"Fandroid"
Screw it. I know where my next bonus is going... ;)
Posts by BorkedAgain
686 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2010
Archos 101 8GB Android tablet
Tuesday 1st February 2011 10:01 GMT
"...the only tablet now on sale that I would actually spend my own hard-earned on."
Yep, for the first time since these new-gen tablet things started coming out I'm actually quite tempted to tot up my pennies and purchase. I think I may just hang about to see how Honeycomb looks (and costs) before I actually take the plunge, though.
Not even tempted by the iPad. Have played with colleagues' pads and, while slick, they're awful shallow...
'Tree Octopus' proves journos no smarter than 13-year-old Americans
Ofcom okays Derren Brown psychic-baiting
Flickr thinks again about 4,000 pix loss
Thursday 3rd February 2011 11:24 GMT
It almost certainly helped.
I imagine they would still have done it without the meedja attention, but the user would have had to bitch and moan a fair bit.
More reputable cloud service providers have DR as part of their service but you gets what you pay for. $25/year isn't paying for a lot.
You can't complain that the cheap-as-chips meal you bought turned out to be chips and not frickin caviar...
PlayStation phone promo'd in creepy commercial
Microsoft lands big handbag on Google's copy kisser
Official: PhD in 'Essential Oils' or 'Natural Toiletries' = 'a Scientist'
New auto-crowd tech writes better articles than pro writers TRUE
Paxo in second c-word shocker
Hack spies 'iPad 2' at mag launch
Thursday 3rd February 2011 10:34 GMT
*Yawn*
Is it me, or does this sound just a touch orchestrated?
Sorry, I guess I'm supposed to be making little hops with my arms clutched tight against my chest going "goody goody goody!" or somesuch but come on. With that description it could have been any fondleslab on or approaching the market including half the £87.50 jobs that DSG will shit into a box for you any day of the week.
Slow news day?
Google to Microsoft: You're stealing our search results!
Google Docs morphs into once and future 'GDrive'
Tuesday 1st February 2011 14:17 GMT
@ Peter
Really? You're serious about this?
I can only assume you've never had to use Lotus Notes (or Outlook or Exchange Web) then...
Me, I've been using gmail for work for months and it's been a revelation. It's great to find a mail platform that simply works the way you expect it to, and is available from pretty much anywhere...
Can't please all the people all the time, I guess...
Boffins hope for dimensional portal event at LHC by 2013!
UK tech retailers are rubbish
Thursday 27th January 2011 13:20 GMT
Profound improvement...
...being over how it would perform with no power cable, I guess. Which is a fair point.
And if you're seriously stupid enough to actually fork out for something like this then I guess the option of looking at the bottom of the box that the equipment arrived in for the *supplied* power cable would be a little too technical in any case...
Wednesday 26th January 2011 11:44 GMT
Not quite the same...
I buy bread, cheese, pickle, margarine, milk etc on a fairly regular basis. So does pretty much everyone I know. It's not a major outlay (although the way things are going...) and it's something we all do all the time. Everyone pretty much knows their preferences by now and, beyond a little promotion-inspired brand disloyalty, you probably know what you're going to buy this week and how it'll taste.
If (heaven help you) you're visiting Dixon's or Vomet or wherever to make a tech purchase, you're in a different position. You probably don't buy a new telly, PVR, laptop etc every week, and if you're Joe Public you probably don't know your GB from your Mb/s so you are going to be relying on helpful staff who have the faintest idea what they're about and are motivated to help you find the best solution for your needs, not the best sale for their commission.
To put it another way, you're screwed.
As someone else said, these stores should be treated as a place to check out the hardware in real-life before ordering it for a hefty discount online. And spread the good word to anyone non-techie you care about, to save them falling victim...
Blackadder style chemists transform gold into purest ... purple
NYT casts Assange as 'arrogant' (with a little 'Peter Pan')
Thursday 27th January 2011 13:05 GMT 
Oh for goodness' sakes.
I was going to post something lighthearted about how Assange looks like Alexander Armstrong in drag, but everyone else is being so damned grown-up so I can't or I'll look like a shallow, immature idiot.
Unfair.
The one with the mittens on string through the sleeves, please...
That's Schmidt: So long to the Google chief who wasn't
Windows 7 Phone glitch spews phantom data
LG Optimus One P500 budget Android smartphone
Monday 10th January 2011 19:58 GMT
Agreed.
The San Francisco is an amazing piece of kit; can be unlocked for free and easily rooted (if you're a bit brave and slightly techie) and makes this look like an overpriced also-ran.
Shame though; in the absence of the OSF this would look like an incredible deal. As it is, it'll do for anyone who can't get their hands on the OSF. ;)
Google battles Derby cops over access to Street View data
Monday 10th January 2011 11:51 GMT
Get it right.
In the Hollywood UI style guide there should be a big "Enhance" menu with "Unscramble" somewhere prominent, and the mouse pointer should be moved slowly and steadily across the screen to the menu, and hover for a fraction of a second over the unscramble before clicking it. Clicking it should cause the "unscramble" menu item to flash twice. A progress bar is *always* good.
