* Posts by EddieD

1117 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

Vanmoof Electrified Bike: Crouching cyclist, hidden power

EddieD

Looking at the graph the red line is the Vanmoof, while the blue one is the Ridgeback.

Er, what?

I got a turquoise line, a Khaki line, and a horizontal magenta line...and my monitor is calibrated right...

I crossed my half century recently, and reckon I'll switch to electric after a further score of years, even though I commute in one of the hilliest cities in the UK (Edinburgh), but if it gets folk on their bikes, and cars off the roads - bring 'em on. What I like is one thing, everyone is different. Only 2 gears is okay in the Netherlands (where I'm spending a long weekend this coming weekend on a bike with one less...), but in the UK, I reckon a few more would be better, but that will probably come on in the future.

Good to see such things starting to reach the mainstream - okay 2000 is quite a lot, but it will come down as the market matures, and the tech progresses.

Intel 'underestimates error bounds by 1.3 QUINTILLION'

EddieD

Transcendental Instruction Accuracy

Why do I get a vision of some OCD guru?

Our Vultures peck at new Doctor Who: Exterminate or, er ... carrion?

EddieD

Re: Still awaiting the *click*.

"Sitting in a neutral parking orbit, but I'm not yet seeing anything I want in the Capaldi Who."

I want his coat. I don't actually watch Dr Who, but when I was visiting my family recently my brother and niece were watching, and now I want his Crombie.

It's on order.

I'm very sad...

Windows 10: One for the suits, right Microsoft? Or so one THOUGHT

EddieD

The downvote button is on the right.

I like Windows 8.1 (I was fairly happy with plain 8)

Okay, I have 2 monitors, and one has a desktop interface (using Classicshell), one has the Metr^w Moder^w tiled interface, and it works wonderfully. I have my work windows on one side with Outlook, the design environment I use for experiments etc, and the other has my recipe app, stocks and shares - it's a good mix. I can bounce from one interface to the other with out much hassle (click on an icon...).

At least Windows supports interface changes/alterations/replacements - it may be a bit of a faff, but there's google out there, it's not too hard.

Okay, it may be better if there hadn't been such a wrench, but if back in 94 there had been the internet around we'd probably still be using Progman 'cos of folk complaining about the start menu...

Move over, Apple Pay: Tesco trials PayQwiq phone-flash pay app

EddieD

Re: Ah Tesco

Most stores do arrange to appeal to Women...

Princes Street M&S, in order to buy Men's socks you have to go in the main doors, through womens blouses, skirts and shirts, down a wee escalator, through Women's Trousers, take an escalator up, walk through the entire Lingerie department, take another escalator up, walk through luggage, Suits, Trousers, Shirts, Jeans, and finally, at the furthest point from the doors, socks and undies. Oddly, I've stopped buying M&S smalls.

What's really annoying is that the escalators can run head to tail, and would allow you to avoid the disapproving looks of the Morningside Ladies as you shuffle nervously through the bras and panties, and get your shopping more conveniently, but management have decreed that thou shalt want to impulse buy a brassiere for your beloved - or even your wife. Or possibly yourself. Each to their own.

Store layout folk really, really want to stop trying pop-psych, and work out the layout which will let folk do their shopping most efficiently.

As for Tescos trying out a new payment method, given their recent headlines I think they need to get their internal accounting and strategy sorted before spaffing their money on a ludicrously involved method of paying for a pint of milk.

Makes me glad I get most of my food from a street market in Edinburgh - cash only, money straight to the farmers, and most surprisingly, not that much more expensive than going to a supermarket.

Clothes I get from whichever shop has the best sale on.

Apple slaps a passcode lock on iOS 8 devices, but cops can still inhale your iCloud

EddieD

Re: sigh

Actually even getting access to your drives have a sonic boom attached when requested by the cops - if you don't give volutarily give up your passcodes, it's off to chokey for a considerable period of time.

EddieD

Passcodes

Whenever I build a new machine at work, I have to now use full disk encryption, either BitLocker or FileVault.

When I do this to a Mac, it always asks me if I want to store the passcode with Apple - how long till iOS follows suit?

And folk just say "yes", as they do to app updates.

Dyslexic, dyspraxic? No probs, says GCHQ

EddieD

Alas...

I'm dyspraxic, but my analytic skills can normally be beaten by an average piece of camembert...and my spatial perception is horrific.

We're not all idiots-savantes, some of us are just idiots...

It's good to see that GCHQ are willing to look beyond the surface though.

