someone is going to whine on about the licence fee for BBC....
I read all this and say "Thank god for ....."
We have no cable in this (insert small town on outskirts of south Manchester, UK) so no TiVo to skip ads. Refused for 10+ years to support Murdoch in any way so Sky Box is out. My ad skipping is MythTV all the way - it works - and boy, am I glad to free from the shouting idiocy that are adverts...
I pay every day for media which I'm not keen on. I can't opt out of paying for it - it's compulsorily paid for.
That'll be commercial TV/media. It raises it's cash by levying a tax on almost everything I buy. The revenue scheme seems particularly hard on the lower paid as the products they are likely to buy seem to buy into the funding scheme more heavily.
The only item I 'buy' (or have as a taxation - if you have your way) is BBC content. Oddly; I don't mind paying that as the films/shows/news are not interrupted by 'devices for funding' aka advertisements.
As another observation: in France you have a 'licence to be able to receive TV ' to pay - ITS PART OF THE LOCAL TAXES ON YOUR PROPERTY - IT'S ALSO A FIXED AMOUNT. There, I emphasised that for you. It was only introduced in the last 6 years ago to better fund state supported television. Interesting/curious isn't it; we're (well some of us) desperately trying to get rid of the lience fee whereas our neighbours have looked across the channel and decided its's the way to go
Er no Jake, and clearly, like me, it's pi**ing you off.
It simply means you an old fart, too long in the tooth for IT [that's thrown at me] and you probably got your shareware from 5.25in floppies sent via the RM after requesting off a bulletin board.
You probably also moan that prior to be dying a death; the last incarnations for 3.5in drives were crap compared to pre 1993 models as they refused to reformat [MS software] coruupted floppies
pfft......... according to my teenager, house phones can make it to the cradle and recharge on their own...actually I think that's "I found it still working again [after parent searched through sofa/teenager bedroom detritus and replaced on cradle by living room sofa] in the living room...
Interestingly; the recharge/nocharge problem seems to affect his fruit based mobile as well
Thanks for that, if you had been more accurate you would have noted that XBMC stands for X-Box Media Centre as in "install on a hacked X-Box". Installing over Ubuntu on a PC is not XBMC's main purpose ("raison d'etre"?). Hence more complex.
Perhaps you should have used Knoppmyth as in 'burn ISO to disk; insert in drive and reboot'
Or again as in Mythbuntu; again burn ISO to disk; install; answer questions on TV card and tune; enjoy.
Mythbuntu works fine and is easy to install; records more programs/tuner than MS Media Centre (courtesy of Win 7) which took much longer to install than Mythbuntu on the same equipment (thanks Win7). Having used the MCE on Win7 for 2 weeks and then tried Mythbuntu I stayed with Mythbuntu - suited my requirements better (like 3 frontends in other rooms using same media/storage sources; +3 tuners in server frontend/backend).
My only gripe is that perhaps Mr Shuttleworth might have used MythTV/Mythbuntu as his starting point thereby contributing to project (but able to add to for 'extended features')
Here's a suggestion: buy/build a 240-12v transformer and box for your car stereo: buy and connect your chosen speakers (car power amp optional) and you're done. Do need to have a car steroe with 'traditional' fixed front panel rather than the 'remote' display common in today's manf fitted models.
With all the 'custom' cases around for PC's - box for the radio/media player shouldn't be a problem.
Not a new idea I grant you - I did this >28yrs ago for university to end up with v compact radio/tape player. That was years before compact hi-fi systems were available for the budget user
My wife has a Wildfire S = smallish screen but quite zippy (for her). Generally speaking (in almost all areas) more oomph is required to drive larger devices (cars; planes; people..). Thus devices (see prev) with more oomph are larger...Smaller phones (so mnfrs think) == not heavy users == more oomph not required - simples tch.
Last time I looked, iPhones looked quite large compared to Wildfire S and Desire and as 0.5 to 1 cm size diff seems a big deal to you - iPhone may well be too big. It also only comes with 1 speed of oomph per fixed screen size....(largish screen) so probably fails there also.
