* Posts by Big Bear

211 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Nov 2008

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Eurocom Panther 2.0 Core i7, SLI notebook

Big Bear
Go

@John A Blackley

So that was at the end of the send page (out of three)? What were your impressions up to that point? What was it about the machine that excited you, or, conversely, aggravated you? It's a shame that you stopped, as the third page of the article has some impressive benchmarking scores, especially around the video card capabilities of the system, as well as some information on the paltry battery life... I would think that this is pertinent information for any prospective buyer, rather than childishly whinging about the operating system. Incidentally, about 5 seconds into a visit to their website, easily found via the search engine of your choice, within the OS of your choice, running the browser of your choice, you might see this:

Operating Systems: Windows 7; Server 2008R2; VMware; Red Hat

Gee, that weren't so hard were it?

Hasbro sues Asus over Transformer Prime moniker

Big Bear
Stop

@Jedit

No, no, no, NO!!!

The cab section of the truck/trailer is Optimus Prime, whereas the trailer is just that, a trailer! It is NOT part of the Transformer, such as the car carrying part of Ultra Magnus, but all it does is either hold is weapon bits (Bay screwup) or become his mobile operations base, including a little tank that Prime can control via remote mind link (see comics, "Rise of the Insecticons" (?) can't be arsed digging out my collection of comics to check).

In this analogy, where combining several parts to increase functionality, then the most similar thing would be Jetfire's booster armour, which enhances his functionality in both robot and plane mode, unlike the trailer which is just a storage unit for Prime's goodies.

Glaswegian arrested for pro-riot Facebook posts

Big Bear
Angel

No need to worry about Glasgow

Why? They have the ultimate deterrent himself. I mean, of course....

JOHN SMEATON

He'll set upon you. Glasgow does not stand for this.

Apple MacBook Air 13in Core i5 laptop

Big Bear

RE: See Ars Technica

I assume this was directed at me. I vaguely remember reading about that court case a while ago, but my point still stands: I don't see what having Nvidia created software would make any kind of difference with a SB i5 as compared with Intel's own software... it's the fact that there is no dedicated GPU in the 2011 system that is the important thing. That being said, I am impressed that the new CPU isn't that far behind the 2010 system in the gaming benchmark, and I've seen reports that the fps on certain games weren't actually that bad.

Big Bear
FAIL

RE: "twice as fast" - WTF?

"Intel won't license nVidea for the later chips" - not sure what you are battering on about here!! Intel doesn't "license" nVidia for anything... they have their components sit alongside nVidia components within systems.

Sandy Bridge introduces enhanced onboard graphics compared to Arrandale, so no discrete GPU is included, as the current range offer vastly improved graphics compared to Core-i first generation and C2D. The previous MBA with the C2D has very rudimentary graphics so required a GPU to handle the pretty pictures and videos that the users would want, though in the form of a weak card. The new model uses only the Intel graphics solution without a discrete card.

Nearly everyone in SOUTH KOREA HACKED IN ONE GO

Big Bear
Childcatcher

What teh mass media has taught me recently

So basically, the NotW has now hacked an ENTIRE country??!!1!1111

Won't someone think of the (South Korean) children??!11!!!!1!

On counterfeits, fakes and Apple stores

Big Bear
Holmes

Surely some mistake!

These aren't counterfeit Apple stores - they clearly display the words "Apple Store" when they know that if they didn't they would appear to be an authourised reseller so they are making sure that they do not pretend to be that which they are not!

Simples!

PS. IANAL, in case you hadn't noticed

Brits lose out as iTunes prices jump

Big Bear

Different regions have different prices

What's the big deal? Do Apple's app store prices change when currencies fluctuate throughout the day? All they do is set a price for a region, with no guarantee that it will match their "master" region, in this case the US. That price will reflect all sorts of different factors and so will lead to the same item costing different amounts in real terms in other regions - it's all about profitability per region and the markups that each region's controlling group within Apple plc they think they can get away with! For example, it is widely thought that the US sells very cheap denim jeans compared to the UK - does the UK arm of Levi ask the US arm to match the UK price? No, as it is a different region and may have differing priorities.

