* Posts by jai

2310 publicly visible posts • joined 8 May 2007

Foxconn staffer lets slip iPhone 5 ship date

jai

correlation?

does it really correlate with the predictions from February? or is it not more likely that he's gotten the June date from those analysts' random guesses predictions

Sugar content now to be measured in Cadbury Creme Eggs

jai

suddenly struck by a desire to nip out and buy a couple of Creme Eggs

I'm sorry to say, Lester, but you are obviously something of an amateur when it comes to cream egg eating.

Some of us have been eating the 2012 batch of cream eggs since they appeared in shops, at the start of the year. And during the last 30 days or so my consumption has only increased. If there's less than 6 eggs in the fridge, then I need to go and stock up - you can never tell when you might need to accompany a cuppa tea with a cream egg, and it's a terrible thing to be caught short unexpectedly.

Cream eggs are for life, not just for Easter.....

Yes, Prime Minister to return after 24 years

jai

"Naturally some aspects will need to be refreshed"

I guess that is where the fear that this won't do well comes from.

Instead of re-envisaging the characters to fit today's political world, it'll just be the same but using modern terms and events.

But equally, is the current way of politics that interesting or funny?

The enjoyment of the original shows is the clever language and arguments, the intellectual mind-games that went on between Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker. My worry is that, as politics these days seems less high-brow, so too will the new version of the show be dumbed down. And with that, it will loose its appeal.

Staggering Kelihos zombie army smacked down AGAIN

jai

got to follow the rules

Rule #1 - Cardio

Rule #2 - The Double Tap

Rul3 #3 - Beware of Bathrooms

Rule #4 - Wear Seat Belts

Evidently they didn't follow Rule 2 the first time around...

Apple IP details tech for 'iTV' innards

jai

dpi?

so, can we look forward to a 50" Retina Display(TM) telly then?

jai

At no point in the whole article does it ever state that iTV is the name of the product.

That's just El Reg trying to stir you guys into making a post that'll stir people like me into replying to it.

#HateTheGameNotThePlayerYo

'Thermal cloak' designed, could solve major chip, spacecraft issues

jai

bows and arrows against the lightning"

This is awesome! Those Martian feckers in their tripodal fighting machines don't stand a chance now that we have thermal cloaking tech. Come on then, you red planet smegheads, if you think you're hard enough!!!!

Amazon names date for Kindle Touch touchdown

jai

Batteries?

What's the battery life like in the touch?

The 4 has half the battery life on the Keyboard. Amazon says it should last a month on the 4, but that's only based on 30 minutes of reading per day. My other half reads for hours a day and has noticed she's charging it nearly all the time compared to the Keyboard.

If the Touch has more memory, does it also have better batteries?

Plastic that SELF-REPAIRS using light unleashed by prof

jai

too late....

shame this wasn't around when CDs and DVDs were all the rage

jai
Gimp

you wear plastic socks? it is for incontinence or just a fetish thing?

Wii U graphics said to be no better than current consoles

jai

Re: D.O.A.

that's weird then, i must know AC, because he seems to know all my friends too (and me, tbh, as i got a Wii last summer when the missus decided she wanted to use it Wii Fit and Zumba, used it for a month, haven't switched it on again since).

the Wii serves a specific need - that of multiplayer gaming, and light-weight, kid-friendly gaming.

i think the critical thing is, now that world+dog has a Wii in their lounge to fulfil those needs, why would they bother to spend so much cash again on a WiiU? if you're having a party, you'll wheel out the old Wii.

James Cameron back from dive to world's deepest point

jai
Coat

Re: "I had this idea that life would adapt to the deep"

There's life, Jim (Cameron), but not as we know it...

Elgato Thunderbolt SSD

jai

hardware compression

That's weird that files that incorporate a compression in their format, will copy slower. Is it trying to double compress them? You'd think they could detect already compressed data and so skip the compression process, speeding up the transfer speeds.

Mass Effect 3 crooks trick gamers with fake 'alternate ending'

jai

Re: Agreed

<spoiler>i agree with this request for spoiler tags</spoiler>

at the very least, perhaps a way to make text white so that you need to highlight it to view it, that would work just as well, but there must be a fairly simple piece of css/js tricky that could be done, no?

