Re: Spinal Taps Amps.
Bugger Spinal Tap, it was a concert by the plutonium rock band "Disaster Area"!
481 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Sep 2013
Been with VM since Telewest days; not been a perfect relationship admittedly as they do seem to run their network pretty sweaty and are very slow to fix over subscription issues (twelve months to fix in my area when a 200Mbps connection would drop to 30Mbps between 17:00 and 00:00). But would so much rather deal with VM support than BT or Talk, Talk for instance; I have to do both as a part of my job and they're both far, far worse.
I don't really regard a channels "look what is coming up" type announcements as adverts and don't mind those, and have previously discovered a new TV programme that I would otherwise have missed. As for the standard, 3rd party, ads I TVR everything on commercial TV and FF past any ad breaks, run a Adblocker and make a mental note of any product whose ads have annoyed me and make sure I never purchase said products as much as I can.
Regarding the ad companies I think it is so sweet that they really believe that they are providing a valuable service to us!
@boltar
"Terrorists like everyone else will go down the path of least resistance"
No, sorry, but the people like the ones that carried out the recent UK attacks *may* use WhatsApp for personal communications, but I'll bet you a pound to a penny that the "organisation" uses private systems for the official terrorist communications and organising attacks. These will be well hidden and secured and only accessible via VPN/Tor and their ilk. It's even possible that dead drops and face to face meetings are more usual that WhatsApp messaging for the "orders" stage of an attack.
Couple that with the fact that the perpetrators of the recent UK attacks were already "known to the security services" and were not being monitored due to "resources", what is the point of having thousands of more "targets" to watch?
"But since then, some staff have been unhappy about the direction of the company. In a conference call last year, of which The Register saw a transcript, staff complained that Liberty Global were "faceless change drivers with no concern for the Virgin values"."
"Virgin values"? So over subscribing their broadband services and taking months or even years to fix it, while still selling new connections in those areas! Do they mean those "Virgin values" do you think?
...."But once they've done that, the real goal has to be to get public support for supersonic travel. To do that they'll want to demonstrate the "sonic thump" to people, by flying over them, so people know what it sounds like and don't have the fear of the unknown that was a problem for Concorde."...
The only reason Concorde wasn't certified to fly over the mainland United States is because it wasn't built by an American company; had it been built by Boeing or MacDonald Douglas it would have had no trouble getting cerification.
...."Your FUD definitely looks like it was created in 1990:
Linux Mint 18.1 "Cinnamon" overview
KDE Plasma 5.X Review 2015
Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 Review
Unity 5 running on Ubuntu Natively"
I was referring the software not the OS with this comment as I stated in the comment it's self.
How often does an end user need to disable SMB shares manually on their PC? Again I was referring primarily to software/driver installation example as below:-
Install Plex Home Theater in Mint run the following commands (Once you've managed to work out which version will work in Mint that is):-
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:plexapp/plexht
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install plexhometheater
Install Plex Home Theater in Windows:-
Download, left click "setup", left click "next", left click "next", left click "finish" - all done and no need to go any where near a command line.
While it's still necessary to drop to command line to carry simple tasks like installing some software Linux, Mint or otherwise, will never be ready for main stream use.*
* I'm not talking about people like us that post here, by "mainstream" I'm referring to "users" in the very broad sense.
Agreed, Word and Excel compatibles would be okay for a lot of our customers too (they would have to be *very* compatible mind), however, there is no Outlook or Power Point and the Outlook compatibles (admittedly I've not looked at all Outlook compatibles) are lacking in some way or other whether it be a calendar or whatever.
Sorry but Linux, in any form is not a viable replacement for Windows as an OS;many companies still have legacy software that will only run in Windows, and quite often Linux versions of software are lacking in functionality and/or the interface looks like it was created in 1995.
Not to mention the number of times it's necessary to drop to command line in Linux to carry out operations that in Windows can be done by a few mouse clicks; also the fact that there is still a lack of hardware support for Linux, from even major manufacturers, means Linux is still not really ready for general usage by the great unwashed.
..."Why the hell did England have to send us the Puritans? Couldn't you have sent them to Australia and given us the convicts?" ...
We didn't "send" you any puritans, they went of their own free will; we did send, generously, quite a few convicts though just to be fair and spread them around a bit.*
* an estimated 52,000 convicts were sent to America between 1718 and 1775.
....I like the BBC but at the current moment in time with regards to their news I don't care if they stop getting the licence fee and move to a commercial model because I won't be paying for it....."