The big problem here is that traditionally people voted with their feet and if they felt they were getting ripped off they would go get their goods from another distributer, which due to Apple's walled garden is impossible, especially when combined with their cartel behaviour in making sure that the Apple app store price is the same everywhere else within a region. It removes the power of the market, i.e. the voice of the consumer. It's kinda the same as when those oil companies got done for artificially inflating the price of oil in secret agreements so there was little fluctuation in price from different outlets.

MS to WinXP diehards: Just under 3 more years' support

Big Bear

The killer Vista/7 feature that XP needs retrofitted

Alt-Up to go up a level in the explorer... and yes, I know backspace does roughly the same thing but it ain't the same!

And someone to have told me about tab-complete in CMD years ago. Would've saved probably hours of labouriously typing stuff out and swearing at this black screen as compared to the other black screen logging into the UNIX box...

Big Bear
Pint

Some silly arguments here!

Right, so people are complaining about MS forcing people off a 10 year old OS (6/7 if you count SP3?)? How long does Apple support any of their releases for? How come the package manager in my installs of Jaunty Jackalope is greyed out? I switched to Mint because 9.04 was no longer supported and I didn't like 10.10 in that it is, in my opinion, shite and unfinished, and also because it was more resource intensive than Win7 on the same hardware. That having been said, I kept 9.04 on two machines because they were working so well and I think Linux still has such a small desktop footprint to stand by security by obscurity now that updates are no longer forthcoming for them - I'll probably switch them to Mint when I can be arsed.

Also, whenever an article comes out about IE6, there are battlecries slagging MS off for not forcing companies off of that version of the browser, even though they have released IE7 (shite), IE8 (okayish), IE9 (same as 8), and IE10 (same as 9). So what is it you folk want? For them to move on or for them to stand still? The comment about XP to Win7 being impossible? Upgrade install is impossible (needs Vista SP1), clean install is fine. What's the difference between this and OSX Lion needing Snow Leopard to install first as it is sold only as an upgrade?

Don't get me wrong - I love XP. I have it on a couple of machines, including one older than the T43 chatted about above (Pentium 4 machine, 2GB of slow RAM)... it also runs Win7 about the same, as limited by a PATA 4200rpm disk, snail speed FSB and enough heat to cook an egg. That machine turns 10 next year and is still one of my best running machines, despite never having had the OS reinstalled (don't know what some people do to their machines to have to flash their OS!) and having been worked hard as it is a gaming laptop. And whilst I acknowledge the overall superiority of Win7 over XP, I still prefer the way XP does things, mostly as it wasn't geared for dummies using it - folders were in logical places, you didn't have libraries hiding real paths, etc.

And now for a pint and a ruby. Ciao bello.

Marathon for iPad

Big Bear

Joypad controls and a real marathon game

The Nintendo N64 did a fair job with the Goldeneye control method I always thought...

Also, wasn't there some kind of game where you had to drive a bus through the desert for hours and correct its drift constantly or something?

Samsung RF711 17.3in Core i7 laptop

Big Bear
Stop

@Rich 30

I thought Sony came out with a chiclet keyboard first in a laptop? Besides, the style is prior art in the Speccy ZX and entire generations of Casio calculators!

Sony goes slim with the Vaio Z laptop

Big Bear
FAIL

@Mike Richards

I think you mean the X series of failtops...

The last generation of Z series were very good.

Groupon India publishes 300,000 user passwords

Big Bear
Pint

Silver lining?

On the plus side, at least they weren't hacked!

Apple quietly Trims MacBook Air SSDs

Big Bear
Boffin

RE: Did any testing body prove the need?

I think you'll find that TRIM is something that the drive manufacturers like to support, and is OS agnostic, and that even the Mac needs to do it to maintain high read/write throughput, assuming that is the reason you went for SSD rather than the usual "it's shiny" argument... and assuming Stevie J gave you the choice in the first place!

You're probably thinking of the whole defragmentation argument that Apple's HFS claimed to not need (it actually did it during file processing and in the background).

Adobe patches critical bugs in Flash and Reader

Big Bear

@Buzzword

Are you using the Firefox plugin? I remember, back in the wastes of time, having FF crash every time I opened a PDF in the browser and after scouring forums found the suggestion to not install the browser plugin, and had no problems since...