NASA's Dawn probe spies 'Snowman' on asteroid queen Vesta

jai

east bound and down

woohoo Jerry Reed!! oh wait, wrong Snowman....

Scammers exploit new Dr Who girl with Twitter smut video

jai

Re: "When I examined the page, ..."

quote I found that each of the videos

sounds like he examined it very very thoroughly indeed

Lovefilm: video streaming outplays disc rentals

jai

it's the ease of access.

i'm switching my subscription over to download only this month.

that said, most of what we've been watching has been via Netflix. Lovefilm just doesn't have the right kind of stuff and the interface on the playstation and the samsung smart tv is much much easier to use on Netflix than Lovefilm

El Reg user forum opens to public, HTML for all (mostly)

jai

Re: My obligatory comment to see if I've reached 100 posts yet.

quote: Tags: Please could we have <pre> and some way of quoting other people's posts?

i was going to put "+1 for <quote> request"

but then i realised that it is really a bbcode type tag, there isn't an equivalent html tag that could be used is there.

best i can think of is to italicise the quote.

I think, if you have to manually format your quote, that's a good way of stopping some quotetard from putting gobloads of a post's text in a quote and then just typing "me too" afterwards.

jai

uh oh

now that El Reg is an official forum website as well as a news site, i wonder how long before it gets blocked entirely by our office websense filtering :(

iPhone 5 gets a 5in screen

jai

i really hope not

i think 4 inches is the max for a phone. if you want a bigger screen, get a frikken tablet

i quite like the 3.5 screen on the iphone - the phone looks neat and compact these days compared to the oversized ugly Androids. I remember when the first iPhone came out and it looked huge against the skinny candybar feature phones everyone had back then.

Devs cheer as Osborne okays game coding tax relief

jai

Re: Too bad...

Surely coders are going to be amongst the most technically literate people in the country. And therefore, the best equipped for switching to a work-from-home model.

jai

who can benefit?

Do you have to be registered then as working for a games development company, in order to qualify? Is it just the companies that qualify? Does it apply to one-man-band type companies?

Or can I get a tax break just for programming some basic and/or rubbish game and punting it on the mobile app stores?

If so, suddenly anyone who knows a bit of javascript can cobble together a game using something like Appcelerator's Titanium, and tap into easy tax breaks :)

Windows 8 on ARM vs iPad: Has Microsoft lost already?

jai

i liked the music, but was still way too much for a podcast format. at the very least, if you're going to put that music dead time at the start, have someone introducing the show over the music or something.

also, try and equalise the volume on the two vocal inputs. Gavin's speech was a bit quiet, so i tuned up the volume, and then Mary-Jo was shouting in my ears, so i had to turn it down, and then couldn't hear Gavin.

Man FLIES with Android-powered homemade bird wings

jai

friend of mine also agrees that it's a fake:

"On the 13/14 video of his you can see around 1.30 there is a sun design on the right hand wing, then the camera looks down, then looks up again. The sun design has a large dot that wasn't there before. Very clear and obvious evidence of digital manipulation on at least one of the videos for sure."

German court: Rapidshare must HUNT for dodgy pirate links

jai

so...

"internet sites could no longer shirk their responsibilities and achieve illicit financial gain"

so what about if you're hosting the files for zero profit? charges to users are adjusted constantly to ensure they only cover monthly costs, and once done.

yes, a major headache to do, because the cheaper the site is, the more popular it will be, so the higher the bandwidth costs required, but i don't think it's impossible.

and then, there are no financial gain, illicit or not. would that be acceptable to the court?

Braben sticks knife into secondhand games market

jai

simple solution

Digital distribution. Just like mobile gaming, you buy the game online, download it, then you can't sell it on to anyone else, because there's no physical media to re-sell.

That said, I don't look forward to having to download a blu-ray's worth of data on the next games like GTA5 and Max Payne 3. But possibly the solution is you open the games up to pre-ordering, and users can download them over a couple of weeks, and then on the release day, the copies are unlocked when connecting to their servers.

Or, commit more to DLC. So you can buy the physical game, but you'll need to keep the disc around if you want to play the full game, as 70% of the single-player gameplay, and the multiplayer, all gets downloaded from online. The disc can hold all the music and the high-def textures, but the gameplay content gets downloaded and only works keyed to your account, or something.

