Posts by Britt

Obligitory

Still waiting for IE to load....

Funding

I know it's old but here goes.

In a bid to find more funding to ensure future space missions, NASA are to announce the discovery of oil on Mars...

On a similar notes, finding water gives an energy source and Oxygen for future missions, so that's dandy. There may even be other items we can make use of.

Iron Sky's Helium 3 sub plot jig wasn't really that far off the mark.

Convenience

From what I gather, many of the devs operate in area with utterly rubbish connection, some reporting 60k/s from Apple servers. With a speed like that from official servers and a 3GB+ file to download that could drop out at any time, I'm beginning to see the temptation in downloading from a more localised mirror.

Reasoning, it's a scary thing. Maybe Apple should consider an official mirror that's easier to access.

It's almost like the music piracy argument all over again.

News from the front, I had to email a funny picture instead of bunging it in Skype.. the horror.

Been there, done that. To some peoples horror, trying to water it down with lemonade only increased its capacity to spread liquid fire around the mouth... oh how we chuckled.

EVE Valkyrie

I need to pop around a friends house to have a go on his headset. He won it at the EvE Valkyrie tournament in Iceland a couple of months back.

I know his rig can use it, he has 2x970's in there. I know that because I built the thing.

He was also the only one there to win one that had a machine that could use it.

Also, Oculus is counting on games like EvE Valkyrie being moderately successful to keep the sales up.

Flarblegarble.

One of the reasons TV shows get pirated is because after they are shown on US tv, the plot is smeared across the web for a few weeks before it appears on foreign telly. People don't like spoilers and people don't like to wait.

Also, an example of a film the deserves to be seen in the cinema is John Wick. Yet, months and months later, is yet to leave US shores. But there sure as hell is a DVD rip of it online.

Alas, the lost sales argument can boil down to "would they have watched it if it wasn't free"? Most likely it would have remained unwatched. People grab stuff because its there to be grabbed, like free samples of food. No intention of buying it, but hey, free taster. That's humanity for you.

LAN Gaming

Highlights the rather annoying lack of LAN gaming native to most recent games and the requirement to phone home to a server just to play locally.

Gimme back my Day of Defeat LAN games!

The End Times

Even Gabe admitted that under such a scheme games like Counter Strike or DOTA would never had taken off. The free factor is what add players and make a mod actually worth something.

I'm a builder who now trains and supports software.

I've got various skills and experiences that can make me more effective at my job than pure IT training due to the people we work with.

It's nice to know that those of us with oddball educations have something extra to give.

This is how you get me to buy comics I wouldn't normally read.

Can I have an option to change Excel back to its previous function of multiple sheets opening in a single instance?

Database applications built around an Excel front end have a hella time with opening several copies of Excel simultaneously.

And maybe, juuuust maybe, can we not continue the trend of each new version of office being bloated and vastly slower than the previous version?

And stop the need to run a repair of the software a clockwork like 4 weeks after install due to buggyness?

I should stop now as I could go on with this for hours.

Oh, did they ever fix the fact that Excel 2013 CAN'T open a spreadsheet with 2 passworded pages?

Or that Word falls over to OLE errors when importing text that has a character from Word 2003?

..........

OK, So it's in Texas...

So when do we get our space cowboys and wild west style frontier bases on Mars?

All this talk

All this talk of battery life, I just sit here with 70% left on my Z2 since taking of charge yesterday morning. Considering I give it fairly high use with web browsing and music it's doing pretty damned well.

Just in the habit of charging it every other day now, still with around 30% left. Don't even run Stamina Mode. Steam is all all the time too. Can't miss a sale.....!

Nuggets

There is a screenshot doing the rounds of someone explaining that what was released and how it was gathered.

No tech details but there is a small group of people who hack and share amongst themselves, only way to get into the group is to buy in with fresh photos.

Seems one member decided he was bored and could make a few quid of the pictures.

Authenticity of claims not confirmed, but they do fit with the range of ages to the pictures and how so many were gathered.

Others Too

Not just Ebay, EVE Online has been down too. Many comments point to a 3rd party issue around the London area.

So, location based behaviour? Am I imagining my Xperia Z2 detecting my location and setting various apps appropriately? I get to work and it turns the wifi on and sets itself to silent. I leave to go home and it sets itself to ring normally, turns wifi off to save battery and tells me my journey time based on my location. The security is an extension to this, not an entirely new feature..

Repairs

Well, pray you don't get a dodgy ram stick.