Why? Dunno... and doubt I can find the source of this belief but been doing it since.

Apple pilfers rips off student's rejected iPhone app

Big Bear
FAIL

@The Infamous Grouse

I find your comparison with MSE misleading at best. The big difference is that you (the owner of the expensive piece of kit) has a choice to use MSE or pay for Norton, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, or to use a freeware suite like Avast, Avira, AVG, etc.

Here, you are prohibited from obtaining the functionality until almight Steve Gods says that you can. Not even the famous Internet Explorer bundling case matches, because even though IE came installed, you could still install another browser afterwards, whereas here, the walled garden does not let you... To go back to your comparison, it would be like MSE being released for Win7, but there being no other security software being allowed to be installed by MS since XP came out.

Has Steve Jobs killed the consumer hard disk industry?

Big Bear

Is it April Fools already?

Funny article.

Won't repeat ad nauseum the comments above about what iCloud stores stuff on, but the author seems to think that the be-all and end-all of storage is the consumer space. Strange that those little corporations suddenly don't matter - y'know, those ones who number their machines in the tens or hundreds of thousands on a constantly evolving upgrade cycle? Last I looked, Mac OS was growing smartly in consumer but not making much of a dent in corporate, and when I say "growing" I mean it is still a distant second in terms of installed base.

Also, the author fails to note that one of the big problems with SSDs is their price, which will massive retard their take up until their £/GB approahes HDD levels. Of course, the big problem here is that the massive growth in smartphones and other media consumption devices, such as his precious iPhone and iPad, all rely on solid state, which means the classic "personal computer (including Mac)" cannot get their grubby mitts on the damn things to push for mass adoption.

FT sticks it to Apple

Big Bear
Trollface

IANAL

But I always thought price-fixing behaviour wasn't allowed, and if a developer agrees to fix their price according to a single channel (Apple's App Store, as opposed to other App Stores) then doesn't that mean the price is fixed...?

Acer writes off $150m as audit finds 'abnormalities'

Big Bear

@David Dawson

What version of Oracle have you got running on the laptop? Struggled to do the same a while back, mostly around getting TNS to play nice with the onboard database as well as the networked databases on the corporate LAN...

Sony Vaio VPCF21Z1E 16in laptop

Big Bear
Stop

What's up with the title?

Not sure what's so difficult about the name... a cursory search on Altavista would tell you that "VPC" is standard across all Vaios (Vaio PC mebbe?), and the model is part of the F-series of 16 inch laptops, so it is a F21, submodel Z1E.

It's no more complicated than a DV7-4285DX from the HP Pavilion range, or the MC72LL/A, which is more commonly known as the MacBook Pro. Actually, it's a bit easier than the latter, as there small variations between the MBPs available out there which aren't inherently identifiable due to the fruity way of calling all their kit by just the name.

Get a bigger bag. Not the big a deal.

As for the machine itself: 3D fad, meh. Looks alright, innards are decent, though Vaios can have varying build quality, with the really decent stuff in their high spec ultraportables like the current Z-series or the TT/TX/TZ of yesteryear. Screens are normally superb, ZX style scrabble keyboard looks decently spaced out, mousepad looks like a nightmare to use.

Desktop Linux: the final frontier

Big Bear

Finance apps

the biggest problem for Linux is that the purchasing decisions are made by finance departments, and until there is an equivalent application as Excel, they won't be interested. I think this is even bigger than Word, and ranks up there with integrated email and calendars from Outlook in importance.

Amazon and PSN outages won't halt cloud revolution

Big Bear
FAIL

How about some real journo work?

Oh come on Matt - how can you compare Cloud with Windows? That's the kind of nonsense my Mac using luddite friends come up with, y'know, the ones who think Sky Broadband comes over the satellite link!

All "Cloud" is, is moving the central server services and/or infrastructure to an outsource provider. It's the same as having IBM running DVLA in Swansea since 2001, but in this modern era has a much snazzier name. It has nothing to do with Windows as most people think of it (desktop). Fair enough, you might've had a raft of Windows Servers for your filesystem, but the heavy grunt work would've been on UNIX servers unless your IT mob were incompetent. In all fairness, this brave new world of Cloud will be exactly the same, with *NIX Cloud servers being accessed by Windows desktops on the client side... The big impact is that these last two high-profile failures has reminded people that Cloud providers need to be open with communications so failover strategies can be put into place. If you lost core services in your internally managed systems, you CTO/CIO will be bollocking the geekeratti until the problem is solved, on Cloud you lose that control which will should be a warning for companies to think hard about putting critical services in the Cloud.

