Not really, I don't care which network I am with but I will never use orange ever again. I was with Orange for 5 years because they offered the best contract. In my final year they increased the monthly price by 50%, then blocked me out of accessing my account and then when I went to renew told me they only did a series of fixed plans and wouldn't let me renew my current package.
I don't care which network I'm with, currently I'm looking to move onto the O2 Simplicity plan when my current contract is up. If Vodaphone, T-Mobile or 3 offer something better I'll ask O2 to unlock my current PPC and move to that network.
People may not care about sticking to a specific carrier (hence no carrier loyalty) but they won't use a carrier that treated them like scum either.
I've run a Windows Mobile 2003 SE and now own a Windows Mobile 5 PPC in the three years I've owned either one I've never actually heard of a Windows Mobile virus/trojan/malware. In fact the only virus/trojan/malware for the mobile platform I have heard of was for the Symbian OS system that was a "proof of concept" virus which propogated itself via bluetooth (requiring the user to accept the incoming file, open it and then install it.)
If the windows mobile platform is so insecure how come the media haven't been talking about it and if they have would you mind posting a few links where I can find out more?
The UK has a three party system, with the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democats. The liberal democrats have neve been in second place because their message is so mixed and confused and when it wasn't it was more or less identical to the oposition.
In many local elections things are much tighter and parties like he BNP can end up in control of local councils, I even know one council made up of Green party members.
We appear to have a two party system because the other parties aren't that good, take the city I grew up in Plymouth. The complete conservative council killed all the services and ran it into the ground, under the last ten years the complete labour council has brought buses every ten minutes to everywhere, brought in lots of markets, carnivals, displays, restored old public swimming pools and updated massive amounts of the city centre. But this has come with a cost, Plymouth has one of the highest council tax rises (each year) in the country. The last local election came down to two issues council tax increase and the dramatic remodelling of the city (unpopular with the older folks.) The Labour candidates promised continued investment but it would mean high council tax rises, the Conversatives promised no more council tax increases but it would mean killing a bunch of the city centre services and stop all investment, the Lib Dem candidate promised a high council tax rise but no new services or investment, while my local green candidate was only concerned about stopping wind farms being built. The young people like myself want to see the investment, we like the fact that we have a massive city centre which on weekends will have a big screen and seating for tennis, world cup,etc.. a place were bands are paid to come and play, the fact the labour candidates want to take the most dodgy area of the city and massively improve it, the old folks all wanted an end to 12% increases, no one liked the idea of a 9% increase (lib dem suggestion) with the dodgy area remaining.
While more complex, the same thing happens on a larger scale. In my last general election I could have voted for a Labour, Conservative, Green, UKIP, BNP, two independents and even one of the Cornish nationalists. The BNP and Green party do get seats in parliament.
I know alot of people have slagged SIX-AXIS off, but I can't for the life of me think why. In resistance fall of man it adds a fun dimension to throw zombies off of you, in pirates of the carribean I've found it to have been an cool feature (in an otherwise standard game), while it could be better in motorstorm it does work (but could do with alot of improvement) and in flOw its implemented brilliantly.
I bought flOw a few days ago off of the PS Network, the game itself seems completly pointless but I'm not sure if its simplicity, the ease of the control mechnisim or the different pace but that game kept me (a hard core gamer) and one of my sisters (a singstar only person) amused for hours over the christmas holiday.
Those are the only SIX-AXIS using games I've played and its worked really well in them for hardcore gamers and novices alike (resistance and flOw in particular) what about it is actually half assed?
You don't have to, a site I help run lost listeners due to squatters, each snatched URL pointed to one of those pointless spamm filled advert pages. Our listeners aren't always the most tech knowledgable and I have no doubt the squatters made enough money through online add's/spyware/malware/adware to recoup the cost.
Considering the hassle I (and others) went through in getting the word out about the domain name change, informing users the pages they were seeing had nothing to do with us and actually helping some who got infected by adware, the £25 they were asking for seems mighty tempting. I just wish there was a panel setup to investigate domain squatters and countries would start putting heavy fines on squatters.
I can and most people I know can see the difference. I bought a cheap 32" HD LCD for my PS3, excusing 1080p and 1080i you can see the difference in games as you increased the resolution. If you take Motorstorm, Orange box, Resistance FOM and start on a 576p resolution, move up to 720 and then lastly to 1080i/p you'll notice the text becoming crisper the model edges becoming smoother, and increase an graphical detail (Motorstorm really suffers at low resolutions.)
Every game I own (except Pirates of the Carribean) looks far better on a 1080p tv then on a 720/576p tv. If you don't believe me, next time your in a store goto into display settings and reset the PS3's resolution then play the game and then run it at a higher resolution, ask a friend to judge if you believe its psychosematic.
I can't see the difference between a standard PAL DVD and a Blu-Ray film (and I've really tried to find some.) But when it comes to games there is a noticable difference.
I really wish there was a -1 moron moderation option, the two drm schemes you describe do exist and I agree they really really suck.
BUTVista has to detect your audio as "copyrighted" or your audio has to have some form of DRM to work. Hrmm I have 20GB of MP3's none of which are pirated or bought online, does vista stop me playing them, converting them, writing them, transfering them or doing any of the things I couldn't do before in XP? The Answer is no, I still rip my music CD's in Windows Media Player and then sync them to my phone through windows media player, I can still find my PC over the network and copy music files onto my PS3, I can even still write my own compilations. SO yes the fact there is a DRM scheme in place is a bad thing, but since I have no intention of buying DRM'd songs from online this makes no difference in my user expearence.
