* Posts by John King 1

40 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Dec 2009

Still using Adobe Flash? Oh well, get updating: 15 hijack flaws patched

John King 1

I think there must be Flash ads on The Register. It was only after visiting the home page this morning that a Firefox security message popped up about Flash on the page being vulnerable.

Muso scrapbook Soundcloud gets $50m, corporatespeak makeover

John King 1
Megaphone

Downer

YouTube may get more hits but I'm not going to go there to listen to an hour-long mixtape. Soundcloud has been great for somebody with my tastes, who isn't really into albums or follows pop/indie/MOR artists but wants to hear a whole bunch of anonymous tracks my favourite DJs are playing. Plus they often have a handy Download link right above the waveforms. There's no videos to speak of with this music, so why go to YouTube?

Plus I think you'll connect with possible income streams (fans and lovers of music) more on Soundcloud than the inane harebrained people you'll get watching an album cover on YouTube judging by the comments on both sites, even if you do get 10x the visitors.

Feeling poor? WHO took all your money? NOT capitalist bastards?

John King 1

Howabout..

If we abolished all forms of tax avoidance, evasion and dodgy corporate offshore financial practices then surely we could balance the countries books? Because at the moment I see no real recovery for our finances if we continue to allow most of our spending to end up in Luxembourg, Ireland or the Cayman Islands.

Is there a prosperous way out for this country if this doesn't stop? Or are we just going to have a 60 year depression ending in a gated Plutocracy, with 95% of all workers earning the minimum wage. After the great Resouce Wars of course.

I'm just looking for one decent forecast that shows us a way out.

Samsung, LG 'lose confidence' in OLED TV tech

John King 1

Pricey?

Any idea of the power consumption of your 28" CRT? Depending on how often you watch television you may end up saving money by buying a decent 32" LCD now.

A new Samsung 32" LED LCD HD telly (e.g. 32EH5000) uses around 35W and is £260. But you could get an equivalent model for around £200 if you shopped around.

I wonder how many years of regular use it would take before the costs evened out?

Windows 8: At least it's better than ‘not very good’

John King 1

I like it!

I had a painless and cheap (£25) move from Vista to Windows 8 and I'm very impressed with it. There were a couple of bugs I ran in to namely search/indexing seemed to get stuck and stop me being able to setup File History, plus after a sleep it wouldn't connect back to the internet (Hyper-V ethernet issue). But the rest has been plain sailing. Multi-monitor support is excellent as I was having constant screen rotation issues with the old nVidia drivers on Vista.

I do think it helped that I used Ninite to install most of my software in one go which including the wonderful Classic Shell Start Menu. Because of that I've only seen that dreadful Metro interface once or twice. And I've never run an 'app', just 'programs'. It boots up in 25 seconds into a lovely three-screen desktop.

But I suppose haters gotta hate.

Software sucks these days - and just maybe it's all YOUR fault

John King 1
IT Angle

Alternatively

Or we may just have a new generation of coders who just slap their code on top of existing framework, drag and drop their usual functions without a thought for efficiency and have no processes in place to test code performance. I've seen people often rely on new hardware or a move to the latest programming language for their speed increases - and ignoring their bloated code.

Step back a generation and every coder was extremely careful about every single byte. You may only have had 32K to play with which is the size of a big CSS or readme.txt file these days.

Apple iPad 4 Wi-Fi only tablet review

John King 1
Thumb Up

Good call.

Thanks for the heads-up re Synology apps. But as luck would have it I have the Synology DS 207+ which is too old for DSM 4.1, and therefore too old for the video streaming functionality. The other Synology apps should work though.

Cheers!

John King 1
Meh

I just got one for work

I finally got an iPad 4 (16GB) for work, my first ever Apple product. I'm a front-end developer and every client was asking for iPad compatibility and touch functionality so it had to be done.

