* Posts by Andy Roid McUser

136 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Aug 2011

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Microsoft Teams usage jumps to 32, no, 44 million as Windows-slinger platform slides onto home workers' PCs

Andy Roid McUser

all the cpu resources

Have you used Teams on a Mac? uses every last cpu cycle and I'm not sure if this is a feature but there's a nice flame and smoke effect near the screen when meetings go over an hour.

Google AMP supremo whinges at being called out on team's bulls***

Andy Roid McUser

Let it die

AMP needs to be retired.

Google makes it to third base with Home digital assistant

Andy Roid McUser

Kitchen interface for Spotify

I have the echo dot plugged into my Jambox in the kitchen for one reason.. to talk to Spotify and TuneIn. If I say Alexa play foo fighters. It goes to Spotify and plays the foo fighters. If I say Alexa play BBC radio 4 .. it goes to tunein and plays radio 4..

Awesome and worth £50 just for that.

Google's head in the clouds: Cut, cut as fast as you can. You can't match us, AWS plan

Andy Roid McUser

Azure

We've tried to love Azure we really have but the simplicity of the AWS and Google Compute offering when looking at scripted deployments and supportability by staff is by far the best.

Compute is great until your want support but their instances seem far more responsive for our workloads.

BT could lawyer up after Sky’s sport channels obligation removed

Andy Roid McUser

Re: Hardware

There's this Google thingy, brought me here.. http://uk.netflixable.com/2015/11/complete-alphabetical-list-wed-nov-18.html

Not advocating Netflix over other offerings, but access to complete box sets , tv , movies , documentaries , kids, music all with no ads on any device on multiple simultaneous devices all in HD for less than a tenner requires more thought effort than, 'I looked a bit and couldn't be bothered'.

Unless you like 10 min long advert breaks for tatt you don't need.

Andy Roid McUser

Hardware

All I picked up in this article was..

1. Powerline ethernet capable linux based hardware with hack potential

2. Sky know how to 'Supercharge'

The reason we got rid of Sky and went to Netflix was €8 per month for loads of stuff in HD with no ads.

Google gives away 100 PETABYTES of storage to irritate AWS

Andy Roid McUser

Re: need more bandwidth

"Replicating the success of Azure"

Have you ever had to battle with Azure.. It makes windows 10 look like a finished product. AWS and Google Compute are vastly superior in terms of actually building a supportable cloud platform. A little off topic but those five little letters get my Friday morning blood boiling.

David Beckham fakes bewilderment to flog mobiles to Yanks. Fakes?

Andy Roid McUser

The small print

After all the 'All-in' , one price , comes the snippet , $80 excludes taxes and surcharges. Streaming video capped at 600kb/sec, no roaming , no international calls, no premium services, $36 Activation fee.

Throughput reduction ( Throttling ) and restrictions apply.*

So the ad's just bullshit.

Apple Watch 'didn't work on HAIRY FANBOIS, was stripped of sensor tech'

Andy Roid McUser

Grammar Nazi

Think you need one of these watches to keep a check on that pulse and blood pressure.

Best lay off the coffee for a while too.

Watt the CHIP!? ARM pops out THE most powerful 64-bit Cortex for mobes'n'slabs

Andy Roid McUser

The difference

16nm A72 has about twice the performance of a 20nm Cortex-A57, and consumes about half the power.

"We have a strict power budget; this is a fanless design,"

And this is the thinking that caught Intel napping after a very large meal. Do much much more, with much much less.

ARM is the British tech success version of Apple, not the richest company in the world by virtue it doesn't manufacture anything but almost everyone in the world owns an ARM designed component. Announcements should be made from Blighty first and then pop over the water to say the same thing but with slightly more fan fare and cheerleaders.

Netflix goes TITSUP worldwide (Total Inability To Support Usual Programming)

Andy Roid McUser

LB Wobble

When we talk to the business the usual 'correct terminology' is that the components, which are tested regularly ,didn't fall over cleanly and suffered from a 'flapping' state.

They don't tend to ask questions after that.

Norks' internet goes TITSUP in possible DDoS attack

Andy Roid McUser

made me giggle

'Possible DDoS'

Apple's DIRTY SECRET isn't that secret, or that dirty

Andy Roid McUser

Re: Reality Distortion Field

@Sleepy you're kind of missing the whole point .

Apple is a lifestyle brand, always has been , they do a lot of things really well, I'm a Mac Book user myself, love the thing, but they present themselves as a purveyor of aspirational premium products. When the masses buy their new Apple product, they don't think that it's made in a sweatshop and utilises materials where people are literally dying during the extraction process.. No , they think of hipster types thinking different and everything being rosey.