Please stop with the knee jerk sound byte reactions - we're not stupid Merkins.

Natty Narwahl: Ubuntu marine mammal not fully evolved

Big Bear
Stop

@Gian

Touchscreen laptops - wonderful idea, terrible in reality. The constant moving of the arm gets irritating as unlike a phone or table, the arm has to move substantially to be not obscuring the screen you have been manipulating, so all interactions entail large movements from the shoulder, which gets a bit tiring. Moving a hand to the trackpad moves from the elbow or wrist down, and the nipple/nub/trackstick involves little movement but slightly less precise tracking.

And the smears on the screen really pissed me off after a while...

On a phone things are different - a slight movement of the wrist moves your fingers out of the way, and since the phone will be held in the other hand, the usual way is to move both out of the way of each other. Tablets are similar, but with a slightly larger movement range.

What I don't get is why, oh why, is a single GUI so desirable? A touch friendly interface designed for a phone is not going to work on a 20 inch monitor! It's like trying to have a phone run a Core i7 and Radeon GPU...

Sony shows MacBook Air-like Vaio notebook

Big Bear
FAIL

@Def

Lessee... Vaio TR5MP, acquired in spring 2004 I believe, still working beautifully despite a few operations to replace parts that I broke - oh wait, Apple wouldn't allow you to fix anything yourself. Followed by the TZ and TT ranges, which shoved a Core 2 Duo in an 11 inch machine without sacrificing anything like USB ports, video out, optical drive (back when we used to use them), or the screen, with built in WWAN as well. If you want an ultrathin machine, then the Vaio G11 was the beast to get.

I just don't see Apple as that innovative as everyone says that they are.

I'll admit I haven't used many of their goods, as the one machine I have spent time with (spent 3 months living with a 2008 MBP) became a paperweight in my house after a week and Apple decided that since it was bought in America, they couldn't service it here, even though Apple are the one company to make identical kit worldwide, inflicting the Godawful US keyboard on all inhabitants of the globe (by which I primarily mean that the UK has to put up with Yankisms). Don't get me wrong - their stuff works no better and no worse than many other machines, but they don't deliver that epicness that the fruit-hating Reg seems to so rave about.

How I learned to stop worrying and love SSDs

Big Bear
Coat

@Mikel

Very impressive... but I'd want to know: can it run Crysis?

Whitehats pierce giant hole in Microsoft security shield

Big Bear
Stop

@AC Monday 09:21

Best sign up for this - you might learn about, and I quote, "Heap overflows in Linux"

http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-us-11/training/bh-us-11-training_ss-el.html

rsync has been shown to have the same sort of vulnerabilities as Windows. Now stop believing all the marketing bumpf and actually get to learn about the tools you are using and how they work! Though I run the Penguini, I still believe in proper security...

Windows 7 customers hit by service pack 1 install 'fatal error' flaws

Big Bear
Linux

@Bill 36

I concur - my industry wide personal experience with one particular machine is that I installed 9.04 and after a year or so of updates and the occasional reboot, it no longer bothers me with update notifications! This leads me to believe that I now have the ultimate, final, fully maxed version of Ubuntu which never needs any more development so surely must be classed as The Greatest OS EVER.

Joking aside, I really should upgrade but I need to build up the enthusiasm to find all the drivers and support for the various bits of bobs inside the machine and then fiddle so that it works. Maybe once this darn project delivers I can set a weekend aside...

Google contradicts own counsel in face of antitrust probe

Big Bear

@Tigra 07

You're right... not the top on Bing, but then again since Bing copies Google, that's just a scrape of Google itself not putting itself at the top of the pile!

