Posts by StooMonster241 posts • joined Friday 8th December 2006 09:55 GMT
Ages ago I had exactly the same thing happen on Windows 7 64-bit and 32-bit editions too — two updates of .NET got into infinite update loops.
Wasted best part of a day trying to fix it myself and finally spent ages on phone to Microsoft Support — via MSDN subscription — and their conclusion in the end (after more than an hour on phone) was "Back up your data. Format drive. Re-install."
I was staggered that a 21st century 64-bit OS could be completely shagged by an update from its author, and require such radical fix.
Wish Apple would put the colour back in OS X too, it's all very grey these days.
A relative of an ATM machine, RAM memory, DOS system, etc.
...is easy access to and easy to use loss-less or loss-less compression codec downloads, without paying a premium price; the current mass-market solution of 'good enough' quality isn't good enough for my tastes.
Until that day CD it is, and ripping to whatever format takes my fancy.
Few friends have got Infinity and really pleased with it.
I use Virgin 100Mb package and get a rock solid 10Mb upstream, but keenly waiting to see what the speed bump does.
As to direct download speeds, I downloaded Dota2 from Steam in three minutes a couple of weeks ago and Mass Effect 3 from Origin in about eight minutes last week. Streaming any HD video service is usually a dream but can occasionally have buffering problems in the early evenings.
I run two Windows 7 64-bit computers, and both of them have had the OS destroyed by Microsoft Updates. i.e. got into infinite loops that won't break and cannot be reversed. Both times called MSDN support and eventual 'official' problem resolution was format hard drive and reinstall OS.
What happens on a Windows 8 tablet when the OS gets shagged by Microsoft Updates, which is inevitable as far as I am concerned?
I can make Win7 64-bit BSoD on demand, if I uninstall AMD's CAP application support it always BSoD and the only way I can remove it to update to latest version is go through the Registry and do it manually -- I am not alone, there are plenty of people with same issue on support forums. There's also a couple of programs that BSoD Win7 when they crash too.
I get a phone call at least once a month from BT trying to sell me Infinity, the latest went like this:
BT: "Hello, this is BT. I'd like to talk to you about our super fast broadband,"
Me: "Sorry but..."
BT: "We are offering broadband that is four times faster than any of our competitors."
Me: "Really? Four times faster than any of your competitors?"
BT: "Yes!"
Me: "I have Virgin Media's 100Mb service, so what I hear you saying is that you can provide me with a 400Mb connection. Wow."
BT: "You know I mean broadband over BT's phone lines, not anything else."
Me: "That is not what you said."
I've got friends in Narrow Street with BT Infinity, they're at the CW end, so it is available to some in the area.
I'm still on CS3 suite, which (mostly) works without issue.
There's a few things I'd like in later versions, but it's just not worth the price of the upgrade to me (not my core business, but I do use it heavily every so often).
Definitely not going subscription route either, nor pay-as-you-go.
Guess I'll stick with CS3 until it stops working due to OS changes or Adobe have a more reasonable upgrade policy.
Apple are a publicly quoted company therefore have many laws to comply with in regards to publishing data such as this.
If they said they'd sold 3-million and they hadn't the shareholders could sue the management and the SEC would want to put them in jail.
I know several people with Apple TV and none of them are IT professionals; rather they are doctors, dentists, managers, musicians, and entrepreneurs ... ordinary ABs in demographics terms.
They don't have them flashed for XBMC, rather they use them for Netflix and renting movies from iTunes -- one thing they have in common is they hate BSkyB (or at least the fees).
Why is Metro UI forced in Win8? For a similar reason it is the new interface on Xbox 360.
On 360 it's all about the advertising, and an additional revenue stream from all those Xbox gamers' eyeballs. It's the money.
On Win8 Metro programs can only be purchased from Microsoft's app store, and Microsoft take 30% of price. This doesn't affect "desktop" programs (yet), but certainly does affect tablets that are Metro only and those users who will buy things like 'Cut the Rope'. Again, it's the money.
I am amazed that El Reg readers aren't more vocal about Metro apps only being available from Microsoft's store.
You know that a lot of modern apartments / flats have only a microwave for heating stuff up, no oven and hob, there's no call for kitchens these days -- as dining rooms before them -- with particular demographics (young, urban, professionals) who eat out or buy ready meals.
My kids love an American tv show called 'The Middle' where the protagonist family use their cooker for bedding storage, as they eat take-away and warm popcorn in the microwave. I imagine there's plenty of households in the UK where cooker and hob are never turned on.