Coming from using Google Play on a Samsung Galaxy S1 I found the Apple App Store to be pretty hopeless. I can't seem to find a decent program to allow me get files, like pdfs, avis and cbr from my PC or NAS (and possibly stream them) via wifi. And none of the decent Google apps seem available like Sky, Maps and Reader. If you've never visited a walled garden before it does feel pretty limiting. I'm sure I'll find some apps that will solve my issues though, I've only had the device for 12 hours.

The good news is that I haven't had to install iTunes on my PC yet and the iPad is still up and running fine. The amazing news is the screen. I've never seen a retina display before and it is quite breathtaking. Coming from an early 80's 8-bit generation I've seen so many improvements in graphic resolution but this seems like it's finally all been solved. To me it's like there's no need for resolution specs any more once you get past certain figures.

Battery life seems amazing too. After a few hours on it last night it was still at 82%. Unlike my much smaller Galaxy S1 which can run out of juice in just over an hour. Build quality is great too but there's something about the touch scrolling in iOS that just doesn't feel right compared to Android.

Now I just have to work out what's the best app to read PDFs, and get them from my home-networked PC. The Register app is quite nice too.

So overall, if it was my own money I was only going to purchase one tablet every 5 years I would probably go for a much cheaper Android tablet in about year's time. I think that's when you'll get an ideal product both hardware and software. The App Store offerings do seem a bit corporate and rigid, and if you're quite technically minded and/or don't usually consume media via iTunes you may find it too limiting.

But it's still an amazing product. And if you're happy to spend a few quid once you've bought it paying for some decent apps and your media then I think you're be extremely happy with your purchase.

Slideshow: A History of First-person Shooters in 20 Games

John King 1

And TimeSplitters too!

Great shout on Scarabaeus. That was so ahead of it's time, and pretty spooky for my younger self.

And let's not forget TimeSplitters 2 by the UK's Free Radical Design. A great FPS on the PS2 made in Nottingham from the guys who gave us Golden Eye, and now known as Crytek UK.

Freesat downs own website after Downton quickie

John King 1

Re: Spot on analysis

Yes, like you I'd pay £5/month for both Sky Atlantic and Sky Sports (if they put all the Premiership games on one channel). Freesat/Freeview gives me everything else I need. Same way I don't mind paying LoveFILM £5 every month or so.

John King 1

Re: Spot on analysis

I'm sure every 4 years we're told that due to broadcast rules and competition legislation SKY has been forced to unbundle all its services so customers only pay for the channels they'd like to watch. And as I wait for the invite from SKY that allows me to tick each channel I want to pay for I watch quality free TV instead via Freeview or Freesat. I'm still waiting.

Were the news people just telling me lies of does SKY just get away with not doing what it's told?

At the end of the day if you have a little patience, a Freeview or Freesat HD PVR and an app showing you all the terrestrial movies showing this week your choice of movies is just as good as the ones on SKY. Add in a on/off subscription to Lovefilm and Netflix and I'd say you have it even better.

Assange chums must cough up £93,500 bail over embassy lurk

John King 1
Go

And the alternative is...

£100K to prevent you doing life in a US prison? I'd hope my family would sell their houses to help me out.

UN agency didn't break North Korea tech embargo

John King 1
Mushroom

Re: Once again, the US Vivid Imagination Working Overtime

It's funny how the consensus of Iran and North Korea being some 'axis of evil' has set in to the public consciousness without being questioned. And yet if you go around using drones to blow up a goat herder's wedding whilst eating pizza in a warehouse in Fort Lauderdale you're one of the good guys.

From an alien's eye view it all looks a bit hypocritical.

Want a Leica camera from Jony Ive? There CAN BE ONLY ONE

John King 1
Facepalm

Way too expensive

Me no Leica.

Ex! interim! CEO! leaves! Yahoo! after! second! snub!

John King 1

Yahoo! Exclamation! Joke! Wearing! Thin!

Maybe! Time! It! Was! Laid! To! Rest!

Sony: Walkman, meet Android

John King 1
WTF?

More capacity, please.

I bought a 8Gb Sony mp3 player 5 years ago for £70 (Argos sale). It's great, perfectly practical in the home and out and about, and I've been looking forward to upgrading to a 32Gb or 64Gb model.