I think the big problem we have here is that Google is a sanctimonious twat that constantly preaches about how it doesn't do evil, etc. etc. and sells itself as being goody and trustworthy, above those dastards at MS and Apple, Facebook, AOL, etc. but in truth, is just as bad. Everyone knows this, but their constant harping on about their inherent lawful good alignment makes them fair game for extra enragement. Similarly, the Church has always preached about being good and holy and whatnot, so when they are shown to be choirboifiddlers, people are slightly more enraged than about normal fiddlers. It's a insinuation of trust that is then broken.

Kinect connect rate outstrips Sony PS3 Move

Big Bear
Go

@Jolyon Smith

"Wiifanboi" - mayhap a "Wiiboi"?

Lenovo eyes peeper-pursuing PC controller

Big Bear

Couple of things pop to mind

Firstly, touch typing - you might not be looking at the screen, let alone the active window as you are using it.

Second, multiscreen - does each one have the sensor, what does that do to us who have a screen where you read output and a screen where the window focus remains for entering commands to create said output.

It'll be fantastic for the disabled users, but less so for the folk who have either twitchy or lazy eye(s)!!

Sony refreshes Vaio series with glowing body and dual batteries

Big Bear

@James Hughes 1

The Thinkpad T20s had that feature 10 years ago - a hot swappable "snazzy name"-bay that could be used for CD drive (this was before DVDs came along), a spare battery, and possibly as extended storage to expand the 10GB drive it came with, but my memory might be playing tricks on my aged mind.

I think what Sony are offering are the option to have a spare battery on top of the normal one, without having to lose some other functionality (such as the optical drive). I presume the USP is that unlike having to choose whether to go with the big longlife battery or small normal one before you boot up, you can change whilst the machine is running, without having to reboot (assuming you cannot just plug it in and then change batteries). Not much of a feature in my opinion...

Sharp launches Galapagos tablets

Big Bear
Boffin

@Marvin the Martian

Oh I don't agree with that... the Galapagos Islands are not "un-competitive" but rather allows biologists to study evolution within a self contained ecosystem with relatively little influx of external pressures and so it can be assumed that evolution there happens to specifically gain an advantage over a rival species or over rivals in the same species at a certain point in time. This is one of the tenets of Darwinism that I find few folk actually get. Namely, that evolution happens in response to a condition that the organism is exposed to that leads to said evolution showing a marked advantage for that condition, and which is only advantageous whilst that condition exists. Once that condition passes, then the evolutionary step may become redundant and either be evolved away from and replaced, or vestigial, like the appendix in the current state of modern humans. Note that the sea, which is very stable in terms of environment for evolution, has very low speciation but rather a large number of genus, which is due to it being such a stable environment. The same effect can be seen up at higher altitudes, where the conditions are less variable and so the number of organisms that can thrive there are reduced.

I think the closest thing you can call an "evolutionary cul-de-sac" is when the process of evolution produces a species that is so overly specialised that is fails to adapt to a new set of conditions and then dies out, much like Australopithicus did - apologies if the spelling is wrong as it has been several beers and over a decade since I studied this.

Apple MacBook Air 11.6in sub-notebook

Big Bear

@JDX

Isn't that somewhat more of a damning verdict on the iPad's price?

Personally, nice looking machine, not sure about all the fuss - it's just another Personal Computer. I agree that it shouldn't be compared with netbooks, but rather with ultraportables, but since the Vaio TT was discontinued there is no real competition in the highly expensive, highly spec'd ultraportable category.

11.6in sub-notebooks

Big Bear

@Michael C

Or perhaps they are riding the wave of interest in the 11.6 inch form factor which the previously rumoured Mini Air (TM, give El Jobbie my contact details if he wants to use that name... y'all heard it here first, folks!) was introducing to the fruity fastboot funtoy? However, the Mini Air still wouldn't be covered here as none are out being reviewed yet, from what I can see out there on the net.

I've been a big fan of this size of machine for work travel, getting the original subnotebook when it came out, the 10.6 inch Vaio TR, and wishing that Sony would come up with a replacement for the TT what was discontinued but a year ago to make way for the stupidly overpriced, underpowered X series. That having been said, I like the look of the carbon fibered goodness (keep your dumb alumnium block!) of the Z series in the 13.1 inch form factor as it is stupidly overspecced, with a stupid price as well, but what a machine! Steered clear of netbooks for that very reason as the performance compromises were just not needed, and with old machine relegated to a secondary purpose, it filled that "don't care so chuck it into the bag willy nilly" niche that netbooks were meant to fill, but with a lot more functionality and, importantly, with a decent screen.