SpaceX blasts a mischief of mice, a 3D printer and a cuddly toy* into SPAAAACE

EddieD

They know the Vogons are coming.

Dolphins will be next.

Moon landing was real and WE CAN PROVE IT, says Nvidia

EddieD
Joke

Debunk this...

http://stuffucanuse.com/fake_moon_landings/moon_landings.htm

Man buys iPHONE 6 and DROPS IT to SMASH on PURPOSE

EddieD

Re: Oh for an old-school Nokia

Aye, the old joke about a guy learning about being dumped by his partner through a text on a 3310, was so distraught he threw it at a wall and it shattered into a thousand pieces.

Phone was fine though.

EddieD

Re: All about build quality

I'll second that view about lumia phones - my ancient 800 has survived drops, kicks and wipeouts from my bike on offroad courses and even at almost 3 years old still looks like new.

Hey, Mac fanbois. HGST wants you drooling over its HUGE desktop RACK

EddieD

Re: "What vast digital media repository could possibly need 64 TERABYTES?"

Blimey.

That's ~2GB per second (assuming 24fps...4GB if at 48fps, natch)

Or this array will hold approximately 8.5 hours of footage...which isn't a great deal, these days

Huawei: Our sales in Europe and US are TINY, admits red-faced exec

EddieD

Change the name...

Being called "who are we?" won't sell...

Baimei?

4K-ing excellent TV is on its way ... in its own sweet time, natch

EddieD

As always

When this topic of ultra resolution TV comes up...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/19/tv_sizes_deconstructed/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/25/the_future_of_moving_images_the_eyes_have_it/

Hate Facebook? Hate it enough to spend $9k fleeing it? Web 'country club' built for the rich

EddieD

Re: How do you know....

Terry Pratchett articulated this theory perfectly:-

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned

'Windows 9' LEAK: Microsoft's playing catchup with Linux

EddieD

Solaris in '96

Even under the most basic WM.

I never used it though, and there are many, many third party addons if you do want this for Windows. I just tend to add extra monitors.

Brit telcos warn Scots that voting Yes could lead to hefty bills

EddieD

Re: You know all this talk of things being more expensive

Half of us will be pissed off, and the other half just pissed.

I was on the phone to my Dad yesterday, and he said he was getting a wee bit weary with the referendum coverage, I told him he was merely getting the edited highlights, and living here it was far, far, far worse.

I may not get to vote in the actual referendum as I currently want to beat the brains out any twat who knocks at my front door when I have a (polite) notice to tell them all to leave me the hell alone...

The long and short of it is that no-one knows really what the financial implications are, but you can bet your arse that every single company will seek any way to maximise profitability after the votes are cast, none of which will be of benefit to anyone either side of the border, other than their shareholders.

Be your own Big Brother: Monitoring your manor, the easy way

EddieD

Re: Security?

Aye, but you can configure a lot of software to overwrite after a specific time 24/48 hrs or similar.

Back in the days of tape CCTV cameras, most small businesses had only two tapes, the first job in the morning being to rewind last night's, and insert tonight's, and if anything had happened, watch last night's...

Slough isn't fit for humans now, says Amazon. We're going to Shoreditch

EddieD

Good idea

A friend was brought up in Slough, she thought JB was being unnecessarily positive about the place.

This flashlight app requires: Your contacts list, identity, access to your camera...

EddieD

Re: Same old, same old...

Hardly - when you use a GoPro you're not normally in a position to be able to use a viewfinder...or quite often near enough to look through a viewfinder - check the PARIS and LOHAN vids...

EddieD

Same old, same old...

Why does a compass need access to Identity services, photo and music libraries etc...

I've got about 9 apps on my Nexus requesting permission to update, all of them wanting increased permissions - why would my GoPro app need permission to create accounts???*

They're all due for deletion.

People blindly press "Okay" and then wonder why their the victim of identity theft

*Actually a serious question, I don't want to remove it, as it's very useful, the GoPro not having a viewfinder, and teh options menu being a wee bit laborious...but I'm not having it create accounts without my permission.

Beer in SPAAAACE: Photographic PROOF

EddieD
Pint

Fullers isn't too bad - not a patch on the local brews, e.g. Harviestoun or Caledonian* - but it's an acceptable drop.

Not after it's been freeze dried in a vacuum though

*Or Atlas**

**Or Orkney***

***Or Williams Bros (Fraoch)

It's Friday, and soon they will be mine...

Power station fault cuts electricity, water and internet in Cairo

EddieD

Re: UK too this winter

Yep.

