* Posts by Steve Ives

130 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Aug 2007

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Vauxhall Ampera hybrid e-car

Steve Ives
FAIL

Re: Ahh, nice try

Useless for me too. I'm a train driver and need a vehicle that can carry upwards of 300 people whilst running on standard guage rail track.

It would appear that GM haven't considered my needs at all in designing this.

Trekkie wants to build USS Enterprise … in twenty years

Steve Ives
Facepalm

Re: Size is not the issue

Like Lister suddenly realising the futility of fancying Wilma Flintstone - " Why am I even bothering? She'd never leave Fred!"

NHS car-crash spatters CSC accounts with red ink

Steve Ives
Facepalm

don't you know?

That as far as a CEO is concernced, poor performance is due to adverse market conditions and other things outside of his control; good performance is due to his or her brilliant initiatives and leadership.

Audi proposes PC-packing stunt bikes

Steve Ives
Happy

Re: saddle...

Since buying my first Audi, I like to pull the seat forward from my preferred driving position so I can get a bit closer to the car in front.

Only global poverty can save the planet, insists WWF - and the ESA!

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

I remember when...

The WWF were just concerned (acording to their logo) about pandas...

Steve

Sony NEX-7 24.3Mp APS-C compact system camera

Steve Ives

Re: WTF?

Jim - the Nikon D300S? The one with the Sony sensor? Just checking ;-).

Steve

Steve Ives
Facepalm

Re: WTF?

Jim - is that an educated response or one based on "This is a compact therefore any D-SLR is better"?

Numerous reviews by extremely experienced photographers have stated that the NEX-& is a superior camera to most, if not all, budget D-SLRs and the equal to many of the semi-pro ones available. (The ones it's not the equal of, it generally surpasses).

I'm interested in the NEX-7 myself to replace my LX-3 and to partner my 1Ds II and I'd be interested to hear your reasons why the NEX7 is lacking.

I must admit to strongly suspecting that you are not fully aware of the critical acclaim the NEX-7 has been receiving...

Steve

HP Envy 14 Spectre Ultrabook

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

Re: still

You just told us why:

"Yes they are portable just like a netbook

Yes they are as powerful as a full blown laptop

Yes they are more practical than a tablet"

Whether or not that's worth paying more for is up to you. If not, don't buy it, but these things hardly make them a "fashion item"

Steve

Steve Jobs' death could clear way for more open Apple - Woz

Steve Ives
Thumb Up

Re: BRILLIANT IDEA WOZ

I love your satire: You know full well that a lot of Internet users don't have the brain power or comprehension skills to not jump to the conclusion that "I like a lot of the openness I see in Facebook or Google, and how things can interplay on the Internet." = "LETS MAKE APPLE AS OPEN AND SECURE AS FACEBOOK" and so you get in there first. Well said.

Steve

Foxconn chief: we're gearing up for Apple 'iTV'

Steve Ives
Facepalm

Of course...

The *perfect* solution for *everyone* is a PC sitting on the floor with mouse & kb & lots of cables that requires booting just to watch TV....

I do hope you're watching TV on a screen with no tuner & no speakers...

Study reveals high price of porn addiction

Steve Ives

Statistics...

not read the original study, but nothing in here to suggest causation or a correllation. i.e. watching porn causing a crap life or crap life makes them watch porn?

Also - 20% would rather watch porn than be at it with a woman - so 80% would rather have the real thing but presumably aren't getting it?

Also - a lifestyle involving 'extreme' or 'excessive' porn causes trouble? Is that like saying the majority of people into armed robbery said that it ruined their lives, leading to legal trouble, job loss and social exclusion?

Inquiring minds...

Steve

Software functionality not subject to copyright: EU court

Steve Ives
Facepalm

Re: What does "function" mean?

there's an enclosed mode of transport, and a lot of snakes".

Is that what 'Snakes on a Plane' is about? I'd been wondering...

Basic instinct: how we used to code

Steve Ives

Re: Ughh... Still shudder when I recall those days

Nothing wrong in a language which only has 'goto' for flow control. How do you think assembler implements those fancy 'Do..While' and 'For...Next' structures? That's right - 'IF...THEN', manually decremented/incremented counters and 'GOTO' - much that same as you'd have to do ti in BASIC.

If you understand how it works at a low-level, it's easier to appreciate it at high-level.

Steve

Getting rich off iPhone apps is b*llocks, say UK devs

Steve Ives

Re: No money in apps? No sh*t Sherlock.

"Jolly good, and what are you going to spend the money on? Drugs, hookers or cars? Immature t1t" - no - if he was immature, he wouldn't spend the money on those things, he'd just waste it.

Steve

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

Have the MP's taken into account...

that all the devs, writing the apps to boost the economy, will be in India?

Steve

Asus: Ice Cream Sandwich Transformer Pad out in May

Steve Ives
Facepalm

iPad

Nice machine, and all these posts about iPads have convinced me that I must have been dreaming on those occasions in the past when I've connected physical keyboards - wirelessly and wired - to my iPad.

Nothing against the Asus, but bear in mind that you have a couple of options to use a keyboard with an iPad.