Unfortunately, none of the machines on this list float my boat...

New GM worms mean large scale spider-silk production

Big Bear
Alert

@P.Lee

In Oz you have frikking spiders that EAT FRIKKING BIRDS!!!!!

http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2008/10/23/11601_local-news.html

It just ain't right.

Electric mass-driver catapults to beat Royal Navy cuts?

Big Bear
Boffin

@Jemma

Afraid I'm going to have to call you up on some points there;

The RN of 1914 had many, many dreadnoughts, from the original 1906 12-inch HMS Dreadnought, and three classes of very similar ships (about 12 ships IIRC), to 20 so-called "super-dreadnoughts" that followed HMS Orion, carrying 13.5-inch guns, including the superlative 15-inch gunned Queen Elizabeths that were fast enough to accompany Beatty's battlecruisers at Jutland. The many pre-dreadnoughts were used in less intensive affairs such as the Dardanelles campaign and HMS Canopus was involved in the Falklands battle hunting Gneisenau and Scharnhorst under von Spee.

The Kaiser's navy, on the other hand, was composed of about 15-20 dreadnoughts, usually carrying 12-inch armament, and indeed I believe they sailed into Jutland with pre-dreadnoughts in Scheer's High Seas Fleet, whereas the British did not have any, just dreadnoughts.

Another area of comparison is the design aim of the ships - the British Empire still spanned a lot of territory so they designed far ranging ships of superior sea worthiness, range and endurance, whereas the Kaiser's ships were generally considered to be sturdily built, but as a consequence of that lacking the legs or comfort for crews to go on extended sorties. They were designed to fight in the confined spaces of the North Sea close to safe harbour, whereas the Royal Navy had to choose to weaken protection for extended range in protecting the Empire's trade. Sir Jackie Fisher, who created the concept of the dreadnought, went on to create the battlecruiser, designed to outrun what she couldn't outgun, and outgun anything that could catch her. These ships were woefully underarmoured, and the final designs such as HMS Furious were armed with the most massive 18-inch guns, but barely 3 inches of armour on the main belt!

During the Battle Of Jutland, Indefatigable, Queen Mary and Invincible were all lost to catastrophic explosions, but it has been shown that the designed "best practice" was not being followed, as highly explosive cordite was stored everywhere for ease of access and the flashguards were removed, something that cannot be blamed on the ship design, but rather the all-out aggressiveness of the Royal Navy ever since the time of Nelson. One major problem that Beatty had during the early phase of the battle when he lost two ships was he was firing at Hipper's dimly sighted battlecruisers whilst being silloutted by the setting sun, a most unfavourable situation, but his entire purpose was to draw the German fleet into Jellicoe's Grand Fleet which he did superbly. Jellicoe managed to deploy his fleet to cross the "T" of the opponent, but Scheer's fantastical "Scheer Turn" saved his own fleet, combined with the distraction of the suicidal Death Ride of Hipper's battlecruisers, which they got away with due to the closing darkness and Royal Navy communications incompetence.

HMS Hood's situation was just bad luck IMHO, sending an old ship out against the Bismark. Hood was never seriously upgraded like many other ships, as she was out showing the flag everywhere, so she never got the increased armour, redesigned protection schemes and uprated machinery that other vessels got, the most extreme of which was HMS Warspite, who was basically a new ship afterwards! I agree with the thought that it was the secondary armament that caused the explosion on her - her 5.5-inch guns were still the old-style single, non-turreted emplacements, with the ammunition feeds being essentially open to all and sundry. It was unfortunate that Admiral Holland refused Captain Leach's offer to let his newer, much more heavily protected HMS Prince Of Wales to take the lead in closing with the Bismark and Prinz Eugen, as a KGV-class battleship could probably have come through the battle as the main target better than the old lady of the fleet...

Apple MacBook mid-2010

Big Bear

Flame wars!

Was the reviewer stuck in the first half of the decade?? His stereotyping of both PCs and Macs are a bit out of date...