Similarly I already know people who've gone from desktop to laptop to netbook to iPad tablet exclusivity, not for me as I have proper work to do on workstation / desktop but I can see quite a lot of people going that way too.
Nokia might make more phones than anyone else, but with wafer thin margins it means their earnings (profits are tiny).
Apple have 6% market share but take 60% of profits of all handset manufacturers, whereas Nokia make 60% of handsets (not really, it's less) but take 6% of the profits of handset manufacturers (probably less, I don't have Nokia's figures to hand but you get the point).
I saw a guy with a Nokia Windows Phone 7 -- Lumia 800? -- on the escalator in the tube once. Really, I did!
Do I win a prize?
Raspberry Pi computer is going to be Xmas present 2012 to my (older) kids, nieces and nephews.
So long as production version is in full supply by Q4-12 then I'm OK with it, although will prolly order one for myself before then too.
Windows laptops may sell many more units, but it's all commoditised low margin stuff.
Apple own the market in laptops costing more than $1000, with more than 70% share.
Which is why for their < 10% market share by volume of laptops they take > 90% of the profits.
This is highly likely to be the same outcome with tablets.
Let's take one step back. Why does the Google corporation make Android?
Is it defensive, to protect their slice of the mobile advertising space? Or is it aggressive, to create a new market for their advertising products and to monetize their users' data?
It certainly isn't out of the goodness of their charitable hearts, they are a quoted company who needs to create shareholder value and are not some foundation of goodliness and open source holiness. Google is a business like any other.
Apple, for their sins, can easily measure the advertising and marketing spend versus number of hardware units sold; it wouldn't be quite so easy for Google to see where advertising spend on promoting an Android platform would get them, and thus what return on investment they would achieve.
Microsoft, were they advertising Windows much before the PC-vs-Mac adverts Apple ran? Has running Windows 7 "I'm a PC" adverts helped them? Even considering they are also relying on each manufacturer to do the job too.
So want one of these, not only for me to relive the days of schoolboy hacking but definately getting them for my kids, nieces and nephews too.
There have been HDCP strippers around for years that take HDMI and convert HDCP laden content to analogue, DVI, or even HDMI with no HDCP.
HD Fury is a popular brand.
Can only agree.
In my household we time-shift everything, even "live" shows on commercial channels are started watching at later times so the adverts can be skipped and catch-up with live for last segment.
I assumed everyone was the same as us -- PVR been around for ages and VCR long before that -- until I recently saw the figures for people watching live broadcasts instead of time-shift, box-sets, iPlayer, etc. and discovered that is the vast majority and I am tiny minority.
I did miss that, thanks for the link chaps, but I have to say there's a difference between accepting that it will be rooted and encouraging it. ;)
Sony and Microsoft do indeed sell their console hardware at a loss for six months (or a year) or more.
Nintendo do not, they make margin on their hardware from day one.
Nintendo have sold "most" games console hardware (if you include handhelds), so most consoles are sold making profits on the hardware.
Apple want to sell hardware, using content as loss leader.
Amazon want to sell content, using hardware as loss leader.
Google want to sell advertising, using Android as loss leader.
Microsoft want to sell Windows.
I must've missed the part of the press release or announcement of Kindle being "root friendly".
I am skeptical this is the case though, as Amazon are a content supply business and (apparently) selling this device at as a loss-leader for their content, why would they allow Rooting? Especially when the most common use of rooting is to pirate software and bypass DRM restrictions on content, yes I know us techie sorts want to fiddle and install stuff and run emulators etc and have more noble ambitions than the freetards, but mainstream rooting is primarily for getting around the kind of restrictions Amaon will have in place to protect their investment.
Android competitor killer is how I read his post, considering the context of the article. Who would be able to match Amazon's price when they don't have the sales from content Eco-system to offset the low price (loss-leader) hardware sales.
Alternatively, one of the tech rumours yesterday was that Amazon are considering buying webOS from HP to power the next generation of Kindle -- one would assume to avoid issues such as the Microsoft tax on Android devices.
US prices don't include sales tax whereas out include 20% VAT, which is a large chunk. Amazon will also have to pay import duty (more tax) before they even add cost of exchange (and hedging it) and then simple extras like cost of support in EU (multiple language instructions etc) and shipping.
Considering all of that, I doubt they would make much extra money from that UK price but they might well come in lower than £199.
Oh also, the cheapest US models also include advertising, you have to pay an extra £50 to get an advert free model. I wonder if these advertised-sponsor models will be available outside USA.