Disclaimer: I own a brick (aka Nokia 9500 Communicator); son is on second iPhone (which seems to be permanently out of juice) and wife on Wildfire S which she is delighted with......
An allusion after my own heart (and probably obscure enough to be a private joke). Luckily this captain WAS in his seat and the cosmic particle didn't fry it....
(If you don't get the quote - may Yag will reveal in the New Year..)
They're bulky for a very good [and designed] reason - to stop your fingers [and smaller=child] fingers touching live contacts. You may now have RCD circuits etc in your posh/new house but this was designed safety for the newly electric world. I have to say, as an owner of a French prop - UK plugs instill more confidence in their job than the current continental style [disclaimer - after 25yrs - I love France but not everything is better than the UK....)
If you take the time to read his diaries [I have] you will be depressed to note that defence procurement seems to be in as great a disarray as it was in the 1660's. Pepys spent much of his time warding off corrupt procurement [probity being his preserve in his own account] of Navy supplies; observing incompetent [Royalist] captains being placed on ships above competent proven captains from the Roundhead regime and general unreadiness of the Navy for fighting off the Dutch in the mouth of the Thames.
My wife used to be head of technical section of [a clinical department] the NHS. She regularly interviewed for new posts; both student technical entry and qualified. From her descriptions of interviewees, I recognise every single one of the 'crimes' in the article.
Major downer was people not turning up...and not ringing to say they were not attending. Needless to say, having wasted interviewing panel time, they were blacklisted for future interviews.
No homework on the department; vague about job being interviewed for; poor personal presentation (suits/business-like appearance please even if you will be wearing a uniform after appointment); slouching in the interview - tick - all present.
As the article says - you are selling yourself to the panel, (who have probably taken time out of busy schedules to interview) so do the homework and do yourself justice
As for "...and working in local government"; almost all our ex-council employees left our NHS department after a couple of months. Reason: "too stressful"; "had to work at weekends"....
My vote - Psion netBook w 64M memory - superb - still have mine; 5MMX for ultraportable
Still the best (shame new pdf files are unreadable and that the Opera browser coughs abd dies on BBC sites)
Really we need the Psion updated e.g. with Android and updated internals. I have been testing the Toshiba AC100 but it's not as finished as the Psion (and it's discontinued now). If it could have the Psion app set (and would stay on standby when requested) AND the My Location fixed to allow external GPS connection - it would fit the bill
Well unlike the great "90% relevant desktops" or the "7%" fruit based desktops; Linux users have a choice on *DESKTOP ENVIROMENTS* and how they work for them.
I'll say it again - choice ; and as a result *debate* and *opinion* ( even agument and flaming??? !). Think that shows signs of "interest" and "life" in a subject. If you find that 0.8% is a rounding error and and the whole thing a "laughing stock" I suggest you save your time and typing and stick to witing about improving your 90% (which after using it since Windows 1, I consider a dogs dinnner) or even the other 7% (I have no experience so cannot comment) and leave those intrested in the rounding error to post.
Windows tablets in the NHS were a complete pain [thanks Dylan 4 for the accurate posts]. As a clinician with an interest in IT AND working in the NHS - windows tablets are NOT FOR THE NHS.
The MS security concept completely hamstrings their use. Almost all wards do not even need PC's - thin clients would be best to avoid all the roaming profile gibberish [in my Trust at least]. Few need Excel/Word etc. they need access to patient management systems [e.g. Lorenzo] which is via citrix; electronic medicines admin systems [again via thin client access]; electronic rostering system [often browser interfaces] and some simplified printing. It kills me to say it; but a smooth profile tablet and bluetooth keyboard for use when intensive data input was required would fit the bill. The windows PC paradigm in tablet form is too complex even now for what is required for 90% of users.
BTW; have you seen the state of NHS PC's/keyboards/mice - sterile they are not! Not even 'clean'. And then the users have a knack of destroying [expensive] laptop keyboards by dropping heavy volumes of paper notes on them. NHS wards need the equivalent of a POS terminal that has indestructible keys; smooth surfaces; no mouse - sounds suspiciously like an iPAD to me.......[god it killed me to admit that]
Well it's the old upgrade/break everything and start fixing routine. KDE4 I find is now highly usable - almost back to KDE3 - still not keen on many desktop widgets. Too like a mobile phone UI and it kills reasons to have virtual desktops (I keep 4).