Firstly, for looks, because "PCs" (using your definition of them being Wintel boxen) these days happen to sometimes look a hell of a lot like Macs, plus with a lot more variety too. My first thought at that pic was it looked like the Samsung netbook with the rounded edges (NC310 I think?), but also, since the reviewer has an opinion of looks, which are subjective, then why is he berating other folk for liking the different looks of other machines? An Alienware might not be everyone's idea of beauty but I personally quite fancy the look of it as it stands out from the crowd!

Secondly, price, because Macs are not sold as "entry level" (even though this is the cheapest one) they should not be compared with the cheap rubbish that PC manufacturers crank out for the unwashed masses. When you start looking at the better offerings the prices soon ramp up to overtake the Mac costs, but then again, that is the strength of PC, where people can get what they want and what suits them. My next personal machine will probably be a Z series Vaio which will be about the same spec and cost as a Macbook Pro, but about a third the size and 1.6kg (not sure where you get the "about 3kg more" @AC "Oh Mr Woo, what can we do?"!). The difference is that I can use it for 9 hours on a flight and it is small enough to actually use in relative comfort in those cramped conditions (though I doubt I'll reach its max runtime playing Crysis 2).

Finally, tech. Yeah, this is C2D and is last year's tech, but when you look at what PC has, they are still releasing models like this, but aimed at the sub-£500 budget market, whereas the i3 cost about £600, i5 about £800 and i7 £1000+ (all inclusive of the f***ing WIndows tax). I don't get you folk who always seem to be reinstalling windows and playing with drivers. I've never done that in a decade and umpteen machines, except when trying to install games or databases on machines that are lower spec than the so-called minimum. The absolute beauty of Mac is the time to turn them on though - that is impressive, and I do like the maglock as I've drunken tripped over a couple of my machines' power leads.

Also, like the comments usually read in other machine reviews - what about running various flavours of Linux out of the box? How does this hardware handle that or does Holy St Jobs declare Thou Shalt Not Use Any Other OS Over Me?

Southpaws up in arms over iPhone 4

Big Bear
Stop

RE: FFS get a grip :D (AC Monday 28/06 10:25)

"the signal is great - no worse than the 3GS or any other phone"

But the previous iPhones were notorious for having crap reception...

Jobs tells iPhone users to get a grip

Big Bear
Jobs Halo

Solution?

Change your grip. Not that big of a deal.

Video calling impresses Brits, if it's Apple video calling

Big Bear
Jobs Halo

Your al rong, innit

And Lo! Did Steve proclaim across the land that the Blessed Feature was to be video call and yea all was right with the world. From sea to mountain, man spake with man as if he were in front of he, e'en tho leagues were the gulf atwixt them. But some did not see His blessed wisdom and decry'd His holy words, speaking blasphemies of Prior Art and other sick heresies, but true to His vision the chosen peoples went forth to the land of i and lived in harmony for all eternity.

Until Steve proclaimed the gospel of iPhone 5...

Antarctic glacier melt maybe 'not due to climate change'

Big Bear
Boffin

@Tom 13

Science isn't cold hard facts.

Science is having a hypothesis and testing for it. However, the vast majority of testing is to find said hypothesis true, and it may well be disproved somewhere down the line. Science is essentially our best understanding at any particular moment in time.

While it has been generally acknowledged that we are coming out of an ice age, the change in climate may well have been altered by human influence to speed up the rate of change. The biggest concern is that an accelerated pace of change may outstrip humanity's ability to evolve to meet the changing conditions. Adaptation and genetic selection works too damn slowly to enable us to natively handle these conditions, and that is the real danger to our species.

Googlegate: Mapping a scandal of global proportions

Big Bear

Surely data storage is "intent"?

Lots of comments about how it was an external library, blah blah etc. but sure the fact that somewhere in Mountain View there is a data structure of tables and attributes which lists your MAC against your address and has some sort of lookup to your Google persona which they already have acres of data on?

The mere fact that some developer must have created a data storage structure, that some DBA implemented said structure, and then some admins allowed the StreetView Peeping Toms to have the ability to transmit the data and then write to the database means that it's not an accident. Either that or Google has some very shoddy data protection practices going on!

