-beam radar that could allegedly fry a rabbit a kilometre away. It was also did much the same to enemy countermeasures that it chose to aim at...

Apple moans over sex toy ad

James Pickett

Rotten to the core

And did Apple ask permission to use the term Macintosh, or to use Xerox's GUI? Pots and kettles, methinks.

Of course, this is excellent free publicity for AS, largely paid for by Apple's lawyers. Way to go!

No end in sight for Vista's Long Goodbye

James Pickett

Downgrade to XP available

I can endorse the earlier comment about nVidia drivers in Vista - our system doesn't show half the controls (including screen resolution!) in the nVidia control panel, and the PnP (Ha!) monitor doesn't.

Local dealer has just told me it is possible to install XP with Vista licence code - it will fail, but will prompt a call to MS, who will give you one that works, apparently...

BTW, is Dell offering XP as an option in the UK yet?

Currys to cease stocking cassettes

James Pickett

Er...

So, what do they expect you to put in your 'Matsui CD35P Personal Portable CD Radio Cassette' (item no. 767552 on their website) then..?

DoH's latest d'oh!

James Pickett

Schadenfreude

It was very amusing to hear a spokeswoman (no doubt being prodded from behind t approach the mic) on the Today programme having to pretend that the forthcoming patient database would be properly secure!

IIRC, a recent estimate (not the DoH's obviously) of the cost of said database, to serve 30m people, was £30bn. I'd happily look after my own records for £1000, and security would not be a problem...

If Google kills penguins, is it doing evil?

James Pickett

More arithmetic

Having now found the original (February) article containing these dodgy stats, I think I've finally grasped the rather tenuous logic. Apparently, all the power consumed by computers, the buildings used to house them and their operators, and to cool/heat/light/feed them comes to an impressive-sounding figure, and it's all Google's fault. Google's bit in all this is probably not so impressive, but in any case we're not told. We're also not told that even 19GW isn't that big a proportion of the 12TW of electricity consumed globally - in fact, I work it out to be about 0.16%, leaving 99.84% being mopped up by things other than computers, even Linux-powered ones. So much for damage to penguins...

James Pickett

Arithmetic?

Hmm - out by several orders of magnitude, I fear. What is it with journalists and statistics?

"It takes about five 1000MW power plants to fuel those servers here and 14 similar plan[t]s to power servers worldwide."

I make that 19 Gigawatts, and if each server consumes 190W (to keep the maths simple - I'm being pessimistic, my PC and 3D graphics card consumes a mere 70W) you get 100 million servers, or maybe 90 million if you allow for the coffee machines. You certainly won't need a lot for heating...

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