The second question is can I play high definition video without using HDMI, again unless its been encoded I find I can play Divx's and various avi's at any resolution I want including 1080p's. So the fact it supports video DRM only really means I get the disadvantage of being able to watch HD-DVD's and Blu-ray films on my pc.
The DRM support is there, if a file doesn't want to use it, then guess what? It doesn't have to!!!
Please carry on telling people they can't play the music/Films they could in XP, its fair easir to show people what utter crap they've been listening to than to actually try and argue about some of Vista's real faults.
BTW I too hate DRM so I make the choice not to buy a format which enforces it on me, hopefully market forces will slowly do the rest.
You obviously don't know why people in the UK pay so much extra, the government levies a tax on the fuel a "fuel tax" if you will. This fuel tax is then spent on maintaining the roads, public transport and other road related things. Alot of americans argue they have poor public transport, a gradually increased fuel tax would allow your government to improve such services and the quality of your roads. A fuel tax theoretically provides a buffer against rising oil costs as well.
There's the knock on effects as well, my performance motorcycle does 60MPG, my last motorcycle did 110MPG, my parents car does 54MPG on average, my various work mates cars all do 40+MPG. When I needed to get to a neighbouring town 6/7 miles away I had the choice of various buses and a train (it actually took as long to get there by train/bus as it normally does by car.)
The *high* fuel costs in america are already getting people to consider better performing cars why not capatilise on this and use it to improve your infrastructure as well.
I agree with you up until 06, the Mac move to Intel did not make them the best value for money, it made them far worse value for money. I can buy and build an identical Intel system for about £750, I could buy a spec matching system from Dell for around £900 and yet Mac want me to pay £1500. Apple are only offering a shinier case, EFI and Mac OS X for £600 - £750. Personnally I don't think an operating system and a shiny case are worth anything near that.
I don't agree with the 07 timeline about the Vista/Office 2007, I still have many friends in University they can get Office 2003 for free, or Office 2007 for free. I've been emailed countless times about the new stupid interface and every time replied they should downgrade back to 2003 if their having so much trouble (the downgrade being free.) Every single person has said they won't downgrade and generally when I remind them of the help function in word,excel,etc.. they never mention the user interface again. Personally I love the new user interface in Office 2007 and found it to really improve my uni stuff, but I'm not sure if I'll spend £275 (for 2007 Pro) as I'm no longer at Uni and don't really need it.
I don't agree with OpenOffice becoming a true replacement for MS Office either, I've read countless posts on Slasdot about how people switch their parent's/family onto Linux and OpenOffice, so I thought I would give it a go. At one point I only had one valid 2003 license and four machines which wanted office so I put my dad and little sisters on OpenOffice 2.0. The older of my two little sisters stole my Office 2003 disc after a week (as I found out recently) the youngest spent days shouting at me, about stupid "word" (no she didnt know it wasn't MS Office, but she decided it was broken [i](she was right word 2003 could do what she wanted but writer couldn't (basically copy about 30 jpg images into a document and remain usuable))[/i]) and my dad stopped bringing any work home because he couldn't do anything. The end result of my trying to keep my family legit by using free software? I was shouted at alot, my little sister refused to speak to me for a week and I ended up hunting around for three valid MS Office licenses(I manged to get 2003, 2000 and XP.)
In the last two years I've tried switching to open source alternatives and almost every time I've been burned by the expearence (Ubunutu Feisty Fawn was quite good and it turns out Eclipse does Java development really well (but is awfull when it comes to C++).) But then I'm a big fan of Vista and I'm sure people here will think theres no hope for me.
Yes but after spending two hours trying to get a connection to work and anouther 40 minute phone call (my expearences with Tiscali) I'm now ready to tell everyone how much Tiscali as a broadband supplier suck. A text message telling me they have placed me on the secondary network which has crashed and may be down for three/four days would have gone slightly further towards softening my attitude about them, a text informing me my use was nearing the high end and much further use on my "unlimited" account would get me disconnected/bumped onto a high latency network. Instead tiscali forced me to work out their FUP limits the hard way.
A small text message to let you know things have gone wrong can go a long way, espeacially when things have broken which are out of their control and the only way to find out yourself is being stuck in a phone queue for a minimum of 15 minutes.
p.s I don't want emails, Tiscali and Tesco have both emailed me in the past about account problems, the problem being I can't log into my account to read their email.
90% of phones capable of receiving texts? Your kidding right? I remember the Nokia 5110 (basically a n402) was released in 1998 (I owned one on pay as you go then too) was capable of 192 charracter sms messaging, My Nan's BT Cellnet own brand analog phone (this predated both the digital antenna's and the GSM sim card standard) which she bought in 1996 was capable of supporting text messages and that was a cheap end phone. (it was still in use until O2 forced a discontinue of service on that model for technical reasons.)
In the last ten years I have taken a keen interest in mobile phones and never seen a model which does not support SMS messaging, heck in the last 4/5 years I don't think I've seen a phone which doesn't support picture messaging (well ok the iPhone doesn't, but then the phone you can get free from Asda when you buy £20 of credit does.)
Its always puzzled me why ISP's won't text you about network outages, filtering and bandwidth limitations.
Its seems Nokia wants to support Apples codecs, rather than Ogg or MP3 (although MP3 is mentioned as a possible) I found the paper interesting as they talk about majorally accepted file formats they state their after ACC, I always thought ACC was about as popular as Ogg with MP3 the generally accepted and mainstream codec.
Personnally I'd rather see divx and mp3 be used as the next standards, but Xvid and Ogg would be cool.