Windowmaker is great for low overhead [but scares the hell out of the uninitiated - wonder what Enlightenment would do to them..).
AfterStep I quite like but maintenance and develpoment seemed to have stopped several years ago - time to revisit?
XFCE get's job done but there's something not tight for me in it's feel.
However - at least there's choice and at least you can even mix'n'match DE components
Register
26 posts • joined Friday 5th August 2011 07:11 GMT
Any minute now....
someone is going to whine on about the licence fee for BBC....
I read all this and say "Thank god for ....."
We have no cable in this (insert small town on outskirts of south Manchester, UK) so no TiVo to skip ads. Refused for 10+ years to support Murdoch in any way so Sky Box is out. My ad skipping is MythTV all the way - it works - and boy, am I glad to free from the shouting idiocy that are adverts...
Re: I had a post-pub toilet malfunction that resulted in a pissy laptop.
pffffttt
Sir, you owe me a keyboard; cup of strong continental roast coffee and/or dishwasher tablets (but then I'll have to take keyboard home..)
This is the Psion you are looking for - don't move along...
Seriously the Psion 3 was the bees knees and as for battery life - modern smartphones - eat your RAM! Def3nder was a real [keypad] trial
Re: Hmm, advertising?
err...
insight+realist = cynical to others
In other shock news; mammals of the ursine persuasion have been found to excrete remnants of enteral nutritional intake in arboreal surroundings
Its the network stupid
Try a softphone in this enviroment:
Wireless access points disappear randomly; reappear 5 mins later minus proxy server
Disappear again - proxy still not evident: reappear again for 10mins WITH proxy. Disappear for 2 hours
wired network now starts this game; it too now disappears for 1hr.
Finally with 1hr of work to go all reappears working
Try making calls in that!
(daily log of an NHS Teachi ng hospital)
What's wrong with a licence fee then?
I pay every day for media which I'm not keen on. I can't opt out of paying for it - it's compulsorily paid for.
That'll be commercial TV/media. It raises it's cash by levying a tax on almost everything I buy. The revenue scheme seems particularly hard on the lower paid as the products they are likely to buy seem to buy into the funding scheme more heavily.
The only item I 'buy' (or have as a taxation - if you have your way) is BBC content. Oddly; I don't mind paying that as the films/shows/news are not interrupted by 'devices for funding' aka advertisements.
As another observation: in France you have a 'licence to be able to receive TV ' to pay - ITS PART OF THE LOCAL TAXES ON YOUR PROPERTY - IT'S ALSO A FIXED AMOUNT. There, I emphasised that for you. It was only introduced in the last 6 years ago to better fund state supported television. Interesting/curious isn't it; we're (well some of us) desperately trying to get rid of the lience fee whereas our neighbours have looked across the channel and decided its's the way to go
when "apps" were called "shareware"......
Er no Jake, and clearly, like me, it's pi**ing you off.
It simply means you an old fart, too long in the tooth for IT [that's thrown at me] and you probably got your shareware from 5.25in floppies sent via the RM after requesting off a bulletin board.
You probably also moan that prior to be dying a death; the last incarnations for 3.5in drives were crap compared to pre 1993 models as they refused to reformat [MS software] coruupted floppies
I could go on but I need to have a nap now tsk
Re Obviously! and 'thicker' by the generation
Thanks for that gem. I feel that you truly made your point
- try 'despair' rather than 'dispair'
Could you illuminate us with the country you refer to and I'll send my 40 yr old English Grammar and Vocabulary textbook from my schooldays
pfft......... according to my teenager, house phones can make it to the cradle and recharge on their own...actually I think that's "I found it still working again [after parent searched through sofa/teenager bedroom detritus and replaced on cradle by living room sofa] in the living room...
Interestingly; the recharge/nocharge problem seems to affect his fruit based mobile as well
re Dumb Question
So you can " tart " it up any way you want....multiple Pi's in one box = Raspbery Tart (multicore server?)