70% of retail price is a lot more money than selling via "standard" retail, if you're a games company that's pretty attractive.
30% is certainly the new digital standard used by Apple, Microsoft, Steam, Sony, Amazon, et al.
Why would I keep a 40Mbps video codec with lossless HD sound Blu-ray that I have paid for in a cupboard, but rather stream a 5Mbps "HD" version with DD 5.1 instead?
Flash is history, Adobe have already started switched their focus to HTML5 with the latest updates to their tool suite and their "labs" products too.
I'm not siding with the Ubi hate for having "always on" requirement, I would much rather have that than a disc in drive or such like.
The amount of time I am offline is negligible -- flying is about it -- and the only time my gaming PC is offline is when the ISP is down, which I can count on the tigers of one hand in the last decade.
Always online is almost like saying, must have electricity these days.
From these comments one can only conclude that the Samsung Galaxy is a far superior tablet to Apple's iPad, but riddle me this...
Wasn't it this week that we were reading that Samsung had pushed 1,000,000 Galaxy tabs in channel, however only 20,000 have sold at retail.
If El Reg commentators love these tablets so much, perhaps they should buy them? Or are they waiting for an HP like fire sale and hoping to pick one up for $100?
• UK the only country where people cannot pre-order Skyrim on Steam
• Brink was month late to Steam in UK behind the rest of the world
• Space Marine and Saints Row The Third currently unavailable to purchase on Steam in the UK
Clearly something is going on with Steam in the UK, if it's not GAME threatening the publishers then what is it?
I suffer an "upgrade" from a series of rock solid cable modems when I went from 50Mb to 100Mb.
This rebranded NetGear router is a PoS with all sorts of issues, particularly for 'power users' such as El Reg readers who probably have their own routers and networks setup.
For example, one cannot use networks 192.168.1.x as the 1 range is reserved for "guest network" apparently. I asked VM about this in one support call and they denied it's going to be like the horrible BT Openworld stuff but I don't believe them.
On the numerous occasions I've spoken to the 100Mb support team they said the #1 issue for 100Mb customers is the SuperHub -- I suggested it's because 100Mb are likely to be power-users and thus less likely to want it anyway -- and the most requested feature is the one to make it into a dumb cable modem (why don't they offer this hardware as an alternative?).
I was told it would all be fixed in r28 as one would be able to select Bridge Mode, but that never arrived and they said r29, and that's not arrived and now r30 is the one being discussed.
I asked if I could have my old cable modem back and downgrade to 50Mb, but they said "No, you can downgrade to 50Mb but you must keep the SuperHub"; as well as complaining to Technical Support I've tried to register complaints with Customer Service about the SuperHub but they don't appear to have any processes to capture my feedback.
I just hope they sort this out soon, I just want a dumb cable modem not this.
I also use Firewire 800 for external hard drives because they are so much quicker than USB 2, but I've never used the Express port.
Although I'm going to upgrade my trusty 17-inch MBP at some point soon, I think I'm going to wait for the rumoured MBP "Air" refresh where they get rid of the optical drives and make the MBP range slimmer and lighter. However, that Apple is switching computer displays from 16:10 ratio to 16:9 is concerning as I wish to retain 1920x1200 and not have to downgrade to 1920x1080.
I've got some FreeSat boxes as well as Sky HD, and have bought them for various family members and recommended them to others. It's really rather good, not limited to foreign stations, and if you get a FreeSat HD box and plug it into the Internet it has iPlayer, ITVplayer, and other streaming services coming soon.
Also if you are someone who appreciates a higher quality picture, the FreeSat HD boxes output SD as 576i over HDMI in their 'Auto' output resolution setting which is usually very much better than the crappy 576p output (and horrible upscales 720p and 1080i) from Sky's range of STBs. Sky oh Sky oh Sky, why won't you let us have unprocessed 576i?
Since the pre-launch of JKR's pottermore.com -- "it's for the fans you know" -- had Sony make•believe logos all over every single page (homepage and leaked screenshots), it's been obvious that Sony eReader exclusivity was coming.
But what all the above posters miss, is that Mssrs Marbles and Gilmore are middle-class and thus beneath contempt.
Whereas the feckless and yobs are poor lambs who are not responsible for their own actions, it woz society what dun it to em.
I think this implies UK actually pays less, and is actually in danger of being charged more later.
As others point out, if you take VAT into consideration -- which we should, and pay more attention to on everything -- the UK price is actually lower than the US price (which is always quoted tax free).
