Posts by Chris 3

Re: "Tax" - really?

Sounds like you need to tune into Radio 4Extra, you can get all the broadcasts of The Navy Lark, Round The Horn and The Men From The Ministry you desire.,

Re: trust me, I'm a healthcare professional

Hang on, that says that *your* wishes are pre-eminent, not your next of kin. What's wrong with that?

Re: re:we have devices made of the best

Since the last G3 iMacs were phased out over 10 years ago, that shows some remarkable longevity.

Re: DAB Bashing

The Roberts DAB I have runs very happily for about 4 days of intensive listening on rechargable AAs, Personally I got DAB because I value the wider variety of stations - 6 Music and 4 Extra in particular. I also nipped down to Halfords and got one for the car.

Re: I'm getting uneasy

I left my wife's machine on 10.6.8 but I have to say this is the first upgrade since then that has made me tempted to upgrade it. 10.9 is a really nice OS and there really isn't much convergent UI going on.

Re: Ummm, this isn't new...

You made me check and yes you're right and I'm wrong.. I made the incorrect assumption that when I saw the Flash plugin running as a separate process in Activity Monitor it was sandboxed.

I'll leave the original post just so this thread makes sense.

Re: He does have a point

"Your arguments, while seductive, are just plain wrong. It does not matter if J.K Rowling had it bad and now is a billionaire with copyright but would have just been sad without it "

Except that your original argument was that it didn't create wealth and only leachers benefited, so it does matter in that it destroys the credibility of your argument.

" It does not make the world a better place and hence it does not serve its function and hence should be withdrawn."

That's a bald assertion you make. For a world where authors and artists and composers are not payed by wealth patrons, but by people buying copies of their work, it clearly serves to help return money to the content creators. Is the system perfect? No. Are the ever-lengthening copyright periods detrimental yes. But you haven't yet proposed an alternative system for funding easily copyable creativity.

"The rent-seekers who profit from it, a handful of superstars and their heirs who profit, plenty of creative dupes who have no reasonable hope of profiting from it *ever*..."

... and of course all the small-time photographers who would see their work used, un-paid by the Daily Mail.

"There are very few 'inventions' that are very inventive and useful in the patent system. If there were, teams of us would be poring through patents looking for neat stuff. "

Which lots of people do. Again, is the patent system perfect? No it's become distorted and the quality of patent examination and awarding appears to be horrible. That doesn't mean that the entire patent system is without merit, just that the award of patents needs to be tightened up.

You might not like copyright and patents, but you've yet to make a sound case for them being abolished.

Re: asking for trouble

You make an interesting and reasonable point, however one thing Valve has going for it, is a tremendous amount of experience (and real world stats) gathered from serving diverse Mac PC and Linux users via Steam. I would expect to see them handle this in the same was that PC games do, with the machines selecting variable video effects levels to give the best available rendering while maintaining frame rate.

Perhaps we'll see 'suggested' video settings by default, with the ability to tinker with video for the people who really want nice reflections at the expense of some stutter.

Re: Bad. Very bad.

Do you roll the mouse around on your knee and have the keyboard perched on the arm of the sofa?

Re: Well, I suppose I should be the first fanboi to say...

I don't actually own an iPhone. I might buy one just to annoy you, though.

Re: lolwut?

The thing about biometric data is 'once it's out there, it's out there'. Password database hacked? Change your password. Finger print out there in the wild? what are you going to do?

Biometrics shouldn't be used for trivial matters.

Where "So much" equals about 8%. Not insignificant, but not the total ownership some like to paint.

Re: RIP Nokia

The only thing that has brand awareness in the *consumer* space. Phones account for less than half of Nokia revenue, ISTR

Did he know?

Thanks for doing this - even if he didn't live to see it become official, do you know if he knew that he had been nominated?

Re: Stunt

> The gimmick is that the solar array is supposed to put more into the grid than Apple take out. That way they can claim they are powered by it.

That's not a gimmick. If their solar systems more than offsets the energy requirenments, that's a viable green energy strategy.

Not ideal, but: http://www.rcblogic.co.uk/p-2481-sonnet-echo-pro-pcie-thunderbolt-adapter-two-slots-full-length.aspx

Re: Yeah, but ...