My dad built a system using an old car battery and headlamp bulbs which he charged during the time we had power, me and my brother lugged a bike with a dynamo up to our room and took turns powering it so we could get changed for bed...

Admittedly then it wasn't such a hardship, other than the lights - our family room had 2 power points, one for the TV, and one used by my mum for the ironing... Only 3 channels of TV, and they weren't on all the time, ISTR they shut down in the afternoon for a while, our radios ran on batteries - and our books were on paper. We made our own entertainment back then :)

Nowadays it's a bit different - our whole lifestyle is geared around the electrons leaking out of the sockets in our rooms - my living room just for me has 6 double sockets, most of which have extenders plugged in.

Virgin Media blocks 'wankers' from permissible passwords

EddieD

About 10 years ago, as Blueyonder, one of their call center staff let slip that they could access our main password - i.e. the one we used for e-mail, their website etc.

I promptly complained to the management that this was extremely poor practice and received a reply agreeing with me and saying that they would modify their policies, whether they did or not, I don't know.

Since then I've not trusted them, and I've not used the email service for anything remotely important

Just in case? Unverified 'supersize me' iPhone 6 pics in sneak leak peek

EddieD

+1 for Opal Fruits

And bring back Marathon bars.

And Jif.

I'll be Hex 32 next week, so I'm officially starting my career as a Grumpy Old Man.

Kate Bush: Don't make me HAVE CONTACT with your iPHONE

EddieD

Re: heard similar please before

Arms, whilst intensely irritating, are relatively small.

Folk who lift their partners on their shoulders should be taken outside and shot through the knees.

If I take photos at gigs (and I do), I take a camera, and go somewhere where I'm not obstructing folk.

Boffins ID freakish spine-smothered prehistoric critter: The claw gave it away

EddieD

Tardigrades

Wonderful critters - can survive vacuum, freezing to almost 0K, radiation, dehydration.

And they look cute for microscopic animals.

The excellent Attenborough series Life on Earth has the Hallucigenia upside down. It's still a great series though.

SCORE: Rosetta probe hits orbit of duck-shaped comet

EddieD

Re: Very impressive

Stardust - and Giotto*, in '86 - were flyby missions. Deep Impact though, yep, in a way - the main probe was flyby, the impactor did indeed rendezvous with Tempel one, albeit terminally.

Rosetta is the first probe to go into orbit around a comet.

*We opened the TV room of our student union late so we could watch it live. Shame it got thwacked....

Too rich for an iPhone 6? How about a gold-plated Brikk?

EddieD

2 years later..

It's an obselete piece of tat...

Okay, if you can afford this, you don't care, but folk who buy things like this, buy 10k watches etc, which don't have inbuilt obselecence.

My inner puritan is a wee bit disapproving.

The fact it looks crap is incidental

Microsoft bakes a bigger Pi to cook Windows slabs

EddieD

Re: re. Sharks Cove apostrophe

Or it could be a cove with lots and lots of sharks.

Philip K Dick 'Nazi alternate history' story made into TV series

EddieD

Re: Here's more hoping...

Blade Runner was a good film, but not much like the book though.

LOHAN's stirring motto: Ad Astra Tabernamque

EddieD

Hmm.

Vacuum distillation.

Send up beer - bring back whisky.

Just a thought.

Arrr: Digital Economy Act tied up, thrown in the hold

EddieD

Re: You repeat the same nonsense

Robin Ince once commented that it cost him about 10,000 to appear at the Edinburgh Fringe (just setting up outside my office as I type) - and that figure has been confirmed by other performers.

However, they then say that the exposure and publicity is worth it, as they will get better fees on the corporate circuit (one regular on Mock the Week said he got about 20,000 for one corporate gig).

The folk that appear in the free fringe (highly recommended by me, btw) though, seem to make a profit by passing a glass around, but not the publicity, and not the corporate gigs.

I'm sure there's a lesson there, but I can't quite find it.

Bad back? Show some spine and stop popping paracetamol

EddieD

Re: Nothing works faster ...

You have my total sympathy, and I agree totally. When my back goes, no pill works.

If I spend a lot of money and go visit a guy who beats me up for an hour or so*, I get some relief, but that may be just because he isn't hurting me any more.

Doctors should really stop just handing out pills to get rid of folk and take a proactive role - instead of masking the pain, try and find out what's causing it, and remove that - treat the cause, not the symptoms.

I'll stop now before I start ranting about antibiotics.

*Remember the scene in Dirty Harry....