They should also be able to zoom in on the vehicle's tax disc and read the owner's name and address from it. Somehow.
Icon shows the person who should be allowed to operate the mouse.
Salesforce buys Dimdim, continues with Facebook-for-biz ploy
Monday 10th January 2011 09:58 GMT
You can integrate GTalk...
...and there are a couple of other options in the App Exchange which might help, but yes, I was hoping something along those lines might be the result of this otherwise unexciting news.
It might help if anyone could tell me that Dimdim actually did, but their website just says "we just got bought by Salesforce"... ;)
Man charged in bizarre EXPLODING VIBRATOR plot
Friday 7th January 2011 14:46 GMT
No, no, NO.
"The best bang since the big one." - Mine's the one with the wide collar and three sleeves. Thank you.
(not sure it's healthy to have known that by heart without having to look it up...)
That's a nasty piece of work there, though. And the fact that he managed to have three relationships (albeit ones that went very wrong) with that hair and that attitude... Well, says a lot. Not sure what, but it says a lot of it.
Nike and TomTom display watch with marathon capabilities
Body of murdered cyberwar expert found in landfill
Thursday 6th January 2011 11:07 GMT
It does read like a novel...
...or the synopsis of one of the more OTT and silly action thriller movies. I always thought real life hired better scriptwriters, though.
Sad to hear that (what sounds like) a decent man has died in distressing circumstances. Despite the Clancey-esque details, I'd tend to assume lizard overlords probably weren't involved.
10-year-old girl becomes youngest ever supernova discoverer
Ford cars get draconian parental controls
Microsoft 'sorry' as Hotmail bug hits 17,000
Tuesday 4th January 2011 10:15 GMT
...or two...
Yeah, it's more like just under 0.005%, but what's a couple of orders of magnitude when you're talking pissed -off freeloaders, right?
I agree though; most in-house systems struggle to serve a fraction of the end-users with a fraction of the reliability that most cloud providers manage, even the comparatively pants ones like Hotmail.
Not sure I'm buying the explanation though. Sounds a bit "training exercise" if you know what I'm saying...
Paris 'cos she likes an extra couple of digits, according to our sources.
In-flight fight for stubborn iPhone-loving teen
Vote now to name killer PARIS space cocktail
Amazon: 'iPad LCD tablets no threat to Kindle'
Tuesday 28th December 2010 03:15 GMT
Hear hear.
There's something brilliant about having an entire bookcase-worth of capacity in something the size of a DVD case, lighter than a paperback, which you only have to think about charging once every three-to-four weeks.
That's weeks, Tony. Not days. Don't know what you were doing with yours; possibly listening to a lot of audiobooks or something, but in normal operations mine will last up to a month on a charge, and that's reading a fair bit, on a daily basis...
Finished your book on the train in to work? No problem; start the next one. These e-readers all come with a bunch of free classics, so if you haven't bought the latest Twilight yet you can always catch up on a Sherlock Holmes or Northanger Abbey or something. Only downside: I quite like the look of a well-stocked bookcase, but this thing has helped me keep a curb on my second-hand-book habit...
Oh, and if you can't stretch to a "proper" illuminated cover (or find the edge-lit effect a little odd) then a clip-on reading light from the local 99p shop will work just as well, same as on a traditional book, if you at least have some form of cover (and you really ought.)
Vulture falls asleep in front of Christmas TV
Monday 27th December 2010 09:46 GMT 
Merry Christmas to all...
Thanks for another year's worth of entertainment and thought-provocation. Season's greetings to the Reg staff and regulars; looking forward to being distracted from work by you again next year...
Here's a virtual pint of sherry to help along the turkey-burps and snores...
London's tube demands faster-than-NFC ticketing
National Identity Card holding chumps have buyer's remorse
Gifts for the Geeks
Google Cr-48: Inside the Chrome OS 'unstable isotope'
Wednesday 15th December 2010 13:07 GMT
Dirt-cheap and instant-on
...and no accumulation of cruft over time. What's not to like?
Okay, it's not going to replace the "proper" workstation for most of the people on here, but I can think of several people who'd find this perfect. Not all of them teenagers.
But, especially for teens who insist on downloading crap and trashing their machines with viruses and suchlike, this is great!
Wednesday 15th December 2010 13:07 GMT
And the fabled "20%"
Asking your staff to "waste" 20% of their time on blue-sky stuff is part of this as well. Most of that time goes nowhere; occasionally something sticks and grows into something cool.
Hands up anyone who *doesn't* waste about 20% of their work hours? Anyone?
Have you anything to show for it?
Txt tax would wipe out half UK deficit, claims union baron
Wednesday 15th December 2010 09:41 GMT
(psst...)
Just a thought, but this may not be the best forum to lump IT and Consultants in amongst the problems. Many of the people around here work in those sectors...
Oh hang on, public sector IT spending you mean? In that case you may have a point. Those guys do rather take the whole packet of chocolate hobnobs...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