5 long years later and there is still no shift in price! It's unbelievable. I couldn't even buy the same capability for less money. Does anybody know why all Sony 32Gb Walkmans start from £200? You can get a 32Gb memory stick for a tenner. Are we really just getting stitched up or is there something I'm missing?

Intel prunes SSD prices

John King 1

waiting for the time being.

My buying point will be when I can get a nice 512Gb for £150. Summer 2013?

Eight... Rugged Cameras

John King 1

Quality?

Is it just me or do those shots not seem to be much improved from a normal compact camera from 8 years ago?

I was thinking of getting a new compact but the output seems just as much artifact-riden as my current one on its last legs. Do I need to enter the £600+ bracket to take decent pics?

Who killed ITV Digital? Rupert Murdoch - but not the way you think

John King 1

Straw clutching

As much as I loathe Murdock and refuse to give a single penny to Sky* I agree that the Panorama doc seemed like a lot of straw clutching. But if the longshot is that we now have Freeview as a result of all this then it may have worked out for the best for most UK TV consumers.

*I've still never understood why Sky is such a success though. You pay £500 a year for it's sports and movies and yet it still shows adverts. You are being done at both ends.

Netflix vs Lovefilm

John King 1

Is Boardwalk Empire worth £400/yr?

Seriously, I'd consider getting hold of a dodgy version from somewhere or just waiting for the box set.

Alibaba! and! friends! offer! to! swallow! Yahoo! whole!

John King 1

Yahoo = ?

What exactly would they get buying Yahoo? 10 million email addreses, Flickr and a search engine nobody uses?

Seriously, I am interested to know what exactly they get for $25bn.

Can the iPad save newspapers?

John King 1
Holmes

All about the money

“You can’t fund 1,000 people with £10-per-month subscriptions.”

I'm sure you can if you don't want to give yourself a £20m+ bonus every year. The model is sustainable as long as you take greed out of the equation.

Crazy pot smokers get high on wireless power

John King 1

New Wall Socket?

Would it be more economical for new homes to have USB charger ports as well as the usual 3 pin sockets? It'd be safer if you could just jack plug most of your low-power devices into the wall, than have a transformer heating up.

Or have I got my physics wrong?

Dungeon Siege III

John King 1

Dark Omen

The last good fantasy RPG I played was Warhammer: Dark Omen. Anybody know of something similar that's come out over the last 10 years?

How to choose the right screen size

John King 1
Pint

Simple but effective. Top Tips (not Viz).

Don't laugh but I do have a solution for people when choosing a screen size. Simply get some large pieces of cardboard with 16:9 ratios of a number of common screen sizes. Then plonk them in the corner of your room or above the mantlepiece, sit back and see if they're the right size for the room.

It may seem silly but it has stopped people I know from buying behemoths that would swallow their living rooms or postage stamps that would give them eye strain.

No, no need to pay me but you could buy me a pint.

Virgin outsources techies, pulls plug on Trowbridge call centre

John King 1

Worth it?

Has this type of IT outsourcing ever been profitable? Every instance I've heard of or actually been involved in becomes a huge cluster%!$k resulting in lost customers, doubling the time of new projects and the inevitable reversal in 3 to 5 year's time.

What is does do is make the CEO look good as he temporarily reduces costs and collects his bonus.

Can any readers tell me of a win/win IT outsourcing example?

Nintendo 3DS launch games

John King 1

Laser Squad game?

I'm sure I read a few months back that the creator of Laser Squad was developing a lunch game for the 3DS. I think it was a turn-based game based on an existing IP. Anybody know about this?

Still, at £230 I think I'll hold off for a year anyway.

WordPress comes under 'extremely large' web attack

John King 1

Correct

WordPress.com and the self-hosted CMS available from WordPress.org are two different beasts.

Those hosting their own WordPress sites would be totally unaffected by this.

Creative Ziio 7in Android tablet

John King 1

Badly timed

With Android 3.0 for tablets coming out in a few weeks this product is badly timed. And extremely expensive.