I know the 2nd hand market is a problem for the game developers. But I don't think many of them have done much about it other than whine "it's so unfair!!!"

There are definitely ways around it, they just need to get us players into the habit of downloading more of our content in a means that makes it very complicated to then re-sell on.

The Register obtains covert snaps of Google's new London offices

jai

Just what sort of party is this room intended for?

that scene out of Boondock Saints when they come in through the air con vent in the ceiling, twisted up in the rope, and spin round firing the 9mm's and waste all the russian mafia types that were sitting in there

Windows 8 tablet freezes in Microsoft keynote demo

jai

Re: ROTFL

a google search suggests it happened in 2005 and 2010 too

Twisted Metal

jai

always been a big fan

there's something about the genre of cars-with-guns that i really enjoy, and Twisted Metal's always been the most enjoyable of them. can't wait to play this!!

i agree with the review though - seems a shame they switched it to being a full blown game, i guess they wanted the money, but the game is perfect as a PSN download.

nevermine, Wrecked: Revenge Revisited is rumoured to be (finally!!) getting released on the 28th, and that's going to be more fun than anything, ever!

BBC Micro team to celebrate historic machine's 30th year

jai

even as a kid....

i preferred my Apple ][e to my bbc micro

but i can't for the life of me tell you why - it's not like it was more shiny or anything. and it's hard to argue that, both being command line driven devices, the user experience was better on the Apple than the BBC, but i definitely preferred it

Portal 2 prevails at Bafta game awards

jai

Mark Hamill

glad to see Mark Hamill got the award. Batman AC was an terrific game, but his performance in that and the previous game was absolutely spot on. Really quite sad at the thought that he's not going to do that character any more.

Apple New iPad Wi-Fi only

jai

but it's not like the hi res screen is a surprise though, is it? it was long rumoured for the iPhone, and when it arrived, it was obvious that the iPad was going to get it too.

so WHY hasn't the competition already got higher res screens? it's impossible to think they weren't aware this was going to happen, so why haven't they already got a tablet in the market with at least the same spec screen?

instead, they're all just sitting on their hands, taking a back seat, happy to give Apple all the market share and the publicity. Sure, they'll probably rush a product to market now, and it'll be obviously rushed and critically, later than the iPad.

for the competition to be competition, they've gotta start getting ahead of the game, not just content to constantly play catch-up

iPad bludgeons to death two UK Apple reseller shops

jai

more detail please

can you expand on how "the iPad continues to 'cut across' different market sectors" leads to "iPad bludgeons to death two UK Apple reseller shops"?

are you saying that they based their business model on being able to sell iPads? and that all iPad purchases were online and so they failed?

Or that so many people have iPads now that they don't go out to the shops any more looking at new kit or to buy support, instead they stay at home and surf web shops and look up how to fix their problems themselves?

SF iPad launch subdued as Apple fans wise up

jai

fans wise up?

Speaking from what we've seen in the UK - looks like a lot less people queued up, but i think that's because the majority pre-ordered instead, not that there were significantly less people ordering the new one.

From what I can tell, in the UK Apple were using three courier companies to deliver. and all of them still had undelivered orders outstanding at 7pm tonight. That's got to be a lot of deliveries to overload the likes of TNT and UPS. UkMail is the 3rd one, but I dunno if they're a 'big' courier company like the other two.

Take your hands off me - I'm a tech VC superstar!

jai

quality - i needed something amusing to cheer me up today and this hit the spot nicely

TDK BA100 earphones

jai

Trouble is, I see TDK and I just think of the old cassettes and VHS tapes that we used to have in our house in the 80s and I have to put some real effort in not to dismiss them out of hand.

But the review does sound very good. Am sorely tempted as the last earphones I bought (Reid and Heath MA-350s following their favourable review by El Reg quite a while ago) have just stopped working in one ear (the nifty braided cord that did not get tangled unfortunately frayed at the connector end eventually and so broken the wires inside).

Apple iPad 3 data contracts compared

jai

PAYG?

How about a comparison of PAYG prices?