For what values of "Useful"? iPads are certainly useful for content consumption and small scale content creation. So for Web, E-mail, book reading they are excellent and they are extremely handy for doing edits to documents. I probably wouldn't use them for primary document creation, but at a push you can.

The fact that my *builder* and his team use them to share design and project plans via Dropbox would suggest that its not just fanboys who find them useful.

Re: Over forties

I'm about to hit my 50s and I thought the Reboot worked excellently. There were a few times where Pine's Kirk directly channelled Shatner's in terms of mannerisms etc. Same with Bones and Spock. Not slavish impersonations, but referencing the core of the performances.

I thought the use of time-travel to switch timelines was a fun conceit to make the reboot universe the-same-but-different.

The best bit was watching all the old trekkers harrumphing about how the new film had forgotten the spirit of the original. Yes it was action-tastic. Yes it was fun. But yes, it was certainly Trek.

Re: And the spin-offs ..

XYZZY?

Re: More Suggestion than Paul McKenna

As an Apple user, I think that's an entirely fair point. However the discrepancy between the results for the MacBook Pro and the Retina model, suggests that there is more going on here, than simple user selection bias.

Also, I always thought that the Thinkpads tended to be the box of choice for the tech-savvy, so I'm surprised to see it down there.

You're missing the fact that...

... they sell. There's a big market for cheap n cheerful.

Re: Now i hate apple....

Looks to me as if that quote has been mangled by Wired, or there is something missing:

“If a user turns Siri off, both identifiers are deleted immediately along with any associated data. " doesn't make sense in context because only one identifier is ever mentioned in the article.

My guess is that the spokesdroid originally said: “If a user turns Siri off, both identifiers and data are deleted immediately along with any associated data. "

I also guess that he meant that any data associated with the ID is deleted, because - as you point out - you can't delete data no longer associated with it.

I have to say that if the data truly *is* dissociated from the ID after 6 months, but kept for 2 years to improve the service, it seems harmless and reasonable.

Yes, came here to say just this. I looked a the headline figures and thought "blimey that growth rate looks pretty healthy". The downgrade is due to struggling Windows 8, tablet and phone strategy however. so I suppose Goldman's point is that this is the high water mark.

I guess the CFO is looking at the current sales figures, and going >gulp<

Re: And the Windows Phone version

Oh god, all the comments on the BBC blogs are from the people with WinPho who want support.

Re: Reality

> THEY will need to fit smart sockets in every part of the home,

... unless they just provide adaptors that you place into the socket used by the washing machine/fridge.

Basically they want you paying attention during take off and landing

Not playing angry birds while safety announcements are being made or during the most dangerous parts of the flight

Re: Are we really talking about putting the network gubbins in a bulb...

Probably needs as much processing power as the average novelty birthday card that plays a tune.

Re: @cornz 1 (was: Sheeple are sheeple.)

OK, I'll bite. What OS/firmware *is* your phone running?

Re: Coming to a wallet near you...

I agree. I avoid using Paypal, because, they're pretty shady in my opinion, I certainly wouldn't want to have a Paypal credit card.

Re: As daft as the test on Myth Busters

> I do use a hands free kit in the car, and you know what, just the same as when I have a passenger I can say "Give me a sec" and ignore the call completely.

I'm really not sure it is *quite* the same. Yesterday, I was waiting to turn right down a sidestreet and a car in a queue was overlapping the box junction, so I couldn't complete the turn. I was facing him, looking straight into his face asking him to back up a couple of feet. He was completely oblivious on the hands free talking in animated fashion. After about 30 seconds I ended up tooting him, and which point he startled back into the real world and backed up.

People on hands free do *not* seem to behave the same way as people with a passenger in the car, perhaps because passengers have at least some awareness of what's going on and tend to shut up without being asked, or when the driver suddenly stops talking realises why and again curtails the conversation.

You're a natural exception, I'm sure but hands free seems possitively dangerous in many situations for a large percentage of drivers.

Re: Is this a bit strange

Well, except that Apple has never been shown to be using an effective monopoly on desktop operating systems to kill off competing Web browser companies, by pressuring computer manufacturers not to ship alternative browsers.

Other than that, it's completely analogous.