Posts by Tony Proudlove

something something linux something mumble rootkit froth whine

Sony have a long long way to go before they can make me forget the shocking injustice and disregard for their customers they showed during this whole sorry episode. By that I of course mean subjecting me to "Don't Mess with the Zohan" as part of the PSN Welcome Back compensation package.

Work in progress

I have no problem with the concept of wearable tech and I'm sure in time it will get to the point where it's actually stylish and functional, at which point it will become ubiquitous. But at the moment, every time I see a photo of someone wearing these Fisher-Price smart watches, or Google Glass or the like, I mentally caption it "Don't worry Ma'am - I'm from the Internet".

Good article, but will the intended audience read it?

Interesting stuff. I made pretty much all the mistakes identified. Didn't do A-Level Maths, did Computing instead, because I wasn't planning to go to Uni at the time. Halfway through my A-Levels, decided to go to Uni but found most of them required A-Level Maths. So ended up at Newcastle Uni, which didn't require A-Level Maths, but instead hit me with a deluge of Maths in the first year, which completely overwhelmed me and I dropped out after year 1, back in the mid 90's.

So really to get the best out of this article, you need to be a 16 year old making your A-Level selections. I wonder how many 16 year olds, or indeed 18 year olds will read this article? A handful is my guess.

To support what someone else said above about HNCs, I fortunately landed on my feet and after dropping out did an HNC in Computing. Far more suitable for me and it led to a Software Apprenticeship with a telco, where I did an HND in Software Engineering on day release. Ultimately I've done alright, although I'm not a developer. A degree isn't for everyone, and despite the subtext of the article and the majority of the comments, there are areas of IT other than development, you know. Some may see development in HFT as the pinnacle, but a code monkey in HFT is still just a code monkey. ;)

Gaming consoles

Nice to see they've identified gaming consoles as a market for these - this would go great in a PS3. I've put a 1TB in mine only a few months ago and it's down to 70GB free already. Consoles are fine with 5400rpm and the data on them isn't critical enough to get too worried about having all your eggs in one basket (not that I've ever had a console HDD failure).

Out of touch?

If, as you say, the predecessor was "apparently well-received", then how are they "out of touch'? Clearly there is a niche market for these 小さい mobes, and recognising it as a niche they're producing a limited 12,000 run. It's obviously not a mobe designed to cater for the mass market.

Paris, because she may be the target buyer.

Good news but not unexpected

"Lync is a relatively new product line for Microsoft, having been launched in November 2010 as a replacement for Office Communicator and Office Communications Server."

It's not really a new product though, is it? It's essentially not much more than a rebranding of Communicator - many of the tools used to manage it still refer to it as Office Communicator (the .adm, for example, last time I looked). So it's essentially been around since 2007.

Not really a surprising announcement this. IIRC Lync has interoperability with Live Messenger, so if that's being phased out to be replaced with Skype, it's only natural they'd have to provide the same functionality.

That's easy for you to say

Are the names of the researchers also encrypted?

Burnt by PLAY

Sorry Sony, I'm a long time fanboi but my 'xperience' with the PLAY has put my off ever buying another Xperia. Poor build quality (the volume button fell off in my pocket); unacceptably small internal memory (I think the 'Low on Space' icon is burned in to my screen); the Xperia PC Suite is useless (connecting the phone wirelessly is next to impossible, using Media Go to transfer music for some reason takes hours when performing the same transfer with the phone connected as storage only takes minutes; the software interferes with my Bluetooth mouse - even when the phone isn't connected, to name a few of the problems); and the final straw is the about turn on ICS. I can't believe I can't upgrade the OS on a phone that only came out towards the end of last year.

Style over substance.

PIPE! PIPE! PIPE!

Pedantic, but it's a simple pipe. It looks like a pipe, and in three of the screenshots it even says WEAPONS: PIPE.

STOP CALLING IT A BLOODY CROWBAR!!1

This isn't Gordon Freeman.

I'm glad I wasn't the only person who found the controls difficult. I missed the game when it first came out but bought it a few years later as a budget re-release. It was fun, but the patting your head while rubbing your tummy control style spoiled a lot of the enjoyment for me.

Orange blobs in Liverpool?

You can see them every weekend down Mathew Street, usually with bad bleach jobs.

CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME

What happened to a sense of humour? He even writes "BECAUSE MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS LOUD!!!!!!!!!". It's a tongue in cheek rant. There's humour in that post and everything he's saying about Twitter is correct.

That said, he fell off after Late Registration.