But you *do* pay for it, every advert on commercial TV has to be paid for by somebody, normally the end users of the product being advertised.
Actually you are incorrect; I've come across the Amazon "Payment method in accessing country" issue myself. There was a link on a bands YouTube site to purchase their CD which I clicked and didn't notice that the link was for Amazon.com and not amazon.co.uk. It wouldn't let me purchase from the .com site using my UK CC's.
There are several issues, for me, with VR; the cost is the first, for something that would only be in periodic use, because VR doesn't suit all game formats, (rather like the HOTAS I bought a couple of years ago, it only gets dusted off for the occasional spot of ED and is used for nothing else) it's way too expensive.
Secondly as a user of spectacles VR goggles/helmets are a no starter; I could put contacts in when wanting to use VR I guess, but that's just more hassle, and the more hassle something is to use the less likely it is that it will be used I'm afraid.
I find myself in two minds on this issue; on the one had we on these forums are constantly bemoaning the erosion of our privacy online and with that "hat on" I say good for FB. Just because this was an account owned by a minor does not, I believe, negate their right to privacy.
With the other "hat on" I sympathise with the parents who're just trying to find answers to the question "why has this happened"? So I can see both sides of this and I'm not sure if there is an easy answer; from a privacy point of view I come down on the side of FB and the German courts I think, however, that would change if it was a child of mine involved of course.
Not sure what the quality of your turntable was Mr Dabbs but I never had that bad a time of it in the vinyl era; occasional albums would have to be returned but the vast majority I bought played with no issues on my Grundig, or the later Sony, Deck. Never had to resort to pennies on the tone arm and always got a complete play through, even on albums that ran longer than the usual thirty-five minutes (Todd Rundgrens "Utopia" is one that springs to mind)
The point is that if "playing some childish game" is what the PC user want's to do on their machine (and it's not your place to decide what a user should and shouldn't do on their PC, not everyone wants to use their PC just for "office work". Many want to use it for entertainment too) then they have no choice but to use Windows.
Linux at this point in time is not a viable alternative.
@ Badger31
It's not a "requirement" to have DX12 admittedly, but paying £30 to £50 per game and not getting the full features because my OS doesn't support them is a bit of a deal breaker for me.
I've said this before on these forums many time now, I'd love Linux to be a true alternative to Windows, I really would, but although some distro's have made great strides in usability and Valve has made valiant attempts to increase Linux support from game developers, it still isn't there yet I'm afraid.
Unfortunately Windows is still just "easier"....
Please show me how to play Mass Effect:Andromeda on anything other than Windows without jumping through stupidly complicated hoops that may result in a running game but with much reduced performance? Same for Fallout 4, Witcher 3 and the list goes on and on. No other OS is a viable option as a gaming OS unfortunately.
...."They already have banks that issue their own bank notes (ignoring for the moment that the UK tax payer owns a substantial slice of that)."....
They have that but they don't have their own currency; they use the pound, the pictures on their notes being different does not make it their own currency.
..."If they achieve independence before and the UK breaks up, while still in the EU, they can't be chucked out of it, unless the whole UK were"..
No,
As was discussed many times during the Scottish independence referendum, one of the "tenets" of EU membership is that each country has their own currency; Scotland fails at the first hurdle in this regard as they have no currency of their own and creating a currency from scratch is no quick task. There are many more requirements for membership that Scotland also fails at the moment.
If Scotland becomes independent of the UK, either before or after the two years from article 50 trigger, it will still have to leave the EU.
..."and will almost certainly vote to leave the UK...."
Well they can vote to leave the UK but that'll not stop them having to leave the EU I'm afraid, they're are in the EU as a part of the UK.
No matter what they do, Scotland will leave the EU, either as a part of the UK or, if independent, on it's own, and will have to apply to join and suffer the time and requirements that takes, including, creating their own currency.
"Earth has a one in a million combination of life supporting conditions."
In just our galaxy one in a million leaves an awful lot of planets; and none of the conditions/elements that led to the formation of the Earth are unique to the solar system.
While I fully support fining for this type of security breach, it must be said that it is the people of Norfolk that will actually be paying the fine, not the idiots that were responsible for this.
When government bodies do this type of thing fining doesn't really achieve anything as it's not the organisations money and they don't care; there needs to be some kind of punishment to make sure more care is taken in future, something along the lines that the person responsible looses their job for instance. Or am I just being silly?