Posts by Annihilator

Re: San Francisco's light rail to upgrade from floppy disks

All of my MD media is still perfectly playable after 25 years. The player (an MZ-R35) can no longer "write" to media (or it can, but it destroys it and renders it unusable - funnily enough I haven't tried again since) but playback is perfect. Battery is shot too, but replacements are available.

Wasn't a fancy-dan Net-MD, but did have optical-in so could record CDs pretty flawlessly (ATRAC was a brilliant format). I miss it in a way.

Re: No brainer

Who's realistically going to buy either of them though? The costs of providing national infrastructure is getting larger and larger, particularly when you consider 5G works with smaller and smaller cell range and therefore more towers/infrastructure in place. Unless they're of a scale that's able to pay for all of that, it's a losing business.

This is the crux of the argument - both companies have been steadily declining over the years, and continuing that trend will see them evaporate. The only thing left will be assets - mainly spectrum which the surviving EE and O2 will likely snap up for lack of anyone else.

Arguably there's a case to be made for pseudo-nationalising the infrastructure. In rural locations, O2/Three/Vodafone already mast-share as it is.

Re: RE: wise choice

HP doesn't have the clogging issue primarily because their printheads are within the cartridges. Ironically, the biggest issue I had during a (sort of) free trial of HP Ink was my light usage, meaning that a cartridge would get clogged, but HP refused to replace it as the levels still showed high.

HP also dcked me off with their free ink trial. Bought the printer with "2 years free Instant Ink!" emblazoned on the box. What that meant in reality was "£120 credit, signed up to the £5 a month plan". When that subsequently went up to a £7 a month plan, suddenly £120 doesn't buy 2 years anymore... Good luck arguing that with HP though.

Re: Customers are happy with subscriptions?

It's self-fulfilling prophecy though. Subscribers wouldn't subscribe if they weren't happy with the subscription. (well broadly anyway, there will always be some idiots merrily continuing)

Now, if they were to measure subscriber satisfaction past and present, that might be a different score. But equally probably still higher than the people who'd look at this service and laugh at it before moving along.

Nope, my manager and my visibility have nothing to do with it. It's the *commute* as I've already explained.

If I'm working at home, I can drop my kids off at school and be at my desk before 9. If I'm forced to an office, I'd be there by 10am.

If I'm working at home, I can pick my kids up at 4 (but usually 5 due to after-school activities like tennis etc) and be missing from my desk for 15 minutes. If I'm in an office, I'd need to leave at 3pm to achieve that.

PS - I love that you've created this account fully to make this argument.

One of the great jobs must be a nuclear bomb salesman. You can just say "aw it's a cracker this one... As a matter of fact Mrs Thatcher, this is the only one that cockroaches are frightened of." You could fill it with doughnuts. Because they're not gonna say "well let's go out to the carpark and see if it works". It could be full of sandshoes and sweeties.

- Billy Connolly.

Back when the PS4 launched this service (remote play has been a thing for a while now), I tried it out from an office location and it was surprisingly good. The app is PSRemotePlay and is available for iOS devices and I assume Android ones. PS4 controllers can be paired to iPads/iPhones, so essentially you could play with your normal PS controller and using the iPad as a remote screen. Was hard pushed to tell the difference.

Re: Black hole time!!!

Or for additional London-centric scale, the equivalent would sit somewhere between the north/south circular and the M25.

Re: Surprised the PPD is that low

It's.... complicated. Apple's is a significant step up in terms of pixel density and PPD. For example, the Quest 2 and PSVR2 are both around 20 PPD of vision, but various things make the difference, such as gaps between pixels etc in terms of the screen door effect, how the lens distributes the pixels. I'd imagine the effective PPD in the centre of the screen is higher than the peripheral views - you tend not to look only with your eyes to the extremes of what you can actually make your eyes do.

Using a PSVR2 I was blown away at the detail I was able to see, but then I was impressed with the original PSVR too (despite knowing I was looking at a screen). I imagine that the Apple one will equally be a "wow" moment.

It's the balance between pixel density and size of the device. They could have achieved 60PPD if they'd made smaller pixels (probably not possible yet), or a bigger display (same density, more pixels) but further away from the eye, making a bigger set of ski goggles.

Re: Cnnot use with glasses so need prescription lens inserts

There are lenses in front of the displays though - my optical physics is as rusty as my own eye-sight, but I'd wager that having them moveable would do the trick. Much like I can use a pair of binoculars without my glasses.