I got an Archos 7HT for £110 which does most of what this machine does, although stuck with Android 1.5.

W3C tackles HTML5 confusion with, um, more confusion

John King 1

When to start?

I've been rolling in CSS3 progressive enhancements into my web sites for a while now but I still think I'm a year, maybe two, away from embracing HTML5.

Is there a reason to build a HTML5 website now unless you specifically set out to build a "look at me I'm so up to date" HTML5 website?

Assange 'threatened to sue' Grauniad over leak of WikiLeak

John King 1

Hmm

This is all 'According to Vanity Fair' so it's best not to get too judgmental about this.

Anonymous attacks PayPal in 'Operation Avenge Assange'

John King 1

Alternative to Godwin's Law?

Is there an alternative to Godwin's Law for when internet discussions eventually mention Israel?

From the above comment it sounds like they're a real peaceful open-minded bunch.

John King 1

Yeah, but...

I prefer the reasons why Anonymous are doing this rather than the reasons why Governments are trying to halt the activities of WikiLeaks and character-assassinate Assange.

Personally I think the world will be a better more open place in 3 years time once the WikiLeaks dust has settled.

Is it time for new Assange devil/angel icons on the comments here?

Dixons warns of tough Christmas

John King 1
FAIL

PC Museum

I asked a salesman in PC World around this time last year if they had any Freesat boxes to which he said it was impossible to get free satelite TV and that I would have to have a SKY subscription. This was also confirmed by the head salesman there who gave me a look like I was mad.

A few months ago I went in to look at the graphics cards. I wanted one of those nVidea GTX460 jobs that had come out 2 months earlier. The choice was pitiful and so out of date. They had ones that were as quarter as powerful as the GTX460 but for more money.

I do like popping in there once every couple of months mainly for a laugh as their shelves seem more like a museum these days.

Acer takes on iPad with Android, Flash, own UI

John King 1
Boffin

Still not taken yet.

I'm thinking of buying a device like this soon but I just haven't seen the killer model yet. The tech I'm really waiting for is a fold-up screen.

I want a fold-up gadget almost twice the size of a Nintendo DS with a similar hard shell that can be used as a phone. But once opended you see a full screen with some kind of no-join tech for e-reading, web browsing etc.. hopefully running Android.

Give me that and I'll part with my hard-earned but until then it's all just gadget porn to me.

Pure Oasis Flow weatherproof DAB and Internet radio

John King 1

Volume knob change?

I've returned 3 Pure DAB radios after being unable to live with them for more than a week. My main gripe is the UI and volume control.

I like to listen to a bit of FiveLive at bedtime and I want to be able to control the volume at low levels. Every Pure I've bought has a gradiated volume control to so instead of an analogue dial allowing me to set this precisely I get a '1' which is way too loud and a '0' which is off. That's no good.

I picked up a £20 generic portable radio/cd from Currys which does the job fine (plus jack inputs for mp3 player). I may get R5 on AM but at least I can set the volume how I like.

For the money that Pure charge you would have thought that they would have come up with the perfect DAB product by now, rather than these expensive almost-theres.

Sony Bravia KDL-46EX403 46in LCD TV

John King 1

Time for a HDTV Buyers Guide?

Hi, I'm hoping that you also think it's time for a new HDTV buyers guide article. The one you did 2 years ago was very influential in my eventual purchase of a new TV but technology has moved on since then and I'm way out of touch.

Stripped-down IE9 interface leaks in Russia

John King 1

Side-by-side on Firefox

Yes, I would love to know how to do that too. I can't find the option anywhere.

Lonely Planet augments muggers' earnings

John King 1
Coat

Safe as..

After visiting both cities (get me!) I would say you should be more careful in London. How long until the Kabul map comes out?

Logitech Squeezebox Radio

John King 1
Megaphone

Volume Dial

Just one question. Is the volume dial graduated (right word?) or smooth analogue?

I have taken 3 bedside music players back to the shops as the there's no way to find a fall-asleep volume between 0 and 1.