Now, I'll admit that it is concievable that the Peeping Tom user was given a very powerful user account that could write the wifi data to any database but please remember that databases do not store any and all data willy-nilly, as they need that data to be defined, designed, given structure, mapping, table space, access writes, ETL links and so forth. So, and please pardon the childish capitalisation, but my "take home" message is this:

HOW CAN IT BE AN ACCIDENT WHEN A DATA STRUCTURE WAS DEVELOPED AND IMPLEMENTED INTO A LIVE SYSTEM?

Megan Fox exits Transformers 3

Big Bear

RE: Crybabies

True, but the original simplistic cartoons were far better in terms of stories with properly fleshed out characters. Look at that abomination that is the new Bumblebee - the original had a weapons index of 1 when you slapped that red see-thru plastic thing over his stats. He was one of the core characters as he used his brain to defeat the Decepticons, unlike the new one who seems to have the street-talking skills of Jazz, the sleek looks of Sidewinder, and the gunnery skills of Blue Streak!!! The problem is that none of them seem to have proper roles - while in the old days even though the majority of them were warriors, they still had distinct personalities and strengths or weaknesses: Prowl was overanalytical, Ironhide was stuck in his ways, Jetfire was uncertain, Mirage was hurt in the sixth comic and never really seen again!

I think part of the problem is that none of the new transformers are easily identifiable anymore (apart from Optimus); a problem not helped by Bay's rutting monkey style of camerawork!!

Having said all that, I'll probably still watch the movie, but most likely not until it comes onto the telly or my wee cousin gets the DVD. Being disappointed at the movies is such a letdown: NOT HAVING THE HOBBITS KILL THE WITCHKING? THAT'S THE WHOLE F***ING POINT OF THE SERIES...

Google to mobile industry: ‘F*ck you very much!’

Big Bear
Stop

Have ANY of you geeks shopped for a phone before?

I'm reading a lot of stuff about locked in handset, etc. etc. but to my knowledge and experience you can go to a store, online or real, buy a handset from a manufacturer and stick a SIM into you device. Then the device has none of the network provider's crap on it, just the standard manufacturer's crap, and you can use it as you will... Network operators negotiate with manufacturers and provide a small subset of their range to the public with deals that include an alledgedly free handset, but they will give you a far cheaper tariff only deal if you ask them.

That's what I did for my current phone, as the UK providers do not want to supply the version of phone I wanted. Paid the manufacturer directly on their website, phone arrived, got a great tariff only deal from the network dudes (no hardware provided) and Larry was a very happy man.

El Reg sparks international incident with Olympics committee

Big Bear

@VulcanV5

Who is more corrupt? The UK Government or the IOC?

Discuss.

Enormous raygun-on-a-lorry project acquires lorry

Big Bear

@Glen Forde

Sir,

Might I suggest a quick viewing this weekend of the fantastic cinematic offering "Megashark vs Giant Octopus"? Drag yon eyes from young(ish) Deborah Gibson (Deborah is her grown up name for serious acting... Debbie was just a good time girl apparently) and feast them 'pon Megashark. Not only can he handle a lorry strapped to his head, but if memory serves me right, at one point he swims at 500 knots, which is a significant percentage of the speed of sound at sea level.

Now, if only we can be sure the darn t'errists haven't got themselves a Giant Octopus...

French court says 'oui' on workplace smut

Big Bear
Black Helicopters

That olde video

Does that video contravene UK filth laws, and as I have watched it, does that mean the boys in blue will be knocking on my door anytime soon?

Those stories of youtube being flooded by smut are true!

IPS in cunning 'get an ID card, get crucified' scheme

Big Bear

Copyright? Or whatever the F*** it falls under...

I'd piss myself if Universal hadn't agreed to using their iconic line for this campaign and sued the IPS for thieving it...

Lenovo demos mini laptop with slip-out screen

Big Bear

Old hat?

Looks cool, hope it runs a bit "snappier" than that!

However, there has been an entire range of these kind of machines out in the Far East in the 7inch form factor over the last two years, that just haven't made it over to these shores. I don't get the US-centric skew of tech when the true innovators are over in Tokyo, Shanghai, Taipei and Seoul...

PS. Agree with Gary - stop calling them Slates... they are fecking TABLET PCs and have been for the last decade!!

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