* Posts by N

15 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2007

Toshiba NB200

N
FAIL

I hate the keyboard

Called into an electrical retailer the other day, wanting to try a netbook. Toshiba keyboard was the worst of the bunch. Awful slab top keys with no indent. The others I "quick brown fox"ed were much nicer (Asus especially).

Sony names date for Euro 80GB PS3

N
Jobs Horns

Yay. Er, that'll be nice.

Um. Was that enthusiastic enough? How about "whoop-de-frickin-do." Or even "whatever".

Show me some really decent software and I might ditch the Xbox; meantime I'm happy with Gears and Halo. I also like the meatier-sized controller.

However. I *hate* that my 360 closely resembles a blast furnace for noise & heat especially once a disc spins up. Makes it unusable for media usage IMHO.

Seriously, is the PS3 quiet enough for watching media? Might consider one if so.

[Evil Jobs since Apple fanboys are even worse than Xbox/PS/Wii]

Asus Eee Box to debut in UK... minus Linux

N
Happy

HDMI?

This would be a perfect under-TV box - providing they give it HDMI.

Should be cool & quiet unlike the blast furnace that masquerades as my Xbox 360 (love the games, hate the noise).

Imagine sofa-surfing, legibly, on your nice big TV. Media streaming. Even a spot of gaming perhaps. All with lovely open sauce, when they get round to it.

UK.gov ready to get muddy again on GM foods

N
Thumb Down

I expect it will happen

And probably sooner than later.

But splicing animal proteins into vegetables, and poisonous plant genes into vegetables, and antibiotic-resistant bacterial genes into vegetables...

WTF?

"So could you explain exactly why you got out of bed this morning? Sorry, didn't convince me, get back in there!"

That's just the thing. You can't. Once it's out, it's out.

This can only, long term, damage food production through sterile plants, poisoned populace, and reduced biodiversity.

Don't know if the bee colony collapse issue is GM-related, but I doubt they'd like it either.

Dissolving the plastic bag problem

N
Flame

Burn it all!

Since we're now not going to be allowed to generate 6, 8, or even 10% of our power from the Bristol Channel (depending on who is making up the statistics at the time), why not use furnaces to burn rubbish and generate power? Plenty of potential in them thar bags.

Incinerators which use secondary air injectors and re-burn are reasonably clean, and any nasties remaining in the exhaust could be trapped and buried for later generations to discover.

Asus to spin off Eee product line?

N
Thumb Up

All is well again

She's back. And front.

BBC vs ISPs: Bandwidth row escalates as Tiscali wades in

N

No. Not "with" Tiscali here.

I recently left Pipex since Tiscali fncked the service with shaping and blocking sites (iTunes for example). I didn't mind paying £25 a month for a decent service.

I'm a happy Be-ing now. It's fast, effective, and slightly cheaper than Pipex was, but offers less frills. Most importantly it doesn't appear to be restrictive in use.

So - if Tiscali want to mess up the internet in the UK with shoddy service then they can fnck right off.

Yay Auntie! Stick it to them!

Sony pledges Blu-ray Profile 2.0 PS3 update this month

N

Copyright warnings?

Every DVD I've seen with these is an original - the ones without are copies.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder about getting fake versions of my DVDs so I don't have to sit through stupid frickin copyright notices!

Tiscali executes stealth LLU migrations

N

You *should* get what you pay for

I pay 25 a month for what used to be a good service with Pipex. For that I expect a decent connection. I expect to be able to connect to iTunes. I don't use P2P and I don't download movies (although with BBC and other TV station offerings I may wish to in due course).

No iTunes, no reasonable connection speed. Very poor. Then Pipex dropped the ball badly and messed customers around with incorrect, misleading information - perhaps deliberately and perhaps not.

Finally Pipex tech support are being allowed to admit there is a problem (below is an excerpt from a Pipex email). I'll give them a chance. My MAC is ready & waiting for use with Zen but I'm holding off for a few days.

--

Unfortunately this is something that is currently being investigated. The usage and traffic management should still be done on the Pipex network - not Tiscali's, however the Pipex customers are also experiencing the same issues as some Tiscali customers. We should have more information on this issue once the Network team have investigated further.

Tiscali hits 'undo' after bandwidth throttling chokes iTunes

N

Pipex and Tiscali

Both my office and home accounts will shortly be migrating to Zen.

Tiscali can disappear up their own blocked ports AFAIAC.

The only regret I have is that I didn't switch ISP beforehand, when I first heard of Tiscali taking over. Shame. Pipex used to be good.

Xbox 360 could back Blu-ray

N

Emulation

Not quite the whole story. The PS2 emulation software exists, so taking it away doesn't really save a great deal.

What it does do is save the license fee to the PS2 section of Sony from the PS3 division. Prime example of how to make the customer suffer due to stupid inter-departmental politics.

You can still (if you want) play PS1 games on the PS3 because that's part of the PS3 division.

Go figure.

PS3 demand booms in Japan

N

PS3 finally "coming good" for Sony?

If so, it's about time. But on the back of what? Sales figures usually ride on a particular release. Some Japan-only title that won't mean a lot to us perhaps?

Still waiting for a good excuse to buy one though. I think I'll wait on the rumble pad version next year.

Evesham left debts of £6.8m

N

There should be a public inquiry!

Sadly there are aspects of company law that get abused.

Those double glazing firms that change names on a regular basis? They're just closing down and taking advantage of the opportunity to get away from tax debts, creditors, etc.

Then you get things on a rather different level - Mr Towers and colleagues at Rover, anyone?

Now that's a thorny one. They kept several thousand people employed for some years and attempted to sell on the company, only giving up when the deal fell through partly because of the workers' pensions issue. In the process they managed to line their own pension fund pockets quite substantially. Or at least that's what the media would have us believe.

It seems we have to spend millions, lots and lots of them, on an DTI inquiry in cahoots with a sodding expensive accountancy firm. Basically a quango - but then the proliferation of such things is one of the blessings Tony has bestowed on us.

So let's dig the dirt on Evesham and waste / spend / flush yet more taxpayers money.

Netgear Storage Central Turbo SC101T network storage box

N

Zetera software? No thanks, then.

Having suffered hours of assorted woes and seemingly endless system resets with the SC101, the Zetera service swallowing huge chunks of CPU time and RAM, I'll be steering clear of this one.

Once bitten? No. Many, many times bitten. All with help from Netgear support that doesn't know ar5e from elbow.

I'm a fan - across 3 offices I use 3 routers and 8 switches. All Netgear. Decent, solid hardware that I trust.

One comment asked (pleaded?), "surely they've fixed the issues by now." It's the software, not Netgear, that's the problem here.

Dell trips over printer cable

N

£14? Shocking

Maybe it's like the snake oil high-end audio cables. Oxygen-free copper, silver contacts, that sort of thing.

Or maybe it's just Dell profiting from those gullible / unsuspecting enough to fall for it...