There are around 49 freely availiable digital channels and 5 analog channels in the uk, all of which can be seen if you buy a £20 digibox (or freeview box whatever itsa called) if you get sky theres probably somewhere in the region 200-300 channels. The analog channels are BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. ITV pretty much has GMTV news a painfully dumbed down breakfast news with bad reporting, Pop Idol (or whatever), trisha, and correnation street a soap. Channel 4 tends to have more varied programming but concentrates on stuff like Big Brother (tv reality shows) and american shows (friends, scrubs etc...) The freeview channels don't tend to have much to offer although Dave has recently burst onto the seen and seems to be popular with blokes. We have a Sci-Fi channel which sucks, Sky One which gets all the american tv series first and has done some interesting stuff (brainics for instance) along with UK living, discovery, etc...
The problem is the BBC used to offer alot of quality shows and things like Panorama and Eqinox (channel 4) used to be great for those intereting in technical things. Unfortunatly the BBC seems to be slowly deciding to cater to the lowest common denominator, so shows like Panarama have turned into complete rubbish and it seems every new BBC documentary has to repeat itself every ten minutes with flashy graphics. Its not that people want this. Heck recently the BBC editors blog asked what things he should think about when he went off to meet other TV producers at some conference. The 600/700 replies all asked for the BBC to go back to producing challenging and inteligent shows and to get rid of stupid reality tv shows.
The BBC isn't the only channel we get in the UK but it tends to be the best with the most varied tv and inteligent, when you've got the BBC producing the Planet Earth documentary compared to Channel 4's chantelle's throwing a tantrum in the recent big brother, or some old woman killing someone in corrie on ITV what do you think is going to get reported.
BTW the TV channels over here keep being hit by various scandals (From the Blue Peter people choosing anouther rabbits name and not the one people voted for, to various phone in competitions being rigged.)
Yes a -1 fanboy moderation would be brilliant just like a -1 irony one would be too. He stated an opinion just because you disagree with it doesn't mean you moderate it negatively, you should reply as to why you think it's wrong. Moderating something down purely because you disagree is bad moderation.
what about superior versions of all of the games PS3
Oh in case you didn't understand the irony crack I found it ironic that an obvious flamebait post accusing someone of being a PS3 fanboy was made by a 360 fanboy.
Nice in depth review of Vista there, some corrections if you don't mind. The Cancel or Allow thing only appears when a program requires admin rights for me the only time I see this is when I'm installing a game or driver. Fraps does also require it but it does have good reason to want admin rights. I agree with the model I don't want ever application on my PC to need admin rights. Vista DRM layers are one of the great myths, they did contribute to the driver isue that Nvidia/ATi had but unless your planning on running DRM media (some of us never will) they don't effect your pc in anyway.
I like the UI differences Vista has made the only bad choice as I see it is placing the network sharing centre behind the network connections screen placing Device manager straight into the control panel was a brilliant idea and the re arrangement of the user folders helps seperate things out.
Vista is working on millions if not billions of computer configurations its biggest problems have been drivers and as far as I can tell those driver issues are slowly being phased out. Mac's are supposed to "just work" and yet there is a strong vocal group claiming the latest release is causing them major issues. Microsoft may have a good excuse for why my scanner made by a small company six years ago doesn't work on Vista x64 (actually someone pointed me at anouther driver and it now does) or the fact that Riven won't install (10 year old game.) Whats apple's excuse? They control all the hardware so there are only dozens of configurations and talking with the big companies who produce software for your platform can't be that hard.
My own expearence is a little different if you have an issue with windows there will be someone else who's had it and hopefully a work around/fix. If there isn't a workaround you'll find people squatting on a companies forum moaning until there is. Linux seems to me to have split into two camps the first is highly friendly (Ubunutu camp) and they are helpfull. The second is the old school linux camp, this is made up of people who believe the command line is the only interface a person should use and will flame you if you ask why you have to go through it rather than a wizard (my favorite being make one yourself.) Its the sole reason I'll only try Ubunutu because I know I could probably get help if I needed it. Don't get me wrong many projects are getting better but they seem to be the projects tied to (or come preloaded with) Ubunutu
While I don't doubt Wii's are selling I'd like to propose what I think is a more accurate view. The media keeps telling us that the Wii will most likely be sold out this christmas, because its so popular ALOT of people have been mass buying. A week doesn't go by when a friend/family member doesn't tell me how they know someone who's bought 6/11 Wii's and plan to keep one themselves and sell the rest. As it stands I don't see this massive shortage we are suffering, I used to work in a store its had the same ten Wii's in the stockroom for 5 months now (so a friend told me last week) a work friend bought a Wii off of Amazon on Monday. When I went Freezer shopping last Saturday Comet, Curry's, etc... all had Wii's in stock.
My theory, the shops will be out of Wii's come christmas but Ebay and newspapers will have hundreds of people trying to sell them at markup (which hopefully won't work I don't like people who do that.) I really hope the shops don't sell out and everyone buying them up at the moment ends up having to sell them below cost.
Vista really requires 1GB of ram to run well but laptop manufacturers have always put to little ram in machines. I bought a Medion laptop with 256mb of ram for a windows xp machine which was doggedly slow. Most of the low end Vista laptops I've seen have 512mb of ram and an intel graphics card which uses upto 128mb of that. XP would run fine on 400mb of ram, 512 really is the minimum for Vista.