@Anonymous Coward God help us..... #
Thanks for that, if you had been more accurate you would have noted that XBMC stands for X-Box Media Centre as in "install on a hacked X-Box". Installing over Ubuntu on a PC is not XBMC's main purpose ("raison d'etre"?). Hence more complex.
Perhaps you should have used Knoppmyth as in 'burn ISO to disk; insert in drive and reboot'
Or again as in Mythbuntu; again burn ISO to disk; install; answer questions on TV card and tune; enjoy.
Mythbuntu works fine and is easy to install; records more programs/tuner than MS Media Centre (courtesy of Win 7) which took much longer to install than Mythbuntu on the same equipment (thanks Win7). Having used the MCE on Win7 for 2 weeks and then tried Mythbuntu I stayed with Mythbuntu - suited my requirements better (like 3 frontends in other rooms using same media/storage sources; +3 tuners in server frontend/backend).
My only gripe is that perhaps Mr Shuttleworth might have used MythTV/Mythbuntu as his starting point thereby contributing to project (but able to add to for 'extended features')
@Hitmouse "cheap car stereo..."
Here's a suggestion: buy/build a 240-12v transformer and box for your car stereo: buy and connect your chosen speakers (car power amp optional) and you're done. Do need to have a car steroe with 'traditional' fixed front panel rather than the 'remote' display common in today's manf fitted models.
With all the 'custom' cases around for PC's - box for the radio/media player shouldn't be a problem.
Not a new idea I grant you - I did this >28yrs ago for university to end up with v compact radio/tape player. That was years before compact hi-fi systems were available for the budget user
@Alex Rose: Why so large
My wife has a Wildfire S = smallish screen but quite zippy (for her). Generally speaking (in almost all areas) more oomph is required to drive larger devices (cars; planes; people..). Thus devices (see prev) with more oomph are larger...Smaller phones (so mnfrs think) == not heavy users == more oomph not required - simples tch.
Last time I looked, iPhones looked quite large compared to Wildfire S and Desire and as 0.5 to 1 cm size diff seems a big deal to you - iPhone may well be too big. It also only comes with 1 speed of oomph per fixed screen size....(largish screen) so probably fails there also.
Disclaimer: I own a brick (aka Nokia 9500 Communicator); son is on second iPhone (which seems to be permanently out of juice) and wife on Wildfire S which she is delighted with......
@Yag
I salute you sir!
An allusion after my own heart (and probably obscure enough to be a private joke). Luckily this captain WAS in his seat and the cosmic particle didn't fry it....
(If you don't get the quote - may Yag will reveal in the New Year..)
UKPlugs == safety
They're bulky for a very good [and designed] reason - to stop your fingers [and smaller=child] fingers touching live contacts. You may now have RCD circuits etc in your posh/new house but this was designed safety for the newly electric world. I have to say, as an owner of a French prop - UK plugs instill more confidence in their job than the current continental style [disclaimer - after 25yrs - I love France but not everything is better than the UK....)
Tosh AC100 -> Be.ez Le Reporter Air 11
Look! colour coordination for your AC100! Like it
@Richard Scratcher
D**n! Beat me to it - my first thought as I read article
as Pepys would have observed....
If you take the time to read his diaries [I have] you will be depressed to note that defence procurement seems to be in as great a disarray as it was in the 1660's. Pepys spent much of his time warding off corrupt procurement [probity being his preserve in his own account] of Navy supplies; observing incompetent [Royalist] captains being placed on ships above competent proven captains from the Roundhead regime and general unreadiness of the Navy for fighting off the Dutch in the mouth of the Thames.
plus ca change
...and working in local government.
I work in the NHS; is that worse or better?.
My wife used to be head of technical section of [a clinical department] the NHS. She regularly interviewed for new posts; both student technical entry and qualified. From her descriptions of interviewees, I recognise every single one of the 'crimes' in the article.
Major downer was people not turning up...and not ringing to say they were not attending. Needless to say, having wasted interviewing panel time, they were blacklisted for future interviews.
