* Posts by nick47

40 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Mar 2011

Think you can solve the UK's electric vehicle charging point puzzle? The Ordnance Survey wants to hear about it

nick47

What we need are large areas with big entrances and exits into which cars can drive and exit, and have charging points where they can get charged up, or pumped up I suppose you could say. We could put these "pumps" in a row and even have two rows if there was room. We would need these places to be located all over the country, and along all the motorways, they could even have buildings on site where drivers could go in and use the loo, they could even sell things in the buildings like newspapers and snacks etc. Like a shop or something. What do I win?

'Not great, but usable': GNOME desktop boots on Asahi Linux for Apple M1

nick47

Why?

What can you do on Linux that you can't already do in a terminal on Mac OS?

Apple announces lossless HD audio at no extra cost, then Amazon Music does too. The ball is now in Spotify's court

nick47

Re: Since it is lossless

Please explain how buying lossless digital is less damaging to the environment.

No Apple fanbois here: Man United BANS iPads from Old Trafford

nick47

Re: What a crap headline

I agree with you. Story: laptops and tablets to be prohibited. Headline: MAN U BANS IPADS!

Black Eyed Peas star pitches pricey iPhone cam add-on

nick47

It reminds me of this project which didn't take off.

http://tinyurl.com/3j2wqo4

Apple iPad Mini 8in tablet review

nick47

Copying videos off

You can copy videos off your iDevices using Image Capture. You don't need iTunes.

Jury awards Apple $1bn damages in Samsung patent case

nick47

But Samsung did copy Apple though.

I don't get people who say:

"Samsung didn't copy Apple, unless you say that they copied a rectangle"

or

"Anyone who sides with Apple is a fanboi and therefore their opinion is invalid"

I am not an Apple fanboi, but I can still see that Samsung copied the iPhone. It's obvious. How can anyone not see it? Can someone explain it because I can't get my head around this!

I've watched the original iPhone launch video and Steve Jobs wows the crowd with the slide to unlock feature. He does it several times. I admit that sliding something to unlock it isn't a new idea (a bolt springs to mind) but it was new on a phone. When he showed the scrolling it was impressive because it was new.

Same for the touch screen. Let's face it, before the iPhone there weren't any touch screen phones. And if there were, there's no way that they were as responsive or as elegant as the one on the iPhone.

It seems like everyone has forgotten what phones were like before the iPhone came out. They were rubbish! I am glad that other phone manufacturers saw the good bits of the iPhone and copied it. It's a good thing. But denying it is like saying that nobody who made a flip phone got the idea from Motorola.

Come on! Explain to me how you think Samsung didn't copy Apple, without using the word fanboi!

Oooh-la-la! 'iPhone 5' bares all, strokes tiny nano-SIM in pics

nick47

Screen size

These are all fake. They're not going to change the screen size. Never gonna happen!

Japanese fanboi builds FrankenPhone from 'bits of iPhone 5'

nick47

Stuff and nonsense.

They will never change the screen size. Never going to happen. I will bet anyone anything. NEVER!

ITV scoffs at ad slump as production arm hauls in cash

nick47

Lidl...

Two kinds of people shop in Lidl, poor people, and smart people.

iPhone 5 to be skinniest Apple yet SHOCK

nick47

Screen size

There is no way that they will change the screen size. Thinness is always a goal for them but they will never implement a different sized screen.

Apple's Retina Macs: A little too elite?

nick47

Not an issue really

You wouldn't usually do a large edit away from the studio anyway. So even without external storage there's plenty of room for most jobs. You'd never keep the stuff on there after working with it, it would be archived and the space freed up for the next job. If you're editing a feature length film, you're unlikely to be doing it on a laptop without any access to external storage.

Watch Smarter: video guide to... memory cards

nick47

Depth of field

What's with the crazy shallow depth of field? Ridiculous!

Now TalkTalk cuts Brits' access to The Pirate Bay

nick47

Their message about the site being blocked looks really nice. I hope they got permission to use that graphic though!

Ultrabooks: objects of desire but just too darn expensive

nick47

Re: should have bought a mac...

If you take your MacBook to any Apple store they'll replace the whole keyboard section for you for free. Book an appointment though.

PayPal whips out barcode app for high-street glad rags

nick47

Re: Cheaper

15%? Where are you? I'm in Argentina and I thought that 10% was as bad as it got.

Foxconn receives Apple smart TV order - report

nick47

How quickly we forget.