My Dad's AMD 2400, Nvidia 6100 on board sound machine was slow to respond with 512mb of ram and snappy with 1GB. My Laptop which was slow with 256mb to run XP MCE 2005 is fast with Vista Business on it and 1GB of ram(1.7Ghz, intel extreme graphics card.)We can argue the merits of having to upgrade hardware for a OS upgrade but 1gb of ram is to Vista what 512mb of ram is to XP MCE 2005.
Two years ago I would have completly agreed with you, Orange's reception in the south west was unmatched (so everyone in the south west I knew owned a Orange phone) but in the last two years reception has been decreasing in the area. An example two years ago I bought a Orange M500 I had a signal strength of 5 bars in my old house. I gave the phone to my dad who is still with Orange and all of the Orange phones he's tried (Motorolla V3i, Sony Erricson w800i, M500) are no longer able to get any signal in the same house. Orange is probably the one company thats going backwards here where as O2's coverage is now excellent (T-Mobiles used to suck but is quite good these days.) That original house is in Plymouth I'm now living in Sherborne just outside Yeovil my O2 phones gets a decent signal everywhere (except one area) my mates with Orange phones tend to lose all signals within houses have the same blackspot I do.
The again I am quite bitter with orange ever since they refused to continue on my contract told me I would have to pay twice the price for less minutes/texts and be a racoon or something and wouldn't match O2's deal (only the tip of the ice berg of the bad service they gave me over two years.)
I agree with your logic but these same people have said the N95 was far to expsensive and yet when someone (not me) bought one they definitly loved it. My PSP has been described as far too expsensive to ever buy by many people but picked up a disturbing amount of interest from people whenever I dug it out to play in Student Union. No I wasn't posing but generally waiting for a uni mate to arrive. Most sports cars are seen as incredibly cool things but recently a work friend was looking for a new car despite being able to afford a decent sports car he got something more practical instead. Apple Macs are seen as cool and yet most people would never buy one because there so expensive.
"Coolness" doesn't really factor in common sense I have little doubt that if I owned a iPhone and showed it to my mates they'd see it as "cool" and probably steal it off me to play with.
I think the iPhone's in the same vein as the nokia n95 and Apple Mac's far to expensive for 90% of people to ever buy since you can get most of what it does in a much cheaper phone/laptop but still cool. Unlike burberry, gold chains, big gold rings, Speedfight 2 scooters and anything else Chav.
BTW this whole post was brought to you from a person who hates the iPhone, iBooks, iPods. I just think its a testiment to the control Apple has over the media and people that it isn't seen as "uncool" just too expensive and not worth the money.
I have a O2 phone (XDA Mini S in fact) I have had pretty good coverage everywhere (not yet found an area where I couldn't get a signal) and my phones reception quality isn't that great when compared to most phones (my Orange m500 using a O2 sim card had a much stronger signal in the same areas.) In the UK the big phone operators Orange, Vodaphone and O2 have around 98/99% coverage of the UK for 2.5G phone and 3G coverage is increasing rapidly (I believe its over 70% coverage.)
Being in the 18-30 age group (21) I saw it as a giant flashy waste of money and worried people would buy it and help show the operators that we would pay for the phone and a overpriced contract.
My little sister (18) exact words on the matter were "why would anyone buy an iPhone cause its rubbish and you get all the stuff it does in an iPod anyway" my other little sister (16) hated it because it lacked a keyboard and was really expensive.
Then we have my ex work mates (all aged between 16-20) universally hated it the girls hated the lack of camera, the guys have hated it mainly because it can't do picture messaging (no dodgey photos from the missus.) The main opinion was it was "a giant waste of money". Its not that "we" see it as uncool but when you compare it to any phone on the market feature wise (ignoring the browser) it has less than a £27 Nokia phone I picked up in o2 on pay as you go tariff and the fact you would get all the cool extra features in the new iPod.
So correction not "uncool" but "giant waste of money" and no I wasn't on a crusade to stop people buying this its actually come up in normal conversation last time I went out with my ex work mates one of the girls started talking about how she was going to get a new iPod nano but would never get a iPhone because how expensive it was.
Yes but when you download Open Office or install star office the look and feel is subtley different they have their own logo's and design. If you goto the live document site you will slight alterations of the standard MS Office icons, you'll see the MS Office logo on the front page and a snapshot of what looks to be MS Office 2003. The site appears to be trying to pretend to be Microsoft sanctioned and be part of Microsoft.
I always thought trademarks were designed to protect companies/consumers when small companies stole names, designs and images from anouther and mislead consumers into buying their product. This would seem like an open and shut case of a website trying to pretend it has Microsoft Office and mislead people into using it for that reason. If they want to tout how the apps looks extremely similar to MS Office let them but lets not use identical images and icons.
When will people realise that not everything that can be done online should be done online. The article is very light on details one of the big reasons I won't even try Google Apps is because all the files are located on Googles servers and I wouldn't have any control over them. The only detail the article does mention is that this "Live" office has Office 2003's look and feel. OpenOffice is free and has Office 2003's "look" and yet it hasn't replaced MS Office, google apps is free and hasn't replaced MS Office.
Next a small upstart company will be telling us how they have a image manipulation program you uses through the web which will replace photoshop.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really, I don't care which network I am with but I will never use orange ever again. I was with Orange for 5 years because they offered the best contract. In my final year they increased the monthly price by 50%, then blocked me out of accessing my account and then when I went to renew told me they only did a series of fixed plans and wouldn't let me renew my current package.
I don't care which network I'm with, currently I'm looking to move onto the O2 Simplicity plan when my current contract is up. If Vodaphone, T-Mobile or 3 offer something better I'll ask O2 to unlock my current PPC and move to that network.