Or, even more simply, just have room inside the headset to wear your own glasses - like others do.

Re: Haven't <> Aren't

While it’s true that the Vision device can run iPad apps, the developer can specifically opt out. And tellingly, both Netflix and YouTube have done just that, as well as saying they won’t be creating a native app.

So unsurprisingly, you won’t be able to stream Apple TV’s competitors content while wearing a Vision Pro. I expect they’ll have a change of heart if those sales numbers go up though.

“Oh, and Vodafone also looking to move their systems to the cloud too. Coincidence?“

To be fair, it feels like every FTSE250 company is. Particularly the dinosaur ones who are just jumping on the bandwagon just as everyone else appears to be jumping off.

How TomTom remains in business is beyond me

Re: Slower Version

Yep. Most if not all CPUs were manufactured in this way, especially in the earlier days when all that defined a CPU was its base clock speed and multipliers. Essentially all Pentiums were created on the same die, tested to see how it performed and then badged at the correct clock speed. The higher cost was primarily down to the rarity and low yields - a P200 was identical to a P133 off the production line, just one was more stable than the other.

Similarly with cores as you mentioned, they'd sell 3-core processors. Realistically, no one was ever going to design a 3-core CPU, but a defective core on a quad-core device was fairly common. AMD did this with the Phenom range - Toliman (3-core Phenom) was an Agena chip with a defective core.

Re: bullshit detected

Yeah but we in the IT industry have a perverse definition of "fitting". We'll scoff at someone plugging an RJ11 into an RJ45 socket, but at the same time have the PCI-E spec which allows for x1, x4 and x8 cards to happily sit in a x16 slot. From memory you can also make a x16 card run at reduced bandwidth in a x4 slot, but I might be misremembering that bit (plus who would actually do it).

Re: Not just Apple

My Samsung TV came with a "magic" remote that has about 6 buttons on it. Doing anything on it is a multi-click nightmare.

LG is better in that it has 30+ buttons, but it's also a wavy magic wand remote that moves a cursor (badly) on screen.

Re: Mac system requirements

You realise that 8GB RAM and 256SSD is only the entry level model, right? There are more options available.

Re: So pay to play

"Not without them being as stringently regulated as any other actual bank."

Yep. Musk will no doubt be proudly banging on about how he'll look to be nimbler than the regulations allow, ignoring that the regulations are blimmin important and there for a reason.

Anyone with half a brain will swerve whatever system he proffers. Just look to his previous version of X (PayPal) to see the absolute lax controls around that for details.

Re: Blink

Yeah I’ve explored the web before for that purpose, not much joy.

However rest assured they’ll be going into my junk box to be resurrected in 5 years when someone has figured it out.

Re: Same Footprint

Like a PCI Express bus.

Re: Ah, ATM

Weird, I came here to post the same thing anecdote but my lecture reference was around 2001. Don't suppose you went to Edinburgh University with Gordon Brebner as the lecturer?...

Re: poor taste

Cutting Crew - I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight

The Verve - The Drugs Don't Work

Re: At least three systems are required

It meets *a* spec. Just not yours.

Re: This was patched yesterday

Not to be that other guy...

"Apple moved swiftly, assigning two CVEs to the exploit chain – CVE-2023-41064 and CVE-2023-41061 – and issuing updates for iOS and iPadOS"

"As for the latest exploits, the advice is to update your iOS and iPadOS devices immediately"

And despite all that, it was a zero-day exploit discovered in the wild. So still newsworthy, and a prompt reminder to patch. Despite having auto-updates on, mine hadn't done it yet - just done it manually.

I think that's the same with everything though. I had caused to repair my dishwasher (new heater) and washing machine (drain pump) in the last month and sourced the appropriate spare parts. The heater was only £30, and the drain pump £58, so both economical repairs, but at some point it won't be. If I were to build either machine using entirely spare parts, it would be more than double the cost of the same machine at retail.

The whole "right to repair" movement is a great step for the IT industry, but I think it's going to be shocking what the prices being charged for components will be. A new hinge for a laptop being £30 for example.

Re: slow transformation

I think it's fair to call that an exploitation of a bug. Or at least an unintended feature that MS have (so far) chosen not to close.

Every guide I've found to doing it doesn't come from Microsoft anyway, so it's fair to say it's unofficial.