SMELL YOU LATER, LOSERS – Dumbo tells rats, dogs... humans

EddieD

Evolution knows what it's doing.

I've been on the Tube in London. I fervently wished for fewer olfactory receptors when I was pressed in against the other travellers.

Report: American tech firms charge Britons a thumping nationality tax

EddieD

Tax????

They don't fucking pay tax here!

Nurse, my medicine!

Mars needs oceans to support life - and so do exoplanets

EddieD

Re: It's not dead - it's just pinin' for some fjords.

Redacted - someone beat me to it...

BBC goes offline in MASSIVE COCKUP: Stephen Fry partly muzzled

EddieD

Could be for the best

Maybe they'll abandon the currently massively over-engineered scriptfest, and return to the nice, simple, clean version that worked well.

That stirring LOHAN motto: Anyone know a native Latin speaker?

EddieD

Re: to the pub

I'd have thought "Ex taberna ad astra" as "From the Pub to the stars"

I'll ask some of the classical scholars here, but I doubt they'll be too cooperative - very serious bunch the classicists.

It was always Azure thing: NetApp floats boxen into Microsoft's cloud

EddieD

Hmmm.

If you flip through Dante's Inferno, you'll find a short passage in the 6th circle that says

but the ultimate wrath and scorn

is reserv'd for those would boxen say...

Running the Gauntlet: Atari's classic ... now and then

EddieD

Atari ST with printer expansion port

3 friends, several beers, and long afternoons.

Ah, nostalgia, it ain't what it used to be....

Virgin Media struck dumb by NATIONWIDE DNS outage

EddieD

Re: Hmm

Yeah - those pages are about as much use as paraffin wax teapot* - a static page showing Cnut** holding back the waves with an "Everything's fine" speech bubble would be equally accurate.

*It's been pointed out to me often that you could eat a chocolate teapot, thereby providing some good use.

**Preferably mispelled

Twitter takes on GOOGLE, swallows wannabe YouTube firm

EddieD

Indie record companies...

...to your marks...

If this works, it could mark a (the first?) serious dent in Google's world domination intentions, if the content providers that got shafted by Google get their act together.

If nothing else, it could provide serious competition the Mountain View monopoly (it's a shame Vimeo hasn't taken off to the same extent), and possibly persuade them that negotiation is better than force.

BBC offers briefest of teasers for the next Doctor Who

EddieD

Re: Nice

Jon Pertwee didn't really go for bovver boots...maybe Jon Pertwee meets Vinnie Jones...

Saddle up for the Tour de Firmware

EddieD

Re: Grumpy old git

Yep, you're quite correct...

However, just as you can do 99% of what a Galaxy S5 can do with a 100 pound landfill Android, the SG5 is more sparkly, more nifty, more posey...

Every hobby has the niche upper end - you can pay a grand for trainers, several grand for a lens, a couple of grand for a tent and so on - 99% of hobbyists won't need it, and won't want it.

Those that do, can, and good luck to them. If it's your dosh, spend it how you wish.

That said, you pay increasing numbers of grands for each pound lighter the bike is (law of diminishing returns applies). Alternatively, a few less pies each week, and you save money, and probably scythe more weight off the bike. But, unfortunately, I like pies. A lot.

Google's Oculus-defying VR headset is made of CARDBOARD – no joke

EddieD
Thumb Up

Re: Precisely why Oculus was never a $2Bn business

Absolutely right - when it's cheap enough, folk will buy into it - the same was true for cars, computers, mobile phones, you name its.

I'm just off to dissect some boxes (but I doubt my Nexus will fit...)

Russian gov to dump x86, bake own 64-bit ARM chips - reports

EddieD

Re: Don't believe everything you read. OTOH...

"Russia's hands-on approach to engineering gave them superb rocket engines and before that, made the Rolls Royce jet engine as good as anything the USA had."

Er, what? Rolls Royce are and were a British company and had naff all to do with the Soviets.

Top 10 tech essentials for the festival season

EddieD

Re: Biolite stove..

I live (and camp) in Scotland - on the places I go I don't think that lack of fuel would be a problem - I could probably fill a rucksack with pine cones in half an hour, it's just the weight that's the problem - 1kg is 1liter of drink :)

EddieD

Biolite stove..

"There is a slight whiff of more money than sense about this thing, but I still want one."

Me too.

Not so sure about the GoPro though - mine, as I have already stated via this organ, is very temperamental. Also, unless you're about 6 inches from the stage, the wide angle lens is going to reduce the already ant-like figures performing to positively atomic proportions. I'll just stick my compact in my pocket.