The point is that with the Cash pile of $165 Billion Apple can and should do better.

Andy Roid McUser

Re: Reality Distortion Field

Mike , it's OK , you can be deprogrammed.

Andy Roid McUser

Reality Distortion Field

If Apple didn't talk down to it's customers with that patronising "We're better than you" Jonny Ive bullshit mantra condensing claptrap then to be perfectly honest no one would bother their arse about where the tin came from or if the drones in the sweat shops needed to take a nap due to exhaustion and poor working conditions..

No one asks these questions of Sony , HTC or other manufacturers of the latest shiny tech.. why ?? because the Apple reality distortion field dictates that Apple are better , just better and that you should follow and aspire to be more 'Apple'

Well, as the world's most profitable and potentially influential corporations its just that the public expect Apple to lead by example.... which they clearly don't, no matter what the PR spin says otherwise.

There will be another program or article like this in 18-14 months and some Apple exec will spew out some random metrics to bamboozal the uninformed stating that in fact , everything is tickityfrikkinboo.

Nothing changes, but hey , productivity is up by 3.9% .. winner.

( Written on a MacBook Pro )

Never fear, Glassholes – Intel to the rescue! 'New CPU' for tech-specs

Andy Roid McUser

"The problem is the batteries. Make them smaller and they carry less charge, there's no way around that."

There is ... Use less power, you're assuming that technology will stand still... when you should be thinking to make the frames photovoltaic, make the frame a battery ( using graphine-esque type materials that haven't been invented yet ), further reduce the power consumption of the chipset and displays... all quite possible in v.near future.

My point was that, these are early prototypes , when the technology catches up, which it invariably will and it doesn't look like I'm wearing Google Glass.. I'll wear Google Glass.

Andy Roid McUser

remember when mobile phones required a suitcase battery ?

People are too hung up writing off this technology simply because the folks wearing them look incredibly stupid. Personally, I'd never wear one as for some unexplained reason I just want to push the wearers of these things under a moving vehicle.

This isn't to say I don't like the technology and where it could go..As a person of a certain age who's eyes are steadily deteriorating, I'd welcome augmented reality functions built into my specs , just needs to look like my current glasses. So just like the mobile phone, in the beginning it wasn't so mobile as luggable. Once the tech and batteries can be reduced in size to the point where it doesn't look like your wearing a giant neon sign saying 'punch me' then I'm all in ( without the camera , that's just creepy )

NOKIA - Not FINNished yet! BEHOLD the somewhat DULL MYSTERY DEVICE!

Andy Roid McUser

No microsoft equals

You can immediately see the benefit of the removal of Microsoft form the company by the quality of the advertising. Hell , it's just an 8" android tablet , but with that futuristic deep bass soundtrack and elegant lines , suddenly I want want want.

SHOW ME THE MONEY! Ballmer on Amazon: 'They're not a real biz, they make NO cash'

Andy Roid McUser

Ignore anything Ballmer says

"$500, fully subsidized, with a plan! That is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine." - Steve Ballmer 2007

Doctor Who's Flatline: Cool monsters, yes, but utterly limp subplots

Andy Roid McUser

Re: Did anybody notice...

It was a Scientific. http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/scientific___giant_scientific.html

To be honest, all this easter egg hiding classic tech within Dr Who episodes is ruining it for me as I now spend the entire episode looking for really old props. Last week they had an ORIC-1.

Should get out more.

Zippy one-liners, broken promises: Doctor Who on the Orient Express

Andy Roid McUser

Re: Was that an Oric 1 on the table?

Good spot. It was indeed an Oric-1. Now I'm going to be playing spot the classic computer tech in next weeks episode.

Hackers thrash Bash Shellshock bug: World races to cover hole

Andy Roid McUser

Re: It's getting worse

Wait.... Servers can get Ebola now ??? Man, when did this happen. I've been busy the last couple of days, doing actual work.. when I pop my head up for ten mins the entire internet is getting splatted with an STD and Ebola has made the LabMonkey-human-laptop jump.

Thinking about the devices within my remit that have /bin/bash and a web server attached being in the tens of lots of numbers,...It's probably too late and as we'll all be dead by the weekend anyway, I'm going to get very very pissed.

Cheers.

Scottish independence: Will it really TEAR the HEART from IT firms?

