Posts by alphaxion

Ive only ever had nightmares of broken mythbuntu installs and never detecting my tv tuners.. so I switched to using TVheadend with the xbmc-pvr build as a front end. all my front ends are old laptops with the screen removed and stashed away out of sight.

my remote control is either my galaxy s2 or an ipad (the android app is awesome).

the only things I can grumble about is the poor quality epg in xbmc and the lack of timeshifting in tvheadend, smoothed over by the tvcatchup add-on that lets me stream a live tv channel over the net should all my tuners be in use :D

"Wayward Porcelin Comms Unit Gives Office The Bums Rush"?

Or just... "NFN"? ;)

title

Paging Dr Cyborg.. time to prove your resolve beyond those pithy rfid chips in your arm. Get some of these in yer noggin!

title

The best I've seen has to be Urlesque.com.. by a long way :D

something I don't get

We see "ignorance of the law is no excuse" often trotted out to slam the book of law at some idiot, yet politico's get to use this very excuse to get off scott free and only have to apologise for very serious cases of fraud, corruption and abuse of position!

How can that be? Surely they should be getting a spanking by the law just like this dimwitted fellow.

They had an answer to the iPad

They had a fantastic answer to the iPad - the Courier concept machine we all saw in those renders.

Then they shitcanned it. Why? Couldn't deliver the OS to power it? Hardware proved too expensive to go into production, similar to how Kinect functionality had to be scaled back?

If they really want to beat Apple at their own game, resurrect the Courier, get it out the door and watch the sales come in.

That bit of vaporware was crying out to be brought to market and would have been a real step towards bringing some innovation into the company.

heh

I popped into the Apple store after work to see if this happens with the on display models.

It didn't happen for me, though I felt an uncomfortable tingle in my hand while I was covering both aerials.

A guy next to me commented "just buy the bumper, then"... I responded with "But you shouldn't have to do that just to get basic functionality out of it!". To this outburst, he offered this nugget of wisdom "you have to have a license in order to drive a car".

Analogy Fail Alert!!

It's closer to "you can't start your car until you've had this entirely optional tinting applied to your windows".

Also, remember when Nintendo had a problem with their Wiimotes? They issued free rubber grips to their customers, then packaged them in with all new Wii's... can we expect Apple to bundle a free bumper case with every phone to address their design flaw?

Thought not.

wait, what?

Uh, I'm sorry but I don't recall her being in the only Transformers movie since she wasn't even born when it was being made. ;)

Those Michael Bay efforts? That's not Transformers, hell even the Go-Bots are embarassed about those things!

title clamps

"silent sexual revolution" what where we no longer give a crap what people get off to as long as it doesn't involve a real crime?

Personally, I don't care. He could be a star in those films and I'd only shrug. Are they any good at the job they're going for? Oh, he's a member of UKIP. No threat to the oligarchy then :P

title this

I don't listen to radio outside of internet based community shows.

My radio alarm clock is always tuned into static and volume jacked up as music would only keep me asleep. Full blast wall of noise on a morning wakes me up, having it on the other side of the room gets me out of bed. Will there be a DAB static channel to replace that functionality?

titles and spectrecles

Aye, I don't think this tax will go away either when its initial goal has been achieved.

How about we stop adding and upping taxes all over the place and look at some good old fashioned ROI examinations on various governmental activities and departments.

Pretty sure we could pay for this without increasing the amount we have to pay if we stopped going to other countries and killing their inhabitants at the behest of the US and our own businesses desires.

The way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if the UK descends into a mass of rioting and civil unrest - once we've exhausted every avenue of written bitching ;)

alternatively...

all the more reason to pour money into that organ growing technology we occasionally hear being trotted out as the future. They're upto making kidneys last I heard. More complex organs are proving to be a bit tricky for now.

Why wait for a matching transplant when they could take some of your cells and grow a new one that is 100% matched to you?

tarded carriers

aye, never understood why they bitch about using the data via a PC even tho you're making pretty much the same usage patterns with the iphone anyway.

Never had this problem with GPRS and nokia's 5 or 6 years ago. They didn't bother with distinction on usage, it was just that... usage.

still hanging onto those british claims to fail

Why is it we brits feel the need to try and sabotage our every attempt at success?

Surely they could have come up with a better name for both the device (hardly rolls off the tongue, it's like we're back in the 80's/90's for naming conventions!) and their company name hardly inspires confidence.. POS Ltd... Piece Of Shit Limited?

Pay a bit of good money on a marketing dept... please, I'd so love to see a resurgence in the UK hardware space for British genius to shake up electronics markets once again!

*puts on his jacket with "Psion could have been a UK Sony" emblazoned on the back*

sigh

No wonder I often feel like the only techy reading articles on the reg that mention Apple.

Why would the numbers of patch requests for windows count? Surely they're not covering microsoft.com due to the amount of bias that would create, likewise they wouldn't be covering apple.com either - since my macbook grabs updates with a similar degree of frequency to my windows boxes.