Therefore the danger is that Apple equalises the UK price with the US, and then we have VAT on top, the price will be significantly higher than 14% price difference.
This explains the "guest network" in the craptacular "Super Hub" that they now force on all users.
Beware changing from 50Mbps cable modem service to 100Mbps as they take away your nice dedicated (dumb) cable modem and replace it with a PoS router from NetGear. Not only does it have all sorts of crap that anyone has an existing network does not want -- it's no longer a dumb IP address presented to your network -- but it has all sorts of crap that cannot be turned off, like NATS.
The "Super Hub" guest network is locked to 192.168.1.x which means you cannot use this range, and it cannot be changed. I spoke to VM technical support about it who said "It's a guest network, for guests", I said "I tell my guests what my network password is", "well, it's for other guests" they retorted, "such as whom, not like that crappy BT Openworld crap that annoys the hell out of my mother and sister and others is it?, "oh no, nothing like that" they said ... Well it looks to be just like that.
After waiting on hold for more than an hour, and talking to five different people on various continents, I spoke to the 100Mbps team who told me the number one complaint with their service was the "Super Hub" and they are currently testing a new firmware called r28 that will enable one to turn all the crap off and make it into a dumb modem.
This cannot come soon enough, then they can address why 100Mbps service is slower and less reliable than 50Mbps service -- I am hoping it's the "Shite Hub"
Finance theory states that dividends and capital gains are a zero sum game, so if a company issues dividends then the share price decreases in line with the amount of dividends. Therefore with Apple and the other companies that don't pay dividends, if you want to get cash you need to sell some of your shares (that have appreciated more in value because they haven't had a divi).
Of course some companies do this because the management get rewarded with Share Options determined by the share price, so it's not in the management's interest to issue dividends and drive the share price down.
Look at Kent for example.
The towns have 100Mb cable modem and fibre optic available -- some of them are often mentioned in El Reg as test-beds for Virgin Media services -- but the surrounding countryside can have terrible broadband coverage and you might even be lucky to get dizzy heights of 1Mb.
I imagine its the same over most of the country, so aggregating results into counties give more a picture of "is county rural" or "is county urban" than anything useful.
Don't Apple's Jam Packs for Garage Band use the VISE installer?
Perhaps they'll go away too when Lion is released?
Yes, not looking forward to not being able to play Diablo 2 et al.
Shame about the dropping of Rosetta.
If I was Steve Jobs, and wanted to get rid of legacy but still wanted to make a few quid, I would include it as optional purchase from the App Store.
On my VM 50Mbps connection -- waiting for 100Mbps install -- i regularly get 48 or 49Mbps downloads but what's better is PC gaming.
My pings on many (if not most) UK servers are in the low single digits, and servers outside the UK pretty darn good too.
I don't do much internet gaming on my Xbox, so not sure on the performance there. Whatever they are doing or whatever the problem is, it's not happening on my PC.
Although only in the games industry...
Blizzard give you PC/Mac version at the same time, as do Valve who give you Mac versions if you bought PC in the past and PC/Mac versions these days, Valve again if you buy PlayStation 3 version of Portal 2 give you PC and Mac versions for free, some EA games (e.g. Sims Medieval) give you PC/Mac versions on same disc, etc.
Unfortunately business software isn't the same (nor most games), as you point out. Microsoft, Adobe, etc. don't offer you multi-platform versions; then again sometimes they don't even give you full version of one product as they've divided it up into many SKUs.
I just look at my kids, iPad is definitely their second television, in fact, some days it's their only television ... and if it's not that, it's a laptop.
"If you are well off then a tablet is going to be your 4th or 5th TV", I think you'll find there's an inverse relationship between wealth and size and number of televisions in a household. ;)
I don't know many households without an iPad -- friends and family, all got 'em, and sometimes more than one.
Which is why I prefer download versions, don't want to be bothering with media and finding a disc to pass DRM test to play a game or find serial number if I need to reinstall.
Unfortunately Steam's retail prices are set by publishers, and you're right ... publishers have no control over the price that physical retailers sell the game for.
Which is another reason why I am wary of publisher exclusive stores, they are bound to be the most expensive way to buy and they want to strangle every other way to buy.
If the PC version of Battlefield 3 is an exclusive on EA's rebranded download service plus Web2.0rhea, Origin, then "no sale".
Steam or others download distributors for me, not buying into having a separate store for each publisher to fuck me over a barrel with.