Steve

Stray SMS leads to aborted landing

Steve Ives

Man and dog.

The plane of the future will be completely computer controlled and will have an emergency crew of a man and a dog.

The man's job is to feed the dog. The dog's job is to bite the man if he goes to touch the controls.

Steve

Steve Ives

Why can't they...

...build a failsafe plane?

I think it'd involve airbags - perhaps filled with helium?

Steve

P.s. I really hope the 'joke' icon isn't necessary.

Aliens Blu-ray disc set

Steve Ives

Re: Well, I'm happy to disappint you.

"Marines! WE...ARE...LEAVING!"

Canon reaches for stars with DSLR refresh

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

Re: Damn that is expensive even by Canon's standards

"If this is a replacement for the 20d, where does that leave the 30d, 40d, 50d and 60d ..."

It isn't - it's a replacement for the 20Da

"At this price point this cannot be a regular DSLR"

Well done - you kept up this far.

"and therefore really only appeals to Astrologers"

...keep going...

"anyone looking for a regular Canon DSLR will go for a regular 60d or one of the 1000 range, and certainly not this."

Congratulations - you've worked out that this camera is different!

"Best of luck with this niche market turkey Canon.........."

Amongst astrologers, the 20Da is highly respected, so it probably will be.

Might go and post a comment in a story about a new SSD that this can't be a normal hard drive and that people who want a tradional hard drive will look at tradional hard drives and that at this price, it'll won't appeal to people who value cost/gigbyte over performance.

Sorry - not much patience today...

What does the Titanic's sinking tell us about modern science?

Steve Ives
Facepalm

The Titanic's been sunk?

Thanks a lot. I was going to watch the film this weekend having never seen it and you lot tell me the ending.

Paedophiles ‘disguise’ child abuse pages as legit websites

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

Child abuse is Black and White.

e.g. A 15-year old boy and girl are sleeping with each other. Therefore they are both vile, filthy paedos. Then one has a birthday and is now 16. They are still a vile, filthy paedo but the other one suddenly isn't overnight. They then turn 16 are suddenly both are beautiful young lovers.

Of couse, if they lived in another country, then neither of then might have been paedos in the first place. Or they might still be.

Or if they were on a cruise ship crossing into national waters they might both have been transformed to/from vile, filthy paedos instantaneously.

See? Black and white.

Steve Ives

Re: A sense of perspective?

This was touched upon in the book 'Freakonomics'. The actual risk of danger is overshadowed by the horror/disgust of the possible outcome e.g. John and Mary won't let their little girl play at her friend's Ashley's house, as Ashley's father has a gun and the girls might find it. and start playing with it. She can, however, go and play with Kaitlin, whose family has nice house with a pool. This is despite the fact that apparently, the pool is 500 times more likely to kill their daughter than the gun.

The headline "Little girl dies in pool accident" evokes commants of "What a shame" and feelings of sadness. "Little girls dies after playing with friend's father's gun" causes outrage and horror and a determination to get tough on guns.

Steve

Novatech pushes affordable Ultrabook

Steve Ives
Joke

VGA?

What's that when it's at home?

James Cameron back from dive to world's deepest point

Steve Ives

Re: Obligatory Abyss quote

but not as good as:

"God, I hate that bitch!"

"Probably shouldn't have married her, then."

Apple iPhoto

Steve Ives

Re: Extemely Limited but looks nice.

You don't get it, do you?

"Extemely (sic) Limited but looks nice." - your paraphrase, not theirs. So "Looking nice" is a bad thing now, is it? Besides, it didn't say that; it said that the interface was very slick, which is a different thing altogether (it also didn't say "Extremely limited").

So what's with the mentality that Good GUI = nothing more than eye candy = something to be sneered at? Perhaps anything with a CPU in it should have nothing more than a command line interface? (Command line? those are for script kiddies. Real men use assembler).

New iPad sales hit 3 million in first 4 days

Steve Ives

None of the people I know who own iPads...

including me and my wife, consider it rubbish becasue "you, know, it needs more cores plus you need to be able to ssh into it over a vnc connection."

Just like a real computer: Android gets Android IDE

Steve Ives
Facepalm

Re: This could be the tipping point...

Get your netbook out and surf/read/email/play stanging up on a train...

NHS claws back £1.8bn from IT project fiasco

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

WTF!

"the department's chief information officer at the time, Christine Connelly, warned that it would be cheaper for the DH to keep its contract, rather than extricating itself from the deal, as CSC could seek substantial damages."

Who negotiated a contract so bad, that if the supplier fails to deliver they can sue you for terminating it?

iPad 3 'first tablet' with Bluetooth 4.0

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

Re: How about old school HDMI?

Serious question - why do people slate the iPad for not having native HDMI out and needing an adapter, when a lot of it's rivals only have mini- or micro- HDMI and also need an adapter?

MYSTERY programming language found in Duqu

Steve Ives
Facepalm

The virus was...

...the Kuang Grade Mark Eleven, injected via an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7.