Since every phone has a touch screen these days it's easy to forget that before the iPhone was introduced, all phones had keypads.

The introduction of the iPad revolutionised the way people thought of tablets, devices which had been around for years. Apple got them right and now they're super popular.

In both cases, other manufacturers, even those who have been making products for years before Apple introduced their designs, have taken those designs and adopted them themselves. It makes me smile every time someone talks about how great the Samsung phones are nowadays. I wonder whether they'd be making such devices if the iPhone had never come out.

When it comes to televisions I expect the same sequence of events. First Apple will point out everything that's wrong with televisions, then say what would be great, "Wouldn't it be great if...". Then they will introduce a TV set which will revolutionise the industry.

And of course, a year later every other manufacturer will release TVs which copy all the ideas. It's happened before and it will happen again.

By the way, my predictions for Apple TV are; it will just be called "Apple TV" not "iTV". It will be available in three sizes with two models each for a total of six models. It will be no thicker than an iPad.

O2 launches On & On mobile tariff

nick47

Wow this is amazing!

£26 for unlimited calls? That seems too good to be true, either I am missing something or this is the best deal ever!

Japanese cops cuff six smut-scam ransomware suspects

nick47
Happy

Photo

Thumbs up if you clicked on the article purely due to the photo and regardless of what the headline was!

Yahoo! invests in New York uber studio

nick47

You! Forgot! The! Exclamation! Marks!

Nude lady recreates Star Wars tauntaun scene in dead horse

nick47

Boobs

One of those "she's naked but you can't see anything" deals. I hate those.

Apple shouldn't bother with TV...

nick47

Android TV

After Apple revolutionise television, I wonder if other companies will bring out their own version of tellys which run on Android, which "borrow" all the ideas that the Apple set introduces, and which all the anti Apple brigade will say is better than Apple! It will be the iPad all over again.

Chinese whisper of low-cost Kindle-confounding iPad

nick47
Trollface

I don't think we'll see an iPad update for quite a while.

Next iPad won't come out for at least another 18 months. They don't need to update it because it's already awesome.

O2 best placed to scoop new iPhone sales dosh

nick47

Visual voicemail only works on o2

Which is the reason I've stuck with them.

Acer to announce ultrabook at IFA

nick47

Re: Seriously looking forward to the review.

You can stick Ubuntu on a MacBook Air. You can stick Ubuntu on pretty much anything, I would think you'd be able to stick Ubuntu on one of these too.

iPhone 5 less than a month away

nick47
Trollface

Why are they bothering?

My iPhone 4 is so good that I don't see how they can improve it.

Corporates love iPhone, iPad more than Android kit

nick47

Couldn't it be that iPads are good?

Anyone reading these comments might think that the iPad is a terrible device which anyone who uses must have a screw loose! They're not that bad surely!

Samsung Chromebook: The $499 Google thought experiment

nick47

Certainly the best looking Atom based machine so far.

I hope other manufacturers follow the design examples here. How I long for a £199 "netbook" that looks like a proper laptop! Sometimes you don't need processing power but you can't beat having plenty of room for your windows or your fingers!

Diary of a cameraman at the last shuttle launch

nick47

Please elaborate!

Hey don't get me wrong, I appreciate the benefits of satelite technology but space exploration by man is pointless. It's a whole big lot of well, space! It's easy to forget that there are people on our planet who don't have enough to eat. Or people who have no home, and I don't mean the dude outside the shoe shop selling the big issue, I'm talking about families with children who really do live rough. I'm from Britain, we have it good, we moan and complain about things but our standard of living is very high. But I've been to places you wouldn't believe. I've had a woman come up to me in the street and beg me to take her baby because she couldn't look after it. I've seen huge neighbourhoods which have only the most basic dirt roads, where you can't go outside after dark in case you get shot for the few dollars you're carrying. It makes me so sad that one man can spend £20,000 on a car, while another man can't even afford the bus fare to send his kids to school. If there is any life out there other than that on Earth, I hope they don't ever find us because I think we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Now, are you going to yell me what you're muttering?

nick47

Great article.

Loved the article. Disagree about space flight being useful. Let's get planet Earth sorted before we go off gallivanting around the solar system looking for stuff to do. I imagine .6% of the US federal budget would do a lot for some of the poorest parts of the country.

Moles say Mac OS X Lion to bound in next week

nick47
Facepalm

You didn't back up?

A 1 TB External hard drive costs about £50. Your Mac Mini has built in back-up software called "Time Machine". If only you had a time machine eh!?