People may not care about sticking to a specific carrier (hence no carrier loyalty) but they won't use a carrier that treated them like scum either.
I've run a Windows Mobile 2003 SE and now own a Windows Mobile 5 PPC in the three years I've owned either one I've never actually heard of a Windows Mobile virus/trojan/malware. In fact the only virus/trojan/malware for the mobile platform I have heard of was for the Symbian OS system that was a "proof of concept" virus which propogated itself via bluetooth (requiring the user to accept the incoming file, open it and then install it.)
If the windows mobile platform is so insecure how come the media haven't been talking about it and if they have would you mind posting a few links where I can find out more?
The UK has a three party system, with the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democats. The liberal democrats have neve been in second place because their message is so mixed and confused and when it wasn't it was more or less identical to the oposition.
In many local elections things are much tighter and parties like he BNP can end up in control of local councils, I even know one council made up of Green party members.
We appear to have a two party system because the other parties aren't that good, take the city I grew up in Plymouth. The complete conservative council killed all the services and ran it into the ground, under the last ten years the complete labour council has brought buses every ten minutes to everywhere, brought in lots of markets, carnivals, displays, restored old public swimming pools and updated massive amounts of the city centre. But this has come with a cost, Plymouth has one of the highest council tax rises (each year) in the country. The last local election came down to two issues council tax increase and the dramatic remodelling of the city (unpopular with the older folks.) The Labour candidates promised continued investment but it would mean high council tax rises, the Conversatives promised no more council tax increases but it would mean killing a bunch of the city centre services and stop all investment, the Lib Dem candidate promised a high council tax rise but no new services or investment, while my local green candidate was only concerned about stopping wind farms being built. The young people like myself want to see the investment, we like the fact that we have a massive city centre which on weekends will have a big screen and seating for tennis, world cup,etc.. a place were bands are paid to come and play, the fact the labour candidates want to take the most dodgy area of the city and massively improve it, the old folks all wanted an end to 12% increases, no one liked the idea of a 9% increase (lib dem suggestion) with the dodgy area remaining.
While more complex, the same thing happens on a larger scale. In my last general election I could have voted for a Labour, Conservative, Green, UKIP, BNP, two independents and even one of the Cornish nationalists. The BNP and Green party do get seats in parliament.
I know alot of people have slagged SIX-AXIS off, but I can't for the life of me think why. In resistance fall of man it adds a fun dimension to throw zombies off of you, in pirates of the carribean I've found it to have been an cool feature (in an otherwise standard game), while it could be better in motorstorm it does work (but could do with alot of improvement) and in flOw its implemented brilliantly.
I bought flOw a few days ago off of the PS Network, the game itself seems completly pointless but I'm not sure if its simplicity, the ease of the control mechnisim or the different pace but that game kept me (a hard core gamer) and one of my sisters (a singstar only person) amused for hours over the christmas holiday.
Those are the only SIX-AXIS using games I've played and its worked really well in them for hardcore gamers and novices alike (resistance and flOw in particular) what about it is actually half assed?
You don't have to, a site I help run lost listeners due to squatters, each snatched URL pointed to one of those pointless spamm filled advert pages. Our listeners aren't always the most tech knowledgable and I have no doubt the squatters made enough money through online add's/spyware/malware/adware to recoup the cost.
Considering the hassle I (and others) went through in getting the word out about the domain name change, informing users the pages they were seeing had nothing to do with us and actually helping some who got infected by adware, the £25 they were asking for seems mighty tempting. I just wish there was a panel setup to investigate domain squatters and countries would start putting heavy fines on squatters.
I can and most people I know can see the difference. I bought a cheap 32" HD LCD for my PS3, excusing 1080p and 1080i you can see the difference in games as you increased the resolution. If you take Motorstorm, Orange box, Resistance FOM and start on a 576p resolution, move up to 720 and then lastly to 1080i/p you'll notice the text becoming crisper the model edges becoming smoother, and increase an graphical detail (Motorstorm really suffers at low resolutions.)
Every game I own (except Pirates of the Carribean) looks far better on a 1080p tv then on a 720/576p tv. If you don't believe me, next time your in a store goto into display settings and reset the PS3's resolution then play the game and then run it at a higher resolution, ask a friend to judge if you believe its psychosematic.
I can't see the difference between a standard PAL DVD and a Blu-Ray film (and I've really tried to find some.) But when it comes to games there is a noticable difference.
I really wish there was a -1 moron moderation option, the two drm schemes you describe do exist and I agree they really really suck.
BUTVista has to detect your audio as "copyrighted" or your audio has to have some form of DRM to work. Hrmm I have 20GB of MP3's none of which are pirated or bought online, does vista stop me playing them, converting them, writing them, transfering them or doing any of the things I couldn't do before in XP? The Answer is no, I still rip my music CD's in Windows Media Player and then sync them to my phone through windows media player, I can still find my PC over the network and copy music files onto my PS3, I can even still write my own compilations. SO yes the fact there is a DRM scheme in place is a bad thing, but since I have no intention of buying DRM'd songs from online this makes no difference in my user expearence.
The second question is can I play high definition video without using HDMI, again unless its been encoded I find I can play Divx's and various avi's at any resolution I want including 1080p's. So the fact it supports video DRM only really means I get the disadvantage of being able to watch HD-DVD's and Blu-ray films on my pc.
The DRM support is there, if a file doesn't want to use it, then guess what? It doesn't have to!!!