Mobile gaming: battle of the gadgets

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

Re: Pro's and con's

"Let's not overlook the Nokia N-Gage, "

"Ha ha hahahahah ha haHa ha hahahahah ha haHa ha haha hahah ha haHa ha hahahahah ha ha hahah ha haHa ha ha!" <breath>.

"hahah ha haHa ha ha hahah ha haHa ha hahahah ha haHa ha hahahah ha haHa ha hahah ah ha haHa ha ha"

Ford: kick your car to open the boot

Steve Ives

Re: GIMMICK ALERT!

"Apparently we've given up on making cars people want to buy (e.g. good fuel consumption, low maintenance, etc.) and now make ones that look like something from a Japanese version of Dragon's Den."

Quite. Let's get the people responsible for design, styling, ergonomics etc and put then to work on engine design and the mechanical bits...

Rememebr that bit from HGTTG when the hair stylists were trying to invent the wheel - "OK - you tell me what colour it should be!".

Stolen iPad leads to 780lb crystal meth seizure

Steve Ives

Re: Press Release from the MPAA and RIAA

Don't forget...

"These people are almost certainly also child abusers, and stole the iPad so as to access the loving family photos on it which have been embedded with Apple's clandestine user-tracking software (aka GPS data). The drug-pushing, terrorist, movie-stealing paedophiles will then track down the children in the photographs and abduct them, to bring them back to their apartment and abuse and eat them whilst playing video-games and watching their pirated movies"

Apple snags blockbuster multi-touch patent

Steve Ives
Facepalm

Re: Prior art

Well, the patent itself references articles and research going back to 1970...as well as citing work by IBM, Synaptics, Fingerworks etc etc.

Steve Ives
Facepalm

Do people *really* not go and read these things?

Go and look at it - it's not a .txt containing the sentance "We're patenting the screen recognizing multiple touches at once.'

Also, patent examiners are not thick - if it's granted, then there's good reason.

Steve

Fat margins squeeze Apple against Android

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

Why...

...do I need an SD card slot?

Apple files patent for 'polished meteorite' keyboard

Steve Ives

People need to read the filing.

It's a bit more complicated than ' keyboards where the keys are on levers'.

Steve

Harvard boffins cause buzz with robot bee

Steve Ives

Does the voice-over guy...

...have the world's most boring voice?

couldn't they get Troy Maclure?

Mac demand helps Apple business bloom in Blighty

Steve Ives

Macs work for me too.

Personally - and I know that for others, this may not be true, I feel that Macs give me better value for money. My early Intel MacBook Pro is still fast & reliable and I don't have to spend my precious home time (working abroad during the week, when it's used by my wife) to fix it at weekends (I program IBM mainframes in Assembler - the technical challange of fixing PCs/Macs is trivial). I've spent in excess of 15 hours over the last few months fixing friends' Windows machines. (addressing slowdowns and HDD upgrades).

Yes, it was expensive, but £1700 for a no-maintenance laptop that is still running fast after 5 years is good value. Hopefully my 18 month old coreI7 macBook Pro will be as good.

I have more and more friends asking me about Macs and I generally recommend them with the caveat of the high initial cost (although lower TCO perhaps) and if they have any essential PC software (AutoCAD, for one friend) then the Boot Camp/ Parallels situation.

I also think that creating home movies, photo books and calenders etc is easier and much more fun with iLife but again, YMMV.

Steve

Apple tells authors: All your books iBook files are belong to us

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

"Meet the new publishers, same as the old publishers "

I think a lot of authors would jump at the chance to receive 70% of the cover price of their books that they sell..

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

It'd be nice to say that comprehension skills have gone downhill, but there's just too much of this kind of thing to say that.

Analyst touts iPad 'transformer' after CEO confab

Steve Ives

the DuoDock...

I had one of those...

Juror jailed for looking up rape defendant on Google

Steve Ives

The problem is...

...that the guideline may state 'past convictions are no evidence...' etc etc, but a juror's thinking is subjective. Perhaps the evidence against the defendant is almost irrefuteable, but that the jurors found him/her not guilty beacause "such a smart/nice young/old man/woman. I don't believe they could have done it so I'll ignore the evidence and let them off." Perhaps if they had known that the defendant was, in fact, capable of the crime then the result would have been different.

I'm not saying that all past convictions should be releaveled, but it's certainly not black & white. The same rule should also apply to wintesses/victims etc.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime Android Tablet

Steve Ives

Or Ralph Wiggum.

"...the keyboard. The value of which can't be under rated"

So it has to be over-rated?

RW - "Me fail English? That's unpossible!"

Best-selling games of 2011 revealed

Steve Ives

At what age do you grow out of expressing your dislike for things by changing their names to rude ones that rhyme? 11, 12?

Bit-part actress slings sueball at IMDb over age gripe

Steve Ives

Indeed...

I have an image of 'Comic Store guy' in my mind...

The next Steve Jobs is: Kanye West

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

what people want...

Was it Henry Ford who said "If I'd *asked* people what they wanted, they'd have said a 'a faster horse'"?

Paris - giving people what they want.

LG to show 55in, 4mm-thick OLED TV at CES

Steve Ives
Paris Hilton

"anything distracting immediately next to the screen." - like a girl in a mini-skirt?

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