No homework on the department; vague about job being interviewed for; poor personal presentation (suits/business-like appearance please even if you will be wearing a uniform after appointment); slouching in the interview - tick - all present.
As the article says - you are selling yourself to the panel, (who have probably taken time out of busy schedules to interview) so do the homework and do yourself justice
As for "...and working in local government"; almost all our ex-council employees left our NHS department after a couple of months. Reason: "too stressful"; "had to work at weekends"....
Reprise Psion netBook [or 5mmx..]
My vote - Psion netBook w 64M memory - superb - still have mine; 5MMX for ultraportable
Still the best (shame new pdf files are unreadable and that the Opera browser coughs abd dies on BBC sites)
Really we need the Psion updated e.g. with Android and updated internals. I have been testing the Toshiba AC100 but it's not as finished as the Psion (and it's discontinued now). If it could have the Psion app set (and would stay on standby when requested) AND the My Location fixed to allow external GPS connection - it would fit the bill
RE: There's a huge drop-off... #
Well unlike the great "90% relevant desktops" or the "7%" fruit based desktops; Linux users have a choice on *DESKTOP ENVIROMENTS* and how they work for them.
I'll say it again - choice ; and as a result *debate* and *opinion* ( even agument and flaming??? !). Think that shows signs of "interest" and "life" in a subject. If you find that 0.8% is a rounding error and and the whole thing a "laughing stock" I suggest you save your time and typing and stick to witing about improving your 90% (which after using it since Windows 1, I consider a dogs dinnner) or even the other 7% (I have no experience so cannot comment) and leave those intrested in the rounding error to post.
RE: in the kitchen in chav houses
Er I have in my kitchen a 17in monitor (Sharpedge I think) linked via HDMI SFF PC [MythTV if you ask]; sound is NAD 302 +Wharfedale #2s
Do I qualify as having "..a 'small' TV is one below 19 ...in the kitchen in chav houses" ???
Phone number; street address -> IP address
Is my home address personal data?
Is my telephone number personal data?
Is my IP address for all intents and purposes 'mine' (e.g. long term broadband connection; smartphone) ?
I feel that if the answer to the top two is 'yes' (and I say it is) and the last question is 'yes' the my IP address IS personal data!
Ogi:"buying a 1982 sports couple"
Wow! Is the 300 squid"'viewing" or for "participation" in the sports??
NHS and Win Tablets - NO!
Windows tablets in the NHS were a complete pain [thanks Dylan 4 for the accurate posts]. As a clinician with an interest in IT AND working in the NHS - windows tablets are NOT FOR THE NHS.
The MS security concept completely hamstrings their use. Almost all wards do not even need PC's - thin clients would be best to avoid all the roaming profile gibberish [in my Trust at least]. Few need Excel/Word etc. they need access to patient management systems [e.g. Lorenzo] which is via citrix; electronic medicines admin systems [again via thin client access]; electronic rostering system [often browser interfaces] and some simplified printing. It kills me to say it; but a smooth profile tablet and bluetooth keyboard for use when intensive data input was required would fit the bill. The windows PC paradigm in tablet form is too complex even now for what is required for 90% of users.
BTW; have you seen the state of NHS PC's/keyboards/mice - sterile they are not! Not even 'clean'. And then the users have a knack of destroying [expensive] laptop keyboards by dropping heavy volumes of paper notes on them. NHS wards need the equivalent of a POS terminal that has indestructible keys; smooth surfaces; no mouse - sounds suspiciously like an iPAD to me.......[god it killed me to admit that]
Time to return to KDE4?
Well it's the old upgrade/break everything and start fixing routine. KDE4 I find is now highly usable - almost back to KDE3 - still not keen on many desktop widgets. Too like a mobile phone UI and it kills reasons to have virtual desktops (I keep 4).
Windowmaker is great for low overhead [but scares the hell out of the uninitiated - wonder what Enlightenment would do to them..).
AfterStep I quite like but maintenance and develpoment seemed to have stopped several years ago - time to revisit?
XFCE get's job done but there's something not tight for me in it's feel.
However - at least there's choice and at least you can even mix'n'match DE components