Please carry on telling people they can't play the music/Films they could in XP, its fair easir to show people what utter crap they've been listening to than to actually try and argue about some of Vista's real faults.
BTW I too hate DRM so I make the choice not to buy a format which enforces it on me, hopefully market forces will slowly do the rest.
You obviously don't know why people in the UK pay so much extra, the government levies a tax on the fuel a "fuel tax" if you will. This fuel tax is then spent on maintaining the roads, public transport and other road related things. Alot of americans argue they have poor public transport, a gradually increased fuel tax would allow your government to improve such services and the quality of your roads. A fuel tax theoretically provides a buffer against rising oil costs as well.
There's the knock on effects as well, my performance motorcycle does 60MPG, my last motorcycle did 110MPG, my parents car does 54MPG on average, my various work mates cars all do 40+MPG. When I needed to get to a neighbouring town 6/7 miles away I had the choice of various buses and a train (it actually took as long to get there by train/bus as it normally does by car.)
The *high* fuel costs in america are already getting people to consider better performing cars why not capatilise on this and use it to improve your infrastructure as well.
You realise most people on Slashdot attack Vista for doing what you suggested.
Because I'm board lets review:
Mac Pro: £1,700 - http://www.apple.com/uk/macpro/specs.html
Overclockers:
Processor: £168 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-156-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=793
Motherboard: £64 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-100-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913
Ram (2GB): £53 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-013-OK&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=817
ATi x1900: £94 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-065-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=404
1TB Hard Drive: £190 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-032-HI&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=940
7.1 Sound: £31 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-052-CL&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat=
Case: £73 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-065-AN
DVD-RW: £22 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-002-AP&groupid=701&catid=10&subcat=951
20" LCD: £155 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-010-AS&groupid=703&catid=17&subcat=948
[b]Total Cost: £850[/b]
Dell:
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/results.aspx/desktops?~ck=anav&c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&a=23~0~85020&navla=23~0~85020
Yes Your absolutly right
I agree with you up until 06, the Mac move to Intel did not make them the best value for money, it made them far worse value for money. I can buy and build an identical Intel system for about £750, I could buy a spec matching system from Dell for around £900 and yet Mac want me to pay £1500. Apple are only offering a shinier case, EFI and Mac OS X for £600 - £750. Personnally I don't think an operating system and a shiny case are worth anything near that.
I don't agree with the 07 timeline about the Vista/Office 2007, I still have many friends in University they can get Office 2003 for free, or Office 2007 for free. I've been emailed countless times about the new stupid interface and every time replied they should downgrade back to 2003 if their having so much trouble (the downgrade being free.) Every single person has said they won't downgrade and generally when I remind them of the help function in word,excel,etc.. they never mention the user interface again. Personally I love the new user interface in Office 2007 and found it to really improve my uni stuff, but I'm not sure if I'll spend £275 (for 2007 Pro) as I'm no longer at Uni and don't really need it.
I don't agree with OpenOffice becoming a true replacement for MS Office either, I've read countless posts on Slasdot about how people switch their parent's/family onto Linux and OpenOffice, so I thought I would give it a go. At one point I only had one valid 2003 license and four machines which wanted office so I put my dad and little sisters on OpenOffice 2.0. The older of my two little sisters stole my Office 2003 disc after a week (as I found out recently) the youngest spent days shouting at me, about stupid "word" (no she didnt know it wasn't MS Office, but she decided it was broken [i](she was right word 2003 could do what she wanted but writer couldn't (basically copy about 30 jpg images into a document and remain usuable))[/i]) and my dad stopped bringing any work home because he couldn't do anything. The end result of my trying to keep my family legit by using free software? I was shouted at alot, my little sister refused to speak to me for a week and I ended up hunting around for three valid MS Office licenses(I manged to get 2003, 2000 and XP.)
In the last two years I've tried switching to open source alternatives and almost every time I've been burned by the expearence (Ubunutu Feisty Fawn was quite good and it turns out Eclipse does Java development really well (but is awfull when it comes to C++).) But then I'm a big fan of Vista and I'm sure people here will think theres no hope for me.
Yes but after spending two hours trying to get a connection to work and anouther 40 minute phone call (my expearences with Tiscali) I'm now ready to tell everyone how much Tiscali as a broadband supplier suck. A text message telling me they have placed me on the secondary network which has crashed and may be down for three/four days would have gone slightly further towards softening my attitude about them, a text informing me my use was nearing the high end and much further use on my "unlimited" account would get me disconnected/bumped onto a high latency network. Instead tiscali forced me to work out their FUP limits the hard way.
A small text message to let you know things have gone wrong can go a long way, espeacially when things have broken which are out of their control and the only way to find out yourself is being stuck in a phone queue for a minimum of 15 minutes.
p.s I don't want emails, Tiscali and Tesco have both emailed me in the past about account problems, the problem being I can't log into my account to read their email.
90% of phones capable of receiving texts? Your kidding right? I remember the Nokia 5110 (basically a n402) was released in 1998 (I owned one on pay as you go then too) was capable of 192 charracter sms messaging, My Nan's BT Cellnet own brand analog phone (this predated both the digital antenna's and the GSM sim card standard) which she bought in 1996 was capable of supporting text messages and that was a cheap end phone. (it was still in use until O2 forced a discontinue of service on that model for technical reasons.)
In the last ten years I have taken a keen interest in mobile phones and never seen a model which does not support SMS messaging, heck in the last 4/5 years I don't think I've seen a phone which doesn't support picture messaging (well ok the iPhone doesn't, but then the phone you can get free from Asda when you buy £20 of credit does.)