From what i could see when i looked, Three was also wiping out the competiton for value (10gb of data for £10 i think it was, whereas all the others were offering 2gb for the same price) but I don't know how good their network signal in my areas.

For a data only device like an ipad, i'm thinking PAYG might be a better option than being tied to a two year contract.

Boffins build cyborg snails to generate electricity

jai

soylent green....

<Charlton Heston>Duracells are snails! damn you, you maniacs!!!!</Charlton Heston>

Clock ticking on NASA’s low-cost X-ray stargazer

jai

artist impression

Doesn't this look an awful lot like that ship in Event Horizon?

And we all know how that story ended happily ever after...

Samsung and LG hit with MASSIVE price fixing fine

jai

Re: To quote a certain geezer

omg is that an Ezzer Goode quote? haven't thought about that track in years! good on you sir!!

Newly discovered asteroid will not ANNIHILATE THE EARTH

jai

three weeks?

three weeks warning doesn't sound like much good

what will they do with three weeks? is that enough time to mount a way to blast the rock out the sky? is it even enough time to find out where its going to hit and arrange for evacuation of the impact site?

where's the OMGWEREALLGONNADIE icon?

Xbox 360 video cable boasts NOISE VIRUS protection

jai

it's a digital signal??

"obtain perfect image transmission"

HDMI - it's a digital signal, with redundancy and error correction built into the standard. There's no need to pay over the odds for extra shielding. Although, that's not to say you should go with the absolute cheapest available. The very cheap cables might be affected over long distances enough to introduce enough bad data to disrupt the signal, but the thinking you'd still only see if on a 1080p image, 720p should still be able to recover the lost data before you see it.

Lawyers of Mordor menace Hobbit boozer

jai

You SHALL NOT SUE!!!!!!

Apple hands iPad screen contract to rival Samsung

jai

yesterday's news

This report from Bloomberg is old news.

TODAY's news has Reuters refuting the claim that Samsung is the sole supplier:

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/14/claim-of-samsung-as-sole-display-supplier-for-new-ipad-disputed-lg-reportedly-on-board/

Tesco blunder prices 64GB 4G iPad at 50 quid

jai

the real trick would have been to get John Lewis to price match it before Tesco corrected their mistake

Xbox Live glitch resets players' scores

jai
Coat

[img]http://achievements.schrankmonster.de/Achievement.aspx?text=SQL:Table%20plyrScores%20successfully%20dropped[/img]

Atari pings Pong Apple champion wannabes

jai

US entrants only?

damnit

Quote: THE CONTEST IS OPEN ONLY TO LEGAL RESIDENTS OF THE FIFTY (50) UNITED STATES AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (THE “ELIGIBILITY AREA”),

Plus, you have to have successfully submitted a game already to the iOS Store.

And i had such a good idea for rebooting Pong in the mould of Zork.... :)

Could tiny ebooks really upset the mighty Apple cart?

jai

Re: Why bother with E-Books?

e-books for fiction, i agree, the only benefit is that i can carry hundreds of books with me and if i finish reading one while on the train, i can pick and choose which one to read next.

but the real advantage is with reference books. I'm carrying around 12 programming books on my ipad at the moment. These are all 400+ page tomes, there's no way i could carry three of them around in my bag each day.

But i can search for text throughout them instead of having to half remember whereabouts in the book i read something, i can bookmark or highlight useful bits of code or suggested approaches to a problem. I can even copy example code, send it over to my laptop, paste it and test it instead of having to manually re-type it.

so for fiction, i'd say there's as many pros as cons for ebook versus dead-tree. But if you add reference books to that, then it makes sense to buy in to ebooks completely.

jai

Re: Apple's argument falls down ...

"Your first sentence is clear evidence of collusion and price fixing."

No, his first sentence is saying, there's a argument over whether this clause exists.

If it exists, then it is clear evidence. But if it doesn't exist, then the rest of the evidence might turn out to be just coincidence and hearsay.

It's this clause that everyone keeps talking about, but no one has yet produced an example of, that's the crux to the argument.

Sony intros Xperia Sola with no-need-to-touch screen

jai

that's gonna ache isn't it? holding your finger above the screen? either it's going to ache in your shoulder if your using it two handed, or ache at the base of your thumb if your one-handedly browsing