Posts by Tringle

I hate them stealth trucks

How on earth are you supposed to see something shiny and the size of a housel and have time to react? Is there a Darwin nomination here?

But . . but . . but . .

I forced the update on my PC and . . nothing to see here. It works just fine, thank you very much.

I feel for our colonial cousins

In November they have a choice between an incompetent unprincipled self promoting proven liar or Donald Trump. Talk about a rock and hard place.

Plus ca change

" . . it looks as though WikiLeaks has been grossly irresponsible . . ."

So what's new?

That's Xiaomi +1

Just bought one. Redmi 3 Plus. Dual SIM, no NFC. Which was what I wanted. Not many pennies.

Only affects Macs . .

Haven't stopped laughing yet.

Aaargh

Two fillums:

The Blair Witch Project - no plot, no atmosphere, just NO.

Schindler's List. I have a particular dread of Spielberg films, but this one was the worst by a country mile. It wasn't just me who nearly lost the will to live, the chap behind me was snoring by about 10 hours in, and it is to this day the film with the most audience heckling I have ever sat through.

There is an old saying that has always been and probably always will be, true:

"With friends like Americans you have no need of enemies"

So they're annoying . .

. . not to mention virtually useless most of the time, but if people near them get paid they don't mind them so much. Can I have a grant to work at the University of Stating the Bl**dy Obvious please?

I'd love one. How do I win the lottery?

This'll be like most of the laws the socialists have tried to pass - ecotax being the most prominent example - dead in the water before it is implemented. That's the great thing about La Belle, the politicians bluster and threaten and sometimes actually do pass laws, but no-one pays any heed to them even if they do.

I'm not sure whether to be worried or not. I have Truecrypt on my PC so that if some ne'er do well nicks it they won't have access to my various accounts and data that could be used to aid identity theft. Frankly I couldn't give a stuff if the NSA or GCHQ can pole around in my data, as long as the local lowlife's can't open the disk.

It seems to me that many tablet purchases are likely to end up in the K-Tel cupboard under the sink. We had one in this household until the non replaceable battery cooked itself. It was replaced with a laptop because laptops are actually useful.

Zut

I seriously doubt that the entire French Socialist movement has a single functioning brain cell.

Luckily for me my Kindle died exactly one month after the warranty ran out. Amazon were significantly less than helpful as I now live in a different country to the one the thing was bought in. They just weren't interested. So the next eReader is going to be Kobo. I think this one might be a little too expensive, but I shall have a fondle in the shop before I decide which one to buy.

Great . .

Now all they have to do is get them to work during hours of darkness, which is when most domestic electricity is consumed.

Not a big enough discount . .

I spend a fair amount of time keeping my screen free of dust and other detritus. The idea that I would deliberately smear finger grease all over my window on the world is as daft thinking of doing the same thing to my car windscreen. Absurd idea that fully deserves its place in the dustbin of history.

I'm terrible sorry for the inconvenience

But here in La Belle we have a government of unreconstructed 1950s socialists and communist. They are, to a man (and woman, and especially the greens) away with the fairies, but alas they did a good job convincing the electorate that they were nice cuddly socialists à la Tony Blair (bad enough I hear you shriek, but they had to get rid of the nymphomaniac midget).

So I am afraid with have got another 3 years or so of this kind of idiocy before normal service is resumed. Whatever that is.

Called me old fashioned

Yep, you're welcome.

I don't even bother with watches that need batteries anymore, let alone one that needs charging every few days and is just a penile extension.

My everyday watch is a Seiko automatic - I've had far more expensive ones, but they weren't as good. Needs adjusting once every two weeks or so, and never needs any other attention.

But I suspect this is a joke. Come to think of it, just like everything Apple does.

Shorting is Theft and Fraud in one neat package

That's all there is too it.

Borrow your mate's car, promise you'll give it back at the end of the month and sell it to someone else, that's theft of the car and fraud on the buyer.

There is no valid reason why shares should be any different.

What makes share shorting even worse is that the institutions that are most active in 'lending' shares are our pension funds - effectively betting against themselves, and therefore us..

The whole thing is disgusting way of sucking value out of trading companies, their investors and employees..

No SD slot . .

No sale.

That is all.

And watch the market for music and films shrink

All this will do is divert the mainly teenage interest into other things. If they can't get the tunes and fillums for nix they just won't bother with them - and they'll no longer go out and buy the ones they really like. It'll take time, of course, and it will be difficult to attribute the declining revenues to stamping on curiosity, but it will happen.

Copyright Math

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0

That is all.

Ban cameras on 'phones

Personally I despise Apple and all their works, but they are not to blame for the fact that most pictures taken with most camera 'phones are complete dross.

I'm amazed that the complaints are only about lens flare, and not blurred images, thumbs in the way and digital noise, to name but a few of the ubiquitous faults with camera 'phone images in general.

This is because the possessors of this technology haven't, by and large, the faintest idea about photography; not one jot. They are of the same mindset as the drivers of the cars we see in the roadside ditches hereabouts on an almost daily basis - their cars have ESP and so they think they can drive them around any bend on any surface in any weather as fast as they like and the technology will just do everything for them. Well it won't, and 'phone cameras, even the iPhone's which is amongst the best, are still total crap compared to almost anything properly described as a camera.

Whenever our little family takes a trip somewhere we check out trip advisor.

Having once changed from a really brilliant hotel (rate by TA as below average) in a town we have visited a few times to one that TA rated highly but which was not even close to being in the same class as the previous hotel, we now look at it just to see how amazingly wrong it can be. The answer is pretty much always, and often hilariously so were it not that it affects the business of the downrated hotels.

The after sales care is so well oiled . .

. . because the products are so fragile they are always breaking. And the profit margins are so big that even if they had to replace every single thing they sold free of charge there would still be a gross profit in it.

Personally I prefer to buy things that don't break, but that's just me being picky.

QED

Thus proving for all those who haven't quite got it yet that any enterprise that relies on 'the cloud' (aka cloud cuckoo land) for essential or important services is foolishly vulnerable potentially capricious and often unreliable 3rd parties.

The 'cloud' might be cheaper than keeping everything in house - and there's a reason for that, it's because it's cr*p.

I don't care

Because access to 4G will be even more expensive than the heroically priced 3G here in France, and I don't have any body parts I am prepared to sell to gain access.

Genius

Now this is what successful marketing is all about.

Only £80 extra to turn an iPad into something useful? Like a notebook that costs less than half the money and is vastly more capable.

Can't see any fanbois buying it, it's just not overpriced enough. Or Shiny™ enough. And it's practical. Doomed I tell you, doomed.

I'm discontinued . .

According to Navman, as far as my N20 is concerned Western Europe has been discontinued.

So I couldn't update even if I wanted to. Although, I can, apparently throw this working unit in the bin and buy a newer model. How kind of them to offer.

But in the days when there were updates available they were more 75% of the price of the unit. I bought a paper map instead for roughly 5% of that price.