Posts by Jim 59

GB

This story brings back memories. Memories of GB not being a very good game. The author was 12. Embarrassingly, I was more like 17. How old were others ?

Surveillance

In keeping files on citizens, Britain takes the lead over Syria, Iran, Russia, China, North Korea and other lightweights. They monitor this forum, so don't say anything bad or it will go on your file.

All seems like good fun until we stop having elections.

China

Hope China does not turn into another USSR. Or rather, hope it follows the USSR into trying democracy and dismantling itself. Unfortunately China's leaders are addicted to absolute power, the worlds most potent drug. Folks like Assad, Ahmadinejad, kim jong-un will do anything, and commit any crime, to get their supply. We need more Gorbachevs and Mandelas to get us out of this mess.

Snoop

I would like to say something bit it might get spied on. I back everything the government does.

Admirals, Generals

How many editors does El Reg have ?

I have absolutely no evidence to support my hunch that the report which Andrew finds so convincing is in some way sponsored by the retailers.

And the "Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)" does not sound like a body interested in public health or anti-social behaviour. It sounds like a body that wants us to buy as much stuff as possible. Wikipedia first sentence: "...founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade...". Prime policy: "to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth..."

Sounds like a great engineer to me, even in retirement:

"...Poor and his family spent much of their time sailing in the US, Mexico and Europe. While on board he developed a communication -"

Biggest laff since Jurassic Park

"I know this..."

Feature phones ?

"Smartphones accounted for 36.7 per cent of all mobe sales"

Not sure I understand - does this mean simple feature phones still dominate the mobile market ?

The bankers would love to fix it

but they are too busy having no moral compass

History

The article fails to mention perhaps the biggest advantage of CLI interaction: it creates a permanent history that can be saved.

Indexes?

What does Google/Apple do with the local index data ? Does this local machine mean that they have, in effect, read every piece of data on my phone and all communications ?

Google

Hate idiots on YT but when it comes to Google, we should be using all the false names we can. Anything to slow down their stalking and top-peepery.

Identify yourself on YT and the whole Google machine will explode into life, profiling you, investigating you, desperate to identify and tie together all your online personas, your Gmails, your Android conversations, your GPS locations etc. etc. They are like the Lidless Eye these days, except more evil.

Digital data

Not sure why you are relying on social media sites to vault your data. Buy a NAS or whatever, keep it in your house. Unfortunately, any format or technology you choose will always have a finite life and will require transcoding to the latest format every few years or decades. Unlike paper.

It's an insoluble problem of digital data. Only analogue is (almost) forever.

Hey Google

just pay your tax

right-on-ness

I am no drama expert, but I agree BBC drama is poor. The writing is one reason. Actors being presented as celebs is another. Worst of all is the implacable political correctness. Almost every scene is set up to give you a "message", which, apart from being irritating, ruins the scene and makes it entirely predictable. How can any drama survive that ?

For example, one such message is that "women are strong and independent". Nothing too much wrong with that. But the drama is so keen on forcing this message on the viewer that it is written into every available scene. So you have the 7 stone female bank teller who beats up the 16 stone armed robber. Silliness. Yet we see this same scene many times every night, or one like it.

The same message explains why every female character in British drama is the same. In fact there is just one character to go round - it is the same woman. She is bad tempered, overbearing, does no suffer fools and constantly makes the men around her look weak. She turns up in dramas, plays, books, and some films. A girl version of the same character features in many children's books.

Artists must be wriggling under this cosh, but are not free to speak.

Hey Google

just pay your tax

"And it's a prospect CentOS users are widely turning down, saying they won't switch to Oracle Linux because they don't trust Oracle and also because of the company's poor standing as a member of the open-source community."

What goes around comes around, Larry.

80's black on black hifi

Every item of music equipment went black in the 80s, even to the extent of having black labels on black backgrounds. I think they wanted to distinguish themselves from the beige/grey/teak/brushed aluminium of the 70s. User friendly it was not.

Surveys

Those figures are pretty bald Does El Reg believe that 65% of the population of China and the US are planning to buy an iPhone 5 ?

These surveys always show Apple thumping Android, but sales figures and real life show it's a pretty even fight, maybe tilting towards Android.

Why are we not surprised

I think we all know that tape has an important place for the foreseeable future, for fairly obvious engineering reasons. Data backup and archival is a large problem space with different solutions for different situations.

Nice article

Nicely written article ("A mesmerising example of hi-fi chutzpah.." etc.). It all sounds like something from the Sirius Cybernetics Corp. The kit is all subjectivist b***ocks of course, but non the less fun for that.

Five year's time ?

As the article says, flash production will take many years to build. Until then the price difference alone will ensure storage keeps spinning.

If floppy disks were cheaper than USB sticks, just as fast and larger capacity, we would still be using them.

Ministry of Love

This proposal is straight out of the darkest pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is the kind of thing many of our ancestors died to prevent. The function of this black box is very similar to the kind of work performed manually by the character Winston Smith. Appalling. Shame on the Tories, who condemned the proposal while in opposition, only to be come its biggest fans once in power.

Whoever is in government just can't resist spying on every aspect of citizens' lives. The UK should be ashamed.

"...for our own enjoyment we shall... expel...systematically destroy..." etc.

The language in this statement indicates Anonymous are not people of great judgement, but perhaps chippy social inadequates with a weaner problem and alot of suppressed aggression to get of their chests. I imagine they watch the Matrix alot.

Seriously, unilateral and aggressive vigilantism is not an attractive proposition. And proving that somebody is trading illegal images requires you to view those images, thereby breaking the law.

Content is king

Most emphatically content is not king, as a quick look at any TV screen in the world will show. In 2012 we are still watching broadly the same programmes as we did in 1976, except that now they are spread over 50 channels instead of 3. You therefore need some serious kit to sort out the 5% watchable from the guff that fills the remainder of the spectrum.

Features are king because they make the desirable content more accessible. This YouView gets my vote because, in drawing together several powerful functions in an intuitive interface, it makes it easier for us to get to the good stuff.

I'll upgrade because YouView will be smarter and lower maintenance than the existing combination of technologies that amount to a You View equivalent, viz Toppy, MyStuff and WD TV Live. The same will apply to many others who have a different permutation of products.

Tablets to outship laptops in 2016 SHOCK

ie. toys are more popular than computers. 'twaserver thus.

Cue the balls

Let's wait until Saturday

@dogged- HAMs

"they are amateurs with some very dangerous opinions about what causes RF signal modulation and usually no training in proper testing and frequency analysis."

Never met a radio ham personally, but I think the average ham has a electronics degree, a room full of books, many years of experience and some serious intellectual horsepower, besides the ham certification. And if there was no issue with PLT, why would they raise it ?

Egregious if true

They just don't get it. If they continue not to get it, Facebook will be gone within 7 years.

Real Inventers of Pong

Bushnell attended a demonstration by Magnavox on 24 May, 1972. Bushnell founded Atari on June 27

B**tard

Hope it beats Topfield+Mystuff+WD live

Incompetence

"...engineer a similar crisis at another bank this week."

The banking sector has deployed so much incompetence recently that there is a danger that their incompetence reserves might run low. Fortunately, they can always borrow some incompetence from another bank. Some people think that banks create incompetence out of nothing but this is not really true. Some chief executives are paid huge bonuses for their incompetence, and...

FF / Chrome / Iron

6 years a loyal FF user, just changed to Iron this week. Still like FF but the bloat was getting too much. FF smells like a Microsoft product these days.

Chrome = Google stalkware