Andy Roid McUser

Re: Sod the IT arguments

I'm sorry.. How many cats were there ? Your keyboard appears to developed a fault.

Apple takes blade to 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display

Andy Roid McUser

Upgrade the display ??

I'm a little surprised that you think not upgrading the retina display is a demonstration of Apple missing a trick. Got to ask you , have you actually used a retina 13" macbook pro ? well I can tell you that 2560x1600 pixels on a 13" inch screen is plenty, I have mine dialled back to 1920x1200 using SwitchResX . I'm not much fussed about the font smoothness, just wanted the real estate on a small device. The brightness and colours are perfect , if they changed a thing on the MBP display I'd be suspicious.

Microsoft fixes all those shaky GoPro vids nobody wants to watch

Andy Roid McUser

This is awesome

Some proper mathematics and computer science stuff going on there and it is to be applauded. We need more of this kind of thing rather than the 'where's my taxi' and lifestyle apps.

Love it - there is hope for the future.

Scotland's BIG question: Will independence cost me my broadband?

Andy Roid McUser

Fag packet maths

This is the fundamental issue that the Pro Independence lot tend to skirt over. It's all emotional pulling at the heart strings , oh look how wonderful Sweden are , we'll do that , we'll join the euro , no , we'll use the pound or bitcoin , we'll have the bits of the BBC we fancy, ohh look oil , that'll last forever... it'll be great and death to Westminster...

The Independence folk would win the argument hands down if they just presented clear facts and a solid road map to its people. However, no plan appears to be in place besides hope in the future.

Hope is not enough.

What they are proposing requires some proper grown up thinking, something sadly lacking. The people of Scotland deserve better and should call off this vote until it is thought through.

BSkyB slurps Murdoch's Italian and German Sky assets to beef up European pay-TV biz

Andy Roid McUser

Moving money and assets around

So 21st Century Fox, a company controlled by Murdoch, sells some of its assets to another company where Murdoch has the controlling interest ( BSkyB ).

This isn't news, just an internal accounting exercise.

Microsoft's MCSE and MCSD will become HARDER to win

Andy Roid McUser

cv in the bin

Candidates that place a high emphasis for MCSE qualifications on their cv are promptly placed in the t.r.a.s.h filing system.

If they are to make the exams harder/useful then a re-branding exercise is definitely required.

Microsoft takes on Chromebook with low-cost Windows laptops

Andy Roid McUser

Re: a netbook by any other name would stink as much

I'll agree with you here. I just bought 6x Toshiba A6 Quad core laptops with touch screen for my son's school, these are running 8.1 and have all the nonsense removed and they are not a smooth experience by any stretch of the imagination, so I hate to think what 8.1 runs like on v.low cost hardware like say a Netbook...

Chromebooks maintain a super low price as the OS is little more than an X window running the Chrome browser and little or no storage - my mother has one and loves it , perfect for her use.

Maybe Microsoft have something up their sleeve .. but I doubt it.

Specs for one of the listed low cost notebooks. ( ES-1 )

Windows 8.1 - 64-bit - Intel® Celeron® N2830 processor (2.16GHz/2.41GHz w/ Intel® Burst) - 4GB DDR3L memory - 500GB hard drive - 15.6" HD widescreen CineCrystal™ display (1366 x 768) - Intel® HD graphics - stereo speakers - HD audio - webcam - multi-gesture touchpad - Wireless - Bluetooth® 4.0 - HDMI® - USB 3.0 - card reader - 3-cell battery - 1-year limited warranty. Color: Diamond Black

NEW Raspberry Pi B+, NOW with - count them - FOUR USB ports

Andy Roid McUser

power

Most noteworthy change here ( for me ) is the removal of that pesky resistor that limited power in to 5v 1A. Now supporting 2A which makes the requirement for the external usb hub evaporate. Would have liked a little more RAM but.. the changes to power without having to pop out the soldering iron are welcomed.

Google Glass faces UK cinema ban: Heaven forbid someone films you crying in a rom-com

Andy Roid McUser

banning these devices in cinema's is a bad idea

So we cant say..

"Ok Google, show me nudie picks of that actress/actor" ( delete as appropriate )

Google starts selling Glass to Brits – for £1,000 a pop

Andy Roid McUser
WTF?

Re: Hmm.

I stand corrected and will endeavor to refrain from blurting out responses via mobile without verifying each and every word. Thus ensuring I do not 'elicit' a severe reprimand from people with far too much time on their hands.

Your feedback was greatly appreciated.

Andy Roid McUser
FAIL

Re: Hmm.