Its always puzzled me why ISP's won't text you about network outages, filtering and bandwidth limitations.
Its seems Nokia wants to support Apples codecs, rather than Ogg or MP3 (although MP3 is mentioned as a possible) I found the paper interesting as they talk about majorally accepted file formats they state their after ACC, I always thought ACC was about as popular as Ogg with MP3 the generally accepted and mainstream codec.
Personnally I'd rather see divx and mp3 be used as the next standards, but Xvid and Ogg would be cool.
There are around 49 freely availiable digital channels and 5 analog channels in the uk, all of which can be seen if you buy a £20 digibox (or freeview box whatever itsa called) if you get sky theres probably somewhere in the region 200-300 channels. The analog channels are BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. ITV pretty much has GMTV news a painfully dumbed down breakfast news with bad reporting, Pop Idol (or whatever), trisha, and correnation street a soap. Channel 4 tends to have more varied programming but concentrates on stuff like Big Brother (tv reality shows) and american shows (friends, scrubs etc...) The freeview channels don't tend to have much to offer although Dave has recently burst onto the seen and seems to be popular with blokes. We have a Sci-Fi channel which sucks, Sky One which gets all the american tv series first and has done some interesting stuff (brainics for instance) along with UK living, discovery, etc...
The problem is the BBC used to offer alot of quality shows and things like Panorama and Eqinox (channel 4) used to be great for those intereting in technical things. Unfortunatly the BBC seems to be slowly deciding to cater to the lowest common denominator, so shows like Panarama have turned into complete rubbish and it seems every new BBC documentary has to repeat itself every ten minutes with flashy graphics. Its not that people want this. Heck recently the BBC editors blog asked what things he should think about when he went off to meet other TV producers at some conference. The 600/700 replies all asked for the BBC to go back to producing challenging and inteligent shows and to get rid of stupid reality tv shows.
The BBC isn't the only channel we get in the UK but it tends to be the best with the most varied tv and inteligent, when you've got the BBC producing the Planet Earth documentary compared to Channel 4's chantelle's throwing a tantrum in the recent big brother, or some old woman killing someone in corrie on ITV what do you think is going to get reported.
BTW the TV channels over here keep being hit by various scandals (From the Blue Peter people choosing anouther rabbits name and not the one people voted for, to various phone in competitions being rigged.)
Yes a -1 fanboy moderation would be brilliant just like a -1 irony one would be too. He stated an opinion just because you disagree with it doesn't mean you moderate it negatively, you should reply as to why you think it's wrong. Moderating something down purely because you disagree is bad moderation.
what about superior versions of all of the games PS3
Oh in case you didn't understand the irony crack I found it ironic that an obvious flamebait post accusing someone of being a PS3 fanboy was made by a 360 fanboy.
Nice in depth review of Vista there, some corrections if you don't mind. The Cancel or Allow thing only appears when a program requires admin rights for me the only time I see this is when I'm installing a game or driver. Fraps does also require it but it does have good reason to want admin rights. I agree with the model I don't want ever application on my PC to need admin rights. Vista DRM layers are one of the great myths, they did contribute to the driver isue that Nvidia/ATi had but unless your planning on running DRM media (some of us never will) they don't effect your pc in anyway.
I like the UI differences Vista has made the only bad choice as I see it is placing the network sharing centre behind the network connections screen placing Device manager straight into the control panel was a brilliant idea and the re arrangement of the user folders helps seperate things out.
Vista is working on millions if not billions of computer configurations its biggest problems have been drivers and as far as I can tell those driver issues are slowly being phased out. Mac's are supposed to "just work" and yet there is a strong vocal group claiming the latest release is causing them major issues. Microsoft may have a good excuse for why my scanner made by a small company six years ago doesn't work on Vista x64 (actually someone pointed me at anouther driver and it now does) or the fact that Riven won't install (10 year old game.) Whats apple's excuse? They control all the hardware so there are only dozens of configurations and talking with the big companies who produce software for your platform can't be that hard. My own expearence is a little different if you have an issue with windows there will be someone else who's had it and hopefully a work around/fix. If there isn't a workaround you'll find people squatting on a companies forum moaning until there is. Linux seems to me to have split into two camps the first is highly friendly (Ubunutu camp) and they are helpfull. The second is the old school linux camp, this is made up of people who believe the command line is the only interface a person should use and will flame you if you ask why you have to go through it rather than a wizard (my favorite being make one yourself.) Its the sole reason I'll only try Ubunutu because I know I could probably get help if I needed it. Don't get me wrong many projects are getting better but they seem to be the projects tied to (or come preloaded with) Ubunutu
While I don't doubt Wii's are selling I'd like to propose what I think is a more accurate view. The media keeps telling us that the Wii will most likely be sold out this christmas, because its so popular ALOT of people have been mass buying. A week doesn't go by when a friend/family member doesn't tell me how they know someone who's bought 6/11 Wii's and plan to keep one themselves and sell the rest. As it stands I don't see this massive shortage we are suffering, I used to work in a store its had the same ten Wii's in the stockroom for 5 months now (so a friend told me last week) a work friend bought a Wii off of Amazon on Monday. When I went Freezer shopping last Saturday Comet, Curry's, etc... all had Wii's in stock.
My theory, the shops will be out of Wii's come christmas but Ebay and newspapers will have hundreds of people trying to sell them at markup (which hopefully won't work I don't like people who do that.) I really hope the shops don't sell out and everyone buying them up at the moment ends up having to sell them below cost.