Is Facebook worth more than Google?

nick47

Facebook is too well established to go anywhere now.

"I'll Facebook you later" has become a phrase in the same way that "I'll eBay some parts" or "Just Google the recipe" have. Once that happens, it's very hard to imagine that it could be replaced by something else. I don't think any web site is worth a million million dollars, that seems a bit over the top, but when the President of the United States has a page on your web site I think that's a pretty clear sign that you've become a firmly established part of the collective consciousness.

Splashtop Remote Desktop

nick47

There's no app for that.

Every time Flash is mentioned in relation to iOS it's about how Lovefilm doesn't work. Can't these guys make an app which allows people to view content in the same way YouTube content can be viewed?

ANONYMOUS: Behind the mask, inside the Hivemind

nick47
Trollface

Yay boobs!

Cake looks good too!

Facebook's 'awesome' plan to hook up with Skype?

nick47

Microsoft already has an instant message client

It's called "MSN Messenger" (Officially called "Windows Live Messenger" but everyone simply calls it "MSN".) It's got a huge user base and it supports video chatting and has done for more than 8 years. They seem to have forgotten about it...

BOFH: Drunken Time Lord

nick47
FAIL

Sapphire & Steel

They were "transuranic elements" and it was ITV.

'Indestructible' rootkit enslaves 4.5m PCs in 3 months

nick47
Trollface

Lucky for me...

I've got a Mac, and therefore can't get viruses.

Apple iMac 27in

nick47
Stop

Just to address some of the points which have been raised.

First off, the screen resolution is 2560 x 1440.

When you place your order, you can choose to have a trackpad instead of a mouse at no extra cost. You can also choose a standard keyboard with a numeric keypad. There is no need to purchase one separately.

All Apple mice since the Mighty Mouse have supported right click, they do not have a distinct button but if you click on the area where the right button would be, you can right click.

All Apple computers come with the iLife suite of applications which includes iPhoto, iWeb, Garageband, and iMovie. The iWork applications (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) are available from the Apple App Store where they cost £11.99 each.

Mac OS X supports managed user accounts which permit you to impose restrictions on the amount of control a user has including preventing modification of the dock icons. You can also prohibit any applications you choose, restrict access to the computer outside specific times, monitor what the child has been doing on the computer, and even block access to inappropriate web sites (all this is built in to every Mac.)

You are not required to enter a password to unlock a screensaver on a Mac by default, although it is an option you can configure in the Security section of the System Preferences.

There are significant differences between Windows and Mac OS X, but to go into them here would be a bit overboard. Suffice to say that if you don't feel any benefit to using Mac OS, then it's likely that to convince you that it has any benefits would be difficult.

It's already been said, but it should be pointed out once again that all Intel-based Macs can run Windows natively, or inside a virtual machine. I use VirtualBox on my MacBook with an installation of Windows XP for those odd occasions when I need Windows for something (like when I recently updated the firmware on my wife's old Nokia phone - a task not possible in Mac OS X).

Finally, I noticed that all price comparisons focussed on the cost of hardware an nobody included the price of a webcam, or speakers, or Windows 7 which as far as I know is about £100. That doesn't include a web page editor, a video editing package, a music creation tool, a basic image editor and library program.

Dixons warns it's getting worse

nick47
Flame

You can't make money selling any more.

Apart from the fact that everyone knows not to buy from a Dixons shop now, because they've ruined their reputation by effectively turning into an insurance company pushing "warranties", they can not compete with the wibbly wobbly web on hardware any more, nobody can!

Ebuyer have effectively killed the market for computer gear, they are too cheap and they offer next day delivery on orders placed up until 11pm! No shop can compete with that, and it's been that way for years. The only good thing is that some people haven't heard of Ebuyer but they've all heard of Amazon, so you're back to square one.

Even local independents are only surviving because of the repairs and services they're selling. The days of the big computer shop are well and truly numbered, Dixons should shut their big empty shops (Have you been in one lately?) and negotiate to have small departments in supermarkets like Asda and Morrisons (Not Tesco though).

It is a shame because even though they are hated by so many, it's always nice to browse computer gear if you like that sort of thing. Plus the convenience factor comes in to play, when you need an item fast, and have no choice, they're there. But that's the only business they're getting nowadays and that's why it's not sustainable.

Steve Jobs screws my wife (out of $944)

nick47

Kilopixel?

Never heard that one before!