As excited as I am about having an internet embedded heads up display in my glasses.. and .. considered buying the first tranche of devices once formally released in Europe, I saw a chap wearing a set yesterday at the train station and initial thoughts were 'what a complete tw@t'. Ironically, he was staring at his mobile for 20 mins through his glass, which appears to defeat the object of the exercise.

Miniaturization and total concealment are required before I put a set on my head in public.

These things illicit the same emotions of pity as wearers of bluetooth headsets.. that bad.

Ohio man cuffed again for shagging inflatable pool raft

Andy Roid McUser

Re: Oh come on,

Who down-voted Cliff ?? Serious sense of humour failure...

Come off it, Moon, Earth. We know you're 60 million years older than we thought

Andy Roid McUser

Re: Why not attack me instead?

Because no one gives a F$%k.

Dude I've sadly just read your 'blog' and it is atrocious , did you just make most of that up.. are you on medication ? Embarrassed for you.

Andy Roid McUser
Joke

But the earth is only 6 thousand years old

So how can this be.....

Clearly the astro-boffins have got it all wrong using their "science" , "facts" and "empirical evidence".

What is needed now is for the above to be taught in schools , what could possibly go wrong ??

<coat>

Tennessee bloke cuffed for attempting to shag ATM – police

Andy Roid McUser

Picnic Table

One Word - Splinters....

Hey, does your Smart TV have a mic? Enjoy your surveillance, bro

Andy Roid McUser

Re: Background noise

Bodge solution yes.. put sticky tape over the web cam on the television. However, if you happen to be an electronics engineer, appreciate your house looking nice and tidy, then its best to not make it blindly obvious to the people who visit know that you've got a tin foil hat in the closet.

The elegant solution is the one you can't see.

Andy Roid McUser

Background noise

If the NSA/GCHQ want to listen to me fart and slurp my coffee in the morning whilst watching the very early morning news, or my kids running around and shouting louder and louder on top of each other then good luck.

That said, If I bought a TV with a camera on it.. I would immediately void the warranty and disconnect it. The microphone I'm not so bothered about , quite like the idea of being able to talk to the TV. 'TV OFF PLEASE'. Conversations in our house are beyond mundane, all the secret stuff happens in the shed and office ;-)

NO, Microsoft hasn't given up on .Net, and YES it's all about cloud

Andy Roid McUser

Sea change

The wind does appear to have made a rather swift dispersal out of the downward vortex Ballmer was sinking the company with, morphing into friendly fluffy clouds ( Awful analogy but I've yet to finish my coffee ).

I've been negative on Microsoft for the last few years with all the hostility toward other platforms and lawsuits but do like the noises coming out of the company since Nadella took the helm have been on the whole ... encouraging. Appreciate this may be heresy to some but I make my living out of FOSS and quite welcome a Microsoft that wants to embrace without all that extend and extinguish malarkey.

We've a room full of .Net devs here all using Visual Studio as their primary IDE, making it capable of true cross platform development would be a real boon. However the proof will be in the pudding ..

Who knows, maybe they will release an enterprise version of 8 and Server 2012 without a trace of that toy town fisher price interface. ( maybe asking a bit much here )

Get BENT: Flexy supercapacitor breaks records

Andy Roid McUser

Acceptable losses in N.Korea

Quote from Kim Jong Un

"Some of you early adopters of supercap tech woven into official Nork state garments may spontaneously combust. As your leader it is a price I am willing pay. All hail me.."

Solaris deposed as US drone-ware, replaced by Linux administration

Andy Roid McUser

Re: one minor flaw

AC lighten up , it's a joke and there is never a requirement to make things personal. It's a giant neon sign of insecurity.

Andy Roid McUser
Black Helicopters

one minor flaw

Actually what happened was that they gave the commandment to a junior to go and get the source code to iOS. After being laughed out of the room by both Apple and Cisco, the junior, using his initiative, got the closest thing he could... cOS . Not realizing that this is in fact the Chinese state funded Linux mobile OS. It was free after all and they gave him the source code wrapped up in a nice auto-loading USB key.

The Chinese now have a fleet of remote controlled Death Machines sat on US soil ready for activation as an incentive for the good people of USA to pay back all that money they borrowed.

I for one welcome our Chinese................

ARM exec: Forget eight-core smartphone chips, just enjoy a SIX-PACK

Andy Roid McUser
Alien

egg based measurement systems

It's about time the unit of a dozen was introduced into hardware terminology. All this counting in units of 8 or 10 has simply got out of control.

e.g.

