Posts by adifferentbob 28 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Nov 2008
Nobody is coming out of this with any credibility. Not the NSA who have their greasy fingers in everyone's privates, not the co-workers who were completely stupid to hand over their credentials, and finally Edward Snowden who it seems would quite happily fuck over his colleagues. I did had a lot of respect for the stand he'd taken, but that is gone now. You have to wonder what his colleagues had done to him to warrant that kind of treatment.
Exactly. We've all got one at home, all my relatives who want an e-reader have one. The next time I buy one will be when my current one breaks. My two year old kindle keyboard does the job, so why do I need a different one?
p.s. I guess the price of ebooks might be a deal breaker for some but there is plenty of decent quality out of copyright to be had, plus the various sales at amazon are worth checking out. I'm not short of stuff to read! What I don't get is the attitude that some seem to have that owning an ereader means you don't read the dead tree versions. I'm still buying "proper" books as well as ebooks. Tablets, dead tree and ereader all have their place. The important bit is the book not the delivery method!
To support something someone else said though, for me reading on a tablet is not as easy as reading the same book on an ereader. There are some situations where the tablet app was superior -earlier this year I had to search a book for a night class assignment. I thought the tablet search interface was much easier than for the same book on kindle. ...but I've not found it comfortable to read a whole book on the tablet kindle app.
I agree. The price is stupid. I have an ipad and an ipod classic so I'm not anti apple. However when you can get a fairly decent android phone for sub £100 apple's pricing looks ridiculous. It would only take amazon or sqmsung to bring out an android media player with a 4" screen and at a sensible price and apple could lose the segment.
No idea how much Sky costs to run but I do know that I pay Sky £24.50 a month for my basic package. My TV license (if I paid by monthly direct debit) would cost me £12 a month. BBC wins every time as to me, the BBC is far better value. Of course it is so cheap mainly because you have almost no choice about whether you pay the license fee.
How about China Mieville's Bas-Lag books - the Slake Moths were badass, and I'd love to see Armada on film
Steph Swainston's Jant stories - The Year Of Our War would make a cool film
+1 for those suggesting Slippery Jim , Bil the Galactic Hero and the Deathworld stories.
I'd love to see The Demolished Man on film - one of the all time greats .
First of all, cards on the table. I'm a fan of 6Music. 6Music is why I bought a DAB radio in the first place. 6Music is why I bought a second DAB for the bathroom, why I bought a personal DAB for listening at work, and why I spent extra when buying a new car to get a DAB fitted. It has introduced me to so much new (and old) music that I'd never heard of before. As I am old-fashioned enough to still buy music, the record industry (especially the smaller independents) has benefited directly from me listening to 6Music. Therefore I am spitting mad at the BBC.
The BBC has opened a big can of worms that they may regret. I don't know whether they realise, but this now has me questioning why we should have a publicly funded broadcasting service. What is the BBC for and why keep the license fee? Judging by the postings on the save 6music FB group I'm not alone in that respect. Its raised lots of questions in my mind.
On the one hand should money be spent on stations such as 6music which have a small audience no matter how passionate that audience? On the other hand , why bother with Radio 1 and BBC1 when we have commercial broadcasters that would ,if the BBC weren't there , likely try to produce a lot of the same content. Given ITVs current pathetic state would that happen? If the BBC were closed would a commercial version of Radio 4 be set up - the audience figures would indicate that if the BBC wasn't there as a rival , there is a market opportunity for a radio station offering a mix of news, drama, comedy , factual etc ...
And of course what is the true story when lots of this story has been leaked by parties that have a vested interest in the removal of their biggest rival?
6Music and Radio 4 are unique. There's nowhere else that has shows like the Freak Zone and Craig Charles' Funk Show. Nothing else that produces stuff like "In Our Time". The listening figures for 6music may not be massive but I bet the demographic is an advertiser's dream.
If they get rid of 6Music I'm for dumping the entire BBC. The TV license is an anachronism. I cannot express my disapproval at them wasting money on "Snog, Marry or Avoid" but axing the content I like. If I don't pay my license fee then I'll be harrassed and most likely taken to court. So time to dump the lot , and let the market rule.
Can you start telling us stuff about the batteries and lifetime on these device please such as the likely useful battery lifetime, how easy (and expensive) replacing the batteries is etc.
At the moment I'm not willing to fork out £200 quid of my hard earned cash on yet another device that becomes worse than use than useless after 2-3 years because the battery is dead and is not user-replaceable. In the meantime long live paper !
I think the reasons that residents of the US don't like diesels is probably more complex than you think. Having chatted to my US in-laws on the subject,they say its partly because not so many are available compared to Europe, and add in the lower general fuel price the maths take longer to work out. Throw in their perception that diesels don't cope with cold weather as well as petrol cars (and it can get very cold there) you end up with the preference for petrol over diesel they have. And lest we forget here in the UK its only in the last ten years that diesels have overtaken petrol cars in popularity -kind of co-incidental with the Govt. threatening to bring in punative road tax rates for anything with fuel consumption of less than 30mpg or so.
"He has very little command of what I assume is his native language and his work is reminiscent of the types of story which would earn a 'D' when handed in to my GCSE English teacher."
Considering that Dan Brown is worth $88 Million* and your GCSE teacher probably earns £30K, you might want to dust off those old essays.
Me - I'm astonished at all the vitriol expressed for Dan Brown and anyone who dares enjoy his work . I didn't think much of his books myself but compared to some sci-fi I've read he's up there with Tolstoy, Hemingway etc. And I can completely understand why people like his books.
Anyway must go as I've got a Jilly Cooper on the go...
* according to a very brief google query.
Seeing as he sells books by the bucketload , perhaps its not that surprising that lots of them end up at oxfam.
what would be more interesting would be to know what proportion of books sold by particular authors end up at oxfam. e.g if A .Non-Coward sells 1000 copies of "Paris Nights" and 500 are donated to Oxfam compared to Dan Brown selling 1 million copies of "DaVinci Code" and 50 000 are donated to Oxfam.
Oooh nasty cockup, and how appropriate that it happened to those titles especially BB. I was of the understanding that the t&cs of the Kindle did state that you were not buying but merely buying a non-transferable license that could be revoked - which is why I will avoid the kindle like the plague if it ever comes to the UK.
ebooks have their place - I have mobipocket and a modest library on my phone and pda in case of emergency but the amazon business model is sucky, and this incident serves to underline that.
Still this should get all the paranoids out there fulminating nicely. Let games commence.
George - who else !
Good , I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of QPootle5. A very fine book. Forget flying cars , I want my own spaceship easily repaired using materials available in the home.
I guess as it was run in a vacuum chamber there was no smell of caramelised soft drink afterwards.
why oh why oh why ? If they have to remake something , how about the Caves Of Steel - they did that in the fifties didn't they?
Just goes to show the paucity of imagination amongst some programme makers. I'd rather they did something from scratch - like The Demolished Man , or something more modern like Stross's Laundry series to name just two. There is so much decent science fiction old and modern that would make cracking TV and that doesn't need expensive fx. But Day of the Sodding Triffids - no no no!
That's the only way you can describe pretty much the whole storyline. Poor spycraft, dubious tech doubletalk (I ranted at the 500nm bit too) and very dodgy character development. Sheesh what is more maddening is that I still watch it even though it has been going steadily downhill ever since they stuck that woman from Brooksides' face in a deep fat fryer. Can't they send the whole series off to live in South America under a new identity. Please.
Oh - was it all based on real events ? Would the cyber attack really be possible. I don't know, but more importantly I don't care.
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