Vista really requires 1GB of ram to run well but laptop manufacturers have always put to little ram in machines. I bought a Medion laptop with 256mb of ram for a windows xp machine which was doggedly slow. Most of the low end Vista laptops I've seen have 512mb of ram and an intel graphics card which uses upto 128mb of that. XP would run fine on 400mb of ram, 512 really is the minimum for Vista.
My Dad's AMD 2400, Nvidia 6100 on board sound machine was slow to respond with 512mb of ram and snappy with 1GB. My Laptop which was slow with 256mb to run XP MCE 2005 is fast with Vista Business on it and 1GB of ram(1.7Ghz, intel extreme graphics card.)We can argue the merits of having to upgrade hardware for a OS upgrade but 1gb of ram is to Vista what 512mb of ram is to XP MCE 2005.
Two years ago I would have completly agreed with you, Orange's reception in the south west was unmatched (so everyone in the south west I knew owned a Orange phone) but in the last two years reception has been decreasing in the area. An example two years ago I bought a Orange M500 I had a signal strength of 5 bars in my old house. I gave the phone to my dad who is still with Orange and all of the Orange phones he's tried (Motorolla V3i, Sony Erricson w800i, M500) are no longer able to get any signal in the same house. Orange is probably the one company thats going backwards here where as O2's coverage is now excellent (T-Mobiles used to suck but is quite good these days.) That original house is in Plymouth I'm now living in Sherborne just outside Yeovil my O2 phones gets a decent signal everywhere (except one area) my mates with Orange phones tend to lose all signals within houses have the same blackspot I do.
The again I am quite bitter with orange ever since they refused to continue on my contract told me I would have to pay twice the price for less minutes/texts and be a racoon or something and wouldn't match O2's deal (only the tip of the ice berg of the bad service they gave me over two years.)
I agree with your logic but these same people have said the N95 was far to expsensive and yet when someone (not me) bought one they definitly loved it. My PSP has been described as far too expsensive to ever buy by many people but picked up a disturbing amount of interest from people whenever I dug it out to play in Student Union. No I wasn't posing but generally waiting for a uni mate to arrive. Most sports cars are seen as incredibly cool things but recently a work friend was looking for a new car despite being able to afford a decent sports car he got something more practical instead. Apple Macs are seen as cool and yet most people would never buy one because there so expensive.
"Coolness" doesn't really factor in common sense I have little doubt that if I owned a iPhone and showed it to my mates they'd see it as "cool" and probably steal it off me to play with.
I think the iPhone's in the same vein as the nokia n95 and Apple Mac's far to expensive for 90% of people to ever buy since you can get most of what it does in a much cheaper phone/laptop but still cool. Unlike burberry, gold chains, big gold rings, Speedfight 2 scooters and anything else Chav.
BTW this whole post was brought to you from a person who hates the iPhone, iBooks, iPods. I just think its a testiment to the control Apple has over the media and people that it isn't seen as "uncool" just too expensive and not worth the money.
I have a O2 phone (XDA Mini S in fact) I have had pretty good coverage everywhere (not yet found an area where I couldn't get a signal) and my phones reception quality isn't that great when compared to most phones (my Orange m500 using a O2 sim card had a much stronger signal in the same areas.) In the UK the big phone operators Orange, Vodaphone and O2 have around 98/99% coverage of the UK for 2.5G phone and 3G coverage is increasing rapidly (I believe its over 70% coverage.)
The issue isn't the operator.
Being in the 18-30 age group (21) I saw it as a giant flashy waste of money and worried people would buy it and help show the operators that we would pay for the phone and a overpriced contract.
My little sister (18) exact words on the matter were "why would anyone buy an iPhone cause its rubbish and you get all the stuff it does in an iPod anyway" my other little sister (16) hated it because it lacked a keyboard and was really expensive.
Then we have my ex work mates (all aged between 16-20) universally hated it the girls hated the lack of camera, the guys have hated it mainly because it can't do picture messaging (no dodgey photos from the missus.) The main opinion was it was "a giant waste of money". Its not that "we" see it as uncool but when you compare it to any phone on the market feature wise (ignoring the browser) it has less than a £27 Nokia phone I picked up in o2 on pay as you go tariff and the fact you would get all the cool extra features in the new iPod.
So correction not "uncool" but "giant waste of money" and no I wasn't on a crusade to stop people buying this its actually come up in normal conversation last time I went out with my ex work mates one of the girls started talking about how she was going to get a new iPod nano but would never get a iPhone because how expensive it was.
Yes but when you download Open Office or install star office the look and feel is subtley different they have their own logo's and design. If you goto the live document site you will slight alterations of the standard MS Office icons, you'll see the MS Office logo on the front page and a snapshot of what looks to be MS Office 2003. The site appears to be trying to pretend to be Microsoft sanctioned and be part of Microsoft.
I always thought trademarks were designed to protect companies/consumers when small companies stole names, designs and images from anouther and mislead consumers into buying their product. This would seem like an open and shut case of a website trying to pretend it has Microsoft Office and mislead people into using it for that reason. If they want to tout how the apps looks extremely similar to MS Office let them but lets not use identical images and icons.
When will people realise that not everything that can be done online should be done online. The article is very light on details one of the big reasons I won't even try Google Apps is because all the files are located on Googles servers and I wouldn't have any control over them. The only detail the article does mention is that this "Live" office has Office 2003's look and feel. OpenOffice is free and has Office 2003's "look" and yet it hasn't replaced MS Office, google apps is free and hasn't replaced MS Office.
Next a small upstart company will be telling us how they have a image manipulation program you uses through the web which will replace photoshop.