"Dude.. Love your new (Brand X) mobile - how many cores is it rocking ?"

-- "Goes like stink and it's got half-a-dozen cores of ARM in it running at four dozen bit mode"

"Also, check out my new LAMP server, two dozen cores and 8 dozen Ryan Giggs of RAM"

-- "Amazing, what does that equate to in brontosauruses"

"Don't be a dunce.. A quarter of a dozen Brontosaurus is a unit of length"

Note : AMD used to employ the half-a-dozen core methodology in their Opteron chips, sadly it was more of a case that they simply couldn't get eight to operate than any desire to use that quite frankly superior Dozen system of measurement.

Microsoft hints at smaller Surface

Andy Roid McUser

Its the interface

I keep on trying and I just can't learn to like it. ( being polite here )

UK's CASH POINTS to MISS Windows XP withdrawal date

Andy Roid McUser
Go

xp

Never really give ATM's much thought besides the usual look for dodgy face plates / skimmers and only ones on the side of the bank protected by a camera.

After having my memory refreshed about OS/2 running on these things I never thought for a moment that anyone in their right mind would use XP for something that needed to run 24/7.

So for all the MS bashing above, I'll say this.. 99.9% of the time I go to use an ATM it's working , no error messages and the best technology is the stuff you don't notice, so for that , well done NCR and Microsoft.. Who would have thought...

I have no bias as to what OS they use, just as long as I can get my beer tokens on the way to the pub.

Another climate change myth debunked by proper climate scientists

Andy Roid McUser
Pint

you can avoid nasty weather...

Sitting on your deckchair in a lovely walled garden running iWeather.

Problem solved. Thanks Apple.

Actor who played Rogue Two in Star Wars dies aged 67

Andy Roid McUser

honour the man who helped destroy the death star

Aim your missiles towards the light Chris an Stay on Target! !

Nokia and HTC throw down swords, sign patent war peace treaty

Andy Roid McUser
Joke

good will to all men ( and women )

For peace to work all you need is one side with a bigger gun.

These patent press releases are hilarious.. Legal staff for Company X and Company Y sat around a table and after many courtroom drama's at a cost of $$$ Company Y has decided to give Company X a few SUV's full of cold hard cash. In return Company X will stop attempting to extort assets from Company Y now that Company Y has willingly handed over a lot of money. Company Y can now protect itself from future litigation by using Company X's patent war chest. Freeing up Company X to make litigation proceedings against Companies A,B & C now that precedence has been set.

Everyone at Company X is rather quite pleased with themselves. Staff at Company Y are wondering why they feel cheap , dirty and violated.

Not too dissimilar from 'Mob' protection money , just done in a court and with 'we're all great friends' press releases. Isn't modern business just lovely.

Nokia to launch low-cost Android phone this month – report

Andy Roid McUser
Joke

perry mason

Wonder if MS will drag MicroNokia to court for infringing its patents, so all the other Android vendors don't feel left out. Then.. and just because this is all make believe , The Moto-Goog-Sung alliance leap to Micro-Nokia's defense with it's patent portfolio protection. Chanting 'we look after our own'.

Meanwhile - Tim Cook sits in the corner, lonely, talking to himself wishing an idea might present itself so those wild promises of 'something great is coming.. sometime in the future .. honest...' don't look so silly when he announces the iPhone 5ds.

Nintendo takes Apple to court for trademark infringement, wins, acquires Apple in the settlement and launches a dual screen gaming console with an integrated phone that's unashamedly plastic and captures the yoof market. Mario becomes self aware and get's a job with the Department of Defense.

Microsoft, after biding it's time, demolishes Nintendo in court for stealing it's dual screen Courier designs and acquires Nintend-apple, using the Johnnie Cochran Chewbacca defense that so successfully got O.J.Simpson off those nasty murder charges.

Steve Ballmer chucks a couple of cats at some chairs in celebration, rubs his hands and yells 'mission complete mother f£$ker... hell yeah !!!!!!' for it was Steve-o's plan all along to assimilate NokIntendApple and replace every device on the planet with the ever-so-successful Metro/Notro/Rubbish interface.

In a none too surprising move, Google gets rather miffed and launches it's little known attack dog department the Central Intelligence Agency to assassinate Ballmer and re-instate the puppet dictator .. Agent Satya Nadella.

Google gets back to 'monitoring' our activities after the little distraction. The news reports that Steve Ballmer, the computing visionary was lost at sea and the search has been called off due to no one caring.

I should go and do some work now.

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