Also, the number of people grubbing for drivers would be pretty minimal since vista drivers work in win7 and the rest of users would either have bought the OS with a new system or be using a system deployed by an IT department.

Come on, use your brain and stop being an obvious troll.

And yes, the trend for Apple is upwards and good news for those of us who are interested in computing in geneeral, rather than braindead fanbois of either persuasion.

More successful OS makers means a greater amount of things to play with :)

Oh, and the black screen of death, isn't that just the old netlogon problem from waaay back in NT days where it was waiting on a response from a server before loading the profile? Anyone checked the DRM module to see if it's having trouble finding its server?

@scott9

The problem with never putting up controversial data yourself, is that someone else can do it too and tag you in them all.

It might be done maliciously or it might be innocently shared. Either way, the protection needs to be made where, unless it was a serious crime, companies should not be allowed to discriminate against a person for their perfectly legal out of work lives. We're getting too close to companies having far too much say on what you can or cannot do simply because you work there.

By all means, exercise a little decorum and common sense (such as not going out dressed as a nazi while out on the town for example), but a company should not control their employees to such a degree as we are seeing.

And this is where government is supposed to exist, to ensure there is a counter power fighting on our side (I know, nieve concept now adays, unless you happen to be a business with plenty of money to slosh around and lucrative board places to offer).

erm

Dunno about you, but I get plenty of exercise lugging PC's, printers and servers around everyday (tho not as much exercise as when CRT's ruled the desk), running up and down stairs to sort out problems etc.

Also, I must be the only sysadmin in history to not drink a drop of coffee - only ever water, mainly cause they wouldn't let me partake in the odd can or few of beer while working, something about health and safety. Don't see it myself ;)

alternatives do exist

I'm quite happy with my Logitech MX Air gyro mouse for the purposes of controlling my HTPC. Also acts as a spare normal mouse when needed and sports a very "Flight of the Navigator" ship look to it. http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/mice/devices/3443&cl=gb,en

Of course, ignore their price.. it's much cheaper elsewhere :)

it's obvious

why they do it.

partly as an homage yo the "under construction" signs that used to adorn the net and, most importantly, it garners hype/attention.

Would there be any anticipation for a simple price change or extra product roll out if they simply performed a batch update to some records?

no, far better to drop the whole site and get a similar boost to sales as a bank holiday sale when it does come back,

ummm

When did Behavioural Tracking Advertising get rebranded to "Interest Based Advertising"? anyone?

This needs following up and ensuring that use of DPI does not go beyond purposes of security and network integrity.

As soon as private data is being captured and analysed for the purpose of building a profile of activity to be used against them for purposes either oppression in their right to freedoms/privacy or commercial profit with no tangiable benefit to those who are being snooped upon and with no consent from them, it needs to be illegal.

Also, the state is to be banned from the use or coersion of use in non-state corporate entities of such technology (DPI or any future technology that accomplishes the same end result) for anything other than ensuring the security of its own networks from outside intrusion/interference. The term "own networks" is restricted to government IT infrastructure and does not extend to the networks run by other people/corporate entities within its bountry of sovereignty.

I should go into law writing, I seem to be better at it than our current set of law imagining wankers.

hmm

I think they have raised more than that considering the Leeds one raised £800 that I know of.

Still, referring to it as "Live Aid of the tech world" is pushing it a bit...

I! might! know!

There are still plenty of people that use yahoo mail, IM, flickr (I have a pro account, so they have $'s from me), upcoming, zimbra... plenty of products they can slather with ads or charges for.

@soruk

I'd avoid opendns.. they are ad supported, so your browsing is being used to pump crap your way.

Just avoid them all and use the root dns servers!

Personally, I'm getting more and more tempted to advance my plans for running a public wireless network with the expressed purpose of cutting ISP's out of the loop all together.

Pay your local node operator for access, if you don't like what they're doing set up your own node and advertise to those around you.

Get that network repeated across the country and place a massive up yours to the governmental attempts at controlling what we see and do.

@rachel

hey, I don't discount everything (my family has a history of ghostly encounters, I myself spent about an hour talking to one when I was about 6 or 7... but that's not to say I believe in duallism) but I also won't believe in something when it is as spurious as "wifi is making me ill and scaring away my great tits" either.

I certainly have my own wild ideas about things (such as everything in this universe having a quantum signiture/vibration that keeps it here, crack that and dimensional travel will work), it's just I won't proclaim them as truth until evidence turns up that actually suggests it, until then it remains a sci-fi fantasy of mine. :P

Just because we pour scorn on the notion that wifi is making them ill doesn't mean our minds are closed, hell the mind has a massive control over the body and if they think it's causing them to be ill they can end up being ill.. it's called the placebo effect!

Doesn't mean it's the wifi doing it, rather their own fears and irrationality. Or do you think that heights have an energy field that causes certain people to become violently ill?

I wonder

I wonder if this means apple is working on a means of syncing your ipod/iphone with media that is centrally stored instead of having to make copies of them on every system on the network.

Prolly not, which means a copy of the media on your PC and a copy on your Mac home server.